I was very, very bad at dating. Rejected early on, lost confidence, vicious circle. I couldn’t tell who was interested and who wasn’t. As a whole, the women I got past one date with (a small percentage) were better looking than the ones who had no interest. My wife did take the initiative, and made it obvious. Being taller than average, in good shape, and gainfully employed wasn’t enough. I got over resenting guys who were getting horizontal when I wasn’t, and just figured I was missing something that most women found essential in a potential partner. Somewhere in another thread there are a couple of posts where Ms. P chimed in.
In the Christian circles I was in, it was a very honored/important thing indeed, but YMMV, and my limited sample size of Christian churches/communities/fellowships might not be representative.
It’s not about wanting it - plenty of people want Thing X or Object Y, but cannot or have failed to obtain it.
At age 40 or 50, yes, but many people are hearing this “Everyone else is dating/getting laid, why aren’t you?” message at a much younger age.
I think a lot of it is realizing that flirtation and courtship are complicated social skills that you kind of have to figure out on your own. We get taught all kinds of other social skills as children, but not these ones. As you’re growing up, maybe your friends will give you some pointers, but they’re probably just as clueless as you are.
But once you figure out how to play the game, it’s hard to remember how little any of it made sense initially. Looking back, I can see many opportunities that I missed because I was so clueless.
And it’s incredibly easy to psyche yourself out and not take enough chances to go somewhere. To get rejected a few times and decide that you’re never going to succeed. I remember the first time in college that I asked out a girl who I would previously have considered out of my league. And she said yes. And I was dumbfounded, thinking “Shit. Was it really that easy all along?!” (No. It was not. I got turned down plenty of other times.).
And confidence is huge. I spent plenty of time as a teenager failing with obvious desperation. But once I realized that I wasn’t a failure… things changed. I’ve had women ask me out. I’ve even had women buy me drinks in a bar a few times. And I’m not rich or exceptionally good looking. I’m pretty average-looking. But I know I’m worthwhile, and I know that that’s not contingent on whether a particular person wants to date me.
Yes, and I’d even say the same principle applies to having a girlfriend too.
There really was a time in my life where A Girlfriend was a big deal and I felt incredibly lame that I was X years old and still had never been in a real relationship (this was a number of years after I lost my virginity in fact…). And the more I thought like that, the more impossible a goal it became.
Nowadays I socialize a lot, and go to 1-on-1 stuff with different people constantly. Getting a GF just organically happens now, indeed I have bigger problems with trying to reject advances now.
Do you know it was honored? Like I said, lots of cultures/religions preach abstinence before marriage, but people still are surprised when they hear of it actually happening.
Yes, but your original comment was about people who question why you (generic you) don’t have a boy/girlfriend or aren’t getting laid. The default assumption is that everyone wants that sort of relationship, not that they already have it.
For that matter, do people really ask that very often? I can’t remember anyone asking me why I wasn’t already seeing someone.
In my case, 51. I’d say by 30 it’s definitely uncommon.
Another thing that tends to sabotage men is that many of them apply a logical/rational approach to an emotional/nonrational issue.
*
John is rich, and he is attractive to women, so I’ll make myself rich and I’ll be attractive too - hmm, that didn’t work.
David is humorous, and he is attractive to women, so I’ll make myself humorous and I’ll be attractive too - hmm, that didn’t work.
Nathan is buff, and he is attractive to women, so I’ll make myself muscular and I’ll be attractive too - hmm, that didn’t work.
Alan is fashionable, and he is attractive to women, so I’ll dress well, too and I’ll be attractive too - hmm, that didn’t work.
Kevin is good at guitar, and he is attractive to women, so I’ll learn to play guitar well and I’ll be attractive too - hmm, that didn’t work.*
It isn’t a metric you can measure. Some people play by all of the rules and never succeed. Some flout all the rules and are irresistible. For some guys, this sort of cognitive dissonance arouses anger or a feeling of being deceived or “sold” something. And if a guy is the violent or hold-in-anger-for-long-time-until-it-ruptures type, you could get an Elliott Rodgers.
I wouldn’t know if people were really virgins or not, but it was a big deal - as in, emphasized and discussed in books, etc. - so I’m sure it deterred a significant number of Christians from having sex until they were married even if they wanted to have sex before then. Even if these were a minority, it still would have been a sizable number of people. Again, YMMV.
I had people asking me, although then again Asians (I’m Asian) are often known for nagging and prying about this sort of thing.
Yes and this is related to an idea of “quick fixes” that is too prominent in society right now IMO.
Guys who are struggling at dating think of themselves as “broken”, and are looking for a “fix”. When they go talk to a girl, and it doesn’t go well, they think of themselves as still broken and a loser etc. The thing they tried wasn’t the fix they needed.
The idea that they just need to work on their social skills and make gradual improvement never really drops.
This is coupled to the fact that there is something comforting about being broken. You can tell yourself, subconsciously, for example “I’m a great guy, it’s a shame I can’t get that across to women because of X”.
I wish, at the age of 20, I had come to terms with the fact my life wasn’t so interesting yet, and that I was still very immature. And that the “fix” would be hundreds of interactions (which would initially be awkward but would get easier and more fun over time). Instead I was stuck in broken / fix mentality for years.
That’s my superhero name. I’m a superhero, damn it, and I’m still alone!
Alcohol and drugs and marijuana (pot is a herb) turn you into a different person. Teens male and female are turning to these chemicals sooner than they use to, which takes away the opportunity to tell the devil no on sex. When you tell the devil “no” he doesn’t like it.
what do you think God likes when you tell him “no”?
Keep your virginity girl … it’s usually not any fun the first time anyway.
Sounds like we were in much the same boat when we were younger. It’s really easy to set up one of those vicious circles in your own mind, and kind of hard to break out of it.
What I ended up doing was sitting down one day, and analyzing the issue as if I was trying to diagnose a malfunctioning computer, or maybe an ill person. My conclusion was that I was putting too much emphasis on each interaction with women who were in my target demographic, and that was making me really unconfident and nervous.
So my solution was twofold; ask just about any woman I met out- pretty or ugly, fat or thin, and if they said yes, go on at least one date with them and shoot for a second. Not because I was interested, but to get used to it, so that it wouldn’t be a big deal.
It worked- by the time I met my wife about a year and a half later, I’d literally been on dates with dozens of women of all shapes and sizes, and wasn’t perturbed or nervous about having conversations, asking for and going on first dates or asking for a second date.
I’m not trying to toot my own horn; I got extremely lucky doing exactly what **Velocity **says you shouldn’t do. t do. I could have very easily fallen into Velocity’s trap had my diagnosis been off just a little bit.
The lesson still stands; the point isn’t to change yourself to make yourself attractive, but rather to kick down the self-generated obstacles that prevent women/men from seeing how attractive you inherently are. Few people are SO uninteresting/awkward that someone out there doesn’t find them interesting and cute.
Are you suggesting that there are rich funny muscular fashionable musicians out there who don’t have women throwing themselves at them?
Name one.
What do you call a beautiful woman on a drummer’s arm?
A tattoo…?
That sounds good, but what is their real self truely believing? Is the hypothalamus and hindbrain consenting?
I still don’t get it. I’ve been married for 20 years because I was in the right place at the right time. If I were suddenly single at 52 I still wouldn’t have a clue what to do. It honestly still doesn’t make sense to me.
This is also me. Every once in a while, I’ll run across my old high school year books and take a peak. The notes and messages in it from a few girls are quite clear. :smack: I had no idea at the time.
I never really dated. I had a close circle of friends in college. It was dumb luck that my Wife and I found each other when we where in our early 30s. All worked out great, August 2nd will be our 20th anniversary.
The OP’s analysis is very shallow. People don’t need sex (although it helps), they need intimacy. And it’s self reinforcing. Having issues leads to social isolation leads to issues. Money has very little to do with it.
The claim is that women don’t ask guys out. do you think women don’t ask guys out in a vacuum? There is social pressure that a girl who asks a guy out AT ALL is desperate – at least there was when I was a girl who did that. I’ver always been a pretty forthright girl, and the only times I was “romantically successful” it was when I let the guy take the lead (regardless of how attractive the guy was). I was/am a pretty good catch, but I “came on to strong” plenty, and it was only after I stopped being this supposed modern gal that I actually met any decent prospects – and incidentally, my husband tells it that he was absolutely NOT sure I was into him, despite the fact that I went home with him ~3 hours after we met. So I didn’t turn into some shy wallflower, but I let him, nervous and unsure though he apparently was, take the initiative.
Things can work for women who are more inclined to take the initiative, and for guys who are less so. But generally not with the average person that they encounter. They have to realize that their inclinations make them an outlier and then they have to think about where and how they might meet people who would respond affirmatively to such an outlier.
It isn’t easy going even then. (i.e., if you’re male and you think “way cool, I’m up for learning how to be the one who gets asked out”, I don’t advise that you go down that path unless you are quite convinced that taking the initiative is contrary to your nature and thoroughly unpleasant to you). But it isn’t insurmountably difficult.
[QUOTE=correlophus]
[QUOTE=PastTense]
If you read the media there are a substantial proportion of women who believe in women’s liberation–and thus are not limited to old-fashioned views of dating.
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That sounds good, but what is their real self truely believing? Is the hypothalamus and hindbrain consenting?
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^^^^ Not atypical, this belief that women are (all) biologically hardwired to need to be pursued and not to be initiators. But if that were universally true, it would be damn difficult to be a sexually active lesbian, if you see what I mean.
It’s easier to find the lesbian bar or the lesbian part of town than to locate an environment in which the sexual behaviors of biologically heterosexual people runs in a different pattern than the expected one. (Don’t discount the utilitarian value of personal ads). If it’s what would work for you, if it’s what would fit for you, and the mainstream courting-dating-flirting script definitely does NOT, well, yeah, it’s possible to find it.