…yes? That’s what you have to do. Maybe she says no. Maybe she says yes. Doing nothing definitely won’t get you anywhere.
The issue is the “always works for me”, the same way an old white man is going to have a lot less trouble with the police or telling a handicapped person to just walk the stairs because it “always works for me”.
Doing nothing definitely won’t get you anywhere.
Not necessarily true, I’ve never been conventionally attractive, but I’ve had women approach me multiple times, in fact all but one (out of… 6 I guess) of my long term relationships were initiated by the woman… Of course that was when I was young, now I’m 50 and going through a divorce, I’m not holding my breath…
If she says no it doesn’t come without consequences. You can’t talk to her anymore without it being awkward, and if she’s part of a larger friend group you’re in the embarrassment is even worse.
You’re overthinking it. I know because I do the same. But realistically most women are quite relieved when you can take a kind “no” in stride because the bar is so low in this regard.
i mean people tend to like confidence, also you get to stop wallowing in ignorance. conventionally attractive or not, either they say yes or no and then you get to move forward from there. going from not knowing to knowing, that is a positive.
You should know when it is appropriate to ask and when not:
Don’ts:
- complete strangers
- people who cannot retreat, e.g. cashiers, waiters and the like, on a busy train/bus in an elevator etc.
- people clearly not in a space to socialize.
- asking for sex
- being ambigious about intentions
Do’s:
- people you held a normal conversation with before
- in a space where they are comfortable and either party can leave easily if things get awkward
- being clear about it being a date
- public place with individual privacy, e.g. going out for a coffee
- no alcohol or other drugs
Don’t forget the most important 2:
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Be attractive
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Don’t be unattractive
Important note: While bullet point 1 may be about physical attractiveness, bullet point 2 is not.
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Definitely. Looking like Henry Cavill makes it easier, but confidence is really the main attraction. I know less attractive men sleep with Victoria’s Secret-type women. And there is actually a study on men who are perpetually single, and the common denominator is being under-confident. But at the same time, you don’t want to be overconfident and thus arrogant.
oh totally. my wife is gorgeous, and she spent a bit too much time in our social circles single because everyone (myself included) was too intimidated to ask her out. we were friends for ages, she started giving me a hard time about having her number for like eight years but never asking her on a date, my ego wasn’t going to stand for that and here we are.
To be fair, it took her years to ask you to ask her. She could have just asked too.
My wife asked me out. Only time a woman has ever done that to me. Only time she had ever done it. I thought she was attractive but I honestly didn’t expect that. Knowing what I know about her now, it took a lot of courage for her to do that.
She shot her shot and hit a bullseye. There are no good reasons for women to spend all their time waiting on men to initiate.
That’s what I thought about my wife… We worked together, I wasn’t looking for a relationship, in fact had just come out of a bad one and intended to be single for a while, but she was persistent in putting herself close to me, and while she didn’t exactly “ask me out” she did push me into situations that very much resembled dates… After about a year we moved in together, then another year we were married… 19 years and 2 kids later, she started up a relationship with another guy in much the same way, but I was preoccupied with health problems so didn’t notice for a couple months. When I did start to notice, she told me I was crazy, ridiculous, a few other not nice things, said he was “just a friend” or “nice to talk to”… But that she wanted a divorce because she had been unhappy for pretty much our entire marriage. I ended up having to talk to the other guy (because of course it was someone we both knew, our son’s best friend’s dad in fact) to get confirmation, and found out just how long it had been going on. He said she had told him we had been separated for “a while” but still living together for the sake of the kids. When I said that wasn’t true, he seemed genuinely distressed and apologized pretty convincingly, and said he was going to break it off… of course I can’t be sure he was being honest either… Holy traumadump, batman…
Sooooo… we’re doing incel shit posting now?
This sort of black pill doomerism seriously destroys your mental health. You don’t have to be a Chad to find a girlfriend friends, but thinking your not “conventionally attractive” enough to date is a self fulfilling prophecy.
Just ask if she plays Warhammer bro
Send me her number. Because she clearly knows Tau are the only good guys in Warhammer.
Only if you’re cool with psychic brainwashing and a pseudo hive mind.
Exactly. Pseudo hive mind.
According to the Imperium.
This is what “blind to privilege” means… LOL
I have had more than one. I am autistic with an anxiety disorder and ptsd and I had guys who aren’t those things always talk to me about girls like I am super pick up master just because inam decently looking and in shape. They way they talked about their experiences made me kinda not want any, too…
And no matter how much I tried to explain my situation when asking for advice they just gave sabotaging and extremely vague advice that doesn’t mean anything. I wasted away my 20s and a large part of my 30s because of shit like that.
The best advice is “women are people too, not some mystical being from outer space”. They feel the same emotions, they get hungry, they get horny, they get anxious or shy too."
Look for people who think similarly to you. I found it that I mesh well with other people who are on the spectrum, have adhd, etc. Ultimately nothing matters when you can’t approach someone, or go out of your way to find hobbies where you can find people with the same interests as you. So if you can’t get over that (or accept a rejection), it won’t work.
Also, don’t focus on a single person, especially someone who doesn’t return feelings / attention, or doesn’t have time for you at all. Even the busiest person will find a tiny bit of time to meet with you if they really like you. Obsessing over a single person for years isn’t the way to find love. Quoting a song by Tim Minchin, “your love is one in a million, but it doesn’t mean that the other 999 999 loves wouldn’t be equally nice”. If you find someone who returns your feelings, you mesh with well, hold on for dear life.
The best advice is “women are people too, not some mystical being from outer space”. They feel the same emotions, they get hungry, they get horny, they get anxious or shy too."
Honestly, this is terrible advice for guys who are having trouble with women.
I only have real experience being me, and interacting with other people, for knowledge of what “people” are.
Let’s say I’m in the park shooting hoops alone. I see someone else walking around in the park, not looking busy or in a hurry. I could wave at them and say “hey, wanna shoot some hoops?”
When I see a woman I’m attracted to, I want to fuck her. Personality, interests, etc - those are all nice and all. Those are things that make me want to hang out with a girl, spend time with her, talk to her. But if she has big tits and a thin waist, my penis says “hey, we should fuck her”, and say “what a great idea, Penis!”
So based on my own personal internal experience of being human, my experience interacting with other humans in other contexts, and your advice that “women are just people” - what I should do is see a woman in the park, wave at her, and say “hey, wanna fuck?”
However, based on every other piece of information I have about how to interact with women, I am led to believe that I should not do this. So if women are just people, but I shouldn’t interact with them in a way which is very understandable to me, then that must mean that I am not a normal person. That there is something wrong with me.
Now, based on the fact that I’ve already written this much, and the sheer fact that I’m here on Lemmy, this is probably a valid assumption. But sexually, it is not. Sexually, I’m a pretty normal guy. Guys are mostly aroused by people’s physical forms and want sex immediately, with emotional connection being lower on the list of immediate priorities. This is very obvious if you simply look at a gay man’s Grindr, where many men set a picture of their asshole as their leading profile pic and allow other users to see their location down to the meter so they can fuck Right. Now.
The reality is, men and women are different. At this point the gender studies crowd usually jumps in and says something about “gender essentialism”, or about how “everyone is different.” Great, everyone is different. But there are some broad trends we can observe, and for the purposes of heteronormative dating, we can fairly easily divide the world into men, women, and other, where “other” are largely irrelevant to the discussion since - if we are giving advice to heterosexual men - either you don’t want to fuck them, or they don’t want to fuck you. So we talk about men and women, and how you as a man should interact with women so that they will want to fuck you.
In order for a guy to improve at being fuckable, he needs to understand that women are different than him. That they want and expect different things. And this is fine. Yeah, women are people. But they are also women, and if you want to date women, you need to treat women like women like to be treated when they date someone.
Read it again, women are people too. What your approach is, is to think of them as objects to fuck, a different category to “people”. You have your own issues to work through. Don’t use people as means to an end.
No, you aren’t pretty normal to think of everyone as “someone to fuck” and instead of saying “hey want to throw hoops together” to a woman too, you would say “want to fuck”. That’s asocial behavior.
And no, it doesn’t matter that women and men have differences.
So yeah, drop this toxic line of thinking first.
I don’t think of women as objects to fuck, because the feeling of horniness is an emotion which emerges before rational thought. Rational thought is plastered over our emotions post-hoc. That’s how the brain works.
And what I described is how my sexuality works. If that offends you, well… That’s your problem. I’m not going to apologize for something I didn’t choose and can’t change. And if we’re going to have a discussion about how dating works, then I’m not going to lie.
No, you aren’t pretty normal to think of everyone as “someone to fuck”
Then why do all dating sites put pictures front and center?
and instead of saying “hey want to throw hoops together” to a woman too, you would say “want to fuck”. That’s asocial behavior.
Asocial is when you don’t socialize. Asocial behavior would be not talking to anyone. What you are thinking of is antisocial behavior - behavior which violates social norms. And that’s my point. There are social norms around asking women to have sex which don’t exist around basketball or asking men to have sex, because men and women are different.
And no, it doesn’t matter that women and men have differences.
So you would tell a man to make a dick pic his lead photo on Tinder? Because that’s what they do on Grindr.
So yeah, drop this toxic line of thinking first.
Toxic thinking is denying reality and trying to invalidate someone else’s sexuality because it contradicts your political views.
“I am not going to stop thinking of women as fuck objects and treat them as people, and if that offends you that’s your problem”
I’m not “offended” by you, I’m telling you to change your thought patterns and stop being an incel in every sense of the word. No wall of text will excuse this line of thinking, or make it okay. I’m done talking with you - it’s obvious you suffer from being chronically online and not understanding how to interact with people.
I’m ethically non-monogamous and am currently sleeping with multiple different women with their very enthusiastic consent. The fact that I understand and can speak frankly and honestly about my sexuality - as well as anything else on my mind - is a turn on for them because it means that they can understand how I’m feeling and appreciate that I am relating to them authentically.
They don’t feel dehumanized by the fact that I think they are hot. They feel sexy and appreciated. And they understand that having sexual urges towards someone doesn’t mean they can’t also be human. Really, being sexually attracted to others and wanting others to be sexually attracted to you is one of the fundamental experiences of being human.
There is a stereotypical male sexuality which is based primarily around physical appearance. And there is a stereotypical female sexuality based around personality. These are not strictly limited to one gender or another, but the stereotypes exist for a reason - because the correspond with broad demographic trends. I have a stereotypically male sexuality. I understand and accept that the women I sleep with have a different sexuality in some ways. So I try to understand what they want, and give it to them, because I like seeing them happy. And they try to understand what I want and give it to me, because they like seeing me happy. We are different in some ways and similar in others, and that’s part of what makes spending time with each other fun. So no, I’m not going to apologize or feel bad about my sexuality.
So now you are treating this person as not a person… Good talk.
I don’t know where you got that from, but you do you
Like what exactly?
Just saying ‘go online’ and nothing else for starters. I ‘went online’ in the mid-2000s and found nothing but PUA and early manosphere crap that was utterly stupid and did far more damage to me socially in the long term that I didn’t even begin to fix until more than 13 years after the fact. It didn’t bring any positive results either. But due to my circumstances I just really didn’t know any better.
Also when I did ‘go online’ or ‘to bars’ and I described some highly weird experiences that I knew weren’t normal they would twist the events so badly that it makes me wonder if they were the autistic ones and not me.
For example when I was 22 years old, I went to a bar and started talking to this woman. She was older than me and kinda vague, lied to me about her name, lied about her martial status (before taking everything back, but never telling me her real name). This was in Dubai I might add, so the social dynamic is a very different place than it would be in north america… and would also really come back to bite me later. The only shit I had to go by was offering her a drink at the start…
But here is a kicker… no one ever bought her a drink before. Apparently she literally did not watch any western media or ignored whatever was on screen. Because the whole concept of anyone walking up to anyone in a bar and buying them a drink was a legit alien experience to her.
Long story short… I saw her a second time a few weeks later at the same bar and she had some friends with her. She treated me like I was an ATM and basically thought that as long as she groped at me inappropriately (she even grabbed my head and shoved it against her breasts, forcibly I might add since I tried to resist) she could ask for meals and drinks and spending money for her and her friends (without the slightest hint of reciprocal sex). However she and friends were giddy and laughing while doing it.
I described the situation to them as I am here without mentioning the whole ‘this person never had a person buy her a drink’ but I DID add it later.
However this did nothing to convince them that they were trying to manipulate them, and they insisted that actually I should have gone for it and lost my virginity in a threesome with some MILFs that day. I am mildly exaggerating, but that was the gist of it.
BTW, just as an FYI, in many bars I went to in Dubai, they were lousy with sex workers. I did have plenty of girls touch me and act all giddy (but not ask for anything) and offer me ‘massages’ (which is a thinly veiled euphemism for sex in case it wasn’t obvious) for reasonable prices. The guys I was talking to weren’t in the middle east and just could not wrap their heads around my experiences being different from theirs.
Even with going online, they said nothing about where to go, how to make a good profile, what pictures to use or anything. Even trying to message people they insisted that you must never say anything other than ‘hi’ at first. This is even when they actually showed me what they did and had giant text walls that they sent detailing whatever was on her profile. I wasn’t able to replicate those, but their advice was just designed to make me waste my time.
Long story short. I am 41 now. Not a virgin, but dealing with a lot of bullshit. I dont care who I tell this to, but I am prepping to see a sexual therapist. I am practically writing my autobiography so I can just give it to them and bring them up to speed so I don’t waste tons of time and money just going on and on with the sessions. I need actual help and not just someone to talk to.
I’m sorry you had that experience. I had a similar, but different, experience. You keep referring to “they” who were giving you advice - who were these people and where did you meet them? It seems like this was a consistent group?
I eventually found some good advice, which boils down to:
-
Be honest. Be honest with people about who you are and what you are interested in. Some people might not like what you are offering. Some might even be offended. But this is all fine, as long as you are honest and respectful and talk to each woman with the assumption that the two of you are on the same team of figuring out if you are interested in each other.
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Improve yourself. For most guys with dating issues, this includes things like going to therapy, building a healthy social life, being physically healthy, and generally being a happy person.
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Talk to lots of women. People are different and want different things. In order to find the women who want what you have to offer, who are themselves offering what you want yourself, you need to talk to a lot of women.
Improving at these things is best accomplished from a place of a positive mindset, good mental health, and with a strong support system.
(Part 2 of 2)
but holy SHIT did he make me look bad. I need to mention that everything he said was a lie. and I even pointed out to him then and there that going to that group was his idea, not mine, and I pointed out to him that everyone around him who was in a relationship did not do anything remotely close to what he was saying.
Then he admitted to me that A: He never had a girlfriend, B: Never dated, C: had no idea how people actually met, and D: Was possibly a virgin. In short, I was extensively more experienced than he was, despite being from overseas.
I could go on forever, but I will stop here (gotta save it for my therapist). You actually did offer some real advice, and I did go out on some brunches on meetup.com and I am much calmer than I was before, and the girls there did talk to me far more than they did previously. Doesn’t mean I am going to getting laid left and right, but it is a much better start, and I actually have far more support from my job and the few family and friends that I have contact with, I had to cut out so many people from my life it isn’t funny.
Well, I gotta say, that was a wild ride.
Personally, I grew up emotionally disconnected, unsupported, socially isolated, and bullied. Like, kids at school making fun of me for wearing clothes that hadn’t been washed, because my parents either didn’t notice or didn’t care. I ended up depressed, socially anxious, and socially stunted as a result. For years as a kid, I prayed for the day that I would have the courage to pick the lock on my dad’s gun and blow my own brains out.
Luckily, I moved out of my folks house at 18 to go to college, and have barely been back since. I avoid spending time with my parents as much as possible, since I seem to have pavlovian conditioning such that being around them triggers my depression, and leads to excessive alcohol consumption.
After agonizing about it for years, I finally lost my virginity at 23. After that, I failed to sleep with another girl for years. At 29, I panicked, said FUCK THIS!! and decided to do whatever it took. So I found a paint-by-numbers guide to getting laid on Tinder on the internet, followed it to the T, and managed to actually start sleeping with women.
I’ll say, the experience made me happier and changed my life for the better. It made me a better person. But at the same time, it didn’t solve all my problems. And also, the couple months of effort that I put in at 29 was really just the culmination of work I’d been putting into myself and my life since I was 13. I still have some heavy emotional problems I’m dealing with - but feeling sexually desireable isn’t one of them anymore, and I’m grateful for that.
To me, it sounds like you’ve been through the shit, and you are taking the right steps. You’re cutting out people who make you miserable - that’s excellent. You are going out to meetups and meeting people. Awesome. You are going to therapy - that is fucking amazing. Seriously, the fact that you’ve been knocked down so many times and are still getting back up is something to be proud of.
Our culture is really weird about sex and dating, so it is really hard to find good advice. I think my best advice is to focus on improving yourself to be more datable for a while (like, yeah, it’s okay to want more people to be into you!), and then to take a break and focus on other things, before coming back to it. You get better at things when you focus on them. But you also need to relax and be happy and not be one dimensional. So alternate back and forth, hopefully without burning out.
I recommend you spend as much time as possible meeting new people and cultivating friendships. Dating and improving yourself is so much easier when you have a deep and wide network of friends to lean on.
For a macro view of how to become a more datable man, I recommend the book Models by Mark Manson. It boils down to “don’t be needy”. If you want to know how to not be needy, you might have heard of the next book he wrote to answer that question - The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.
If you have problems moving things forward with women - anything from introducing yourself to asking them on a date to getting them into bed - the best advice I ever heard is “stop trying to be smooth.” You are autistic. This is actually a superpower in dating, because you will have a hard time sending and receiving the subconscious, unspoken cues most people give each other. Instead, you use your autism to be direct - tell girls exactly what you are thinking and exactly what you want. Ask them what they are thinking and what they want when you are uncertain. Just be autistically honest. As long as you are honest and respectful, just say anything that pops into your head. “Hey, I saw you over here and thought you were really pretty. What’s up? I’m John.” “I’m glad you agreed to go on this date with me, but I have to say, I’m kinda nervous.” “You have a beautiful smile and it makes me want to kiss you.” “I’m having a good time with you tonight. Do you wanna go back to my place?” “You seem nervous. Are you okay?”
At the same time, learning to flirt and communicate effectively is a process that doesn’t happen overnight. To learn how to flirt, I recommend a book called “The Inner Game of Tennis”. Read it, and everywhere it says “Tennis” just replaced that with “flirting”.
Thanks. I did hear about some of those books, but I am VERY wary of a lot of things that have a PUA feel to them, since the PUA stuff has been the biggest problem to me in my social development (as I noted) and I am very hesitant to return to any such material as long as I know they might carry that label. I did read The Charisma Myth (and I need too look at it back again), but I will look them up. Models kinda has that trigger to me right now. But it could be that I am confusing it for something else since I did hear it.
you did mention Inner Game of Tennis, but I assume that you are the one who replaced ‘flirting’ with it, and it can work. I am not a 100% beginner, and like I said, there’s been some very strange things happening to me lately, and they’re kinda on the good side… but I can’t be sure yet. Seeing your results in finding sex on tinder is encouraging, but my experience with Tinder has been very discouraging. I went on Tinder from May to November 2015 and I only got one date, one other girl to date, and after I turned 32 in October, despite expanding my demographic to include everyone from 18 to 35, I got ZERO matches despite hundreds of swipes. It was almost like I had expired after 32. But seeing you get what you wanted after just a few months was good… but for me, due to a plethora of other factors (I was stalked and cyberbullied by many PUAs online and they even harassed my family for months. One guy was actively trying to get on my facebook page for 4 YEARS after the fact) due to my panic factor probably being far, far, far higher than others and my sheer insecurity at being an early something wanting a younger girlfriend. I hope that this time it doesn’t take me 18 months to find a girlfriend or go on dates. I was mostly doing ‘day game’ and ‘night game’ which was never the thing for me and the absolute worst crap I ever did. Also I had a tremendous amount of stress at my old job when my emotional state became apparent and they just tried to fire me immediately when I mentioned I was having dating issues and my whole issues with sex. People didn’t talk much about sex at the job, but when they did they mentioned dicer stuff than that… but apparently I struck a nerve and everyone thought I was a predator and needed to be gotten rid of immediately. They spent nearly 3 years trying to firing me and the stress from all that was physically killing me like cancer.
Fun fact: It was only when the stress got so bad that upon my Union representive’s recommendation that I go on a sick leave was when I was finally relaxed enough and… yeah, that’s when the one girl I met said yes and we went dating. She was 19 and I was 33, but you’d think I would be the more mature one but… nope. She was in full control of absolutely everything. In fact she was kinda surprised how I managed to reach my age and maintain a positive disposition towards people after a lifetime of suffering from incredible abuse, as she would have expected me to be an intensely closed-off person if I was ‘normal’ under the circumstances. I wanna make it clear that this girl did more for me in the few months we dated than anyone else in my life did in decades, and I will never forget her and I will never say that I don’t feel anything towards her anymore, because she is that good. This is considering when I was 25 I lost my virginity to a 31 year old… virgin girl, and that experience was one of the most shattering and destructive experiences I had in my life. Even one of the PUAs I spoke to (the type of guy who I legit believed really did bang over a 100 girls before the age of 24) said that if he had an experience like that now, he would give up on women and becoming a monk. That experience is also one reason why I am kinda hesitant to date someone older than me even though it was probably that she was a one-off and not all girls older than me are like that.
I am mildly apprehensive about online stuff, but at the same time I do want to try. While before I was focused principally on younger girls, and while I am going to be expanding my horizons and putting my age range from 25-45, I don’t want to be left out by any group. I had a lot of problems in my life and I felt robbed and left out of so much time for a million reasons that I just feel like any group that puts in an age limit is a personal affront to me, even if it isn’t that.
My current job is also highly supportive and I am going to get my sex therapist through it. I don’t talk about dating on the job, but I have a feeling that if I did bring up the topic to my boss, he would be OK with it. So I know I won’t be under ANY stress from my job, and that stress along with other stuff in my life previously is what was the biggest hinderance in finding a date/girlfriend.
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I feel like you missed step one there, mate.
Step 1. Be. A. God.
Imaginary and vengeful… Got it.
Bro looks like he Superman, they should have had him play Superman at some point
Instead of whatever the hell Man of Steel was
I’m amazed that this “hate the thing to be cool on the internet” approach still works.
I don’t hate Man of Steel because the internet told me to
I hate Man of Steel because it doesn’t understand Superman’s character beyond “Strong guy who punches things”
A movie where Superman stops to save a squirrel > A movie where Superman destroys Metropolis to get to Zod
You should watch that movie again when you’re older. You missed a lot of details because you only saw/focused on the violence.
I don’t hate art and I don’t understand people that do. It may not appeal to me but that’s someone’s interpretation of that item.
I suppose if you want the Superman you described there are so many versions. Take your pick from any of the multiple versions that saved a squirrel.
I saw Man of Steel in my late 20s.
It was nothing but mindless violence. Not Superman at all.
Ok.
