[QUOTE=Gary Kumquat]
I reckon it’s your self effacing modesty that’s holding you back.
[/QUOTE]
My point being that women don’t get to discover any of these things about me because they blow me off (sometimes with laughter) at the first meeting.
“Hi, I’m Phase42!”
“Eeew! Beat it, perv!”
[QUOTE=Ultros]
The one thing I don’t understand, though, is how do you, well, show interest without showing interest?
[/QUOTE]
You don’t. You’re not “interested”. You’re living your life unconcerned by your romantic status. Ça met égale! You’re good either way, with or without 'em. And you can’t fake it. How one gets into this state of mind I have no good formula for. I don’t think you’d want to try mine, quite frankly, because maybe there are less soul-crushing methods.
[QUOTE=Ultros]
I somewhat identify with neutron star and Phase42, and I’ve seen this advice before, and I’d love to put it into practice. The one thing I don’t understand, though, is how do you, well, show interest without showing interest? How do you act like you don’t care at all while still managing to interact with them, invite them to do something with you, and spend time with them? I work in a hospital, and there are tons of cute nurses around. What should I do, not say hi to them or make eye contact when they get on the elevator with me? I’m already doing that, and they’re not exactly jumping all over me.
[/QUOTE]
Psst… wanna know a secret? Do ya? Here it is: women are people, just like you! No, really! You actually don’t have to spend time, money, and energy trying to “figure us out” because we aren’t a goddamn puzzle. Self-assured guys (and no, I don’t mean the guy with the Lexus) know this. They know that women are just human beings and treat us as such. They don’t get their Jockeys all in a twist because they can’t figure out how to talk to one of us. Personally, I don’t like being treated as an alien or an enigma, because I am neither. The guys who figure that out and treat me like a person will get the interest. The guys who whine on messageboards about “why don’t women like me, I studied this one woman for a year to figure her out but when I finally got up the nerve to ask her out she called me a pervert, what am I doing wrong?” won’t. That’s all you need to know.
I have the social skills of a third-grader with Asperger’s but at least I’ve figured out that human beings (no matter what their gender) like to be treated as human beings. I am sorry you haven’t figured that out and choose to rely on your arcane misogynistic female-catching rubric, but don’t blame the women. Actually, that might be part of it: you’re trying to “catch a wimmins” instead of trying to attract an individual. You know why women don’t like desperation? It’s because we want to be appreciated as the unique human beings we are, and not just be some guy’s wife or baby-making machine. And from the way a lot of guys talk, that is all they want. When a guy is on a single-minded quest to score a chick, it’s a lot of pressure to be that chick and to know he’s wrapped up so many desperate hopes and dreams in you.
My SO is probably a lot like the so-called “nice guys” on this board–non aggressive, good listener, intelligent. But why does he have a sweet hot vagina trophy instead of you? Because he made the effort to attract me as a friend first, way before we ever started dating, instead of treating me like some kind of prize. Do you “nice guys” even have any female friends? I mean, in real life? My guess is no.
Yeah, this is something that I’ve been bottling up for awhile. But it really does boggle the mind how a guy would rather go to the hassle of flying a woman in from overseas–someone who will stay with him out of tradition or a sense of personal obligation–than treat women like human beings.
Also, hawksgirl, you rock. I am so fuckin’ sick of the nice-guy misogyny on this board.
[QUOTE=Loopydude]
You don’t. You’re not “interested”. You’re living your life unconcerned by your romantic status. Ça met égale! You’re good either way, with or without 'em. And you can’t fake it. How one gets into this state of mind I have no good formula for. I don’t think you’d want to try mine, quite frankly, because maybe there are less soul-crushing methods.
[/QUOTE]
Well I don’t know what’s soul-crushing about realizing you don’t need another person to survive, but the reason that this is so attractive is because most women (I would say most human beings, but there are a lot of men who don’t care about this too much) like to be with someone who is self-sufficient. This means emotionally as well as financially. It is a lot of pressure to be someone’s entire world and I know I wouldn’t want that kind of responsibility.
There’s nothing necessarily soul-crushing about achieving self-sufficiency, but I think when one thinks the best thing they can do is find another girlfriend, often the process of discovering this may not, in fact, be the best thing they can do is a serially unpleasant, one. For me equal parts rejection by the ones I wanted, and wasting my time (and theirs, to be fair) with the ones I didn’t want.
[QUOTE=jayjay]
That’s not terribly fair, actually. The era of relatively easy-to-get divorces is even younger than the era of Marrying For Love. If modern divorce had been around in the days of arranged marriages, I would imagine we would be seeing quite different comparison numbers.
[/QUOTE]
True, but if divorce leads to either another arranged marriage (or whatever system is used) then maybe divorce wouldn’t be so common.
That said, I agree that the current system being bad doesn’t indicate in any way that older systems were any better.
[QUOTE=Ultros]
The one thing I don’t understand, though, is how do you, well, show interest without showing interest? How do you act like you don’t care at all while still managing to interact with them, invite them to do something with you, and spend time with them?
[/QUOTE]
Watch a movie called “The Tao of Steve”. The rules are:
I suppose these rules don’t work if you want to get with one woman in particular, but his technique was more to follow those rules in his life and women would flock to him.
I think the key is not to show interest in the woman. Rather, show yourself to be an interesting person and let the women come to you.
[QUOTE=John Carter of Mars]
I doubt that it’s the first girl, but I don’t know for certain.
[/QUOTE]
I swear, just when I thought I’d seen all the quirks of human nature…then I discuvered Craigslist Moscow. But hey, at least it’s free - maybe Bubba finally figured out how to save the cash on matchmaking agencies.
[QUOTE=Eva Luna]
Hey, this isn’t Bubba, is it?
I swear, just when I thought I’d seen all the quirks of human nature…then I discuvered Craigslist Moscow. But hey, at least it’s free - maybe Bubba finally figured out how to save the cash on matchmaking agencies.
[/QUOTE]
Ha! No, that’s not Bubba, but they are very, very similar. Except that guy says he likes horses. Bubba can’t deal with horses.
You know, I don’t get how this is so very different from internet dating. It’s just using the better communication made possible by the internet to do something that’s been happening for centuries, if not since the emergence of modern man.
Both parties can say no at pretty much any time, and the “mail order” bride isn’t entering into things unwillingly. The man has to spend a lot of time and money looking for the right woman. If she has half a brain, she knows that there are certain risks involved, just as he has to know that there’s a certain amount of risk that she’ll only stick around long enough for residency and then take him for alimony and child support on top of that. Like anything in life, the risks are never one-way.
If it works out, they both get something out of it that would have been difficult or even impossible to obtain if done another way. If it doesn’t, then both of them have risked—and lost—more than the average couple. Like someone else pointed out earlier, marriage has only recently been about love. Only about 100 years ago, how good of a provider or breeder he or she was would have been more important than how much they loved each other. Simple attraction would have been more than enough.
I’d be willing to bet that these marriages last longer than the average simply because both of them have so much invested in it to start. How many people do you know who have left their home countries for a relationship? How many people do you know who invested considerable time and effort and, yes, money into finding the right spouse? International relationships can be more difficult (I should know, I recently got married to a Japanese woman) but there can be some rewards from those cultural differences and both of you usually have a greater incentive to make things work.
[It’s worth noting that the linked article was re-published in the Deseret News. I know the Mormon church has cleaned up its act, but still, the irony tingles.]
Here’s another viewpoint: As far as “power” and “economic disadvantage” are concerned, what difference does it make whether I import my bride from Ukraine, or marry a Ukrainian woman who’s already here?
Should I avoid marrying a Mexican woman for the same reasons? A Vietnamese woman?
What, this is starting to sound like racism you say? Yup, I just figured it out. This whole issue is a sneaky way to encourage us rich white men to stick with our own kind. Because we have too darn much power and economic advantage over those poor ferriners. It’s just not right.
Still, I like the way some of these non-Americans think. A few years ago I was talking to my friend Natasha, an immigrant from Ukraine (same age as me, much better job than me, stunningly beautiful, but alas, already married). Some of her relatives were visiting, and I happened to comment that her cousin was a pretty girl.
Natasha said, “Would you like me to introduce you?”, clearly meaning, according to her tone of voice and facial expression, “Would you like me to fix you up with her?”.
As the cousin looked youngish, I inquired as to her age. “She’s sixteen.”
Because I was thirty-five, I probably looked a bit disappointed as I said, “Ah. Kinda young.”
Natasha replied, “So?”
Mind you, we were having this conversation at church.
and:
You shoulda’ hit it! 16 is legal in most states. Anyway, you could have dated and then married her if things worked out. By today you might have had a bunch of little Phaseakovas underfoot, instead of lamenting about single women not being interested in you.
[QUOTE=MGibson]
However, I find something quite odd about a man who has to turn to turn to foreign brides who are desperate to escape their impoverished surroundings.
[/QUOTE]
Many of the foreign women who place ads with these international matchmaking venues are neither impoverished nor desperate. And moreover, to address a point raised by the article under discussion, neither are they uneducated.
I’ve perused some Russian and Ukrainian international matchmaking websites and found that most of the women had post-secondary education and were working in white-collar jobs (clerical, managerial, etc.). All of them had a basic to excellent command of English, which is one more foreign language than most Americans have. I get the impression that many of them are looking for a foreign spouse not because they’re poor and miserable but because they are ambitious and interested in the world outside their country. They would probably emigrate on their own, except that it’s extremely difficult to do so unless you’re exceedingly wealthy or at the top of a field with international mobility (e.g., academia).
As for the men who use these sites, I can’t offer any statistics, nor can I really speak from experience, as I’ve only ever browsed through the profiles without signing up to contact anyone. But what got me interested in the first place was that I’m interested in foreign languages and cultures, and have lots of friends from Russia, Poland, Belorussia, and the Ukraine. I never tire of hearing their perspectives on things. I love Russian and Polish cuisine. I also happen to think Slavic women are beautiful. Though this interest is far from fetishistic (that is, I’m not exclusively attracted to Russians), I think I could be very happy with a woman from that part of the world, provided that we were compatible. So I figured that, for lack of many available women of that type where I live, I could check out some international matchmaking websites. I don’t see it as all that much different from using a dating website for your own region, except that your first “dates” will necessarily take the form of written correspondence. If my initial correspondence led me to believe that the woman was simply looking for an easy way to emigrate and wanted a relationship only insofar as it helped her emigrate, I would lose interest immediately.
[QUOTE=psychonaut]
Many of the foreign women who place ads with these international matchmaking venues are neither impoverished nor desperate. And moreover, to address a point raised by the article under discussion, neither are they uneducated.
[/quote]
I’ve also noticed quite a few that state that they don’t want a local man because all the men they know drink too much vodka. One of the more amusing ads I saw was quite emphatic in describing the young woman’s desire for a man taller than 160 centimeters, which is 5-foot-3-inches. I’d say that she wouldn’t have much trouble in that department if she was looking for an American man. It made me wonder if the men in her town were all unusually short, or if she simply wanted to make it clear that she wanted a man taller than herself.
Oh gods, yes! This is one reason I’m so thankful for the Internet. Growing up during the Cold War, I didn’t really spend a whole lot of time thinking about what Russians looked like, but in the back of my mind was the stereotype of a short, fat, prune-faced, angry woman with a scarf over her head. Granted, gymnast Svetlana Boguinskaia did much to dispel that image, but it was the Internet that really helped me discover just how beautiful these women can be.
I imagine this is similar to the surprise some men felt when they first saw a real Japanese woman, after being raised on WWII propaganda
I love the sound of the name Svetlana.