For me, when family or friends have bee like "Why don't you want to have kids/own a home/etc..."
I ask them what I'm getting out of. "Oh the joy of raising another human life, continuing your family legacy, the feeling that you've accomplished something...."
And my reaction is always "The difficulty, cost and risks of raising a child outweigh the benefit of knowing they're mine. The concept of a family legacy to me isn't important, families will grow and diminish whether or not I'm involved. The feeling of accomplishment comes from a life time of society telling me what it expects me to do with my life and that's the pay off: feeling like I completed goals that someone else other than me dictated."
If I found someone I really liked, that I wanted to share the experience of raising a kid with and creating a family life, I'd do it. But they'd have to be pretty special. Shit my brother married his wife like 7 years ago or something, and even they have no interest in having kids. It just seems like a lot of work and expense for an unknown quantity of fulfillment.
And for me personally, I've seen enough marriages and families implode that it makes me question why any of it is worth the attempt. I like the things I prioritize now, and a family and kids requires a re-prioritization of what matters because.....you chose to do a thing that made you re-prioritize. Kind of like a chicken and egg thing.
Put another way, I don't fault anyone for going that route because it's obviously what they wanted. What's annoying is that society at large doesn't extend the same kind of understanding to people who want to take a different path with their life. When I want something, I go after it. If I'm not going after it, it's because I don't want it.
People will always willingly invest their energy in something they want. Doesn't matter if that's drugs, video games, a partner, a home, or a family. And I know myself well enough not to try to force myself to get in to something I know I don't actually want.
Too bad the people who flirt and express interest in me are folks whose looks I do not find attractive: big swole/ripped muscly dudebros.
Are you female Teneb, or just of the other persuasion? Always assumed you were male. (You don't really need to answer this.)
Internet interaction is not a suitable replacement, because it has manicured contact lists, and the suggestions from services are the result of demographic filtering to keep people in their comfort zones, and are NOT real random interaction.
I met a girl playing WoW and it got serious enough I traveled to meet her and we met uh....genital to genital. It didn't work out in the end, mostly due to money and logistics more than anything.
So while the internet isn't a suitable replacement, it's true, it's still a functioning venue for social interaction that can lead to other things. And frankly, I find a woman way sexier when she can bant with me with her words and her wits through text while sober, than when I meet one half drunk in a bar face to face.
Really it's the question of what you do after you have sex with someone. I've always wanted a relationship, not just sex. And having sex with no real intention of a relationship has always felt pretty dishonest to me. Unless someone comes up and is like "You want to to just be fuck buddies", I'm not going to go out and put the moves on someone with no intention of following it up. There are millions of pretty faces out there, but only a few people that actually "work" for you. Internet porn has kind of numbed me to the absolute value of beauty. It's whether I actually click with someone that motivates me toward sexy time.