I Do Not See Myself Represented in Essays on Dating | Hacker News Reader

I Do Not See Myself Represented in Essays on Dating

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65 pointsenkiv2105 comments

Sounds like this dude is insufferable and exhausting and probably presents himself as such on his dating profile.

Edit: Before you start writing a treatise on the socio-economics of contemporary market-based internet dating in the age of diverstity.. just try the following:

1. Put up a crisp, clear picture of yourself dressed nicely with a smile. Put up a second clear picture of you doing some kind of interesting activity (hiking in the wilderness, doing art, playing with a puppy, etc).

2. Write a self-description that gives off vibes of you being a generally positive person, and relatively charming and perhaps a bit funny. If you can't be charming, you can at least be polite. If you're not funny, you can at least be lighthearted.

> Sounds like this dude is insufferable and exhausting and probably presents himself as such on his dating profile.

In my experience, people making these kinds of statements often haven't any sense of humility, compassion or empathy, so it is likely you cannot understand even why he would make his post.

Further, this same personality trait also seems lead to online ridicule of people trying to share their experiences online.

> Edit: Before you start writing a treatise on the socio-economics of contemporary market-based internet dating in the age of diverstity.. just try the following:

Edit: It is also consistent with this personality trait to assume that your advice is desired, and to then provide that advice.

I would make the first picture the one where you do an activity. The activity tells more about you than the clothes and the smile (unless the clothes are really interesting, I guess). Seeing someone relaxed and doing something they love is more informative, and in my opinion more attractive, than watching someone posing for a photo. But do make sure they can see your face. Reflective sunglasses are a poor choice.

Also, trying to appear generally positive, relatively charming, and perhaps a bit funny, is not informative either; everybody tries that. I think it's far more useful to show what makes you you. Be yourself. But be your best self; this is no excuse to be a slob or a jerk. But this is more about self-improvement than about appearing attractive. Be interesting. Be nice. Share your passions, but be open to people with different passions, because you're unlikely to find someone exactly like you (which would be boring anyway).

The photo that worked for me was the photo I took at the gates of Timbuctoo. I'd been on vacation there, traveling through Mali for two weeks, and ended up there. Covered in dust, unshaven, but excited. Great photo. My future-wife recognised it and suggested Ouagadougou now that Timbuctoo wasn't so proverbially unreachable anymore. That turned out to be a great way to break the ice.

But most importantly: be open to the other person. They're probably interested in you, and they want to know you're interested in them.

> just try the following

This is the typical format when responding to people who have dating issues. "Sounds like you're too X. You're overthinking things. Just do Y."

Typically, Y is the most mundane, boring straight-forward cliche advice that everyone and their grandmother gives. It's delivered as if the person with the problem just never thought to try out the basic advice, like do an interesting activity or be a positive person.

I mean, this is a guy whose avatar on Medium is a semi-close up picture taken with a low-quality somewhat-fisheye webcam with bart simpson faces pasted over his eyeballs.. Yeah, he's probably lacking some of the basics.

Because, without a doubt, Medium profiles are the way to meet your dream mate.

Even if that's true, I'm not sure that invalidates his point. The essays on dating still do not reflect his needs; where in that case his needs would be: how to not be insufferable and exhausting.

Yeah he reads like the kind of person who will only send incredibly verbose self-deprecating messages - then be surprised nobody likes him when he spends most of his time talking about how awful he is

I agree. He is the one without self-awareness.

Did he ever consider that he may not be fun to be around? He seems to think he's somehow better than other people, more "self-aware" as he puts it, but maybe he's just not aware of the social skills needed to seem attractive to other people.

I hope he realizes what he needs to do before it's too late. Other, more successful, men may just be _better_ than he is. It's not some vast unfairness, it's just that there are things this man needs to work on and get better at.

>For some people, their expansive social network provides a pool of friends whose friendship can grow into romance; this won’t work for me, since I am too exhausted from my day job & side hustles to maintain hundreds of close friendships.

I see this right here as his principle problem. He needs to make time for getting out of the house and doing things with other people. On top of that, he needs to make sure that this social time isn't laser focused on finding a romance, and let interactions with women play out naturally.

The funny thing is that he identifies the nature of his problem -- that he does not value sociability enough to partake in regular social activity, but instead of admitting that his actualised priorities create a challenge for him, criticises the culture.

To me, this seems like someone who never trains complaining that they always fail to run marathons, and it's the fault of the steroid abuser.

Here is a line from Robert A. Heinlein's Friday that seems appropriate.

“In this case, the trouble with ‘the people’s right to know' is that it strongly resembles the ‘right’ of someone to be a concert pianist - but who does not want to practice."

Any tips or advice for this? Preferably tuned for someone who has no friends.

The biggest advice is don't go out expecting to make a close, personal, tell-all-your-secrets, go on holidays together friend. Finding a close friend is almost as hard as finding a longterm romantic partner, save for the fact that you don't have to exclude everyone with close friends from your search.

Instead, just focus on finding large social groups you can join without too much pressure -- anything where ten or twenty people get together on a regular basis. It could be anything from exercise classes to night school to volunteer programs to church groups to boardgame meetup groups to renfaire and LARPing to poetry nights at a coffee shop.

Your goal here isn't to find your soul-friend, it's just to make a lot of friendly acquaintances. People you can talk to about your mutual interests, who will engage in the standard small talk about work and family with whom you can complain and sympathize for five minutes or an hour at a time.

Then, settle in for the long haul of having a social circle. Figure out how much you can commit to -- don't try to do everything if you can really only manage a couple of days a week or month. If you want and can make time for daily or nightly activities with ten different groups, great; if you can only handle one or two groups meeting one or a few times a month each, do that instead.

Again, this isn't necessarily going to result in any friends who will help you bury bodies, but a large circle of casual friends is nothing to sniff at.

My sister shared a tip she uses when moving to a new town. Say yes to every social engagement no matter what.

I have gotten a lot of leverage out of being religiously involved (not just showing up Sunday morning, but showing up for workdays and midweek bible studies), sports leagues when moving to new locations and hosting occasional dinner "parties"/potlucks.

I like to throw a Christmas in July potluck where I cook a couple of turkeys (bought at Thanksgiving and freeze until July so they are $0.99/lbs), make five lbs of mashed potatoes and gravy and rely on guest to fill in the rest of the details. Then I invite everyone I am friends with or might want to be friends with, neighbors, coworkers, people I met from sports leagues and church etc.

I also recommend just introducing yourself to everyone you can when you move to a new town or neighborhood. Your physical neighbors, the clerks at the stores nearby, the bus driver, the postal carrier, etc etc.

People might think you're a bit strange, this day and age, and the simple introduction isn't going to blossom into any bosom friendships, but it can transform you from a stranger to a neighbor, and vice versa for the people around you, so you don't feel like an outcast in your own home.

Forget dating: First step is getting yourself some local friends. This means joining social activities nearby. Are you interested in board games? Start showing up to the local board games meets. Do you like cooking? Take a cooking course. Dancing is so easy it's almost cheating: go to local balls or join a class, it's a ton of fun and you'll meet many people. Think of anything that can be done or taught socially that you might find enjoyable, I guarantee you'll find social events related to it and odds are that you'll be well received because communities like this always benefit from new faces.

I've been going to a twice-a-month board game night, and... what now? People come, some bring games, we play some and then everyone leaves. What am I missing?

That’s it. You’re riding the bike. You said you wanted to ride a bike. Keep doing it because seeing those same faces regularly is slowly building some rapport between you. You’ll naturally pick up some details about them, hear their likes and dislikes, past experiences, etc. Soon enough you’ll know enough about them to advance the arrangement to friendship. Congrats, achievement unlocked.

Is that really a viable strategy though? You're talking about spending months, if not a year or more, for a chance to make a friend. Then once you've established a group of friends there is an even smaller chance that you will meet a potential romantic partner. This in turn leads to an even smaller chance that the relationship works out.

It seems to me that approach could easily take decades. I'm not sure that's a realistic strategy.

Well, building friendships is something that takes at the very least a few months and that's with very regular contact. Generally speaking friendship usually comes from a simple factor: it breeds from familiarity and that takes time.

This is why it's fairly important to be doing something you find enjoyable by itself, otherwise you'll get bored of it before friendships have a chance to blossom.

Do you have hobbies?

My main two hobbies are music and D&D. I go out and play at open mic nights and have met friends there, and I have also gone to gaming stores to play D&D and made friends there. Since the folks there share a common interest with me, it made it much easier to meet new people and make friends.

EDIT: keep in mind, those don't have to be your hobbies. But there are hobbies like that that can allow you to meet new people.

Think through your hobbies that might lend themselves to meetups: tabletop/card gaming? cycling? rock climbing?

Beyond that Meetup.com is a wealth of resources.

Beyond that, maybe try out new hobbies that are social. Improv, casual sports like kickball (even if like me you aren't particularly into them), hiking groups, etc.

This about it this way: what do you do when you are not with other people? Is that something you could do with people and people would want to be part of? If so, you are in a good spot making friends and having relationships.

Get involved in things where there is opportunity to meet nearby socially-adept well-connected people. Unlearn any prejudices you have about what kind of person you get along with.

I spent years having an overall pretty bad dating experience very similar to the author's. But there is one thing I eventually learned that seemed to help.

> if I don’t get an extremely clear indication of interest, I try not to show any myself.

If you're a weirdo like myself who has no idea how to flirt, your best bet may be to simply be as open as you can about your feelings. People generally like openness, and they like it when people like them. I've told friends that I was in love with them, and in cases where the feelings weren't mutual they let me know, and I dropped it. I'm married to the one where they did turn out to be mutual. :P

From reading this, I wonder if there is a business case for a "faux" dating business. Before a date, you could get certain opinions on how you look, how you present yourself, etc. And you could go on some sort of outing with someone, and at the end, you get feedback on what you did well and what you didn't do well. This would also give you an opportunity to "practice" your date skills (for lack of a better term).

Also, being blunt, with dating apps, it really is all about physical attraction first. If who you are trying to court isn't physically attracted to your pictures (or think you're trying to hide something), they simply won't interact with you.

> From reading this, I wonder if there is a business case for a "faux" dating business.

Idk, I think this type of thinking is a major part of the problem. We're turning everything we can into a profit seeking venture. Even dating itself has been commodified. We no longer form relationships by talking to the people around us. Instead, we stare at our phones and swipe left or right. Someone is able to make a profit that way.

From the article:

"For some people, their expansive social network provides a pool of friends whose friendship can grow into romance; this won’t work for me, since I am too exhausted from my day job & side hustles to maintain hundreds of close friendships."

It seems we need to set aside more time as a society for things like social activities and forming relationships instead of being productive or generating someone money.

That's fair. I hear this and am thinking that it sounds that the author needs to have someone to give him an honest opinion on why he hasn't been dating. And I wonder, what would be the best way for that?

I think as a business idea it's a good idea. There would actually probably be a market for it.

And that's the problem.

Instead of having time to make friends who can give us dating advice, we instead spend our time making money, then paying a business to give us dating advice. Then we turn to another business to introduce us to potential romantic partners. Almost everything that we do these days is making someone money, which is great for the economy, but not so much for happiness. A business can't replace actual friends and an actual community in a truly fulfilling way.

I believe such services exist. They are commonly referred to as “Escort Services” and I agree that John would be well advised to consider using one.

This already is a business, "Dating coaches".

> It’s soul-crushing to spend every day of your life making bets you know you’re going to lose, but the alternatives are giving up or becoming a monster.

I've never used dating apps, but I would assume it attracts a certain type of people, which this author seems to be complaining about. Why not try a sport or hobby to meet people?

I dunno 'bout you, but I'm a dude, and sports/hobbies would just be a way for me to meet other dudes. (even assuming I had outgoing social skills)

This kind of advice can be so frustrating to receive. Like when other women (often old enough to be my mother) suggest meeting females at the supermarket. Like, what? Nobody wants to be bothered while they are grocery shopping. This could only work for the top 1% of extremely attractive guys.

The "just meet people" or "just talk to her" narrative doesn't work in modern life. Everyone is walking around with headphones on and their noses pointing at a screen. Nobody wants to talk to you. Especially in a romantic context. On dating apps, there is an implicit romantic intention, so at least a guy is free to flirt and hit on girls in that context. In other contexts, he has to worry about attention being interpreted as harassment, on top of the risk of rejection.

> "The "just meet people" or "just talk to her" narrative doesn't work in modern life. Everyone is walking around with headphones on and their noses pointing at a screen. Nobody wants to talk to you."

But that's exactly why hobbies are so great. You get to meet people you already share a common interest with. They may want to talk to you about that common interest. While talking, you could discover you have more in common and just like talking to each other in general. And then you make a date to talk with just the two of you.

> " On dating apps, there is an implicit romantic intention, so at least a guy is free to flirt and hit on girls in that context. In other contexts, he has to worry about attention being interpreted as harassment, on top of the risk of rejection."

That's true, but when that's not working, it's time to try something else. There's no single solution for everybody.

But how do hobbies help tho? Lets say I wanted to improve myself, leave my introverted hobbies behind and do something more social with my time. You still need to create relationships with people in order to be invited to do those hobbies together.

I should add that I am actually married, even though I've never once in my life ever hit on a woman. I got snatched up entirely by accident. So I've grappled with these issues but they aren't relevant to me anymore.

You can go to meetups or join a club. Or join an online forum and agree to meet with people there. But even introverted hobbies can be done together. Roleplaying is popular with introverts yet done in a group.

> Nobody wants to be bothered while they are grocery shopping.

They do if they find the guy attractive, though. The trick is you don't get to know beforehand. You have to take the risk, and the rewards, or (more often) the failure.

At times as a 20 year old I would try the bars and parties approach and had limited success. In my hobbies, also male dominated (75/25) M/F ratio I'd easily find girlfriends. I always felt when I was younger that I should be able to meet people "normally" without that as a crutch.

Alas, I'm about 10 years married, from someone I met in my hobbies. Most male dominated things have participants and/or groupies--even something obscure. If your hobbies have zero women, maybe find another one or focus more on one that has something.

Rather than sports etc I find general non dating social events of the type women might go to quite good. Arts/movie meetups. Even tech events sometimes though they tend to 90% male.

Trouble with dating apps and single events is everyone is kind of shopping around for the best match available which can be problematic if you are average. Normal social events you don't get that so much.

If you are a lonely misanthrope looking to meet other lonely misanthropes -- They are probably on the internet too.

More generally, people like you are more likely to be close to you. The anthropic principle of dating.

However, getting out and playing beerleague softball might make you a more attractive person along with expanding your mate pool

Pretty much my first impression: in my experience dating apps tend to yield only ONSs at best but meeting people who I share an hobby with tends to make for significantly longer-lasting relationships.

> if I don’t get an extremely clear indication of interest, I try not to show any myself.

Plus this is just flat-out wrong: People can't read your mind, if you're interested make it known; it's not even weird, it's how society expects you to behave.

At least for me, the issue is that my hobbies (i.e. martial arts) are extremely male dominated.

I was like that. Actually, I'm worse. I never got laid before I was 32. I've always been very respectful of boundaries, didn't want to impose, and due to social awkwardness, that meant I had a hard time approaching women. And to be honest, I don't really have an easy solution; in the end I met my wife and we've been happily married for 12 years now.

For a while I did give up. Particularly in university, I wasn't very interested in the dating game. I did have the occasional crush, didn't know how to act on it, and when I did, it generally amounted to nothing. After 30, I decided to try this online dating, went on lots of dates, most of them amounted to nothing, then I met a woman I fell madly in love with, and she apparently with me, but we soon realised it wasn't going to work: she smoked, I hated smoking. I wanted children, she didn't. We broke up, and I soon met my wife on that same site. And I believe she was the one to contact me first, which definitely helps.

That site that got me two hits in a row, wasn't a normal commercial dating site, though. It was really cheap, low threshold, aimed specifically at Christians, and not just at dating, but also at friendship. And it supported blogging. Maybe that lowered the threshold somehow. I don't know. But I've become a strong believer in non-commercial, focused on special interest, dating-but-also-friendship sites.

For one thing, commercial dating sites are mostly scams. OKCupid used to love exposing those scams, but I believe they've been bought by the biggest dating scammer, so they're likely as useless as the others now.

Ultimately, all you really need, is a way to meet new people with similar interests to yours. Not identical, but it helps to have some common interest, whether it's a hobby, religion, activism, or whatever. It doesn't have to be a dating site, it can be a real-life activity. It can be an online game (I know a couple that met on World of Warcraft). Make sure you can talk about something other than dating. See if you can talk to them about other stuff than dating. If it turns out you can talk to each other, ask her out for a coffee or some other small thing. Or maybe do something hobby related together, see how that works out. I suppose you've got to become more confident at making the first move if you don't want to be totally dependent on the whims of the other, but the move doesn't have to be aimed straight at dating.

Though to be honest, I don't know how much my advice is worth. People like me never get a lot of dating experience; once we find the right person, we stick with them.

Out of curiosity, what was the site?

A Dutch site: funkyfish.nl.

What about people who don't want to have friends? I have had "friends", people I considered my brother. A person I loved. But in due time, it all feels like they were using me. That I was just a toy for them to pass the time. Someone they could exert their demons out without judgement. Be the space that no one else would give them. I had boat loads of fun, but I never really felt cared for ever. The only people who ever cared for me where my parents.

You either change your mindset or stay alone forever. There is no other option. Unless you are a suave lone wolf in which case you could also be fine, but it seems like you are focused on the negative things that happened to you while you should really be improving yourself.

Welcome to America.

Women call people like him "nice guys", and that's not a compliment.

This meme needs to die.

The hacker ethos is "It doesn't matter whether the subject is popular, everybody who's interested is interesting".

But the dating ethos is "Men with badly-groomed beards who write harem anime reviews don't get dates". There's just no way around it, that's the problem here. Having a house and job are attractive characteristics, in the same sense that a functioning set of limbs is, but they don't set you apart. It's the personal details that matter.

You can't fight a million years of evolution. Hypergamy[1] is a real thing. As you observe, the author of the piece strongly signals low social status and confirms it by declaring his lack of mating success. Fortunately for him, and others in his predicament, there are ways to signal higher social status and thus increase mating success[2]. Human behavior is far more complex than animal behavior, but pragmatically we should still understand a behavior such as going to medical school and becoming a doctor to be, in addition to its other purposes, an observably effective status increasing display.

When it comes to mate preferences and thus what kind of display behaviors will be successful, always look at revealed preference and always ignore stated preference, as the latter is observably less accurate and matches revealed preference when it is. As this can be an emotionally sensitive subject I'll not offer examples, but many will readily come to mind on some consideration.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergamy

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_(zoology)

IMO owning a house in early thirties is pretty good. It should also be attractive for those people who want to start a family.

It's really good actually but it's not a differentiating factor at the dating stage. Dating is an emotional competition, marriage introduces practical considerations. You need to get past the likeability filter before any woman is even asking herself whether she'd settle down with you.

If you present yourself as marriage material without succeeding at being dating material, you're selecting for economic opportunists ("gold-diggers").

His point about the missing middle in dating apps is valid feedback about dating apps and all algo-based matching platforms (including news aggregators like this one, although in the case of aggregators it may be desirable).

Designing non-WTA systems is really hard

One system that gets around it is the matching algorithm for medical residency, which is designed to match every student with a space. But (1) this is probably not appropriate for dating, and (2) professional licensing has its own problems.

To add to and explore the last bit of your comment a bit more, medical residency matching is a generalisation of the stable marriage problem — stable means that between two groups no two pairs can be broken apart where the members of the old pairs can form a new pair which is happier (Only one of the new pairs needs to be happier). If I recall correctly, the algorithm can be biased given that it might need to resolve multiple, competing stable solutions, which is an interesting exercise for whoever is trying to use it (I believe the medical one was changed to favour applicants in recent years).

I wonder if there’s a perturbation on the dating app format where the app creates groupings, then invites members to speed-dating style events where rankings can occur (Or just outright pairings if people vibe, but that should be fine because they presumably would be paired later anyway as first choices), and then setup blind second dates with the stable pairs.

WTA?

WTA probably means winner-takes-all in this context.

Winner Take All

Opinionated advice, ymmv.

Get off dating apps; they're toxic. Use Meetup, take a pottery class, a yoga class, join a hiking group, a book club. And crucially, don't expect any of that to yield a romantic partnership. Make friends. Go to their weddings, parties, etc. There, you might meet women who are looking for a guy like you. Or maybe one of your friendships will blossom into more.

When I was single and presenting as male, I found myself in a similar conundrum. I found success in "playing hard to get," eg., rather than immediately biting at every flirt, I'd respond with low-key flirts and not escalate for some time. After I got enough consistent-seeming signs, I'd ask somebody out long before I got attached to the idea. "Hey, you wanna get lunch some time?" "Uh, do you mean a date? I've got a partner." "Oh, haha, yeah I meant a date, no worries." When you can do that without feeling devastated, you're on the right track.

It's old but there's a list of bars etc. here, if Tinder etc. are that bad: https://www.connecticutmag.com/the-connecticut-story/the-sav...

I found OkCupid (where I met my now-wife) extremely easy to get to know people. Tons of filters and search options, the most amazing matching algorithm of any site (you answer questions from "Don’t agree at all" to "Agree 100%", then you can say what you want your match to answer and finally how important their answer matching is; this enables way more than more naive sites). You can mark-up any word on your profile as a keyword.

And people reply. Back then I was pretty overweight but almost every woman I messaged replied, including those with the scary "rarely replies" badge. The few times I asked they said it’s because most men who write them either just said "Hi", "Great tits", or showed they didn’t actually read their profile first.

But this was all several years ago, so maybe things got worse. I know nowadays the push to pay them is a lot more heavy-handed and OkStats is gone.

Okc has gone to speed swiping format like everyone else. You can only message someone you match with now, which is unfortunate because you used to be able to demonstrate some kind of attractiveness other than initial appearances. I get that women have a problem filtering the deluge of low-quality messages otherwise, but I wonder if there isn’t a better way to meter the problem than mutual swiping.

Seems like he lacks basic social skills and expects women to date him because he owns his own house. He feels guilty and "like a monster" hitting on or asking women out because of this thought process. He himself said he had been successful in the past -- why not continue that and make yourself happy?

> Seems like he lacks basic social skills and expects women to date him because he owns his own house. He feels guilty and "like a monster" hitting on women because of this un-empathetic, objectifying, and entitled thought process.

What if his brief statement about financial stability is to deal with claims that he needs to first take care of himself because women aren't interested in highly unstable men who can't take care of themselves?

What if, no matter what he states, people immediately jump to conclusions which require assumptions with no evidence and include quotes that he didn't make?

There's a traditional low-tech solution to this problem, used by generations of nerds. Step 1, hang out in real life with a bunch of guys. Have fun with them. (If you're really sucked into your work, this step could take a while.) Step 2 is that women will appear and you will date them.

Not that I am an expert, but like (I assume) most people I put in my time in the dating mines.

And this is my observation about people who have this complaint: the vast majority of couples are aesthetically matched. You might be hoping for a certain aesthetic. You have to match that. The easiest way to do this is to start eating healthy and working out. By working out, I don't mean an occasional job, but the heavy stuff: lifting, crossfit etc. It goes without saying you should not injure yourself.

This small "trick" -- working out -- will have a dramatic effect on your dating life.

Online dating has many problems, but not all failures to obtain a positive outcome from online dating are the fault of the system. It is easy to blame the system and more difficult to accept that the system is not at fault in some situations. You can't simultaneously reject the current societal dating standards but also expect that a system based on those same standards will work for you. Given this, might it make more sense to find a method of dating that is more in line with the societal standards that you seek to live by?

I think the problems may be that 1) he blames the patriarchy 2) he doesn't see himself as a catch

I know men are in a difficult position because they want to err on the side of caution and not make a move when it could be seen as a violation/unwanted, but these attitudes (blaming the patriarchy, etc) are projected to the would-be partner and it's probably a turn-off. Find someone you can build trust with where every interaction between the two of you isn't interpreted through some larger cultural lens.

Not directly related, but the biggest obstacle that I find I face is that people who share my religious background tend to be more conservative while, in terms of lifestyle and worldview, I tend to be more progressive. I find that the women who I am interested in rarely share my faith while the women who share my faith rarely share any of my interests.

What would be the optimal way of finding partners, or simply people you would like to spend time with, among 7+ billion people?

Here's my answer* : train an A.I to "flirt"/"have conversations" with others A.I. Use reinforcement learning to tailor the A.I. to specific users.

Nice, everyone now has their own personal I.A. that can go on dates with other personal A.I. Thousands of them per second, if needs be. If the system works well enough that A.I.s "get along" as well as their human models would (/would not), you have found a very nice way to perform a "double blind" matching platform. Feed back the results after you go on a real date! "A.I." here could be anywhere on the spectrum of a simple regexp, to neural networks, to AGI.

Of course, in my experience, shared experience is a big part of what makes relationships (non romantic, and prob. otherwise), while previous experiences or interests are a way to discover things to do together (or recall shared experiences), so this can't replace getting out and sharing activities.

* TBH, that's just shower thoughts, but could turn into a fun research/week-end/startup/fediverse project (or just a writing prompt for a novel).

Edit: split this post in two different ones.

Yes, I could use some dating advice as well. But I find this post a bit self-pitying. Even if I find some of myself in the words expressed by the author, it is unreasonable to always ask the other party to do the first move. For now, I sort of stopped caring, and see flirting as a social sports of sorts (hone my social skills). Lots of missed opportunities (I generally don't know how to behave if things start going too well), lots of fun and new friends as well :)

Edit: I sort of realize that I am catching up with the social interaction I didn't have at (high) school (too young, different countries, different interests such as tech stuff). Other people generally do the opposite and catch up on the skill side later. Either way, I'm still learning, as always.

Maybe he should try speed dating. In that kind of context, it's easy to start a conversation and not awkward to show interest in someone. And it's more personal than getting to know someone through an app. But maybe it doesn't attract to kind of people he'd be interested in.

> I’m no catch, but there are probably a half dozen people I know who I would date & who would date me if communication opened up. (I know this empirically: there was a short period in college where I hit on everyone, and while I stopped because I realized I was probably making a lot of people uncomfortable, I ended up having a casual thing going with about ten young women simultaneously — and this was back when I was broke, out of shape, and the special kind of dumb that only college students can afford to be.)

It sounds, friend, like you have a misguided (outsized) sense of nobility. You aren't wrong about what women put up with in our society, but you also can't write off any initiative by you at all as dangerous. Your own anecdote shows that when you put yourself out there, plenty of people have interest in you and don't feel the need to run for the hills. It's admirable how hard you're trying not to be a part of the problem, but don't make yourself a martyr. After a certain point, it isn't helping anybody.

I'm sure striking the right balance is much more difficult for someone who has trouble picking up on social cues, but it's just a matter of trying it out and learning the curve. Maybe you could practice with or ask advice from women you know platonically? You said you're friends with most of your exes- maybe they can give you insight into how you came off in those relationships?

It's a big and complicated world out there. It's good to try and be sensitive to others, but you can't let yourself get totally buried by worry about how you'll affect them. You just have to do your best, and then apologize if you mess up. And that's okay.

You have it in you to grow past this and find a companion. Everyone deserves to be loved. Best of luck.

> It's admirable how hard you're trying not to be a part of the problem, but don't make yourself a martyr.

I find myself sceptical of whether this is altruism, or a justifying righteousness to explain fear of embarrassment or rejection.

It doesn't have to be either/or. I myself have dealt with a crippling fear of being a bad person in other arenas. It's a cyclical complex of self-distrust with a sense of righteousness as the driving force pushing you downward, which makes it very hard to uproot.

On that note: therapy is great, too.

It is as simple as you ask a woman out who you are interested in. If she ignores you or says no, you move on. If she keeps saying yes to your date invitations it means she likes you. Avoiding or being scared of making the first move is very unattractive and shows extreme lack of confidence and confidence is the most attractive trait.

>It is as simple as you ask a woman out who you are interested in

No it's not that simple. Some women are propositioned so often that it becomes a trial just to be out. Time and place are important too.

I rarely admit this to people, but when I was 19, I paid $700 to go to a weekend "PUA convention" like what Tom Cruise caricaturizes in the movie Magnolia.

The eye-opening part for me was when we broke out in small groups, went downtown in Austin, and the group leader (employees of the event) cold-approached women with a level of success I only thought was possible in Hugh Grant movies and reserved for nobody other than Hugh Grant in real life. And my group leader was a 39yo bald guy.

Most of the "wisdom" around approaching women are simply superstition and self-sabotage. "No, there's no way that could work so I won't even try."

See, this kind of thing seems like it would actually start to enter the territory that the OP is terrified of. Confidence is essential, yes, but you can be confident and also be considerate. Setting aside the plethora of things wrong with a "PUA convention", your group leader probably made lots of women very uncomfortable. There's a difference between taking initiative in a context where women are actively looking for those kinds of interactions, and taking initiative randomly on the street.

I think your post demonstrates my point of sabotage. You took a general explanation of a scenario ("guy talks to women with great success") and assumed the worst, that this guy must have made women uncomfortable by approaching them, as if discomfort is an intrinsic part of human interaction.

If you trot out this self-sabotage enough, you won't even leave your house because you might inconvenience someone by taking up the sidewalk tile they might've wanted to occupy. Yet this is the kind of thought process you see in men all the time when it comes to women and dating. As if women are anti-social automatons that don't actually like meeting new people much less single men who find them attractive and interesting. Or maybe they're just putting on their makeup and high-heels to meet everyone but you with your +discomfort debuff aura.

I recommend trying to not just talk to women in the wild, but anyone. Just strike up some quick convo instead of assuming you're making them uncomfortable.

I think you've come into this comments section with quite a lot of baggage about how you think these things need to play out.

You misunderstand; I don't have any trouble with human interaction, including strangers.

But I've heard many women describe being exhausted by getting hit on constantly, in situations where they really just don't care and just want to get their coffee, or get to work, or be out in the world for literally any other reason. If you're at a bar or on a dating app: go for it. In that context, people are actively soliciting that kind of interaction. There's an implied social contract: "we are here to flirt". You may still be rejected, but you're invited to put yourself out there. In most other contexts, jumping straight into romantic interactions out of the blue is probably going to be unwanted. Being friendly to all people is great, sure. But read the room.

And, from others' anecdotes, those annoying interactions are the best case scenario. Some (a minority, but not so small it doesn't matter) men don't handle rejection well. They get persistent, or pushy, or sometimes even irate or violent. Even if it only happens one out of one hundred times, it's enough to put someone on edge when a stranger approaches them and compliments their hair. Just another reason to keep unprompted amorous interactions within the appropriate contexts.

> You took a general explanation of a scenario ("guy talks to women with great success") and assumed the worst, that this guy must have made women uncomfortable by approaching them, as if discomfort is an intrinsic part of human interaction.

I find this whole mindset to infantilize and encourage shitty women to lean on that. Not all women are massively scare to communicate with men.

> probably made lots of women very uncomfortable.

Did you ask them?/How do you know they were?

I find this admirable. You realized you had an issue, you tried something to address it. You might even have had some success at it. Awesome! It's weird that you're getting downvoted for this.

Which women and how often?

Do you have women friends? Ask them.

I have a woman, as well as I have talked to women and if I have picked up anything it is that many of them consider modern men to lack initiative. It is actually easy to stand out by being straight forward and confident. Just don't be pushy and accept rejections gracefully.

Several things you just said are dramatically oversimplified.

That's unavoidable when you tackle such a complex topic in two lines. But he's right that confidence is attractive. Of course that can be dangerous too; it's what con-men rely on. So it's a balance. But too much lack of confidence is a problem too.

You can have infinite confidence and still be kind/sensitive/considerate. The two are independent axes, and both are important (and attractive).

> You can have infinite confidence and still be kind/sensitive/considerate.

How is this possible? Infinite confidence would mean that you think it is impossible that you aren't right and therefore others must be wrong when they disagree or reject you. I can't see such a person being kind, sensitive or considerate.

Confidence means you aren't pushed around by the world; sensitivity means you willingly open yourself up and pay attention to the world around you, and take it into consideration. The difference is nuanced, but very important.

In some ways confidence empowers a person to be kinder and more considerate. Not that they will be automatically, but they have more opportunity to be. Someone who lacks true confidence is naturally on the defensive, always having to think about how to prop up their own standing. More often than not, people who come off as brash and pushy are actually doing so out of a deep insecurity that they're trying to satisfy.

There's a difference between the confidence that you're absolutely, undeniably correct and it's inconceivable that you might be wrong, and the confidence that you deserve to be present and involved, and that your views are valid and defensible, and that you're willing to reconsider those views when faced with a sufficiently convincing argument that it's wrong.

Taking initiative is exhausting, especially if you are very introverted like a lot of people are in tech. This means that you are unlikely to try a lot of girls, so you'll go with the first one who says yes, thus very likely ending up in a horrible relationship.

There are of course some very introverted men who end up in good loving relationships, but I believe they are a tiny minority. Your odds could get improved if you were exceptional in some way, but if you are just a typical person then good luck.

>Taking initiative is exhausting, especially if you are very introverted like a lot of people are in tech.

This reads like an indictment of... Something. But what? Should there be public policy that helps socially awkward men mate like there's public policy that helps disabled people access public services?

Yes it's challenging to be different from normal. Welcome to the privilege discussion. Now that you're here what do you think our priorities should be?

It isn't an indictment, it is just an observation.

> Now that you're here what do you think our priorities should be?

Personally I'm fine being alone, both my parents were in multiple extremely toxic marriages so I feel no need to get into one myself.

A reasonable ask seems to be for society to provide resources to help people learn to overcome the challenge and an environment where they are able to. After all, the point of society is to allow its members to meet their needs.

you're not wrong. i can't help but wonder whether you (and anyone else who agrees) extends this kind of consideration to all of the abnormal people that move through the world.

i posted the comment that you responded to because it's an opportunity for people to sympathize.

> This reads like an indictment of... Something. But what? Should there be public policy that helps socially awkward men mate like there's public policy that helps disabled people access public services?

That's kind of what the "pickup artist" businesses addressed and helped with.

To put it more delicately than a sibling comment, yes, that's a real problem and there's no singular solution to it. But even if taking initiative is hard, I honestly think it's essential. It may take practice, it may be draining, but relationships aren't going to fall out of the sky.

It seems like a victim complex to me. If his mindset is like that no wonder he is not getting any.

> in western society (and in some eastern ones too), women who directly reject men are subject to male rage & women who seem too enthusiastic are subject to slut-shaming (which can also result in violence).

Perhaps he would have more luck dating in a less patriarchal society, with higher gender equality?

I read most of the post (unlike others in here) and his issue is distinct from that of many others on dating apps (or at least it is according to his self-reported behavior).

it is probably not relatable to most here (because he's bending over backwards to be egalitarian and most on here lean the other way) so I'll just respond in case he ends up reading this.

I share many of your concerns and sensitivities around feminism and autonomy. despite being arguably just as sensitive as you are (according to feedback from former partners) I do well on apps and in dating. how? I'm assertive and aggressive but I get explicit consent at every escalation. And if you think I'm exaggerating I am not. Evey escalation. now obviously I'm not tactless - I do not have multi form contracts that I ask for signatures on. I simply check in and we have a short, always interesting, conversation about boundaries and trajectory and all that. most of the time everything goes as expected but I have been rejected (which is also how I'm sure the way I'm doing it is working - because when feel free to say no).

it works very well. I have deep meaningful dates (that turn into relationships often).

aside from that I'll say, from the photos of you online, you're not doing yourself any favors. I think I could help you but I don't know you personally. I have toyed with the idea of starting a consulting service that taught men how to present themselves such that they're attractive.

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