Dude, you have summited. It’s all downhill from there.
SoaT, to me it’s ironic that you can discuss quantum physics in an accessible manner but not emotional matters in any comprehensible way, if the verbiage in this thread is any guide. How would you describe your Emotional Intelligence?
What did your ex say was the problem with your relationship that broke up the marriage?
I’d bet someone watching you on a date could critique your style constructively. Perhaps jali’s offer above of a practise date is worth a shot.
Yeah, not to burst your bubble, but it really wasn’t like that. I didn’t even get the walk to first base before her parents found out that she was seeing a gai-jin and threatened to bring her home if she didn’t cut me off instantly and without discussion.
Apparently that I wasn’t one of the guys that she wanted to have sex with. Frankly, I wouldn’t have trusted anything that came from her lips, as she couldn’t even be honest with herself, much less me.
Stranger
I’d like to applaud everyone for the fact there hasn’t been a single “how YOU doin’?” yet in this thread. 
That said, I wish I knew what to say in these kinds of threads–I’ve felt the way Stranger is feeling multiple times in my history as a person-who-dates, and it always seemed to end for me with a random bit of arbitrary luck rather than with anything I changed or didn’t change.
My only weird consolation is that I’m learning all new levels of painfully stupid human tricks when it comes to “dating in the polyamorous community”.
You know what you’re missing? A confidence exuding swagger.
Ok, maybe not a swagger, but at least confidence. Once you manage to settle down with someone, your eyes will be open to all the possibilities that existed before and ones that still exist but you choose not to pursue. My unsolicited, free advice is to go on as if you are in the type of relationship you wish to be in and start viewing the world as opportunities you take advantage of rather than waiting to let yourself be fished from the sea.
I think most of us have felt the way Stranger is feeling at one point or another. I’d like to think I’m fine at relationships themselves, but to me dating is a horrible and awkward experience I rather just skip over. Considering I just finalized my divorce this morning, and am still in my 20s, I’d say I’ll have to go through the horrible ritual of dating several times over before settling into a relationship again.
I make it a personal habit of mine to never let a guy down by saying “You’re a nice guy, but…”. For one, it’s usually pure bullshit, and for two, there are much more honest ways of telling a guy you’re just not feeling it, or you simply don’t see being with them in that way. There are definitely guy friends of mine who I would never want to date, and I’m sure they feel the same way about me.
As a side note, even in your verbose bitterness there is a witty and amusing bite to it. I’m not sure my reaction was appropriate, but a good lot of what you said had me laughing or at least cracking a smile. Perhaps in part because I can relate to the pure awkwardness of dating. There have been dates where it feels like “oh, you breathe air, too?” is the only thing I have in common with the other person.
The thing is, I don’t think the people who know me would say that I lack for confidence at all; if anything, I come across as being overconfident, possibly to a fault, especially when it comes to interpreting the interest of women.
Stranger
+1. A couple of thoughts:
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The more I talk with people who find themselves in long-term yucky situations, the more I conclude that there are some “mental sacred cows” that they can’t get past. I just had dinner with a friend who hates his job but cut off every. line. of. reasoning. I could offer about how to approach his job search differently. Even though I had successfully changed careers a few years ago, he sat there looking at me like I was a moron, but his sense of decisiveness was the real problem - he knew what was possible regarding his job search, so why even try to change his mind?
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Have you tried speed dating, hiring a relationship consultant or anything like that? Some way that you can ask questions about how you come across, either with an “expert” who can give you advice, or a bunch o’ women that you have very little invested in, so you can ask them how you are coming across without feeling weird…
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The more data points, the better. As a scientist, you know that your process of inquiry works far more effectively if you start with an initial hypothesis, set up the experiment to capture as many data points as possible, and then review the data and refine the initial hypothesis over time and be open to what the data is telling you about the topic you are studying. If you think about this metaphor - are you really doing this? Are you going out on dates, even a bunch of blind ones? Are you able to review what works and doesn’t work to “update your hypothesis” - i.e., change basic things about your appearance and/or how you approach initial interactions with women?
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Have you “asked for the business?” That’s a common business phrase - some folks in Sales do all the right things to woo a customer, but then get all shy and don’t explicitly ask the customer for their business. Do you come out and state to women that you would like to date them, etc.? I was out with a work buddy at a concert in Seattle last week and we were standing there absorbed in the music since we are both music geeks. He goes to the bathroom and this really (really) cute girl walks up to me and says “uh, are you two together? 'cuz your friend is really cute, and, uh…” I had to break it to her that yeah, we’re both straight, but yeah, we’re both married with kids, so no deal. She was cool - we had a nice chat, but when my buddy rejoined us, she talked a bit more and then moved on. She asked for the business - and lordy, we both would’ve loved to have given it to her in an alternate universe…
I read your posts and feel like I am like you in a lot of ways (hope you don’t find that insulting!) so I find myself thinking “jeez, there is something going on here that is an elephant in the room that we can’t perceive on line - something where Stranger either can’t or is unwilling to see some aspect of his situation that must change before this gets better - could be a basic thing like communication style or appearance; could be a mindset issue where he should be targeting a bunch of smaller victories, not shooting for the moon - something…”
Sorry I can’t help you more - I would to hear that you connect up with someone…
WordMan
I’m glad you got a few laughs out of it because if one is going to be all angsty and bitter it should at least be in the service of accentuating humor. Otherwise, it’s just unpleasant and generally no fun.
Stranger
Well… when I was actively dating few years ago it appeared the best strategy in talking to women was to be be somewhat confident, but also to pay attention to them. Not as in “study them” just just keep track of the twists and turns of their responses as if the conversation was a dance. Dressing well, even if going casual, was important too. Pressed shirt, shined shoes, nice looking watch, and newish belt and sharp overall grooming are all things women pay attention to in terms of gathering an overall impression of you. Girls from 6 to 60, brainiacs or not, like fun stuff like dancing and moving. You need to have some fun post dinner options mapped out in case she takes a shine to you.
Women have usually decided in the first few seconds to minutes if you have a shot, the rest is just foreplay to see if you are bearable or not. Women may say they like intelligent men, but mostly that means they want men who are intelligent about them. Even if you are world’s smartest man, and you have tons to say on any relevant subject you really just need to STFU and listen to her. It’s best to keep massive knowledge about anything hidden as your secret superpower when, and if, the need arises.
In the end women are attracted to confident, relaxed men who are interested in them as individuals. Trying too hard or being overwhelming conversationally is off putting. I don’t know Stranger from Adam’s off Ox, but if he is trying to impress dates by being super knowledgeable he is going to wind up holding the short end of the stick more often than not. Knowing about things is sexy if it’s lightly popped in. An potential info tsunami from a naturally tense individual is terrifying and enervating, and will get little play.
Again, no clue how Stranger plays it IRL.
Stranger On A Train, I am not as articulate as you so I will make this blunt.
You need to get pissed, dude. You need to stand up for yourself.
And I quote:
Compare that to this thread:
That dude is righteously pissed, yet in control of himself. That’s a healthy reaction.
You’ve obviously built into your self image that you’re someone who gets rejected and treated like crap. That isn’t healthy at all. You need to respect and value yourself. I’ll tell you my number 1 rule for dealing with people. They’re very suggestible usually. If you sincerely feel you’re a hot potato, as long as you’re not annoying, or fake about it, they’ll believe you.
Being stood up, short of extenuating circumstance (such as an attack from Rita Repulsa’s newest monster, etc.), is inexcusable.
I’ll tell you my story. I’ve never been stood up but I have taken a lot of crap from the dating world. At first I thoguht it was something I didn’t understand, people do a lot of screwy,and self centered things. I thought it was something I was doing wrong. I never stopped to consider maybe sometimes people are just bitches and assholes, and a lot of the time they’re just on a different wave length. We tend to see in other people by our own biases and perceptions of things by default, and I’m a stereotypical INFP. I was so naive.
My ex broke me out of that. I’d never get angry with her, I found the switch in my head that controls anger, and flipped it off. It’s destructive, not practical, better to talk everything out or so I thought. In hindsight she needed me to stand up for myself. When I didn’t it put all the pressure on her Made her feel like she was on a pedestal. You see Anger taken to extremes is indeed bad and evil, but tempered with self control it’s healthy. It’s a valve that lets all the pressure that’s been built up out before things explode.
Sometimes I think about trying to patch things up with her, we’re on good terms, but I don’t know if it work right now, and I don’t want to put her or me through that if it won’t.
I’ve did some dating since then, but had a lot of BS from it so said 'Enough! and took a break. Wanted to focus on other areas of my life, but ironically from it I’m really understanding people now. It gave me a perspective to observe unbaised. My problems in the dating world stem from a difference in perspective.
Most people’s world is a torrent of social data social status (respect, values, subculutural alignment, etc.), stories from work, bitching and complaining about various things, etc.
I don’t think to talk about that stuff. I’m an over grown kid. Plus I have obscure tastes in music, books, movies, and stuff. I find a discussion of Godzilla just as enthralling as a game of super smash bros, a game of tag, a Yoshida Brothers tune, setting down to read a copy of Stranger in a Strange Land,. Coupled with a world-view drawn from a mixture of Philosophy, Philosophical Taoism, Sociology, Biology, etc.
It’s hard to connect with people. Sometimes I translate things into metaphor. Usually I just play interviewer. People think you’re the most interesting person in the world when you’re talking about them.
Also I’m figuring out social things. People test you in little monkey ways taking monkey social cues. Some people just aren’t naturally tuned into these things. I’m not, and maybe you’re not. They seem like drudgery to me, but as I pick up them I start to learn how to react to them with the right little monkey social cues. I learn how to appear confident with the right little monkey social indicators of confidence etc. I’m really starting to feel noticed, and starting to see woman ect different then they did before, in a good way. Remember you are a human attempting to couple with another human. Humans are primates and as such have certain primate social instincts, and social rituals. It’s the hieght of hubris to think they don’t apply to you.
Anyway I hope some of this is useful to you or someone. I end this post with a much less confident tone than I started with because while I’m certain self respect and standing up for yourself are key, the rest is a bunch of hodgepodge rules of thumb, and figuring it out as you go.
Also I think you’re really over complicating things for dates. I empathize as someone who over thinks things down into way deeper detail then is useful, but sometimes that can be very detrimental.
Just dress nice, be chill, and have fun. If it goes bad there’s always more where she came from.
**Stranger **- did we kill your thread?
Sorry, man. :smack:
First of all, Stranger, I know you were meant to be humorous in the OP, but seriously, if you talked like that in real life, it would be a great cure for insomnia. Imagining you talk on a date is like hearing someone on NPR blathering about something or other in a milquetoast fasion.
People tend to cling to their strengths and avoid their weaknesses. This means that while they may start out as ‘mildly good at this/mildly bad at that’ the balance gets more and more lopsided until they’ve reached ‘Full-blown Aspie Idiot Savant’ stage. Some people need to spend more time addressing their weaknesses and being confident. For example, I am not good at basketball (despite being tall) I’ve got the whole ‘uncoordinated awkwardness’ thing going on. However if I got invited to a game of basketball, I would channel the powers of Woody Harrelson’s character in White Men Can’t Jump in both perceived skills and confidence.
Two things that make a woman dry up down there worse than the Atacama Desert are desperation and insecurity.
With Desperation, people tend to disrespect themselves- abandon standards and settle for some grunting hambeast of a partner because its ‘better than nothing’. They will do things on the other person’s terms and conditions and feel like they don’t have any power/leverage in a situation. I noticed guys that are chronically single also tend to be real pushovers, and don’t really assert what they want in other aspects of their life. Women, I’ve learned, really zero in on this (unless they are more desperate themselves, which is evern worse )
With insecurity, I boil it down to this situation: If someone asked you to do something you’ve never done before, you can do it two ways. One way is to realize you’ve never done it before, wonder what you should do, how to do it right, overanalize it, etc and basically act like you don’t know what the fuck you are doing. The other way is to wing it, act like its something you’ve done a thousand times. When people are confident, it tends to bring out more potential in them; they tend to try harder and own up to the good things about themselves. Insecure people don’t accept the positives, they only see the negatives and define themselves by their shortcomings. It can surface in a lot of sneaky ways, like our body language, the way we stand, where we are looking, etc.
As someone who has seen both sides of this gulf, I can tell you that being a walking Barbie doll who “everybody” (read, “a constant swarm of shallow know-nothings”) wanted to date is far less fun. Now that I’m bigger, older, less blonde and more into my job than the gym, I can tell you that the few dates I go on are more enjoyable. Mostly because people are actually trying to talk to me.
I think you suffer from the same disability I do, we are DWI - Dating While Intellectual. It’s a serious handicap, and vastly exacerbated in my case by an inability to metabolize Ethyl Alcohol. The majority of people are living a life of the body. Those few who are living a life of the mind tend to do it indoors, or in a subset of comfortable and well-known environments.
You’ve specifically said you are not seeking advice, but I’ll jump in with the crowd and give you some anyway. Have you considered joining MENSA? Or attending lectures at the local colleges/universities? You need to find an intellectual gathering place. They do exist, and most of us seek them out at one time or another. If you’re near DC the National Geographic Society does some great lectures. Also I’ve found that Aquarium Societies tend to be full of brainy types.
On getting out of the friend zone - your best weapon here would be a dancing class. Showing that rythmic ability to get in synch with a woman’s bodily movements is a very powerful game changer. Also learn some ballroom dancing so that you can learn to subtley “lead” a woman’s movements. This WILL work, I promise you.
hth
I Hope you pronounce it to yourself as “thang.”
Hope is the thing with feathers - Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was wrong … the thing with feathers turns out to be my nephew. I must get him to a specialist - Woody Allen
No, I was just taking some time to matriculate. Despite the fact that I didn’t ask for advice, some good stuff was offered here.
Part of my problem is that I’m virtually the Invisible Man when it comes to women I find attractive. It isn’t that I’m repulsive–or, at least not until I state my interest–but that I’m just not even seen, sometimes literally. The woman I most recently attempted to ask out was utterly shocked and seemed slightly repelled before I could even get the whole statement out. The idea that I might be interested in her was clearly a completely foreign thought, despite the fact that I’ve known her well for quite a while, had thought that her behavior indicated similar interest, and only held back because of complications in the situation. Instead, I was totally off-base, and earned myself all of the trouble I was trying to avoid with none of the benefit.
I don’t have a lot of time to spend carousing and attending classes and so forth, so I keep periodically trying the online thing, but that is nothing but an exercise in frustration; even the occasional bites pan out to nothing as they stop responding in e-mail with no explanation, and I look back over the communications looking for some way that I came off as creepy, desperate, pathetic, whatever. After three months of trying I did have one date last weekend…with a woman who wouldn’t stop talking about traffic. Traffic was her center, and I could not budge her off of it, regardless of the other topics I tried to bring up or questions I asked. I know I can go on about pedantic things, too, but I’d like to think that there is at least some variation in my tedium. It’s kind of stupid to turn someone away when I have nothing else in the pipeline, but honestly, spending even a few minutes with her was making me want to thread dental floss through my nasal cavity.
I’ve been trying to meet women through other venues, but that has added up to a whole lot of nothing; even getting a woman I find attractive, or often period, to make eye contact is a hurdle I can’t leap. It’s not just me that notices this, either; I’ve become legend among my group of friends for being inexplicably ignored by women to a point of absurdity.
I just don’t get it. It seems that no level of confidence, assertiveness or satisfaction with other areas of my life (job, personal health, outside interests) makes any difference in this. I’m at a loss as to what to do differently at this point, other than suffer the unfulfilled infatuations and occasion suggestions by friends or co-workers that they know so-and-so who would be perfect for me because we both have a two eyes and a pulse, and then get stood up even on that basis. Getting pissed off about it (as The Tao’s Revenge suggests) doesn’t help; nor does delving into my own interests and detachedly waiting for lightning to strike.
Anyway, thanks to all that responded.
Stranger
If it’s important, make time for it. If not, then keep on keeping on.
I’m sure this is standard dating advice. But, you know, if you’re an opinionated bastard and you’re having to hogtie yourself in order to play nice, maybe it’s not worth it.
When Superman dresses like Clark Kent, he’s judged as Clark Kent. If you want people who like Superman, don’t tell them you’re Clark.