Married but still think about my ex, please help!

[Xantippe]

As you imply at the end of your post men are expected to be more active in the beginnings of relationships, so it is common that attractive young women are approached by potentially abusive men and shy young men are left alone and become lonely. Especially in a society where many people get very little guidance from their parents or other elders.
But that is not the only reason I think why when one hears “how is it possible that A is with B, A could have done so much better,” A is a woman and B is a man.

To a man especially it causes a lot of unpleasant cognitive dissonance to hear women say that they want “relationships” and understanding and respect (whereas men only want sex and beauty) and then to see some women irrationally stuck to men who obviously don’t give them these things.

But maybe this isn’t the right place to discuss this.

I think what shy young men don’t understand is that shy young men can also be abusive or can be very difficult to live and parent with, so that shyness by itself is not some sort of bill of good health. Aside from abuse, a shy person might, in fact, be rather selfish or demanding about expecting others to do the heavy lifting of getting to know them (for instance not making any effort to do light social chit chat), refusing to socialize to the most minimal degree with a girlfriend’s or wife’s friends or family no matter how awkward for the girlfriend or wife, and expecting a girlfriend or wife to do the heavy lifting with regard in various necessary communication tasks that activate the shy person’s phobias about social interaction.

So, it is not the case that all one has to do is talk a nice shy guy out of his shell and everything will be lovely forever–the shy guy can be rather a burden to even the most understanding girlfriend or wife and a lot of women will be astute enough to see that or at least intuit it.

(I’ve only seen a few episodes of Big Bang Theory, but as an example, you can imagine how tiresome it might be to be Sheldon Cooper’s girlfriend or wife.)

 

[captainmike]

Your remedy is simple. Go to confession–to the same priest–every time you seriously think about him. Over time, you will stop doing so.

 

[Estevao]

Also, how do you know that you wouldn’t be abusive if you had a girlfriend or wife? If you haven’t had a serious girlfriend or been married, you don’t know what you are capable of.

You know, you’re right, if there’s one thing feminists have taught me is that all men are potential pedophiles and wife beaters. But hey it seems that being a wife beater is a lot more attractive than being some loser nice guy.

So, have you asked anyone out in the last 90 days?

Yep, three, three rejections. Plus I went dancing, even when I could get a partner to dance with, it’s like they were repulsed by me. It doesn’t help your confidence to get that kind of primal reaction.

Also, how about asking women out that you actually have something in common with? (And just both being Catholic isn’t good enough.)

You see the problem is that there could be a girl that i have a lot in common with, but me being a socially awkward loser with no friends and who mumbles, trips over his words and still has acne scars means that it all adds up to jack, especially when there’s some alpha bad boy she’s longing after (or would prefer dreaming about rather than wasting time with a loser) like most women’s cases. All these “hobbies” like reading, knowing foreign languages, current events, etc. etc. alpha bad boy beats that 19 times out of 20.

Nice guys finish last, I wish they told me this when I was younger instead of lying to me with dozens of fanciful rom-coms about the nice guy getting attention from women, let alone ending up with one.

Anyways I want to stop derailing this thread with my moaning, it doesn’t change things one iota. I’m done. I should try to help out more on this site.

 

[Boccherini]

I think what shy young men don’t understand is that shy young men can also be abusive or can be very difficult to live and parent with, so that shyness by itself is not some sort of bill of good health.
…
(I’ve only seen a few episodes of Big Bang Theory, but as an example, you can imagine how tiresome it might be to be Sheldon Cooper’s girlfriend or wife.)

I don’t dispute it, although I don’t think that anyone thinks that shyness is a bill of good health. My impression is that shy people, men and women, feel guilty about being shy and often imagine that they are the only shy people in the world.
Also I expect many of the men who go around complaining about how their “niceness” makes them unpopular are not actually that nice, but are in fact rather creepy.

Sheldon Cooper isn’t shy actually, he’s the most self confident of the male characters in the Big Bang Theory.

 

[Xantippe]

I don’t dispute it, although I don’t think that anyone thinks that shyness is a bill of good health. My impression is that shy people, men and women, feel guilty about being shy and often imagine that they are the only shy people in the world.
Also I expect many of the men who go around complaining about how their “niceness” makes them unpopular are not actually that nice, but are in fact rather creepy.

**Yes.

Here’s a quick treatment of “nice guy syndrome”:

geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Nice_Guy_syndrome**

Sheldon Cooper isn’t shy actually, he’s the most self confident of the male characters in the Big Bang Theory.

I’ve just been watching the early episodes, and as I recall, he has a tendency to pull back when a stranger appears.

You’re correct that shy isn’t quite the right word for Sheldon, but “shy” is way more polite a term than “socially awkward” or “anti-social.” In any case, shy and socially awkward people (not to mention actively anti-social people) are a lot of work for the people that are dating or married to them. It’s not unnatural for a prospective romantic interest to have a look at that and decide, it’s not worth it to me to charm the wallflower. The more social person may not be thinking this through explicitly, but it is actually the case that if a successful relationship blooms, there may follow a decade or two of socially remediating the wallflower. And that’s if it’s a success–the wallflower may just shut himself up with his computer while the rest of his family lives their lives without him, a very lonely life for the more social person who made the effort of discovering his finer qualities and marrying him. And lord help us if it’s a guy and he has a strong view of male headship–in that case, he may view his wife’s efforts to integrate him into the human world as insubordination.

So, I would heartily recommend that shy/socially awkward/anti-social people who desire marriage work hard on developing their social skills. Firstly, it will make them more attractive and make it easier to present their finer qualities. Secondly, it will make their marriages and family life happier, as marriage and family life are essentially THE ultimate social skill challenge.

I’m a recovering shy/socially awkward/anti-social person, married to a similar person, and I’ve come to have a lot of empathy for the struggles of the gregarious person married to a shy/socially awkward/anti-social person.

Sorry, OP, we are way off-topic!