1. Don't be an ass, be kind and respect people
2. Be polite, accept a no as an answer
3. Accept the universe is not owing you anything, let alone an initimate relationship
4. Be open minded
5. Accept yourself as you are and others as they are
It really comes down to number one, don't be an ass.
Most Incels so maybe celibate, but it is, considering how they see and treat women to how they see the world and society, totally voluntarily and self inflicted.
Also, whining about how hard your life is, how you are not able to achieve your goals because of things outside of your control is a huge turn off, regardless of how your face or body looks like.
And no, it is not easy for me neither, if it wasn't for my now wife when we first met, we wouldn't be together now, forst steps and all that crap. The we didn't beak up so, well, that is on both of us.
People tend to over complicate the first step thing so. Just be reepsectful and nice, accept a no, and a date will ultimately follow. Because the opposite sex wants a date, maybe not with you but still, as well. Just don't spray and pray, that approach doesn't work with job applications, it worls even less with dating.
However, the basics of what is physically attractive within the society you live are likely straightforward enough that if your likeness is posed to 100 others, you'd get a pretty closely clustered set of ratings.
If your interests trend towards a particular subgroup/subculture you may wish to further optimize for what's generally more attractive to that group.
B - That seems obviously wrong? Physique, grooming, clothing, etc - virtually no one is at the upper bounds of what they can do in these kinds of areas and they have a massive effect on how physically attractive someone is viewed to be.
Sure, that doesn't mean that everyone can become the most attractive person on the planet that way....but they absolutely have the agency to influence how attractive they are to others, significantly.
Before I met my wife I knew a different woman while we were in college, she wasn't classically attractive, and wasn't attractive to me, but we spent lots of time in the same social circles, and over time grew emotionally close, she apparently had been attracted to me the whole time, but I only started to see her as beautiful after over a year, we didn't end up exploring any of that for other reasons (and bullet dodged apparently because she started to go down a very damaging ideological path) but I could have seen that relationship blossoming into something much closer and it involved two people who most wouldn't consider attractive. beauty is definitely in the eyes of the beholder and claiming there is objective beauty is setting yourself up for failure.
Above all else, if you really want to live a better life, stop spending all day obsessing over people who have a bunch of physical attributes that society is telling you are desirable. Especially, if you rarely see people like that in real life. This includes, movies, tiktok, insta, and obviously, though possibly the hardest to cut, porn. All those give you a warped sense of what normal is and give you expectations that you will never actualize.
I think one aspect is that we mix charisma with attractiveness. They correlate, but looking like a movie star is not the only way to have charisma. Simply the easiest. Yes, the easiest, compared to being funny, having interesting life stories, or being wildly successful. You can dedicate 2 years to looking attractive with consistent results. You can't dedicate 2 years and guarantee you make tons of money or that you can tell some good jokes.
Either way, if you don't accept yourself, change yourself to a way where you can. As RuPaul says:
>If you can't love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else?
Also this list of points is probably wrong. Particularly "Accept yourself as you are and others as they are" is mutually contradictory to things like "Be polite, accept a no as an answer" for many people. jiggawatts is pointing out that if people want to improve themselves useful advice is hard to find. Telling someone who knows that they need to change that they are an ass, need to stop that but simultaneously that they need to accept themselves is unhelpful.
In fact, finding the balance between what parts of yourself to accept and what parts need to change (and why) is a complex challenge that is beyond the abilities of most people. The average human just keeps doing what they do unless something traumatic happens.
And no, us humans are not victims of our biology. Since one the few things in the bible I actually agree with, is the whole "god gave humans free will" bit, as intelligent, self-aware animals we can control our actions to an extent. Failing to so actually is a problem, I agree. But that is an individual problem, not a universal one.
Call me crazy I suppose, but wouldn't it be a good idea to give people with problems good advice about how to solve their problems? Maybe some sort of community they could go for for good, actionable advice?
Because if you walk through what you've just said slowly, it was (1) identified that finding a partner is easy for people who don't have problems finding a partner, and (2) anyone who is having problems is on their own, no need to help them.
The thrust of the thinking there lacks a certain empathy. Plan B is being a bit gentler and explaining what they are doing wrong to them using clearer advice than "don't be an ass". That doesn't mean anything concrete and it isn't actionable. It also isn't true, lots of asses have no trouble holding down a partner (usually figuratively, occasionally literally to the general horror of us all if it gets uncovered).
And yes, I insist, not being an ass is a great basis. Which requires knowing what makes someone an ass, true. If people fail at knowing that, well, issues at dating are more of a sympthom and not the root cause.
Also, yes, at the end there is only so much others can do for you and help you with. Being able to be self-reliant, and being able to ask for, and accept, help are actually rather attractive traits. As is taking responsibility, first for yourself and then for others.
What most adults discover, after college, is that there are few places to find a mate. The only place they will visit with any regularity is work... and even if we ignore the good advice of "don't shit where you eat", work is often a poor environment in which to search for potential mates (maybe especially true at the ages that most are concerned about doing that).
In previous eras, where mates were found more quickly, high school and then college were always the best places. High concentrations of other unmarried people your own age or close enough. But that's discouraged today and often impossible anyway given economic reality. It's definitely unwise according to popular opinion.
Church might have been another place, but not really for generations at this point. Most aren't religious, and becoming religious isn't easy even if you can somehow set aside any philosophical objections to the dogma or worries at the quality of mates available there. A young man or woman who joins a church for the purpose of finding a mate will often be looked at with disdain and suspicion... anyone eligible at those places probably already has candidates in mind. Courtships tend to be a quick thing, so even if you go there and find a woman or man the right age not yet married, someone else already had them in mind and they were probably less than 12 months away from marriage anyway. You showing up and interfering isn't going to win you any friends.
In the 1980s, this might have been solved with bar-hopping. But the AIDS crisis and the end of the sexual revolution hammered the nails into that coffin. It was never a good strategy anyway.
And all of this is just one issue that makes it difficult. There are others.
Our society isn't currently arranged in a way that is conducive to pairing people up for the long term. And likely, societies that are bad at this don't get to remain societies forever. I suspect rather strongly that they die.
Regarding bar hopping, going out still is a thing, isn't it? Just one thing so, if bar hopping is only done to pick up women, it might a good thing you stopped doing it, not because of AIDS, but for everyone else going out.
Edit: What weird kind of creep goes to church to pick up women? And why do some people think that all social interaction with the opposite sex (gays and lesbians seem not to have that problem) has to be aimed at some kind of sexual / romantic end game? That can happen, as can a real friendship or nothing at all. Approaching it with the goal of sex / dating in mind might actually be part of the problem...
If "don't be an ass" is all the advice you needed in order to find love, you are unspeakably lucky. I hope you make your wife breakfast every morning and thank your God every night. Please don't offer dating advice to CS grads ever again.
And, given the rough 1:1 ratio of men to women, and the relative 1:1 ratio between gays and lesbians, any significantly large group of male incels seems to indicate a similarly sized group of women.
Women likely don't have any advantages here. There are some social norms that have been upended, where it's somewhat possibly safer for them to make the first approach, but that only helps if they're in the presence of a suitable candidate.
> What weird kind of creep goes to church to pick up women?
Why would that make them a creep? If there are women there, women who very likely want to marry, given what we know of religious people, then there doesnt' seem to be anything creepy at all about it.
While the church leaders and the congregants would likely tell you that the church exists for many other things besides, included in their list would most likely be one item something like "to find and meet like-minded people, and to help those searching to settle down and live the sort of life they are advocating (marriage, family, etc)".
We were, after all, talking about long-term relationships (and in particular marriage) and not Tindr hookups.
> And why do some people think that all social interaction with the opposite sex has to be aimed at some kind of sexual / romantic end game?
Why would anyone think otherwise, would be a better question. Some people who hold a somewhat "progressive" view of the world insists that men and women are perfectly substitutable, and that they exists for reasons other than the biological imperative. For such people, men and women fraternizing should only happen so that they can be friends, and if there is some "romantic spark", then this is at best an unfortunate side effect that should never be sought or hoped for.
It's really anti-human.
> Approaching it with the goal of sex / dating
We weren't talking about that. We were talking about long term relationships, and not Tindr hookups. While it's true that there was a historical era where dating existing primarily towards that end, by the 1980s that certainly wasn't true. That change correlates loosely with the decline of the use of the term "courtship", and with the ascent of the term "dating" (but not perfectly).
> Approaching it with the goal of sex / dating in mind might actually be part of the problem...
The opposite is true. Approaching it as if there is some other reason confuses many people, causes them to hesitate and postpone, and just generally interferes in men and women pairing up. Even when people in those circumstances find someone else, the other person tends to be non-committing, and they wait around hoping that will change... wasting time they probably don't have on poor candidates.
Have you ever heard someone talk about how they've been engaged to their boyfriend for 9 years? Or, how they're even reluctant to call them boyfriend/girlfriend anymore, tend to use the word "partner" alot?
There's some extreme dysfunction going on, and modern instincts are to double down on that dysfunction in the bizarre hope that somehow things will improve.
This logic doesn't follow at all: people can have more than one partner.
The logic works out "close enough". You don't really live near any FLDS compounds anyway.
You don't need to live near a FLDS compound to find people engaging in non-monogamous relationships.
This is the equivalent of not teaching chemistry, and then someone who's dabbled in alchemy piping up and saying: "Why bother with all that, it's not that hard, just combine earth and water!"
The reality is that the "assholes" get the hottest women. I put that in quotes because that's the superficial impression, not a nuanced statement. It's valid though. There are women who get married to murderers on death row. These are sexy, beautiful women. Meanwhile "nice guys" are single into their thirties and complaining about it on Reddit.
Even a casual perusal of either anthropology or evolutionary biology should dissuade you from any such silly Disney(tm) approved notions.
Women maximise their reproductive success by partnering with killers. Hunters that are capable of bringing home the bacon, but just short of being psychopaths and killing her and her children. A little bit of violence is acceptable.
Being "nice" and "polite" doesn't work. As a random set of examples, people here on HN will generally acknowledge either Trump and/or Elon as being unmitigated asses, right? They've both had multiple wives and a bunch of kids.
What does that tell you?
Are you going to do chemistry, or alchemy? Magic, or science? Are you getting dating advice from Women's Weekly, or Nature?
And no, a stelar career, shit ton of money, fame and drop dead looks are not what I meam by that.
Point was not being an ass. That means basically two things: Not actively treating people like shit (that can be pretended, something all those pick up artists scum bags do and sell) and unintentionally doing it. The latter is the harder bit, as it involves actually caring and listening to other people. When in company, making it all about yourself is not necessarily being an ass (it can be so), but rather egoistical and unpleasant for the other person.
Having years of therapy (!), and nothing to show for, hints, IMHO, at the second issue. No amount of therapy and course work can make you care about someone else as much as you do about yourself, IMHO, because therapy is for you.
Ad my grandmother aslways said: every pot has its cover (very bad translation). And she was right. The trick is to not force it, be open, let stuff happen and just not be an ass. Or a self-victimizing whiner, as that can be kind of the opposite end of toxic masculinity and is equally unsexy. But even then, there is someone special out there.
As soon as you make a relationship as much about the other person as you do about yourself, are sincere about that, well, a lot of surprising things can happen.
Also, you are never done becoming a better human being. Especially since for ech step forward, you will take a couple back at times.
I don’t find that to be the reality. Most likely, the “nice guy” has a number of qualities that are off-putting to potential partners and the “asshole” is only perceived as such by the “nice guy”. I don’t mean to say assholes don’t find partners, they do, but the general perception of “the asshole always gets the girl” seems more like a sophomoric projection of jealously than reality.
> Being "nice" and "polite" doesn't work. As a random set of examples, people here on HN will generally acknowledge either Trump and/or Elon as being unmitigated asses, right? They've both had multiple wives and a bunch of kids.
> What does that tell you?
Not much… I mean it’s not news that rich and powerful men have an easy time finding people. But tbh, all walks of life have partners. Tons of nice, polite people have partners, yet you ignore those examples for some reason and claim that “doesn’t work”. I suspect the root issue is a jealously/confusion/frustration that an ass like Trump can find women but you have yet to have the same luck. The reality is that it’s possible for pretty much anyone to find a partner and it doesn’t mean much. Being a likable person will give you the best chance, regardless of how many assholes happen to find people. Perhaps the only useful lesson from observing assholes having success is that assholes tend to have confidence and don’t care what others think, making them more likely to put themselves in a position to find a partner without fear of rejection.