So is a prospective SO just supposed to ignore being kept at arm’s length? I mean come on. There are lots of valid reasons to have no friends. However, a large percentage of them also equal a valid reason not to have a girl-friend.
Huh, but I’m not currently looking for a SO. 
But, once I do look for one it will suck if this person freaks out that I have not been in any serious relationships.
And once I get #3 resolved, which should be soon, I would love to let more people into my personal life. As for now, it’s in neither of our best interests.
Don’t worry, they won’t.
Women freak out when someone who has never been in a serious relationship fails to treat them like normal human beings and instead treats them (and expects them to be) like this exotic fantasy woman-creature they’ve been building up in his head for years. Presumably you won’t do this.
Exactly. Sometimes I think the romantic life of the average SDMBer never progressed beyond an eighth grade dance where the girls and boys stand on opposite sides of the gym, viewing the other gender as an odd alien species. And that is very sad, because it means that people aren’t really communicating; we’re just organizing into camps and sniping at each other. Why would you want to date someone when you think their entire gender is inscrutable?
Anecdote which might or might not help some of you: the guy I’m dating right now was part of my social network (i.e. a friend) for a year before we decided to go out. And so far it’s going better than almost all the other relationships I’ve had, because I knew in advance that we had something in common besides physical attraction, and that he could be a good friend and a good communicator. Because the person you’re dating isn’t just your girlfriend, she’s a “girl friend,” a friend who just happens to be a girl. That sounds hokey, but it’s true. When you’re in a relationship you have a platonic relationship on top of the romantic one, and both are equally important and should not be neglected. My least satisfying relationships have been with guys who have never had any female friends or even seem to like women all that much.
And as for the thing about how men shouldn’t/can’t have female friends or vice versa, oh please. I actually like it when a guy can have female friends that he’s not banging because it means that he doesn’t think any less of us, or treat us like some kind of fantasy goddess.
There’s no reason to think that we’re significantly different from the rest of the US population. How’s that for encouraging?
True 'nuff. No wonder they keep making those lousy sitcoms about relationships.
None of the above is fine, too - the list I threw out was in no way intended to be comprehensive. There are a thousand reasons someone might not have any friends - those were just the first few that occurred to me as possibilities, and some of them were clearly facetious.
But, in point of fact, it sounds like you do have friends - just not close ones. Which is also fine. Hence, you don’t meet the criteria of someone with no friends.
And it also sounds like you have a reason for not having close friends that would also preclude a close romantic relationship - or so I read your point 3. So a girl thinking of dating you who was concerned about your lack of close friends would have a valid concern, correct?
Wow. Who are you are what did you do with msmith537? A reasonable post about women. A little generalizing, but you hedged. And the “kind of like all people” comment was really quite classy. I was beginning to wonder if you knew any women who didn’t respond positively to the “when I went to law school” pickup line.
Um. Boobs? A vagina?
I’m with you, Rigamarole. You’ve got backup.
I figured I’d get that reply at some point.
Are you claiming that men and women are looking for the same things in a mate?
I don’t think so. Therefore, it makes sense to want to figure out what qualities the other side is looking for.
Saying that men and women are both “just people” does not help in questions such as the one in the OP.
Well yeah, I am. More specifically, I’m saying that different people look for different things.
Do you want your dad’s job? Do you want to marry your buddy’s wife? Would you like to pick up your uncle’s favorite sport? Of course not. You want what you want, not what everyone in your gender wants. Could someone take a look at you and determine who you’d want to date? Of course not- thats why your friends date people you’d never dream of dating, and others let go people you’d consider a dream girl.
10,000 years of human history have made us able to wear clothes, build shiny buildings, and date according to our own needs and whims. Some things are universal- Most of us are looking for companionship, fun times, good sex, and according to the personal ads, lots of long walks on beaches. But some people are looking for people who like to dress up in diapers, or people who will buy them houses, or people who will turn a blind eye to their affairs. It all depends on who you are.
There are no guys that don’t have good luck with “women”. There are only guys that have not done well with the women they’ve tried to form relationships with. “Women” are not monolithic, any more than “bosses” or “parents” or “black people” are. There is no “approach” that will get all women or parents or bosses or black people to like you- you just have to get to know the person and what they are looking for and if you two, specifically, are a good match.
There are some good ways to make sure they don’t like you though, and most of those involve acting like they are women or parents or whatever first and a normal human being second.
I have a lot of geek friends. I have a lot of friends I suspect are still virgins well past college graduation. The thing that holds them all in common is that they have thought and stewed about this concept of a “girlfriend” for so long that their ideas of "girlfriends’ and what it might be like to have one have stopped feeding on real-world input and instead feed on themselves in this feedback loop, producing this incestuous mutant concept of relationships that no longer reflect reality.
So when a potential girlfriend shows up, instead of acting normal, they act in the way that makes sense according to their fantasy concept of “romance” (I recall one friend sitting outside his would-be beloved’s dorm window for three days straight with a boquet of flowers). Then they get confused and despondent when the girl fails to react in the way their fantasy dictates they should. So eventually they get bitter and start hating women deep in their hearts, making everything worse.
To add insult to injury, through this whole process they’ve all been surrounded by women in their peer group, classes, work, etc. who they just completely missed because they were too caught up in the concept of “girlfriend” to notice the real live girls sitting right next to them.
Yes, we are all individuals, with individual choices, but there are some general observations that are, statistically, true and so would constitute good advice to anyone seeking the opposite sex.
For example, a shy but otherwise decent-looking guy has less chances of attracting women than does a shy but otherwise decent-looking girl has chances of attracting men.
So, the advice to a shy guy might be to try to overcome his shyness and be more assertive, if he wants to have a higher probability of attracting women.
But advising the shy woman to be more assertive won’t necessarily increase her chances of attracting a guy.
True, both might eventually find a person that is attracted to them (since we are all individuals, as you say), but modifying their behavior slightly in the direction of what the other sex, statistically, wants in a mate they increase their odds of finding someone.
What it comes down to is the difference between groups and individuals. I’ve got a pretty good guess as to what white females age 18-24 are looking for in a mate, but if you show me any particular one of them, I’m not going to be quite as confident in those predictions.
And I think that’s what a lot of the confusion about dating comes down to. Some men don’t understand that a particular woman isn’t women restricted to one body. Their stereotyping tends to shine through in everything they say about dating, and you wish you could just smack them upside the head with a clue-by-four. Sadly, that’s still a fictional device.
I don’t always agree with** even sven**. Matter of fact, sometimes we come right down on opposite sides of the issue. But here I agree with her.
Maybe I’m reading something into this that isn’t there, but I kinda get the impression that you’re suggesting that because women, bosses, parents and black people are all collections of individuals, that there’s nothing we can say about them as a whole that we couldn’t say about any other group. Is that what you’re trying to say?
In most of these theoretical cases, the “shy but otherwise decent-looking” guy is forty pounds overweight, showers every other day, and won’t date “fatties”. But the “shy but otherwise decent looking girl” is one of those “take off the glasses and lose the ponytail” jobbies. Well, yeah, of course their prospects are unequal. Take a look at most of the guys you know. Would they date girls with beer bellies like theirs?
There are whole calvacades of pretty much “undatable” women who’s appearance, weight, social habits, etc. make them largely unattractive. But since you don’t consider them datable, you don’t figure them in to these little equations. You are comparing the entire spectrum of men with the “datable” spectrum of women.
I promise you, women go through just as much trouble, heartache and pain as men do regarding finding relationships. At fifteen, a lot of them also feared they would die virgins and nobody would ever love them. The less popular and sucessful ones also lament having to choose from the dregs of the male population or go without.
I also promise that things like assertiveness and social status can turn a pretty ugly girl into a much-sought after sexual and romantic partner. Is the queen bee or sexual focus of your social group the objectively prettiest one? They rarely are. Are there perfectly attractive women you won’t date because they have some personality flaws? I’m sure there are.
Despite popular belief, women don’t live in some sexual paradise where they can get the partner of their choice at any time. Yeah, we can walk in to a bar and come home with someone. <i>But so could most men.</i> Most men don’t do it because they arn’t attractive to the disease ridden nasty looking creepsters that lurk in bars looking for sex. Surprise, Women don’t do it for exactly the same reason.
Be friendly. Be outgoing. Have interesting hobbies. Keep in shape. Learn to make good conversation. Get a decent or at least interesting job. Avoid self-pity and other emotional drama. Don’t come on too strong too fast sexually or emotionally. This dating advice works for everyone, man or woman. It’s not a big mystery.
No. I’m saying that if you can’t treat them with basic human dignity and respect to begin with, you can’t really expect to get far with your fine tuned techniques.