For more than a decade, love-shy men—men who struggle to find a romantic partner—have been emailing me and posting in my comment section about their woes.
There is a community on reddit called "incelexit" specifically focused on giving healthy dating advice to love-shy people, and helping people escape from the toxic and self-defeating blackpill mindset. https://www.reddit.com/r/IncelExit/
A lot of men post there calling themeselves unlovably ugly. I swear, literally every time they've posted an actual photo, they look completely fine, often quite attractive.
I think it's a good community and I'd like to see more like it.
Eh? They try, but (at least to my recollection, which is years out of date now) they can’t seem to make up their minds between whether to help the love-shy find love or help the love-shy be less angry and frustrated in their loneliness. Both are worthy goals, but they pull in essentially opposite directions.
There were also at least a few users who did terrible jobs of hiding their contempt for the sort of people they were allegedly trying to help. That is likely just due to being on Reddit and not anything to do with the community itself though
On that last point, I'm assuming they've got people who post along the lines of "maybe you should just suck less?" (Possibly a bit more subtly than that.) I think any group attracts this sort of dickhead. See the people with a healthy BMI who can't resist clicking on conversations about trying to lose weight so they can write "It is very simple; you just need to burn more calories than you consume". Just block 'em.
“Terrible people are clearly overrepresented among people who can’t get a date.”
Is there any evidence of this? It doesn’t match my experience and what I’ve observed, which is more along the lines of what Scott Alexander once posted in Radicalizing the Romanceless:
“Compared with virgins, men with more sexual experience are likely to drink more alcohol, attend church less, and have a criminal history. A Dr. Beaver (nominative determinism again!) was able to predict number of sexual partners pretty well using a scale with such delightful items as “have you been in a gang”, “have you used a weapon in a fight”, et cetera. An analysis of the psychometric Big Five consistently find that high levels of disagreeableness predict high sexual success in both men and women.”
I've been looking into the romanceless post, and the evidence he cites is extremely weak. For example, obviously there are confounding factors that would cause a churchgoer to have less sex (absistence), and other reasons for alcohol drinkers to have more sex (being around other alcohol drinkers with lower inhibitions). More importantly, why should we assume a churchgoer or a teetotler is inherently a nicer person?
Ozy’s post says that “sluts are evil”, i.e. terrible men are disproportionately likely to have lots of dates and sexual partners, which was what I was getting at. Ozy seems to agree with this claim and the evidence backing it, but what’s the evidence that terrible men are also disproportionately likely to be on the opposite end of the spectrum and not get any dates or sex partners?
Read my post again! Terrible people are more likely to *want* to have a large number of sexual partners, and so have a larger number of sexual partners. (People with high sociosexuality are worse people, even though high sociosexuality is mostly driven by desires and not behavior.) This is compatible with most people not wanting to date terrible people.
In fact, in a monogamous culture, the most obvious way to acquire lots of sexual partners involves people not liking you very much-- they put up with you for six months, notice that you suck, and then dump you.
Sorry to be daft but I’m not clear on what I said that you are objecting to. I agree with everything you said here except for your original assertion that “Terrible people are clearly overrepresented among people who can’t get a date”, which I just haven’t seen any evidence for.
What seems clear to me is that terrible people are over represented among people who date and have sex with a lot of different partners. That’s not necessarily in contradiction with your claim, but I still question it.
Man, my evidence for everything in this post is having talked to lots of love-shy guys. Take it or leave it!
I have also observed other people choosing partners; in general, they seem to select against terribleness. There are a lot of selection effects here-- I try to be friends with decent people and not terrible people, and it seems plausible to me that terrible people select other terrible people as partners at least sometimes. When people wind up dating someone who sucks, it's usually because they have few other options or because the person seemed okay at first. So I think if you can't hide being bitter and unpleasant for the first couple of months of dating, this is pretty bad for you in the dating marketplace.
(it is also not obvious to me that being bitter and unpleasant is especially correlated with propensity to commit gun crimes)
I suppose my model is that yes of course people try to select against terribleness, and most do this reasonably well when it comes to picking a life partner, but that’s far outweighed by how much early-stage dating opportunities increase with disagreeableness (“bad boys” for instance).
I’ve also talked to a lot of love-shy guys (and tbh was one when I was younger) since I studied in a nerdy disproportionately male field, and generally did not observe what you saw about the disproportionate terribleness. But arguably I’m biased.
I would guess that terrible people are overrepresented in both "gets lots of dates" and "gets almost no dates". I wouldn't like to guess which is more common amongst terrible people, it probably depends where you draw the boundaries.
>If you don't want a shy, anxious, passive boyfriend, then it's reasonable to rule out love-shy men.
Question: How do we know it isn't the revealed preference of the vast majority of women that they in fact don't want a shy, anxious, passive boyfriend? You seem to think there is some sort of matchmaking failure here, but that is not obvious to me. It sure seemed from the "Dating Men in the Bay Area" review that the author herself couldn't stand to be in a relationship with a shy, anxious, passive man, and that's despite having no shortage of empathy for them!
Well, for one thing, a lot of women are shy and anxious themselves and prefer a similar partner! And a more assertive woman probably ought to prefer a more passive man. And even if you prefer a less shy man in general, it's possible that a specific person has other desirable traits that outweigh it, like being funny and kind. And also I have read too much fanfic about those shy anxious boys mutually pining after each other to believe that no one likes shy anxious men.
I can't argue people out of their romantic preferences but I do think most women would be open to some love-shy men if they weren't prejudiced against the entire demographic.
So if a man is too cowardly to ask anyone out, and even in a relationship, too passive to plan dates or initiate sex, then at what point does the woman get any kind of reassurance that he actually likes her and isn't just, you know, going with the flow because he's deeply passive?
There's a reason we traditionally expect men to go to significant effort in dating—in part because it's a way of distinguishing between the man who is passionate about & deeply committed to his partner vs. the man who's just agreeing to go out with her because it's easy and he doesn't have anything else going on.
We can reverse your question. So if a woman is too cowardly to ask anyone out, and even in a relationship, too passive to plan dates or initiate sex, then at what point does the man get any kind of reassurance that she actually likes him and isn't just, you know, going with the flow because she's deeply passive?
The obvious answer is that both people should put equal amount of effort in asking people out, planning dates, etc. But that doesn't seem to be how straight dating works, men are expected to do it much more than women (at least based on my fairly limited exposure to straight people).
It’s different for women because few women will say yes to a man just because it’s easy and they don’t have anything else going on. Agreeing to sex is a much stronger signal of interest coming from a woman. If i were to assume a man is passionate about me & devoted just because he’s willing to have sex when I ask, i’d be an idiot.
Anyway I sympathize with your desire for egalitarianism. What Ozy describes doesnt seem like egalitarianism, it seems like the woman doing 100% of the relationship work and taking 100% of the risk of getting rejected.
That seems like a weird double standard, but what do I know about straight dating (not much).
Ozy is not saying that 100% of women should put in 100% of effort, that'd indeed be stupid. But if you're willing to put in 70% of effort while an average woman is doing 30%, then you'll be able to get a man who's much better in other ways.
I don't see how expecting men to take the initiative actually helps this. The classic "rake" figure who charms women, has sex with them, and then abandons them is very much taking the initiative, but certainly isn't devoted to you.
Taking the initiative on asking for sex is a credible signal that he wants to have sex with you, but so is accepting your proposition, and neither says much about his interest in a long-term relationship. That is just something you have to assess some other way.
This is a good point. I think we should distinguish between the commitment/effort signals men send in early dating (initiating and planning dates) and those that men can show later on, like establishing a joint household, caring for it responsibly, monogamy if you're into that). You need both early & late signals of commitment.
The answer to this is the same way that men do in healthy relationships: they receive affirmation and effort from their partner, because having made the first move on asking for a date and a kiss is not the same thing as initiating everything forever, and anyhow initiation is not the same thing as showing enthusiasm or effort
Maybe I’m taking what Ozy is saying too literally, but they did say: “if you date a love-shy man, you're going to be planning dates and initiating sex.” Why would this change if the man learns he can get the relationship he wants without ever taking initiative or risking rejection?
I did not mean that you will plan literally 100% of dates and initiate literally 100% of sex, just that it will be tilted somewhat more in your direction than is normal for straight relationships. (In general, men tend to plan more of the dates and initiate more of the sex.)
The same reason it does with women in healthy relationships? Because they love their partner and so naturally want to do these things with them, and have come to learn how that partner appreciates being shown they are appreciated.
I think it's risky to go into a relationship assuming that your partner's fundamental personality and level of risk-taking will change just because he knows you'd like it to
OK, but what's the particularized relevance? Like, in this particular case -- if you have a couple with a man and a woman, and the woman has higher initiative than the man, and so the woman started things, but also the woman does more of the planning more generally... then what's the problem? We posited that she has higher initiative! Seems to me like she'd fine this a pretty sensible arrangement. If you have knowledge of the particular people in question then population-level differences just aren't very relevant.
I addressed this on my blog. Briefly, we need men to put in effort to show their commitment to the relationship, because just being willing to be in the relationship & have sex with her shows very little about the man's level of commitment. This isn't reversible because women are much less likely to date/have sex with men they don't actually like.
Later in dating, there are many ways to show commitment: early in dating, initiating and planning dates is it.
I would guess that it can happen pretty quickly - my model of these things is that a large number of them will treat being asked out as though they were just handed a winning lottery ticket and will be very enthusiastic. (I certainly was!)
"No man's problem is just not having sex. If it was, he could hire a sex worker."
Great article overall, but I'd push back on this one point. Aside from the obvious point that some people can't afford to hire a sex worker, a lot of people have ethical issues with sex work, or don't like the social stigma surrounding it, or feel uncomfortable with the idea of having sex with someone who you know from the start is just pretending to enjoy it.
I'm currently single and I imagine I could afford to hire a prostitute (don't know what the going rate is, but it's not they only do business with the wealthy), but I never have for all of the other above reasons.
I don't think there's really a perfect categorical distinction between the people you call love-shy and blackpillers; this seems more like the type of distinction people often consider Asperger's vs autism to be (and that it originally was), where someone tries to rehabilitate the image of a certain group of socially unacceptable people by disassociating them from the worst subgroups.
Specifically, I think lots of people who have not had romantic success are seriously resentful about the dating world and the opposite sex, that this resentment is a pretty natural reaction to being constantly rejected or ignored, and so this is not a great way to distinguish between good and bad people who have not had romantic success.
Back in the day there were two subreddits for love-shy men:
- r/incels was for men who couldn’t get a date or get laid, and were seething at women for it
- r/foreveralone was for also for men who couldn’t get a date or get laid, but who were just horribly depressed and thought poorly of themselves for it
It was actually amazing how well the two groups seemed to self-sort. Even a mod on a sub that had worked to ban the r/incels subreddit went on to r/foreveralone to assure them that they were totally fine and not going to be next.
So no, I completely disagree with what you’re saying. Internal vs external locus of control is a personality trait, and while love-shy men with the latter will be resentful as you say, love-shy men with the former aren’t.
I really don't think there is a massive population of people who have been totally isolated from romantic affection and hold absolutely no resentment of any kind about this. I think there are a lot of people who direct that resentment at societal norms that make their lives more difficult, or at shallow people specifically, or dating apps, or so on and so forth, such that they don't hate the opposite sex, but in general the people I've known who've had this experience are absolutely angry at the world, even though they usually aren't hostile towards women/men as a whole in the way we think of incels as being. But I don't think it's fair to expect universal love and benevolence from these people. Respect for others, sure, but being angry about the dating world doesn't automatically make you a hateful person.
I think there's a very broad definition of resentment - even broader than yours - where it's true that everyone feels resentment, but during my "totally isolated from romantic affection" period my attitude straightforwardly was "the reason I have no dates is because I have spent insufficient hours signing up for dating sites, sending messages on dating sites and going to social events with women and asking them out," and I felt annoyed at myself for not maximizing my long-term total utility, but that was in the period where OKCupid mostly worked so I didn't blame dating apps, I just thought I had a hard job.
If you wanted to, you could say I resented myself for not working hard enough at it, but I'd call that guilt and there wasn't that much of it (about romance), or that I resented the rule men had to be the ones to ask (but I thought it existed for completely logical reasons and resenting it would have felt like resenting that beef jerky costs more money than carrots) and all this seems like stretching the definition of resentment pretty far, for me.
Fair enough. In this day and age it seems like people being horrible is a more salient factor in a lot of dating problems than in the OKCupid days, though, to the point where it is a very easy and obvious (perhaps the most easy and obvious) target for frustration and anger. This might explain why we have had different experiences/viewpoints.
Probably! I expect I'd resent OKCupid if I was doing it now, and indeed just the knowledge that I can't go back means that I quite dislike the people who retooled it by this point.
I thought the red pill was the misogyny pill, and the black pill was despair. Or, possibly, liquorice. Maybe there's been an update to the standards...
Red Pill - women are only attracted to these cartoonishly macho men and you can probably learn to become one. They are also kinda stupid and overly emotional
Black Pill - women are only attracted to modelesque men, and trying to make them attracted to men like me is kinda like trying to make a gay man straight. It won't happen. It's all looks, money and/or macho traits won't make a woman authentically attracted to you. At best she'll put up with you in an extremely transactional way
That's my reading of it anyway. There's a lot of overlap but ultimately red pill is cringe and harmful, whereas true black pill online spaces almost seems like a sinister death cult. There are users purporting to be super attractive men saying "yeah no woman will ever love you and they are stupid, just give up lmao" and "rate my looks" threads where users tell perfectly normal looking men that they are hideous. One of the guys behind a big incel forum has also made another forum for sharing suicide methods and encouraging suicide - women are allowed on that site, not on the incel site. It's bizarre.
Mostly accurate but black pill can also involve personality, if you believe dominant personality traits that attract women cannot be successfully learned or only work if you are also tall and masculine-looking.
> Most of them are passive, at least romantically: if you date a love-shy man, you're going to be planning dates and initiating sex.
OK, awkward question, but: What do people actually mean when they say "initiating sex"? Like I actually don't know. It seems to me from my own experience that most of the time it just sort of happens -- you're lying on the couch cuddling, you start kissing, this leads to more extensive fooling around, eventually you're both so horny you move to the bedroom and have sex. The point where someone says "let's move to the bedroom" doesn't seem especially significant unless it's your first time together, like at that point it's already clearly going to happen because you both need it, I'd hardly call that taking initiative. I assume that what people have in mind is somewhere earlier in the process, but -- again, unless it's your first time together -- there isn't anything that jumps out as a notable boundary that requires taking initiative, just a gradual escalation until it's unavoidable. Or do other people do things differently...?
Unfortunately, your two options for meeting women are The Apps or Not The Apps, due to the Law of the Excluded Middle. Either you should get good photos (professional photographer might help) and accept a soul-crushing amount of swiping, or you should go to some kind of social event that has women at it even if you wouldn't want to go to that kind of social event on your own. (Or maybe get friends to matchmake, if your friends have female friends and are down for that kind of thing.)
Fortunately, a lot of mostly male hobbies have more gender-neutral adjacent activities. For example, if you like weightlifting, maybe you can incorporate yoga on your rest days. If you like gaming, I'm told DragonCon has pretty close to a 50/50 gender ratio these days. Writing might be a solo hobby, but can you go to a writers' group? Etc. It can also help to try to think what kind of activities the woman you want to date would be doing. For example, an EA vegan man might do vegan leafleting (even though it's not a very effective form of helping animals) because women who share his values are leafleting.
Do you know any couples that have paired up because he decided to try going to yoga consistently? Or really any activities that are more gender balanced/female heavy. I’ve not heard of any stories like this, personally.
I’ve done a good amount of yoga/pilates and it’s just not a very social activity. There’s no socializing in the activity itself and you’re entirely relying on your cold approach skill before/after class. Which, to me, is basically like trying to date someone through an app. A lot of women I’ve met also have literally zero awareness of others. So, the idea that just being in their proximity for some period of time will warm them up to your presence only would work for some women. A lot will literally never notice your existence until you introduce yourself. That’s why I say it’s a lot like cold approach still and feels similar to online dating in terms of odds.
IDK when I did yoga a lot of people hung out afterward and talked about whatever insane woo bullshit? If there isn't a "hang out and talk about $interest" step then it's pretty bad for dating, I agree.
Ok. I haven’t seen this. Maybe you need to go to very hippie yoga meetups then. I was mostly doing classes at gyms for these. Most people do this as a before/after work activity and just as part of their physical fitness.
Yes I have - social dancing (!!!!!), climbing, running clubs, walking/hiking clubs, winter swimming (am Scandinavian). You're right that yoga is not ideal.
I'd probably suggest singles to go to IRL single mixers most of all.
Maybe it’s different in Europe. I don’t know almost any couples from those activities. If you’re a part of the activity, you tend to find couples that existed from the activity some years ago but I’m not seeing new couples form very often at all. Some of those also have as bad of a gender ratio as online dating and/or require a level of dedication/skill that required years of intense effort to be attractive still.
Huh, which of these have too many men in the States?
Scandinavian social dancing (some places abroad may lump a lot of the dances we dance together and call it "historical dancing", like polka and waltz and menuet and whatnot) is really easy. You
can learn basics in like 20 minutes. Ballroom dancing is a lot harder, as is tango. Salsa and bachata and a lot of the Latin dances seem easy as well.
Climbing, running, walking seems like something that can be done at many skill levels?
In any case, as a woman I'd be way more open to someone approaching me during a hobby activity than on the street. I think it increases your odds like, a lot.
As someone who is at DCon as I type, there are indeed plenty of women there…but most of them seem to be with friends/partners/generally not looking to talk to strangers. But even if they weren’t, that is just once a year.
If 80% of your social circle is men, you might also want to consider dating men. Even if you're mostly attracted to women, there might still be some men you like.
Then I'm a little bit more serious about this than your therapist (but only a little).
My first relationship was with a gay guy, and it worked out much better than you might expect a relationship between a gay guy and a lesbian to go. We didn't have sex (because you know, lesbian and gay), but finally getting lots of cuddles and handholding and dates felt great, even if I wasn't attracted to him sexually all that much. So who knows, it might also work for some other people too.
Would you say that if a man cannot get a date/matches off a typical app like Hinge then he’s probably not physically attractive? (Assumption being that his profile is high quality)
I haven’t found a strong difference these days between men who date off apps and those who are relegated to in person. It seems like if you do well in one, you’ll do well in the other. I think the biggest issue for love shy men is getting a date to begin with. And to me, it seems trivial in effort to get one off an app if you are physically attractive. So, this leads me to think most of these love shy men are just simply ugly.
AIUI it's pretty hellish for a normal-looking man to get a date off the apps. If you don't match easily on the apps, you can rule out being a model, but you could easily be one of the vast majority of people who look normal.
As I’ve seen, it definitely can be very hard for some men to get dates off of apps but it somehow seems to be the most common way for college educated to meet their spouse after college. When I was in nyc, it seemed like most people who met in real life would never take it serious but if you met off an app then it would be serious.
I’m just not seeing many serious couples being made from irl meetings post-college for the college educated. I’ve asked a lot of college educated people and almost all the ways they’ve met their spouse/partner are not replicable for people who’ve already graduated college.
Straight women get an overwhelming (like, actually overwhelming) amount of attention on dating apps. Real life isn't like this for average women. It's like being a recruiter for a job offer with 100+ applicants versus, like, 5-15. It's a first world problem but ultimately overwhelming to... perceive and choose between 100 people.
And you can show off your strenghts easier in person than over text, unless you happen to be a physically attractive but shit person.
There is a community on reddit called "incelexit" specifically focused on giving healthy dating advice to love-shy people, and helping people escape from the toxic and self-defeating blackpill mindset. https://www.reddit.com/r/IncelExit/
A lot of men post there calling themeselves unlovably ugly. I swear, literally every time they've posted an actual photo, they look completely fine, often quite attractive.
I think it's a good community and I'd like to see more like it.
Eh? They try, but (at least to my recollection, which is years out of date now) they can’t seem to make up their minds between whether to help the love-shy find love or help the love-shy be less angry and frustrated in their loneliness. Both are worthy goals, but they pull in essentially opposite directions.
There were also at least a few users who did terrible jobs of hiding their contempt for the sort of people they were allegedly trying to help. That is likely just due to being on Reddit and not anything to do with the community itself though
On that last point, I'm assuming they've got people who post along the lines of "maybe you should just suck less?" (Possibly a bit more subtly than that.) I think any group attracts this sort of dickhead. See the people with a healthy BMI who can't resist clicking on conversations about trying to lose weight so they can write "It is very simple; you just need to burn more calories than you consume". Just block 'em.
“Terrible people are clearly overrepresented among people who can’t get a date.”
Is there any evidence of this? It doesn’t match my experience and what I’ve observed, which is more along the lines of what Scott Alexander once posted in Radicalizing the Romanceless:
“Compared with virgins, men with more sexual experience are likely to drink more alcohol, attend church less, and have a criminal history. A Dr. Beaver (nominative determinism again!) was able to predict number of sexual partners pretty well using a scale with such delightful items as “have you been in a gang”, “have you used a weapon in a fight”, et cetera. An analysis of the psychometric Big Five consistently find that high levels of disagreeableness predict high sexual success in both men and women.”
I've been looking into the romanceless post, and the evidence he cites is extremely weak. For example, obviously there are confounding factors that would cause a churchgoer to have less sex (absistence), and other reasons for alcohol drinkers to have more sex (being around other alcohol drinkers with lower inhibitions). More importantly, why should we assume a churchgoer or a teetotler is inherently a nicer person?
Ozy also has a post pointing out some problems here: https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2017/04/19/deradicalizing-the-romanceless/
Ozy’s post says that “sluts are evil”, i.e. terrible men are disproportionately likely to have lots of dates and sexual partners, which was what I was getting at. Ozy seems to agree with this claim and the evidence backing it, but what’s the evidence that terrible men are also disproportionately likely to be on the opposite end of the spectrum and not get any dates or sex partners?
Read my post again! Terrible people are more likely to *want* to have a large number of sexual partners, and so have a larger number of sexual partners. (People with high sociosexuality are worse people, even though high sociosexuality is mostly driven by desires and not behavior.) This is compatible with most people not wanting to date terrible people.
In fact, in a monogamous culture, the most obvious way to acquire lots of sexual partners involves people not liking you very much-- they put up with you for six months, notice that you suck, and then dump you.
Sorry to be daft but I’m not clear on what I said that you are objecting to. I agree with everything you said here except for your original assertion that “Terrible people are clearly overrepresented among people who can’t get a date”, which I just haven’t seen any evidence for.
What seems clear to me is that terrible people are over represented among people who date and have sex with a lot of different partners. That’s not necessarily in contradiction with your claim, but I still question it.
Man, my evidence for everything in this post is having talked to lots of love-shy guys. Take it or leave it!
I have also observed other people choosing partners; in general, they seem to select against terribleness. There are a lot of selection effects here-- I try to be friends with decent people and not terrible people, and it seems plausible to me that terrible people select other terrible people as partners at least sometimes. When people wind up dating someone who sucks, it's usually because they have few other options or because the person seemed okay at first. So I think if you can't hide being bitter and unpleasant for the first couple of months of dating, this is pretty bad for you in the dating marketplace.
(it is also not obvious to me that being bitter and unpleasant is especially correlated with propensity to commit gun crimes)
I suppose my model is that yes of course people try to select against terribleness, and most do this reasonably well when it comes to picking a life partner, but that’s far outweighed by how much early-stage dating opportunities increase with disagreeableness (“bad boys” for instance).
I’ve also talked to a lot of love-shy guys (and tbh was one when I was younger) since I studied in a nerdy disproportionately male field, and generally did not observe what you saw about the disproportionate terribleness. But arguably I’m biased.
I would guess that terrible people are overrepresented in both "gets lots of dates" and "gets almost no dates". I wouldn't like to guess which is more common amongst terrible people, it probably depends where you draw the boundaries.
Wasn't that based on a study of adolescent boys?
I checked and Scott’s links are broken today. The first one might be but I don’t believe the other two are.
>If you don't want a shy, anxious, passive boyfriend, then it's reasonable to rule out love-shy men.
Question: How do we know it isn't the revealed preference of the vast majority of women that they in fact don't want a shy, anxious, passive boyfriend? You seem to think there is some sort of matchmaking failure here, but that is not obvious to me. It sure seemed from the "Dating Men in the Bay Area" review that the author herself couldn't stand to be in a relationship with a shy, anxious, passive man, and that's despite having no shortage of empathy for them!
Well, for one thing, a lot of women are shy and anxious themselves and prefer a similar partner! And a more assertive woman probably ought to prefer a more passive man. And even if you prefer a less shy man in general, it's possible that a specific person has other desirable traits that outweigh it, like being funny and kind. And also I have read too much fanfic about those shy anxious boys mutually pining after each other to believe that no one likes shy anxious men.
I can't argue people out of their romantic preferences but I do think most women would be open to some love-shy men if they weren't prejudiced against the entire demographic.
So if a man is too cowardly to ask anyone out, and even in a relationship, too passive to plan dates or initiate sex, then at what point does the woman get any kind of reassurance that he actually likes her and isn't just, you know, going with the flow because he's deeply passive?
There's a reason we traditionally expect men to go to significant effort in dating—in part because it's a way of distinguishing between the man who is passionate about & deeply committed to his partner vs. the man who's just agreeing to go out with her because it's easy and he doesn't have anything else going on.
We can reverse your question. So if a woman is too cowardly to ask anyone out, and even in a relationship, too passive to plan dates or initiate sex, then at what point does the man get any kind of reassurance that she actually likes him and isn't just, you know, going with the flow because she's deeply passive?
The obvious answer is that both people should put equal amount of effort in asking people out, planning dates, etc. But that doesn't seem to be how straight dating works, men are expected to do it much more than women (at least based on my fairly limited exposure to straight people).
It’s different for women because few women will say yes to a man just because it’s easy and they don’t have anything else going on. Agreeing to sex is a much stronger signal of interest coming from a woman. If i were to assume a man is passionate about me & devoted just because he’s willing to have sex when I ask, i’d be an idiot.
Anyway I sympathize with your desire for egalitarianism. What Ozy describes doesnt seem like egalitarianism, it seems like the woman doing 100% of the relationship work and taking 100% of the risk of getting rejected.
That seems like a weird double standard, but what do I know about straight dating (not much).
Ozy is not saying that 100% of women should put in 100% of effort, that'd indeed be stupid. But if you're willing to put in 70% of effort while an average woman is doing 30%, then you'll be able to get a man who's much better in other ways.
But if the man is putting in 30% of average effort, how do I know he actually likes me?
If you can't tell if a life-shy person likes you, then the advice in this post is probably not for you. It's as simple as that.
I wrote something further addressing these points:
https://kayla718047.substack.com/p/dating-the-love-shy
I don't see how expecting men to take the initiative actually helps this. The classic "rake" figure who charms women, has sex with them, and then abandons them is very much taking the initiative, but certainly isn't devoted to you.
Taking the initiative on asking for sex is a credible signal that he wants to have sex with you, but so is accepting your proposition, and neither says much about his interest in a long-term relationship. That is just something you have to assess some other way.
This is a good point. I think we should distinguish between the commitment/effort signals men send in early dating (initiating and planning dates) and those that men can show later on, like establishing a joint household, caring for it responsibly, monogamy if you're into that). You need both early & late signals of commitment.
Wouldn't it be more like shifting the gender balance of people taking the risk of being rejected towards 50%?
The answer to this is the same way that men do in healthy relationships: they receive affirmation and effort from their partner, because having made the first move on asking for a date and a kiss is not the same thing as initiating everything forever, and anyhow initiation is not the same thing as showing enthusiasm or effort
Maybe I’m taking what Ozy is saying too literally, but they did say: “if you date a love-shy man, you're going to be planning dates and initiating sex.” Why would this change if the man learns he can get the relationship he wants without ever taking initiative or risking rejection?
I did not mean that you will plan literally 100% of dates and initiate literally 100% of sex, just that it will be tilted somewhat more in your direction than is normal for straight relationships. (In general, men tend to plan more of the dates and initiate more of the sex.)
The same reason it does with women in healthy relationships? Because they love their partner and so naturally want to do these things with them, and have come to learn how that partner appreciates being shown they are appreciated.
I think it's risky to go into a relationship assuming that your partner's fundamental personality and level of risk-taking will change just because he knows you'd like it to
Once again, this question is reversible!
men and women are not symmetrical
OK, but what's the particularized relevance? Like, in this particular case -- if you have a couple with a man and a woman, and the woman has higher initiative than the man, and so the woman started things, but also the woman does more of the planning more generally... then what's the problem? We posited that she has higher initiative! Seems to me like she'd fine this a pretty sensible arrangement. If you have knowledge of the particular people in question then population-level differences just aren't very relevant.
I addressed this on my blog. Briefly, we need men to put in effort to show their commitment to the relationship, because just being willing to be in the relationship & have sex with her shows very little about the man's level of commitment. This isn't reversible because women are much less likely to date/have sex with men they don't actually like.
Later in dating, there are many ways to show commitment: early in dating, initiating and planning dates is it.
https://kayla718047.substack.com/p/dating-the-love-shy
I would guess that it can happen pretty quickly - my model of these things is that a large number of them will treat being asked out as though they were just handed a winning lottery ticket and will be very enthusiastic. (I certainly was!)
Thanks for the discussion! My fuller argument for why we need men to show some initiative in dating is here:
https://kayla718047.substack.com/p/dating-the-love-shy
"No man's problem is just not having sex. If it was, he could hire a sex worker."
Great article overall, but I'd push back on this one point. Aside from the obvious point that some people can't afford to hire a sex worker, a lot of people have ethical issues with sex work, or don't like the social stigma surrounding it, or feel uncomfortable with the idea of having sex with someone who you know from the start is just pretending to enjoy it.
I'm currently single and I imagine I could afford to hire a prostitute (don't know what the going rate is, but it's not they only do business with the wealthy), but I never have for all of the other above reasons.
Also the fact that it is literally illegal in most places
Yes, and that! (Thanks, now really kicking myself I missed that one.)
I don't think there's really a perfect categorical distinction between the people you call love-shy and blackpillers; this seems more like the type of distinction people often consider Asperger's vs autism to be (and that it originally was), where someone tries to rehabilitate the image of a certain group of socially unacceptable people by disassociating them from the worst subgroups.
Specifically, I think lots of people who have not had romantic success are seriously resentful about the dating world and the opposite sex, that this resentment is a pretty natural reaction to being constantly rejected or ignored, and so this is not a great way to distinguish between good and bad people who have not had romantic success.
Back in the day there were two subreddits for love-shy men:
- r/incels was for men who couldn’t get a date or get laid, and were seething at women for it
- r/foreveralone was for also for men who couldn’t get a date or get laid, but who were just horribly depressed and thought poorly of themselves for it
It was actually amazing how well the two groups seemed to self-sort. Even a mod on a sub that had worked to ban the r/incels subreddit went on to r/foreveralone to assure them that they were totally fine and not going to be next.
So no, I completely disagree with what you’re saying. Internal vs external locus of control is a personality trait, and while love-shy men with the latter will be resentful as you say, love-shy men with the former aren’t.
I really don't think there is a massive population of people who have been totally isolated from romantic affection and hold absolutely no resentment of any kind about this. I think there are a lot of people who direct that resentment at societal norms that make their lives more difficult, or at shallow people specifically, or dating apps, or so on and so forth, such that they don't hate the opposite sex, but in general the people I've known who've had this experience are absolutely angry at the world, even though they usually aren't hostile towards women/men as a whole in the way we think of incels as being. But I don't think it's fair to expect universal love and benevolence from these people. Respect for others, sure, but being angry about the dating world doesn't automatically make you a hateful person.
I think there's a very broad definition of resentment - even broader than yours - where it's true that everyone feels resentment, but during my "totally isolated from romantic affection" period my attitude straightforwardly was "the reason I have no dates is because I have spent insufficient hours signing up for dating sites, sending messages on dating sites and going to social events with women and asking them out," and I felt annoyed at myself for not maximizing my long-term total utility, but that was in the period where OKCupid mostly worked so I didn't blame dating apps, I just thought I had a hard job.
If you wanted to, you could say I resented myself for not working hard enough at it, but I'd call that guilt and there wasn't that much of it (about romance), or that I resented the rule men had to be the ones to ask (but I thought it existed for completely logical reasons and resenting it would have felt like resenting that beef jerky costs more money than carrots) and all this seems like stretching the definition of resentment pretty far, for me.
Fair enough. In this day and age it seems like people being horrible is a more salient factor in a lot of dating problems than in the OKCupid days, though, to the point where it is a very easy and obvious (perhaps the most easy and obvious) target for frustration and anger. This might explain why we have had different experiences/viewpoints.
Probably! I expect I'd resent OKCupid if I was doing it now, and indeed just the knowledge that I can't go back means that I quite dislike the people who retooled it by this point.
It might not be the most obvious difference within the population but it is the one which people looking for dates in the population care about
I thought the red pill was the misogyny pill, and the black pill was despair. Or, possibly, liquorice. Maybe there's been an update to the standards...
Red Pill - women are only attracted to these cartoonishly macho men and you can probably learn to become one. They are also kinda stupid and overly emotional
Black Pill - women are only attracted to modelesque men, and trying to make them attracted to men like me is kinda like trying to make a gay man straight. It won't happen. It's all looks, money and/or macho traits won't make a woman authentically attracted to you. At best she'll put up with you in an extremely transactional way
That's my reading of it anyway. There's a lot of overlap but ultimately red pill is cringe and harmful, whereas true black pill online spaces almost seems like a sinister death cult. There are users purporting to be super attractive men saying "yeah no woman will ever love you and they are stupid, just give up lmao" and "rate my looks" threads where users tell perfectly normal looking men that they are hideous. One of the guys behind a big incel forum has also made another forum for sharing suicide methods and encouraging suicide - women are allowed on that site, not on the incel site. It's bizarre.
Both are misogynistic.
Mostly accurate but black pill can also involve personality, if you believe dominant personality traits that attract women cannot be successfully learned or only work if you are also tall and masculine-looking.
Do you think "charm school" for boys could mitigate some of this?
Unfortunately the closest thing to this tends to be PUA stuff.
Or the military? Especially back in the day when it was a normalized part of more men's life trajectory.
"Ultimately, each love-shy man has to choose for himself to learn how to flirt."
What advice would you give to someone (like me) who doesn't know how to flirt, and wants to learn?
Read Models by Mark Manson.
I second this, I wish I had come across this book much earlier in life than I actually did.
> Most of them are passive, at least romantically: if you date a love-shy man, you're going to be planning dates and initiating sex.
OK, awkward question, but: What do people actually mean when they say "initiating sex"? Like I actually don't know. It seems to me from my own experience that most of the time it just sort of happens -- you're lying on the couch cuddling, you start kissing, this leads to more extensive fooling around, eventually you're both so horny you move to the bedroom and have sex. The point where someone says "let's move to the bedroom" doesn't seem especially significant unless it's your first time together, like at that point it's already clearly going to happen because you both need it, I'd hardly call that taking initiative. I assume that what people have in mind is somewhere earlier in the process, but -- again, unless it's your first time together -- there isn't anything that jumps out as a notable boundary that requires taking initiative, just a gradual escalation until it's unavoidable. Or do other people do things differently...?
Any advice for someone who is A) far too ugly for dating apps and B) has zero hobbies that aren't either 80% male or best done in a solitary fashion?
Unfortunately, your two options for meeting women are The Apps or Not The Apps, due to the Law of the Excluded Middle. Either you should get good photos (professional photographer might help) and accept a soul-crushing amount of swiping, or you should go to some kind of social event that has women at it even if you wouldn't want to go to that kind of social event on your own. (Or maybe get friends to matchmake, if your friends have female friends and are down for that kind of thing.)
Fortunately, a lot of mostly male hobbies have more gender-neutral adjacent activities. For example, if you like weightlifting, maybe you can incorporate yoga on your rest days. If you like gaming, I'm told DragonCon has pretty close to a 50/50 gender ratio these days. Writing might be a solo hobby, but can you go to a writers' group? Etc. It can also help to try to think what kind of activities the woman you want to date would be doing. For example, an EA vegan man might do vegan leafleting (even though it's not a very effective form of helping animals) because women who share his values are leafleting.
Do you know any couples that have paired up because he decided to try going to yoga consistently? Or really any activities that are more gender balanced/female heavy. I’ve not heard of any stories like this, personally.
I’ve done a good amount of yoga/pilates and it’s just not a very social activity. There’s no socializing in the activity itself and you’re entirely relying on your cold approach skill before/after class. Which, to me, is basically like trying to date someone through an app. A lot of women I’ve met also have literally zero awareness of others. So, the idea that just being in their proximity for some period of time will warm them up to your presence only would work for some women. A lot will literally never notice your existence until you introduce yourself. That’s why I say it’s a lot like cold approach still and feels similar to online dating in terms of odds.
IDK when I did yoga a lot of people hung out afterward and talked about whatever insane woo bullshit? If there isn't a "hang out and talk about $interest" step then it's pretty bad for dating, I agree.
Ok. I haven’t seen this. Maybe you need to go to very hippie yoga meetups then. I was mostly doing classes at gyms for these. Most people do this as a before/after work activity and just as part of their physical fitness.
Yes I have - social dancing (!!!!!), climbing, running clubs, walking/hiking clubs, winter swimming (am Scandinavian). You're right that yoga is not ideal.
I'd probably suggest singles to go to IRL single mixers most of all.
Maybe it’s different in Europe. I don’t know almost any couples from those activities. If you’re a part of the activity, you tend to find couples that existed from the activity some years ago but I’m not seeing new couples form very often at all. Some of those also have as bad of a gender ratio as online dating and/or require a level of dedication/skill that required years of intense effort to be attractive still.
Huh, which of these have too many men in the States?
Scandinavian social dancing (some places abroad may lump a lot of the dances we dance together and call it "historical dancing", like polka and waltz and menuet and whatnot) is really easy. You
can learn basics in like 20 minutes. Ballroom dancing is a lot harder, as is tango. Salsa and bachata and a lot of the Latin dances seem easy as well.
Climbing, running, walking seems like something that can be done at many skill levels?
In any case, as a woman I'd be way more open to someone approaching me during a hobby activity than on the street. I think it increases your odds like, a lot.
As someone who is at DCon as I type, there are indeed plenty of women there…but most of them seem to be with friends/partners/generally not looking to talk to strangers. But even if they weren’t, that is just once a year.
If 80% of your social circle is men, you might also want to consider dating men. Even if you're mostly attracted to women, there might still be some men you like.
That is what my therapist once said, though he was joking.
Then I'm a little bit more serious about this than your therapist (but only a little).
My first relationship was with a gay guy, and it worked out much better than you might expect a relationship between a gay guy and a lesbian to go. We didn't have sex (because you know, lesbian and gay), but finally getting lots of cuddles and handholding and dates felt great, even if I wasn't attracted to him sexually all that much. So who knows, it might also work for some other people too.
Unfortunately, I was born this way.
Would you say that if a man cannot get a date/matches off a typical app like Hinge then he’s probably not physically attractive? (Assumption being that his profile is high quality)
I haven’t found a strong difference these days between men who date off apps and those who are relegated to in person. It seems like if you do well in one, you’ll do well in the other. I think the biggest issue for love shy men is getting a date to begin with. And to me, it seems trivial in effort to get one off an app if you are physically attractive. So, this leads me to think most of these love shy men are just simply ugly.
AIUI it's pretty hellish for a normal-looking man to get a date off the apps. If you don't match easily on the apps, you can rule out being a model, but you could easily be one of the vast majority of people who look normal.
As I’ve seen, it definitely can be very hard for some men to get dates off of apps but it somehow seems to be the most common way for college educated to meet their spouse after college. When I was in nyc, it seemed like most people who met in real life would never take it serious but if you met off an app then it would be serious.
I’m just not seeing many serious couples being made from irl meetings post-college for the college educated. I’ve asked a lot of college educated people and almost all the ways they’ve met their spouse/partner are not replicable for people who’ve already graduated college.
It seems like men are really overrepresented on dating apps in a way they are not so much in real life, so dating apps are just terrible for men.
Straight women get an overwhelming (like, actually overwhelming) amount of attention on dating apps. Real life isn't like this for average women. It's like being a recruiter for a job offer with 100+ applicants versus, like, 5-15. It's a first world problem but ultimately overwhelming to... perceive and choose between 100 people.
And you can show off your strenghts easier in person than over text, unless you happen to be a physically attractive but shit person.
Your area can make a strong difference.