From my own experience, social anxiety. Its not like I can’t even talk to girls. Shit, I probably get along with some better than I do dudes, but I always hesitate to take any action that might have elevated stakes. And I’ve worked hard on convincing my self not to think this way.
I agree with this. I’ve known lots of really attractive guys with a lot going for them that have terrible dating lives because they never make the first move
While dudes that are terrible beings and not very attractive get way more dates because they’re always hitting on women
I get hit on at the cash register so much and never notice until one of my coworkers points it out to me, partly I think because of the fact that I don’t necessarily not reciprocate - I enjoy talking to people to pass the day and being friendly and making folks laugh - but flirting is certainly not something I even understand on a basic level because I’m also socially anxious and self conscious.
While dudes that are terrible beings and not very attractive get way more dates because they’re always hitting on women
I see this often and it’s amusing because the terrible guys are usually the same ones who complain about women not liking “nice guys”, while the shy ones will usually be split 80/20 between “I guess this is just life” and “WOMEN HATE NICE GUYS” despite never talking to any women
I’m a woman who lives in a college town famous for its high quality Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science degrees. So the woman to man ratio in the 20-30 age group is like 1:4 at best.
So a lot of guys I’m friends with just don’t get laid cause the math doesn’t work out 🤷
Some of them tho… should probably do a bit of soul-searching first. Being dismissive about “female interests” like makeup and the gym while also being weirdly fetishistic about “gamer grill interests” like cosplay and video games just makes talking to them really hard. Like, they’ll always look at everything you say through a lens of “how does that benefit ME?” - Talking to them is a literal minefield.
Another factor is also that they’ll exclusively hang out in male spaces and just expect women to show up and talk to them somehow??? Like yeah, don’t sign up to ballet just to creep on women, but expanding your horizon beyond Friday Night Magic won’t kill you. I’ve heard Lorcana is great, and there are plenty of women playing it at my local game store… just casually talking to them during a game would be a normal human interaction
Being dismissive about “female interests” like makeup and the gym
Wait, how the fuck is the gym “female interests?” These losers wonder why they’re unfuckable while saying shit like this lol
Don’t get me started on it! From what I could gather the thought process was something like gym -> being vain -> women ?? The guy who had that idea was also the kind of guy who never set foot in a gym before and claimed that 30mins of beat saber per week was enough to keep him fit…
gay sex really is flourishing around here. My chronically over sharing work buddy says his body count has gone over the 3 digit mark a while ago. He’s reduced his hours to 30 a week so that he has more time for gay sex. Truly based.
I’m trying to take advantage of the statistics. The majority of guys in CS are either incredibly awkward or just try to ignore their female classmates (not in a malicious way, just awkward). If you have some charm and self awareness, you’ll be able to stand out from the crowd.
Some excerpts from @HoChiMaxh@hexbear.net’s effortpost response to a similar question:
First is that I’m of the opinion not everyone is always in a place in their life where they’re likely to get a good match even if they’re trying. People are often reluctant to talk about these parts of their lives, so I’ll share my experience with this.
There was a period in my late 20s where I really struggled to find someone - this dry spell lasted maybe 4 years. Looking back on this period it’s easy to see that even though I was interesting, fit, had hobbies, good hygiene, etc, I was very likely emitting some weird vibes that alienated me from potential partners. That was probably a mixture of sadness (due to loneliness), desperation, but also some incoherent mix of pride and self-loathing. I also had social anxiety that I hadn’t learned to control.
That is to say, I was never undeserving of a connection, but had some ways of being (that were hard for me to recognize about myself at the time) which made it hard for me to form those connections.
I have friends who had dry spells for much, much longer - but while what I wrote above didn’t directly related to them a lot of it did. We were all lucky enough to find love in the end.
I have no way of knowing if this applies to you of course, but I do feel like we have a tendency to euphemize these periods as “dry spells” without talking honestly about the loneliness, uncertainty, vulnerability and fear that can often be felt during these times.
My advice is to take the pressure off yourself - maybe right now isn’t the time and when you look back you’ll see why. The self-imposed pressure to have a partner can build a desperation that seeps out, and is deeply unsexy. I recognize this is a frustrating paradox, but the only way around it is to learn to be comfortable with who you are. It’s ok to be single though, and gives you a lot of extra time.
I would strongly recommend using this time to work on yourself - learn an instrument, learn to bake, learn a language, read interesting books, etc. Don’t don’t just smoke weed, play video games and watch YouTube. Build yourself into an even more interesting person than you already are. If you have mental health issues, use this extra time you have to put some serious work into addressing them.
But also, do activities that give you experience talking to different types of people in a low-stress, non-sexual environment. Get active in your local left org, join a book club, volunteer at a soup kitchen, join a community soccer team, get involved in municipal politics, do language exchange, take a dance class, go to community events they post at the library or community center. Get used to saying yes to things even if it scares you a bit.
[…]
Anyhow, there is no easy answer to this problem. The best I can do is tell you that this isn’t that uncommon, a lot of us have been there, it is hard, often humiliating, generally sucks, and you don’t deserve it. I mostly hope that just knowing that even though you feel alone you aren’t, in a way. I really hope you find someone you deserve comrade.
I was very likely emitting some weird vibes that alienated me from potential partners. That was probably a mixture of sadness (due to loneliness), desperation, but also some incoherent mix of pride and self-loathing.
what would that look like from the outside?
I think you’d have to ask @HoChiMaxh@hexbear.net, but it doesn’t look like they’ve posted for a few months
From meeting a lot of these people and being one when I was younger (I was a CS major and work in software) I do think the main reason is just really poor social skills.
Like everything else socialization is a skill that can be learned, even later in life, and like all skills the important thing is that you get a lot of exposure & practice (not online). Unfortunately there’s a feedback loop where if you’re bad at it people will want to socialize with you less and you’ll get less practice. Transcending this loop is one of the great challenges of growing up.
For me I managed to get out of it by making female friends. Women for whatever reason have much more advanced social skills than men at most ages in our society, and are much more accepting of people without highly developed social skills as friends. Women also tend to organize many more social events & hangouts than men. Here’s the thing though, women can also detect any secret horniness behind your actions like a shark can smell blood in water from a mile away. You are 100% not being subtle no matter how much you think you are. So if you as a hetero man want to make female friends you have to, from the very start, make a deal with yourself to never ever sexualize them in your mind. Dispel all such thoughts of this type. Incidentally this is a useful skill in itself, as the :reddit-logo: style “just sexualize everything, it’s natural and everybody does it” attitude is so fucking off-putting to almost all adults of any gender. So it’s important to realize you can actually control, in your mind, whether you sexualize someone, and make the choice not to do that when you’re friends with them. This is not to say these thoughts never occur, everybody has intrusive thoughts about everything even truly unhinged things, but it’s a conscious choice whether you want to take that thought and run with it when it happens.
So basically after a few years of just hanging out with women using this method my social skills had developed enough through sheer quantity of training data that I could take flight and make other friends myself, plus of course the friends I had while I was learning were real friends, and this is also coincidentally around the time women started finding me attractive in a more-than-friends way.
Women for whatever reason have much more advanced social skills than men at most ages in our society, and are much more accepting of people without highly developed social skills as friends.
A bit of a tangent but women, and AFAB people in general, are probably better socialised because they have to have a good sense of solidarity to survive under patriarchy, similar to queer people. Women growing up generally form more emotionally open bonds with each other than men do with men. Women will walk each other home on nights out, ensure that their friends are safe, give each other a tampon and are generally more willing to help each other out than men are to help men out. Men don’t fear being assaulted when they walk home to the same extent or for the same reasons women do, and are expected by other men to be able to defend themselves. So women form bonds out of necessity, for their safety under patriarchy (and obviously because they want friends), so they have more practice socialising. And of course, toxic masculinity plays a massive part in why men are not as good at making connections as women.
This is generalised and theoretical, and just comes from my experiences in life, but I think it definitely plays a part in why men struggle to socialise compared to women
Being vulnerable is seen as a feminine trait in society. It’s why people don’t bother girls or women when they’re close to each other and share their concerns and thoughts. But if a boy or man does it, he’ll be accused of “being in his feelings” or a pussy. I think statistically, most females have a richer support network compared to most males.
I’ve had a few close friends and several friend groups growing up, and I honestly cannot tell you anything about my make friends’ personal lives, but pretty much all the girls I’ve been friends with tell me everything about them and I can reciprocate without the fear of being judged or mocked. In my experience, guys tend to try to turn uncomfortable or personal topics with other guys into banter, myself included. It’s not malicious, but we’ve never been taught or experience intimacy and vulnerability with each other the same way we do with girls.
So basically after a few years of just hanging out with women using this method my social skills had developed enough through sheer quantity of training data that I could take flight and make other friends myself, plus of course the friends I had while I was learning were real friends, and this is also coincidentally around the time women started finding me attractive in a more-than-friends way.
how old were you when this happened?
there’s more than one kind of that guy. for example, i’m broke, mildly disabled, and don’t like churches or bars.
not hating women is below the bare minimum and gets me exactly as many cookies as I deserve for such a great exertion.
When I think of my former friend I grew up with that is permanently unable to get a girlfriend, he was cool as a friend. But he was a creep a bit to women, not respectful, resentful for not getting female attention, and it just grew and got worse - but I didn’t see that side of him at all until I transitioned lmao, I guess it only came out to people he wanted to bang.
