Yeah, well, you’re free to stop talking to me. I’m not paying you, and I don’t have a gun to your head. But I’m honestly not playing games right now. I’m just a bit stuck.
I did read that post.
I feel like I’m talking to myself like a two-year old right now. “P-man is brave. The sky is blue. I like elephants.” Sorry. It’s not you, it’s me.
…
OK. P-man is brave. Fine. Does his wife like that about him?
The fuck I know, dude. Why don’t you ask her?
I was interested in your response to this question, and in fact I more or less asked it of my wife a few days ago. Her answer was that a guy should flirt, and observe the response. (Yes, she is a scientist too.) If there is a connection you’ll get a positive response.
I’d figure that if there was no response a guy is either not flirting hard enough, or needs to actually do something like ask her out.
If there is a negative response, friends it is. Which should be okay.
So that is one more vote for how you see it.
Yeah, fair enough.
**P-man’**s wife, if you’re still around: Is P-man brave? If so, do you like that about him?
This is P-man’s wife again. P and I were reading all of these posts at the same time, after coming back from a memorial service.
I laughed and told him that I thought that I was more brave than he is, and he didn’t disagree with me.
I love that he was brave enough to move to NYC (from East TN) by himself, to try to meet a wife. It worked, and it only took about 2 years.
An argument could be made either way regarding my bravery when it came to asking women out. I was often too afraid to even ask, so I wasn’t brave. But I sometimes would do it anyway even though I was terrified, so then I was brave. Now I’m brave when the situation calls for it, but in a lot ways I’m still risk averse.
I think you made my point for me here. Or part of it.
Martian, I made that same point pages ago, back when I first mentioned that guy.
What were you expecting me to say?
Yeah, I suppose so. Anyway, then we’re back around. Good. And I wasn’t expecting anything specific.
Let’s say he asks a follow-up question: “I was scared, because I was afraid of rejection. Do you have any ideas about how I can become less afraid of that?”
This is what I would say to him:
“I’m probably not going to be much help. I have never been in your situation (having to ask someone out on a date) so I have never dealt with rejection before. I can imagine that it gets easier with more practice, so maybe get out there into the world and see if you have more luck with other women. If you ask enough times, maybe you’ll become desensitized to the pain. Therapy might also help if you’ve got serious social anxiety or if self-esteem problems are holding you back. But honestly, these sound like ideas you’ve probably already heard. You might do better asking someone who has actual experience in this department. (But please stay away from those PUA people.)”
And then I’d promptly change the topic because the awkwardness would be killing me.
I’ve never dealt with social anxiety before, so I would feel weird advising someone in this situation. I’ve dealt with social ineptness and social isolation, so I have tons of good ideas for self-improvement areas. But how to conquer fear of rejection is above my pay grade. I think I’d be a sobbing mess if I had to put myself out there all the time. So I don’t know how guys do it.
All these questions make me think you’re waiting for me to slip up and say something that’s controversial. I don’t think that’s going to happen. But I guess I’ll keep playing along.
Really? You’ve never asked someone out on a date?
I don’t mean that in a bad way, I’m just genuinely surprised. Because you strike me as a person who wouldn’t have a problem doing that. Also, as someone who might want to do that, at least occasionally.
Too late for edit: Not that I think that you would have a shortage of people asking you. Just that, sometimes, even so, you’d want to be the one taking initiative. Going out and taking what you want, as it were, instead of waiting for it to come to you. Seems like it would be more your style. So I’m just surprised. You strike me as a strong person. You remind me of a friend of mine, who is just about the strongest person I know.
I am a strong person in a lot of ways, yes.
But I’m not interested in dating or relationships. Even with friendships I’m pretty passive.
So I’m being completely honest when I say I don’t know how rejection feels or how to deal with it.
Have you ever gone on a date at all?
Nope. Maybe I should go on one, just so I can say I did it? I’m tired of feeling like a freak when people ask me that question.
Have you had any relationships?
Your mom used cottage cheese as well? That’s funny.
I didn’t like it at the time. I remember asking her once to leave it out and she said “oh, you’ll never even know it’s there”. It was years later that I finally figured out the perfect reply, “leave it out, you’ll never know it’s missing”.
I think the cottage cheese was a 1960s American shortcut in place of doing a proper Béchamel or ricotta layer. For some things, there are no substitutes.
I think the theme of this thread is that you can’t just duplicate someone else’s actions and expect to have the same results or the same emotional experience. Rejection sucks, but it sucks because of the risk you take and the hope that someone will say yes. Take away that hope and the whole thing changes. If you just go through the motions to see what it’s like, it won’t be the same experience.
I second that finding interesting hobbies, and getting good at them, is a good way to generally be more attractive.
Because it’s not that nice guys are unattractive to women.
It’s that the kind of guy for whom “nice guy” is pretty much the most positive thing they can say about themselves is often the same kind of guy who is somewhat sitting on the sidelines of life. Not engaging enough, and not socializing enough so they are not getting the feedback they need on where they’re going wrong.
And the answer to the OP is that I think most such guys do find a woman who can love them eventually, because most will get past being “just a nice guy” eventually.
The problem is, since the nice guy thing is something of a vicious circle, it can take some guys many years, even decades to rectify.
This is why I post so much advice on this topic in these threads…I know how frustrating it can be when you can’t get a girlfriend and the harder you try the further you seem from improving the situation.