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I wanted to ask something that's been on my mind for a while now: in modern/comtemporary Western society, most straight adult women are overwhelmingly supportive and accepting of gay men, and their lifestyle. This is continually and culturally re-inforced in popular society constantly, where you commonly see movies/TV shows with gay men and straight women befriending each other very closely, all the time in recent years.
Research from Gilmartin and Shockley has shown that women typically overwhelmingly reject the love-shy male
Any thoughts or comments please?
Its like going to the pound to pick out a puppy. You have a bunch of bubbly, happy, sociable puppies that want to interact and play and make you laugh and feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Then you have a puppy that hides in the shadows, hunched over and fearful and runs away if you try to approach. Which one would you be attracted to.
Pursuit of the antisocial, fearfull one will just drain the life out of you.
Its like going to the pound to pick out a puppy. You have a bunch of bubbly, happy, sociable puppies that want to interact and play and make you laugh and feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Then you have a puppy that hides in the shadows, hunched over and fearful and runs away if you try to approach. Which one would you be attracted to.
Pursuit of the antisocial, fearfull one will just drain the life out of you.
Yeah that pretty much fits!
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Originally Posted by ~A New Me~
It's commendable that you are trying different avenues. However, you come across very formal. And as one who is not used to face to face social interaction. I'm thinking you give off this same vibe on your dates. Being nice is fine, but mature women want a man whose niceness is complimented by his masculinity. I've read quite a few of your threads and you appear to always analyze/over analyze everything. Also in previous threads I've wondered why you allow people to treat you the way they do. IMO, you need to put trying to date on hold for a moment and concentrate on your social skills. Talking to people. Developing friendships. Learning how to be comfortable around other people. Now, you don't have to stop trying to date for a long time. It's just that I think once you get some friends and are used to friendship banter and seeing people happily want to spend time with you, it will help you loosen up and this new found attitude will transfer over to your dating activities.
THIS^^. THIS THIS THIS!!!! If I could jump up and down and scream here, I would. Knight, your search for a relationship is clearly not going to be successful until you learn to become somewhat more secure and confident in social arenas.
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Originally Posted by darrensmooth
^^^^^^
Yes i think he needs to spend time on himself, there are probably as you say issues that are bigger than just dating, and he is focusing all of his self-improvement on dating aspects. The way he describes social interaction, sounds so scripted and un-natural, im pretty sure the women on the dates he went on felt the same
Its like going to the pound to pick out a puppy. You have a bunch of bubbly, happy, sociable puppies that want to interact and play and make you laugh and feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Then you have a puppy that hides in the shadows, hunched over and fearful and runs away if you try to approach. Which one would you be attracted to.
Pursuit of the antisocial, fearfull one will just drain the life out of you.
How can you get to the truth of the matter if we don't say what the women who rejected you may be thinking? It's not polite so they don't say it. Here, we don't know you and can be more objective. So yeah, it is uncomfortable but most truths are.
He's not a hunched over, fearful puppy. He's just got a veneer up (like his coach mentioned) of not challenging women. He's too self-possessed and presents a formal image that makes a girl uncomfortable. Too nice, too controlled = fake or something off about someone.
We provoke and prod to get to the heart of your problem. There's no agenda here to hurt you personally. If we're blunt, it's to cut through your defensiveness.
It has nothing to do with being a yes man. Nothing at all. It is about looking at the whole picture and being humble enough to realize that maybe, just maybe, this is a line of thought you need to consider.
And I have stated as such, several times already. Specifically, and again to reiterate, you will note that I mentioned the wisdom of certain ppl, including h886, beachmel and some others I cannot recall by C-D s/n atm, had wisdom that exceeded my own, in certain areas. I acknowledged that I could very well be wrong, about certain things. If these are not examples of humility, then I'm not quite sure what really is. I certainly never claimed to be the final authority of anything; my reasoning is directly based on my own life experiences, with happened to relate a great deal to the straight male love-shy that Gilmartin presented.
I don't believe people are reiterating over and over that the online relationship was not a real one to be mean and hurtful. (In case you were thinking that). It just that when you understand the validity or lack of validity of this online relationship, that will be a big step forward because it will be apparent you are on your way to having a realistic view of relationships.
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Anyway, this thread is 12 pages long and I doubt I am saying anything different. My two cents is to get out in the world and have some fun. Get out of your comfort zone. Try some new foods, go to conventions you've never been to, travel, listen to music that never interested you before, get a pet or volunteer at a shelter, or just volunteer somewhere. This will increase your social skills which will only lead to a more confident and attractive you.
Your suggestions sound great in theory. However, there are also several complicating factors. For the past 5 years up until last Jan., I had to pull huge amounts of irregular overtime, nearly every day a week including some weekends, at work. We're talking anything from 10-15 hours workdays, sometimes every working weekday. This was b/c we lost over half our staff 5 years ago, and I got the effective workload of 3-4 ppl, also had major fixed long-term project deadlines that were set in stone.
The reason I mention this is, i barely had any personal life at all of my own, during this time, b/c of the aforementioned grueling schedule. As a result, I was forced to prioritize my time, free time of which I had precious little of and was an extremely scarce commodity. So what did I do? With the little free time I had, I gave it almost exclusively to dating, using the methods I had outlined in my earlier thread. Heck, there wasn't even enough time for me to be able to decompress, b/c I had house chores and duties to attend to after work, as well.
These huge overtime hours commitment could again rear its ugly head anytime in the immediate future, b/c we are or will be at the next phase of an important project shortly, which had been deferred until now (otherwise I wouldn't even have gotten the time I have off now off, either). If I have to choose between making friends and dating, I simply have to choose dating -- it is a higher-order priority. Friends are all well and good -- but in the end, what I need is a girlfriend, not a friend.
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All the best!
Thanks.
Last edited by Phoenix2017; 03-01-2011 at 11:52 PM..
THIS^^. THIS THIS THIS!!!! If I could jump up and down and scream here, I would. Knight, your search for a relationship is clearly not going to be successful until you learn to become somewhat more secure and confident in social arenas.
I completely agree.
Now...if we can just get you (Knight) to listen.
And I *am* listening to each suggestion that is made, whether I personally agree or not. I didn't say I wasn't... In fact, some arguments made that I originally did not support, I later realized that they were more complete than my own understanding, and I stated as such.
How can you get to the truth of the matter if we don't say what the women who rejected you may be thinking? It's not polite so they don't say it. Here, we don't know you and can be more objective. So yeah, it is uncomfortable but most truths are.
He's not a hunched over, fearful puppy. He's just got a veneer up (like his coach mentioned) of not challenging women. He's too self-possessed and presents a formal image that makes a girl uncomfortable. Too nice, too controlled = fake or something off about someone.
We provoke and prod to get to the heart of your problem. There's no agenda here to hurt you personally. If we're blunt, it's to cut through your defensiveness.
Donna: I'm sorry, but it's not fake, and not a veneer. I have no clue how I can actually prove that to you though, in a practical manner. How did you arrive at that conclusion?
ETA: to most straight males, the very thought of being accused of "acting gay", or the implication that they are gay, is one of the ultimate insults that they can ever receive. The wording could have been phrased differently -- for example, instead of (paraphrasing here) "you're acting gay", the same point could have been made, but the same thing could have been said differently so as to remove the inflammatory words. In any case, by implying that women are potentially wrongly misperceiving me be behaving in a homosexual manner, only supports Gilmartin's theory that straight love shy men are often wrongly misperceived as gay.
Last edited by Phoenix2017; 03-01-2011 at 11:49 PM..
I think you can simplify this by realizing that the love-shy female also exists and has a lower chance of finding a partner.
Not really, women are not expected to make the first moves and be assertive. Even if a girl is love-shy if she doesn't look like a complete ogre the chances are pretty good that men will still approach her.
A love-shy guy is quite simply ****ed because if he is too scared too make a move on a girl then he will never get one, and my bet is that those few women who do make the first move... won't on a love-shy guy but thats just a guess.
Shyness can be trained away though, and it can be cured. Love-shy guys need to focus on practising it away instead of just sitting back and giving up.
Its like going to the pound to pick out a puppy. You have a bunch of bubbly, happy, sociable puppies that want to interact and play and make you laugh and feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Then you have a puppy that hides in the shadows, hunched over and fearful and runs away if you try to approach. Which one would you be attracted to.
Pursuit of the antisocial, fearfull one will just drain the life out of you.
Speaking of puppies;
knight: Try buying a puppy, women flock to cute puppies (so don't get some f'ed up race that looks like crap, get agerman sheppard or so.), if it doesn't work you can always eat the dog Too bad student quarters don't allow pets...
And yes I'm kidding, but seriously if you give women an easy thing to strike up a casual conversation about they will look at it and then it's easier to strike up the conversation yourself(don't count on them to do it, they seldom will). I find it way more easy to talk to women who have something that sticks out, like a dog or a hairstyle, than most college-uniformed girls. (tight jeans, nice top/blouse, common hairstyle.) Seriously there is basically nothing to comment on other than shallow surface stuff when it comes to most college chicks... (other than that they're hot, but they already know this all too well.)
For example when I carry my football pads to and from practise women(and others) usually give it a good look since american football is a rare sport here(nordern europe), makes for conversations on buss-rides to and from practice...
I say something like "hey saw you noticing the pads, have you played?"(men and women play in the same teams here because the female participants are too few to form teams of their own)
and of course in like 99% of cases they go "What? no! i'd break in half" and blablabla, we up talking about different passtime interests... the part that sucks is that almost all end up telling that their boyfriend plays soccer or icehockey or something else and then it's pretty much nothing once again.
The thing is I figure that sooner or later someone will be single, and if we have a good conversation then it can't be a bad thing.
What I think is wierd here in college is that almost 100% of attractive women(about 40-50% of women can be considered attractive here...) have boyfriends while less than 10% of the guys do...
When I started we had 22 people in our college introduction group... 12 girls, 10 guys.
10 of the girls had boyfriends either day one or within the first week.
of the 10 guys 1 had a girlfriend, and now he's single too, and none of us other guys have a relationship...
As a result all guys (including me) hit on women regardless of relationship status in clubs and stuff, because the only shot we have is basicly women who decide to cheat on their BFs...and because of that most women have their shields up pretty darn strong compared to how it was "back in the real world".
Feels like I can barely say hello to a female outside of the friends-circle without getting a look like she thinks I'm after something, even if I'm really not. The buss is basicly the only exception...
Last edited by sportsgeek20; 03-02-2011 at 01:27 AM..
The reason I mention this is, i barely had any personal life at all of my own, during this time, b/c of the aforementioned grueling schedule. As a result, I was forced to prioritize my time, free time of which I had precious little of and was an extremely scarce commodity. So what did I do? With the little free time I had, I gave it almost exclusively to dating, using the methods I had outlined in my earlier thread. Heck, there wasn't even enough time for me to be able to decompress, b/c I had house chores and duties to attend to after work, as well.
These huge overtime hours commitment could again rear its ugly head anytime in the immediate future, b/c we are or will be at the next phase of an important project shortly, which had been deferred until now (otherwise I wouldn't even have gotten the time I have off now off, either). If I have to choose between making friends and dating, I simply have to choose dating -- it is a higher-order priority. Friends are all well and good -- but in the end, what I need is a girlfriend, not a friend.
You don't even have time to give to yourself, and you are going to do handstands to find a date? Ummm...dear God. Knight - if your time is so precious that you can't attend to your environmental, emotional, and physical needs (keep the home clean and working or pay someone to do it, devote time to personal enjoyment - hobbies or other mentally satisfying activities and socializing, and ensure that you are staying active and fit through a regular fitness routine!!!) then it's going to be a constant and serious struggle to attract a prospective mate. You have no sense of being grounded and secure in your life. You sound, literally, incomplete. Not because you need a girlfriend, but because you need a LIFE first.
I can't emphasize enough how unappealing that is.
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Knight, your search for a relationship is clearly not going to be successful until you learn to become somewhat more secure and confident in social arenas.
Too bad student quarters don't allow pets...
