I don’t think it’s reactionary. I think it comes from a common experience that single guys have. If it were easier to find a woman you connect with, who just wants to hang out and get to know you for your personality, then I suppose it would be that simple. As it stands though, women like that might exist, but they’re like unicorns.
As a single guy, if you go out to third spaces (few and far between as they are, especially ones that don’t center around alcohol), with the intention of finding someone to date, people will call you a creep. If you go to a hobby group to try to meet like-minded people, and you find someone you’re interested in romantically, if you even so much as hint at it, people will call you a creep. If you’re in public, the general consensus is “Don’t bother women; they can only assume you’re a predator and they’d rather be mauled by a bear than talk to you.”
So meeting women in person is out of the question. But if you go to the dating apps,
the vast majority of women there are either bots, or they’re just advertising their instagram or their snapchat or their tiktok or their onlyfans and they don’t actually check their profile for matches. And the few who actually match with you end up just wanting to sell you cryptocurrency and aren’t actually interested in meeting you for a date; maybe they aren’t really the person pictured in the profile.
And the relatively few real women who are actually on the apps are either filtering for height and/or income level, or fast-swiping based on looks (sucks to suck if you don’t take good selfies), or if they actually read your profile then you still have to somehow manage to be unique without being cringe, seem “normal” without being cliché, show some personality without sounding self-centered, express confidence but don’t be self-aggrandizing.
So that’s already an impossible balance to strike on just a silly profile on a platform that’s already inherently kinda cringe. So ultimately it comes down to looks, height, and income level. And even if there are women on the apps who look past that stuff, they’re only really being shown the profiles of guys who pay the top-tier subscription and pay for extra boosts on top of that. And the guys who get the most likes (meaning attractive, tall, and high-earning).
And if you somehow luck out and get matched with a real woman, but you don’t immediately sound enthusiastic (but not too enthusiastic, mind!), or if you some how even slightly indicate that you want to know if she’s real before getting emotionally invested in the conversation, then she gets offended and calls you sexist for even implying that a scam account could be catphishing as a woman.
And if you somehow make it through all of that unscathed, and have a real conversation with a woman, even if it seems to be going well, she might ghost you at any moment without any indication as to why. It could be something you said, maybe taken a different way from how you meant it, or maybe it sounds cringe or cliché or didn’t land or whatever. Or maybe you took too long to respond. Or maybe you responded too fast. Or maybe she found a “better” guy and moved on. Or maybe she went on a date with some douchebag and now she thinks all guys are like that. You’ll just never know. But you have to make it through at least a week or two of navigating all of this perfectly, and then if you’re lucky, you might get a first date, after which she might ghost you for any reason or no reason at all. And you probably need to go on at least four or five dates before discussing any sort of commitment or expectations after which you might finally feel somewhat secure in the budding relationship.
So dating apps are out of the question too. And other online spaces are too, for that matter, because if you bother women there then they call you a creep.
So you can’t meet women in person. You can’t meet women online. What’s left?
But a guy can’t exactly get away with saying he’s searching for a diamond in the rough, because apparently that’s misogynist since it implies there are women out there who don’t meet his standards (such as “treat me as a person and not as a wallet.” Even the implication that some women might just be looking for a free meal is seen as sexist!).
Describing the process of dating as an interview process is viewed as sexist (if you’re a guy of course, because apparently that objectifies women; but if a woman describes it the same way then she’s “liberated” and “empowered”).
So all-in-all if a guy lucks out enough to actually land a date, and the woman suggests somewhere expensive, if he suggests somewhere cheap or free then she might ghost him and then it might be another year or two before he’s offered another date. Is that really an offer he can turn down?
If you’re wandering in the desert, and you’re starving, and someone offers you a grilled cheese for $30, do you really have a choice to say “That’s too expensive! I’ll go somewhere else.”? Airlines know this.
And yet society still hasn’t caught up to recognize how lopsided the dating scene is. Yes, women face problems and that sucks. Most people don’t deny that. But the slightest discussion of the problems men face gets viewed as an attack on womankind writ large, and immediately flamed.
Edit: collapsed the rant about dating apps because it was a tangent and also the longest part
I don’t have time or energy to read or respond to your entire comment because honestly who does.
One thing that really irks me is the “its impossible to meet women in public because they treat you like a creep when you approach them to find a date”
Women don’t like being treated like a romantic prospect pff the hop, but a lot are happy to meet new people. The important thing is not to approach anybody like a romantic prospect when you don’t know anything about them, because they know you’re doing it exclusively based on how they look.
The interactions that have seen the most success are the ones that aren’t presumptuous. Just talk to people in general like you’re trying to make friends rather than date and take it from there based on whether they actually seem interested in your company.
Just talk to people in general like you’re trying to make friends
You’re assuming I know how to make friends. I don’t have any of those either.
I have no social skills and overthink every situation. I’m always nervous in public, feeling like there are constantly eyes on my back waiting for anything that can be taken out of context and misrepresented. In public or private, I overthink everything I say and sound hesitant. Sometimes my eyes involuntarily roll up in my head while I’m thinking extra hard on people. Usually I can’t get a word out before somebody assumes what I’m thinking and gets upset. Other times I only get out half a sentence before they assume the other half. So I overthink things further, spiralling into analysis paralysis, and no matter what I do I can never seem to get my point across how it meant it.
I’m not good at real-time conversations. Especially when there are multiple people involved. There are too many factors to overthink, and I can’t keep up. Even if someone asks me what I think, I feel put on the spot and get nervous and blurt something out, usually that doesn’t land or even communicate what I really intended to say, because I didn’t have enough time to think about how I should phrase it.
So people say “just talk to women how you would talk to anyone else,” but what they don’t realize is that I’m not good at talking to anybody. And once a woman detects that I’m nervous (which doesn’t take long), she assumes I have an ulterior motive anyway, so at that point even saying I’m just looking for friendship is going to sound like a red flag to them.
Throughout my life, my best friend (and often only friend) at any given time has been my romantic partner at that time. So there’s a lot of blurry area where I’m not sure what falls under “friendship” and what falls under “romance.” So even if I try to make friends, there’s probably going to be a lot of second-guessing and occasional “more-than-friends” signals.
Plus I just don’t know how to maintain a friendship without prioritizing someone how I would a romantic partner. There have been times when I tried to avoid dating, and just making friends, but people thought I was flirting with every friend that I made so everyone stopped talking to me.
I simply don’t understand how to socialize like a “normal” person.
You have to practice and suck for a while, living is all a process of trial and error. Don’t blame your lack of practice and skill on other people if you haven’t gone out of your comfort zone to learn.
You said women assume the worst when you approach them. Use that pattern recognition all humans have and run some tests instead of assuming all women will react the same way to you. Because they’re not reacting to you, they’re reacting to your behaviour.
Ask yourself why and try a few different things. You’re gonna fail, but you have to learn to move on from that to build your confidence.
If you want to build connection, you have to learn to be comfortable with vulnerability.
I’m autistic and am no stranger to misinterpreted signals. Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean my social interactions are all fine and dandy. I flip between thinking everyone is crushing on me and everyone hates me, and this is a normal human experience that everybody goes through. You have to learn to let go of people sometimes and learn which interactions tend to lead to better connection, but you will get nowhere if you do not try, and you will get nowhere faster if you don’t try and you avoid social interactions because of an outcome you are assuming will happen.
I will reiterate. I am diagnosed autistic. I STILL do not know how to socialize as a normal person, and I have accepted that I never will. It is time you also accept you will never know what is normal, and figure out what works for you through trial and error and vulnerability.
Here’s hoping you find your confidence. Godspeed 🫡
I don’t think it’s reactionary. I think it comes from a common experience that single guys have. If it were easier to find a woman you connect with, who just wants to hang out and get to know you for your personality, then I suppose it would be that simple. As it stands though, women like that might exist, but they’re like unicorns.
As a single guy, if you go out to third spaces (few and far between as they are, especially ones that don’t center around alcohol), with the intention of finding someone to date, people will call you a creep. If you go to a hobby group to try to meet like-minded people, and you find someone you’re interested in romantically, if you even so much as hint at it, people will call you a creep. If you’re in public, the general consensus is “Don’t bother women; they can only assume you’re a predator and they’d rather be mauled by a bear than talk to you.”
So meeting women in person is out of the question. But if you go to the dating apps,
the vast majority of women there are either bots, or they’re just advertising their instagram or their snapchat or their tiktok or their onlyfans and they don’t actually check their profile for matches. And the few who actually match with you end up just wanting to sell you cryptocurrency and aren’t actually interested in meeting you for a date; maybe they aren’t really the person pictured in the profile.
And the relatively few real women who are actually on the apps are either filtering for height and/or income level, or fast-swiping based on looks (sucks to suck if you don’t take good selfies), or if they actually read your profile then you still have to somehow manage to be unique without being cringe, seem “normal” without being cliché, show some personality without sounding self-centered, express confidence but don’t be self-aggrandizing.
So that’s already an impossible balance to strike on just a silly profile on a platform that’s already inherently kinda cringe. So ultimately it comes down to looks, height, and income level. And even if there are women on the apps who look past that stuff, they’re only really being shown the profiles of guys who pay the top-tier subscription and pay for extra boosts on top of that. And the guys who get the most likes (meaning attractive, tall, and high-earning).
And if you somehow luck out and get matched with a real woman, but you don’t immediately sound enthusiastic (but not too enthusiastic, mind!), or if you some how even slightly indicate that you want to know if she’s real before getting emotionally invested in the conversation, then she gets offended and calls you sexist for even implying that a scam account could be catphishing as a woman.
And if you somehow make it through all of that unscathed, and have a real conversation with a woman, even if it seems to be going well, she might ghost you at any moment without any indication as to why. It could be something you said, maybe taken a different way from how you meant it, or maybe it sounds cringe or cliché or didn’t land or whatever. Or maybe you took too long to respond. Or maybe you responded too fast. Or maybe she found a “better” guy and moved on. Or maybe she went on a date with some douchebag and now she thinks all guys are like that. You’ll just never know. But you have to make it through at least a week or two of navigating all of this perfectly, and then if you’re lucky, you might get a first date, after which she might ghost you for any reason or no reason at all. And you probably need to go on at least four or five dates before discussing any sort of commitment or expectations after which you might finally feel somewhat secure in the budding relationship.
So dating apps are out of the question too. And other online spaces are too, for that matter, because if you bother women there then they call you a creep.
So you can’t meet women in person. You can’t meet women online. What’s left?
But a guy can’t exactly get away with saying he’s searching for a diamond in the rough, because apparently that’s misogynist since it implies there are women out there who don’t meet his standards (such as “treat me as a person and not as a wallet.” Even the implication that some women might just be looking for a free meal is seen as sexist!).
Describing the process of dating as an interview process is viewed as sexist (if you’re a guy of course, because apparently that objectifies women; but if a woman describes it the same way then she’s “liberated” and “empowered”).
So all-in-all if a guy lucks out enough to actually land a date, and the woman suggests somewhere expensive, if he suggests somewhere cheap or free then she might ghost him and then it might be another year or two before he’s offered another date. Is that really an offer he can turn down?
If you’re wandering in the desert, and you’re starving, and someone offers you a grilled cheese for $30, do you really have a choice to say “That’s too expensive! I’ll go somewhere else.”? Airlines know this.
And yet society still hasn’t caught up to recognize how lopsided the dating scene is. Yes, women face problems and that sucks. Most people don’t deny that. But the slightest discussion of the problems men face gets viewed as an attack on womankind writ large, and immediately flamed.
Edit: collapsed the rant about dating apps because it was a tangent and also the longest part
I don’t have time or energy to read or respond to your entire comment because honestly who does.
One thing that really irks me is the “its impossible to meet women in public because they treat you like a creep when you approach them to find a date”
Women don’t like being treated like a romantic prospect pff the hop, but a lot are happy to meet new people. The important thing is not to approach anybody like a romantic prospect when you don’t know anything about them, because they know you’re doing it exclusively based on how they look.
The interactions that have seen the most success are the ones that aren’t presumptuous. Just talk to people in general like you’re trying to make friends rather than date and take it from there based on whether they actually seem interested in your company.
You’re assuming I know how to make friends. I don’t have any of those either.
I have no social skills and overthink every situation. I’m always nervous in public, feeling like there are constantly eyes on my back waiting for anything that can be taken out of context and misrepresented. In public or private, I overthink everything I say and sound hesitant. Sometimes my eyes involuntarily roll up in my head while I’m thinking extra hard on people. Usually I can’t get a word out before somebody assumes what I’m thinking and gets upset. Other times I only get out half a sentence before they assume the other half. So I overthink things further, spiralling into analysis paralysis, and no matter what I do I can never seem to get my point across how it meant it.
I’m not good at real-time conversations. Especially when there are multiple people involved. There are too many factors to overthink, and I can’t keep up. Even if someone asks me what I think, I feel put on the spot and get nervous and blurt something out, usually that doesn’t land or even communicate what I really intended to say, because I didn’t have enough time to think about how I should phrase it.
So people say “just talk to women how you would talk to anyone else,” but what they don’t realize is that I’m not good at talking to anybody. And once a woman detects that I’m nervous (which doesn’t take long), she assumes I have an ulterior motive anyway, so at that point even saying I’m just looking for friendship is going to sound like a red flag to them.
Throughout my life, my best friend (and often only friend) at any given time has been my romantic partner at that time. So there’s a lot of blurry area where I’m not sure what falls under “friendship” and what falls under “romance.” So even if I try to make friends, there’s probably going to be a lot of second-guessing and occasional “more-than-friends” signals.
Plus I just don’t know how to maintain a friendship without prioritizing someone how I would a romantic partner. There have been times when I tried to avoid dating, and just making friends, but people thought I was flirting with every friend that I made so everyone stopped talking to me.
I simply don’t understand how to socialize like a “normal” person.
Nobody starts out knowing what they’re doing.
You have to practice and suck for a while, living is all a process of trial and error. Don’t blame your lack of practice and skill on other people if you haven’t gone out of your comfort zone to learn.
You said women assume the worst when you approach them. Use that pattern recognition all humans have and run some tests instead of assuming all women will react the same way to you. Because they’re not reacting to you, they’re reacting to your behaviour.
Ask yourself why and try a few different things. You’re gonna fail, but you have to learn to move on from that to build your confidence.
If you want to build connection, you have to learn to be comfortable with vulnerability.
I’m autistic and am no stranger to misinterpreted signals. Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean my social interactions are all fine and dandy. I flip between thinking everyone is crushing on me and everyone hates me, and this is a normal human experience that everybody goes through. You have to learn to let go of people sometimes and learn which interactions tend to lead to better connection, but you will get nowhere if you do not try, and you will get nowhere faster if you don’t try and you avoid social interactions because of an outcome you are assuming will happen.
I will reiterate. I am diagnosed autistic. I STILL do not know how to socialize as a normal person, and I have accepted that I never will. It is time you also accept you will never know what is normal, and figure out what works for you through trial and error and vulnerability.
Here’s hoping you find your confidence. Godspeed 🫡