The DoubtingThomas dating / relationships MEGATHREAD

[_Res Ipsa]

That is my problem. Where can I go to talk to girls? Do I go to the bar?

It depends. Do you want to go to a bar? Do you enjoy going to a bar? Are you comfortable in a bar? If not, don't go to a bar.

Personally, if I wanted to meet and talk to a woman, I wouldn't go to a bar for that. In my experience, most bars where singles go to mingle have loud music that isn't conducive to meeting and holding a conversation with someone. In fact, in all of my 60 odd years (and yes, they were all odd), I don't think I ever met a woman in a bar that I attempted to pursue any kind of relationship with. The women with whom I ended up having a romantic relationship with I first met through school, work, or theater productions.

For me, the easiest way to meet people is through groups. I belong to a walking club. Most of the members are women. We do lots of talking as we walk. I boardgame frequently. I've become friends with several women over the past few years hanging out at a game pub, playing games with whoever is around, being introduced to other boardgames, being invited to boardgames at people's homes, etc. I also hike, and have met any number of women over the years on trails and talked with them while hiking.

But I don't do any of those things specifically to meet women. I do them because I like to do them. And some of the people who also like to do them happen to be women.
Figure out activities or hobbies that you enjoy. Or better yet, activities or hobbies you've never tried. Look for groups of people to do those things with. You have an automatic thing to strike up a conversation about: the thing you are doing.

you'd be surprised at how many of them are lonely.

So far no luck on dating apps.

I wouldn't expect a woman on a dating app to express to complete strangers that they are lonely. My last date as a single guy was pre-app. But I suspect that people don't present an image of who they really are on a dating app. They present a picture that they think will be appealing to a potential romantic partner. That's one of the advantages of meeting people through groups and trying to develop friendships. People can be more of who they are at, say, bowling league, than when describing themselves in a dating app.

What's a little frustrating for me is that DT seems to me to be teaching himself to be a helpless victim. He needs a girlfriend to be happy, but then actively searches for obstacles that prevent him from getting a girlfriend. It almost seems like trying to make helpful suggestions actually just enables his helplessness.

I am all stressed out from work.

Okay. Why is that an obstacle to meeting people? You can tackle managing your stress and then go and meet people. Or recognize that being stressed out is part of the modern human condition and get out and meet people like people under stress manage to do.

I simply want to enjoy life.

I want to enjoy life, too. But sometimes doing that is anything but simple. What is it that is keeping you from enjoying life? Once you figure out what that obstacle is, make a plan to remove the obstacle or find a way around the obstacle to get to happy? You have far more power over your situation than you are letting yourself see.

I have no life in our meaningless universe.

Welcome to the existential crisis. It takes some getting used to the notion that the universe has no meaning. But lots of us do. I'm comfortable with it. I don't feel any need for something outside of myself to provide meaning to my life. You ever listen to Tim Minchin's "Storm?" When he gets to "Isn't this enough?" I can honestly answer "yes."

Crisis aside, yes, you have a life. Isn't the problem really that you don't have the life you want? What do you want that you don't have? Once you know what it is, figure out what is keeping you from getting it. Once you've identified the obstacle, don't dwell on the obstacle. Figure out how to remove it. Or go around it by finding happiness some other way. Or change your thinking about what being happy actually means.

If you know of someone using a dating app willing to do some long distance dating let me know.

I don't know anyone who is using a dating app, because I never ask. None of my business. Matchmaking isn't my thing. I did it once unintentionally and it worked out great. With that success under my belt, I promptly retired.

And you really should seriously consider Jersey Girl's advice about the therapist/life coach. I think you'd be pleasantly surprised.

[_Analytics]

LOL. I find that book extremely interesting, but I wouldn't consider those guys to be role models. My point was that in terms of having sucess with the opposite sex, Strauss's story is more inspiring than a Horatio Alger novel.

Is it? There's a lot of sad postmortems on that cultural moment out there now that really take the shine off the life of a PUA as inspiring. That includes Strauss. He considers that a dark period of his life.

I think of the "PUAhate" that later became the "Sluthate" community and its various offshoots that developed out of failed would-be PUA's and see someone like DT being susceptible to finding a home there. Don't give him a nudge.

Have you read the book? It was several years ago when I read it, but as I recall it begins with Mystery checking himself into a mental hospital because he was suicidal. The book doesn't paint a glamorous picture of that PUA cult at all.

When I say it was inspiring, I'm saying it is inpiring because Strauss was able to change himself and achieve his goals. The idea that you can radically change your personality and change your social life is mind expanding.

[_Analytics]

....Every attractive girl with a guy used to be single, and many will be again. And many are single, right now. The guys they hook up with are the guys who are out there playing the game....

I just saw this copied in Lemmie's above post. I strongly object to the above and the message that it conveys.

Why?

If the sexes were reversed I'd offer the same message. It is a cliché for single women to claim that all of the good guys are already taken. What is wrong with pointing out that this isn't true?

[_honorentheos]

For me, the easiest way to meet people is through groups. I belong to a walking club. Most of the members are women. We do lots of talking as we walk. I boardgame frequently. I've become friends with several women over the past few years hanging out at a game pub, playing games with whoever is around, being introduced to other boardgames, being invited to boardgames at people's homes, etc. I also hike, and have met any number of women over the years on trails and talked with them while hiking.

But I don't do any of those things specifically to meet women. I do them because I like to do them. And some of the people who also like to do them happen to be women.

Figure out activities or hobbies that you enjoy. Or better yet, activities or hobbies you've never tried. Look for groups of people to do those things with. You have an automatic thing to strike up a conversation about: the thing you are doing.

Absolutely great points. More importantly this is how one finds fulfillment as an individual, adds richness to one's life, and overall raises one's day-to-day level of contentment generally. OTOH, making everything about what one doesn't have and lacks the ability to control produces the opposite.

I kinda feel like we say this to DT in every thread in multiple different ways, and he comes back and tells us all he does is work, can't meet women so he's unhappy, and his life is still stressed while he could easily change his eating habits and activity level to become the guy the girls at work would learn to love if they would get to know him...

Still about 50/50 on his being a middle-aged believing Mormon trolling the board. But for the benefit of the discussion, it's perhaps worth while to engage as if he were a young, recently disillusioned post-Mormon trying to figure life out without the flawed scaffolding of the Church. God knows there's plenty of real people going through it.

[_Analytics]

To clarify, I didn't suggest that he go out and join the pick-up artist community, start negging women, peacocking, and otherwise start acting like a douche. I suggested he start eating better, started exercising more, and learned about how to make himself more attractive and charismatic.

You advised him on reading material to improve playing "the game" to attract women that includes one book on PUA I've read and another that I'm fairly sure is a PUA book. You even told him that if he wants to get attractive women he too needs to learn to play "the game." It's like you're giving him a head start on writing his inevitable manifesto.

Of the four books I suggested, one generally fits into the genera of a "PUA book," but it was written by a woman in London who isn't connected with the community that was popularized in America by "The Game" and the show on VH1. I don't think trying to figure out how to socialize with women is intrinsically bad, much less that it necessarily leads to moving into a delipidated mansion in Hollywood filled with losers.

Those guys don't have a trademark on the word "game". If an insurance agent was paralized to pick up the phone and say the same thing--don't freak out over rejections and think of it as a game.

[_Analytics]

I don't mean it that way. I'm just recognizing people are social creatures.

Ok. Thank you for explaining, but the words you used did not convey that that was your intent, so why use words that stereotype and demean?

Analytics wrote:

...you can compete with anybody for the most atractive girls....

....Every attractive girl with a guy used to be single, and many will be again. And many are single, right now. The guys they hook up with are the guys who are out there playing the game....

In what way is this demeaning? Is the idea that some girls are more attractive than others demeaning? I'm quite blind to what you find objecitonable.

[_Jersey Girl]

I just saw this copied in Lemmie's above post. I strongly object to the above and the message that it conveys.

Why?

If the sexes were reversed I'd offer the same message. It is a cliché for single women to claim that all of the good guys are already taken. What is wrong with pointing out that this isn't true?

This here: The guys they hook up with are the guys who are out there playing the game...

[_Analytics]

I apologize for being obtuse. Is it the term "hook up" that you find offensive, or is it "the game" analogy? Or is it the implication that a girl is just a prize in a game amomg men?

I'm hung up on people thinking the problem is DT for being selective, when part of the challenge is that the girls he wants to date are being selective too.

My message is that he should work on himself and make himself more attractive, and that he should get out there and interact more and ask more girls out. That shouldn't be demeaning.

[_EAllusion]

Of the four books I suggested, one generally fits into the genera of a "PUA book," but it was written by a woman in London who isn't connected with the community that was popularized in America by "The Game" and the show on VH1. I don't think trying to figure out how to socialize with women is intrinsically bad, much less that it necessarily leads to moving into a delipidated mansion in Hollywood filled with losers.

Those guys don't have a trademark on the word "game". If an insurance agent was paralized to pick up the phone and say the same thing--don't freak out over rejections and think of it as a game.

"Game" doesn't ordinarily mean solid interpersonal skills that allow a person to develop meaningful relationships. It means seduction kills with a heavy connotation towards manipulation. The PUA crowd didn't invent the term or create a new meaning for it. They just borrowed it. Maybe you're running sick game by, uh, meeting women with mutual interests and cultivating friendship, but that ain't what people think of when they read your words.

Of the books you recommended, the one I have read is Strauss's. I stand by my position that it's a bad book in general as an inspiration to find romantic partners or cure loneliness and it is a terrible idea to recommend it to DT with his particular foibles on display. Maybe don't recommend someone with sketchy views on women and relationships and anguished inability to find romantic fulfillment an infamous conduit to militant misogyny that preys specifically on those traits.

[_EAllusion]

Have you read the book? It was several years ago when I read it, but as I recall it begins with Mystery checking himself into a mental hospital because he was suicidal. The book doesn't paint a glamorous picture of that PUA cult at all.

It does and doesn't. It's half expose, half motivational how-to. On one level, the author presents himself in such a negative light, mostly unintentionally, that you'd think readers would read it as a cautionary tale. But that's not necessarily how it is or was received. It most certainly was inspiring to people to try and follow in similar footsteps. Strauss ends up giving the reader the impression that you want to avoid the excesses of the player lifestyle, but incorporating pick up artist tactics is a great way to win mates and influence people.

I haven't read Strass's follow-up stuff, but I recall reading his later book tour interviews where he disavows his writing from this period.

When I say it was inspiring, I'm saying it is inpiring because Strauss was able to change himself and achieve his goals. The idea that you can radically change your personality and change your social life is mind expanding.

I don't know how you can say this and just glide over the moral content of the book.