(emphasis added)
That would seem useful in any process of addressing the issue. It has been discussed in many other conversations, many of us have a hard time “reading signals” right (and that includes the ones we are giving out – it can become a vicious cycle).
I’m genuinely confused what you’re counting as “help.” What are you looking for in this thread? Sympathy? Understanding from others? A better understanding, yourself, of what might be happening? Advice for getting the thing (a meaningful romantic relationship) that you miss having? Something else?
Helpful for me in that it wasn’t something I’d thought of. I will keep it in mind and maybe something will come of it.
What am I after? This debate is always framed in stupidly simplistic and divisive terms. Women = good, men = bad. It’s really that foolish. If we can’t get beyond this stupid us vs them attitude, we’re doomed.
At this point, I think I’m only going to get attacked more for trying to tell my story, so I’ll go back to lurking.
Except no one else is doing that, just you.
Yeah. We definitely live in different worlds.
In my world, women aren’t a monolithic block, and the idea that they would all universally decide “fuck this guy in particular, let’s all shun him on sight” is preposterous.
What you describe sounds more like a universe that operates by the logic of a middle school Coming-Of-Age movie.
Yeah - the rest of us keep telling you that this “us vs them” mentality you keep exhibiting is toxic, and probably the main thing keeping you from a relationship (not being “too skinny” or “too weak chinned”).
Eta: but if you view that as an attack, I don’t know that further discussion will be very productive.
I don’t see the debate being framed in those terms. I’m a guy, and I don’t think men=bad. I think that’s a fundamental misunderstanding.
And I don’t think you’re getting “attacked” for “trying to tell [your] story.” I think you’re getting criticized for how you’re responding to people.
When I work with students, I’ll sometimes talk about fixed mindset and growth mindset. Fixed mindset is a belief that however you currently are with a set of skills is due to factors beyond your control, and you’ll forever be stuck at that level. You’re bad at math (for example), and there’s nothing you can do about it; it’s just a fact of your personality. It’s a mindset that’s lethal to learning. Growth mindset is just the opposite. It’s a belief that your current skillset is malleable, and that by practicing skills, observing the results of mistakes, and paying close attention to feedback, your skillset can change.
Part of my frustration with your posts here has been that you seem to demonstrate a fixed mindset. You’ve expressed deep dismay over your lack of a relationship, and described some frankly bizarre patterns in your life (the basilisk stare, for example); but when folks suggest something you can do to grow, your responses have been overwhelmingly to explain why change is impossible.
Which is your right, of course; but if you decide that change is impossible, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I strongly recommend social dancing. I square dance. But there are contra dances, folk dances, swing dances, Lindy dances, Rumba, and several other styles. Look for a place that offers lessons and is open to singles. (You don’t need lessons for Contra dances or folk dances, as every dance is typically taught every time. For those, just look for events open to beginners.)
There isn’t any sexual contact. But there’s lots of touch. From human beings who want to touch you.
Very well said.
To be fair, I don’t know that he’s describing women as a monolithic block. He is suggesting that he pretty often gets that sneering contempt response, but he’s not entirely clear on why that’s happening.
Some possibilities:
- Women are terrible and are treating his terribly for no reason. I don’t think he, or anyone, is suggesting that.
- There’s some cultural thing going on that makes this response more common in Australia than where I am? I deeply doubt it, but maybe?
- There’s something about Shakester that’s eliciting a super-rude response from women who aren’t normally prone to super-rude behavior. I think he’s suggested that it’s his physical appearance, which I’m skeptical of, but maybe I’m clueless here. The fact that it’s single women and not coupled women doing this makes me think that’s not the issue. A behavior on his part that he’s not aware of seems likelier, but for obvious reasons none of us can know what it is–which is why I suggested a friend giving him a brutally honest evaluation.
- There’s something going on with the context of the meeting. This is what I most suspect: maybe his friends are telling single women, “Hey, you’ve got to meet Shakester, he’d be the perfect boyfriend for you!” and then they meet him and are stunned at why their friend is trying to set them up with someone who’s not their type, and that stun is manifesting in the basilisk stare. That’d account for why only single women do this; and if that’s what’s going on, Shakester needs to tell his friends to knock it off.
FWIW, after my parents divorced in their forties, they each began contra dancing, and each of them met several partners through contra dancing, and ending up remarrying someone they met through contra dancing.
Oh, and if you crave hugging, look for gay dance events. Square dances (google IAGSDC), English country dances, Contra dances… Most of those were started during the AIDS epidemic, when gay men craved touch but were terrified of sex. They tend to have a culture that encourages lots of non-sexual physical contact, including hugging. You will mostly be hugged by gay men, and they are horrible places to meet single straight women. But they are great places to engage in consensual human touch.
ETA: this may work better in North American than in Australia. Sorry, i forgot your location.
I think it’s an important skill to be able to talk to people without there having to be an underlying sexual agenda.
And yes, of course women also often want sex; and are sometimes interested in it in specific interactions, although wanting sex in general isn’t necessarily going to translate into wanting to discuss it, or the potential for it, while trying to get one’s errands done, or trying to digest horrible medical news about yourself or a loved one, or trying to get to work on time or to get home while there’s still light enough to weed the tomatoes; or doing lots of other things necessitating going out in public.
And no, it’s not weird for people who might want to have sex with each other to engage in conversations that might lead up to doing so. But it’s obnoxious, if unfortunately all too common, to approach all one’s interactions with half the population as if that were the only or primary reason one might have to talk with them.
Yeah, that’s a problem. And it’s a societal problem. Try rephrasing it as “don’t really know how to talk to people”, though. We are people. And that rephrasing might make it look different to some of those with the problem. The societal problem is a strong tendency to think of women as some sort of odd special case of “people/humans” that needs to be studied as if we were extraterrestials.
Yes, we are. Because the point is to start conversations to try to make “normal good guys” realize that the woman looking at them askance in the street or on the elevator or in the grocery has good reason to do so even though she knows that most men are “normal good guys” and you’re probably one of them.
Maybe you already understand that and don’t need this conversation. But there appear to be a whole lot of men who react like ‘how dare she be afraid of me?! I’m a good guy!’
And yet nearly all of them are somehow entirely able to help it when it comes to tackling a male who’s larger than they are; or a person they think is armed; or someone who’s in the presence of a batch of other people likely to defend them.
There are a few people who genuinely can’t control their violence; they usually wind up locked up and/or under treatment in short order. But for nearly all men this is plain bullshit.
It’s even bullshit in regards to the mountain lion and the polar bear. They choose their prey, according in part as to whether they think the prey’s likely to damage them, or even whether it’s likely to be able to get away and therefore cause them to waste energy on a fruitless chase. If they don’t control themselves in that fashion, they don’t live long.
That’s fair. I wouldn’t either.
Are you entirely sure you’re not misinterpreting that?
Someone trying to not show a reaction to your scars might by accident produce a sort of rigid stare; not trying to glare at you, in fact trying not to glare at you, but doing a bad job of it.
That’s a social awkwardness problem on their end, if so; and it is a problem. But if that’s it, it might well go away with time and further acquaintance – though I agree that if they actually are glaring at you that’s not somebody you want further acquaintance with.
I have not seen it framed that way here, looking at threads as a whole; though such threads do have a tendency to attract an occasional poster insisting on trying to do that. The mods, these days, often shut that down.
But if you’re somehow seeing that in this thread – then I suspect you’re also seeing it other places where it isn’t so.
Yeah, I wonder also whether that’s what’s going on.
That looks like a great suggestion. And it’s another situation in which casual conversation is entirely normal, and so a good place to practice casual conversation for those for whom that’s part of the issue.
The trick is not to go to the dances focused on finding a sexual/romantic partner. Go to the dances focusing on having a good time at the dance. If anything else ensues, it’ll probably take quite a while to do so; and such dances are in themselves a lot of fun. (I will add, however, that some groups do require training; while each dance is called, if you don’t know what the calls mean you’re going to be lost. But groups that require training usually also give training classes. And there are situations that assume almost everybody’s a beginner and effectively give a training class as part of the dance; as well as some groups that will take in an occasional untrained novice and everybody else will just cheerfully pull you in the right direction.)
I’ve spent a lot of my adult life working out how and when to be and not to be appropriately intimidating to people, since I’m tall, big, and very deep voiced. So I’m used to people being a bit intimidated for the most part.
I guess what I’m getting at is that it’s not the normal, good guys who necessarily need to change their behavior, so basically lecturing us is preaching to the choir. And the men whose behavior does need to change aren’t going to be swayed by some internet poll about bears and woods.
The ones who are ticked off that women dare to be afraid of them do.
The ones who don’t know what they can do to appear less threatening, and in particular the ones who don’t see why they should bother to do any such thing, do.
And some of the “normal, good guys” should change some of their behavior around other guys.
I really don’t want to go over this again, but that’s not what happens.
When I say taken women don’t tend to react badly to me, I’m generalising. I’ve had some bad reactions from them, it’s just far less common. I mean, women are guarded with unknown males a lot of the time, and we all know why that is by now. It’s a normal thing, some do it more than others, that’s all understood. And not a problem.
Am I doing something wrong? Let’s put it this way: something that I get often is female friends asking me to walk them to their cars at night. Now, this isn’t flirting, it’s not any kind of courtship; it’s my ex, it’s women who are out at night without their partners or whatever, and it’s even been single women. I’m very happy to do that. If I was a creep, that wouldn’t happen. If any of them thought I would try something inappropriate, it wouldn’t happen. I am trusted by women who know me.
Women who do not know me, especially those who are single, often react badly to me. Women who know me do not. I’m not imagining this, and I don’t see how anything I’m doing is causing it. My working theory is that in TV and movies, the bad guys are often ugly, or odd-looking, and the good guys are always pretty. People genuinely believe that looks = personality. The halo effect.
People who are average to good looking often have a lot of trouble grasping how much of a thing that is. People’s replies to me here show that clearly. If you look a bit weird, that’s a big problem. Now, there are odd looking people who have overcome that, but so what? That doesn’t mean everyone can do it and it doesn’t mean that it isn’t a real problem.
If you’ve spent your whole life with people making bad assumptions about you based on the way you look, that takes a huge toll.
I get this, and I get that the effect may be bigger than I imagined. What I’m not clear on is why single women would have this reaction to a larger degree. I’m also unclear on what you’re saying, viz.
I’m not trying to twist what you’re saying, I just don’t understand. Is this common? Is it the kind of thing where it happens maybe a couple of times a year but it really fucking sucks and your brain focuses on those times? Is it like this?
I’m not suggesting you’re a creep. I am wondering whether there’s something different in the way you first meet single women vs. coupled women that results in the disparate responses.
Edit: and I should be really clear, I had a lot of the same issues for many years in my late teens and early twenties. I don’t think I was especially unattractive, but I was especially effeminate, and that narrowed the dating pool for me as a straight guy. There are a lot of reasons why I’m no longer single, but I know deeply and firsthand the loneliness and despair that can come from wanting to be in a romantic relationship and not being able to find one, even though you have many close women friends. I don’t want to diminish that in any way.
There may well be something to that.
But, if that’s it – then if those women got to know you, they’d react differently.
I’ve found that for me, sexual attraction can either increase drastically or decrease drastically as I get to know somebody. I’ve run into some other women who say the same thing about themselves.
So, if they’re being actively rude to you on first meeting – yeah, write them off. But if they’re being wary of you on first meeting – maybe don’t write them off. That may be a back-of-the-head reaction to your scars that they’re not good at consciously controlling; or they may be wary of all men at first meeting and may be aware of this and think it’s a good idea; or they may consciously think that you look like you get into a lot of fights and that may make them wary. In any of those cases, getting to know you seems likely to change that. (That is, it may or may not change the sexual attractiveness; not everybody works that way. But it certainly ought to change the trust level; and it might change the sexual interest level.)
Yeah. I can see that it would do that.
So you’re basically arguing that Men Are Evil. That men could choose to refrain from violence, but they don’t (and that women do choose to refrain from violence, and perhaps other species do as well.) The argument is that Human Men Are Evil.
Now a dog being put down because it can’t properly socialize, can’t stop biting, isn’t infrequent. But I don’t think anyone would make the argument that these particular dogs are evil. Even if one breed tended to have more of these issues. Even if one breed had so many issues that many people believe that breed should be discontinued, it’s not the fault of the dogs, they aren’t choosing to be born this way.
So some corrective actions should be put into play. Also, some dogs can be properly socialized with training. So if a particular breed needs more socialization, more training, since they aren’t choosing to be born, it would be compassionate to provide that training.
None of us is choosing to be born, and we aren’t choosing to be born as men, women, non-binary, whatever. I’m not arguing that men shouldn’t be put in jail in larger numbers to the extent that it is necessary. I would argue that if men need more socialization training, society should provide this, since the men aren’t choosing to be born as men. Perhaps the human men should get the same consideration that a dog gets.
So me, personally, I do not believe that men are choosing to be evil any more than women are choosing to be evil (and women also choose to be evil.) Women have been shown to engage in infidelity and abusive relationship behavior to the same frequency as men. I don’t reject the idea of evil. I do reject that human men are somehow inherently evil and deserve scorn as a result any more than any other living being.
Definitely a lot more often than that. I mentioned somewhere above that I tried to remember the last time I met a woman and got a first reaction that was promising, and it must have been around 20 years ago. Literally can’t recall any since then, and I meet a lot of people.
The only action I’ve had since then has been women who have known me for years before deciding they were interested. My ex, we worked together (not every day, but weekly or so) for years. I’m thinking about 5 years, before anything happened.
My previous ex met me back in the 90s, and for whatever reason nothing happened between us for 20 years.
I can’t think of anyone who might be next in that sequence, but who knows?