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PaperclipPerfector
1d ago
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Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Maybe better suited for Wellness Wednesday, but had a key realization about myself this morning. Went on a date with a med student Wednesday that I was not all that enthused about, despite her ticking all the on paper boxes. I was talking about this to my roommate, and he pointed out that there's no obligation for me to go another date with this person, and I fired back that I need to give people more of a chance if I want to get married and raise a family. He then replied that it doesn't seem like I'm actually deeply interested in that right now. And I think he's right: I like my life, my friends, my activities and independence, and having a partner and a family would compromise most of that. I only feel like I want those things because I feel pressure from my parents and from society (and weddings and the like) to not be single. I don't actually want to be in a relationship, at least not just to be in one.
I've done a lot of bitching and moaning about dating on this forum, and I think this morning I realized that the main problem actually comes from within me. I'm not actually very interested in dating for datings sake, and the only reason I pursue these things is because of pressure from society, and people telling me I need to be in a long-term relationship before I'm 30-35 or I'm completely cooked. Of course I'm not going to have success because in my heart of hearts I don't actually want it.
My preferred mode of forming relationships, particularly romantic ones, involves knowing the person in some personal level (at least 'acquaintance,' possibly 'friendship') before actually initiating romantic intent.
It is possible that the ACTUAL version of modern dating everyone is forced into is innately distasteful to you.
I want to be 100% clear that the current paradigm for finding a partner WAS NOT NORMAL until just over 10 years ago. And it SHOULD NOT BE ASSUMED to be the best way to go about it.
But it occurs to me that anyone under 30 lacks knowledge of the before times, so apps is just how it is done.
The apps have an unfortunate effect where every time you invest emotions early on and get burned, it teaches you to withhold your enthusiasm. But this means you intrinsically don't approach a new date as an exciting new opportunity. And so you don't bring that enthusiasm to the date, and its less likely to result in 'chemistry.' (assume that this same thing happens on the other side!). And so it becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Both sexes end up withdrawn and reluctant to invest... so even if one side gets interested after the first or second date, the other might not reciprocate.
I suspect that if you met someone more 'naturally' you'd end up getting a sense for your compatibility before you had to enter the romantic arena with them... and that's a foundation you can build some enthusiasm on!
So your distaste for dating might literally just be how the apps have 'trained' you through repeated operant conditioning, and isn't really just because you're too comfortable in your routine to let somebody else in.
You'd let somebody in, but they have to get past your filters first. And too many people are failing at the first 'filter' because of how you're meeting them. Whereas knowing someone for a bit BEFORE expressing interest means they're PRE-FILTERED to a certain extent.
Anyway, my two cents, as I have been in the trenches for a long enough time to see this problem arise in many men.
I'll say that this is my preferred mode too, but I also am wary that the average woman feels the same way. When I look back on my dating history, even back to secondary school, I can't remember a single time when "this person is attractive, but I want to get to know them as a person first before expressing romantic interest" ever actually worked out, or ended with a relationship. Inevitably, if I decided I liked the person and I would be interested in knowing her romantically, any expression of interest would just be rebuffed -- typically politely, but still.
You do often see women online complaining about "I thought he was my friend, but then he asked me out and he was just lying about being my friend to get in my pants," as though being friendly and engaging with someone as a person instead of immediately asking them out is a kind of duplicity that can only be understood in a prurient manner. I don't know if those exact thoughts run through the typical woman's head, but it does accord with my experiences being friends with and dating women.
I'm not always a fan of their methods, but I do think the redpillers are descriptively correct when they say that women generally have a separate mental track for "potential romantic interest" and "potential friend," and you have to behave in a certain way to be put into the first category rather than the second. Every woman I have ever seriously dated expressed -- either with their body language and flirtation (when I got better at reading this), or in hindsight, after we were dating and she would look back upon meeting me -- that I did something that impressed her the very first time I met her.
It was always something that was more than just "urquan was really nice and friendly," it had to be, "urquan was the class clown and I thought his joking was really confident," "urquan proudly said he was a Democrat when the teacher in poli sci class used him as an example of voter registration," "I liked how urquan made jokes that built upon each other when we talked and incorporated things I was saying," "the way urquan writes about what love means to him was so romantic, it makes me feel like I'm in a romance novel," or "urquan gave a lecture to a college atheist club where he made a historical argument that the US is a Christian nation because of the large influence that Christianity has had on its history," which, to use her words, "made me think you had your own independent thoughts and didn't just think what other people wanted you to think."
There was also, of course, the time in school where I was waiting for someone in the lunchroom, a girl that sat at the table and I started talking, and I absentmindedly and unconsciously started suggestively flirting with her and thought so little of it that I blacked it out of my memory. (The only thing of that flirtation I can recall is she was eating a banana, and, well, schoolboy-tier phallic jokes were made.) What a surprise when I subsequently did the, "I'd like to get to know her as a person before I express any interest" thing, having forgotten that I'd implanted the mental image in her brain that the fruit she was eating was my fucking penis, and then 3 months later she drops a note on my desk as she shuffled out of the classroom that told me she was in love with me and asked 'would you go out with me?' Man... the high of reading that note was so intense that I'd compare it to heroin, if I knew anything about what heroin makes you feel like.
You should note that, in all my examples, I did something actually impressive in some sense: I was confident enough to say something controversial, or to take a stance proudly, without reservations, or to state how I felt about something in beautiful and moving words, or to express my sexuality clearly and unapologetically. I wasn't nice, I wasn't friendly, I was confident, without fear of rejection. Confidence is the engine of attraction. The engine!
The other thing I note from my dating history is that, of course, in most of these situations I subsequently did the "I really just want to get to know this person first before I express any romantic interest", enough that multiple relationships of mine have started because I did something impressive enough, and was subsequently intransigent enough in my withholding of romantic interest, that eventually these young women took matters into their own hands and directly stated their romantic interest in me out of sheer desperation. Obviously they would have much rather preferred that I ended my sequence of impressive acts of sheer confidence by confidently suggesting something romantic. That's how you get swept off your feet.
The reality is that women want to be impressed before they do the "I just want to get to know this person" thing; it's just how their attraction works. Men are actually the same way -- it's just that their attraction is more visual, and women's is more an attraction to the gestalt of a man.
So, if you're attracted to a woman, you do nothing impressive, subsequently become her friend, and then later decide you like her enough to ask her out. The read she has of that situation is: "well, you did nothing to impress me or to trigger my attraction, and now you're springing this on me, why are you making me have to romantically reject my friend after this time knowing each other?" They see "being friends before suggesting any romantic interest" as a failed strategy -- in which case it's pathetic -- or a covert attempt to "let her guard down" before she knows what all you want out of her, in which case it's considered creepy, like espionage. I think that's a harsh judgment, but it's the kind of judgment I think is being made.
I think in most cases men don't mean it like that, and it's not so much a strategy as men just being slow to warm up to someone, even if they're attracted to them. Men's romantic interest is much more gradual, while women's is much more binary, in or out. Hence why men are more commitment-phobic than women: they escalate from "cute" to "beautiful" to "worthy of adoration" to "eternal and undying love" more slowly.
(Evopsych terms -- maybe men's up-front sexual attraction is the thing that bridges this gap ancestrally? Women ramp up sexual availability slowly, men ramp up romantic/emotional availability slowly, both are withholding something the other wants, so they have a reason to stick around with each other and try to build it up?)
I guess what I'm saying is, I feel you. But some element of the obligation to "bring that enthusiasm to the date" is that you have to impress as a man, or you've already lost. I got really lucky, in that a few times in my life I've just been being my stubborn, headstrong, fiercely intellectually independent, and paradoxically public-speaking-enjoying self, and a woman has taken note of this and found me attractive when I'm being what I consider to be the best version of myself.
So, perhaps "Just be yourself," and "be confident," really were the best pieces of dating advice, because the best relationships come from authentic attraction to personality.
It's just that this assumes that "yourself" is attractive or impressive in some way, and additionally is horribly mismatched to a world in which men and women are less and less interacting organically, in the real world, where real personalities and authentic strengths are present. The end result is, well, the Game.
Since when is saying something controversial rewarded with female approval?
My guess would be that the situation was one where the girl agreed with what he said, and was pleased he had the courage to say something she thought was true. Saying something controversial which a girl disagrees with would be unlikely to win her approval.
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