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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34507 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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I have more sympathy than this, because while I am very aware of how weird it would be to ask a female friend to have sex with me, I am also very shy and have remained single for many years because everything that might lead to any kind of romantic relationship seemed very weird and overly forward to me at first until I forced myself to do it, with my heart beating out of my chest and every instinct telling me not to.

Because of this, the first time I had sex as an adult was at 25 and I had my first serious girlfriend, who I met online, at 28. The only relationship I've had with someone I met in person started when I was 31. So while I always have a strong reaction to these stories where I think the guy was obviously doing something really weird, I also recognize that I am really bad with women and that I really should be doing a lot more things that feel wrong to me. So who am I to judge people who make these mistakes? At least they're trying.

The thing is, no one ever sits you down and tells you how dating works. Almost everything I know comes from TV, the internet, and experience, and experience is really the most important one that allows you to figure out what from the first two sources is bullshit and what is not.

That's a relationship that usually develops from mutual attraction and having hung out together enough that clearly there are some sparks, but neither one (claims) to want a "relationship."

It sounds like he thought that's what happened.

So this poor guy wasn't ill-intentioned, but he made an absolutely horrible social blunder, one that anyone, man or woman, could have told him was a blunder, and unfortunately he's suffering the effects people usually do when committing a massive faux pas.

And this is probably where my evolved instinct to never take any risks comes from. But I had to force myself to overcome those instincts and when I started trying to date, I made some mistakes which may have resulted in my ostracization from a group of friends in my late twenties, which was very difficult, especially since it happened right before covid. Finding the right level of risk aversion to maximize social success is very difficult when you are fundamentally just not good with people. It's not enough to recognize what you shouldn't do. You also need to be able to recognize what you should do. Telling the difference is the hard part.

I empathize with this more than you might think, and I agree that the poor OP probably did misread the signals he thought she was sending.

I hope his life and future dating prospects are not destroyed by this, but he suffered a painful (and appropriate) lesson which hopefully will be a learning experience for him.

If real I dont think transferring schools to reset his reputation will be a bad call given a fair number of people meet their partners in college and given how retarded he is, he should probably optimize for that.

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