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Comment by CocaKoala | Hacker News Reader

What's bad about the advice? It seems to flow pretty logically from the article.

"Women want to date men who are emotionally available, good communicators, and who share values" means that your starting point to search for a relationship should be that you are emotionally available, good at communicating, and you have a clear concept of your values so that you can determine whether or not you share them with a potential partner. The advice to get to that state is "focus on mental health, including getting therapy if you need it" - that all seems correct to me.

It's not relevant for getting dates, but getting dates is easy. It's extremely relevant for any stage of a relationship, including the early ones.

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> getting dates is easy

Citation needed. I'm sure many here will vehemently disagree.

Ask your friend if they want to get lunch with you - problem solved.

"That's not a date" Why not?

"My friends are all in relationships" Make more friends.

- "I'm from a poor country and my family can't afford to eat"

- "Be more lucky"

You are correct, the advice to achieve the third level of Maslow's Hierarchy does not address what you have to do in order to achieve the first two levels.

That was actually a parody of the third level advice given, just in lower level terms to highlight the absurdity...

The question was "how to get dates" - "how to get friends" is a different question. The easy way to get dates is to ask your friends on dates, and the easiest way to do that is to ask a friend to get lunch with you. What part of that reduces to "get lucky"?

First of all, that taken literally is just bad advice. You're friends with your friends, you don't ask them on dates. It basically translates to "try to get romantic with one of your friends [of your preferred sex]". Is that supposed to be how people get dates?

So, I take it charitably that you meant "you ask people you know" (not your actual friends/buddies) on dates.

Which is as good as saying "to get a job, just ask for one" to an unemployed person. To which the proper response is "Gee, why didn't I think of that..."

I disagree that it's bad advice - it can certainly be applied badly, but so can anything. You meet somebody, you become friends with them, you start dating them, you get married - that's an extremely natural arc. You shouldn't ask all your friends on dates (just like you shouldn't ask everybody you meet on a date) and you should be cognizant of hints that somebody isn't interested in dating you, but to say that somebody is EITHER a friend OR a romantic partner and there's no overlap between the two is strange to me.

And this isn't the only way to get dates - dating apps certainly try and short-circuit the "be friends" part. But I've been friends with every girl I've dated before we started dating, including the woman I'm now married to. If you're not friends with somebody, even a little bit, why do you want to date them?

edit: And of course, if you're going into friendships with the intention of trying to date the person, that might work out poorly. Meet somebody, be their friend, and if you're both open to something developing, it can happen. Asking them to have lunch is a way to start that.

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