Well, Frank, I myself hooked up with a clingy, needy, suspicious babe several years ago, who drove me right up a wall. I suppose she was The One?
Queen Tonya has a good point about friendless men not “getting” friendship (been there … yeesh), Large Marge has a good point about the same criticism applying to women, and DianaG makes the trifecta with her consideration of why the guy is friendless.
FWIW, when I’m talking about someone being friendless I mean friendless, not just having a small social circle. I have a pretty small social circle, myself – but I have one.
Beware of Doug, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a post from you in a dating/relationship thread that wasn’t hyperdefensive. As has been pointed out, there is no “game” here – it’s just life. I expect any guy I’m dating to have one. If you feel unfairly judged because you’re lacking in social skills, please don’t twist that into a failing on the part of those of us who think that social skills aren’t too much to expect. The “naturally quiet or reserved” still have friends. Nerds have friends. Geeks have friends. Gangbangers have friends. Marilyn Manson has friends. People have friends!
You are the only one in this thread equating “no friends” with “not worth spitting on if he were ablaze.” The OP said it has come up when women he knows are talking about “past dates and or potential mates,” which means the guys are being given a chance. No one who has replied has said that friendless guys aren’t worthy, just that being friendless is a red flag. So cut the self-pitying melodramatics, 'k?
Obviously not. That doesn’t mean that there is no one out there who is content to form a close relationship with just one person, and the rest of the world is merely there for common amusement. (And to keep the duprass supplied with restaurants, museums, and zoos.)
It’s a fair cop… :rolleyes:
Well, hey. Maybe you’re sufficiently understanding and enlightened to see someone with a small social circle as having “a life.” Most people, in my experience, aren’t. Maybe it’s not a game, but it certainly has rules – a lot of them unwritten, petty, and stupid –and a lot of the stupidest rules matter the most. How much of this is due to the way we date and mate in our culture and how much is due to my hyperdefensive response whenever the dating issue comes up, I truly have no idea.
I have friends (he protested weakly). I just don’t spend a lot of time with them, or even feel all that comfortable with them being around all the time. I wish I felt differently. But until then, I guess I’m just supposed to leave the ladies alone.
Problem is – I’ve done that for entirely too long now, and I’m getting sick and tired, and I can see myself real soon now, turning around and realizing it’s too late, and the rest of the world has me in a pigeonhole I can’t ever get out of, and where the hell all the time went.
So many wonderful women…so many unwritten rules…so many competitive men I can’t stand living up to. Being myself is so goddamn lonely, sometimes I think I’d so better being nobody. If that’s self-pitying melodramatics, I’ll make the best of it – I imagine more than one of you reading this has felt the same.
Doug, what do you think you are going to like in having a girlfriend that you don’t like in having a friend?
“If”?
(OK…I’ve stepped back and taken a few deep breaths here. The ranting nihilism has passed, I think.)
I guess…not having to deal with the whole guy thing? The feeling of “what have you done for me lately?” The judging and comparing and competing against your male friends? The feeling that any really deep emotional concerns (such as we’re talking about here) are off limits, because all we ever talk about are things and stuff?
I guess a lot of what we’re taught is “friendship” is bullshit to me, and I have this idea that if I could connect with the right woman, we could have something much more real and intimate than all that.
I also don’t like the statistics on loners. Too many die early and unhappy. But there I go with the melodrama again.
I suppose I could disguise my self-dramatizing streak as nice nasty masculine anger. :mad: So maybe I AM melodramatic, buster. What’s it to YOU?
Yes, that’s right. Never mind the fact that I just told you exactly the opposite, and the fact that no one in this thread has even implied such a thing, that’s what you’re supposed to do.
Martyr complexes are a much bigger turnoff than any lack of friends.
I concede fact 1, and respectfully (but no more respectfully than you surely felt when you wrote that) contest fact 2.
The concept of the red flag keeps coming up in this thread. In racing, anyway, that means DANGER. AVOID. KEEP AWAY. And yet the red-flagged individual is supposed to keep on trying to reach out and connect, when there’s no freaking hope of it working?! It’s a joke.
So learn to live your life so that you are happy, though alone. Do things you enjoy, and enjoy them. Go to the zoo (or whatever); drive around New Mexico (or where ever) for a week exploring; keep trying to find new and interesting restaurants while keeping yourself known at the good old ones; go to the library and girlwatch in between chatting with the old biddy who just beat you to the last Lawrence Block book about whether Scudder or Rhodenbarr is a better character. Do things that make you happy with life.
Seriously, seems to me your goal is to be with someone instead of to be happy. You can’t be happy with someone unless you’re happy with being you. No one will want to be with you unless they find something they enjoy about you.
I’m alone at this time in my life. I may die early, but by George, I won’t die unhappy. And if chance allows me to meet the withdrawn, shy woman who suits me to a T, I’ll be prepared to suit her to a T. And so should you be.
Now I’ll shut up before I’m forced to move this thread to MPSIMS.
Keller is a better character than either, although possibly not the ideal role model given Doug’s circumstances: easy to identify with, though, which, given his occupation, is why he’s such a great character.
Heh. I just did a three-day weekend driving around a bit - Delta is a nice town; I bet I’d enjoy living here - - Glenwood Springs is a nice town; I bet I’d enjoy living here - Leadville is a nice town; I bet I’d enjoy living here. I didn’t come home with a bunch of real estate brochures to throw away, though; nor did I start a stamp collection.
It’s just not true, man.
Love isn’t this magic connection that makes everything different. No one woman- “right” or not- is going to make you feel whole and complete. The reason you don’t feel good isn’t because you just havn’t found that perfect woman yet. That perfect woman doesn’t exist. There are just a bunch of imperfect ones that you may one day grow to love.
Relationships are founded on and inseperable from friendship. And it’s not always this great moment of perfect oneness. And women arn’t strange creatures that- if you could just get them to see you way- will act any different than anyone else on this earth. Everything on this earth takes work, guts and patience.
I think you will have much better luck in your life if you stop thinking of a relationship as an end in itself, but rather as a journey.
Whoah, Beware of Doug, I haven’t read a series of posts in which I could relate to so well in a long time. I’m not as stressed as you over these matters, but then I’m only 20. If things don’t change in the years to come and I end up being a forty year old virgin, still trying to make the best of things, well…I might very well be cracking up inside. I don’t know. These days it seems like I’m far far more likely to try and supress urges towards needing a girlfriend, or needing friends in general, than try and comply with them. I would like to think just steamrolling over the idea that I need other people in my life to be happy or satisfied is a better life strategy than constantly trying to make friendly with everyone. There are a lot of advantages to single life over a more a social one…but still…I’m conflicted over choosing one or the other.
But I do think that being able to blaze your own trail succesfully and with little to no help or motivations from others is a great sign of strength. Why the people always needing reinforcement and the company of others are praised the most, I don’t quite get.
Now, do you feel like you can’t measure up to other men, or that you simply refuse to because that’s part of “The Game”, and one that bothers the hell out of you?
I think that’s where I’m coming from with the relationship thing, and I know that’s where I’m coming from in regards to just making friends. The competition thing really is bullshit, and I can’t stand it. And it isn’t because I can’t win. I have more ambition, discipline, and drive than plenty of the people my own age I meet. I workout everyday and am reading multiple textbooks even though I’m taking summer off for school. But I’ll be damned if take someone down a peg just to look better in front of someone else, and I don’t appreciate it when other people do it to me. That’s not to mention that conversations that feel like competitions are horrible, and way too common in some groups.
Finding a group of people you can just hang out with without scorekeeping of favors, or harsh judgments over trivial quirks in your personality/lifestyle/taste in movies is way harder than it should be
It’s unfair that some people make assumptions about you based on your lack of friends. It’s also unfair that women judge a guy by his car, watch, shoes, etc. just as it’s unfair to a woman with A-cups to to be ignored when one with DD’s walks in the room.
The thing is that women (and men) have a right to choose a mate by whatever criteria they set for themselves (no matter how shallow or petty). I don’t deny any woman the right to her own judgement (flawed or not) when choosing , just as I wouldn’t want her to deny me. No one should compromise their desires when it comes to spending their life with someone.
I know this isn’t an advice column and all, but if you want to have friends, be a friend. Reach out to people…treat them like an interview. Ask questions. Remember the answers. Take some interest in what they’re up to. Honestly, you’ll be surprised at the impression you’ll make. 
Wow. Where exactly are y’all meeting these people? Competition? One-upmanship? Snide judgements? Among friends? Is this an episode of 90210? Because there’s a difference between “wanting to have friends” and “wanting to sit at the cool kids’ table.”
Friends are people you like. When I say that a person should have friends, I mean that they should have at least one or two people whose company they enjoy, and whom they feel close to, not that they should have a whirlwind social life and Prom King/Queen on their resume. For me, it’s about seeing that the person has the ability to maintain and enjoy reciprocal, non-obligatory relationships.
There’s nothing wrong with being self-sufficient. It’s a good thing. But not having friends doesn’t make one self-sufficient, it merely makes one friendless. If you really feel that people with friends have them because they need constant affirmation and support, then you really, really don’t understand the nature of friendship. Affirmation and support are part of it, of course, but it’s reciprocal. Among *real * friends, ass-kickings and interventions are also sometimes necessary. In either case, it’s really about knowing the person, and caring enough about them to know when an affirmation or an ass-kicking is in order. Real relationships, whether platonic or romantic, take time and effort. Not having any is a sign (to me) of emotional skittishness or laziness.
But women hate it when men spend time with their friends (my wife’s favourite is “I don’t want to be like those women who won’t let their husbands go out with the boys, but…”).
My theory is that if a guy has lots of friends, the woman can make him sacrifice them all as a sign of committment. If he has no life to begin with, she has nothing to take from him, meaning there is no point in pursuing the relationship.
I’m trying to figure out why I’d want to be romantically involved with someone who doesn’t value friends. What is my relationship with this person supposed to be about? Cause sex is good and all, but I really want to spend time with someone I enjoy, who will be a friend. Someone who doesn’t have friends may not know how to be a friend. And that’s really the foundation for a relationship.
We’re aiming for balance, here. As a woman, I want a guy who has friends, but not ones he’s out with all the time. If a guy has a ton of buddies (most single) that he sees nearly every free minute, playing sports or going out to bars…he’s not my type of guy. He will probably have trouble finding the time to devote to a relationship, and will be pressured by his single buddies to hang out with them instead of me.
But a guy who has absolutely no friends is just as bad. He’s probably content to spend all his time on the couch, in front of the TV, or in front of a computer, and will get resentful if I try to drag him out into public to go out to dinner or If I go out on my own. He won’t mingle with my circle of friends…just sit there at parties, not talking, and soon my friends will stop inviting me because he’s not friendly.
So there needs to be a balance. I’m looking for a guy who has friends the way I have friends. I don’t live in my friends’ pockets all the time, but I don’t avoid people either. I’m very shy, and I love to do things on my own, but I also work well with others. And I want a guy who has that balance, too.