What's the point in dating in today's society

[Irishmom2]

ChunkMonk:

Men have to figure out how to get women interested in them. Women just have to figure out what guy interests them most.

I don’t think that’s what dating looks like to women.

And I can speak for myself that I went over and introduced myself to my future husband after a book group.

Being a wallflower doesn’t work for women any better than it works for men.

Yes, stop trying to figure out how to get someone interested. If you have to be someone else to get someone interested in you, at what point can you actually be yourself?

Be genuine, be yourself. If someone isn’t interested, then it wasn’t meant to be.

 

[Xantippe]

Thst’s just some of the questions that go into an approach. Imagine follow up conversations, the actual date, after the date, second date, third date, when is she my girlfriend? Is she seeing me as a romantic interest or as a ‘friend’? If she’s doing the ‘friend’ thing, is it because she takes things slow, or because she wants a beta orbiter (those girls DO exist). Is she leading me along, or is she really ‘just really busy this week’?

Where is the “actual friend” option here?

Another thing, I think you’re overestimating how much scheming and strategizing needs to go into a relationship when the couple is actually compatible. When the couple is compatible, things take on internal momentum, without the need to resort to weird tricks. (Not that they might need to revisit how they do things once they’re married and living together and eventually when they have children.)

Do you think that women don’t frantically second guess the intentions of guys they are seeing?

How many times have you cold-approached a man and asked him out on a date?

I have. And I eventually asked him to ask me to marry me, and he did.

Someone I had never seen before randomly approaching me just to as me for a date would be weird even if he was blindingly attractive and charming. I’d rather be spoken to like a person and asked out when it seemed natural.

Yeah. I’ve only ever gone out with people I met through friends, volunteering, or a church event (met my future husband at a Newman Center book group), and if any strange man spoke to me in public, I’d usually just keep on walking, and it would never cross my mind to go out with a total stranger. “Don’t speak to strangers,” is a pretty deeply ingrained habit.

That’s why the advice to get out more is not very helpful.

I think the advice to “get out more” is about getting to know more people.

Well, this is where the very real difference between guys and girls comes into play. Most girls can basically just exist, and eventually they will receive interest.

Speaking from experience, I got much better results from being proactive and attempting to meet somebody than from doing nothing.

Oh sure, they have to look presentable and have a relatively friendly attitude, but they don’t really have to do anything.

Being friendly is “doing something” and does in fact require effort.

 

[TheLittleLady]

Have you joined (or thought of organizing) “Theology On Tap”?

 

[jdavani]

Closest one is sixty miles away and I tried organizing one a while back but it fell through. I can’t do it all by myself. Basically my diocese caters to the elderly rather than the young adults. Theology on tap isn’t a priority

 

[Bataar]

Is that a back peddle I hear?

We don’t need ‘ technique’. We need genuine. To understand someone, get to know them. Be yourself and listen.

Unless a guy has some sort of “game” he will have no one to listen to. A guy who goes some place and doesn’t approach or pursue anyone (game) will not have anyone to talk or listen to.

 

[ConfusedLucy]

I know they feeling, you can’t start a young adult group when the only potential member is you.

 

[jdavani]

OP here. I might as well chime in with the game stuff. If chuck said confidence instead of game I doubt there’d be this backlash. To me, having game is the same as being good at job interviews. It’s a specific skill that anyone can learn how to talk to someone and show their intentions. Some people are just really uncomfortable with the idea that there’s technique involved in getting to know someone. Now someone else in this thread gave me advice to approach women with the mentality of a car salesman. Maybe one sale out of a hundred. It’s a good analogy.

You can be genuine while employing social techniques. We do it all the time when we meet people for the first time.

 

[jdavani]

I attend the other young adult groups from time to time but only about five people show up to those. Theology on tap needs more that five people to work lol

 

[ConfusedLucy]

I think the reason the game thing bothers me is the way it implies that women are just passive things that you can program the right response out of if you are skilled enough.

Working on confidence and social skills is a good thing for both genders and can be useful in all different parts of life. The only problem is when it comes with an attitude of entitlement.

 

[Xantippe]

Some people are just really uncomfortable with the idea that there’s technique involved in getting to know someone.

There’s certainly a technique for meeting people and being socially appropriate, but really “getting to know someone” is not what “game” is about.

 

[ConfusedLucy]

I’ve similarly tried young adult groups but the low numbers mean they have to do it on the diocesan level which makes them a pain to get to and the numbers are still in single figures.

 

[jdavani]

I agree. No one is entitled to sex or a date or anything like that.

I’m just talking from my experience as a law student, we are taught to speak a certain way and to use our body language in a certain way to convey certain things in specific instances in court. I just think learning that is social acuity. If I applied what I learned in school to meeting strangers I don’t feel I’d be ingenuine.

 

[Xantippe]

I was just looking at this from a dating coach and he makes some interesting points:

http://www.sparksofattraction.com/why-puas-are-my-toughest-clients/

“I’ve worked with short guys, guys with stutters, guys in their fifties, guys who are blind, and guys with Aspergers. Hell, give me any physical limitation commonly thought to hold a guy’s social and dating life back and I barely bat an eyelash. Those aren’t my tough clients.”

“The only challenges that I ever face come when a guy has negative beliefs that he is unwilling to let go of. While this can happen to anyone, the category of guys that most consistently challenges even my perfect record, is what’s known as the Pickup Artist, or “PUA”.”

“It’s not even the weird, technical language such as “set” and “HB8” they use to separate themselves from the rest of society, dehumanizes women, and creeps out any normal human being within earshot – that’s an easy fix – stop talking like a weirdo. Rather, the PUA subculture has two beliefs which are almost ingrained into their being that directly contradict what teach.”

[Quick note: the Red Pill/PUA language jumps out at and alienates normal people.]

“The first sabotaging belief that they hold to their core is that women, especially beautiful women have a higher value than they do. They put these women on a pedestal and then believe that they somehow have to win them over, or say things that actively demonstrate their own value in order to level the playing field. If a woman isn’t in the mood to talk, it isn’t because she’s in a bad mood, it’s because they said or did the wrong thing.”

“The second limiting belief that will forever make PUA’s my most difficult clients is that it’s what you say – specifically how funny or clever what you say is – that best displays your value and will get a woman, or anyone to like you.”

“Women, once again, are right with me on this one because the most common complaint they have in regards to man is, “he’s not listening to me, he’s just waiting for his turn to talk”. PUA’s exemplify this as they desperately try to say the “right thing” searching for the most clever joke they can make that they’re sure will get the girls to be more response.”

“It’s not complicated, but this combination of thinking they need to impress women and feeling that the words coming out of their mouth are the way to do it lead to guys running around like tap-dancing monkeys, spitting out line after line hoping that the next one is the one that “hooks the set”. Ultimately though, even though they sometimes find a girl who will hook up with them despite their cluelessness, most women are wondering why he’s trying so hard, the guys are frustrated because they’re usually putting in way more effort than they’re getting in return, and they’re dissatisfied with their lack of consistency and the ultimate knowledge that they’re doing something wrong.”

Chunk Monk (and any other PUA/Red Pill guys listening), does that remind you of anything?

I would argue that all of these issues are what leads to PUA/Red Pill dating burnout.

 

[TheLittleLady]

Really? Perhaps you have not attended a large Young Adult conference, but, there are many in the US

Tell that to:

SEEK - FOCUS

https://steubenvilleconferences.com/young-adult/

Find a Campus | Newman Ministry

Various Catholic Lawyers Guilds have large, local conferences:

http://www.catholiclawyerguilds.org/

Catholic singles

National Conference for Single Catholics

 

[Zzyzx_Road]

Men who don’t register on a typical woman’s radar (that’s most of us) have to act. No two ways around that. I don’t do cold calls, I’m nowhere near good looking enough to get away with that. I get my dates out of social circles, but most of the time, no one can be relied on to act for me, say “psst, hey Z, I know this girl you gotta meet”. No, what happens is I have to initiate the conversation with her. Or ask her to dance with me. It won’t be too creepy because there will be some social circle familiarity there and I do have some conversational skills. But I still have to ask for her number. Nothing happens unless I take proactive action.

Related to the above: It’s harder for introverted men and harder yet when they’re shy. I’m considerably less shy than I used to be but I’m still quite introverted though I can fake extroversion for longer periods than I used to. But there was definitely a time when I was a creep now and then, and rejection was once a crusher. I needed to learn confidence and social calibration and watching her body language. Even in social circles, I have to be careful of who I approach because it’s not hard for a single rejection to turn into rejections by the entire circle. A lot of men don’t even have that and they never develop the confidence required to push through rejection. Then it doesn’t help when our culture starts talking about “toxic masculinity”. That is the part most women do not get because they’re ones who get asked, they have the power to reject, they have the power to accuse. Think the old phrase “one can dish it out, but they can’t take it” comes to mind here.

Did I read about game? Yes I did. Best advice I have is to take what works for you and is compatible with being Catholic, and toss the rest. There is actually a lot of good advice buried in those sites, one just has to ferret it out and ignore the naysayers who say it’s all 100% immoral and bad and no good can ever, ever come out of going there. Only some of it is bad, not all of it. The best advice is along the lines of “get yourself together” and don’t be creepy. Worst advice is along the lines of so-called “systems” which is all most critics can see when they’re saying 100% bad.

 

[jdavani]

I don’t need believe that a guy can be inherently bad looking unless he has a deformity. If you take a guy and you give him nice tailored clothes and you had him work out he’d get a good physique. Besides looks don’t matter as much to good catholic girls than they do to women who aren’t religious.

If you can’t do the cold call it’s because of your confidence and not your looks

 

[Xantippe]

Men who don’t register on a typical woman’s radar (that’s most of us) have to act.

[snip]

Related to the above: It’s harder for introverted men and harder yet when they’re shy. I’m considerably less shy than I used to be but I’m still quite introverted though I can fake extroversion for longer periods than I used to.

[snip]

Did I read about game? Yes I did. Best advice I have is to take what works for you and is compatible with being Catholic, and toss the rest. There is actually a lot of good advice buried in those sites, one just has to ferret it out and ignore the naysayers who say it’s all 100% immoral and bad and no good can ever, ever come out of going there. Only some of it is bad, not all of it. The best advice is along the lines of “get yourself together” and don’t be creepy. Worst advice is along the lines of so-called “systems” which is all most critics can see when they’re saying 100% bad.

Women who don’t register on a typical man’s radar have to act.

It’s harder for introverted women and harder yet when they’re shy.

There is good advice buried in those sites, but the socially naive won’t be able to figure out which is which, and a lot of men have their confidence unnecessarily crushed (for example, they’ll start believing that women can’t possibly like them because they’re not 6’2" and he-man bodybuilder types).

What is good on those sites can be found elsewhere (for example, “frame” is manospherese for what normal people call “boundaries”). But because the manosphere is a cult, guys talk themselves into the idea that these are top-secret insights found only in the manosphere, whereas if they read more widely, they’d hear about boundaries, social skills, etiquette, and positive and negative reinforcement.

Edited to add: One of my recent acquaintances is a middle aged guy who is extremely charming, musical and married, despite being no more than 5’3" and having an extremely un-macho profession. His wife is taller than him and decent-looking, but obviously much shyer. The husband’s social skills are off-the-charts good, though, he’s got fantastic leadership skills, and he’s a very talented amateur singer. (He leads a community music group one of my kids is in.)

 

[Xantippe]

I really cannot get on the bandwagon of the manosphere being a good place for lonely single guys, because I have seen so many guys come through CAF who have soaked up manosphere ideas, and it has obviously poisoned them. Here are some typical problems:

–their self-confidence is shot and they believe women only want them for their money (no matter how broke they are)
–they get weirdly obsessive about weightlifting (a little bit of that goes a long way)
–they start believing that all women are tramps (AWALT)
–they start believing that they have the right to fornicate, watch porn, and commit adultery, but that women need to be pure
–they want 100% wifely obedience, while not being obedient to their religion or religious authority
–they idolize various professional PUAs who are financially motivated to fib (as they run courses/sell books)
–they focus on other people’s supposed sins, rather than growing in virtue themselves
–they stop being able to take in information from outside the manosphere cult
–they create a goal of finding a perfect fembot wife, and find real women (even good women) endlessly disappointing
–they keep doing the same things over and over, in the hope that next time it will be different, until they finally despair and give up

 

[Mr_Freeze]

Chicks looove a project. Sounds like you will meet someone soon my friend.

 

[Joe_5859]

Nice summary. I really do empathize with those guys. If I had lived in a different area or gone to a different college, I could definitely see myself having gone down such a path. There are a lot of trains of thoughts we can get hung up on that are detrimental to our well being and our spiritual life (to say nothing of our social life).

I understand what it’s like to be a socially awkward guy. I think it’s okay to feel discouraged from time to time. But don’t dwell in that place of discouragement. That never helps improve your situation.