Even when you do feel you have it somewhat together — don’t be surprised when nothing happens, and for no good reason you can figure out. The law of averages is in favor of your hitting it off with somebody you’re attractive to. But any given individual is a complete crapshoot. There’s no point to try to calculate or quantify it.
This is why I feel your 0.5% projected success rate is too dire. If people seriously believed there was a 1 in 200 chance of a given meet-up amounting to anything, dating would not be the dominant mode of social interaction it is. You can get better odds playing the horses.
Goofus & Galant. I didn’t know they even asked women out.
I really don’t think I am needy to be honest. Perhaps I am and don’t see it, but I really just don’t think that is a risk anymore. But I could be wrong. And I don’t really get angry or hurt when a girl says no. Sometimes with some girls I actually enjoy a bit more it bothers me but only for a bit.
I think I do take this thing too seriously though, in the sense that I segregate hitting on women from normal conversations as if they are something different. Thats something I should look at and work on.
Some women I’ve asked out through email, women from class. The problem is alot of them never write back, so how should a person go about rectifying that, aside from not asking women out unless they are giving off good signs as not all of these women were so that is probably my major problem right now.
The 200 figure was pulled out of my ass to be honest, and was based largely on when I had worse social skills and was just asking women out w/o actually getting to know them or picking up on signals from them. However even then I’d say about 10% were willing to date me (most were in relationships though) I assume as I get better at socializing my odds will improve alot and I will alienate far fewer people.
I guess dating is such a neurotic area of life that bad things are guaranteed. So many people seem so uptight, insecure & prone to objectification. Like the thread I listed earlier about people dumping others because of Seinfeld trivialities, maybe I expect too much from an area of life where people place so much emphasis on everything.
Best bet is probably not to take things seriously, learn to only ask out women who give off good signs and just converse with the rest, learn (moreso) how to enjoy just the challenge rather than the results.
a) It’s a lot easier to like someone when you know you won’t have to back it up.
b) Even with a 1% success rate – it just doesn’t pay to think in those terms.
Stay away from these people. At least when they’re in their “dating” mode. (This must be why it makes sense to meet people in more casual ways…being sensitive to yourself and them if you do want to take it further.)
“Enjoy the journey”: a reasonable and worthy goal. I say go for it.
It has been my observation that often when men say that they can’t get women to go out with them, what they mean is that they can’t get a certain kind of woman to go out with them. Some men set their standards extremely high, and totally ignore the kind of women who actually would go out with them.
I used to be a fat girl. I was horribly lonely. I was extremely horny. I’d have been easy pickings for just about any man who’d have asked me. However, when the weekend rolled around, I was usually sitting alone in my room reading Sylvia Plath and eating cheesecake, and a lot of lonely, horny guys were sitting alone in their rooms doing whatever lonely, horny guys do when they are lonely and horny. I bet these guys told their friends that no one date them, just because they hit on some cheerleaders and beauty pageant winners, and struck out.
I woulld suggest not asking a woman you know from class out via e-mail at all. If you’ve met someone face-to-face, you should ask her out face-to-face. The e-mail thing might be coming across as a bit odd.
I see your point but I don’t know if I agree totally, but you are right to a degree. I have hit on women who would be considered unattractive but they seem to react badly. One got really nervous and the other just kind of froze up. I guess I felt like they had the impression that I was trying to use them or they weren’t used to that kind of attention. For me, I’ve always tried to approach women who were either plain or slighly above average looking because I figure they won’t react badly to attention, but they won’t take it for granted like really attractive women do.
(I hate to admit this, but I can be superficial like everyone else) but I think you’re right (not about me preferring supermodels because I don’t, but about my standards being too restrictive). I actually prefer chubby women, women with about 30-40 more pounds than the so called ideal physique but I just don’t really get excited about women in the 220+ range. Sorry. On the other side of the coin, I’m going to spend most of my life living a life of voluntary poverty, and that’ll turn alot of women off so it all evens out in the end, my superficiality will turn people off and theirs will turn them off of me.
I think you’ve got to give up this “asking out” thing. In all my years I’ve never been “asked out” by someone I formed relationships with. I’d certainly never “go out” with someone I had just met that day. The whole thing seems ackward, too intense, and way too weird.
Most relationships start either by casually hanging out as friends- just the same as you’d hang out with a guy friend- or by intense alcohol fueled sexual attraction (at parties or bars). Try inviting some girls along with you to do the things you normally do. Or go out to some bars, drink it up, and dance with people. If you can’t dance, a couple or drinks will make it so that you don’t know the difference.
(note: you don’t have to drink, and if you do you should drink responsibly. But alcohol is a time-honored way to erase ackwardness, increase sexuality, and generally lubricate sexual relationships.)
God I hope this thread doesn’t get derailed. I admit to being just like all the other men in the sense that I pass over women who are probably pretty good quality once I get to know them, then I come to SD and bitch about my situation. No different than the women who say ‘there are no men available’ when they really mean ‘there are no 6’ tall handsome men with 40k incomes who are available’. But as I said it is (in part) just because in my experience women who aren’t physically attractive react badly to being hit on. I find chubby women with acne scars really attractive, but I’ve had some back luck hitting on them. Some of the worst experiences I had with women involved me approaching women who weren’t very attractive and didn’t know how to react. Its a really bad feeling to watch a woman go ‘uuuhhhhh’ and turn and walk away to go to the women’s bathroom to follow her friend who tried to extracate her from the situation. In the long run I don’t know if it was all bad, maybe she wasn’t mad at me. But yep, this doesn’t help that whole alienation thing I keep referring to though.
However, I have alot of things about me that most women would find unattractive as well. I want to live a life of poverty and invest most of my income. I can be annoying at times. So as I said, it all evens out.
Uh, I would tend to agree with even sven on this one. It’s kinda what I was getting at with my last drunken post. ‘Being asked out’ seems…old fashioned and odd, at least to me and I sure many, many others.
Just do what you want to do. And stop thinking so damn much!
IIRC, he believes that he is or used to be schizophrenic.
Also, just like even sven and Nunavut Boy I have never dated someone I didn’t meet in a non-dating context first, and on all but one of my dates the guy was an all-out friend. That was what I was getting at by “researching”–not going through the girl’s trash or anything, just talking to her and hanging out with her and finding out what her interests are. Taking (or pretending to take) interest in her as a person, not just as a potential mate.
I would never go on a cold date with someone; the whole idea is weird and if the date turned out to be neurotic and needy (as I’m afraid you come off as) I would be even more freaked. Whereas if I met the same guy earlier, and hung out with him platonically, I might decide that there was nothing to be afraid of and that the guy’s neuroticness was actually kind of cute. There are guys I have dated that would not have come off well at ALL on a cold date, but because I knew them beforehand I knew what to expect. Really, there are so many drawbacks to cold dating, and the whole idea is coming to seem rather Victorian.
I see your guitar song and raise you a piano song:
Late at night, when it’s dark and cold
I reach out for someone to hold
When I’m blue, when I’m lonely
She comes through – she’s the only one who can
My baby grand is all I need
Wes, let me tell you something that helped me get a boyfriend years ago.
I stopped trying.
Honestly, just stop looking. Learn to love yourself and build your confidence. Take care of your body, mind and spirit. That’s what I did, and guys seemed to notice. Suddenly I had looks and date offers from guys that I’d never had before.
When you’re desperate, it hangs all over you like a bad stink. Girls can see it and it drives them away. My best advice is just to take care of yourself, and good things will follow.
Wesley, there’s no need to justify whom you find attractive. It’s very subjective. We each like what we like.
With the possible exception of these nasty people from high school, I doubt people are reacting as negatively to you as you think. I think a lot of us have this tendency to assume that if someone is whispering or has a strange look on their face or behaves someway we think is peculiar, it’s about us. I firmly believe most of the time it’s not. I doubt you’re truly alienating anyone, although you may be taking them a bit by surprise.
I wasn’t sure from reading your post, but do you have conversations with these women prior to asking them out? Do you know anything about them? Do they know anything about you? I’m not saying you need their life history, but their name, their major, some interests are a good start. I know I’ve been asked out “cold” once and found it really awkward and declined. He may have been a super guy but I wondered why he would ask a girl out on a formal date when he didn’t know a thing about her. I guess I always liked to ease into things myself. I prefer a decent amount of conversation in a comfortable environment before I want to commit to spending time alone together.
So you chat, you laugh, you find out a few things. You seem to have some common interests. Then maybe casually suggest getting coffee. See where it goes from there. For me, that’s a comfortable, low-pressure environment and it seems far less scary then going on “date” with a stranger. I doubt I’m alone in that.
Exactly. Why would I want to spend an entire night with someone if I wasn’t reasonably sure we would get along? Add in the fact that I would have to get dressed up, the expense of the date, the expectation of a kiss/fondle/etc, and it’s clear that it is better to date friends. You know kind of what you’re getting into, and you know that you won’t be starved for conversation.
Have you considered signing up for an online dating service? I’ve never tried them myself, but I imagine that would take away a lot of the pressure and fear of alienation you are feeling when asking a woman out.
Frankly I can’t say that I’m one to give advice when it comes to women. But I suspect that at least part of the problem is with your general mindset and approach to the issue. I suspect that you’re asking these women out with a general approach of looking for something from them, rather than the two of you mutually wanting to spend time together. This usually means the two of you knowing and being comforatble with each other before the idea of dating comes up. My wife and I may be an atypical case, but we were friends for 5 years before we started sleeping together.
