I’ve never cared for the whole league thing either. I can tell what women I like, but that doesn’t really tell me whether they’re lonely or beating off guys with a stick. And I have no idea what league I’m even in.
I’ve met some popular and conventionally attractive people that I, too, found interesting and desirable. I have. I tend to be surprised. I overwhelmingly prefer female misfits. Even the small handful of popular and attractive ones I’ve liked a lot had something in their personal history that they went through that made them feel like misfits on this planet for awhile.
I think there are traits which are generally attractive, though a 1-dimensional scale is not going to capture it. Yes you can look at a fat middle-aged guy with a lousy job and a beautiful 20 year old girl and say they are unlikely to hook up, even without knowing anything else about their circumstances and personalities.
But beyond those extremes, things are nowhere near that simple. I’ve known plenty of couples where if we’re out as a group I’m sure people are thinking “How did she get him?!” or whatever, when actually, if they knew both people, it’s more like the other way round.
And I think it’s very important to say that in a thread like this. Men who struggle to get dates often perceive the world in terms of “She’s a 9 and he’s a 7 at best, how the hell did he get her?! He must be rich…” or whatever.
It’s not helpful to think of relationships in such simple terms. And such guys need to get a lot more experience, starting with having more, and real, conversations with girls they’re not attracted to, as well as with girls they consider out of their league.
On reading back, this sentence kinda sounds like the opposite of what I’m trying to say, so let me clarify:
Some guys, who are struggling to find a girlfriend, might just approach / talk to women that they consider to be realistic dating prospects.
They should resist the temptation to do this IMO, and talk more often to both 1) women they are not attracted to 2) women they consider to be “out of their league”.
(As well as general socializing)
In my case, it was refusing to fuck without a condom. Call me picky, but hey, I’m happy with my clean bill of health.
Indeed without exception the teen couples I knew who had to have a hurried wedding were Church people. Those Church camps were hotbeds of boy meets girl and they didn’t seem to stop at holding hands. Religious groups know how to make their congregation grow and it sure as hell isn’t by holding hands.
This sort of thread attracts outliers. This board attracts outliers. Meanwhile out there amongst the teeming millions, studies of desirability based on simple criteria show highly regular results.
This sort of thread attracts outliers. This board attracts outliers. Meanwhile out there amongst the teeming millions, studies of desirability based on simple criteria show highly regular results.
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If that were not true, the outliers would not be outliers. Are you attempting to invalidate the experience of outliers by accusing us of being outliers?
No. And there was nothing about my post from which you can validly draw that conclusion. The “single number” for attractiveness is not banally simplistic. It’s highly accurate, and its accuracy is interesting, not banal.
Stating that someone is an outlier is a fact not an accusation, since there is no crime of being an outlier. And as to invalidating experience, I don’t even.
But the “banal” post was itself a reply to LSL Guy’s
One could infer from that that “outlier” belongs in the list along with “Hetero homo male female” etc.
It’s a statement that takes a generalization and says “this applies to absolutely everyone, it’s as immutable as the law of gravity”.
But for us outliers, 6 may be a significant improvement over 8. Or what the rest of the world perceives as 2 is for us a 9. And LSL Guy’s advice (and by extension, yours) is not of any use to us.
Agree. Especially with the last point. As amplified by the AHunter3 / Princhester exchange just above.
For the purposes of this thread you’re right that reducing it to a 1D score is mostly unhelpful. In that sense I’m wrong to bring it up. It may not explain why a person who’s struggling with relationships is struggling. But it may explain some of why the people he’s failing to connect with fail to connect with him/her. It doesn’t matter how good your “game” is if the other side is using a conventional scoring system you don’t rate highly on.
People who are skilled at golf do it a lot and hang out with people who do it a lot. Those who aren’t, don’t. And as a result don’t get better at it. 90% of golf games are played by 10% of golfers who are themselves (WAG) 5% of the total population.
The 90/10 rule applies to socializing, relationshipping, and sex too. (Or maybe it’s 80/20; the specific numbers aren’t critical to the argument) 90% of socializing is done by the 10% who are really, really good at it. The rest struggle to varying degrees making do with far less total activity spread far far more thinly.
The difference between golf and socializing / relationshipping / sex is that 95% of the populace is indifferent to golf; only 5% care one way or the other. Contrast with that with socializing / relationshipping / sex: 99% want it, 1% are indifferent.
Sure they do, but my point was that in the common run of human experience a man thankfully doesn’t, as Shodan claimed, have to be unusually rich, famous or wealthy for a woman to express interest in him. Luckily for my love life in my 20s, most women aren’t that shallow.
You’re lucky. My twenties were mostly a big goose egg. Worst decade of my life by far.
I don’t think it was advice it was just a statement. So whether it is or isn’t any use is not to the point.
**LSLGuy’s **post was arguably over-dogmatic although I think most readers would understand he didn’t mean it completely literally. But regardless, given that my post was about outliers, I was inherently recognising that the “single number” system isn’t universally applicable.
I didn’t mean that women were shallow (although of course some are.) Many if not most women would prefer not to be the one initiating (i.e., asking men out on dates, etc.) because it puts them in a position of vulnerability and potential rejection. The person initiating is in the weak position, the person being initiated to is in the strong position (just like a job applicant vis-a-vis an employer, or an applying student vis-a-vis a college’s admission committee.) The person who is initiated to has the power to approve or veto. The one doing the initiating is going out on a limb; putting himself or herself “out there” to be potentially rejected.
For that matter, of course, plenty of men would prefer to be initiated to, rather than be the one doing the initiating. But due to social norms, and also as mentioned earlier that most women won’t initiate, it therefore falls to men to be the initiators. It’s like a game of dating chicken to see who caves in first - if no men and no women initiate, ever, then everyone would be single (and most, unhappy,) but men tend to “blink” first. Of course, there are, no doubt, some men and women who relish and enjoy being the initiators, too.
The answer to your question can be found here:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=812025
Wow. Now *that’s *definitive.
Color me not too surprised the OP had something unusual hiding is his closet; the earlier posts were suggestive. That wasn’t what I was expecting though.
I think part of the problem is simply that women in general don’t desire males and sex with the same passion as men. Most of these threads are guys complaining about not having a romantic relationship with women.