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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   1804 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for October 18, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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When things go wrong in life, I’ve made a custom of distinguishing my experience from others by telling people, “I don’t have mistakes, I have catastrophes.”

Throughout my entire life, I have the worst luck and misfortune out of anyone that I’ve ever known. When things begin to break down, they always seem to happen in ‘just such a way’ as to inflict the maximum possible damage, or make the situation unrecoverable or come at an expense so great that any recovery would amount to a Pyrrhic victory, to any attempt to improve things.

A few months ago my girlfriend broke up with me over a situation she uncharitably misinterpreted, or was using as an excuse to exit the relationship. The following week, I lost out on a great and promising career opportunity. On August 1st my father killed himself. On September 11th, my sibling died of a drug overdose. On October 4th, a long-time friend died of a massive stroke. And today on October 19th, my trusty companion and cat, Esther, passed away after being found in the bathroom. And a dear family member is in the hospital with stage 4 cancer.

I can’t even count all the shit I’ve been through from the day I was born. I’ve been through so much abuse, bullying, homelessness, and I don’t even know how I deal with things day in and day out.

I must have the worst luck in the world. I don’t have mistakes, I have catastrophes. The only peace there is comes from knowing on a planet of 8 billion people, I can’t be the only one out there that’s been there.

I’m terribly sorry to hear everything you’ve been through and I hope very much your luck turns around.

That's awful my friend. Sometimes the world is cruelly unfair, and we suffer ridiculous amounts for no real reason we can discern. Sounds like you have suffered more than your fair share.

I won't sit here and try to give you advice or meaningless platitudes, but at least people here can witness what you've been through. And hey, you still manage to write intelligent posts on the Motte, so that's something I guess.

Reading what you've wrote what a tough couple months. The worst tragedies I've heard from friends and acquaintances are someone living in NYC during 9/11 and remembering going to funerals for three weeks straight, and someone who's family lost everything in hurricane Katrina.

Hmm. That's interesting. There's a lot of possible explanations for this. The ones that come to mind are basically poverty and what you might call a cultural clash, especially if you are trying to make the jump from poor to middle class.

I’m astonished that anyone ever managed to date without dating apps.

I’m a 25-year-old man. This year I have been living a very social, outgoing lifestyle. To explain what I mean by that, this is what I’ve done in the past month.

  1. I went to 4 concerts
  2. I went to a friend’s birthday party
  3. I went to 8 Meetup events. Most of them were with a group called “20 somethings in [city]” that mainly does happy hours but I also went to a few board game events and an improv session.
  4. I hosted 2 game nights myself.
  5. I informally gathered with friends at bars 2 times
  6. I went rock climbing with friends 2 times
  7. I went to a haunted house with some friends.

These weren’t all with the same friends. I have lots of friends and I make new ones fairly often.

I’m hoping to eventually find a girlfriend, and other than dating apps it’s common advice to be very social and meet new people. I do. (Not only for this reason, I also like it.)

The problem is the demographics of those friends. I made a spreadsheet of everyone I’ve done social activities with lately and it was like 70% men and 25% women who are in relationships. Even though it was like 60-70 people, only a handful were single women. And of course being single and female is not the only criteria for being a good match for me. I’ve still yet to go out with a woman I didn’t meet online.

I don’t really understand how anyone did this in the Before Times because I don’t really think my situation is that unusual. I think it’s normal for a man to have more male friends than female friends and it’s also normal for many people in their mid 20s to be in relationships.

For people who regularly find or used to find people to date by means other than dating apps / the Internet, how does it actually work? Is my problem that my milieu is really unusual for having a low ratio of single women? Or is meeting people to date at general social activities unusual for everyone, and “cold approaches” more common than I’d assumed?

Going on the 2010s internet asking this question got you a list of places where women didn't want to be talked to by men. This included streets and gyms and supermarkets, but also all classes and clubs, parties, bars, conventions, concerts, festivals, and speed dating events. Oh, and if a woman turns you down, it's always because she was afraid of you. That last part in particular has completely fucked my self-esteem to this day.

Half the time that a woman approaches me at a social event (once every two years or so) I somehow get in trouble for it. Her friends mobilize or an event coordinator complains. One time a completely unaffiliated woman called security on me because a woman asked me to dance with her.

I think you're short on what I would call Tier 2 social events, and heavy on Tier 1 events.

Tier 1 events are things like the Meetups where people would have to make a conscious effort to seek them out, or have minimal opportunity for extended social or physical interaction. Women don't usually attend these (relative to men at least) unless they're extremely female-oriented activities, or are an opportunity to show off (think dancing/clubs/bars)

Tier 2 social events are things like house-parties where you have to be invited by either the host or someone else who was invited. As you can expect, single women tend to get invited to things more than single men, so it creates a good ratio. The purpose of Tier 1 events is to make friends to invite you to Tier 2 events. Parties, formal events etc. This is where the "make female friends" advice comes in, but really just "make friends that are either female or sexually/romantically/socially successful is probably more accurate.

Typically, all social networks are comprised of interconnected social Hub People, each of who is a center of a social circle comprised of Spoke People who are connected to the rest of the group (other than 1 or 2 people) through the Hub. If you've ever met one of those guys who just seems to know everybody everywhere, that's a Hub. If you aren't a Hub, then you have to find one.

P.s. (I suppose there's probably a distinct Tier 3 sort of event, like a sex party or orgy, where you more or less know you're going to be sexually involved, but I've never participated in such things.)

Thanks for your reply. For what it’s worth, my experience is not consistent with the theory that “tier 2” social events have higher ratios of women than “tier 1” social events. I’ve been to private parties that are almost entirely men.

That's fair. Entirely possible it just varies based on the social circle. I can only go based on what I've seen and heard.

Dating apps have destroyed the horniness component of social events. They haven't just enabled a new style of dating, they have completely cannibalized the previous setting.

70% men and 25% women who are in relationships

Second, call me a broken record, but : "Self-delusion, self-delusion, self-delusion". If you do an activity to date women, women smell your desperation and run away. If you do an activity because you like it, it will cater to your gender, and therefore be mostly male.

Choose an activity you can see yourself liking that single women also love. Lie and delude yourself into believing that you are doing this activity purely for the activity and not for the single women. Force yourself to show genuine interest in activity, until you eventually start getting interested in it. Now, that you're convinced you are not doing this activity to date, engage with the rest of the social group without any care for their gender. Why would you care, you aren't doing this to date. Overtime, you genuinely forget that you chose the activity for the women. If you remember, then gaslight yourself. Now you have single female friends who see you as the safe man around them. You have never made a move on them because you do this activity for self-actualization and not for women. Your platonic female friends notice that you have been single for a while. They ask you if you want to date their friend. You are reluctant because you don't do this for the ladies. But well, you are single, and their friend does seem cute. What's the harm. Afterall, you might have gaslight yourself, but self-delusion is eventually just that, delusion. You don't TRULY believe that you're happy being single. 1 date, 2 dates, 3 dates, and eventually you meet a woman who likes you back. Maybe it works out. Congrats, you now have a girl-friend.

Wait what ? How did you manage to get past women's walls, all while having started as a desperate single man ?

It's classic method acting. Play the long game. Self-delude. By the end of it you have a partner. And guess what, you are just as likely to have found some real friends and a genuine hobby in this process as well.

milieu is really unusual for having a low ratio of single women?

never drink your own koolaid. Your milieu didn't just happen. You drank your own koolaid that women like self-driven men who work on themselves. Yes they do, as long as it is the things that they find attractive. And as long as that drive puts them in common spaces with them over prolonged times.

this is what I’ve done in the past month

Consistency is key. Especially if you want to find a partner rather than just get laid. Pick 1. You did so much dude. Just rock climb, a LOT MORE. Like 3 times a week. You aren't going to date any of your rock climbing female-friends. But they might set you up with someone eventually. Keep your thirst out of the gym. bring it to dinner parties they invite to you later.

It is likely that it will be more or less understood that you will never have a partner. You aren't making a million a year, you don't have enough charisma for a career in politics, AND you are fundamentally disgusting on a deep visceral biological level due to autism or shortness or something like that. The best you can realistically hope for is someone that holds their nose and endures that disgust due to religious or personal convictions.

Are you charismatic enough to convince people to more or less go through Hell basically to make you happy? Are you able to hang in a contest of wills against a Navy SEAL or better yet the Saigon monk who calmly burned himself to death? Are you OK with being maimed, even killed, by your partner? Being a nurse and caretaker to someone who's addicted to something and only using you as an enabler? If you are OK with all of these things - and a goddamn saint to boot, AND you never make a social blunder large enough to be described in words - congratulations. You have The Right Stuff to be in a relationship.

Climbing Mt. Everest is probably easier; I think K2 is on a par with being in a relationship. Or maybe Everest - if you're doing it without oxygen and maybe solo.

Is this sarcasm ? So other than ~0.1% of the world population, no one else is worthy of a partner ? What kind of utter bullshit is that ?

You need help my man. I have seen the ugliest, most useless bums find a partner who genuinely loves them, have kids and live a content life. Relationships are literally the easiest thing. There are exactly as many men as there are women. Every ancestor of yours had a relationship. It's that simple.

Dating apps is not real life. Social isolation is the real disease. Get out there, meet people, be yourself, and lose some of that cynicism. God, nothing kills a vibe like deep cynicism. Give it enough collisions, and eventually something will work out. The rich, charismatic, virtuous and attractive might find a partner with fewer collisions, but there is no upper limit on how many times you can roll.

It's not that bad out there man. If you are white, and in such a deep resentful rut, then just move to a South-East-Asian country. You'll find someone who loves you for what you are (white) and what you bring to the table (citizenship). No, that's not gold-digging. She will still love you, in the truest sense with deep gratitude for the life you provide her. Go be happy.

I dated in the early era of dating apps, but it was a weirdly low success rate compared to in person interactions. (or maybe it wasn't weird and I was using the apps wrong)

I played a co-ed recreational sport. It was about 75-90% male. After a tournament there would usually be a party. About half the time I could find someone to be with for the night at those parties. Aside from me there were many couples that formed. Something about physical exercise gets the human mojo flowing. Probably part of why dance is such a good activity.

It does sound like you are in bad ratio environments, but I can't honestly say that always stopped me. I met my wife at work, where about 80% of coworkers were male. The unspoken benefit of a broken ratio environment is that getting picked means you are a top pick, and not just whats available. I think it tends to create situations where maybe the women are a little more interested.

In general, I'd say don't be worried. If your end goal is to meet someone and marry them, and you are getting any hits then time is on your side. It may not feel like it. But five years of getting a chance means you are probably going to get lucky. The people I know that stayed single well into adulthood did so for one of two reasons:

  1. They chose it. They did not want a committed relationship, only sex and flings.
  2. They accepted it. They did not even attempt to get out in the dating game. They never asked anyone out, never flirted, and never even left the house.

Keep it up, you'll meet someone. Might take longer than you wanted, but don't lose hope. The dating 'game' is a game you can only lose by quitting.

I highly recommend learning how to dance, it's one of the things a man should know how to do. Personally I do competitive dancing so you have a set partner who you work with and has the same choreo as you - certain steps are not leadable so you need to have an agreement in advance of who will do what when if you want to do them (also it's meant to look good rather than feel good, my Latin teacher says that if you're untrained and a move feels good, it probably looks shit), so you don't really meet that many new people (and competitions are not an environment conductive to meeting people, everyone is extremely focused and doesn't need distractions). However once you get good at the competitive stuff and learn how to lead properly (takes about 3-4 years of training), you can start going to social dancing where the atmosphere is a lot more relaxed and your superior skills at looking good while dancing compared to everyone else also in attendance will attract women to you, and then you an take it from there.

Dancing as a whole is also very female dominated, there's a huge shortage of good leaders, so once you get to that point you're suddenly highly in demand.

Equally though please don't go dancing just to hit on women, it's obvious to everyone from a mile away and disrupts the flow of the class. In fact I'd recommend avoiding women completely for the first year or so to focus on improving your technique, having women you find hot nearby is distracting from what the teacher is saying.

Dancing is a meme recommendation for a reason, and conspicuously missing from your list. When I look over my dating history, almost all the women I've dated came from social dancing. The trick is to do it for long enough that you don't look like you're only there to bring someone home, and to have enough skill that it's enjoyable for the ladies to dance with you. Bonus: this is also around the time it starts to become really fun. If you choose a closer/more intimate style of dance, there are all sorts of subtle escalations, you can see how you react to each other's touch, and so on. But any style in your town with a passable (and, if important to you, a not politically-converged) scene lets you move between dancing and talking when you run out of steam for either.

How does it actually work?

The social night where I met my last ex:

  • The night was a social with a "warm-up class" before-hand, before the lights went down and the music really got going.
  • I was running late to the class but was able to slot in and do a decent-enough job. I'd been away for ages so there was a bit of "who's this guy?", maybe?
  • Once the night shifted from "class" to "party", we had a few dances together. The usual etiquette in this scene was to dance maybe two songs with someone. More is a bit possessive, and less is a bit "I'm not really feeling this". This means that there's a decent rate of churn between partners, and people move on/off the floor pretty regularly. (Different cities and styles will vary here.)
  • We'd chatted and danced on-and-off through most of the night, and I also noticed that she was starting to blow off other people's invitations to dance in favor of talking with me. (I'd say it's usually pretty rare to dance with the same person more than twice in a night. We danced two or three times during the night, and then shared the last song.)
  • The way we danced as the night wore on became much closer and more and more comfortable. This is hard to describe in words, but it was much more comfortable than the usual "ok you're not a creep so let's dance properly".
  • We ended up dancing the final song of the night with each other. I was feeling good about how things were going, and we'd fallen into dancing close again, so I moved her arms from the usual frame to having her elbows behind my neck. (She later told me specifically that she really liked how confidently I did this. I was just having a good time.)
  • We ended up talking more once the lights came up, swapped numbers, helped with pack-up, etc. Teed up a date over the phone and took it from there.

I met another of my exes at a class (but I think the social environment is a lot better):

  • We'd been going to the same classes for a little while
  • The classes tend to have people rotate partners during the lesson, which is great for practice as everyone dances a little differently
  • This girl started lingering longer with me when we were practicing, and didn't linger nearly as much with other partners
  • Classes often had a "mini-social" at the end, and we'd often find ourselves dancing together after class, maybe a little longer or a little more flirtatiously than strictly necessary.
  • So I asked her after class one week, if I "could take her out on a date next week". I like saying "date" because it's absolutely clear. If you give off "secure" vibes, like you're not going to go to pieces or turn into a stalker if she says "no", then at worst she'll just be flattered.
  • I have seen other dudes get numbers after classes, so it's definitely a thing people do. But spend a good few weeks building up your skills so you're not "that guy who wants only one thing".

I see a decent number of women on the apps writing things like "I'd rather be approached in person, but that doesn't happen, so here I am". So consider that permission to do so?

I see a decent number of women on the apps writing things like "I'd rather be approached in person, but that doesn't happen, so here I am". So consider that permission to do so?

Are these women aware that in the 2010s, there was a campaign of feminists telling men that no one wants to be approached in person anywhere ever? I also recall ~30% of Facebook posts by women being complaints that men talk to (or look at) them. Yes, I still very much mad.

Almost certainly not, because real people aren't always online.

Which style dance do you do? Latin?

Yeah I used to dance a Latin style. I found Latin scenes more politically compatible with my views than something like Lindy Hop.

I like this post because it doesn’t only give advice but also describes a real(istic) scenario in which the scenario leads to dating. People who ask dating advice usually have no idea how even the most favourable situations turn into dates and they are hopeless at situations that require you to know what you are doing. I remember once upon a time reading some annotated successful tinder conversations and how it completely clarified online dating to me after many failed attempts

You don't happen to have links to those annotated conversations, do you? I tend to struggle online.

Nope sorry.. I haven't been on the dating market for a long time fortunately

Dancing absolutely doesn't come naturally to me, do you think the classes can overcome that?

I personally think I have next to zero dancing talent (I'm literally flatfooted and empirically the people who started with me got to higher levels before me) and I get complements on my "skill" by untrained people frequently. A surprisingly high number of people in my club are super nerdy STEM type people and the teachers explain this as dancesport being attractive to the sorts of people who like systemising stuff since it's literally "we tell you how exactly to do this move step by step and which portions of your body to move when and where" and there is basically zero "just do what feels right to you" crap.

As a proper sport there's literally a book that details how exactly each step is to be performed and what steps are permitted in which dances. In competitions judges will notice how well you perform your steps when deciding to mark you down for the next round or not.

Here is an example video of what it's like to learn a step: https://youtube.com/watch?v=jNq75FrUgV8 , this one is a bit complicated (it looks simple, it's really not) but you can see the process to learning a step, it's all systematic.

I'm worried I'm too uncoordinated for even rote learning to work on a useful timescale, but I'll certainly give it a try when I can! Thanks

It's one of these things that really benefits from six months of practice, like boxing. Won't make you into the next Tyson or Travolta, but you'll get enough movements drilled into your head to not embarrass yourself.

Partner dance can absolutely be learned. You memorize figures and where to step literally down to a fraction of a second!

To some degree, yes. Especially given that you are a fairly conscientious and determined individual. While doctors aren't Navy SEALs, they can't be chumps in the conscientiousness department.

Especially given that you are a fairly conscientious and determined individual.

I have ADHD, and more informally, I scored like 2nd percentile in the Big 5 assessment! So you'd be surprised, I manage despite my gross deficiency in that regard.

It's not just an issue of conscientiousness, it's whether or not it works, at least for those for whom dancing doesn't come naturally.

That's exactly the point of classes. I'm not great, but I got to the point where people started seeking me out to dance, and it's been said that my entire bloodline has two left feet. Just give it a go - worst that can happen is you burn about 8 evenings and still hate it.

Sure, I'll consider it, thank you! Might be a bit less embarrassing on the dance floor.

In my experience probably not, but you can get good enough to enjoy it (but still quietly seethe when you meet someone with natural talent).

Hmm, something to consider for when I have more free time and disposable income then. For now, I'll settle for drinking enough that I can convince myself to shake my limbs about a bit in a dimly lit room 🙏

In the before times (but still post sexual revolution) there were a billion singles mixers, there was speed dating, there were classified ads, matchmakers, there were cruises and vacation destinations (like Club Med) that largely catered to young single people etc etc. Like obviously people in the 90s were meeting and dating.

I’ve never used apps but friends I know have met boyfriends there, but mostly college/grad school, workplace, parties, friends of friends and so on. In fact I’d say most have met through parties and friends of friends of people we or they went to school with who still live in NYC or London. Maybe that’s a class thing but I don’t think so. I go to a lot of parties where gender ratio of single people seems to be 50/50, men seem to be doing fine.

I think a lot of this is just men and women having social circles and being in places or environments that don’t overlap as much as others do.

I'm immensely grateful that my profession has an excellent ratio of men to women, and that these days the women slightly predominate.

Then again, I never had any particular issues getting a date when I wasn't studying in bumfuck nowhere, so YMMV. The advice that others have given, namely to shoot your shot whenever possible and not societally suicidal, is good advice. It's a numbers game, and that doesn't change even if the numbers are smaller.

How did you date in India? Apps or just ask out people you meet in class or whatever? Is the expectation that people won’t have sex until it’s serious?

I mean, contrary to popular belief, Indians can and do have relationships before being packed off to an arranged marriage (and even those are usually family sanctioned dates more than the bride and groom seeing each other for the first time on the day of the wedding, at least out of the boonies).

As for how I've dated, well, it's usually been people in my med school, or a friend of a friend. The girl I was seeing for the longest, almost five years, I met at a friend's birthday party. Current girlfriend, well, let's just say our plan to do a research paper together ended up involving another kind of biology, but we met in the maximally nerdy manner of both being in the same local study group for a medical exam.

I've tried Tinder and managed to squeeze a handful of dates out of it, but it didn't go anywhere. I imagine it's even worse than the West, about the only person I've met with any success on it was a doc buddy of mine, who despite the shared degree, was hogging all six of the packs. It's an utter wasteland as far as the eye can see.

I'm pretty charming, so I have no issues just flirting on and off in person or sliding into DMs later. It's that HR meme personified, you just have to be funny and provide plausible deniability.

Now, the last question depends strongly on where and who you are. There are sections of richer society that are almost as libertine as the West, but the UMC in general doesn't usually do one night stands, perhaps after a few dates, and the lower you go, the longer it takes to get past kisses and heavy petting. Sleeping around a lot will likely get you heavily slut shamed, and even the wildest women I've dated would be considered pretty tame by American standards. My slag of an ex, has what, maybe 10-15 notches on her belt that I know of? At most it's like 20. But things are only getting more liberal, and horny medical students or young doctors are usually independent enough that it's not a big deal and they can usually put their past behind them when it's time to settle down.

Is there a college in your city? That seems like the obvious place to meet early-20s women.

Otherwise, you need to go where the young women are. Ioper's post below has a lot of good suggestions but you'll know your own city better. I recommend partner dancing classes to every guy who asks this question so that's worth a shot if you think you'd enjoy it.

Is there a college in your city? That seems like the obvious place to meet early-20s women.

Seconded. Take a graduate class a semester or something like that, now you're on campus for a good reason. Some losers will think you're a creep, ignore them.

You don’t have to wait for events. You can talk to any girl that catches your eye in public. Work on day game, not event orchestration. Spear fish, no net.

I’ve done social activities with lately and it was like 70% men and 25% women who are in relationships.

it's always like this. lots of men competing for relatively few women . work , school, work-family outings are different in that the social aspect is mostly taken care of: everyone comes from the same sort of social milieu or cut from the same cloth, or without the baggage that comes with prior relationships .

it's always like this. lots of men competing for relatively few women .

Where did all the women go, nunneries? I don’t actually believe this, women will see a number of men approaching them sure, but the population isn’t 75% men / 25% women.

It's a truism but they're going where men don't. All those activities that you'd never consider, and if you did you would dismiss as at the best a bit girly. The girlier the activity the more women will be there and the less men will want to go even in the knowledge the there are lots of women there. At the top end you have "wellness" classes that counsel eating as the salve for your neuroses, or losing weight and getting fit by sitting still and breathing. There'll be a few men there. At the far end you have a club for knitting bootees for premature babies. They won't be at the model railway hot sauce tournament, where even if you're not remotely interested in those things you probably wouldn't be uncomfortable if you washed up there by chance.

Adding on to your spear-not-net fishing advice, the most pragmatic suggestion I can think of would be shops, specifically food shops and supermarkets. Firstly you have to go there anyway. Second you can probably get some indication (and give some indication) of who is more likely to be single by whether they have a basket and are browsing the wine section or if they have a trolley and they're loading it up with mascot breakfast cereal and lunchables. You can somewhat narrow the demographics by time of day too - retirees, school mums, working lunchers, unemployeds, school mums again, working diners, weekly family shoppers, then finishing with evening drinkers - or by swapping the supermarket for the health food shop or the bijou bakery. To some degree the times and places that you shop will naturally select for your own matching demographic. And third you have a lot of opportunities for open-ended casual interactions and brief conversation starters, and the people are in flux so there's less of a weird sense of imposition in sparking those brief conversations that there might be in a bar or cafe where people sit at one table for the duration of their visit.

If it's going to succeed though I'd say it's probably best approached as a low stakes strategy where the expected outcome is weighed heavily towards buying the ingredients for a nice meal, weighed moderately to sharing a pleasant moment with a stranger, and minimal expectation placed on landing the woman of your dreams after five minutes cruising the bog roll aisle. The advantage is that you get endless repeat chances plus the opportunity to raise your culinary skills in the meantime. You also have a baked-in face-saving retreat of the need to complete your shopping the moment any promising interaction risks becoming awkward, unlike a bar where you might have just bought a fresh drink or a social group that doesn't finish for another hour or more. It's a bit like talking to someone in the street but without the sense of interrupting their travel.

[Caveat: I've never done this but I have had pleasant interactions with women in the supermarket regardless, and I'm an introvert with resting fuck-off face who lives in a fairly socially reserved area and skates through the shop on rails to get out the door as soon as possible.]

Wellness classes represent the top end of that spectrum?

Dance classes/events, arts classes, choir, church, certain volunteering orgs, "leftist"/"green" political orgs, gym classes, yoga classes, meditation classes etc.

There is a plethora of activities where the women are a clear super-majority, to practically only women.

Yes, this stuff is really just the flipside of, like, your kindergarten school teacher friend asking where have all the single men her age gone.

Gallery openings in London and NYC are (among young attendees) certainly mostly women from what I can tell.

The old fashioned and still fairly reliable way is to go to a bar and start chatting to some girls. I've met a good chunk of the women I've dated through dating apps but the rest are mostly just women I walked up and said hello to at a bar. The walking up and saying hello bit is important, there have been periods when I would go to bars a lot and not have any luck with women because I just talked with my friends and women usually aren't going to walk up to a group of guys to spark off a conversation.

If you don't like that idea I've found language exchange meetups to be very gender balanced and you can get to know people beforehand a lot more than you would at a bar.

Has anybody here ever substantially changed their personality? I don't mean a simple increase in confidence or developing a taste for beer. I mean a fundamental shift in polarity -- going from an introvert to an extrovert, a risk-averse nerd to an overconfident jock, etc.. Do you think there's any limit on the changes people can make in themselves, barring traumatic events or assistance from drugs?

Hmm. My personality changed at age 15 following a traumatic experience. I went from jovial class clown to quiet, somewhat intense, gentle nerd. Wasn't deliberate though.

The most reliable way to change your personality is to change the contexts in which it is expressed. If you're always a nebbish follower, it is likely because there are always other people leading you around, and you've adjusted yourself to that. Want to be more assertive? Put yourself in charge of people, you'll learn. They'll look at you as a leader, you'll learn to lead. Over time, leading will become the habit, and that will take over in other contexts outside of the context where you were forced to adapt.

Obviously there are limits to this. I'll never be the overconfident jock that, say, Sauce Gardner is because there is no possible context for me to be that much more talented than that many others. But if you want to feel more like a confident jock, the thing to do is to work out and find a rec league of a sport weird enough that you can compete; that will give you the context you need. That's why white people in America invent a new sport every five years or so, so that people can experience that context when they aren't good enough for the headline team sports.

I remember a phase change in early childhood. I was a rather introverted kid, refusing to interact with strangers or even family outside my immediate one.

One day, an aunt of mine tried talking to me, and I remember mentally going fuck it, what's the harm? and engaged in a bit of polite conversation. She was extremely surprised, pleasantly so, and I recall feeling gratified by the positive feedback, along the lines of "huh, that wasn't bad at all, maybe I should talk to people?", and I did so from there on out. I'd say that's a change from an utter introvert to an ambivert.

A more recent example was college, where I made an effort to make friends, not that I tried particularly hard, but it seems I'm an interesting enough guy that I had friends who would look for me and drag me along to places even if I was perfectly content being a shut-in.

I've changed slowly over many years. Was an INFP Myers Briggs personality type as a kid and teen. Now I consistently test INTJ, and the degree of introvertedness has gone down a lot.

The noticeable effect is that I am much more hard hearted. Can be good and bad sometimes.

I think there are some limits on how much you can change, depending on your brain. Even the most socially inclined autists are at a social disadvantage. I spent years trying to fight and cope with depression through willpower and habits alone before giving up and getting medicine.

I think most people are more mentally flexible than they give themselves credit for. But it takes many years of good habits to create the change. The main way to do it is just pretend to be the person you want to be, and if you do that long enough you no longer have to pretend eventually.

At some point I went from looking like a doormat for abuse but actually being on a hair trigger to start swinging and getting in fights all the time; to looking like if you talked shit your life was in danger but actually being calm and able to avoid conflict.

It was a purposeful change, after I got pretty good at wrestling and got big enough that I almost ended some guys whole career as a functional human in freshman year over some stupid bullshit, it put the fear of god into me.

I think that is the limit also: You need either a trauma response avoidance of something; or a crazy desire for something to make the change. you can't just think your way into it.

The Hock provideth.

Yes. I went from the "dumb guy" to the "smart guy". Im naturally "smart" but that was unrealised/unapparent until I got to university because I spent a majority of my school years skipping classes, playing video games and just fucking around. In university I decided to take things seriously for once given the higher stakes.

I believe this applies to me. I have gone from: highly introverted (and I mean never spoke unless spoken to, never attended a single social event, etc) to extremely extroverted (arranging the social events, and being a hub of my social circle instead of a spoke.) The shift was part gradual, part lurching, and quite difficult. The largest shifts were when I joined an improv troupe, acted in a play, and began going dancing at clubs. No drugs, no alcohol, nothing of the sort was involved.

Basically I think the crux of it was forcing myself to do things that were completely contrary to my nature for an extended period of time (constantly for months). Eventually the nature gave out and adapted to the situations it was forced into. Any extended period where I went without social contact resulted in me getting reset very quickly. It has to be maintained for years to stick.

After a couple years with basically 0 days without extended social contact, something flipped in me and I actually enjoy it now.

Why did I do this? I deeply believe that wide social connection would cure effectively every social ailment of the postmodern era, and was determined to make my own little piece of the world a bit better. It has largely worked, though the work never stops. Such is the nature of good things.

That's amazing. I too was (and to some degree still am) introverted, to the point that I'd need to just escape to silence sometimes if I had to spend a lot of time around people because of some quasi social activity (eg school). In my early twenties I experienced some fairly dramatic changes abroad and when I returned home I, too, was arranging reunions and social get-togethers and hosting parties.

But then it stopped. I think the catalyst was a situation where a girl I really liked basically began completely ignoring me after a sexual encounter. I chalk it up to my expressed neediness in the face of her confidence--I can remember at a traffic light as I sat in my Volkswagen Jetta a Camaro pulling up and she was in the passenger seat laughing at the aside of a guy with this long blonde Fabio hair--not at all like me, and not at all like what I would have thought she (intellectual, Jewish, nerdy) would like. Lesson learned. Anyway right about then it was as if my confidence had been deflated like a balloon.

In the many, many years since I've forced myself, similar to as you describe, into a career where I daily stand in front of people (my typical lecture is in front of 100+) and this has helped forge me into someone no longer so choked up it's hard to speak, but I still think I'm am introvert.

I'm not sure that I've substantially changed my introverted self to an extroverted sense, but I can "mask" (or whatever term the kids are using these days) significantly better than I used to.

Just an update to the disagreement I had with my girlfriend that I mentioned in last week's thread. Apparently it wasn't a huge deal to her, because after that first argument, she didn't bring it up again. Pretty much the best outcome I could have hoped for.

Hi folks! In less than 2 weeks I'm running the Dublin Marathon to raise money for Focus Ireland, a charity which provides food and shelter for homeless people in Ireland. If any of you have a few shekels to spare for a great cause, please consider making a donation: https://www.idonate.ie/fundraiser/FionnMurray (I've already met my fundraising target, but it never hurts to exceed it.)

I normally post here under a different username which has multiple AAQCs, but the fundraiser link reveals my real name and face, hence the throwaway account.

I'm entertaining a few different job offers at the moment and curious to see how others here might handle negotiations. What equations do you use to compare compensation packages across disparate elements? For example, how do you decide whether net-gain in take-home pay is worth losing a few days of vacation. How do you measure the dollar value of a telework day? How do you price in a commute aside from the costs of gas?

Well, about fifteen years ago I kind of got tricked on something like this. I showed up at this job with an attitude of "I will work very hard but also be aggressively gay until you fire me for being gay," which sounds weird but my employer at the time had a policy of firing people for being openly gay which wasn't just legal, but actually specifically approved by the President of the United States. By the time I figured out my organization wasn't actually obeying the policy, and in fact mostly used it to get rid of low performing homosexuals and as a convenient escape hatch for people of any orientation who wanted to quit without the negative consequences outlined in their employment contracts, which included imprisonment, it had been almost three years and I felt like I had basically been conned into working harder than at any previous job.

I coasted for a little over a year, but only because I couldn't quit without being thrown in jail. Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed about a year after I got out. For subsequent jobs, I went back to my previous policy of taking an entry level position, performing better than most entry-level hires for about a year, then losing interest and quitting without giving notice.

Obviously, I wouldn't have posted this if you'd specified in your post that you wanted useful advice for your situation instead of expressing curiosity in general, since we obviously have very different goals in life; but on the Motte, how one phrases the question will affect the answers one receives. ;-P

But in all seriousness, I would strongly second @Walterodim 's advice about placing cultural fit with the company above monetary compensation. I once moved from a hotel company to a bank for more money and it was a huge mistake. Going from $12.50 per hour to $14 for similar low-level call center duties is very different from the offers you'll be facing quantitatively, but qualitatively similar to what Walter outlines--but I went from enjoying my work and co-workers to being deeply unhappy with the work and consequently unpleasant to otherwise likable people, even though the job description was virtually identical.

If they're all in the same ballpark, where you need to get this granular, you're better off treating them all the same and deciding based on company / work / manager .

If that's all in the same ballpark, and you don't have a preference, then the answer is easy:

Go to the one that has the higher take-home pay and try negotiate the vacation up to parity with the other.

Unless telework affects your availability for some of your tasks (which is to say that some of your work has to be done in person and thus telework complicates scheduling), I wouldn't consider it to be a concession from the employer and thus not worth any amount of pay.

To be honest, I would go mostly by vibes if things are close enough that I need to start assigning numeric values to telework days. The difference between $150K and $170K annual compensation just isn't the kind of thing that's going to matter as much to me as whether I like my colleagues, believe in the products I'm working on, and think I'll be treated fairly going forward. If I lack large numeric or vibes differences, I would ask for more compensation and see if one of them decides to take me up on it.

Since your relative preference for those factors is probably somewhat subjective, I would argue there isn't really any advantage to a very complex model. Assuming the offers are somewhat similar, you can probably just use a linear model and assign coefficients to roughly match your preference. Kind of like a decision matrix or this example. I would just put everything in dollar units since that's probably the actual thing that's up for negotiation. Then negotiate for the highest dollar equivalent compensation. The whole exercise uses an absurdly simplistic model with made up numbers, but is probably more accurate than just winging it. It's not even very wrong, in the sense that you can expand most reasonable functions with a first order Taylor series in the relevant variables about the point of interest.

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