I'm (25F) trying to make friends in a male-dominated hobby/club (21-35M), but they only seem to be interested in a romantic relationship?

I recently joined some fitness/weight lifting groups, which are heavily male dominated. Everyone was very nice to me and also seemed very welcoming. I hit it off with 2-3 guys in particular, and we spoke sporadically throughout the course of 2 weeks (10 minutes, 2-ish times a week via text). In each case, as soon as the fact that I had a boyfriend came up, the other person became very distant.

I've been in a long term relationship for a while. We live together so it's not unusual for him to come up in conversations about daily life (plans for the weekend, who I'm going out to eat with, my boyfriend is picking me up, etc.). I never try to be presumptuous that someone is interested in me, but I also don't avoid or hide the fact that I have a significant other.

I haven't been in a circumstance where I wanted to make new friends since university (I have my own social circle, but I joined these communities to have friends with a newfound interest of mine). As silly as it sounds, I'm having a really hard time making friends, and I find it very disappointing to start getting attached and then be somewhat ghosted because it turns out the other person was only interested in me physically or romantically.

To add, there are other women in the group, which I've gotten along with well, but we're talking about 4 ladies (2 of which have young children) and maybe 20 men.

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TL;DR: Want to make friends with the guys that share a similar hobby/interest, but they only seem to be interested in dating.

Submitted January 24, 2020 at 02:54PM by lunaneko_ https://ift.tt/2sVkXVr