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Comment by xyzelement | Hacker News Reader

> Quite often a reasonable, achievable, and worthwhile desire goes unpursued because we have a simultaneous desire to not pursue it. When we say something is “impossible” or “too hard” or “not in the cards,” that’s a clue.

This resonates. Many who are stuck frustrated not getting what they want have talked themselves out of trying to get it to begin with.

A good another clue is 3rd party attribution. "My life is bad because of bitches/billionaires/Mexicans/whatever" - I've never heard anyone talk like that while also maximizing what's in their power to change.

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I usually don't struggle to work towards my goals but totally agree that this resonates and this single insight made the article a worthwhile read.

It’s a self-truthing statement. As in, everyone who doesn’t agree with you is also excluded from your criteria. So from your point of view, you are absolutely right.

It goes like this:

- Papa deer: “Remember son, you have the power to make objects move by thought. If you see a car rolling towards you, STARE at it straight in the headlights and concentrate and move it with your mind.”

- Son deer: “Isn’t that how grandpa died?”

- Papa deer: “He didn’t believe enough.”

So I’ll say it straight away: Some people, no matter how they work to build a startup, are blocked from success by external factors, on which they can do nothing. And I can say that because I’m a millionaire twice from startups, and that gift/set of skills/learnings/factors will never dawn on some people.

Of course I’m definitely not saying that because I’m single and have no talent in women ;) But I’m tired of “Just put your mind to it, and if it doesn’t work, it’s because you didn’t try enough.” No. I irritate women. I can see it in their eyes, and there is no way around that (at least until someone tells me what my defect is, assuming it’s a defect I can work upon, but everyone lies to me saying “try more”. No, papa deer).

You've missed my point with both parts of your post, alas.

I am not talking about guaranteed success, but about people who don't try the avenues that are available to them.

Like if you are a deer and your family is getting killed by cars, have you tried not standing in the damn road?

I know so many people who have an obvious next action available that would leave them no worse and likely better, but they don't try it.

Which brings me to the second part of your post. What have you tried that could potentially lead you to be less irritating to women? Or at least, what could you try? I could come up with a list of 5+ things for you right now and I don't even know you.

> I know so many people who have an obvious next action available that would leave them no worse and likely better, but they don't try it.

Obvious to you, perhaps. But, who says it's obvious to them?

That's GP's point, I suppose - that people may have plenty of good moves available, but they've also built up near-instinctive defenses and repulsion fields around them - so even if they accidentally think or read about one of such options, they'll reject it as fast as it registers to them. It might be that the only way through those defenses is for someone else, or some situation, to force one to consider the option for a few more seconds or minutes.

I know I have this problem myself - some steps seem unavailable until some third party just plain tells me, "yes, you are actually allowed to do this, and you already know nothing bad will happen".

I am the GP you are referring to and - thank you for explaining my point perhaps better than I did :)

... even when told.

It took me several frustrating years to figure it out, but eventually getting visibly fit and well groomed gave me enough leeway to bisect the bugs in my interpersonal communication protocols and algorithms.

One of the obvious bugs to me is that, I think one of the most common and profound bugs men seem to have is in the active listening department.

This one quality tends to be quite profound at setting men apart. No need to disagree, fix, suggest, or provide a different perspective. Listen and thoughtfully respond with empathy to what the woman is saying.

Hopefully, that’s one of the interpersonal bugs you figured out. ;)

Far too often I see:

Woman: “My model of the world is X”

Man: “Your model doesn’t make sense. This is my superior model.”

Woman is irritated.

Alternatively, merely responding with, “I never saw the model of the world that way. Tell me more. Why is X that way? What is Y?”

Now she feels seen and heard. And provides the basis for men to also feel seen and heard as well.

Hopefully, this comment can help the many men out there who have trouble with women.

Not to mention, men tend to provide this exact response to other men, which compounds the irritation women tend to feel.

It's funny because the idea of "if you didn't succeed, you didn't try hard enough" is a cornerstone of the self-help industry and the charlatans peddling various self-improvement systems. If anybody follows their system and doesn't succeed, well, they either didn't try hard enough or they really didn't follow the plan as it was laid out. It's a foolproof way to show the next sucker that your system works.

> It's funny because the idea of "if you didn't succeed, you didn't try hard enough" is a cornerstone of the self-help industry and the charlatans peddling various self-improvement systems

For example “ HOW TO IDENTIFY & REMOVE ABUNDANCE BLOCKS FOR MANIFESTATION”https://selfmadeladies.com/overcome-abuandance-blocks-faster...

An aquantance had paid for a course on manifestation: she talked a lot about “blocks” when I questioned her about what stops manifestation from working!

“Blocks” are definitely blame-the-victim e.g. “you didn’t believe strongly enough so your cancer wasn’t cured”.

The same goes for most schooling. If you succeed, the school takes the credit for "educating" you. If you fail, you just did not try hard enough.

Also the cornerstone of recommending diet and exercise as health advice.

I mean, to me it seems obvious that what you put into your body will either have a positive or detrimental effect on your body. Why wouldn’t diet and exercise be the cornerstones of having a healthy life?

> it seems obvious that what you put into your body will either have a positive or detrimental effect on your body

It's obvious in general - e.g. clearly poisonous things are clearly poisonous. Less so in specifics, as the body is good at extracting what it needs from ingested food, and discarding the rest; it works out as long as you provide the full range of the things the body needs. However, that wasn't my point.

My point is, recommending change in diet and exercise regime as a solution to problems is about as effective as telling one the solution to money problems is to study nuclear physics and then join a bank as a quant. Yes, technically it works, but people who could do this are already doing this; for everyone else, it's a near-impossible task, given the constraints of their current adult life. Getting on what's currently considered healthy diet and good exercise regime, means trying to endure self-inflicted psychological torture and having non-productive but tiring activities cut into the amount of time you have in a day/week - for indefinite time period, but at least couple months, and uncertain gains. Not many adults can pull that off. Which is why they don't, which is why "diet and exercise" is what I call "fuck-off advice". For most who try, it's bound to fail, mostly for structural reasons, and will bring plenty of pain and guilt in the process.

That someone can’t change their lifestyle for the better(“near-impossible “) is just wrong. You are describing some fantasy scenario where you have to endure months of pain before you notice any results. It’s just not true. I believe most people who don’t train their body and eat well have had wrong training from childhood, including me. My diet still sucks but is getting better each month by a conscious unlearning of poor habits inherited from my parents.

An untrained individual(not morbidly obese) who incorporates the following 3 minute workout in their morning routine will feel the changes already on day 2:

Hold a plank, for as long as you can manage

30 second break

Push ups, as many as you can do

30 second break

Again do push ups, as many as you can do

The extremely short body weight workout I described will still create a noticeable improvement and can be improved upon on when the individual feels ready. What I described will be a good first step and is hardly akin to studying nuclear physics. You don’t have to be an Olympic level athlete to reap the rewards of daily exercise.

In general, an improvement in diet and physical activity, even small changes, has an almost immediate positive effect. Clarity of mind, improved self confidence, better sleep…

Thanks for the counterpoint and the exercise tip. I'll actually try it tomorrow, maybe mix it with my usual "idk what I'm supposed to do so maybe some burpees". But my experience so far was that nothing ever changed noticeably beyond the early days, in which the major change was just the ability to do 1.2-1.5x as much pushups/planks/burpees as the day before.

As for dieting, I had a limited success with it - managed to visibly drop weight in few months, though I regained it over the year after I dropped the diet regime. Problem is, the diet was moderately distracting on a daily basis. The bigger problem, however, is that the vastly reduced variety of meals I consumed made me dislike some of them, and make others feel bland - so at this point, I can't see myself going back on the same diet, simply because I'm repulsed by the idea of eating those same foods again.

And back to the big point - as far as I checked, neither my weight, nor diet, nor physical activity seem to have had any noticeable correlation with my sleep patterns, mood, energy levels or ability to focus. I've never felt any positive effect within days or weeks of improvement in physical activity or dieting - nothing above noise floor, and especially nothing I could clearly attribute to lifestyle change.

“Diet and exercise” is kind of like, “learn programming by writing your own toy programs.”

As a developer, the problem is obvious. The solution statement is too general and non-specific to be able to act on. You might start with, choose a language based on some goals, get an environment set up, write hello world, etc etc.

The same divide and conquer approach applies to diet and exercise. There’s a bajillion diet and exercise programs that exist out there, but likely it’s too overwhelming to choose from the thousands out there and we don’t know what we don’t know.

My recommendation is divide and conquer to start small. Many choices for activity exist.

The main thing is to not be overwhelmed and just start with one thing and start small. Showing up is 50% of the work.

Here’s some seeds for the exercise portion. Put any of those terms into YouTube and there will be many folks out there with lots of great and bunk information, but holding it’ll be a start to parse.

Walking, running, calisthenics (body weight pushups, squats, jumping jacks, etc), weightlifting (dumbbells, barbells).

For nutrition, I’ll seed you with the basics.

Cut out foods that make you feel bad. This starts by taking a moment to assess how you feel before consuming food and after consuming food and determining whether you feel better or worse. Generally stay away from the worse feeling foods.

And for what to consume, increase the number of servings of color you consume to 4-5 colors a day. Reds (peppers, tomatoes), blues (blueberries, purple cabbage), greens (kale, lettuce, spinach), yellow (squash, pumpkins, lemons), etc.

Just about every diet and exercise program out there will follow some form of this skeleton with concrete plans and meal prep plans and such.

Hopefully this is enough of a seed to help you over the research activation hump!

Or feel free to email the profile if you’d prefer more in depth discussion. I’m happy to share the years of my knowledge attained for my own specific goals as an enthusiast of the diet and exercise lifestyle.

Are diet and exercise not good health advice?

Are most advice in self-help books not good productivity/happiness advice?

The problem with both is that people who can follow them for effect already are following them. So in practice, diet and exercise is what I call "fuck off advice": the person you give it to, should they believe it, will try and try and not see much effect, and eventually fail - but the process will take 3-6 months or more, during which they won't bother you with their problems, and at the end of it, they'll blame themselves for not being good enough, and perhaps even see you as a good person who tried to help.

> Of course I’m definitely not saying that because I’m single and have no talent in women

That you are able to make an honest self-assessment really bodes well for you. While a lot of the pick up artist stuff is skeezy, anyone who has spent time in bar and nightclub culture has seen the general principles in action. The human mating market is a real thing, and both men and women have various patterns of behavior that can be observed and learned. That knowledge can be used to be a misogynistic cad, but it can also be used to form and strengthen true loving relationships.

There are a lot of hucksters and scammers in the space unfortunately, so you have to prudently sift through the crap to get the useful information which is unfortunate when you're not entirely sure what the useful information is. One very reputable place to start though is with Robert Cialdini's books. He focuses more on persuasion in general, but he's legitimate and correct. It's really important to understand concepts like frame, assuming the sale, revealed preference, and especially social proof.

> I irritate women. I can see it in their eyes, and there is no way around that

Again, the fact that you're observant and honest enough to recognize this means that I am nearly certain you can mitigate or remedy whatever defect or defects that you have. The simplest although depending on your disposition perhaps not the easiest approach is to watch what men who are successful with women do and don't do, and then try to figure out possible things you're doing or not doing that are repulsing women. At that point it's just a matter of A/B testing with a large number of women, which can easily be done in any large city with a night life. It can be rough at first, but after a few times you realize the sun still shines and brightly and the ocean is just as lovely no matter how many girls reject you and rejection loses its sting.

And of course since you're a man of means hiring a coach could be a very good idea, assuming you can find one who is trustworthy and ruthlessly honest.

> Some people, no matter how they work to build a startup, are blocked from success by external factors, on which they can do nothing.

What are the factors specifically? How are you defining success? My definition is "You built a profitable business" and there are so many small businesses doing this across the world, I can't really think of external factors that are true deal breakers except perhaps very bad health, it's hard to start a business when you're bedridden. Millions of people are starting businesses all the time in incredibly limited situations like a street food cart in a slum in India and succeeding.

Not who you responded to, but I have a disability (Multiple Sclerosis) that pretty much precludes me from building a successful business. Starting a successful, profitable business usually requires both working around the clock at first in order to establish it and the ability to forego health insurance/healthcare for a period of time. If I'm lucky I have 10 functioning hours a day and I need to make money to not starve so 8 is taken up with a full time job (luckily I walk 5 minutes to work so no commute). I also still need to shower, eat, and exercise to keep my physical condition from deteriorating. On bad days I'm sneaking in naps at work because I have less than 8 hours of good functioning. Weekends are usually spent recovering (sleep/migraine).

Basically anything that eats up your time. Disability is just an example problem that nobody can blame on us.

Edit: It doesn't need to be severe, which is why I mention it. I'm actually better off than 95% of MS patients.

You probably know this, but Dr. Terry Wahls, MD, and Nicole Apelian, PhD herbalist are two professionals with MS who have used diet and such to manage their MS.

See also Dr. Joel Fuhrman: https://www.drfuhrman.com/health-concerns/9/multiple-scleros... His plan also has a lot of success with reducing or eliminating migraines for many people.

Best of luck with managing MS.

I think it is fair to say that there is a difference between starting a business you can survive on and one which will make you a millionaire. These often get mixed, especially on HN.

> I irritate women.

Maybe some subset of women. Unlikely all women.

Have you considered that perhaps bucketing a whole bunch of unique individuals into a single group may be a big part of the problem?

I mean, if you expect to be irritating to someone before you even meet them, you probably will be kind of irritating.

Try treating each person as unique and not assuming you know what they think before they have even met you?

Are you saying you irritate women and it’s due to external factors over which you have no control?

I would bet a good therapist or dating coach could help you.

I irritate women, it may or may not be under my control, for example if it’s due to my race then it’s not, if it’s due to societal clichés then it’s not; and for what is under my control, I have seen for about $10k of psychologists and I was never told the defect I have, probably because that would discourage me, instead they say there’s always a chance, never try never know, ask them out and blah blah blah.

I’d love if someone told me my truth, but until then, I can’t do much.

Granted I didn’t try a dating coach, I don’t know where to find them, their answers will always be “pay me $100 and believe in yourself”, and yes I’m very afraid that if I find out a dating coach helps, I’ll have lost my life for nothing, but it’s impossible to talk about it because no-one ever accepts to envision that, yes, when you reach 40 without capability to date regularly, well you’re fucked, I’d commit terrible things to make people admit that I’ve lost my life if I could,

Why can’t people accept that, yes, it’s hard, I see uglier people than me succeed, I see total losers succeed, so yes, the only artifact I see is:

I - irritate - women, they become between sarcastic and mean to me after knowing me for a few weeks.

Could even be that I don’t ask early enough, that I don’t sexualize them enough, I’m always too careful about not stalking them and ensuring they don’t feel like a bag of meat, so maybe they’re just frustrated that I don’t kiss them on the second date. I don’t know, hypothesis! but that would at least be a fair explanation that I could work on.

Instead, the only feedback I have is, that I’m selfish or whatever trait that you could judge anyone with - Let them first, I also donate to charities way more than friends, I’ve also belonged to more charities than much more of the population, I’ve also accompanied by best enemy through cancer, til he died with us playing the song he himself composed, this asshole got the most beautiful death he could imagine, I mean the accusation of selfishness or closed-mindedness doesn’t hold any cold-headed analysis.

Advice: Pick a woman you trust. A co-worker, a neighbor, someone who knows you. Ask her straight out: "Every time I try to date, I wind up irritating and driving off the woman I'm dating. Can you tell me why?"

Listen seriously and carefully to what she tells you. Mind you, she's not necessarily right. But she's much more likely to be right than a bunch of randos trying to diagnose you over the internet.

I don’t understand your position here. You start out saying some people are blocked from success and imply your lack of success with women is an example. Then you say you don’t know if your lack of success is something you can control because no one has told you exactly what the issue is.

Is your definition of being blocked anything that doesn’t just happen by itself?

Seems pretty clear to me: whatever one is trying to achieve they can be blocked (lack of money, talents, wrong country, etc.) and unless the block can be identified you can never know if it's a block that can be managed/overcome or not. Since OP doesn't really know what's wrong they tried asking for external feedback but that feedback was not actionable and it also didn't help identify what kind of block it was.

> Is your definition of being blocked anything that doesn’t just happen by itself?

sigh... really ?

This story kind of misses the point, and there's a whole lot that goes into "try" and "try harder".

Not everyone can do anything, but I think any individual person can do a lot. But are they trying and are they thinking about how they're trying?

i also sold my startup to a good outcome and ran the business very profitably for years and i agree that there are some things that can not be taught - but that doesn't mean they can't be learned if you have the right mental models. at one point i was terrible at dating / women but over the years i've gotten a lot better than where i started. and yes, there are some people who are just hopeless because they refuse to let go of weird mental hangups that aren't based in reality.

here are some personal observations which you may or may not agree with.

1. you need to be in reasonable shape. pay no attention to the exceptions to this rule, they don't apply to you. so get fit however you want. the more the better. nobody wants to fuck a slug.

2. you don't NEED money, but it certainly doesn't hurt. truly not caring about bills/expenses exudes something you can't fake. broke dudes can truly not care about bills also, from the other side. counter-intuitive, right? if you were broke, could you fake it convincingly? no, probably not. because the exceptions don't apply to you.

3. if you show an ounce, a smidge, one iota, a mere hint of neediness, you're fuckin' GONE. again, pay no attention to the exceptions because they don't apply to you. this can be anything from needing to text/communicate way too often, or weighing other peoples' opinions too much, or being unsure of how to deal with a situation. if you're confused about life just keep it to yourself and ask your male friends or older guys. being confident and wrong is an easy fix if you're a fast learner. being a wishy washy dork is unforgiveable.

4. learn how to dress well in your own style. the exceptions don't apply to you. everyone has their own style so there's not much to say here other than make sure everything fits.

5. being good at sex matters a lot, or at least not terrible. you need a solid baseline upon which to improve. this may seem like a catch-22 because it is. catch-22 is the base layer of reality of the male condition. if you want success you need to figure it out, just like in business. just fucking figure it out, smart guy. the exceptions don't apply to you.

6. height and race matters a lot. if you're short or not white you need to work harder at everything, unless you are exceptional, which you clearly are not. whether or not this is worth it is up to you. if the threshold for effort is deemed to be too much, that's a valid response to a skewed market. just know that every other guy out there is hoping you give up.

7. a woman can break up with you or dump you or ghost you for absolutely no reason at all even if you are the perfect ideal person on paper. this is a non-deterministic field of outcomes. if you get upset at this, you need to grow up.

8. persistence in the face of overwhelming odds against you is how you succeed in business, it applies here also. some are lucky, they are exceptional, and you are not.

As a woman, men who are focused on stuff like this (beyond basic physical and financial health) scare and repel me.

yeah, guys working on improving themselves is pretty creepy, especially when they talk about it on the internet. and how would you know they're trying to become a more confident, well dressed, decisive and assertive version of themselves, anyway?

9. never tell women you are working on this stuff actively because it is extremely creepy to them that you are trying to pull yourself up from being unattractive. above comment is saying so, in plain english. the very thought that you would want to improve yourself is repulsive. general rule of thumb is just shut the fuck up about it and avoid over-sharing.

"just so you know, i'm working on not being a needy dork that texts you 24/7. i hope to be more attractive to you by working on my ability to make decisions for myself without being devastated when someone tells me their opinion of me. do you like me more now? how about now? how about now?"

No, trying to better yourself is fine.

Following that advice isn't bettering yourself, you're essentially just doing the human version of SEO.

You aren't becoming a better or kinder or more interesting person, nor are you working on your ability to make real human connections with others.

And a lot of you will say, so what? If it gets me a girlfriend, what does it matter?

These are the dudes who get dumped or divorced and never see it coming, because they never bothered to learn how to relate to people.

> These are the dudes who get dumped or divorced and never see it coming

no, i do believe you have it exactly backwards.

you're also just making up straw man arguments like "can't connect with people". i didn't even mention that, or hobbies, or charity, or anything. pure fiction in your mind.

you see a post about 'self improvement' and your mind just fills in the blanks with your own assumptions. you probably didn't actually read half the post.

Oh, I read it. I'm commenting on what you chose to emphasize and what you left out, because that speaks volumes about what you value.

Almost all of the advice was around superficial, self-centered things.

All of it was about you getting something you want, and none of it was about being a net positive in someone else's life.

It comes off as cold and selfish.

yeah, so you took something i didn't say, and just made it up. you even gave me an opinion on this made up topic. that's called a straw man. that's the literal definition of one. i know, you're probably the kind of person who doesn't usually commit logical fallacies. except when you do, of course. either way:

be fit, make money, don't be needy, dress well, be good at sex, work hard to overcome height/race, move past breakups, keep working to improve.

these are somehow selfish? HAHA okay buddy. then again, hey you know you could NOT follow my advice, and

be fat, broke, needy, schlubby, lame at sex, lazy, heartbroken, and give up.

If you want to do them, fine. But they're not going to make you successful at relationships, because everything about them has to do with you.

And what would you rather they do? Just "be themselves"? That advice is one of the primary root causes of the incel epidemic.

The problem is y'all keep trying to run last century's playbook.

Relationships are no longer transactional. The age of the breadwinner and provider are over. Women are no longer forced to stay home while you toil in the mines or whatever. You're optional.

Because you're optional, you need to be more desirable than no relationship and frankly, a lot of you aren't.

> Relationships are no longer transactional

LOL. buddy. i've got some news for you.

the fact that you can't actually point to a single thing i said (not something you just made up out of thin air) and claim it is actually WRONG, means you're just angry at my opinion.

See, this is what I mean. You have an extremely cynical, corrosive view of relationships, and it leads you to post things like this and assume other people are angry, too.

Relationships aren't something you acquire, they're something you build. You need to be a net asset to your partner, and just bringing home money doesn't count.

> Relationships are no longer transactional

why would that be?

"everything in the world is about sex, except sex, which is about power"

Because it's not true?

why was it true and no longer is?

The kind of relationship you described sounds terrible to be in. I hope this isn’t the norm.

That's the evolutionary leetcode portion of the interview.

Just my N=1 here, but I've actually run the self-improvement gamut and got results out of it - had a year where I went from never having held hands with a girl to sleeping around quite a bit. I think the self-improvement type of vibe tends to attract girls who are more into short term things, which leads to burnout. By this I mean, if you are a guy who looks very good/masculine, are good at flirting, etc but just are not the type of guy that a girl would want to bring home or show to friends due to some immediately-visible perceived deficiency (like race, height, etc.), you become typecast as the "experiment" (i.e. an easily-accessible alternative to what they normally go for, a one-time thing), the "rebound guy" to get over an ex, or part of a girl's "exploratory phase", etc. - you aren't a priority for her and she cares less about you than the already-little amount you might care about her.

After getting burned a few times I realized that what I "wanted" was to sleep with a lot of girls, but what I "actually wanted" was to sleep with a lot of girls who want me more than I want them (i.e. an egotistical drive) - emphasis on the "want me more than I want them" part. It's an important distinction, and the fantasy is to be the guy who all the "good girls" (i.e. the relationship-oriented girls who don't easily fall for guys) fall deeply in love with and would do anything for but can't pin down, and this narrative is pursued as a goal because it provides a sense of security ("there will always be people who love me"). In reality you just attract many girls who might not even want a relationship, and that fantasy sense of security will cease to exist. Even if you do find the fabled "good girl" or if one of the short-term minded girls falls for you, you will be conditioned to be skeptical and doubtful of their long-term relationship capacity because of your experiences with the other girls, thus erasing any of the sense of security that you initially sought.

Also, in the end it seemed that the "want me more than I want them" thing was actually more important than sleeping with the girls. So when I found out that the girls I was sleeping with wanted me in a relationship capacity less than the admittedly close-to-zero amount I wanted them, it was really demoralizing, as I'd inevitably end up with this weird shitty feeling of being "just another guy" a girl slept with and it did not feel good at all. Then I realized that my behaviors probably also led girls to feel hurt in this way, and the whole exercise between the genders is kind of futile overall and people are hurting each other over something as trivial as ego and a misguided search for security.

Now I just kind of maintain the self-improvements from before, as they've added great value to my life, but I don't actively seek out dating, going to clubs, etc. I figure that if something pointing to a relationship comes about organically I will definitely be fully open to it, but it is not as much of a priority at the moment.

You sound a little nuts but I appreciate the candor! One thing you are completely missing here (and to be fair, may not be for you) is the actual benefits of a relationship - as opposed to quantifying the ego-boost of a hookup or whatever.

Like, I enjoyed my slutty single says but I LOVE father's day with my two kids and wife even more :) I don't measure the "value add" that my wife brought me in units of her desire for me or something weird like that - I look at the life I am enjoying and could not have without her.

As I said this may not be for you but a mention of this was completely absent altogether and that was odd for me.

Yea, I guess I forgot to also mention that what I "actually actually" wanted was that sense of security, and I was looking in the wrong place for it. Though once that sense of security is there, it's possible to engage in and enjoy relationships in a "normal" way, rather than from the point of view of "gaining points" to try and acquire that sense of security.

The whole episode opened my eyes that I was not only doing this "points counting" in a dating context, but also in a friendship context, e.g. trying to find friends who reach out to me more than I reach out to them (in pursuit of a similar type of security), rather than just relaxing and enjoying the friendships in a natural way. I'd say things are much better now.

these are good points. i will say that people who tend to mention on the internet their lack of success with women are basically starting at zero so bombarding them with this stuff merely shifts the "overton window" (this is an imperfect analogy) to the right so they start getting some improvement. their cumulative 'score' is just so far in the weeds they need all the points they can get. there is no room for nuance when you're in the hole. it's like cooking up some super custom individual muscle bodybuilding workout plan for someone who is 400 pounds and eats chocolate bars all day.

more well adjusted/successful men are "deficient" (this term is used loosely) in fewer of these categories and may not need to change much from baseline, or at all. the zero dudes need to level up basically everything in order to even have a snowball's chance in hell. i.e. a tall jacked rich dude can get away with being an emotionally needy text-happy dork sometimes. it might even be endearing in a "i can fix him" kind of way.

the most important thing is for guys who WANT to improve (not everyone really gives a shit, which is fine) the most important thing to understand is that you CAN improve, and society's bullshit platitudes, dismissals of concern, and implications creepiness of wanting to improve are just that - bullshit, deeply dishonest, deceitful, and fucking cruel.

to make matters worse there are all sorts of con artists who prey on younger guys so hearing this kind of stuff from a non-sales-oriented pov on a place like HN is important.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

I am now in a similar situation you were before: I've never had a relationship, the last phone number of a girl I got was 2 years ago and it was a coworker, etc.

The original article suggests to learn how other people have already gotten the thing you want. So can you share the plan you followed that made you start attracting girls? Or can you share some resources you used to achieve that goal?

there's tons of stuff on the internet for this now. keep these two things in mind:

1. is what you've been doing for years, working? then don't keep doing it.

2. has asking advice from women, ever worked?

3. imagine you have always been poor, how do you think your social circle would react if you tried to get rich? if you actually achieve it?

think deeply about these things with an open mind.

talking about the fact that you can actually learn to be good with women is highly offensive to a huge portion of the population because you are turning that something that should be 'natural' into something that can be quantified and that deeply upsets some people. they really can't handle it mentally.

Extremely uncomfortable and true, like swallowing the red pill.

Have you found a way of finding similarly minded people in life?

While anyone might not be able to hit the big time, most skills are learnable / improvable.

CA is not a place to get laid. Go East, young man, go East and grow a pair.

What, like Boston? Way overpriced, no parking, shit weather....

The incredible thing is, this map has stayed the same for 131 years now. SF has men: https://www.jonathansoma.com/singles/#4/7/2/0

If you had two successful startups, maybe chances are that you don't put much time into other activities which includes dating and the relationships that can come from dating?

If I said I was going to try to have a successful startup putting a couple hours a week into it now and then, what is the probability of success? So maybe the issue is going up a learning curve?

If you do eventually find yourself in a relationship, here is some advice for making it work from Emma McAdam and also the Gottmans: https://courses.therapyinanutshell.com/relationship-skills https://www.gottman.com/couples/workshops/art-science-of-lov...

The Gottmans also supply dating advice you can sign up for on their website, but I don't know what it is. I would guess though it is better than the "be an alpha male" advice you might find on a lot of internet sites.

And here is advice specific to hard-driving successful men making relationships work: https://beyond-driven.com/insideout1 "Discover The New Method That Hundreds Of Modern Men Have Used To Save Their Marriage, Reignite Their Sex Life, And Even Transform Their Careers... without ever going to marriage counseling, reading countless "self-help" books, or even mentioning a thing to their wife"

The core idea Tim Arrigo, guy behind that website, expresses in a related promo video is that the same conventional masculine traits that help me succeed in business (problem solving, suppressing emotions) lead to failures in their marriages. While I don't know the details of his approach, I've seen that theme before, like in the book "The Pleasure Trap" about how human behaviors to seek out salt, sweet, and fat (and conserve energy) that were so adaptive in our hunter/gatherer past lead to health disasters given our modern (processed) food supply. And I've also commented elsewhere on how people's traits that may help in one situation may hinder in another (like how paranoia may be useful for a programmer debugging complex code and being suspicious of every line but that paranoia may be corrosive in human relationships).

Many techies tend towards high-functioning Asperger's. If so, these may be of interest too, since relationships involving one or two Aspies can have some special dynamics: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=aspergers+and+relationships

On the other hand, maybe you just have been lucky so far? :-) As in, from a Philip Greenspun essay: https://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science "Speaking of fertility... A $400/hour divorce litigator said "Knowing what I know now, I could have made a lot more money going to a bar and working for one night than I have made by going to college, law school, and working for 20 years. It turns out that I was sitting on something worth a lot more than a law degree." What's the cash value of fertility compared to working in science? ... A divorce litigator put it a little more simply: "There is no reason for a woman to go to medical school. If she wants to have the spending power of a doctor she can just have sex with three doctors." ... In some states, though not Wisconsin, a plaintiff's own earnings or earning potential can reduce the potential profits from child support. "A degree in poetry is a lot better than a degree in medicine when you're a child support plaintiff," observed one litigator, and added "for a woman with a functioning reproductive system, the decision to attend college and work is seldom an economically rational one in the United States.""

No doubt there are various ways one can disagree with those selected divorce lawyer statements, of course. But they do suggest there can be potentially predatory "wrong women" out there if they believe those things. Of course, a woman in an unhappy relationship might also be more likely to drift in that direction of focusing on money? And the first links on building better relationships can help prevent that.

All the best in building mutually healthy relationships and raising a happy family if that is what you want.

Ask for the moon and you'll be surprised by how often you get it.

It's a cliche and people normally hate this statement, the truth is only a small portions of those what you want are overlapping with what you really needs, most of people are spending most of their efforts and time pursuing the non-overlapping sections.

I don't really want to live my life based on just what I need though. My needs are already met. I want a lot more than that.

Don’t forget people overvaluing talent as one of the main excuses while minimizing what they can control.

Always bet on grit. It's a learnable skill and you never lose it.

I’d argue you will almost certainly lose it if you never loose it ;-). Loose it or lose it, I always say

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