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Comment by leoh | Hacker News Reader

I thought the most profound thing mentioned in this article was that loneliness was about intimacy. Not necessarily physical intimacy, but social intimacy. This is exceedingly important subtlety. Too often we say things like "go be social, go hang out." You can "be social", but non-intimate relationships (relationships with people you don't trust, people who are cruel, people who aren't authentic) do not have good therapeutic value.

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The loneliest period of my life was during my clubbing days in my 20s. I was out doing something almost every night, had a few dozen people I called friends. Sometimes it was alot of fun, but it was ultimately draining... the connections were superficial at best.

Moved away shortly after turning 26, stopped answering almost all calls and had little social interaction for about 6 mos. Then I got a dog and started meeting people again but slowly and in a completely different context. That was probably the most cathartic period in my life.

I know what you mean. A friend of mine was saying he was heavily into the party scene in the years before he met his now fiancée. He said meeting her earlier would have saved him years of going out to clubs for the sake of not feeling lonely.

And of course a lot of use feel like it is easier to meet someone when we don't have our walls up. But most connections made at a club are superficial at best like you said.

So what's a good solution to shortening the time it takes to meet one's fiancée?

Possibly not clubbing to begin with. That does not usually lead to marriage.

Do things. Do things that bring you into contact with other people: namely, working with colleagues, rather than customers. (So a soup kitchen counts, but being a solo consultant doesn't.) When they invite you out for doing stuff, join in. You can back out the second time if you don't enjoy it. Get to know as many of them as you can. Share your interests; listen to theirs.

You'll run into someone interested in you soon enough.

thanks!

+1 Take a community college course in something that you enjoy like history or calligraphy, if it's good enough for Steve Jobs it's good enough for you. Join a local theatre company, even if it's just painting scenery and doing scene changes. Take a fitness course at a local gym. Learn Tai Chi. If you're in the US go backpacking round Mayan ruins in Mexico. If you're into a hobby already, become active in it. If you play roleplaying games, volunteer to help run a convention. At least you'll have something to talk to people about.

99% of mainstream dating advice is hogwash.

Learn the truth about women. Start reading:

http://dalrock.wordpress.com/ http://heartiste.wordpress.com/

The best dating advice is concentrated on men who are players or aspire to be. But the skills to seduce a fling and a future wife are very similar.

If you want to catch a great woman, you must have the skills to catch any woman.

That second site looks like manipulative bullshit to me.

That's because it _is_ manipulative bullshit! Heartiste is famous for spouting misogynistic garbage. Pretty terrible stuff.

The above advice is probably really good if you think of women as objects.

If you can have a Class of Human, I don't see the problem having women AND men as objects.

The problem is that it doesn't have a point to it. If you don't treat people like people, instead of puppets, there's very little point to interacting with them. Even if you could "catch any woman", what would you do with her when the superficial fun wears off?

Obviously I wholeheartedly agree with you. I was just trying to make a relevant joke.

On a more serious note, people who treat others (be it men or women) as objects/puppets are themselves devoid of any deeper intelligence. I will go so far to generalize and say that they are pretty shallow morally, and a lot of times, intellectually (not quite, but I don't know a better word).

To "catch" a woman?

Stick to fishing... it's not 1973 anymore!

Get. The. Hell. Out.

"the skills to seduce a fling and a future wife are very similar"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult

Besides that those same "skills" you're developing are going to fuck up your future relationship(s) when you continue to behave like a sociopath.

Dont try too hard.

I guess to be sincere, be kind, be supportive and always be prepared to listen, treat love given to you as rare, so don't spoil and throw it away. Be there for her.

That's just my solution though I haven't met mine.

I am pretty sure this http://www.artofmanliness.com/ helped me a lot. Not thought dating advice but by helping me to become a better man. I know it sound cheezy, but really you don't really want to trick anyone into marriage.

Just to be clear - these weren't people I randomly met going out. Most of them started as friends from college, friends from work, friends of those friends, etc. This was a big social circle that was fairly consistant/intact for a period of about 5 years. We did most things together and from an outsider's perspective we were close knit. But really the glue was we partied well and we did it often, perhaps a vibe of mutually ensured self-destruction.

While it produced some of the most exciting moments in my life and most of us acted like we really cared about each other, it just felt forced. Personal bounds were loose. Rumors/talking smack was common. It was caustic and emotionally draining. I didn't realize it much while it was happening because it felt awesome to have this big group of cool friends, but after some time you just realize you feel like total crap - basically you're surrounded by all these people yet you have no one to talk to because whatever you say can be used against you.

I've noticed that it's hard for me to join a group of people that has more than 2-3 people. Thinking back, throughout my entire life, I've always been in groups of 'only' 2-3, or 5 people tops. I tried doing the whole 'going out of your comfort zone' and getting into groups which had 9-10 people but the vibes they gave were exactly like you said - superficial. You had this constant feeling that the other people weren't above backstabbing/trampling you over to achieve their means. It felt kind of hollow, and I slowly started to drift away from them to meet others.

"Water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink". I have definitely been through similar periods in my life. The problem with having a volume of superficial "friends" is that it artificially covers up our loneliness to some degree, which makes seeking out more intimate relationships less of a priority. It's the emotional equivalent of attempting to live on fast food: it makes us feel full, but leaves us starving for what we actually need.

This strikes a chord and speaks something about cultural interactions.

Ages ago, when I was at university, I spent a semester in a Soviet bloc country. There were no clubs other than the Party-run ones; few movies to go see, little to buy in stores, no TVs, no Internet, no cell phones. The isolation could have been profound. But for many people, what this meant was that human relationships became very, very intense and valuable. Friendships with my fellow students became so, as did friendships with other locals I met and got to know.

Upon returning to my home university in the US, I was very happy to see my friends, and quickly joined them on my first day back at one of our usual hangouts, a bar. I was appalled to realize that all the conversations I had had with them for all the nights we'd been going out were utterly superficial and meaningless compared with the relationships and conversations I'd experienced overseas. I gradually withdrew from my friends, trying to stick more to non-party/bar settings so we could have what I considered to be more real, deeper conversations; but I had changed, and they had not. It was very isolating.

I gradually discovered that a few of these friends also were craving deeper interaction (cue jokes, okay, okay) and those friends became not only the people I hung out with more, but the ones whose friendships with me lasted decades until today. But there was a seriously lonely stretch until I discovered that, and it was all about social intimacy -- not physical, not being among people, but sharing our true selves in conversation and companionship.

<edit: fixed a minor typo.>

Yep.

Believe it or not, this is actually a key insight in meditative/contemplative practices.

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