What I see sometimes is an unhealthy combination of “because my standards are so low, it’s especially frustrating that even this ugly fat girl won’t fuck me”. And they talk about it–in very insulting terms, at times–in front of other ugly fat girls that they aren’t considering fucking. Which pretty much makes ugly fat girls hyper-sensitive to the idea that they are being pursued entirely because the guy hopes they are desperate. The thought of having your person discussed publicly in those terms is enough to turn you off any man where the mutual attraction isn’t very obviously authentic. It’s not an atmosphere where you casually date.
Except it doesn’t, it really doesn’t. My nerd credentials are pretty spectacular: in addition to going home most nights to catch up on Dr. Who, in addition to teaching my kids how to play indy side-scroller games like Cave Story + (on the PC I built from components), in addition to running tabletop roleplaying games I’ve bought on Kickstarter, I volunteered for a decade as a moderator for a D&D messageboard. No fake geek guy here.
I’ve been married for 12 years. I play D&D (Pathfinder, really, but I guarantee you don’t care) with a group of six people, including two hetero couples. The last player besides myself isn’t my wife, but he’s the husband of a co-worker. I go to gaming cons when I can, and generally a table of six will have at least one woman at the table, and it’s quite common for a group to be half women. Almost all the nerds I know are married.
I spent a long time in my younger years unhappily single. I had some neuroses and behaviors that really got in the way of casual flirting or dating (e.g., I thought the best beginning to a relationship was to confess my strong feelings of attraction up front. Strangely unsuccessful). My one saving grace is that I never blamed women for my own neurotic behavior; I was totally clear that that was on me, not on them.
I agree, the stereotype is just nonsense. In my experience there are plenty of guys playing board games and RPGS, going to cons, watching (and cosplaying) SF and fantasy movies and shows, who are successful with women. Some do the married with 1.5 kids and a picket fence thing, others more the ‘dating’ model, and others go highly nonconventional. There are geeks who fit the ‘forever alone’ stereotype, but it’s not because their hobbies drive women away, it’s that there’s something unpleasant or toxic the rest of their personality, like being a ‘nice guy’.
It can be really hard to acknowledge your own issues, and it’s very tempting to blame your problems on shallow bitches or the stuff you like or other external factors. I nearly fell into the Nice Guy pit years ago, but like LHoD managed to avoid it by not blaming women for issues in my own head.
I think in a lot of ways, bump is correct about a big chunk of the geeks not getting girls . . . meme for lack of a better term.
I am, in most relevant ways, a giant geek myself. I’m a fairly avid video gamer, I play competitive Magic the Gathering on the regular, read and watch and generally enjoy several different varieties of sci-fi and fantasy. Hell, I collect Magic the Gathering original art pieces, and let me tell you folks, very little is nerdier than that. I am also clearly, blatantly and obviously female. As a result, I have spent a goodly portion of my life hanging around geeks. To the extent I socialize, it’s pretty much with geeks.
Given my gender, and the fact that there are vanishingly few topics I am unwilling to discuss seriously, I have spent an inordinate amount of time giving advice to love-lorn geeks (both of the Nice Guy ™ variety and the more emotionally sensible variety). For whatever reason (possibly because I, myself, am female and have been happily married for over a decade now to another massive geek) love-lorn geeks positively seek me out to tell me all about their dating woes and ask for advice. The troubles that come to the non-Nice Guy sorts are many and varied and often are just venting about a relationship the guy already knows what to do about. I don’t really offer advice so much as a sympathetic ear and occasionally shoulder.
I’ve noticed a pretty definite theme with the Nice Guy sorts though. For starters, they always seem to come in two flavors, which are essentially delineated by how they to respond to an inquiry about whether they’ve approached the lady in question - the one who is allegedly the object of their desire. You get the ones who answer “No! I couldn’t do that! What if she rejects me!?!” (let’s call them the Column A guys), or you get the ones who answer some varietal of “We’re friends!/I’ve been friendzoned and I can’t get up!” - the Column B dudes.
If it’s Column A, no amount of attempting to persuade the love-lorn soul to, yanno, strike up a conversation will actually get him to do so. I’ve decided that these guys don’t really want a girlfriend, they want a quest - an impossible ideal to yearn after in finest chivalric tradition - a McGuffin, if you will. The thing about actual girlfriends is they expect you to contribute to the relationship also - you know, holding conversations, sharing activities, performing minor favors of a non-sexual nature, phone or text conversations and the like. I also notice that these guys will fixate solely on the Object - obliviously failing to note other ladies angling for their attention or brushing off other ladies (with varying degrees of tact and sympathy). I also notice that while these guys can wax eloquently about the Object’s physical virtues, they tend not to know a goddamn thing about the Object other than that. They often will have constructed a whole personality for her in their minds without having any interaction at all - or being able to answer questions like “Okay, name three things she’s interested in” or “Name one relative or friend of the Object” or really any question to relating to what the Object is as a person. The Object is, to these guys, precisely that - an object. Not a human being, not a person, not a creature with agency of her own - a thing. Generally, these dudes are pretty harmless and most of them figure out eventually that real ladies are much more entertaining than their idealized conception of the Object Of Their Desire and change their behavior accordingly.
The Column B guys are actually a whole lot creepier to me (and a lot of other ladies). These are the ones who make friends with the objects of their desire specifically and deliberately for the purpose of being to pounce on times of trouble to slip their dick in. They often don’t think of it this way - and man, are they offended when you suggest it - but that’s what it is. They initiate or cultivate friendship under essentially false pretenses. They are this guy to a T. xkcd: Friends I mean I understand that in their minds a lot of them have convinced themselves that the only way to get a girl is to essentially trick her - either because they have a low regard for women or because their own self-esteem is so beaten down that it’s all they can think of.
Both categories are making several critical mistakes in thinking: the first is that somehow being a decent human being entitles them to the specific girl of their dreams. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve heard “But I’m a nice guy! I’d treat her well! I wouldn’t lie, or cheat, or hit her!” and responded “You have just managed to describe the entry point for not being a total asshole - what do you have to offer her outside of your failure to be a complete shitstain?” Being a decent human being is the “You must be this tall to ride this ride” test for having a successful relationship - it’s not a special accomplishment worthy of accolades and prizes. If we’re comparing successful dating to say carnival games, it’s basically the equivalent of failing to shoot yourself with the pellet gun or not tripping over the ring toss booth and landing face-first in the goldfish.
The second is that girls are prizes to be won. Women are people - human beings complete in their own agency who get to make their own decisions about whom they will and will not associate themselves with. Nobody has an entitlement to a specific partner. Hell, nobody has an entitlement to a partner full stop*. They are not stuffed animals at a carnival game - or achievements - or treasure chests - or boss loot. You don’t automatically get one if you successfully complete certain tasks. Which means, by definition, that completing certain tasks does not entitle you to one.
The third is this: Speaking as I did earlier about what one might offer aside from basic decency, most of the Nice Guys with whom I have had this conversation when directly to “But I’m not riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiich!” when I mentioned this. That is not, in fact, what I am thinking of when I ask what a person has to offer. Relationships are work, yo. Anyone who tells you differently is full of shit. Mostly, the rewards are worth it, but anyone who thinks that being able to say “I have a girlfriend!” is the end of the discussion is having a failure of critical thinking. Unlike fourth grade, having a person to whom you can truthfully apply the title “significant other” requires more than the mere agreement on their part that they are, in fact, your girlfriend. If you just want someone who isn’t involved in your life except to be available for sex, hire an escort. Everyone will be happier with this arrangement. An actual girlfriend is going to want to get involved in your life - and rightfully is going to expect you to get involved in hers. A fair number of the Nice Guy sorts I’ve discussed their relationship woes with seem to somehow harbor the notion that successful relationships are not going to require them to - for example - cease spending every evening at the local game store or online playing the Game O’The Month (or that, magically, their girlfriend is going to want to do exactly what they want to do all the time). In short, they somehow think the only change that will happen in their life is the availability of sex.**
*Not all people even want one. There have been fairly lengthy periods of my life when the mere thought of being in a relationship with anyone was . . . . beyond me.
** To be fair, this tends to be the sort of Nice Guy who is complaining less about their ability to get a girl in the first place than their inability to keep a girl for more than a few weeks.
Yeah, being called a creepy, duplicitous stalker, no one could object to that.
I’ve been married for twenty years to a guy that I used to run Sf conventions with. We play D&D in our basement every Friday with our friends, our spawn, and their spawn (geeks do breed which implies some sort of hetero sex on occasion by at least some of them).
I’m also what passes for mainstream attractive. My geeky sixteen year old daughter is really attractive - we both dress nice and wear makeup and have traditionally “good looks.” My geeky husband had girlfriends before me - none of them unfortunate looking. I have lots of geeky male friends who are married.
My sixteen year old has the manic pixie dream girl problem when interfacing with straight geeky guys - they don’t treat her like a person. Since she isn’t into guys, that isn’t a huge deal for her - I purposely avoid the convention scene with her and she only goes to a small gaming convention with her Dad surrounded by her Dad’s fifty year old friends - because she doesn’t need the abuse “nice guys” give when their manic pixie dream girl doesn’t return their affection.
This only hits the nail partly on the head. I think many of these guys have this logic: They have seen women be in relationships with men who *do *lie, cheat or hit women. This then leads to cognitive dissonance in these guys’ heads: “If he can lie/cheat/hit and *still *get a girlfriend, then how come I don’t lie/cheat/hit and *can’t *get a girlfriend?”
It’s incomplete logic, but it is understandable logic.
My wife has told me lots of times that one of things that she found attractive about me when we first met was that I am a bit of a geek. She, on the other hand, is not a geek at all.
Geekdom never prospers. The reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it geekdom.
I think one just needs to get over the fact that certain activities are going to attract one gender more than the others and you should not expect that particular pursuit to be the avenue you use to get dates. So dont go to a Magic, model railroad, or woodworking event hoping to meet girls.
Also if you want to attract women, find out what women like and change yourself. If they like the buff guys go to a gym. Be able to have a conversation outside of geek topics. be able to mkae a woman laugh.
It really is understandable logic - I’m actually pretty sympathetic to this viewpoint. But it’s definitely incomplete logic, and I’ve spent a lot of time pointing out as tactfully as possible that this logic is incomplete. Usually the thing that helps get it through is asking the question “Well, were the women you saw in relationships with guys who lied/cheated/abused them happy in their relationships? No? Do you want a hypothetical girlfriend to be unhappy with you?” I also point out that “getting” and “keeping” a girlfriend are seriously very different considerations.
I think a lot of the issue goes back to the whole wanting a quest, not an actual relationship thing. I quite often see what I kind of mentally tag “Harlequin Romance Novel Thinking” going on in this arena - the underlying assumption that all relationships are happy/better than no relationship. It’s like all of the mental focus is on obtaining the status “In A Relationship” - like it’s a game achievement, and no mental focus is ever really invested into developing or maintaining or furthering a relationship once they’ve gotten someone to agree that they’re in a relationship.
Speaking for myself, when I was in high school, the geek guys were socially awkward, and kinda creepy. There was one guy who I liked and would have gone out with if he had ever asked. I think he liked me, but I think his best friend did as well. So you know, bros before hoes and all of that.
It’s not always that simple. Not all women like the same type of guys or laugh at the same things. Besides which, would you give the corresponding advice to a woman; if guys like women who are buxom and stupid she should get implants and pretend to be an idiot?
I was going out with a woman about a year ago. She was divorced. She once told me of the time her husband called her after midnight because he’s been arrested for driving drunk while coming home from a sex club. Now, I have no desire to follow in those particular footsteps, and I can’t see myself ever doing that to someone I cared about. But I think it’s also human nature to wonder what he had that I didn’t.
Geekiness is associated with autism. Men get autism more than women do.
[QUOTE=Robot Arm]
I was going out with a woman about a year ago. She was divorced. She once told me of the time her husband called her after midnight because he’s been arrested for driving drunk while coming home from a sex club. Now, I have no desire to follow in those particular footsteps, and I can’t see myself ever doing that to someone I cared about. But I think it’s also human nature to wonder what he had that I didn’t.
[/quote]
You mean other than “being awesome”?
Let me flip the question around. What does a “geek” believe the typical American woman aged 18 through 49 is going to find attractive about a man who wears silly T-shirts, tends to be unkempt, works it a STEM job that is largely incomprehensible to most people, prefers discussing the minutiae of works of science fiction and fantasy and indulges in activities like videogames, cosplay or larp that tend to be viewed as juvenile or childish?
And that’s even assuming they don’t have a laundry list of personality issues.
Hey, I am awesome. Must’ve been something else.
Well, yeah, that’s the $64,000 question;[sup]*[/sup] what do they find attractive? You have women who are into those things you describe, and you have women who aren’t, and you have women who’ll say exactly what they want, and those that don’t. There is no single answer. Hard to blame those who find the whole thing confusing, or never figure it out.
- Yes, I know, out of date reference.
Are you leaving out the part where she broke up with you to go back to her ex? Because if not, then I don’t think it is human nature to feel jealous of the ex-husband of the woman you were dating.
She did not go back to her ex, at least as far as I know. On the other hand, he did convince her to marry him and have three children together.
And I’m not jealous. I just offered that as an example of how befuddling the whole topic can be. I trust that she saw something special in him at some earlier point in her life. Just wish I knew what it was.
There’s a Seinfeld episode called “The English Patient”, in which George meets a beautiful woman named Danielle who briefly mistakes him for her boyfriend Neil. She explains that George looks a lot like Neil, only Neil is actually not as attractive. George becomes obsessed with figuring out what “secret” Neil has with women…so obsessed that he misses Danielle’s obvious interest in George himself.
Your example reminds me of that, only worse. There’s nothing “befuddling” about it except for your unhealthy fixation on the ex-husband of the woman you were dating.