In my life coaching practice, I see a lot of male clients who have trouble getting dates (including fairly severe trouble, such as never having been kissed in spite of being in their thirties).
>Men who share the tastes of AO3 readers can participate in shipping-heavy fandom (though not liking slash limits your options somewhat).
The male homo sapiens advertises his creative prowess with a sexual display, that of writing a Lügner/Kraft slashfic with both great emotional sensitivity and an erotic frisson that borders on the problematic. Through this work, he seduces his wife. And this literary bower serves a second purpose, for the internal contemplation of same is required by both to maintain the desire requisite to culminate the marriage.
One subset of the desexualized man reacting negatively to advances (which you described very well), is that he can actually convince himself that the woman trying to engage with him is making fun of him. If your worldview is that no one is interested and no one could be interested, then why is she flirting with you? She must has some ulterior motive, she must be trying to set you up for failure.
In High School I opted out of dating: I was only interested in serious relationships, I figured that relationships in High School were unlikely to be serious, and I was socially awkward so I decided to start dating in college and forget about the whole stressful subject until then. Since I didn't even consider the possibility of having a relationship with my female classmates, I also didn't consider the possibility that any of them would ever want a relationship with me. This was reinforced by my social awkwardness, my physical awkwardness, my introversion, and my lack of dress sense. I was 100% "internally desexualized".
Then one day a couple of giggling girls approached me and told me that another girl liked me. The girl in question was, in my opinion, the hottest girl in my year. While there were girls that I would briefly consider the possibilities of a future relationship with, before shaking it off, I never thought about this girl that way even once because she was so clearly out of my league. But these girls were telling me she was interested in me? In *me*?! The girls wandered off while I sat there in bewildered silence.
After a moment I shrugged the whole thing off and decided to forget about it. Because clearly the most logical explanation was that someone was playing a practical joke, either on me or on the girl. I wasn't going to fall for it.
Now, with the benefit of a couple decades of hindsight, I recognize that she might actually have been interested in me. While I considered her the hottest girl in school, it now occurs to me that I had no idea if anyone else thought the same way because I had no interest in those kind of discussions. It could be that she was just exactly my type, and that if I had pursued her she would have responded.
It all worked out for me in the end (I'll be celebrating my 13th wedding anniversary in a couple months), but I certainly concur that people in that kind of position are likely to believe that someone is setting them up for a cruel joke rather than that a beautiful woman has any romantic interest in them.
In my case my thought was "she may well be into me, but if we date and it goes badly, she's better connected and anyway being female can go to HR and get me fired." I started leaving work late through different entrances to avoid one of the women.
Happened twice in about 5 years. One later had a manic episode and got fired, the other left for a different part of the country. Interestingly I didn't notice it at first as she had been previously married to a woman and I assumed she was gay. The bi ones seem to like me for some reason...
I'm genuinely uncertain, based on your other comments on this post... but "we didn't have those options"/"given the way I look now" kinda hits me in a particular way. It's reminiscent of how I thought before I transitioned. Idk. If that's something you've considered and rejected, you can just ignore me. I might just be projecting here. But if you haven't explored it, I'm open to talk further?
I appreciate your reaching out, it's quite kind. I don't think it's the case, though-- I feel like a mediocre man and not at all like a woman. I actually took the Bem Sex Role Inventory and got, like, 50% masculine and 5% feminine. So I kinda think transitioning isn't the answer. You're welcome to DM so I don't hog this whole thread but fair warning, I probably hold some views you'd find disturbing. (I've had some very bad experiences in the past with people suddenly attacking me after saying something I thought was innocuous-specifically I said something about evolution.)
I think the "learn to social dance" advice is great for the reasons you stated; it gets you comfort with physical contact and, later, becomes a stable source of female validation that's not directly about sex. However, it is also true that new leads (the role men will mostly end up in) struggle predictably in similar ways.
I wrote a thing about this, where I lay out a case that "group classes" feel approachable as a way of learning to dance but that they need private lesson supplementation, and I think the mostly-incorrect perception that private lessons are "optional" is why so many guys flare out of learning to dance before getting anywhere:
Man, reading this makes me happy that I'm doing Nordic partner dancing. It's not gendered (I mean traditionally it was but not anymore), many are group dances where you don't get to reject anyone, and it's not as hard nor nearly as competitive as eg Latin. It's so much more chill. Mostly pretty unsexy too, yet many people find partners in the scene.
We also sometimes do some American square dances following the same principles. Loads are also based in polka and waltz.
wow, not getting to reject anyone seems terrible, from both sides! and seems like it would make it not work for the purpose in this post, since the asker would have to worry "wait did they only say yes because they had to...?". I'm glad modern liberal California social dance culture has instead converged on "consent is necessary and may be withheld, but be kind about any rejection"
Well when you're 8-100 people in a circle or square, and the dance calls to walk x amount of steps to the corresponding person in the circle, you can't just say "no I don't want to dance with that person for 20 seconds" and mess the entire structure of the dance up for everyone else. So there's no rejection but also no choice in group dances. In couple dances, of which there are plenty, there is a choice and rejection is fine in principle. However they are notably less flirty than Latin.
for my part I'm thinking mostly of contra, where you choose a partner for a given dance but then you also dance a bit with everyone else up and down the line, and indeed you can turn down the first but not really the second
Most also follow a basic script with little variation, so leads don't actually have to decide much and there isn't as much communication. This goes for polka and waltz too
I’ve always been surprised by how many men have just never tried that hard or have severe social issues. For myself, those have never been the issue.
One could say the not acting sexual or whatnot was part of my own issue but the reality is that I was living in a situation where literally no one found me physically attractive. I wasn’t obese or poorly groomed. Just facially ugly.
The facially ugly part is still true today and why I’m still single. I think this crowd is probably relatively small because my specific issues are that I’m mixed race, no specific ethnic background (genetically unrelated parents), and facially ugly. Having all of those is really uncommon. Example being that I’ve seen plenty of less fortunate looking Indian men able to get dates with plenty of other Indian women. They can’t date much outside their race/culture but they can date internally. Does that suck? Sure but it’s better than nothing! When you’re racially ambiguous like I am with no cultural backing - you don’t get that kind of in group bias benefit. In fact, I am *always* an out group even with my own family. Very strange life to live.
Anyway, I know you don’t try to focus on the unchangeable but I do think we as a society need to talk about the unchangeable more because it really is a massive issue for those affected. I suspect the crowd that is unlovably ugly like I am is larger than some of the other groups we’ve made national headlines about. So, seems worth giving some attention and thought about how to handle the life for such people who are otherwise the same as anyone else but just born with a bad face or whatnot.
I hear you man. There's lots of us with problems we can't talk about.
I suspect as the number of mixed race people rises, it's going to be less of an issue as it becomes more common--we're seeing the rise of hybrid groups like 'Wasian' and 'Castizo'. Doesn't help you now though :(
The problem is a lot of the 'unchangeable' stuff is 'problematic'. In your case, the left doesn't want to talk about men's problems or women's choosiness, and the right doesn't care about mixed race people. But I agree there need to be forums for it.
The thing about mixed race is that it's not really a big issue if you're deeply connected to the communities and identify with them. I don't have that privilege. I have no ties or connections with the associated ethnicities of my genetics. Now, I'd normally say that shouldn't matter but the truth is that familiarity with one's background is what breeds more attraction. The more you are around X types of individuals the more you are open to dating them. (to a point - just a generalization)
If no one has ever been around someone who looks like me (and I can guarantee they haven't! I am a rare breed) then it makes it hard to sell what I look like.
Beyond that, my real point is that my face is ugly. My genetics, my mixed race, my lack of culture/ethnicity/etc, etc. would all be pointless to discuss if I was hot facially. Women would date me regardless. But, most men *aren't hot*. Therefore, they need some form of ingroup (or outgroup/fetish!) bias to help them... and that's what I see dominate the market overall. People aren't just looksmatched - they are either fetishmatched or racematched. And it's just bonkers how much we are skating by on such things.
You know, like a stereotypical man, I want to come up with a solution. But the truth is I failed myself, so what could I possibly add? Build muscle to gain self-confidence maybe?
So I'll act like the stereotypical non-man and offer sympathy. Yeah, dude, that really sucks, I am so sorry for you. Nobody takes the suffering of lower-tier men seriously, and you don't have any ethnic group to claim solidarity with. And people complain quite a bit about racial preferences in dating, but only if it makes a sufficiently right-coded (white men) or left-coded (people of color) group look bad.
Yeah, there’s not really any solutions. I’m a stereotypical dude who would rather come up with solutions than complain. I spend an embarrassingly high amount of time dedicated to trying to figure out what I can do but even with the thousands of hours of studying and lifting, etc etc etc. nothing worked. It’s a tough life.
I’m tired of it, myself. It’s tiring beyond belief.
Drastic solution I know, but I think you might benefit from traveling or moving somewhere people give substantially less of a fuck about race than in the US. I'm thinking Latin America and the Carribean, but even liberal parts of Europe could work.
I’ve traveled extensively. Like I said, I am not just racially mixed but also ugly. It’s the ingroup bias and/or fetishization that allows others with less fortunate faces (mind you - probably still better than mine) to still find a suitable match.
I’ve never had any change in my results from going to any other country. The passport bro thing only works if you’re white or some other fetishized race. It’s not really a thing for people like me in other countries.
Again… a lot of attraction is due to familiarity or due to fetishization. People aren’t normally attracted to races and types of races they’ve never seen before.
I think there are major pros to the Latin dances! If you get good at leading you can tailor the experience to the follows skill level, and at a certain number of hours you can seamlessly flirt and make jokes with your body while you're doing the dance. It's totally worth it.
> So they don’t feel motivated to go on dates, because the average person they go on a date with is less cool than their friends.
Funny to me that the solution offered here is to wade through a sea of less-cool people, rather than to try dating your cool friends. But I suppose my partner and I are strange people.
If you *want* to date your cool friends, then you date them and the problem is solved! But sometimes people have lots of cool friends that for whatever reason they don't want to date.
>"For many people, losing weight is difficult to impossible."
This is true literally, since there are dozens of people I believe this applies to. With ozempic, I no longer count this as a valid excuse from people, at least not your target demo who is reading blogposts about getting a GF
Proposal: put these lessons in the water supply, as it were, by making rom-coms about people in the above situations.
We already do this for overcoming unattractiveness (any film with a makeover scene for haircut/clothing, things like groundhog day for mean-ness) so why not the rest of them?
Either both protagonists can be loveshy or the other one can have some other emotional arc which is fulfilled by them getting with the loveshy one. If doing the latter, do it properly. Make the non-loveshy one (especially the woman if it's het) properly three dimensional and give them reasons why the loveshy one is an especially good match for them. Don't just make them an abstract prize for getting over one's problems.
I get the sense due to what they used to call 'social proof' average het women (the target for this, like it or not) really don't like romantically unsuccessful guys--if nobody else wants him it's evidence he's not worth having. (You'll remember Ozy had to write a whole article arguing this was irrational!) Darcy's grumpy but also insanely rich. Romance.io has 17079 hits for 'alpha male' and 13474 for 'possessive hero' but only 1887 for 'nerdy hero' and 1647 for 'shy hero' (and the top hits for many of the last two are the same and frequently seem to be about gay romances).
That said 1887 > 0, and you know what they say about being the change you want to see in the world. I've never seen a rationalist romance novel. Maybe this is your chance!
Lots of areas of life are like this. You have to bootstrap up in order to prove yourself. If you want to be romantically successful, the best way is to become romantically successful. Start toiling.
Nah, if you look down I actually got there (heck, I was doing the poly thing) and ended my relationships out of paranoia (justified or not, who knows?) about feminism.
I was more trying to encourage you to write the Great Rationalist Romance Novel. I'd be really curious to see it.
"You can’t make yourself taller"—I actually HAVE found myself wondering if the "next Ozempic" is gonna be giving boys human growth hormone to make them taller.
I mean, the FDA has already approved of HGH for "idiopathic short stature" (i.e., being unexpectedly short but not as a symptom of any medical condition) for over 25 years now, but even in that context, doctors currently tend to prescribe it only if the kid is significantly shorter than either parent.
> Most women (and men) also think it’s hot for people to have a certain “sexual energy,” to seem like the kind of person who fucks
This, as an aside is why I both find (high quality) breast implants hot and would never actively recommend someone get one. They work primarily because they're a costly signal that someone wants to be sexy, which is in itself hot.
They are usually also better looking, and lighter to carry, than natural big tits. Signed, chubby girl with big saggy tits that have been saggy since I was like 16
Strippers are notorious for persuading men that the stripper finds them attractive even when they really don't. Perhaps that would be a good way to bootstrap a belief in your own attractiveness? Maybe you could go to the club when there isn't much activity, sit down with a stripper, and treat it like a practice date. If nothing else, could be a good way to reduce any anxiety you experience from hanging out with a stunning woman in lingerie.
I've never been to a strip club, and it's always seemed rather strange to me. Thinking the stripper likes you is stupid, and everyone knows it's stupid, but somehow guys do it anyway.
Thanks for this post. It's nice to have a neutral label that I can put on my problem like "internalized desexualization," instead of just thinking of myself as a coward.
>Men who share the tastes of AO3 readers can participate in shipping-heavy fandom (though not liking slash limits your options somewhat).
The male homo sapiens advertises his creative prowess with a sexual display, that of writing a Lügner/Kraft slashfic with both great emotional sensitivity and an erotic frisson that borders on the problematic. Through this work, he seduces his wife. And this literary bower serves a second purpose, for the internal contemplation of same is required by both to maintain the desire requisite to culminate the marriage.
One subset of the desexualized man reacting negatively to advances (which you described very well), is that he can actually convince himself that the woman trying to engage with him is making fun of him. If your worldview is that no one is interested and no one could be interested, then why is she flirting with you? She must has some ulterior motive, she must be trying to set you up for failure.
In High School I opted out of dating: I was only interested in serious relationships, I figured that relationships in High School were unlikely to be serious, and I was socially awkward so I decided to start dating in college and forget about the whole stressful subject until then. Since I didn't even consider the possibility of having a relationship with my female classmates, I also didn't consider the possibility that any of them would ever want a relationship with me. This was reinforced by my social awkwardness, my physical awkwardness, my introversion, and my lack of dress sense. I was 100% "internally desexualized".
Then one day a couple of giggling girls approached me and told me that another girl liked me. The girl in question was, in my opinion, the hottest girl in my year. While there were girls that I would briefly consider the possibilities of a future relationship with, before shaking it off, I never thought about this girl that way even once because she was so clearly out of my league. But these girls were telling me she was interested in me? In *me*?! The girls wandered off while I sat there in bewildered silence.
After a moment I shrugged the whole thing off and decided to forget about it. Because clearly the most logical explanation was that someone was playing a practical joke, either on me or on the girl. I wasn't going to fall for it.
Now, with the benefit of a couple decades of hindsight, I recognize that she might actually have been interested in me. While I considered her the hottest girl in school, it now occurs to me that I had no idea if anyone else thought the same way because I had no interest in those kind of discussions. It could be that she was just exactly my type, and that if I had pursued her she would have responded.
It all worked out for me in the end (I'll be celebrating my 13th wedding anniversary in a couple months), but I certainly concur that people in that kind of position are likely to believe that someone is setting them up for a cruel joke rather than that a beautiful woman has any romantic interest in them.
In my case my thought was "she may well be into me, but if we date and it goes badly, she's better connected and anyway being female can go to HR and get me fired." I started leaving work late through different entrances to avoid one of the women.
Happened twice in about 5 years. One later had a manic episode and got fired, the other left for a different part of the country. Interestingly I didn't notice it at first as she had been previously married to a woman and I assumed she was gay. The bi ones seem to like me for some reason...
My rationalization is "eventually they'll realize how crazy I am and stop talking to me"
Mind you, I don't even identify as male anymore, but I did for most of my life.
We didn't have those options when I was growing up. And given the way I look now I'm unlikely to be seen as anything other than male.
But, hey, if what you're doing's working for you, please enjoy!
I'm genuinely uncertain, based on your other comments on this post... but "we didn't have those options"/"given the way I look now" kinda hits me in a particular way. It's reminiscent of how I thought before I transitioned. Idk. If that's something you've considered and rejected, you can just ignore me. I might just be projecting here. But if you haven't explored it, I'm open to talk further?
I appreciate your reaching out, it's quite kind. I don't think it's the case, though-- I feel like a mediocre man and not at all like a woman. I actually took the Bem Sex Role Inventory and got, like, 50% masculine and 5% feminine. So I kinda think transitioning isn't the answer. You're welcome to DM so I don't hog this whole thread but fair warning, I probably hold some views you'd find disturbing. (I've had some very bad experiences in the past with people suddenly attacking me after saying something I thought was innocuous-specifically I said something about evolution.)
I think the "learn to social dance" advice is great for the reasons you stated; it gets you comfort with physical contact and, later, becomes a stable source of female validation that's not directly about sex. However, it is also true that new leads (the role men will mostly end up in) struggle predictably in similar ways.
I wrote a thing about this, where I lay out a case that "group classes" feel approachable as a way of learning to dance but that they need private lesson supplementation, and I think the mostly-incorrect perception that private lessons are "optional" is why so many guys flare out of learning to dance before getting anywhere:
https://lifeimprovementschemes.substack.com/p/partner-dancing-is-hard-but-also
Man, reading this makes me happy that I'm doing Nordic partner dancing. It's not gendered (I mean traditionally it was but not anymore), many are group dances where you don't get to reject anyone, and it's not as hard nor nearly as competitive as eg Latin. It's so much more chill. Mostly pretty unsexy too, yet many people find partners in the scene.
We also sometimes do some American square dances following the same principles. Loads are also based in polka and waltz.
wow, not getting to reject anyone seems terrible, from both sides! and seems like it would make it not work for the purpose in this post, since the asker would have to worry "wait did they only say yes because they had to...?". I'm glad modern liberal California social dance culture has instead converged on "consent is necessary and may be withheld, but be kind about any rejection"
Well when you're 8-100 people in a circle or square, and the dance calls to walk x amount of steps to the corresponding person in the circle, you can't just say "no I don't want to dance with that person for 20 seconds" and mess the entire structure of the dance up for everyone else. So there's no rejection but also no choice in group dances. In couple dances, of which there are plenty, there is a choice and rejection is fine in principle. However they are notably less flirty than Latin.
oh I see, yeah that makes sense
for my part I'm thinking mostly of contra, where you choose a partner for a given dance but then you also dance a bit with everyone else up and down the line, and indeed you can turn down the first but not really the second
Most also follow a basic script with little variation, so leads don't actually have to decide much and there isn't as much communication. This goes for polka and waltz too
I’ve always been surprised by how many men have just never tried that hard or have severe social issues. For myself, those have never been the issue.
One could say the not acting sexual or whatnot was part of my own issue but the reality is that I was living in a situation where literally no one found me physically attractive. I wasn’t obese or poorly groomed. Just facially ugly.
The facially ugly part is still true today and why I’m still single. I think this crowd is probably relatively small because my specific issues are that I’m mixed race, no specific ethnic background (genetically unrelated parents), and facially ugly. Having all of those is really uncommon. Example being that I’ve seen plenty of less fortunate looking Indian men able to get dates with plenty of other Indian women. They can’t date much outside their race/culture but they can date internally. Does that suck? Sure but it’s better than nothing! When you’re racially ambiguous like I am with no cultural backing - you don’t get that kind of in group bias benefit. In fact, I am *always* an out group even with my own family. Very strange life to live.
Anyway, I know you don’t try to focus on the unchangeable but I do think we as a society need to talk about the unchangeable more because it really is a massive issue for those affected. I suspect the crowd that is unlovably ugly like I am is larger than some of the other groups we’ve made national headlines about. So, seems worth giving some attention and thought about how to handle the life for such people who are otherwise the same as anyone else but just born with a bad face or whatnot.
I hear you man. There's lots of us with problems we can't talk about.
I suspect as the number of mixed race people rises, it's going to be less of an issue as it becomes more common--we're seeing the rise of hybrid groups like 'Wasian' and 'Castizo'. Doesn't help you now though :(
The problem is a lot of the 'unchangeable' stuff is 'problematic'. In your case, the left doesn't want to talk about men's problems or women's choosiness, and the right doesn't care about mixed race people. But I agree there need to be forums for it.
The thing about mixed race is that it's not really a big issue if you're deeply connected to the communities and identify with them. I don't have that privilege. I have no ties or connections with the associated ethnicities of my genetics. Now, I'd normally say that shouldn't matter but the truth is that familiarity with one's background is what breeds more attraction. The more you are around X types of individuals the more you are open to dating them. (to a point - just a generalization)
If no one has ever been around someone who looks like me (and I can guarantee they haven't! I am a rare breed) then it makes it hard to sell what I look like.
Beyond that, my real point is that my face is ugly. My genetics, my mixed race, my lack of culture/ethnicity/etc, etc. would all be pointless to discuss if I was hot facially. Women would date me regardless. But, most men *aren't hot*. Therefore, they need some form of ingroup (or outgroup/fetish!) bias to help them... and that's what I see dominate the market overall. People aren't just looksmatched - they are either fetishmatched or racematched. And it's just bonkers how much we are skating by on such things.
You know, like a stereotypical man, I want to come up with a solution. But the truth is I failed myself, so what could I possibly add? Build muscle to gain self-confidence maybe?
So I'll act like the stereotypical non-man and offer sympathy. Yeah, dude, that really sucks, I am so sorry for you. Nobody takes the suffering of lower-tier men seriously, and you don't have any ethnic group to claim solidarity with. And people complain quite a bit about racial preferences in dating, but only if it makes a sufficiently right-coded (white men) or left-coded (people of color) group look bad.
Yeah, there’s not really any solutions. I’m a stereotypical dude who would rather come up with solutions than complain. I spend an embarrassingly high amount of time dedicated to trying to figure out what I can do but even with the thousands of hours of studying and lifting, etc etc etc. nothing worked. It’s a tough life.
I’m tired of it, myself. It’s tiring beyond belief.
Drastic solution I know, but I think you might benefit from traveling or moving somewhere people give substantially less of a fuck about race than in the US. I'm thinking Latin America and the Carribean, but even liberal parts of Europe could work.
I’ve traveled extensively. Like I said, I am not just racially mixed but also ugly. It’s the ingroup bias and/or fetishization that allows others with less fortunate faces (mind you - probably still better than mine) to still find a suitable match.
I’ve never had any change in my results from going to any other country. The passport bro thing only works if you’re white or some other fetishized race. It’s not really a thing for people like me in other countries.
Again… a lot of attraction is due to familiarity or due to fetishization. People aren’t normally attracted to races and types of races they’ve never seen before.
Do you have something like this but for people who can’t get paid work instead of who can’t get relationships? Like a jobcel
I think there are major pros to the Latin dances! If you get good at leading you can tailor the experience to the follows skill level, and at a certain number of hours you can seamlessly flirt and make jokes with your body while you're doing the dance. It's totally worth it.
I’ve had it with these motherfucking vapes on this motherfucking plane!
> So they don’t feel motivated to go on dates, because the average person they go on a date with is less cool than their friends.
Funny to me that the solution offered here is to wade through a sea of less-cool people, rather than to try dating your cool friends. But I suppose my partner and I are strange people.
If you *want* to date your cool friends, then you date them and the problem is solved! But sometimes people have lots of cool friends that for whatever reason they don't want to date.
For example, the stereotypical heterosexual has a friend group that's almost all of the same sex.
"The only solution is for the man himself to have low-stakes" The last footnote appears to be truncated.
>"For many people, losing weight is difficult to impossible."
This is true literally, since there are dozens of people I believe this applies to. With ozempic, I no longer count this as a valid excuse from people, at least not your target demo who is reading blogposts about getting a GF
Proposal: put these lessons in the water supply, as it were, by making rom-coms about people in the above situations.
We already do this for overcoming unattractiveness (any film with a makeover scene for haircut/clothing, things like groundhog day for mean-ness) so why not the rest of them?
Either both protagonists can be loveshy or the other one can have some other emotional arc which is fulfilled by them getting with the loveshy one. If doing the latter, do it properly. Make the non-loveshy one (especially the woman if it's het) properly three dimensional and give them reasons why the loveshy one is an especially good match for them. Don't just make them an abstract prize for getting over one's problems.
I know I'm supposed to have quit, but:
I get the sense due to what they used to call 'social proof' average het women (the target for this, like it or not) really don't like romantically unsuccessful guys--if nobody else wants him it's evidence he's not worth having. (You'll remember Ozy had to write a whole article arguing this was irrational!) Darcy's grumpy but also insanely rich. Romance.io has 17079 hits for 'alpha male' and 13474 for 'possessive hero' but only 1887 for 'nerdy hero' and 1647 for 'shy hero' (and the top hits for many of the last two are the same and frequently seem to be about gay romances).
That said 1887 > 0, and you know what they say about being the change you want to see in the world. I've never seen a rationalist romance novel. Maybe this is your chance!
Lots of areas of life are like this. You have to bootstrap up in order to prove yourself. If you want to be romantically successful, the best way is to become romantically successful. Start toiling.
Nah, if you look down I actually got there (heck, I was doing the poly thing) and ended my relationships out of paranoia (justified or not, who knows?) about feminism.
I was more trying to encourage you to write the Great Rationalist Romance Novel. I'd be really curious to see it.
"You can’t make yourself taller"—I actually HAVE found myself wondering if the "next Ozempic" is gonna be giving boys human growth hormone to make them taller.
I mean, the FDA has already approved of HGH for "idiopathic short stature" (i.e., being unexpectedly short but not as a symptom of any medical condition) for over 25 years now, but even in that context, doctors currently tend to prescribe it only if the kid is significantly shorter than either parent.
> Most women (and men) also think it’s hot for people to have a certain “sexual energy,” to seem like the kind of person who fucks
This, as an aside is why I both find (high quality) breast implants hot and would never actively recommend someone get one. They work primarily because they're a costly signal that someone wants to be sexy, which is in itself hot.
They are usually also better looking, and lighter to carry, than natural big tits. Signed, chubby girl with big saggy tits that have been saggy since I was like 16
Interesting, I didn't know they were physically lighter. Sounds convenient for back problems
Strippers are notorious for persuading men that the stripper finds them attractive even when they really don't. Perhaps that would be a good way to bootstrap a belief in your own attractiveness? Maybe you could go to the club when there isn't much activity, sit down with a stripper, and treat it like a practice date. If nothing else, could be a good way to reduce any anxiety you experience from hanging out with a stunning woman in lingerie.
How do strippers do that, anyway?
I've never been to a strip club, and it's always seemed rather strange to me. Thinking the stripper likes you is stupid, and everyone knows it's stupid, but somehow guys do it anyway.
People have a tendency to believe what they want to believe. For a lot of straight/bi men, a beautiful woman loving you is a powerful fantasy.
Aaron has a (content warning: fairly detailed) writeup of SlutCon, sounds like it was a very positive experience for him: https://lifeimprovementschemes.substack.com/p/slutcon-diary
Thanks for this post. It's nice to have a neutral label that I can put on my problem like "internalized desexualization," instead of just thinking of myself as a coward.