Hacker News Reader

Comment by trashface | Hacker News Reader

Introversion has drastically different effects for men and women in the dating market. An introverted woman will still get approached by men, so even if she intentionally opts out of dating, she can always opt back in pretty much on the fly if a guy she likes approaches her. So she will still get relationships, if she wants them.

Introverted men, on the other hand, often just don't pursue women, especially if they have low testosterone (or sex drive) as the OP probably does. Since in most cultures men are expected to do the initial approach, this can translate into very long spells (decades or more) of singleness for them. Even worse, introverted men are often very bad at reading women's signals. Those are often quite subtle, because for extroverted men interested in dating (the majority), women just don't need to signal that much to get results.

View on HN

> An introverted woman will still get approached by men,

I'm an introverted man and all 4 women that have hit on me in my lifetime have been those I didn't feel similarly about. I imagine the ratio for women is similar. Just because she can jump back into the sea, doesn't mean she can summon new types of fish.

Yeah but she’s going to get 4 a week not 4 per lifetime

The solution is of course for women to take that first step more often. Both my wife and my mother took the first step.

(just looking at heterosexuals as you are doing,) every time a man forms a relationship with a woman, a woman also forms a relationship with a man. So, "different outcomes" for men and women are bounded by the roughly equal numbers of men and women, and the number of single men will come out the same as the number of single women*, so any impact that introversion of either sex has will also play out in the other sex. So, if introverted women are getting more relationships than introverted men, then there a bunch of extroverted women who are not getting relationships.

*women tending to date men older than them and vice versa does mean that in an increasing population there might be more women in a particular dating pool than men than one would otherwise expect, but there might be negative feedback in the form of more pressure for age-reverse relationships to take up the slack

btw, this type of reasoning also applies to many other relationship canards like "men are more promiscuous than women", because no, not possible

You implicitly assume that one man can only have a relationship with one woman at the same time (or vice versa). If you drop that assumption (because it's BS), your reasoning just collapses.

This argument is wrong. A "hot man" or "hot woman" can have many partners in a short period of time, sometimes at the same time. Less desired people, as you can see in this thread and pretty much everywhere this topic is discussed earnestly, can go a whole lifetime without even a single partner.

In my experience, women absolutely have an easier time getting partners, and there's no contradiction. It's just that a few men are taking all the girls - always been this way (notice how many places used to even enshrine that in law by allowing marriages between one man and multiple women - quite a few countries to this day) and probably will never change.

Interesting, I hadn't heard about research into how introversion affects dating outcomes.

Can you post the sources you're relying on here? I want to read more on this.

There aren’t any, because it’s nonsense. Even introvert and extravert is mainly a myth; during experiments there are no clear measurable differences. One recent study even claimed the only difference was that introverts were slightly smarter.

There is also no measured connection between being an introvert and having low testosterone.

And in fact around 2/3 of all psychological research cannot be reproduced. Take any psychological claim with a giant pinch of salt.

That's my base assumption, but I figured my message would be more likely to create a dialog to clear up the nonsense.

Sounds like he made a few claims: 1) "An introverted woman will still get approached by men", 2) "Introverted men, on the other hand, often just don't pursue women, especially if they have low testosterone (or sex drive) as the OP probably does", 3) "In most cultures men are expected to do the initial approach", 4) "introverted men are often very bad at reading women's signals", 5) "women just don't need to signal that much to get results".

1, 3 and 5 feel like super common sense to me, were you asking for sources on that? I'm asking mostly because I wonder whether my intuition is completely off when it comes to these things, or if there are people who live in completely different realities where women are expected to make the first step, more women approach men than the opposite and men really don't need to signal interest because they get so many offers.

I was asking for a source that showed that introverted women had happier outcomes ("results") than introverted men in dating.

Introverted women probably get hit on more ("more offers"), but using that to conclude that they see better outcomes is like saying it's a good thing that my dating life is successful because my inbox is filled with unsolicited dick pics.

The primary argument was that it makes it a voluntary decision for them ("opt back in"), because they'd have the opportunity. It doesn't mention that those are necessarily great opportunities, but we usually consider having opportunities better than not having them.

If you're unemployed and you get an offer a week, you're better off than if you didn't get any offers, even if those offers aren't great. Options > no options.

This isn't necessarily true in dating. Many of the "offers" come in the form of harassment.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com