One of the more popular news stories being shared around the web this week has been the story of how Chris McKinlay, a mathematics PhD candidate “hacked” OKCupid in order to find love. Naturally, this inspired both wonder – OMG, nerds can break the code and get laid! – and misaimed anger by people who seem to believe that McKinlay was doing something fiendish and underhanded, a digital pick-up artist who dehumanized women by trying to reduce seduction into numbers and becoming an online Svengali.
“MissUTexas_1985, you shall kneel before z0d_rUlez!”
The truth however, was much more prosaic. McKinlay did what many nerds have done before: he attempted to solve a problem by taking his strengths – research, coding and statistical sampling – and applying them to the task at hand. Rather than finding some ruthless exploit in the human psyche that was somehow vulnerable to math, he was, put simply, attempting to moneyball online dating.
Of course, McKinlay is hardly the first person to attempt to make the system work for him… or even to apply it successfully. Amy Webb, a digital strategist with Webbmedia Group employed a similar strategy of data mining, mathematical analysis and matchmaking algorithms to solve her own love issues.
And you can do it as well. You may not be a brilliant mathematician able to write custom code to seek out your perfect – or near perfect – match… but you can definitely crack the code and make OKCupid dance to your tune, giving you more success in online dating than you’ve ever had before.
How They Did It
While their methods differed – McKinlay started by examining how to affect OKCupid’s match percentages while Webb was developing an algorithm to predict which men on JDate had long-term potential – their approaches were the same: both McKinlay and Webb wanted to know how to make themselves more appealing to their potential online partners. In order to do so, they both engaged in researching just what made someone desirable online through a combination of coding, A/B testing and statistical probability.
Part of OKCupid’s appeal is in the compatibility matching. The site uses a specific compatibility algorithm based on comparing the questions answered by two possible matches, how each person hopes the other person would respond and what weight they give that question. In OKCupid, your compatibility score directly affects the visibility of your profile to other people. The lower your compatibility with an individual, the less likely you were to show up in their searches. McKinlay, frustrated that he had such low compatibility with women in the Los Angeles area, used bots to gather information on how women answered questions and sorted them into discrete groups based on their interests. After determining which groups were most interesting to him, he would create two profiles crafted for maximum appeal for women in those particular clusters.
Making this one of the few times you can actually say that those AP math classes would have relevance in the “real world”.
Webb, on the other hand, wanted to find The One1 and created a large data set of features that she felt were critical for long-term potential and gave them numerical values, weighted for importance. If an individual didn’t reach a certain score, then she wouldn’t go on a date with him. If he didn’t reach an even higher score, then there wasn’t likely to be any long-term potential and she was less likely to consider him as marriage material.
To help craft a profile that would appeal to the sort of man she was attracted to, she decided to become him; she created ten separate male profiles in order to collect data on what sorts of women she would be competing with. Over time, she developed enough quantitative data to determine issues like profile length and qualitative data to help determine what to write in that profile and how. And in her own words it made her “one of the most popular people on the Internet”.
Now unless you are already a mathematical genius with a head for working in Python and a knack for turning seemingly unquantifiable data into weighted values, this can seem so out of your wheelhouse as to be completely useless. Except it’s not. You can take what they learned and hack your own OKCupid profile without having to do the high-end coding first.
Content Is King
One of the first things that Webb found is that content was the most important part of dating profiles. According to her findings, writing long and elaborate dating profiles is actually detrimental to online dating success. In fact, the most popular men and women were far more concise, using 97 words on average. Now while you don’t necessarily want to restrict yourself to an arbitrary number you do want to keep things short and to the point. The web is increasingly the domain of shortened attention spans; unless the content is extremely compelling, the longer a person spends on an individual page decreases proportionally with it’s length2. TL;DR isn’t just a Reddit joke, it’s how many people treat online interactions.
You’re not just competing with other dudes, you’re competing with Candy Crush Saga.
So take the same advice that every editor gives aspiring writers: kill your darlings. A well-written dating profile is a well-edited profile and that means being willing to take a hacksaw to it. Be as verbose as you want when you write it… then take another pass and slash it to the bones. Having restrictions can work to your advantage; it means you can’t afford to fuck around. If you’re going to try to keep it to 97 words per section, then by Zod you want them to be the best 97 words possible.
Moreover, how you write is equally important. Not only do you want to write in complete sentences with proper grammar, but you want to make sure you’re using optimistic language. One of the keys to online dating is to be as approachable as possible and there’s nothing more likely to turn a prospective date off than being a bundle of negativity. Complaining, whinging, even deprecating humor all reads as a giant sign that screams “DO NOT DATE”. There is not a woman in the world who’s dream man is somebody who sits around grousing about how life is unfair and the world sucks and by the way, would you like to touch his penis?
If you want people to be interested in contacting you – or receptive when you contact them – then you have to make it as easy as possible for them and every burst of negativity is the verbal equivalent of putting another barrier in the way.
Understand How To Work the System
One of the benefits of McKinlay’s data mining the OKCupid compatibility questions was that it showed him not only which questions to answer but how to answer them. Without getting deep into the math of how OKCupid computes compatibility (which you can read about here if you’re interested), you want to answer questions that correspond with how your potential match hopes you will. The more questions that match the other person’s desired answer, plus the weight given to their desired answer, the more compatible you are. If you want to be a more desirable match, then you have to answer the questions the right way.
To start with: Clear out all of your questions and start from scratch. Don’t get too caught up in answering questions. Not only is every question a chance to lose compatibility points, you hit a level of diminishing returns very quickly. You only need 100 questions to get a 99% compatibility rating with a .01 margin of error. Once you get past 500 questions, the potential value diminishes; there’s not a material difference between 99.7% and 99.9% The most it will affect is your position in people’s searches, which, while good, isn’t the only thing you should be relying on. But more on that in a minute.
The next rule is to be honest. Lying – or making “joking” answers – is going to only give you false matches with people you’re not actually compatible with. The name of the online dating game is to actually date them, and picking the wrong people because you tried to play silly buggers is only going to waste your time; they’re not going to want to fuck you just because you’re a 90% match when you’re hiding potential deal-breakers.
“Look, we have 89% compatibility. That means that you should be giving me a handy under the table by now.”
The third is to answer carefully. You want to pick questions that will give you the most amount of compatibility points with your match, and to weight them appropriately. “Mandatory” gives a weight of 250 points to a matching answer while “Very Important” gives you 50 and “A Little Important” only gives you 1. You should never answer below “Somewhat Important”, and even then you should use that sparingly and only with binary answers.
The fourth is to pick the right questions. You want to start doing your research on which questions matter to the women you’re interested in. McKinlay found the 500 most popular questions through a combination of Python scripting and creating bogus profiles, which frankly isn’t an option for most of us. However, OKCupid actually gives you that information, if you know how to look for it. You can actually compare your answers with your prospective matches by looking at the “The Two of Us” tab and choosing the “Questions She Cares About” option. These will tell you which questions your match weighted the most heavily. By answering several from each of your most compatible matches, you will develop a strong cluster of questions that will help tweak your match percentages. Again, I stress that it’s vitally important to honest answer honesty. There’s no benefit to be had by trying to guess the “right” answer rather than the one that actually matters to you. If the question doesn’t matter, then just skip it. It’s better to not risk losing the compatibility points.
Do Your Due Diligence
The match percentages are only the first step. Those make you more visible. It’s your profile that needs to intrigue them. If your profile doesn’t let them know that you’re exactly the person that they’ve been looking for all this time, then they’re never going to want to message you, never mind actually go out on a date.
One of the keys to a good profile is to make sure you have one that’s getting the right kind of attention. You want one that prompts people to respond and shows that you have plenty of commonalities. Except… you’re not going to hit this magic ratio on the first try. Or on the second. Or even the third. There will always little things you can do that maximize your returns. You should be revising your profile regularly; there is always room for improvement, especially when it comes to to making sure that other people like what they see. And that means doing your research.
Both Webb and McKinlay went out of their way to research both the people they were interested in but also their competition in order to stand out. McKinlay would data-mine his top matches to find what they were interested in and responded to and made sure to adjust his profile accordingly; when teaching proved to be of great interest to the women he was interested in, he made a point to emphasize his job in academia. Webb created male profiles in order to figure out how to fine-tune her photo choices; as it turned out, the most popular women who were interested in the same sort of men she was had photos very different from the ones that she was using.
So maybe the picture of you in your Bathrobe Jedi costume probably isn’t the best choice..
Remember, you’re not spear-fishing for specific women; you’re looking for trends of interests that occur with greater frequency amongst the women you’re interested in. Don’t forget: you’re marketing yourself to women in general. The more appealing a product you can put out there, the better your response rate will be.
Get Noticed
One of the things that was notable about McKinlay’s results: he was getting more cold-emails from women messaging him first than he was sending out. He made a point of getting women’s attention by visiting their profiles – as many as possible in fact. He wrote a Python script to systematically visit every profile within his parameters that had a high match percentage, sorted by age; it would start at the oldest potential matches and work it’s way through all of them at 41 years old before resetting and then going through everyone who was 40 years old. As a result: he was showing up in the visitor logs of hundreds to thousands of women. Out of those, a percentage would be intrigued enough to click through and visit his profile – which at this point had been carefully optimized and incredibly intriguing. As a result: women would start to send him messages, giving him a better rate of return of interest than he was getting by cold-contacting women.
“Well hello salty goodness…”
Keeping your profile’s visibility high is an important part of online dating success. In addition to visiting the profiles of your matches, you want to use OKCupid’s code to your advantage. Regularly updating your main photo helps keep your profile active and appearing higher in the searches; the more recent your activity, the higher you’re going to appear in people’s searches than less-active profiles. Use other attention getters like Quickmatch and profile rating to have the system help make sure that your profile appears in front of other people.
You also want to make sure that you give women the option of making the first move. Not only does society encourage women to be passive, but many men react badly when women shuck the gender roles and make the first move. A line in the “message me if…” should make it clear that you’re more that happy for women to contact you if they’re interested.
It also helps to message women who have expressed interest by visiting your profile. If they stopped and checked you out, it’s worth sending them a message to say hi.
Online Is Only Half The Battle
It’s important to remember: the key to online dating is offline. Just getting responses to your profile and messaging back and forth doesn’t do you any good. No matter how much intellectual chemistry you may have online, you need the physical chemistry for things to work out. One of the key points in McKinlay’s story is that he went on over 50 first dates… and far fewer second or third ones before meeting his girlfriend. This, ultimately, is a part of dating; there are going to be people that you just don’t work with for one reason or another, and no amount of talking on IM or Skype or on the phone is going to let you know in advance. So if you want things to work, you’re going to have to put in the effort to have an amazing first date and see where it goes.
There will be false positives. There will be people with whom you simply aren’t compatible or who just aren’t interested in you.
But then you’ll find the ones who are. The ones who get you, and that hit all the right notes for you too.
And as frustrating as those false starts may be, the ones that work will be worth it. So take some time, put in the effort… and you too can hack OKCupid into finding the relationship you’ve always wanted.
Did they post thier source code online anywhere? Maybe I can get my brother (a computer programmer himself) to take a gander and maybe adpat it for me (and maybe even for him too). I find it EXTREMLEY impressive that the guy even made a script that opens his web browser and automatically visits pages of women who might be a good match for him. That alone makes online dating a matter of sitting back and relaxing instead of gandering and wondering about profiles.
But I actually disabled my Okcupid profile for now, after a long time of absolutley no repsonses/visits to my profile and messages. I want to try my luck in meatspace for now and if I feel like it, maybe I'll reenable it sometime in the future.
If he made it publicly available, the people running the site would see it too. Anybody who did something similar would soon find themselves banned.
Remember that from their end, you’re making tons of page calls, and using a tool that could be used to scrape tons of personal customer data. Neither is the sort of thing a site administrator would be happy with people doing.
It's also worth noting that the "Visitors" section of your page gets a lot less valuable if it's just reporting 'bot activity, and not folks who clicked on your ad because they saw something interesting. It's the sort of thing where the more people do it, the less valuable it gets.
Yeah, I could knock out a website that would do the work for you but as soon as people started using it, the Visitor log would be as tough to wade through as a popular woman's inbox.
Yeah I know. Maybe it's still the failed programmer within me that is still hoping to program something meaningful one day. The reality is that I HATE programming, so you shouldn't worry about me doing something like this anytime soon (or at all, frankly)
Eh, not necesssarily.
This could be done in ubot studio with a couple random timers and be made to look totally human and be impossible to catch pretty easily.
Python is pretty powerful, and I wouldn't be surprised if you could download a module that made opening web pages something you could do in a line or two. But yeah, I like the idea of people sending off pet algorithms to run off and sniff around other pet algorithms and then come back when they've found something.
Plus, like DNL said, he didn't just sit back and wait for people to roll in – he pulled all-nighters working on it and went on nearly 100 dates before he got anywhere close. Obligatory xkcd link: http://xkcd.com/1319/
Oh yeah, there is: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/832331/launch-…
As for actually getting the profiles you want to visit, apparently there's an API* (kinda): http://www.quora.com/OkCupid/Does-OkCupid-provide… although I have no idea how easy that is to use.
Someone has also written something that scrapes the webpage HTML for messages, which is another possibility (I think this might have been how they did it, given that they trained the algorithm to mimic a human using the site to stop OKC blocking it as a spam bot): https://github.com/lehrblogger/OkCupid-Message-Do…
So it's not easy, but it's not like you're just sitfing through a sea of bytes like staring at a Matrix screensaver.
*Something that third-party programs can use to get data from OKC, send messages, etc
You can do this with ubot studio in a drag and drop visual editor that you teach to manipulate webpages.
You do have to learn how conditionals, and their scripting works.
The receptiveness to women messaging you is super important. Women have to wade through a lot of profiles simply because there are more guys on most sites than women, so if she finds yours and she likes it, make sure it's clear you want to hear from her too.
Sentences like "Message me if you're hot" are not particularly encouraging, btw. Something more specific, like "Message me if your netflix instant queue is longer than a Ph.D dissertation" or "Message me if you still check under your bed for monsters" or "Message me if you spend 20 minutes in the shower contemplating the universe with shampoo dripping in your eyes" are better. You don't want to be too limiting, aim for things that the sort of woman you would want to date would want to identify herself as. You want to make it sound like messaging you will open up a world of possibilities. And this does not necessarily mean leaving the couch, there are all sorts of new experiences that can be found at home, whether in the kitchen, on the bookshelf, on tv, or at the gaming table- I'd leave the bedroom off the list simply because most (all?) women will hesitate to message anyone who seems like he'd take it as an open invitation to sex at now.
https://www.quantcast.com/okcupid.com?qcLocale=en…
Because the "these sites are a sausage fest" meme seems to pop up everywhere, I figured it'd help to point out the real imbalance. About three men for every two women. It's an imbalanced ratio, but not the OMGhopeless that lots of people like to say it is.
3 to 2 is still more men than women, and let's face it, there are a lot of men out there that no self-respecting DNL reader would emulate, right? (presumably there are also women who fall into that category). and those men tend to be very loud. and persistent.
In DC it seems like it's the opposite, way more single women than men. I think perhaps there are more men on the sites though because men face less stigma with online dating and being single in general, and also women have to wade through the sea of creeps on the site so it's more of an effort to be active.
Years ago when I was on okcupid, my tagline was "message me if you'd rather get a beer than message each other back and forth."
I'm going to apologize for this, because I know you've said in the past, but are you a man or a woman? I think that's a great line for a woman to encourage messages. I'm not so sure it would work as well for a man.
Exactly, as a man posting that looking to encourage responses from women, it could very well come off as sleazy rather than fun.
You got the Matrix quote wrong. There is a One; there is no *spoon*.
I thought he was parodying it or something.
1. It's a comment on Oneitis.
2. It's also a stealth Rock and Rule reference. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR-Z92eXVoo
The more you know …
+1 awesome-points for Rock and Rule-references, NerdLove.
Dear Zod, someone besides me makes Rock And Rule References! Maybe I'm not the biggest thing since World War Three after all!
Remember Johnny, "evil" spelled backwards is "live"… and we all want to do that.
"According to her findings, writing long and elaborate dating profiles is actually detrimental to online dating success. In fact, the most popular men and women were far more concise, using 97 words on average."
*looks around sheepishly*
*adds item to to-do list*
"Clear out all of your questions and start from scratch."
This might actually be a good idea simply because I'm not exactly the same person I was five years ago when I first created that OKC profile. Some stuff has changed; I'm all-in on poly, and am pretty comfortable with kink.
*adds another item to to-do list*
I also like the idea of picking questions carefully. You don't want to bog down your statistics with stuff that you really don't care about either way.
I think the most important questions are the ones that relate to relationship & lifestyles- sure there are some political and moral questions that I guess are no-gos, but I think it's more important to find people who want the same thing out of a relationship, at the macro and micro level, as you do. And the political/moral questions are usually more nuanced than the okc method can allow (for example, I know a lot of people who are personally against abortion in that they would not get one themselves as a method of birth control, but who are stridently for keeping it legal and readily available- that's a nuanced position that a yes or no question can't reflect)
I also feel like there's an excellent argument to be made for being very judicious about flagging questions as "Mandatory." For me, anything related to non-monogamy falls under that heading; if you're not down with dating somebody who has a fiancee, every moment you spend on my profile is a moment wasted. But while I hold some very strong political views, I could actually see dating somebody who disagreed with them as long as she wasn't a dick about it, as I'm capable of returning that favor. And stuff that's a dealbreaker for a long-term primary relationship (You have cats? Then we'll only hang out at your place briefly, after I've spammed my paranoid immune system with several pills' worth of STFU) is no big deal for something more casual.
I don't really agree with your second paragraph, and think that might be an indication of individual preferences. I actually care quite a lot about some of the political and moral questions – one of the reasons I'm using online dating is that when I meet people in other ways, I tend to end up on dates with people with extremely incompatible views.
Just in terms of your example, I think that the best way for someone who had the opinion you mentioned to handle that question (the common one in OkCupid is whether it would be an option in the event of an unplanned pregnancy) would be to answer it and then add a blurb about supporting it remaining legal. That's actually something I'd consider a fairly important relationship – I'd be happy to be friends with the person you described, but I wouldn't have sex with a man who had those views.
I guess I didn't word it well, because I agree with what you said down thread in your own post- that there are a lot of questions that are worded so strangely you can't put a lot of faith in the answers. The blurb doesn't get added into your statistics, so it screws with the results and you end up matching with people who are actually more extreme than you are.
Honestly I think the abortion/ reproductive rights issues are more telling when you compare them to what a guy's profile says. If he is anything but 100% for a woman's right to control what goes on, but wants casual sex, that is a huge red flag. Like I said, a more nuanced aspect of a relationship than the statistics are able to reflect.
I guess I can understand that being a concern. I think one way to handle situations like that would be to answer one question of that type (presumably the least ambiguous one), to add an explanation afterwards, and to skip any duplicate questions. Unless someone has marked that question mandatory, a differing answer shouldn't knock down an otherwise compatible match too much.
I think that part of my objection is that I don't think that your second paragraph is generally applicable. I think it's a nuanced aspect of a relationship for people who have somewhat complicated feelings about the issue. For me, abortion would be an option – and probably the only option – regardless of whether a relationship was serious or not, so I kind of want the statistical feedback rather than a holistic view of whether a man is looking for casual sex or marriage. I think it's at least worthwhile for people to consider that questions that come up early in the answering process are ones that are important to other people, who aren't necessarily weighing things in the same way that you are.
That's something I did on my last foray into OkC.
I even took the step of only answering questions I felt like I could mark as "Mandatory" or "Very Important". I guess I'm going to need to take the additional step of finding out what questions really are important to potential matches.
Yes, last time I tried OKC I had a lot of questions that weren't mandatory or very important. I suppose it depends how you're doing on the current profile. It seems like if the system is good, it shouldn't require too much gaming, since otherwise no-one would find anyone on dating sites. Writing an OKC bot to trawl the site seems like an interesting intellectual exercise, but I'm dubious that leet haxxor skills were the deciding factor in finding love.
I suspect they sped up the process of going on over 50 first dates. With my schedule, that alone would take me no less than six months. Adding a second or later date per week would just about kill every second of free time I have left. So the more I can reduce the looking for people to go on a first date with, the better.
Yep, I'm thinking scratch built profile here.
This is just speculation, but I'd be interested to see if the preference is against longwindedness generally, or if the reaction to long profiles is partly a negative reaction to a few common profile mistakes that correlate with having a long profile. These are some ones that I see pretty frequently that turn me off, more because of the content than the length itself:
– "about me" sections that are boring bios of work accomplishments mixed in with trite cliches
– "private thing" sections detailing uncomfortable tales of woe
– "message me if" sections that are lists of dealbreakers
– "favorites" sections that suggest someone is rigid or snobbish about their tastes or that are so long they emphasize differences (though here I think simple boredom with endless lists of albums is the main problem)
I remember back when Facebook was new, people would list every album they owned practically. How, exactly, is that helpful? I agree that an uncurated favorites section is probably one of the biggest sources of the number-problem.
That, and people affecting a certain wordy, "intellectual" style- going Faulkner instead of Hemingway. I assume they are trying to mark themselves as not text-speakers, but they come across as pretentious and exhausting. If you're using a lot of words to tell me interesting things about yourself because you have a lot of interesting things about yourself, I'll give you a pass.
I've actually gotten compliments on my wordy-ass profile from women who otherwise had no interest in dating me, so I'm doing SOMETHING right. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder how many potentially interested parties click, go "Ew! Ginormous text wall!", and then leave, never to return.
Messaging is probably a place where brevity matters more. A long profile can work for you so long as it's an engaging read throughout. When it comes to messages, short and simple is the way to go. The more detailed it is and the more subjects you bring up, the more likely the recipient will totally mean to get back but never quite get around to it.
Too few people understand that they're not up against shallow men or entitled women or any of the other easily identifiable boogeymen. What they're mostly up against is sheer apathy and inertia.
When I come across a long profile, I generally skim or read parts of it (e.g. the first paragraph of each section) to get a general idea of who the person is. If I like what I've read so far, I'll take the time to go through the whole profile. If not, then I'll move on. I've never looked at someone's profile and thought it was so long that I couldn't be bothered to read at least some of it. I find that this is a good middle ground between spending too much time on any one profile but also not dismissing someone just because they wrote a lot about themselves.
And I think, in most cases, a partial read-through is sufficient to know what the rest of the profile would be like as a whole. Most people aren't so inconsistent as to have, say, one or two amazing paragraphs about themselves hidden in the middle of their self-summary while the rest of their profile is rambly and boring. So if a profile is 1000 words long, and I read 250 of those words, I can usually find something in those 250 that would pique my interest if the person is a good match. Similarly, if someone is just rambling or expressing negative attitudes, it only takes those 250 words for me to figure out that reading the other 750 is probably not worth my time.
I tend to skip favorites or skim for obviously geeky things. If you love Faulkner, that doesn't really influence my perception of how compatible we may be. If you like Dresden Files, that's going to grab my attention.
It's interesting how different people read profiles. I'd give someone who genuinely loves Faulkner a good bit of credit, because at least I know that person thinks that reading is an interesting, enjoyable, important thing to do. We might not be able to trade references, but we could at least agree what to do on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Someone who likes Game of Thrones gets full credit. Someone who lists a couple of books they almost certainly read in high school, two supermarket bestsellers they read a few years ago while flying, or "lol magazines i guess" gets zero points.
Not that there's a value judgment attached to any of this. I tend to skip or skim the music section, and I rarely bother with the "six things" question since I seldom find anything there that influences whether I'd like to get to know someone.
Ahh the Dresden Files. I was in Chicago over MLK and insisted on going to the Field Museum. Yay Sue!
I really think the favorites section is where a lot of people go wrong. Telling me you like several dozen different folk bands or dudecentric comedy movies has a diminishing rate of return. What does the thirtieth band tell me about you that I didn't know already? Is someone who's that invested in one genre going to sneer at a message from someone who doesn't share his tastes? And does comedy guy like anything else? I'd be happy to watch The Hangover or Anchorman with a date even though they're not my favorites, but would someone with such an exhaustive list ever let me pick the movie? I think a lot of people just spew favorites, rather than trying to think about the breadth and the depth of interests that are being discussed.
I don't always mind the wordy style, or at least I think it depends on what someone's saying and whether that style seems to match up well with the person in question. If someone's writing in his own voice, that's a narrowing rather than a broadening strategy, but probably works for some people. If someone comes across as fake…well…that's a different matter.
I'm wondering if, for these sections on favourites, it might be worth seeing if you can make a sentence or two that incorporates all of them and doesn't read like a run-on sentence. Even if, ultimately, the format in your profile won't be a sentence or two that incorporates all of them, it might help to see how much ground is covered and how many of them link into each other or something.
I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud here.
I'm the same way. I cut my teeth on Kevin Smith and Joss Whedon, and still default back to that high intensity wordiness. Ideally I'd like to find someone with matching tastes, but I'm well aware how much that kills in profiles and especially messages.
I'm a big Whedon fan too (I have "thoughts" about Kevin Smith that are irrelevant here) and people who know me IRL know that I'm pretty quick on my feet and can say clever stuff in conversation. (my dad and I are both verbal, charming people)
But, that's a skill and Whedon's characters also rely heavily on intonation, which doesn't come across in text well. In general, it's a dangerous line to walk to try to demonstrate a verbal skill that requires a listener via text. If it were easy to convey sarcasm through writing, half of all internet fights would be avoided.
Oh, growing up hasn't been the best career move for either of them, but they're the still the first names to come to mind when I want to talk about snappy, smart dialogue. If you can point me at people who do a better job of that nowadays, I'll be much appreciative.
And yes. I'm aware that it's hard to get across in text. That's why I said it's a habit that has to be worked around.
(Although side note. It's why I dislike when women say things like "message me if you know the difference between there/they're/their" or "say something more than hi". That sends the implicit message that a spellchecked and grammatically proper bit of rambling wordiness is what will work. It's one of those bits of well-intentioned advice that doesn't quite work out the right way in reality.)
I don't know who writes for Sleepy Hollow exactly, but I love their dialogue. It's so… the way people talk if they are clever and interesting. Reminds me of a historical rather than nerdical Whedon or Smith.
I'm going to quibble with that last bit. I think that's an annoying thing to put in a profile, both because it sounds snippy and because it alternately gives hope to a lot of guys who can write reasonably well that they're guaranteed to get a response. That being said, all the studies on grammar and profiles have shown that while good grammar and wordiness won't guarantee you a date, very bad grammar tends to turn people off.
Agreed on all fronts. I was referring to seeing it in profiles.
Aaron Sorkin, aka The Dark Lord of the Walk 'n' Talk, does dialog well, but can be more than a little self-important.
Also, Parks & Recreation. Just … all of Parks & Recreation. (Season 2 and forward; Season 1 is crappy Office fanfic, and should be avoided at all costs.)
"Any dog under fifty pounds is a cat, and cats are pointless." — Ron Swanson
Aaron Sorkin to me is Whedon without any of the things that make Whedon fun and all of the things that make Whedon obnoxious dialed up to 11.
Parks and Rec. Yes. (I also love its spiritual cousin of quotability- community minus season 4)
I was also surprised by how much I've been enjoying Brooklyn Nine-Nine. (that's how you say it). It hits that sweet spot between cleverness and niceness that Parks & Rec and good Community live in.
I need to go back and watch a bit of The West Wing again. I liked that show, but The Newsroom makes me want to throw things at the TV. I'm not sure if it's that my tastes have changed as I've gotten older, that Sorkin's gotten more prone to inserting Author Tracts over that same time period, or if there's just something about the different settings that made it more tolerable in one show than another.
Odd tangent but as we're discussing wordsmithing, I think I need one or two sentences sprinkled through my profile that are from or reminiscent of Welcome To Night Vale. Talk about conveying a lot of information about yourself succinctly! A couple of random samples from their FB page:
Home is where the heart is. We found it one day in the sink. It hums things late at night, but they are not songs.
The night and day differ primarily in how much of the world must be filled in by your imagination.
I really need to listen to that podcast sometime. I already follow the Twitter, which is a thing of weird, brief beauty.
I have to stick up for the people who list all their fave albums. It reminds me of a line from the book "High Fidelity" that "it's not what you're like; it's what you like." People who listed their fave albums are self-selecting; if you are passionate about grunge and metal, I am happy for you but there is NO WAY we could have been musically compatible. And as superficial as that may sound, for music-lovers, this is like having major differences in political views–it's indicative tat we march to drumbeats that are just too different. Besides, there's NO WAY I wanna spend my free time and money going to see Nine Inch Nails (no offense if that's your cuppa tea…my point is that it isn't mine…)
I agree, generally it's not so much the length but the dullness of the content that's off-putting. I have a long profile and probably SHOULD trim it down (and have tried!), and sometimes get comments that holy that's a long profile, though I think those users were mostly on mobile apps which would exaggerate the length even more. That said, like GH, the wordy profile didn't seem to work against me at all and seemed to attract pretty high-percentage matches who all seemed like quite decent guys.
Well, the thing is, if you've read ten profiles that are long winded stereo instructions, you're not going to read the 11th long profile at all. So to some extent, the why doesn't matter.
I'm not sure that's the model of profile reading that's the most common – or at least, that's not how I read profiles. I tend to skim profiles for some general indication of quality, in part because dealbreakers are often located toward the bottom. Then I'll go and look at Unacceptable Answers. If all is well there, I'll go back and read the profile more closely.
So, for me, a long profile with lots of good content generally gets a message or a response. One that has a bunch of whiny demands in the "message me" section doesn't get past the initial scan. But this is mostly just idle curiosity. I think that a lot of OkCupid users would benefit from a general directive to do some cutting.
I think that last part is the key. There's always room for one more edit.
Her data analysis is actually probably wrong, she was likely looking at the wrong thing.
In online marketing, its not the length of the copy that kills you, it's the lack of calls to action. You should be asking the person to do something at least once per viewable area of the page.
I'm sure being too wordy isn't helpful either, but 97 words isn't likely to be the part that mattered.
I find it ironic that McKinlay’s partner found him, not because of his applied data mining, but because he was six feet tall and had blue eyes. Sometimes it does all come down to being open to random chance.
But he did use some of his data to craft his profile and let's not discount the encouragement that taking an active role in dating can bring. Yes, his girlfriend didn't come from his data mining, but it sounds like he was on the verge of quitting all together before he wrote the code.
I continue to think maybe I am just too romantic for dating (and that is a bizarre thing to say, because I have always considered myself far more practical than romantic.) But GEEZ, does this sound cold and mechanical. The idea that a guy would be writing to me because a bot told him I answered some arbitrary questions (and there are a fuck lot of them on OKCupid) a certain way… or that he ISN'T responding to me because I use 105 words instead of 97 on average… is really unsettling, like we're all just cogs in some impersonal dating machine.
I get that we are all insignificant specks of dust, and nothing we do matters and the universe makes no notice of us and our lives are meaningless, existential drama angst and all that…. but dating is the last place I want to be reminded of that. Being told I am a number…. I am date #35 out of 100… because hey, dating is a numbers game for guys, is a really big turn-off, because it suggests the guy is just trying to slot someone halfway acceptable into the Girlfriend Role, not that he is genuinely interested *in me.* I mean, how interested COULD he be if he's also equally interested in 99 other girls?
I guess hurray if it works for people. But the idea that I have to answer my questions based on how *other* people want me to answer them, because I'm apparently not attractive enough to be honest, is kind of gross.
…. Is this really what modern dating is? Scripts run against web pages, endless amounts of twisting and morphing yourself, JUST to find someone who you can spend an enjoyable half an hour with? Cause God damn, if this is the only way to be successful at dating, point me to the nearest convent.
Actually, I thought the guy's story was just the opposite. He tried to mechanize it, and in the end his girlfriend found him independently of all his data mining.
Online dating is a misnomer. You date people offline. What you use OKC and those other sites for is online meeting. It doesn't remove the romantic parts to tailor your chances to meet people you've actually got something in common with. Romance happens once you see each other in real life. Websites are just another venue for increasing your social visibility so that you can find the people to try romance with.
Sure, but if we're going to compare it to just another way to meet people, I wouldn't be too thrilled to be "chosen" by a guy who'd just been working his way through the entire bar.
Maybe it's just disheartening to realize how low it seems a lot of guys' standards are, that they really COULD be happy with just about anybody. (Obligatory poking fun at self: and yet I still didn't qualify despite all the low standards!)
Again, I think you're conflating meeting with dating. He's just trying to get dates (he went on 50+, but very few 2nd or 3rds). He's just trying to meet people and get past that initial hurdle. After all, we're talking complete strangers here- he doesn't have much information to judge by.
I too had fairly low standards for guys that I would talk to, and only slightly higher standards (aka no safety concerns) for guys that I would meet for a beer or something. I went on a lot of first dates. I went on 2 second dates. I went on 1 third date.
All his standards say is that he would be happy to give a lot of people a try.
"All his standards say is that he would be happy to give a lot of people a try."
And that's what kind of bums me out. Like I said, maybe I'm too much of a romantic, but the idea that a guy has such low standards that he could go on a date with nearly anyone kind of makes me wonder why I'd waste my time. If I am so unremarkable to him that I am just one of a crowd of people he's considering, I'd probably not going to change his mind after a date. It also means I'm now competing against an even greater number of women-no thank you.
Maybe it's too high of an expectation, but I want a guy who looks at me and says "She hits my buttons, and I think there's something special about her." If he says that about tons of people, then the word 'special' ceases to have meaning.
How would he know that if he's never spoken to you? You've talked about how much you don't appreciate being judged by appearances and how shallow you think men are, but it seems like your ideal scenario would encourage shallow judgments only. You're talking about a man who hasn't ever laid eyes on you, hasn't ever breathed the same air you're breathing, hasn't ever heard your voice. How would he form an opinion about you besides just "Hmmm, I want to know more"?
Online dating is not like anything else, you're wrapping up the initial meeting and the first date and the "hi my name is" all in one go. It's a lot of stuff to pack in.
I don't like being judged by appearances because I always lose. If a guy were to judge my appearance as 'hot' or 'totally my type,' I'd be a lot less antagonistic towards it. I actually don't have a problem, per say, with being objectified or a guy choosing me based on my looks… I don't like it because my appearance always ends up being a flaw, instead of a boon.
Thinking I am angry that men are shallow isn't a totally accurate reading of my position. I only mind men being shallow when it negatively impacts my dating success.
Put it another way: I wouldn't mind a guy being shallow if he still found me attractive. I don't *want* a guy who "can see inner beauty." When guys use the line that they like me 'despite' my looks, it sends the message that they actually aren't interested in me, they're interested in showing off how deep and enlightened they are. To quote Tina Fey, they're doing the 'Can I be amazing at you for a moment?' thing.
I've dated guys who weren't 'shallow,' who dated me because they liked my personality and didn't 'judge' me based on my looks. And I HATED it. I want a guy who loves the inside AND the outside.
So yes, I'd be totally okay with the online superficiality, IF it ever worked in my favor. Because it'd mean the guy who looked at me and said 'Hmm I want to know more' was actually responding to my looks, and not just trying to prove how non-shallow he is.
Ugly people want partners who find them attractive too.
So a guy who likes a lot of women couldn't possibly find you personally attractive? That I'm not buying. I know a lot of guys who are pretty much just devoted to the female form in all its shapes and always have something they appreciate about a specific woman too. (That one's eye-twinkle, the way that one carries herself, the texture of that one's hair)
You seem to be assuming that guys take all women available and message them in order of attractiveness. While I'm sure guys are just as likely to prioritize as women are, there are other things that play into to that have nothing to do with preferences. For example, if a guy made a go with a woman for a month and it didn't work out, he signs back on with the same profile and there are new women to match with. Those women would be "higher" numbers but you can't assume that he thinks they are less attractive than the ones he messaged the first go 'round.
"That I'm not buying. I know a lot of guys who are pretty much just devoted to the female form in all its shapes and always have something they appreciate about a specific woman too."
Ugh I freaking hate that. It just comes down to "If everyone is special, then no one is special."
If a guy can find something beautiful about literally everyone, then finding me beautiful is not remarkable, because to him, everyone is beautiful! I want a guy who finds me *uniquely* beautiful.
Unique or exclusive? I understand and share the desire to be more than just a "well… she's got a good personality" or even "Well, she's got her tits going for her if nothing else." But I don't think what I'm talking about is the same as "if everyone is special, then no one is special." Everyone IS special, because everyone is different. Even if he dated your theoretical identical twin, there would be things that make Marty Marty and not Mirty. (Your theoretical twin parents are bad at naming).
Because if you date anyone who's ever dated someone else, they probably thought she was beautiful too.
Sure, they probably did…. but I like to think they think I'm more beautiful. If they thought she was more beautiful, I'd probably encourage them to go back to dating her, OR to pursue someone who they considered better than their ex both emotionally and physically.
You said that there are guys who appreciate the female form in all ways and can find something to appreciate about every single woman. That's what I find distasteful… If you think everyone is beautiful, then I am not specifically beautiful to you. Yeah, yeah, we're all special snowflakes…. but just like I'm not big on poly, because I want my relationship with a partner to be specifically unique, I'm not big on someone finding EVERYONE beautiful, because I want to be uniquely beautiful to them.
What if it's not a ranking, though? I don't find everyone beautiful by many means, but barring a few times when I didn't listen to myself, I found all my partners attractive – and when I was with them, I tended to find people of their type more attractive than a lot of others.
You've had several boyfriends yourself. Have you had specific opinions on which one was better-looking than the others, and if so, how did you feel when you were with one of the other guys?
I did indeed have specific opinions on which one was better-looking or more my type. As to how I felt…. well, kind of like I was settling. I've dated a few guys who weren't my physical type, but I've been told over and over that beggars can't be choosers, so I had better just be happy with anyone who would have me. So…
Which is why if a guy found someone else more beautiful, I'd encourage him to date them instead of me. Because I know if I had that kind of preference, I'd be settling.
Well, I wasn't so much speaking about guys who weren't your physical type. Like I said, I've made some bad decisions and ended up in relationships where there wasn't much physical attraction, and I do understand that feeling. But what about…for instance…the second-best-looking guy you've dated? Can you identify someone as such, and did it feel like it was an issue for you guys?
(Not arguing or anything. I'm curious about this mostly because it's something that's kind of different from how I view attraction and dating.)
Yes I can identify the 2nd-best-looking guy and so on, and I'm not sure it felt like an issue, per say, only because I sincerely doubt the guys cared. If they had cared, it probably would have been a problem.
Did you care, though? During the times the relationship was happy (or, if there's a high crossover between bad relationships and being #2 or #3 on the looks list, if things were happy), was the fact that you'd been with someone more attractive something that irritated you a bit?
Somewhat. It just reminded me that I was settling for what I could get. I'm not saying my exes were unattractive, per say, but there was an underlying feeling that I was with them because the guys who were my type* weren't interested.
*I should note: guys who are my type hit about equal in terms of "who is more attractive." I would honestly be hard-pressed to say which ex is more attractive IF they fit my physical type. For example, if I date two tall, lean brunettes, it's going to be tough telling which one is more *physically* attractive.
So physical attractiveness trumps everything for you then? You say the second most attractive guy you were with you felt you were compromising because he wasn't the best looking. What if he had the number one personality? Would that make a difference, or is it primarily all about looks for you? (sincere question, as that might help explain a lot about how you approach dating, and why you feel like looks are the be all and end all in being treated like a special person – since that's also what you feel about your partner)
Looks don't trump everything, but they matter. I want someone who is first in looks and personality, just like I want to be someone else's first place in looks and personality. I consider anything else settling.
If someone is number one is looks and number two in personality, I would still consider that settling.
Okay cool. I think this explains a lot about your fear about others and how they see you. Since you want number one in everything, you want to be that for others. Since you judge others for not being perfect, you assume others judge you the same way.
Am I correct in assuming that when you say number 1 in looks, you aren't talking about movie star looks. You are talking about your own personal tastes, and what counts as 1 for you?
Correct.
I am going to take umbrage at the idea that I judge others for being not perfect. I don't think looking for a match that is most compatible with me physically and emotionally is somehow expecting them to be perfect.
Cool. This makes a lot of sense to me. I think ultimately you just want someone who you are physically and mentally attracted to, and don't want to compromise with one or the other. This doesn't mean you want Ryan Gosling and that's it. You just want someone who makes you feel all the feels in all the ways.
And I dunno, for me, that makes what you want a lot more clear and attainable (though I hope it's already been attained with your current gent
).
I'm just wondering, how exactly will you know that the other person is first place in anything given how many people there are in this world? Obviously you'd have some automatic filters to narrow it down (A/S/L being some of the most basic ones), but even then there's still potentially many possibilities to exhaust if you're wanting to know for certain that they are first place.
Unless there comes a point at which you go "OK, as far as I am willing to find out, this guy is first place."
**Because if you date anyone who's ever dated someone else, they probably thought she was beautiful too.**
Right, and vice versa. The people you've dated in the past, you thought were attractive. How do their looks pertain to the guy you're currently dating (or hypothetically would be)? They don't.
I guess I think they do. When I settle down/marry a guy, I want him to be the most attractive guy I've been with if at all possible.
Haven't you ever been with someone who's drop dead gorgeous but a total asshole, though? Meaning: Yes, attraction is very important, but it's all part of the package. Personally, I put up with a whole lot of shit and misery when I let looks trump everything else. So I could understand a guy thinking the same about a past girlfriend who was hotter than me.
Lucky for me my current guy is the total package and looks like Bruce Springsteen in the '70s, yummmmm. I did spend a long time in lousy relationships and "I'd rather just be alone" breaks.
If he is an asshole, then he isn't physically attractive to me. My physical attraction to someone is really hard-wired into how I feel about them emotionally.
Ah. That makes sense and is probably very common (I know I am the same way). Can you see how it could be the same for guys? That a guy needs to know you before he finds you physically attractive (or at least the most physically attractive person he knows)? That a guy needs to meet almost everyone with whom he has potential attraction before he can say for sure that she's special?
Remember, online dating isn't like meat-space dating. This guy doesn't know you from Eve.
I have yet to run across a guy who needs to know a woman before he's physically attracted to her, and I have asked a LOT of guys. Now, he might not want to date or sleep with her, but every single guy has said he can tell right off the bat if he's attracted to a girl.
These guys seem to be talking about surface level attractiveness though, not the deep-seated, you-are-the-one-for-me that you're looking for (and should be looking for- no one should settle for someone who thinks they are more attracted to other people).
It's just… that takes a while to come. Like.. a long time maybe. Certainly more than just a glance through a profile. Possibly more than one date. Possibly more than weeks or months.
I'm talking about surface level, too. That's what I mean…. I don't need a guy to fall instantly in love with me right from the start, but he needs to at least think there's something special about my looks.
But if they did act attracted to you, you wouldn't trust it (IIRC).
No, I don't trust it when it's peppered with "But that girl's much hotter" or "I'd rather a redhead but you'll do!" or "Though too bad your butt isn't bigger" or "Hot girls are stuck up anyway" or "Well your friend turned me down, so…" or "Your personality totally makes up for it!" or "I can never get any of the girls I like" or "I think focusing on looks is shallow anyway" or…..
THAT'S when I don't freaking trust it.
Well, if you dated guys who've said those things, then put me in the, "Yep, you've dated assholes" camp. You need a better man picker, and that means wasting as little time with assholes as possible.
They may not be assholes to *have* those preferences, since we all do, but to state them out loud? (Just to be clear, did they say these things freely or after you asked them over and over and over again if they thought some other girl was hotter?).
Some combination of both. Sometimes they offered it, sometimes I asked (though not incessantly.)
And my man picker is oriented entirely around "Will he date me?" If only 'assholes' will date you, that's what you're going to end up with.
Yes. This this this. People are going to have preferences, and using those preferences to convict them of thoughtcrime in every case where you aren't their most awesomest partner ever is a recipe for training your partner to lie about their preferences.
And also agree that stating preferences is different than having them.
God forbid I actually want a partner where I fit their preferences. How dare I.
I…what? How did you get to that conclusion?
You seem to want to prove how tough you are by not getting upset when a guy you're dating tells you to your face how much they'd rather date your friend than you. People said, "Maybe you'd be happier if you didn't put up with that," and then somehow you conclude that you're wrong to want someone who wants you. ???
"Yes. This this this. People are going to have preferences, and using those preferences to convict them of thoughtcrime in every case where you aren't their most awesomest partner ever is a recipe for training your partner to lie about their preferences. "
That is the comment I was referring to. The idea that wanting to be someone's best option means I'm forcing my partner to lie (because I could never actually BE the best option.)
**They may not be assholes to *have* those preferences, since we all do, but to state them out loud?**
Is this the comment I made that you objected to? Following the conversational thread, I was clearly only referring to people telling you that you ARE NOT their preference. Guys saying, "God, I love your ass" or "You look like my porn fantasy" or whatever were clearly never a part of this conversation.
Fit their preferences? Of course. Where you're their best partner? Absolutely.
Asking your partner to believe you're superior to all other potential partners in all ways at all times? That's not gonna be true, and by asking your S.O. to adhere to it, you're training them to not speak to you honestly.
I'm going to second fuzzilla that the vast majority of those statements are asshole things to say*, for several different reasons. Those statements are all cruel to you. Several of them stereotype other people in unfair ways. And, as a redhead, a dude who's so fixated on hair color that he can't shut up about it to his brunette girlfriend comes across as an obnoxious fetishist as well as an asshole.
*In another context, I could see the last statement as being true and non-assholish, but not very well-stated.
*Shrugs* I still don't find them asshole things to say, if they were honest. Better a guy tell me those things, than think them and never say them. Because if he says them, I have a choice of deciding if I want to stay with someone who thinks that way.
They may not have been nice but at least they were honest.
"Hot girls are stuck up," isn't just a bad thing to say. It's a bad thing to believe, and it affects more than just the two people having the conversation.
I would also say that if someone's viewpoint is that they're dating someone because Friend turned them down (not because they were interested in both women, or in one and then developed feelings for the other) or because they can't find a redhead, the ethical thing to do is not to begin a relationship. And, when it comes to some of these very specific tastes, I think someone who wants a trait that's present in only a very small percentage of the population that badly might do well to spend some time thinking about how he developed that taste and whether he's dragging any stereotypes or objectification into it (in this particular case, I'd recommend spending some time considering if he's adequately separating the real women around him from various TV characters he enjoys, since that's how that fetish seems to start.)
Lemme just say that I have never ever had any guy I was dating or even remotely interested in (like in the going-on-dates phase) say something like this to me. I'm not exactly drop-dead gorgeous or even conventionally attractive.
Those are not comments everyone just puts up with.
I've had two partners who said things like that to me (two guys is a pretty small proportion of the men I've dated). One of them was an abuser, and the other was an asshole. This admittedly may be coloring my reaction to these kinds of comments.
I have a few people in my life who also have a history of healthy relationships. I think it's really important to identify those people and run problems by them. "Is this abusive or just normal?"
Helps to have some people who can say "Nope. People who respect you do not say such things."
Well like I said, if they think those things, I would rather they say them. I would much rather deal with verbalized comments like that than a person who refuses to say what they're really thinking because they "respect" me and don't want to come across like a jerk.
Well, if you don't agree they're assholes, I think you can agree they're "guys who can't or won't give you what you want and need, for whatever reason." If you know this about them, then you don't stick around long enough for their comments to sink in and hurt you.
It's confirmation bias to say "only assholes" will date you. Even if that were true, it would be better to be alone than be treated like garbage.
I don't think so.
I personally think those things are things that guys who turn out to be abusers and *ssholes tend to say.
At best they're things that people less than schooled in social skills tend to say. In which case, Dude Who Says Mean Things, do us all a favor and upgrade your social skillset, please.
But…I thought you said you dated lots of assholes..? Or things ended naturally because you were incompatible..?
You guys are the ones that keep calling them assholes. I continue to assert that aside from one big jerk (who I think I tricked myself into believing wasn't a jerk, that it was my own fault) I really don't think any of the guys were assholes.
And things ended because in all cases but one, they dumped me for other women.
I didn't call anyone an asshole, just asked for clarification.
**And things ended because in all cases but one, they dumped me for other women.**
I can see why it's (looks/attraction/feeling special) is a touchy issue for you, then…
Gender flip your statement, and that's how most of my relationships ended too. That seems to be how a lot of people view relationships in general.
Unfortunately, there's no way to safeguard against that happening that doesn't get horribly unhealthy. Your partner supposedly has an outside life that introduces them to outside people. All you can do is try and minimize the hurt/fallout that happens if things wind up not working out.
This isn't so different for guys tbh. Sure like you mention below, a guy can look at a photo of a girl and say whether or not he thinks she's pretty – but the moment he meets her, says hello, and actually interacts socially with that person, his perception about her physical attractiveness completely changes (or at least CAN completely change). Are you telling me you couldn't look at a photo of a guy and say if you think he's physically attractive? I mean, above you talked about your type being tall lean brown haired guys… I think fuzzilla really hits home an important point here that is not worth brushing aside. There's a package to consider – and if a guy who would at first look like an Adonis turns out to be a jerk, and thus becomes physically less attractive, then it's bad news. If a guy has a lovely personality but is just too unbearable to look at, then the attraction just isn't going to be there. You need and want both, and that's fine. However… just like a super hunk can turn into an unattractive person once they open their mouth, so too can an average-below average guy turn into a very attractive person once interactions begin. The exact same is true for the gender roles being swapped. So it's fine to have the standards that say, 'I want to be with someone who sees me as attractive and whom I se as attractive', but you would be wise to allow some interaction to happen first to eliminate the useless initial "photo" attractiveness bit. That's what dating is all about…
I admit I'm skimming here a bit, but maybe celette didn't so much mean certain guys go for every type of girl, but that for every type of girl, there's a type of guy attracted to that type (and vice versa)? Honestly, that might be what people are really after when they do that corny thing of, "Which five celebrities are on your 'free f***' list, honey?'" It's a a way to gauge your partner's "type" and learn about them by finding out what qualities they find attractive and why. Tall, short, chubby, skinny, sincere, sarcastic, etc.
Maybe it's a cliche talking point, but I can personally attest to how f***ing fabulous it is to have found a guy who honestly prefers curvy women over toothpicks. To be found uniquely beautiful and not just, "You'll do." The key to dating success is to spend as little energy as possible on people who don't make you feel like that so you have energy left to find the one(s) who do.
What an ugly way to go through life. If someone can find beauty in everyone, that doesn't make you more or less beautiful. It just makes him more perceptive.
So how many other women is your prospective lover allowed to find attractive? Just movie stars? Maybe only movie stars who aren't alive any more, so they're not so threatening?
Do you refuse to be friends with people who can see good things in other people?
I assume that when you're with a guy, then, he is going to be the only guy you find attractive, find funny, find interesting, etc.
The thing is, Marty, while you may be the heroine of the movie of your life, the only important character in that storyline, the one everything revolves around, part of being a functional adult is realizing that you're a supporting character in everyone else's movie, or even an extra. Whoever you're with is still going to be a complete human being himself, not just an adjunct to you, and have a rich inner life, only *some* of which is going to be about you. That doesn't mean he'll love you less, it just means he's a whole person in himself.
While it's fair to want a significant other to find you beautiful, it's neither fair nor realistic to expect that he's suddenly going to cease to be able to recognize beauty in others.
Not funny or interesting, but the only real life guy I find attractive? Yes. I do genuinely only find my current partner attractive… and if I don't (if I start looking at guys on the street for more than a second) then that's a big warning bell that something's off.
You are conflating two different things, by claiming that seeing other people's beauty is somehow seeing 'the good things' and means I am jealous of ANY good seen in other people. No…. it's the idea that I am not unique that gets under my skin, because if EVERYONE is attractive, then NO ONE is. Just like how everyone describes themselves as "smart." If we are all smart, then the actual definition of "smart" has lost all meaning.
If his "rich inner life" involves being sexually attracted to other real life* women, then yes, I do see that as something that impacts me. Because it's a part I want to reserve for myself.
And I don't see why it's not realistic if that's how I myself operate. Am I not real?
*As in no longer in the fantasy realm, like movie stars, porn stars, his own imagination, etc.
Okay, I will say that when I'm dating someone, other (real-life) guys' attractiveness registers to me the same way women's attractiveness will. I am pretty darn straight, but when I see a woman rocking an outfit or something, I might think "Wow, she looks good." The same for guys who aren't my guy. An almost factual recognition. This has as much to do with my unwillingness to sexualize other people without their consent (a whole 'other hang up) as my respect for my partner and our relationship.
But are there humans who are more clever, or entertaining, or funny, or any number of things than my fiance? YES. Even in things in which he excels. But they are not my partner.
I think the important point here is everyone is attractive to someone but no one is attractive to everyone. Otherwise we could all just stop by the Bureau Of Attractiveness, get our Attractiveness ID Card and just compare numbers with potential dates. "Well, I'm a 6, so I try not to date below 4. Sorry, it just won't work out."
There's the makings of a pretty good dystopian novel in there somewhere.
Its the same one as the service for people who will date/sleep with "anyone" that requires them to date whoever the computer matches them up with. Otherwise we send a Sandman out after them.
The way I look at it, any man dating with that horrible 1-10 "scale of attractiveness" in the back of his head is doing exactly that.
"Like I said, maybe I'm too much of a romantic, but the idea that a guy has such low standards that he could go on a date with nearly anyone kind of makes me wonder why I'd waste my time."
First dates don't necessarily mean much, especially given the way that dating rewards extroverts and extroverted behavior. With all the truisms about kissing frogs and how it's all a numbers game, the most efficient way is indeed to schedule a lot of first dates and then see who's worth making a second, third, etc. with*.
*(Because you're Marty, I want to make this extra explicit. You've said that you're an introvert, and the super efficient extrovert's way sounds like slow torture. You shouldn't shoot for maximum efficiency if it makes you feel like the whole process is a chore; that undermines the whole point of seeing how you feel in each other's company. Just that most people understand the efficiency argument on some level, so approaches/first dates shouldn't count for much.
Especially when you consider everything that has been written here about getting so hung up on someone that you ignore other potentials. There's always a chance that the super cool girl I just messaged is suffering from inbox fatigue or is just starting to get serious with someone else. Does it benefit anybody for me to invest any emotional weight in someone I haven't had real interactions with?)
Doesn't mean I have to be thrilled that I'm the girl you're messaging because the super cool girl didn't get back to you. Or that you're messaging me because you need numbers, and don't want to get hung up on someone.
I'm not saying I need to be the ONLY girl a guy is seeing in the beginning stages. But if he's messaging anything with a pulse to the point where he needs bots and scripts, that's a whole different level. There's a certain threshold I'm comfortable with…. A guy messaging me and a few (3-10 I'd say) other girls at the same time to see who bites? Sure. But messaging absolutely anyone who seems even vaguely acceptable? Nope, please take me off that list.
To me it seems like this is a problem that tends to solve itself, at least so far as the objection you're voicing. If someone's writing everyone vaguely acceptable on the site, more likely than not he's sending cut and paste messages to women who don't think he's very compatible with them. The guy being talked about above put in an extraordinary amount of effort into his profile, but for the most part, I don't think it's a concern that you'll end up on a date with someone whose net is quite that broad, because I suspect you'll have deleted his message before you even had to worry about that issue.
I do think you're likely to run into a lot of guys who are between that and the 3-10 you describe, though. Based on what I've heard about response rates, writing 3-10 women will get many guys 1 answer and some guys none at all, so it kind of makes sense for them to write to a wider group of women than that.
This is what a first date is like: It's like going to a burger place you usually like and ordering the burger you got last time and liked, but the guy at the counter says "Oh the bacon cheeseburger? We're out, but we have one with chorizo instead of bacon. Would you like to try that?" and you go "hmmm, well they're both pork products, the burger was good last time, so sure." And then you try the burger. It may be as good as you expected, or perhaps chorizo is a poor substitute for bacon. Maybe it's even worse because you didn't realize they meant vegan chorizo that's made out of collard greens. This is about the level of expectation and investment people have in a first date. You really have to try a lot of burgers and burger places before you find your favorite.
I disagree. If they said "Well we're out but we have this one with chorizo" I'd say "Oh okay never mind" and go to a different place.
Unless I've never been to a place before, I always have a favorite, and I will not try something different UNLESS I feel like it, not because the favorite is not available.
In other words-I know exactly what I like. And I rather suspect anyone who successfully dates me is similar, since I am very much an acquired taste.
I was saying that this is about as much faith as people put in a first date, and honestly, I think if you're waiting for someone to be perfect before you go on a first date with them, you're doing it wrong. After years of dating, that's how I feel. I just that is a very limiting way of thinking about it and in my experience the way you're looking at it is not how most people look at it. I say that because you keep stating "why would I want to go out with someone who is just making his way around a room, or trying out all the people that respond to him." This is the way most people approach the first date. When I was single, my qualifications for going out on a first date were pretty much 1.At this moment, I don't hate you 2. We had a conversation, which makes me think we're capable of having another one (exclude for online dating and just hope based on listed interests) 3. I am at least mildly attracted to you, or not actively repulsed by you. I had some fucking terrible dates, but I also had some amazing one. Some people I went on dates became life long friends. A lot of first dates I've forgotten. But the first date I had with my boyfriend was amazing. We spent 12 consecutive hours together, and none of the many mediocre dates could change that. Even if I had met him online, and he was one of 20 dudes who had written back, it wouldn't have changed the fact that was probably the best first date of my life, but there was no way I could have known that. My only hope for the date was only that I have a good time with a good person. You cannot have successful experiences if you are constantly afraid of failure, it is too limiting. You want to wait for the perfect romantic moment for someone to show up at the perfect moment, go ahead. I don't think that's how life happens and I don't think you'll be successful in the plan, but I truly wish you the best of luck.
I would rather have fewer first dates that are amazing, then tons of first dates that are mediocre. Quality over quantity. If my criteria for a first date is literally just "I can have a conversation with you" and that's all, what a waste of time! I'd rather not even bother.
I'm not afraid of failure. I just don't get the point of wasting time on something that falls right out of the gate. If I know right off the bat a guy isn't compatible (he is really super social) or is just using me as a space filler, why in the world would I spend my precious time with him? Time is an asset I can't get back, and I'd rather not spend it on non-starters.
Sure, I could go on a date thinking I'd be wrong…. but any time I've tried that, it ended up just being a waste, as I secretly expected from the start.
I don't want perfection. I don't want a "perfect romantic moment." I just don't want to waste my time on a guy who views me as quantity, instead of quality. I don't want to waste any emotional or physical energy on someone whose standards are so low that literally ANYONE could be sitting in my seat and it wouldn't matter to him.
Oh, it's so complicated. I'm with GJ in some ways on this, at least in the sense that once someone meets my basic date parameters, there's not a lot of correlation between how strong our internet connection was and how good the date will be. There's a lot of in person stuff that can't be predicted ahead of time.
On the other hand, I have finite amounts of time and emotional energy, and going out with everyone who was interested no matter how seemingly incompatible as an experiment makes me want to hide under the covers. So does going out on 100 first dates in any time frame that's not measured in decades (you know…I may have been out on 100 first dates in the last decade….which is weird to think about). So, for me, I try to balance those two things and find a compromise between how much I have to invest in dating and being open to real life chemistry being different from online chemistry.
1. You can't really know that someone is using you as a space filler. If you feel like someone who talks to a lot of people can't possibly think you're special or have a unique connection to you, then I don't think you have an accurate vision of people. If you know right off the bat there is no way you could be compatible, by all means don't go out with them.
2. Time is valuable, but you won't be successful without risking that asset. You don't have to risk it on someone you are 100% sure isn't good for you, but you're also wasting another resource, which is potential for meeting people, by preemptively judging everyone.
I'm a little confused about what you're saying. Are you saying you don't want to go out with someone to whom you're just number? Well, duh to that. No one wants to be just a number to a person. But if you're saying that you don't want to give someone a chance because you think you may just be a number to them because they happen to interact with a lot of people, or date a lot of people, or sleep with a lot of people, I don't think that's going to get you more amazing dates. You have an equally likely chance of having a shitty date or an amazing date regardless of whether it is date 1 of 10 dates, or date 30 of 30.
Very few people will literally date anyone, but a lot of people will air on the side of "ok, let's see where this goes" for a first date. If it wasn't romantic, but a girl you met at a party and you were talking and she seemed friendly but you just don't know if this person is going to be your new best friend or someone you'll never see again, and she asks if you want to have brunch with her and some friends the next day. Would you say no because she might extend the invite to any girl she was talking to?
I don't want to meet people, not really. I want to have deeper connections with the ones I already have. Cramming my life with more acquaintances is not what I'm after. I don't make friends through casual dating.
I won't get an amazing date if the guy just came off of yet another amazing date with an equally amazing girl. The more options a guy has, the less chance I have. It's true, date 1 out of 1 might be shitty, but at least I'm not competing against every single lady in the Northeast metro. The higher the numbers, the less likely I'll stand out as anything special.
If the girl extends the invite to any girl she talks to, no, I won't go. Because I am looking for a one-on-one friend connection, and if she doesn't feel it or see it similarly, I don't see why I should pursue it.
OK, genuine question. I won't even follow up on it if you don't want me to: do you really think its that unlikely that there's someone (or someones) out there who would pick you regardless of how many other options presented themselves?
I do think it's unlikely, yes. It's like you and everyone else keeps saying… I'm not the best. I am 'good enough,' and presented with enough options they WILL find 'the best.'
You can go ahead and follow up if you want.
I don't think anyone said "you're not the best". GH's example was actually that he and his ex weren't The Best for each other. Now you and I define The Best differently. To me, anyone I'm going out with long term is going to be The Best because of our shared experience. There's no one who can walk by and make me think "she's better, gotta bail". Ergo, who I'm with is the best.
I asked, not so much as relates to that as because I see you talking down about yourself a lot. And although you might believe every word you say, I think its at least possible (ok, I think its very likely but nothing in life is certain) that there are guys out there for whom your looks, interests and even dating preferences are a perfect match, for whom you would be The Best, even on a first date.
Plenty of people said I'm not the best. That I'm forcing my partner to lie to me and I'm punishing him for "thought crimes" and making my insecurity about himself (because wanting to be his first choice in key areas apparently makes me a broken human being.)
OK, my mistake. I won't take responsibility for other people's words. Fuck 'em. If you're happy, you're doing it right. If you're not happy, perhaps you should consider what changes in your attitude, behavior or life will make you happy.
See second paragraph above.
I think maybe people meant you're not at your best? To me, that's how it comes off. It's just that it's difficult to get into relationships when you're not at your best, emotionally, physically…even if it might not matter to others. It's something that kind of fucks with your mojo and gets in your head. To me at your best is not the same as being the best.
That's valid, but how do you think one on one connections happen? You say you don't like casual dating, but isn't all dating casual until it becomes serious? That's something that confuses me. Unless you're part of some serious religious sect, people don't date with the "is s/he the one?" mindset from day one.
Also, how many time have you met multiple people in one day, or even in a span of several days and were like "wow, those two people are equally amazing. In fact, there is no difference in the emotions they elicit in me."? That rarely happens, not just with humans, but movies, music, and food….all kinds of things. There are very few instances where things are completely equally. Something always stands out. Something always differentiates you.
Not all dating is casual. Plenty of people date with the idea that they are dating to find someone serious/long-term/"the one", not because they particularly enjoy dating itself or are just looking for some fun. That's my mindset and I'm not from a serious religious sect or something.
Obviously something *doesn't* differentiate me, considering how even my friends frequently forget I exist.
Oh, well for that value of "casual dating", its very much the exception, not the rule to me. I still don't consider dating a chore but I do have one eye to whether or not this has the potential to go anywhere. Casual dating is what I do with single female friends when I'm not willing to get involved in anything serious for a while. . .please note that this should not be taken as some sort of wisdom. My track record with doing that is somewhat mixed.
Hmm. I definitely know people who date like that, but in a lot of cases, they're the people who are going out on quite a few dates and may have some early stage overlaps. Finding a partner is a high priority, so they're working at it.
I also know people who become exclusive and very serious right away, but the people I know who do that generally weren't seeking partners. They were just being single until they met someone very appealing, or a slow burn with a friend turned into dating.
Of course, other people might be different, but this style clash might explain some difficulties.
"I would rather have fewer first dates that are amazing, then tons of first dates that are mediocre."
You can't make that choice, though. The only choice available to you is "Have fewer first dates, or more first dates." You have no control over the quality.
Well, you can control somewhat but that winds up reducing the number of horrible dates more than the mediocre ones.
… Yes I do. But only going on dates with guys I know ahead of time I have some decent shot at connecting with.
That doesn't guarantee you amazing, at least not online. Narrowing things down there can't predict chemistry. I think the only way to guarantee amazing dates is to restrict dating to men you know very well socially.
But how are you supposed to know if someone is a good fit for you before you even meet them? I'm a fairly shy introvert, I have very limited social energy, and I have quite high standards for both romantic and friend relationships – but I'm willing to hang out with a wide variety of people once, to find out whether those are relationships I want to pursue. The fact that I am picky is precisely why I want to aggressively meet a whole lot of people, since if I'm working from just a few options I'm a lot more likely to have to either compromise my standards or not develop any relationship at all.
Because I'm not talking about being a good long-term fit. I am talking just about the superficial meeting part. If a guy has such low standards for physical attractiveness that he could literally have a first date with nearly anyone, then he ISN'T a good match for me, because I want to be special from the onslaught… Even just special in the superficial, purely physical way.
This is just explaining another perspective on things. I think I get where you're coming from in terms of this, and I think it's something that makes and may always make online dating difficult for you.
My stance would be that looks are somewhat important to me, but that lots of other things are important as well, and that some of those traits are a lot harder for me to find than physical attractiveness. I'd probably be open to a first date with maybe half or two thirds of men who are my age and who meet a handful of pretty strict lifestyle qualifiers. At the moment, that means I end up going out with one or occasionally two people a month, but when I was in a larger city, it meant I went on quite a few first dates. My personality isn't compatible with everyone else's, so then I could make my decisions on the in person interaction. My dates weren't very special to me before meeting – that was something that happened after I went on a date or maybe two with them and got to see some of the unique things that don't come through in a profile. But, like I said, I tend to attach to people very differently than you do, and it's not very important to me that a guy thinks I'm special before meeting me (realistically, too much of that actually makes me uncomfortable).
I have read enough of your posts to understand what's behind them: You want to be special to someone. It's a pretty simple request. And it is your experience that if you aren't that from the outset, the guy is just going through the motions in the relationship. Because this is something you have experienced personally. I share quite a few deal breakers as you, and one is actually the being approached by the guy, not the other way around. And that comes from a similar reason as yours is.
BUT. I just want to point out that just because there is a pattern, it isn't absolute. For example, my current boyfriend seems to find me perfect. It freaks me out a bit, he even thinks my flaws are fantastic. He also thinks I'm gorgeous, to the point where I'm all "Okay, settle down a bit."
And yet here's the thing, we knew each other before we dated. And he wasn't interested in me when we first met. He dated a lot of girls while we were just friends (I too dated others). I don't know what switched in him, but something did. And the timing worked out for us, and now we're rather happy (fingers crossed). I wasn't special for him from the "onslaught" . I was a friend, and we enjoyed each other's company, but I wasn't his number one back then. If I had held fast to a rule that said the second a potential partner sees me he has to think I'm the one, I'd never be in this relationship (where right now it's like I'm beyond his number one, I'm his number .5
).
I guess what I'm saying is, I actually really get your POV. But I also want to caution you for being too dogmatic about it. There are exceptions to every rule. And some of those exceptions can result in something really special.
Well I think I'm dogmatic for a reason. Like, it's fantastic that your boyfriend is so excited about you. But if you swapped me into your place, it doesn't matter how enthusiastic the guy was *now*, I would never truly trust that it was genuine. I would always wonder if it's coming from a place of desperation, exaggeration, or plain ol' dishonesty.
Please understand me, I'm not saying that your situation IS, or that even my situation would be. I'm saying, knowing myself as I'd do, I would never be able to accept that my current boyfriend, no matter how nuts he seemed about me, was genuine if he wasn't pretty nuts (not like madly in love, but at LEAST generally attracted) from the beginning.
Some of the rules I put up, I do so not necessarily from experience, but because I know how I react to things. To be perfectly frank, I'd never be in your situation because if a guy doesn't seem into me from the beginning, all of my attraction gets erased, and never comes back. Like, I've never ever fallen for a friend, or even a long-term acquaintance. The attraction is either there from the beginning, or it never is.
Oh. That's too bad. So basically you are willing to miss out on a loving man because you don't trust him. Not that he's doing anything wrong, but because you are so incapable of seeing how people's feelings can evolve and change and be one thing once upon a time and something completely different later, that you would rather not work on those irrational fears, but instead give up on the potential love of your life.
I mean, right now I'm thinking about my parents. My mom was dating someone else when she met my dad, she wasn't interested in him. It wasn't until a year later that she was. If my dad was like you, I'd never be born. And I'd never have witnessed one of the most loving, generous, hilarious, respectful couples I've ever seen (ie. my parents).
At any rate, it's not that I don't understand that that's how you feel, it's that I wonder if that's not something worth really working on. Again, I know you're with someone now, so it might not be worth it. And I know how you don't like to change yourself. I just . . . that just makes me so very sad. Truly.
And don't worry, I am 100% confident in my gent's feelings for me. You don't need to reassure me
.
It's more I'm willing to "miss" out on a loving man because I want someone who is like me, and I don't understand that mindset (and I have a very hard time trusting something I don't understand.) I don't change my attraction levels from -platonic- to -romantic-, so I don't understand the mindset of someone who does. Does that mean I'm "missing" out on a loving man? I think it means I'm "missing" out on someone who is incompatible with me.
I don't think someone who is incompatible with me is the love of my life.
And it isn't irrational. It's just that it isn't how I work. If a guy isn't interested in me, I cease to be interested in him. And once I go platonic, I never go back. If I manage to overcome my attraction to them, it evaporates and it never returns.
Back in college, I got a big, stupid crush on a coworker. I happily never dated him (like I said, it was a very stupid crush) and we eventually became friends. If I was single, and he showed up at my door naked, vowing his undying love… I would feel not a single romantic urge. As soon as we became friends, poof, attraction just vanished.
So it wouldn't necessarily be that I couldn't overcome the irrational fear of being unable to trust him. It'd be 1) his attitude towards relationships would be vastly, weirdly different from mine and 2) if he wasn't interested, then any attraction I had for him would have vanished forever.
I don't view it as sad. I'm glad for it, because I can work my way out of Oneitis pretty easily if I ever set my mind to it. I've ducked out of dozens of crushes by talking to them about the girls they were interested in-poof!, crush gone. It's pretty awesome to not be plagued by unrequited love in that way. If that means I miss out on "the love of my life"….. well, then, he wasn't the love of my life, was he, if we're so fundamentally incompatible.
This actually makes a lot of sense to me.
Can I ask a sincere not leading question? You say his ability to turn from platonic to romantic is incompatible with you because you can't do it yourself. What about it is actually incompatible? As in, once he's romantically interested, it's a real feeling (even if you don't understand how that's possible), so it's as if he was attracted from the beginning. What does this ability do to the larger scope of the relationship? Aside from it being a thing you just don't trust. If you can accept that people are able to go from platonic to romantic (because it happens all the time and is real, to otherwise not accept that others are capable of that IS irrational, so since you claim not to be, I assume you accept that others are capable of sincerely being able to do this), why is the end result of him being romantically interested incompatible with you?
Again, sincere question.
It's incompatible because 1) my attraction for him would have disappeared, never to return and 2) I don't understand it. I want to understand my partner. I want to feel similar to him. Attachment styles and the way we are attracted to people is a place I want to feel similar. If he's the type of guy that can gain feelings somewhere down the road for previously-platonic people, that's really at odds with me, who will never develop feelings for platonic people.
I'd essentially see our attachment styles as different. And because I don't understand it, I'd be consistently questioning it and concerned about it…. I question things I don't understand. And if I can never understand that, I'm going to always be questioning it. Questioning something constantly erodes whatever trust we could build.
Others are capable of it, sure. But I'm not. And I wouldn't want to date someone who was so fundamentally different from me in that way, because I don't want such a big question mark between us. Like "Well, if he can develop feelings for people who were otherwise platonic, does that mean any and all of his female friends are potential crushes/mates? So there is absolutely no guard against him falling for them, despite his assurance in the present, because his future can change so suddenly and frequently?" NOPE, a big ol' "Do Not Want To Deal."
Yes, some things should be worked on, some fears and trust issues adjusted for, etc. But why the hell should I put so much energy into changing a trust issue that is attached to a hypothetical person? Like, the "love of my life" MIGHT have this attachment style, which MIGHT lead to him falling for me, so I should change myself in this way. What sense does that make, when I could just…. not date someone who has that attachment style and save myself a WHOLE lot of hypothetical work?
Oh you in no way have to change, I was just curious. And I think with your answer it's clear to me that though you claim to think it might be reasonable for others to have this attachment style, you don't really believe it. I just think it's important to be honest with ourselves. You don't trust people who can change their feelings, because ultimately this means that they can change from loving you to not loving you. You can never trust someone who builds from nothing to something because you then think it can go from something to nothing (even though the same could be said of insta-love – it can go from attraction to not as well).
And that I find is a pity, because I think the majority of the population is more in the platonic to romantic attachment style camp, the getting to know people and as they do finding them more and more attractive, than the insta-love camp – the "this is the one for me, I know it right out of the gate". And I think your lack of trust is holding you back from meeting a large group of potential suitors.
That being said, if this is what you truly feel (which I believe), then you just will deal with having to work within a smaller pool. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. It's just harder is all.
Um…. no, I think it's completely reasonable for others to have that attachment style, because some people can handle things other people can't. I can absolutely handle someone who has a sometimes-irresponsibly-behaving dog, whereas for others, that would be a huge issue. We all have different strengths and weaknesses, and different deal breakers. I think other people could handle the whole "but he might like his female friends later!" no problem. I'm just not one of them.
I don't think you are getting it. I think you are being pretty unfair. I am stating, clear out, *I do not work that way.* I never have. I have never, despite having lots and lots of male friends, ever developed a crush on a guy who was otherwise platonic. EVER.
So even IF I could embrace the uncertainty and not understanding a guy who functions that way, I *literally could not be attracted to him back.* Because when a guy isn't interested I move the fuck on and don't look back. I thought this was a GOOD thing, so I find myself scratching my head that somehow even THIS about me is problematic.
Yeah, lots of people fall into that larger camp. Lots of people fall into the camp of only wanting to date girls with tattoos, or not wanting kids. I am well aware that every standard and deal breaker I set up for myself lessens the pool.
But what's the alternative? Date someone who isn't compatible to me? I repeat: how can the love of my life be someone who is *not compatible* to me? Who I literally could not be attracted to??
Ack, no! I'm not trying to convince you of anything or judging you, and I do actually understand your point of view, I was trying to work with your point of view to see if maybe I could bring up a point you might not have thought of, that's all. I certainly do not want to upset you, or make you do anything you don't want to.
I'm truly sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. Truly.
Aaaaannnd . . . I just read your thread in the forum. And now I think I get you even better.
Never once, in our conversation did I tell you you were wrong to do what you do. I wanted to understand why you did what you did, and I wanted to point out some negatives in case you hadn't noticed them. But I also appreciated your POV, and said many times that it was perfectly fine for you to do whatever you wanted. I just wanted to offer you a different perspective. That is all.
But here you go and create a thread (in which I cannot comment), claiming I said you were wrong to do what you were doing. And while it does hurt that you managed to twist my words such, it explains so much. And it goes back to trust. You honestly cannot think of any other reason a person might point out an opposing view other than to tell you you are wrong. You don't trust me when I say that I just wanted to point out something, but what you were doing if it works for you is also fine.
It all comes back to trust. And you don't trust people when they say what they say. You read behind the words, you assume a negative subtext.
Anyway, I'm writing this to point out, again, a different POV. You'll likely not believe me, which makes me sad. But there you go. I never once said you were wrong. Ever.
" And I think with your answer it's clear to me that though you claim to think it might be reasonable for others to have this attachment style, you don't really believe it."
"I find that a pity."
"Oh. That's too bad. So basically you are willing to miss out on a loving man because you don't trust him."
Really? You really don't get how someone could read those, and get the impression they're being told they're wrong? No, you didn't *directly* say "You're wrong for wanting these things." You only strongly implied I was to be pitied, that I'm broken (because I don't "trust", completely ignoring my explanation for my own behave and SAYING FLAT OUT you thought I was lying to myself), and that I'm "missing out" on love.
You really can't figure out how that will come across?? You really can't see the implication of "you're missing out on your soulmate!"
It isn't a negative subtext. It is *text*. You cannot use words like 'pity', 'not honest' and 'missing out' and expect the other person to think you are a-okay with their perspective.
You want me to think you are fine and supportive of my position? Write a post that actually SHOWS it.
Marty, I have been here trying so very hard just to show you another perspective. As someone who actually has a lot of preferences herself. As someone who insists that men do all the approaching herself. I was trying to come from a place of empathy. And yes, it does make me sad. Because every response you make to me and to others here is filled with fear, and self loathing, and suspicion.
I am supportive of what you ultimately choose to do, but I did not post in order to say "you go girl!" I posted to try to open your mind a little to other possibilities. And after you reject those possibilities, THEN I say "you go girl!" Because I just wanted to make sure you saw all the sides, because it didn't seem like you did. Quite frankly I still don't think you do.
For example in your thread on the forum you claim that people are saying you have a small dating pool because you are ugly. WTF???? People are saying you have a small dating pool because you yourself are making it small. You don't want to date: friends, socially active people, people who date a lot on OKC. That makes your dating pool smaller. And that's okay. What we are trying to do is let you know, in case you didn't realise it, that you are the one limiting yourself. No one else. And if you are okay with that, sincerely and truly that's awesome. Because of course you can still find someone in a smaller pool. It's just harder. It is.
We just are trying ultimately to help.
And maybe I have come across poorly to you, but again, that's your interpretation. I never said your way was wrong. I said it was harder. And I wanted to help you make it easier.
For christ's sake Marty, we are trying to HELP YOU. Not hurt you. But you've been so wounded by so many you can't see it.
In any event, I'm so sorry I hurt you. I'm so sorry because I really thought we were having a good conversation where I was learning about you, and you were listening to my perspective (even if you didn't agree). I had no idea I was hurting you this badly. It was not my intent. And I wish I could take back some of the things I said. I'm not perfect. I'm sorry I said you made me feel sad. I just want you to be happy. And all I see here in these comments after months and months is you being so unhappy. And I know I don't know you, but for some reason you've hit a sympathetic nerve and I care. I don't know why, but I do.
I sorry. I truly am. Do what works for you. Please. And what's so silly is, after all this, you do have a boyfriend who you like a lot. So it's clear your way does work for you. So please, carry on. You go girl!
I have a boyfriend who I am apparently a shitty partner to (because I don't have options), who I am forcing to lie to me (because I can't *possibly* be the best, he obviously finds other girls way hotter and better than me but hey I'm 'good enough'), whom is literally the only person who I can seem to date with any measure of success while he could drop me and get a perfect girlfriend at any point.
Oh but I could potentially get a guy to sleep with me for no-strings-attached sex. And that's somehow a good thing.
Yeah, I am limiting myself. Because LOOK what happens otherwise! And while I appreciate your apology, I continue to be flummoxed how people on this board think ripping me apart without ever trying to see my perspective is helpful. I started this thread thinking I'd get a few people who said "Yeah modern dating is kinda hard…" or hell, that I'd be ignored completely. I don't ever start threads thinking I want people to take apart my preferences brick by brick, just so they can point at me in my naked state and tell me how insecure, distrusting, and wounded I am. No fucking shit I am-that's why the bricks are there in the first place! And telling me to just 'get over it' just emphasizes how little people actually DO try to understand before barreling in with all the things I'm doing wrong.
Well I can certainly agree with you that modern dating is hard. Oh my goodness is it ever. And I am quite terrible at it. It was, again, why I was trying to empathise with you in my ineffective way (I apologise again for that). I think we are in a really frustrating place these days as men and women, where all the old rules have been tossed to the side (for good reason, they were sexist for all genders, and archaic), without really knowing what to replace them with. We also have some people still attached to the old rules, while others are searching for the new, and then those people come head to head.
And we all have our baggage, and it influences our interactions. And we have to work on ourselves, but not go overboard and become someone we don't recognise, and we can't overthink it, but we still need to think . Oy vey on a cracker I just want to scream sometimes.
And really, while I think this blog does more good than bad, I've seen enough evidence with certain posters (not actually you so much) that sometimes all this advice does is little more than confuse, not clarify.
So yes, dating these days is hard. Hard as fuck. I'm still glad, as a woman, I live now and am allowed choice. But with choice and freedom comes a lot of frustration and fear and confusion. Freedom is great, but it's a heck of a responsibility as well.
That being said, I don't think anyone is saying you need to "get over" anything. I think people are just offering advice. And maybe we ought to add "It's difficult and takes a lot of work but . . . " but I think most of us assume as much. Any advice is not easy. Is not a "get over it". It's a slow process. It also isn't all or nothing. A person can take some advice, ignore others, and still keep on doing what they are doing. But I definitely don't think there's anything easy for you, or for me for that matter, to get over.
Dating/relationships/living is hard. For all of us. Which is why I think we come here and offer advice to each other. Because we know how hard it is, and we want to see if we can lessen the burden for others. It's nice to think we can. It's nice when we do. But it doesn't always happen, because ultimately not all advice works for all people. And that's okay too.
"We also have some people still attached to the old rules, while others are searching for the new, and then those people come head to head."
Don't forget the people trying to write the new rules to be even more sexist and self-serving than they used to be.
…actually, do forget them.
Wait, "forget" isn't the word I want. What am I looking for…?
Ostracize! Yes. Those motherfuckers. Ostracize those guys.
Amen!
MArty, the thing is, your preferences are weird. They are uncommon. I don't think anyone here shares them (WHICH IS OKAY, we're all here because we're weird and uncommon).
So I think a lot of us are just trying to wrap our heads around your POV, because it so alien to us. And it sounds negative, because, honestly, I think most of us would be unhappy in your situation.
(Also, it doesn't really help that you have a habit of getting defensive/argumentative. Your discussion style sounds very similar to a debate, so people are going to debate you.)
Why are my preferences weird??
Allow me to attempt" your preferences are significantly different from the majority of those involved in this conversation and they are different in a way such that we have a difficult time understanding why you have them in the first place.
Guest, FYI, I think you've been perfectly reasonable, and empathetic, and it's very clear that you've been doing your best to understand other people's POVs.
Thanks! I appreciate that. Nonetheless, I do think some of the things I said to Marty were a bit extreme, and I could see how they could be read as me pitying her (since I basically said I felt sad). My point was that I felt sad because I knew where she was coming from, not that I was superior or I was right and she was wrong or anything. But I can get the misunderstanding. Tone and intent are very tricky things to discern on the internet.
Ahem.
Did you think the last time I asked you to coach me I wasn't serious?
LOL. I think we need to negotiate. Tell me what I need to do to make it happen.
To whom are you referring? Me?
Sure, but even if you're talking about pure physical attractiveness, there's a huge component that doesn't come across in photos. What about a guy who knows that he can't judge whether he's attracted to someone from a photo or a description, because he cares a lot about (say) how the girl smells or moves or smiles? Would you feel that such a guy didn't think you were special, even if the reason he was going on a lot of dates was because he knew he couldn't judge attractiveness in any other way?
I'd just find his form of attraction kind of strange, I guess, and wonder why he was using online dating if his mode of attraction was so focused on real life interaction. I mean how would he even begin to narrow it down online?
Because it takes a lot less time to say "hey script, find me everyone between 29 and 40 who is thin, athletic, average or 'a few extra pounds', is single, looking for a long term relationship, likes cheese and 8 bit video games, has a compatibility rating over 90% and an enemy rating less than 20% and visit their pages" than it does to go out and find 100 people who fit that description through work, friends and on the street. The whole point of writing a script like that is it takes a little while up front but then zero time later. All he's doing is cutting the long-term time that it takes him to go through profiles by hand by having a robot do it.
Once he's got those matches that he could have eventually dug up himself, he's still doing the same things everyone else in OLD does. He's just viewing with his own eyes a much smaller dating pool of much more likely matches than most people. So if you make it into the pool of a guy who's using this approach, you're already more special than the vast majority of women on the site within his driving distance.
OKC's filters are better than nothing, but have some surprising limitations. For instance, the first thing I do when I click a profile is skip down to the section detailing what she's looking for, and see if she only wants single guys or guys much younger than myself. Why can't I filter them out automatically?
Yup. I'd love to be able to filter out guys who aren't interested in anyone in my age range, or for guys whose age ranges I'm within but whose choices there give me the twitches.
OkCupid is also quite limiting in terms of location circles. A 100 mile radius cuts out everyone from a reasonable sized town I'd be willing to travel to. A 250 mile one means I'll get a frustrating list of a bunch of attractive, compatible dudes who I will never meet because they live in Canada.
Except I'd never make it into that pool, because depending on how you write the script, you could potentially miss out on data.
For example, I have no idea what to put as my body type. I am somehow both skinny, average, curvy and overweight, depending on who you ask. So if I put myself as average, any guy who wrote his script to find curvy girls would miss me.
And if the script does work flawlessly and brings me in, I'm still not unique *to the guy*, I'm just a collection of data points chosen by a robot. HE didn't choose me-his script did, and his script is working under artificial limitations.
And how is any of that less beneficial to you than being in the normal pool that people go through by hand?
If i find your profile because OKC presents you as a match, you're still going to be #6,382.
Because people going through by hand are making conscious decisions. They're not computers, pulling out data based on potentially arbitrary decisions. A guy isn't actively thinking "I must choose only girls who have an average body type" when he's looking at pictures, whereas the script would be.
Essentially, a guy choosing me by hand is doing so because he sees something. A guy choosing me because of a bot is doing so because the bot told him there's something.
And yeah, I'm still going to be #6,382. Which is probably why I dislike online dating so much…. it reminds me how insignificant I am. That I'm not a person, I'm just some data points on a screen for someone to whiz by because I don't include enough Whedon quotes in my profile.
OK, so the issue is online dating. Gotcha.
Would you let me put my tea down first the next time you make a crack like that?
Wasn't a crack, just an observation that her issues with using mathematical models and data mining are problems that persist in OLD without them.
Have you ever played with the search function on an online site? What you're saying kind of puzzles me, because people are already searching for single women without children between the ages of 25-35 who graduated from college and live within 25 miles and then sorting by match percentage – and the only reason people don't usually throw body type into the search criteria is that it's a premium feature.
The sort of thing being discussed here narrows the algorithm, but I'd be very surprised if there are many men who are writing to people without having done a search first.
There was a great This American Life episode where a group of Harvard physics PhDs tried to quantify how many datable women were in Boston and their professor walked in and wanted them to run the numbers for her. Her requirements were that they had to be 1. taller than her (she was like 6ft tall), and 2. smarter than her (she's a physics prof at Harvard, so…) 3. in her age range, and 4. single, obviously. They ran the numbers for Boston and basically came up with no one.
That's a result of user error in writing an algorithm, not in the idea of doing some more specific searches itself. In that particular case, a dude who's looking for a "curvy" woman would be a fool not to include "average" as well. Anyone who's used the site for even a short period of time realizes that self-descriptions of body type tend to vary and are one of the least accurate descriptors out there.
You're not unique to the guy at that point. When he looks through his and decides which of his custom matches to write, that's when he decides there's something there worth pursuing (I'm sure some of those new high matches for him didn't seem so appealing when he opened their profiles and saw something incompatible). The visiting algorithm would be irrelevant to someone like you, since that's aimed toward women who will make the first move.
But that literally happens very rarely. Going out with a lot of people doesn't mean you lack standards. I apply for a lot of jobs when I want to find a new job, but that's not because I don't have standards for where I want to work. It's because that's going to statistically give me the best chance of getting what I want.
It happens for me. I know from the onset if I'm attracted to someone, and I have rather specific standards, yet I can look at a guy and go "Hmm there's something special about him." Even if the something special is as limited as "He catches my attention."
Going out with a lot of people doesn't mean you lack standards, but it does mean you have very broad standards. And I don't consider falling into very broad standards, being special.
How special can you expect to be to someone the first time they meet you, let alone online? People become special to us as we get to know them and discover the things that make them unique. Personally, "she catches my attention" doesn't exactly make me feel special, a lot of things can catch someone's attention and it's not exactly a lasting thing.
It's still better than "Well I go on a date with her because I don't actively dislike her," which seems to be the point of the 100 date exercise.
Yeah, no, at least not when I mention it. I don't set some arbitrary number of people. I'm looking at pictures, then profiles, then message replies to find someone who's interesting, who I think has potential. I know that no one of these people, any of whom I could be decent friends with, is very likely to work out. Maybe its schedules, if I only see someone Wed night and Saturday afternoon because of our work schedules, there's just no time. Maybe we have different opinions or goals that don't pop up on a profile. The way I find that out is to go on first dates, see if there's a spark there and repeat as necessary.
Edit: The point isn't to date as many non-special people as possible. Its to eliminate the ones who aren't compatible at the earliest opportunity. Sometimes that's the photo, sometimes that's the third date when we go to the pool and her bathing suit shows off a previously unseen "88" tattoo that isn't a Buckaroo Banzai reference.
But how is the romantic guy who's your The One going to magically know its you he's looking for? You can't stand out of the crowd until you've met.
But he can at least know from the beginning if he's attracted to me. That's literally ALL I'm talking about.
He still has to see you, even a picture. If every guy was doing this data mining, the aggregate effect for you is that it would eliminate the guys who won't be interested in you and those who do see/approach you have picked you out of a much smaller pool. In OLD, you're always #6,382. Every guy who visits or messages looks at multiple (even many) profiles per session. Some of them get messages, some get dates, some get nothing. I'd say even with OKC's filters, I message less than 10% of the people it puts in front of me. If we're counting quickmatch or matches with just pictures, I probably see 40-50 profile shots per visit (100 for POF). I read halfway into maybe half a dozen quickmatch profiles and message maybe one or two.
There's no way for you on the receiving end (you don't want to chase people) to know if you're "just #6,382" or if it took me 6,381 previous tries before going "holy shit! My dream woman!"
Unfortunately, "working their way through the bar" is the only way most guys get any responses in online dating.
Doesn't mean I have to be thrilled that I'm #35 on the list, or that guys are choosing me just because everyone else turned them down. I am sympathetic on a macro scale that dating is a numbers game, perhaps more for guys than women, but it doesn't mean I am *personally* sympathetic when I discover I'm just another number.
Serious question, how do you feel about romantic history? Like, if you're the 20th girlfriend a guy has had? Assuming he's old enough that it isn't a major red flag about personality issues (or, like my brother, started "dating" at 11 and by the time he reached high school had to date girls from other schools because he'd literally run through all of them in his class- eye roll), does the fact that he's had lots of prior relationships bother you? Maybe I'm misinterpreting how you feel, but that seems similar to not wanting to be #35 on the list. A guy who's willing to try everyone for a few months doesn't seem like your cup of tea.
You could argue that the guy with 20 three-month relationships before meeting you would not have been the same person at relationship #4. Those years of both life and love have molded him into the person who's dating you now. But, at the same time, scores of messages to other people besides you could have been molding him too. Making him look at what he really wants, leading him to you.
"Does the fact that he's had lots of prior relationships bother you?"
Speaking from experience, kind of but not for the reason you'd expect. I wouldn't necessarily be jealous, but I WOULD assume the relationship wasn't long-lasting. I mean, if all of these other girls couldn't satisfy him, no WAY am I going to.
Because I have dated one or two guys like that, and what I've noted is that guys like that usually have lots of different preferences and tastes, which is why they've dated so many people. When they have settled down, it's been with a Super Person… someone who manages to be the Ultimate Catch, who can satisfy all of those different varied tastes simultaneously. So you have the Nerdy Girl who is also the Cool Sports Girl, who can play a video game and cook a souffle and also loves soccer…
Essentially, I see a guy who has a long history of short relationships as having very high standards in order to settle down. Since I have no chance of exceeding such high standards, I would just rather not bother. He rejected all of those other girls…. what are the odds that you're the exception and not the rule?
Serious question. How would you feel if I said the same thing about a girl with an extensive sex history?
I'd say "Okay."
I mean really, so long as you're not saying she's done something wrong or disgusting, it's your prerogative and choice. I think guys who say "It's totally cool that she has a long sexual history-I'd just prefer someone who, like me, kept sex to romantic relationships" are not slut-shaming but are stating a perfectly fine personal preference.
Yeah, it doesn't seem like Marty is making some sort of value judgment, just saying that the sorts of people she's known who have that pattern of dating are not what she's looking for.
A guy who wants a partner who's more of a homebody might turn down a woman who does the bar scene, one-night stands thing a lot just because she has a different personality than he wants. That's not slut-shaming.
You call it "working his way through the bar," I think some people would call it "being social." When I met my boyfriend, we were at a party and has a rule that he tries to talk to everyone at a party at least for a few minutes. He was literally making his way through the party when he talked to me and we hit it off. I'm not offended by this, it seemed like a great way to meet people and make the most of being at a social gathering.
And I am not a person who talks to everyone at a party. I am just not interested in *everyone*-call it picky, call it too high of expectations, call it anti-social, I'm not a fan of either being that person or being around that person. I don't even really enjoy being friends with the Super Popular person for that same reason… because I feel less remarkable, less special and less important to them.
I'm not claiming it's wrong to be that person. I'm saying it just really gets under my skin, and doubly so when it's in a romantic context.
Actually, believe it or not, he's not Super Popular. He's an introvert and loves spending time on his own and it takes energy for him to be social. He just decided one day it was something he was going to do, and I think that's great. I know the Super Popular person, I have one in my life. She doesn't make her way through the party, she's making her way to the important people and throwing interaction around on her way there. I know you want to feel special, but just because someone interacts wants to interact with lots of people doesn't mean none of them are special to him or her. It certainly doesn't mean every person registers the same way or that she or he doesn't make lasting impressions of some people.
Whether the "truth" is that I am special to the Social Person or not, I *feel* unimportant. The truth inside their heads is really inconsequential if I interpret their actions in a certain way. And the way I interpret those specific actions are… I am not that important to them.
I want to date someone like me, who also doesn't talk to everyone at a party. That's all.
Even if it worked, the data mining wasn't there so he could find Compatible Female #572. It was there to reduce as much as possible the number of incompatible people he had to meet in the course of finding the right one. It reduced the noise by allowing him to eliminate the 90% of people that his unrefined technique would find who wouldn't work out.
Yes, this. I wonder if it would help to think of it not as "the computer has found me 800 interchangeable women, any or all of whom I will probably find attractive enough to date" but as "the computer has removed the clutter of 6000 women I'm unlikely to find attractive and/or who would not be a good match for me, leaving me a smaller pool from which I am more likely to find my ideal match."
It's like if I went to a restaurant that had a 40-page menu, I'd probably be overwhelmed and a bit frustrated trying to find something I wanted to eat. But if the waiter could cross out all the dishes containing onions, beets, or Swiss cheese, leaving me with maybe a page and a half, I'll still be choosing something I really want–I just won't have to dig through a menu the size of a novella to get to it.
You just named three of my favorite food items.
Clearly we will not be engaging in fisticuffs at the buffet.
That sounds like a great no-budget steampunk martial arts movie.
Fisticuffs At The Buffet
This isn't modern dating. This is one kind of modern dating. It's not and doesn't have to be for everyone. Having someone be really specifically interested in you is really important to you, so honestly, online dating is probably always going to be a tough fit for you. I think that we've talked about the fact that I have a lot of trouble meeting men who are compatible in my area, so for me, the impersonal dating machine and its (for me non-)arbitrary questions lets me meet guys who have at least a base level of compatibility and see if we can build interest from there.
I do think it's worth noting that the 97 word average doesn't mean that people are being turned off by profiles that use 105 words per category, though. It's a general signal that people dislike the super-long, droning profiles that list every movie and album the person has ever enjoyed. I do agree to some extent with the idea of answering questions based on how *other* people want you to answer them being troubling, though. I think it's good for people to really think about how they're coming across in the questions and to avoid answering them in ways that will unintentionally scare away good matches. But, if I came across the profile of a guy who'd skipped all the questions about no meaning no and gay marriage being sinful because he wanted to attract more women, I still wouldn't be very happy when I ended up on a date with him.
Seconded. I think the mentality to have with online dating is not that it will find you your one perfect match…it will instead weed out the 98% of the population you have no business dating even once.
More broadly, I don’t know how much DNL has to offer Marty in the long run. Different gender, different goals, different personality – I don’t how much an outgoing guy who successfully mastered picking up women in clubs is going to be able to say to an introverted woman who wants to find a life partner.
The community can actually offer Marty a surprising amount. She wants something with a strong dose of initial magic. It's a myth to think that magic just happens, but there's lots she can do to encourage its growth. Other people here may have skillsets she can tap into. (For instance, she's mentioned that she has an unusual build, so people with more fashion-fu can maybe help her have a better sense what fits her.)
Also, because she gets a lot of flak and deserves to be appreciated for advances she makes, I will note one place where she's made significant improvement under everyone's noses. Back in the day, she was big on the "men only want one thing" train of thought. Nowadays she's able to see that casual dating is very different from seeing her as just a collection of warm holes, and that having specific relationship outcomes in mind is her making an active choice instead of being subject to the whims of male fancy. Even if the whims of male fancy still dictate the dating environment she has to live in, it's still a fundamentally healthier way of looking at the world.
OK I can get behind the community offering insight that the blog host isn’t in a position to give. And if you’re going to take men being sexually interested in you as a point against them…yeah, that’s a recipe for fruatration.
Overall, it seems like she is very much wanting to be in a situation of mutual “The One”-ness, which I can’t see ending well. Anybody worth having a relationship with is going to be able to attract people, and asking them to say they are wholly uninterested in them, or that they prefer you to all of them in all ways, is…bad. I can’t see how it ends in any way beyond your partner either lying to you on a regular basis, or pulling an ostrich routine and desperately trying to not interact with or acknowledge people they find attractive.
Yes, you can take this too far the other way easily, with a partner commenting on other people’s looks or trying to make you feel inadequate. But there’s a balance to be struck here, and asking your partner to always make you feel like the only girl in the world seems likelier to end you up with a good liar than what you actually want.
What if what you want is someone who thinks you are the most attractive?
If a guy doesn't think I'm the most attractive woman he's dated, why in the world would I want to be with him? How is THAT a recipe for a good relationship, when that aspect is so important to me?
We disagree that anyone worth having a relationship with is going to attract people. If nothing else, that's rather offensive, considering I attract almost no one. I mean, I'm lucky if I attract a guy *a year.* So am I not a good person to date? The assumption that we should all want extroverted, extremely attractive Popular people is kind of strange to me. I don't attract hardly any people, and I don't see why I wouldn't want someone who is like me.
Or, I dunno, maybe I'm a shitty unattractive partner.
I think you just gave me an insight into where our mindsets differ.
I agree with you – I want to be the most attractive person to my partner in every way. What I think we differ on is how that happens. My model is that it doesn't really matter where you start; what matters is the trajectory. Does he think you're more attractive today than yesterday? Then you're in great shape for the long term. The initial attraction is only relevant in that it gives you a baseline. You, I think, are much more interested in the initial level of attraction, and less concerned with trajectory.
Does that make sense to you?
I don't think I'm-not?, concerned about the trajectory. I would also like to continue becoming attractive to my partner. Hell, he doesn't even need to think I am the Absolutely Most Gorgeous woman when first meeting me. But he does need to find me at least attractive initially.
I was always very confused by the desire to be *most attractive*. I just want to be attractive to my partner. It would be crazy of me to think I would be the *most attractive* person he ever laid eyes on FOREVER. He has certainly been with more attractive people, or at least seen more attractive people. Regardless, at one point, neither one of us will be physically attractive anymore. We will be old and possibly need help in the bathroom. I want there to be some deeper feeling than attraction there so that my partner can look at while I'm sick and gross and think "That bloated, runny, farting, unshowered woman is the woman I love."
My ex-wife explicitly wanted to be the best sex I'd ever had. Caused a lot of tension, particularly when she wanted to experiment with poly. Ultimately, I came to see it as a symptom of the underlying insecurity that played a large part in wrecking the marriage.
I understand the impulse to want to be the best/hottest/whateverest; it's flattering, and feels more secure. But it's an illusory security; it puts you in a place where your partner's history can spit-out existential threats to your relationship at any moment, and can make your relationship contingent on a series of white lies of ever-growing complexity. People are entitled to their pasts, and demanding that their past not threaten you in any way isn't very respectful of your partner.
I'm fine being good enough, which sounds pretty sad at first glance. "Good enough" has unfortunate connotations of settling, of mediocrity. But if somebody thinks I'm good enough to get excited about seeing, to create a relationship with, to make a lifetime commitment with, that's REALLY damn good. And that's good enough for me.
Who cares where she's been? She's with me now, and she's happy to be here.
**People are entitled to their pasts, and demanding that their past not threaten you in any way isn't very respectful of your partner.**
Exactly. Your whole comment is A+, but especially that.
Marty, I get why you feel insecure about feeling attractive and wanted if every guy you've dated has dumped you for someone else. But you will be forever spinning your wheels if you don't learn to keep your baggage in check and stop looking for problems everywhere and projecting past hurts onto new people you encounter.
I once had a fight with the most awful guy I've ever dated who tried to convince me I was "neurotic" for calling him on hitting on someone else right in front of me. He said, "You're just like my ex-wife! She was so jealous and she didn't speak English and didn't have a job!" Umm…maybe I made him *feel* the way his ex-wife did in the heat of the moment..? But no, I'm not "neurotic" for calling him on legitimately d***ish behavior, and no job/doesn't speak English does not describe me at all, Captain Projection. Point of this aside being, I'm sure you don't like people projecting past hurts that have nothing to do with you onto YOU, so make every effort not to do it to them.
That's fine for you but that's not what I want. Are literally all of your wants in the relationship healthy and never have any kind of insecurity, irrational need, fear, or emotion behind them? I'm gonna guess with some examination-no. There are at least SOME in all relationships, because we are human, and humans are inherently needy, irrational, kind of fearful beings (not all the time, but at least some of the time.)
I don't think it's wrong to want security. I don't think it's WRONG to want to be the best. Why? Because I would see HIM that way. I wouldn't want to be with someone who is just 'good enough' for me. I want True Love, or as close as I'm gonna get it in this lifetime.
If a partner has to LIE to me about that…. if I'm not the best, if I'm just 'good enough'…. then that's on him. The lying is NOT my fault, if I have been honest and upfront about what I want. And I would MUCH rather a guy leave me BEFORE, when he realizes I'm only 'good enough,' than later when he HAS found The Best.
Because they always do. They always find The Best. Building a life with someone on a gamble that 'good enough' will trump 'the best' is a horrible risk, and one I cannot understand why I'd take.
I think. . .at least in my experience, you've got the cart in front of the horse. Anyone can start out as "good enough" and the process of building a life with them makes them "the best". No ex of mine in ten years has been The Best but The Best is dead. It wouldn't be fair to anyone else to hold her up as a ruler next to them, especially since I've admittedly idealized that relationship a bit in the intervening years.
On the other hand, every relationship once it gets serious is, to me, with The Best. We have shared experiences, an emotional bond, we've grown together. No one else at that particular time has done that. When the relationship fails (they all end in death or breakup, after all, so its not 'if') they're not The Best anymore because we're not growing a life together anymore.
I don't see where he said his relationship was perfect and never had any doubts or insecurities. I think the point being made was that healthy people strive to be healthy more often than not. Also, your insecurity is not your partner's responsibility. They have a responsibility to treat you with respect and consider your feelings, but you frankly sound like someone who has a bottomless need for reassurance that no healthy person could reasonably fulfill.
"Are literally all of your wants in the relationship healthy and never have any kind of insecurity, irrational need, fear, or emotion behind them?"
Certainly not. But dealing with that stuff is on me. All I can expect of my partner is that she'll hold my hand and not poke me where I'm wounded. Demanding that she indefinitely cater to those irrational fears, or staking the very existence of our relationship on whether or not her history conforms to those irrational fears (which very, very definitely encourages her to either lie to be safe or dump me in favor of somebody who isn't one anecdote away from dumping her), does not strike me as a healthy approach.
GH is on to something here. It seems like what you're wanting for security assurances from your partner would push them to confirm what you're worried about. Either lie or leave.
We can make our fears come true by trying to prevent them too strongly.
And leaving would be fine with me. If they HAVE to lie or leave, because I am NOT the best, I'm just 'good enough', I am happy for them to leave. I'd rather be single than date someone who is with me because The Best is just too much work to attain. I will not be someone's 2nd Place. THAT'S my ultimate fear. Sure, being single forever is a big concern of mine…. But having someone settle for me is the far larger one.
I want a partner who sees me as The Best in terms of intelligence, personality, physical attractiveness, and compatibility, because that is how I would want to see my partner.
I guess my point is, Marty, that for most people, they would STILL rather be with you, not because the best is too hard but because "best" is subjective, but what you're asking would scare them off. If my partner insisted that he be The Best in all things to me, that would make me very uncomfortable. Very. Uncomfortable. Because that's unrealistic. It speaks to a level of insecurity that no one can touch. But, I would never leave my partner and I can honestly say that he is the best partner for me.
to misapply Shakespeare: "One woman is fair, yet
I am well; another is wise, yet I am well; another virtuous,
yet I am well; but till all graces be in one woman, one
woman shall not come in my grace"
Is it unrealistic? Because in the play you are quoting, he does indeed find a woman who embodies all of those qualities.
I don't think it's unrealistic to want to be someone's Best in the ways that matter.
Well, for one thing, Beatrice is the epitome of friends first. And he's listing those characteristics assuming that no one would meet them AND knowing Beatrice very well already (ergo at this point assuming that Beatrice does not meet them either).
What GH and I are pointing out is that Best in the ways that matter to you are not necessarily Best in the ways that matter to him. He might not rank looks as high as fun-factor or intellectualism as high as kindness. Or whatever. If he meets your qualifications, you have to trust that you meet his. And that's what it seems like you're missing here.
Best total score vs best in every single event.
"Well, for one thing, Beatrice is the epitome of friends first."
… Did we read the same play? I'm pretty sure they were sorta-of-kind-of lovers (or courting) first, then turned bitter adversaries with an undercurrent of sexual tension. I always read that quote as him trying to talk himself OUT of being attracted to Beatrice.
Except people have been pointing out I DON'T meet his qualifications, that I'm not the best, that I'm just 'good enough' and I need to be okay with that or I'm forcing him to lie/conceal/leave. So why should I trust it, if all of you are saying me thinking I'm the Best is completely unrealistic?
OK, time to get my Shakespeare nerd hat on.
Whether Beatrice and Benedick were ever lovers beforehand is usually up to the director. Joss Whedon's version – which is excellent, BTW – has them having hooked up and Benedick sneaking out and presumably not calling afterwards. There's nothing in the script that definitively confirms or denies it, so it really works either way. The only thing you can really know for sure is that they've known each other a long, long time and have been doing this dance for pretty much forever.
But his speech about women that Celette quotes isn't about Beatrice at all. It's about Benedick explaining (rationalizing, really) why he intends to never be married, all the while mourning the impending loss of his drinking buddy to the bonds of holy matrimony.
The rest of the speech makes it pretty clear.
"Rich she shall be, that’s certain; wise, or I’ll none; virtuous, or I’ll never cheapen her; fair, or I’ll ever look on her; mild, or come not near me; noble, or not I for an angel; of good discourse, an
excellent musician, and her hair shall be of what color it
please God."
Basically, he's saying "she needs to be absolutely perfect, or else I'm not going to bother."
"… but as for hair color, you know, whatever. It's not like I'm picky, bro."
Doc, I'm not sure your intended audience caught your meaning there, but I want to assure you some of the rest of us did.
What if he regards you as The Best in every way that matters to him, but worries that certain details about who he's dated in the past would cause you to doubt that? If there was some conventionally very attractive woman in/near your social circle who he used to date but has no desire to ever go out with again, would you drop him because he can obviously date "hotter" women than you? If he mentions an ex got an article published with Prestigious Magazine X, would you drop him because he can obviously date "smarter" women than you? If he lets it slip that he still occasionally masturbates to memories of a relationship he had ten years ago, would you drop him because that sex is obviously better than the sex he's having with you now? (Though I admit, the last one is tough to envision in a non-dickish context. I suspect alcohol would be involved.)
I just don't see this approach as encouraging a partner to be at all forthcoming. I do suspect it could be a significant source of stress and worry — you learn the wrong detail about his past, a relationship he cares about with a woman he loves is endangered. But, hey, if it's working for you, rock on.
Well if he's dated hotter or smarter women in the past, then my instinct is to let him go so he can find a woman who can go toe-to-toe with those AND has the other qualities he finds important. So if he dated hotter women, then I would want him to leave me and go pursue a woman who was both hot AND had the qualities I did. Or if he dated a woman who could get published, I'd want him to go find a woman who can get published AND has qualities that matter to him.
I wouldn't necessarily (that being the key word; I might depending on context) think he wants to date those same women again, but I would suppose that he wants a woman with those qualities. After all isn't that why he dated them? So if I lack those qualities, I may have ones he likes and cares about, but I am lacking other ones that are obviously important to him. So I'd want him to find someone who *all around* the best partner.
I don't necessarily want a partner who is forthcoming, if their forthcoming is "Well she WAS hotter than you." Like I said, I want a partner who *genuinely* sees me as the all-around best. If they don't, then it's obviously better for everybody to part ways.
Life is too short to be with someone who you may love, but lacks the qualities you are attracted to.
But what if dating a woman who could get published only showed him that hey, that's NOT what he wants? You're ranking not only who he has dated but also what his preferences are.
I mean, I'm a lawyer. A lot of my friends are lawyers. I could never date a lawyer and I found that out pretty darn fast. My fiance can't go toe to toe with me in the verbal realm (when I go all out) but I wanted that in a partner. I've dated people who were more verbally adept than him. That's past tense for a reason.
It depends on what he defines as important to him and what he expresses. In your example, I presumed that because you said "his ex did this," you meant "he liked this thing." If he could care less about getting an article published (he doesn't see it as a marker of intelligence or ambition or whatever, it's just a thing to him) then I'd probably shrug and not let it effect me.
My judgment of what qualities he finds important would be based on what he said/demonstrated. In other words, I wouldn't use another woman's quality to compare myself to, unless I knew it was a quality he held in high regard. It's only if he held it in high regard (he sees getting published as a big sign of intelligence) that I'd be like "Okey-dokey, time to exit stage right."
I think that's a pretty healthy way to go about it, but at some point, it comes down to being able to trust that he means what he says. You're making the decision to leave for him, based on what you think he's thinking. In part because it seems like your dating history is full of guys holding on to you as a placeholder girlfriend! Which, is… NOT how people should treat you.
What I'm trying to point out is that there are a lot of other people in the world who are not jerks and not treating you like a placeholder girlfriend, and those people will be bumfuzzled why you walked away pre-emptively. You're acting/ thinking, with good reason, in response to some shitty behavior from others in your past.
**Demanding that she indefinitely cater to those irrational fears, or staking the very existence of our relationship on whether or not her history conforms to those irrational fears (which very, very definitely encourages her to either lie to be safe or dump me in favor of somebody who isn't one anecdote away from dumping her), does not strike me as a healthy approach.**
I totally used to be that girl. I guess that's why I get all het up in the comments. I dunno if I was harsh with Marty, but I am trying to be helpful, and sometimes it's hard to have boundaries with someone whose problems remind you so much of yours (past or present). It's easy to think, "When I see this spot, I stamp it out," without stopping to be like, "Oh, right, not my life."
Not that I take any comments back, but maybe my tone was too harsh to be productive..? I dunno.
That's me an' Hobbes, Mad to some extent, too. I get you.
I've had a few conversations here that ended with me saying to myself "I somehow veered into 'Belligerent douchecanoe' territory, didn't I. Perhaps I should go do something else. Like look at puppies."
So, you're literally constantly looking for a guy who is more attractive than the last guy? That seems crazy to me. Real attraction, the through and through kind, some may call "true love," can't quantify against other people. There can't be a most, because it just is. If someone can stack me up against everyone and be like "everyone was an 8, you are a 10" that would freak me out. THAT seems unromantic. Like, I don't want the person I love to be able to quantify it.
I am a stability junkie too, but being deemed *most attractive* does not give me stability. It actually freaks me out a little bit when my boyfriend talks about how attractive I am because I want to be like "but what else? I'm not going to look like this forever? Will you love me? Is there anything else to love?"
And a mindset where there's absolutely NO qualifying or comparison freaks ME the hell out because it gives me no sense of where I stand, where the other person stands, how their thoughts line up, and all that. The nebulous "Oh well I love you, cause" would not work for me.
It's fine if it works for you. But I don't think wanting to be with the best partner, or BEING the best partner for someone else, is "crazy." And I don't think it means I don't have "real" attraction. It means I quantify things, because it helps me feel stable in a world of vague uncertainties.
But that's the thing, in a relationship you don't stand in comparison to other people, for the most part. You can't really quantify successes or failures in any relationship with another person because 1) you will never know or understand 100% of what another person is thinking and 2) individuals don't understand their own feelings or emotions perfectly 100% of the time. I had an abusive ex and sometimes I may compare my current partner to my ex in order to evaluate what he is doing, only to be like "ok, that was mean, but not abusive." or "that was a reasonable reaction to that thing. When Ex was in a similar situation, he did A and B, and that was bad." Sometimes, when my boyfriend does something, I think "Oh hey, that was cool, the guy I dated two years ago wouldn't have done that."
You say you have standards. I assume your standards are at least somewhat stable, they don't adjust every time you meet someone. You have a basic level at which you expect to be treated and at which you expect to connect, so you judge at whether people meet that level or not. That is how people are "quantifying" you. Does she do nice things? Does she listen to me? Does she make me feel good about myself? Does she challenge me? It's not an "Oh well I love you, cause you know." It's an "I love you because these are all the things about you that I am attracted to," not "I love you because you're X better than Lisa, and Y better than Karen, and Z better than Melody, and those are all my exes."
It is not crazy to want to be the best partner for someone else, or want the best partner for you, but the best for someone and the best for you is independent from other people, I would say even when someone is actually choosing between you and another person. I remember having to break up with a guy when I started getting serious with my boyfriend and he said "what did I do wrong?" and I said "You didn't do anything wrong. Nothing about you makes you a bad partner or unattractive. There was just an unquantifiable element that made me feel like this other person was a better partner for me." I've been on the other end of that too. You can go crazy trying to quantify that. Relationships, of all kinds, have a vague uncertainty to them. You can try to quantify things to make yourself feel better and more stable, and the illusion of stability may actually help you and make you a better partner, but that uncertainty will still be there to some degree.
I think you DO stand in comparison to other people. I compare my partner, and I've always *been* compared. If you're monogamous, you can't have a relationship with every single person, so there IS some sort of ranking, comparing, and deciding going on. If there was absolutely NO comparison, then no one would ever pick just one partner, because "everybody is a possibility because everyone is unique!"
When I get a job, it's because I have beat other other candidates for the job, since they can't afford to hire every single person that's applied. I see the beginning of a relationship in much the same way.
I can absolutely qualify what is making me choose Partner A over Partner B. No, it doesn't make Partner B unattractive or bad, but I could tell him *exactly* why I'm not choosing him. It isn't unknown at all, to me.
I could tell Partner B the reason I didn't choose him, it would be "we just didn't have the same connection as Partner A and I did." and he would ask why, and THAT I would not be able to answer. Often, not always, but often that is also how people are hired. "We just thought this person would be a better fit." What? Just a gut feeling. There is some comparison, but the important decisions aren't made thanks to a spreadsheet of people qualities.
That is bizarre to me. I don't follow gut feelings, either in jobs or romantically. I would never pick one partner over another because of a "connection." More evidence I'm a freak, I guess.
OK, this confuses me. Not like I don't get it but like we clearly use the same language to mean very different things. Because to me, someone being special, standing out of the crow is part and parcel of that connection. At least, if by "stand out" we're meaning anything more then "eh, she's cute".
Then again, unlike zmd, I could tell Partner B that "I'm not as comfortable opening up to you about my feelings or my past" or "we don't share the same excitement over the things we do together" or whatever. There's always a reason, its not always easy for everyone to articulate.
I did have a guy say to me, "When I think back over all my other lovers, you're near the top." That made me cry. I was like, "Dude, I have four sisters. DO NOT directly compare me to other women. UNLESS you're telling me I'm the best. Probably even then…" I don't need details, you know?
He always wants super specific feedback about sex and what I like – which is admirable, but it's like he practically wants a quantifiable spreadsheet or something. I'm like, "Dude, if you're doing your job right (*and you are*), then sex should turn me into a drooling idiot (*and it does*)…" I tried to talk him into being more selfish in bed (odd problem to have, I know) just for general enjoyment and also to help turn off the analytical computer brain. Even though his intentions are good, I really don't like feeling cross examined in the bedroom.
Anyway, an aside. The whole comparing women/wanting to be the best thing reminded me of the whole extended conversation here.
I think a couple can be perfectly happy if their honest assessments of their partner's skills and overall happiness-making abilities are, "They're great, although it's true that my best sex ever was when I was 19, and I don't know if I'll ever replace the really deep connection I had in that 4-year relationship that ended 'cuz the guy moved to Boston and eventually married someone else – but this person is making me happy right here, right now."
Everyone has baggage, and the past doesn't render the current situation invalid or inadequate. However, it's smart to NOT spell your feelings out so exactly to the current person you're dating.
I dunno, is that what Marty has been getting at all along, here? Either way, that does make perfect sense to me.
Um, if I'm not the best sex he's had, I want him to get out of the relationship *right the heck now* and go find someone who IS the best sex.
Life is way too short, and marriage is way too long, to be with someone who isn't the best. Maybe you'll never get *that specific person* back, but I think you should be out there, finding the absolutely best partner you can. Anything else, I see as settling*, and I have NO interest in being settled for.
*The good kind of settling, as I see it, is the kind where you recognize your partner has flaws and isn't perfect. You're never going to find a PERFECT person. However, you can find your best match…. and I think your best match is the best sex and the best connection ("connection" being a substitute word for "qualities I find important") possible. If I'm not that, I'm really just a space-filler UNTIL you find it, and no thank you.
It may simply not be physically possible to have crazy monkey 19-year-old sex as you get older. Does that mean that since you hit your peak so early you should just give up forever and ever, amen?
That said, my old ass has amazing (yes, possibly the best) sex with my current boyfriend. He drives me crazy when he analyzes everything to death, though. At the risk of TMI, he can only ejaculate through hand jobs (years of the "rhythm method" burned into his brain – yes, of course I use condoms), so intercourse doesn't end with his orgasm, it ends with me saying, "Yep, I'm good." So maybe because of that he has a harder time "letting go" and getting out of his head. The different communication styles thing is a work in progress, I guess.
"It may simply not be physically possible to have crazy monkey 19-year-old sex as you get older."
I dunno, I've read a lot of divorce/dating-later-in-life blogs where people say that opposite, that they're having the best sex of their lives well into their 40's, 50's, and 60's.
In your case, I would say… IF an area can be worked and improved on, THEN I see why you shouldn't just jump out of the relationship to find the best. If you have "pretty darn good" and have evidence that with communication and work it COULD be the best, well, you go. That situation makes perfect sense to me.
For me, the disconnect is when you *know* something that's important to you isn't going to get any better, that it is 'good enough' but will never be 'the best' and yet stay that confuses me.
There's a difference between knowing that it won't get any better and thinking it's the best. If you know it won't improve, that's a red flag. But frankly, I won't know what was the best sex (or anything else) I've had in my life until I am dead.
**But frankly, I won't know what was the best sex (or anything else) I've had in my life until I am dead.**
That's the spirit. ;o)
you see that a lot in wedding planning, people talking about it like it's the best day of your life. Um, no. I sure as hell hope it isn't. I hope it's the worst day of my life, so that it's only uphill from here. If this is as good as it gets, why bother at all?
The minister said something I found really beautiful at the end of a friend's wedding: "When you reach the end of life's journey and look back on your life together, may this be the day you loved each other the least."
"I won't know what was the best sex … I've had in my life until I am dead."
Is it wrong to hope that these wind up being related?
"Holy shit, I can't believe I've been having sex for five consecutive hours at the age of 97! FutureViagra is the BEST! Wait, are those chest pains?"
So you want your obituary to read "he came and he went"?
"Here to go" as Spider Jerusalem would say.
**For me, the disconnect is when you *know* something that's important to you isn't going to get any better, that it is 'good enough' but will never be 'the best' and yet stay that confuses me.**
That makes sense.
**I dunno, I've read a lot of divorce/dating-later-in-life blogs where people say that opposite, that they're having the best sex of their lives well into their 40's, 50's, and 60's.**
If that's true, it's because people get better and better at communication and knowing themselves and learning to quiet their inner critic/self doubt, not generally because they turned into better and more capable physical specimens. It's better because their ability to connect (and/or own their choices) is better. Not that everyone over 40 is decrepit (ahem), but they're sure not 19 any more.
It really doesn't make me feel secure to hear "you're the hottest/smartest/funniest" from a partner. I don't like the thought that he would be comparing me to other women, period. I am not delusional enough to think I would be the hottest/smartest/funniest/whatever woman he has or will ever met. If he truly thinks that, then there is a good chance someone else will come along in the future and he will compare her to me. All I want to hear is "I think you're hot/smart/funny, I am so attracted to you, and I love you." People seem to think that if you don't think your partner is BEST at EVERYTHING, that your attraction will fade and eventually he's just be someone you toss aside for a hot new thing, but I think it's the opposite. Anything that is best has potential to not be best. You love someone not because they're the best, but because they illicit that feeling and connection from you.
I feel kind of the same – actually, I'd rather not hear bland things like "beautiful" at all because to me that sounds like something you say when you know a compliment is expected and need to think of something quick. I like really specific compliments – some specific thing about the way I think or look or act – and definitely wouldn't want other women being brought into things implicitly.
In other words, it sounds like you think "the most attractive partner" is where you start, and I think it's where you finish.
My goal here is understanding, not to contradict you.
Um, no, I still pretty much see a guy casually dating me as just seeing me as a series of warm holes. I've always acknowledged that other people enjoy casual dating and that's totally cool for them, but it makes me feel used and gross. So I'm not quite sure where you're getting that.
I'm also pretty sure I am far beyond the help of anyone, fashion-wise.
I think there's a lot of distance between, "Thing X makes me feel degraded," and, "If someone wants to do Thing X with me, I assume they see me as Degrading Label."
One of those is about your specific experiences and emotions. The other one assumes an attitude on your partner's part…which makes it kind of hard for someone who does enjoy Thing X to read that statement without assuming that you also think their partners for Thing X think of them as Degrading Label.
Well I guess I think it's unfair for other people to read my statement and assume I'm expropriating my experience to everyone else's. If I say a guy who wants to have casual sex with me sees me as a series of holes, I'm not trying to say that any guy who wants to have casual sex with any girl sees them as a series of holes. I literally just mean my specific situation. That guy, me, casual sex. I am not making a statement about Casual Sex over all, I'm making a statement about Me and Casual Sex.
Maybe I should just be really explicit in the future?…
I think the problem comes when you're not talking about a specific guy. If you are and he's done something to make you think that he sees you that way (as opposed to you feeling that way regardless of his thoughts, which is in itself a good reason not to have casual sex), then that's your experience. If we're talking about guys in a general sense, I think it's fairly easy for people to extrapolate that from the guys in general who are in a position to have sex with you to the ones who are in a position to have sex with them.
I'd say that, yeah, when it comes to these kinds of things, being explicit tends to be best because it avoids some of the vagueness in language that leads to confusion over whether something's an "I" statement or a "we" statement.
How about "any guy in relation to me"? As in, the same guy could have different goals/agendas/attitudes depending on what girl is in front of him, and when I'M in front of him, it's always going to be degrading and turn me just into a series of holes. Is that a better way to put it?
I think that's a more helpful way of putting it, because I think it focuses on the way that you feel that guys are inclined to treat you. It's not perfect* but I think it makes it a lot more clear that this is something you're saying because the men who you've dated casually have behaved in a way that makes you feel used.
*I think I might take exception to the idea that some particularly kind, thoughtful men who I've dated casually would treat you disrespectfully if they met you, because that's completely contrary to my knowledge of their characters, and I'm guessing that a man might react to the same issue more strongly.
Well the key would probably be they wouldn't want to casually date me. Like I said above, with one exception, the only guys who want to date me are ones who treat me disrespectfully. A guy who would treat me respectfully, wouldn't want to date me, casually or otherwise.
I have a handful of specific people in mind, two of whom I've dated and one of whom is a friend. I suspect that some or all of them would be open to dating you, perhaps casually and perhaps not. Granted, these are decent human beings, so I suspect that if you told them that casual dating makes you feel gross and used, they wouldn't attempt to casually date you. But that would be your filter, not theirs.
I think sometimes it's good for everyone to remind themselves that their interactions are a relatively small and decidedly non-random sample of human behavior. You've met one guy who wanted to date you seriously and who treated you respectfully and a group of guys who didn't treat you respectfully at all. I think it's at least worth being open to the possibility that there are other guys who you don't know personally who would treat you respectfully whether they dated you casually, seriously, or not at all.
Doesn't mean you should date casually. I mean, I think the fact that it makes you feel bad is all the reason you need. But sometimes it's worth being open to the idea of people who are both good and interested in you.
"But sometimes it's worth being open to the idea of people who are both good and interested in you."
When I've run into 1 out of… what? Probably 2,000 on the rough side of an estimate?… guys in my lifetime that fit that description, why in the world should I think a larger number is even a possibility? You are right that it's a small sample, but I'm never going to live a life where I'm interacting with a small sample. A small, non-random sample is all I'm going to have. And since that's all I'll have, it makes sense to use that to make an educated guess about the future.
I don't think you've really run into 2,000 guys who you can evaluate in the same way that you evaluate your boyfriends. This is just going on what you've told me, but I know that you've dated three men who you met in various ways through mutual friends. I also think you've dated some other people – were any of those online guys or cold approaches, or were they also in your social circle?
If all or most of your boyfriends have been from your circle (which is a perfectly fine thing, that's how some people date), then your data set isn't 2,000. It's all the dudes in your extended friend groups who are single, which I'm guessing is a substantially lower number.
I'd agree that we're all stuck with small, non-random samples. But I think it's worth remembering the smallness and non-randomness. For starters, social circles are partly under our control. As a secondary measure, I think that being willing to be open to the idea of good people is a way to not scare one off if you do happen to bump into them (and even though you're dating now, it's still nice to get to know good people rather than lousy ones).
You're making two big mistakes here.
First is the objectification inherent in being "a series of holes". It's the difference between using someone solely for my own pleasure, and wanting a casual encounter where their pleasure is intrinsically assumed.
Second, and more importantly, is forcing things into a binary of "real relationship" vs. "just sex". One can want to enjoy dating for the sake of dating, without seeing their date as just an upgraded fleshlight.
An example to illustrate. I think you're cute, and when you're not focused on relationship stuff you seem like you'd be fun to hang with. I'm also a bit burned on serious relationships, and it'll take a huge amount to convince me to have kids with someone. If I asked you out for classic Who marathons, old timey arcades, and heavy makeout sessions – all while being cognizant how you feel about sex outside of serious relationships. How would this fit into the real relationship/casual sex dichotomy?
I'd still see that in the casual sex dichotomy. I'd still see it as being used, just for make-out sessions instead of sex. I'd see it as "used" because there isn't anything necessarily gained for me, while there are some things lost. I could gain the companionship and Who marathons, but I could do that without the physical. The physical would be a loss for me, because I feel really uncomfortable with physical-ness when it isn't leading to something. I'd probably start feeling attached, even without the sex, which would impact me finding a partner who DID want a long-term commitment.
I don't enjoy dating for the sake of dating. I just don't, I find it messy and anxiety-inducing (as well as filling me with fear, uncertainty, annoyance, and frustration.) Other people can enjoy dating or casualness, which is great…. but if someone is trying to have them with ME, I am now involved, and their actions are impacting me. Since I *don't* view casual dating as fun, then the other person's needs/wants/preferences are now overriding mine, which is how I would define "useage." They are getting gains, and I am getting losses.
Are you saying that the reason someone trying to casually date you would be using you is not because there's something about you that compels men to treat you badly, but because you dislike casual dating and are open about disliking casual dating and anyone trying to push that on you would already be disrespecting your wishes?
If so, then I'm completely on board with and have no problem with that, and think that's a good way to talk about the subject.
I'd probably say both. I'd say there's something that compels guys to not treat me well (especially since I've seen those exact same guys who were 'jerks' to me be amazing boyfriends to other women) AND I've had guys push back after I've stated I am not a big fan of casual dating.
Got it. I think the second one is a true thing and a good thing for you to realize. Someone who tries to push you into one kind of relationship after you've said you don't want that is being a jerk about things, whether the relationship in question is friendship or casual dating or marriage.
I'm more skeptical of the first thing, at least as it relates to every guy who might ever want to date you, but I can understand that your experiences make you feel that way. Regardless, I think breaking it down into these two issues is probably the explicit way to talk about your feelings about this without anyone getting mixed up and thinking you might be talking about how they'd treat a woman or about how their dating partners have treated them.
"I'm more skeptical of the first thing, at least as it relates to every guy who might ever want to date you"
Me too … especially since, if I'm reading the forums correctly, she has a boyfriend now and has had one for some time.
Some other people would far rather have that than have to be dating to find that.
And some people don't even have that.
It's my ex, the one out of the six who DID actually seem to like me. I am happy to date him, but I literally had to go back and find the ONLY guy in my entire life who seemed to be attracted to me to find a boyfriend again.
Oh and he was screwing someone else while I was trying to get him back. But I'm sure it still somehow comes across as me 'winning' to you.
So what? Who cares how you found him, you found him. Isn't that a good thing? And how interesting you are the other woman in this case. No wonder you worry about other women stealing your men, since you do it to other women.
Just read your thread on the forums, I want to apologise for my dig about you being the other woman in my post above. It's clear you did not know you were, and I am sorry he put you through that. That was terribly unfair of him.
Ahem. . .having knowingly been That Guy. . .The Other Guy, that is, not the guy cheating on his girlfriend. . . and having been the guy whose girlfriend found The Other Guy, I'll take that dig for Marty. I've earned it over the years and its strangely cropping up again at the moment.
I would also just like to note, on the whole "People are trying to help you, I don't know why you feel attacked!"
You make a harsh comment that you later discover is untrue, and yet do not get down-voted at all. Gentleman Johnny makes a comment that he has been that Guy, and gets up voted. Yet every single one of my comments in this thread is in the negatives, even when it is something comments following it agree with.
Do ya maybe see why I'm a little defensive now?
I can understand that. And why you would feel how you feel.
I would like to offer a potential explanation, but when I do I want you to understand that I agree with you that it's unfair. Here's my possible explanation: I think, if I'm perfectly honest, you have a reputation here for saying things that people disagree with strongly. So just as sometimes you read into what others are saying (and have admitted that you read things that aren't always there), others read into what you are saying that isn't there. So people downvote you without actually reading carefully what you write. And that's bullshit. And not fair.
That being said, and I don't think you're going to like the next bit, the way to handle it is to demonstrate through your actions that you aren't what people assume you are. Reacting defensively is precisely what people assume here you'll do. If, instead of reacting to the downvotes, you only reacted to the words people were writing to you, that might make things a bit better.
You mention in the forum that you got downvoted twice on what, to me, looks to be a very reasonable post. And that has really upset you, to the point where you quoted it in full in the forums. But in response to that post you've also gotten a lot of positive respectful feedback. Two people downvoted you, were lazy and clicked a button. But many many others took time and wrote and responded and agreed and treated you well. I think that is maybe where your energy should go.
But you are right, it's not fair. It stems from pre-conceived ideas and reputation. You have, unfortunately, a certain reputation here where some foolish people are going to assume you are posting something negative without even reading your post. So they likely don't even read your point and just click a downvote. Such people are silly people, and not worth your energy, or your defensiveness.
Again, not saying they are right to do so. Just saying how unfair things can wind up happening.
(also as far as explanation goes for my post not getting downvoted . . . it might have been harsh, but what you said in your comment vs what you said in the forum is very different. You DID come across as the other woman. You literally said "Oh and he was screwing someone else while I was trying to get him back." This sounds to me like you knew he was screwing someone else as you were trying to get him back. That you were trying to win him away from another woman. There is nothing in your statement that says, "As we were working on getting back together I discovered he was screwing someone else". That is something QUITE different. So my response to you, though harsh, was kind of not inappropriate as it basically sounded like you were stealing someone's guy. So no one downvoted because they didn't think I'd done anything wrong. I only learned I did anything wrong when I got more information. So I apologised. Thus anyone who would read the first comment followed directly by the second would see that it was clear I'd made a mistake earlier. Why would anyone downvote an error that has been acknowledged and apologised for? – though I see someone has now, I will assume not you, so that should make you feel a little better I hope
)
Gentleman Johnny made a self effacing point that being That Guy is a bad thing that he's still karmically paying off, while implicitly saying that you didn't deserve that. No one's saying they think its cool that I helped women cheat on their husbands.
Followup question. How would you feel about the same offer, with making out taken off the table as well? Basically, how much of this is that you dislike the emotional complications that come from being physical, and how much of this is that you just don't like the process of going out of your way and vetting a new person for personal compatibility?
If making out was off the table, I'd consider it a Friend hang out, which would be a-okay with me. I love making compatible friends! So if by vetting for personal compatibility, you mean in a platonic way, awesome. But if romantic vetting… nope. I would not vet for romantic compatibility in that way, because right off the bat I'd be incompatible with a guy who doesn't want a long-term relationship or kids.
Please remember this exchange next time you feel like beating yourself up for being unattractive.
You took a situation where someone said "I find you interesting and attractive, I would like to get to know you better", and said that unless they met very stringent standards you could see them as nothing more than a friend. This means that the guy either respects your boundaries (in which case you get a nonromantic friend), or he ignores them (in which case he's a guy who ignores your boundaries).
I'm not telling you to abandon your expectations and make yourself feel awkward. Just noting that there's a prosaic explanation that doesn't reflect badly on either you or the majority of the male population.
Um, gee, I totally fell for your straw man didn't I. Still, excuse me if I don't consider it all that flattering that a guy is attracted enough to use me for random make-outs or sex. What, I'm supposed to be flattered and feel validated by that??
You are setting up a scenario where I am bound to lose. Either I completely throw my standards out the window, or I have to ADMIT someone, *gasp!*, finds me attractive.
Do I really have to say that when I say no one finds me attractive, it's "no one finds me attractive enough to consider me beyond a one night stand?"
Cause could I get laid if I tossed out all standards? Sure! I HAVE gotten laid! There are guys out there desperate enough to say "Sure I am attracted to you enough to fuck you for a night." But ya know, that's not really the Attraction I'm talking about.
When I say "guys don't find me attractive," I literally mean "Guys don't find me attractive enough to date" and qualifying it with "Oh but they'd totally fuck me, no strings attached" is not exactly helpful to my self-esteem or as detrimental to my original assertion as you seem to think.
…Your takeaway here is that saying "I'm attractive, it's just hard to find someone with a compatible romantic style" is a lose condition?
http://gifb.in/lvsV
No, my take away is "Guys offering to sleep with me, no strings attached, is not a marker of my physical attractiveness, nor is it something I feel flattered by."
I think the result is something more like, "Some guys probably do find me attractive, but many of the ones I know begin even their long term relationships by casually dating in a way that isn't comfortable for me or want very different things out of life than I do."
This does sound like it's something that might happen sometimes, since you've described a circle of friends where the norm is for people to start out as friends with benefits and where lots of people aren't interested in marriage or children. It's possible there are some men who find you attractive, but who haven't pursued you because they start relationships by dating casually or because they disagree with you about important life things. It sounds like there definitely are some who, being less ethical, are prone to pushing for what they want even if they know it will make you unhappy. That doesn't mean you should change, just that attraction isn't really the issue. It's lack of congruence between your desires and those of the men you spend the most time around.
But I don't see offering no strings attached sex/hook-ups as a marker of attraction. Sure, maybe it could lead to dating, but just offering that up does not mean the guy either finds me attraction OR would ever want to date me.
I've had more than a few guys sleep with me despite having almost no attraction to me. Why? Cause they were desperate/bored/lonely/stoned, what have you. Pulling "I am attractive" from a guy offering a hook-up does not make sense to me.
There are people who want NSA sex because they're desperate/bored/lonely/stoned. There are also people who only have sex with people they're attracted to and who often start their relationships that way.
You shouldn't sleep with either of these people, given your preferences, but I don't know why it helps to only include the first group in your worldview.
Cause that's the only group I've ever personally encountered (when I am the one involved.)
Well, and I think the point of this discussion was pointing out that there might be some past/present/future who hasn't asked because he too realizes that you guys are incompatible and doesn't want to push you into something that doesn't feel comfortable. It's at least worth considering as a possibility, even though it's not one you'd want to act on.
It's a couple of things.
First, most guys have learned from experience that investing heavily before being given a clear go-ahead is guaranteed to blow up on them. Dating from the mid 20s on does have that element where most people are afraid to show vulnerability until the other side does first. The reason we want low investment dating is because we've lived through what happened when we tried a high initial investment.
Second, by Marty's own admission a guy who finds her attractive and respects her and her boundaries will quickly get filed away under Friend, and once she files a guy there he's there for good. (Remind me again how the friendzone is just a myth made up by bitter Nice Guys, BTW.) A guy who finds her attractive but doesn't respect her/her boundaries will pressure her regardless, go for the backdoor gambit, or any other number of jerk moves. It's worth looking at how that might throw in some serious sampling errors.
Oh, that's really interesting. I don't think I've ever met a woman who filed guys permanently into "friend" like that before. I think this is a useful moment of insight for me; thanks to you both.
Um I'm not filing him under Friend because he respects my boundaries, I'm filing him under Friend because he doesn't want to date me.
If a guy doesn't want to date me… if we are incompatible… then he is a Friend at best. Why the hell would I consider dating a guy who only wants short-term dating, or only to get laid, or doesn't have the same long-term goals as me??
My boundaries have nothing to do with it. My desire for a long-term relationship and a compatible partner has everything to do with it.
I repeat…. why the hell would I go for a guy who doesn't want to date me or is incompatible with me??
I never said that you should date someone you're not compatible with.
I am saying that there are guys who find you attractive and interesting, but have different long-term goals than you do. They'd like to date you in the sense of going out and doing silly/flirty/romantic things together, but they respect that your goals are incompatible so they don't press you to do anything you're not comfortable with. The ones who press you after you've made your boundaries clear are ones who don't respect you or your boundaries.
Once again, I'm explicitly not telling you to date anyone if you're not feeling it. What I'm saying is that there are probably plenty of decent guys who do find you attractive, but don't go for anything more than friendship due to goal mismatches and missed communication.
I'm not trying to get you to do anything dating-wise. Just to train yourself to look for more positive interpretations of the data that still fit the facts.
I continue to disagree that guys wanting to bone me and have no-strings-attached "fun" is somehow a positive data point. It's like saying "Male who has difficulty dating, there are plenty of women out there who'd love to have you buy them dinner and be there for them in all of their emotional needs without any kind of physical connection, reciprocation or commitment. You just have different goals, but you should take that as a positive sign!"
I think you're misunderstanding the point, and I'm going to try to explain it better because I think it's a good point.
You frequently say on here that you have a hard time dating because you are inherently undesirable to most guys. What I believe NonA is trying to say is, you have trouble dating because MOST GUYS ARE UNDESIRABLE TO YOU.
*Guys wanting to fuck me with no strings attached does not fucking mean I am attractive to them.* Please, please, PLEASE get this, people.
Not wanting to be used for some cheap easy sex does not mean I find guys undesirable. It means I *don't want to be used for cheap easy sex.*
His example clearly outlines this is a guy who is not compatible with me, doesn't want the same things as me…. just wants to get in my pants, without any kind of commitment, romantic interest or expectation.
A guy fucking you does not mean he's attracted to you. I know-I have had sex with guys who were not attracted to me.
Sex /= attraction.
So can we PLEASE drop this, because it's really starting to piss me off, considering just HOW MANY times I have run into these same types of guys? And it didn't raise my self-esteem…. it made me feel like shit, that these guys consider me so easy and baseless they literally just want to use me as a stand-in.
I think Max's point is that the fact that he wants to have casual sex makes HIM undesirable to YOU, because you don't interpret that as a valid or meaningful form of attraction. I'm not saying you should – believe me, I can't even wrap my head around casual sex. But you are the one who is drawing that boundary, which means you're the one saying he's not appropriate for you. (Which, I'll say again, I totally support.)
I'm not even just talking about casual sex. I mean there are guys who would totally be interested in being in a relationship with you, but they'd prefer to do it differently than what you prefer, if that makes sense.
"(Remind me again how the friendzone is just a myth made up by bitter Nice Guys, BTW.) "
I'll take that bait. I just had that discussion with someone a few days ago.
If the Bitter Nice Guy® in question is unwilling to Use His Words and, if he is in fact attracted to her, to *tell* the lady in question "I find you attractive" — the thing is that *she* has *not* "placed him" in the much side-eyed FriendZone.
To clarify, I'm not one who believes it is a myth.
What I take issue with is the passive tense used by the Bitter Nice Guy® in his description of the alleged FriendZoning, wherein said Bitter Nice Guy® whines and moans of "being placed" in said Zone, or wailing that "she put me" in said Zone.
No, no. This is not the "Mistakes were made but not by me" model.
Here's the thing: mistakes may well have been made, but if you were/are attracted to the lady in question and you fail(ed) to articulate that to her — you made them.
They were not made unto you.
And BTW? Dudes that pull this kind of thing are, imo, not "nice" dudes in any event.
Those dudes are not nice, because genuine nice guys are the ones who articulate their feelings, by – you guessed it – Using Their Words.
Bitter Nice Guy®s are actually Risk-Averse Passive-Aggressives whose other frequent 'mating call' is "They won't date me – those b*tches!"
And to add insult to injury, they purport not to understand at all what is problematic about that sentiment, and/or why it is not advancing them toward their stated goals.
However, irony of ironies, it's rare that they are actually called on being such (the Risk-Averse Passive-Aggressives that they are, that is), because such behavior — actually calling things the way one sees them, especially when said behavior is Performed by Ladies — is so frequently classified (and so frequently by the BNGs that it would make me laugh if it weren't so infuriating) as Not Nice.
Yeah, I got into this with Marty earlier. She was resistant to the idea of pursuing guys (which I understand) but equally resistant to the idea of flirting with/encouraging men who were hitting on her, because she didn't want to have to "light the path six steps down." If you only date men willing to proceed without a green light, you end up dating assholes.
Hmm. That's a very wise comment. Socially intelligent people calibrate their approach based on feedback from the other person, so yeah, you'll miss out on them if you make them do ALL the work.
MEN DON'T HIT ON ME.
Do I need to have this as a caption on my profile or something, because people here seem to be making a whole lot of assumptions based on their own hypothetical of my situation.
I was working on the assumption that Rei's comment was based on a prior quote from you or something. I don't really know, of course, but there is the possibility that some guys hit on you and you don't pick up on the signals or read it as flirting, or you just don't pursue it because you're not interested.
If anyone can actually prove that I have been hit on and just didn't notice, I will give that person $20.
Ok, forget "hitting on." Substitute "interacting with." If you don't flirt, or at least signal that you are receptive to the guys you are interacting with, the guys that are good to date will leave you alone.
This! I will try to be friendly, but if I am getting no signals of interest at all then I will not flirt more.
But that's exactly what you're doing to the guy — projecting your assumptions onto him, treating your assumptions about what he wants or thinks of you as if they universally apply. Saying, "well, it's only if he wants to have casual sex with ME that I assume these things to be true, not if he wants to have casual sex with other girls," doesn't change that.
They only apply to *me.* I don't understand what's hard about this concept. I have no idea how other people react in casual sex, but I can never be someone who is not me. I can never experience casual sex from a place that doesn't involve me, because I will only ever have the experience of being myself. So I literally cannot say how Guy A would treat casual sex with Girl B, because I can never be Girl B. However, I can say how Guy A would treat casual sex with me, because I *am* me, and I am here, experiencing it. And given my personality, the way I express things, the way I meet people, and the type of guys I interact with, I can very safely say that any guy who wants to have casual sex with me has these thoughts and assumptions, because they are the ONLY thoughts and assumptions he could have, given my personality and who I am.
Watered down example: no one who interacts with me is ever going to think or assume I am a world class pianist, because I am, in no way, a world class pianist, nor do I act like it, talk like it, or allude to it. So any guy who wants to have casual sex with me is going to make these sorts of assumptions, because based on how I act, that's really the only assumption he CAN make.
No, you CAN'T say what Guy A thinks about casual sex with you, because YOU ARE NOT GUY A.
I'm not sure what's so hard about that concept.
You're making a big assumption that your behavior controls the inside of Guy A's head completely when he's thinking about you. There are a lot of other factors involved that have nothing to do with you, and everything to do with his personality and life experiences and so on, and the conclusions Guy A draws from your behavior aren't necessarily going to be the ones that you assume he'll reach. Your behavior doesn't communicate the same thing to everyone that you think it does.
Or, to quote some lines from a favorite song of mine:
What you think you've given
Is not what the world has received.
Can you feel the distance
Between what you think you know, and what you know?
In the case of casual sex, yes, my behavior DOES communicate what I think it does. Considering that *every single guy* who has wanted casual sex has treated me the exact same way (as easy and disposable), I think there's pretty good evidence that I'm sending exactly the signals I think I am.
I give up. I can't fight your solipsism.
The amount of patience that you and practically endless other commenters have exhibited here up to this point with this, um … ongoing narrative … has boggled my mind, and continues to boggle it still.
Personally, I don’t have a big problem (other than those of time management, energy management, and that I just wish I could get it over with already, LOL) dating a lot of people in order to find my One , because I feel like we all co-create our relationships. They aren’t static, or formed just when we show up in each others’ lives. Therefore, whatever I create with M in Virginia is going to be different from J in DC, and I’m going to have to choose from my choices what’s best for me and so will he, and work toward hat’s beset for both of us lining up in one of those circumstances, and given that, I’m grateful to feel like I have an abundance of choice.
Because the actual person one is in each of those relationships is going to be different. You (universal “you” ) show up differently in every relationship you have – precisely because the other person is different. It’s not a question of all the people being stacked up on some hyper-competitive hierarchy. Ugh. I personally have a hard time seeing it as a comparative analysis. I’d find life waaaaaaaaaay too anxious if I thought like that all the time – especially about dating, which I find anxiety-producing enough as is – and I’ve had more than one shrink tell me I ‘tend toward anxiety’ in any event in general.
That’s just me though.
I think you have a very healthy attitude toward it.
That’s a lovely compliment, and thank you very much.
Because – to quote Michael Keaton in The Paper, when his assistant tries to physically keep him from going down the elevator to chase a story until he okays Page One – I have been “Workin’ on it, workin’ on it, workin’ on it …”
"I don't understand what's hard about this concept."
People can understand what you mean and disagree.
Yes, thank you. You put it perfectly. I casually dated a lot of people. Some were certainly warm bodies to me, but other were very important people in my life that I just didn't want serious relationships with. I met one of my best friends because we casually dated. I know I was not just a warm hole to him and he was not to me, and I find it offensive that someone would suggest that. I understand why it's not for some people, but I hate hearing general statements how wrong casual sex is.
For the love of fucking God, I have already STATED that the warm holes thing is in regards to ME. You have just acknowledged that some of the guys were warm bodies to you, so why do people continue to take offense at the fact that I am talking about my own personal experiences *where that happened to me*? I am and never have been talking about anyone else.
Casual sex/dating/whatever is a wide spectrum. Every person does it differently. To a lot of people, that's just the first step in determining whether someone is worth getting to know. My problem with what you basically said is "I assume every guy who casually dates me just cares about sticking it somewhere." To me this says "If you casually date, all you care about is getting laid." You didn't clearly say, as you later clarified, that casual sex isn't for you, that you feel used, etc etc. You implied an intention on the other person's part, rather than your interpretation. It's also an existing stigma against people who have casual sex or NSA hookups or FWB arrangements, that we don't really care about the other person. My friend that I had a FWB arrangement with for probably over six months, we were practically dating. We would hang out all the time, hook up, watch TV, cook dinner, talk about life, and just do friend things. People would ask "that sounds like a relationship, don't you want him to care about you?" He already cared about me and I cared about him, and we got a lot of shit for not "doing right" by each other, so it's a bit of sensitive issue. It's okay to say "I can't do this kind of arrangement." MORE people should say shit like that instead of getting into things they don't want. But, you can't assume intention on the other person's part. I know plenty of casual hookups that have turned into very caring relationships and marriages.
I clarified later exactly what I meant! Are you really going to take me to task for something I already clarified?? That I have already said "I am talking exclusively about me." I'm sorry it's a sensitive topic for you, but it isn't fair to be angry at me for meaning something I didn't, that I have already clarified.
You're getting angry at me, for replying to a comment from someone else, where I didn't take into account the one clarifying comment you made in a thread of 200? I am not "taking you to task" at all. I replied to someone else's comment on the thread about THEIR statement. I even stated that I saw you later clarified your comment. You asked why someone was upset with your statement. I told you. Because in your original comment you assigned intent to someone based on their actions (some might even argue values), and therefore it could be interpreted as assigning the same intent to everyone who engages in that behavior. That kind of statement can be interpreted badly. I'm not angry at you, I am trying to explain why it's better to say "I don't like this/it makes me feel bad/it's not for me" rather than stating "when someone does this, they think of me as this other thing." This is why people are always like "use 'I' sentences." A lot of people who engage in casual sex pride themselves on being safe and considerate, particularly because there are so many people that label casual sex as dangerous and intentionally hurtful. It is okay to not like casual sex, and I applaud you for knowing it's not your thing and sticking to that. To me, it's kind of like saying to an introvert "Why don't you care about spending time with me?" vs. saying "When you retreat to have your alone time, I sometimes feel like you don't care about the time we spend together." One is an accusation of intent, and the other one is a statement of feeling which is a lot easier to respond to ("no, I love spending time with you, but I also need time to myself and it makes me appreciate my time with you even more.").
"Even if the whims of male fancy still dictate the dating environment she has to live in"
The whims of male fancy, as you put it, dictate the dating environment a lot of us live in. That's not just her problem.
Yeah, this is about trends. People want to read a synopsis, not the novel.
I don't like being judged by appearances because I always lose. If a guy were to judge my appearance as 'hot' or 'totally my type,' I'd be a lot less antagonistic towards it. I actually don't have a problem, per say, with being objectified or a guy choosing me based on my looks… I don't like it because my appearance always ends up being a flaw, instead of a boon.
Not that I want to give you a complex or anything, but… What if a guy is attracted to your personality(because you're awesome), but is attracted to you physically because he is fetishizing you in some way?
I'm a little iffy on the idea of only answering those questions that you, personally, find to be important. I think it's a good idea to answer at least answer some of the ones that come up early in the answering process, even if they're not important to you. After all, most of the women who's profiles you're looking at will have answered them, and those are ones that other users frequently rate as important. I've seen a handful of profiles where the guy had answered 50 questions, but quite a few of them were very odd ones that I'd never seen before, while lots of the common ones were missing. Granted, I'm guessing lots of women don't bother looking at specific questions, but that strikes me as being strange and an indication that the person is hiding something.
I think I'd be more likely to suggest answering some of the ones that don't seem like a big deal to you honestly, but then doing a spot check against a bunch of the profiles of people who you think seem fairly appealing but who have a significant enemy percentage rating and then looking at the Unacceptable Answers tab. Sometimes people misread questions (a lot of people don't realize that because of the wording of, "Would you date someone who smoked?" or "Would you date someone who had children?" their answers to what their partner should say are ruling out not smokers and parents, but people who are simply open to dating smokers or parents), some of the badly-written ones are open to interpretation (the one about women having an obligation to shave their legs tends to be read differently by men and women), and sometimes reviewing a list of things your profile has signaled as dealbreakers makes you realize that you'd happily make an exception to some of those things for someone who was cute and cool. If you've been careful about your questions, people who have significant enemy ratings and low match ratings should be people who you really wouldn't want to date, not people who make you want to write anyway and take a chance.
Out of interest, is it normal to have to go on that many dates in order to find someone, or is part of the point of the story that they were mainly learning about themselves and what they wanted from a partner? I get that it's hard to build chemistry from looking at a profile and sending messages, but I'm curious as to whether other people have found they needed to meet upwards of fifty people in order to find someone they wanted to date.
It depends a lot on definitions.
First dates, yeah. Sometimes the chemistry is just a blank, sometimes you like them but they're not serious prospects. That's the whole point of first dates.
People who seem like they'll be worth becoming serious partners, and then the ones who do wind up becoming serious partners? There'll be a lot of turnover. There's the simple question of how many people you're compatible with in the first place, and then the bit where life often gets in the way. (If you've been dating someone cool for a month and you get an amazing job offer in another city, is someone you've only known a month really that much of a factor in your decision?)
So yes. Most people in a good-sized city will usually date lots of people before finding the right person. The exceptions are people who married their high school/college sweethearts, and people who live in small areas where the numbers don't support that sort of turnover.
Oh, it happens sometimes in smaller areas, too. Not to quite the same extent, but there's also more openness in those communities to dating someone who lives a couple of hours away, and there's not nearly the taboo on dating friends' exes as I had gotten used to.
The problem with being a lawyer is that most of your skills relate to filing out forms, getting people to tell their story when they don’t want to, and trying to win on a legal technicality if possible. You also assume opposition. Treating a date like a case is probably not the best idea. ;).
I once had an interaction with somebody on OKC who "Loved conversation" where she appeared to be answering me with as few words as possible. Once I got that image of her lawyer sitting next to her and advising her to say as little as she could so that she wouldn't incriminate herself, I lost interest. Depositions just aren't sexy to me.
The technicality thing really is a problem for relationship-building. You might win the fight, if only because the other person gets tired of arguing, but you're probably not going to accomplish anything.
I once went out with a guy who was a Conflict Resolution Specialist for the Better Business Bureau. You could really tell how his job had become his personality. Even expressing my opinion on how to personally take care of my safety became an opportunity for him to "mediate" my opinion. I stopped taking his calls after that.
Ewww. Thats some seriously creepy thing to say to a date.
It started innocently enough, about how I never go anywhere without my gps. He was very in favor of being a free spirit and letting the road take me wherever it wanted. I commented how that wasn't a terribly safe practice for a woman traveling alone. To which he proceeded to nearly lecture me on the evils of living in fear and how #yolo and other such patronizing helpfulness. I can't say all his points were wrong, but his presentation really is what turned me off. That and the fact that it was happening on a first date.
Uh. Yikes. I think that might actually make me excuse myself early. There are ways that people can express preferences for different kinds of traveling or amounts of risk-taking, but someone who dismisses my opinions about my personal safety isn't someone who I'm really going to trust with it.
Also, being patronized to is so not sexy.
I sent out the bat-signal text to a friend when he excused himself to the restroom. A few minutes later I got the "help I've broken down & need a rescue" call. Sure it was the cowards way out, but I didn't want to have a mediation about why I was cutting things short in front of the other patrons of that particular Starbucks.
Any kind of lecturing, on a first date no less, is such a big "no" to me.
Why do some people think that this is a good idea?
And who convinces them?
Did he have charts?
No, but he did have brochures to the island in the Bahamas that he planned to relocate to in the next 5-10 years. It was as odd as it sounds.
The only way this could be weirder is if he whipped out an emeter and asked you what you knew about Dianetics.
No, relocating to the Bahamas is justifiable. At least the weather's nice even if you get the occasional storm. Nothing can justify scientology.
Ah, one o' them there Law Of Attraction types. They're kind of cousins of Motivation Speaker Audience Members.
The ones that get me are people who'v been to too many motivational seminars. If anyone says I need to "actualize my inherent whatever to achieve my life goals" we are not going to get along. The reason being that I tend to find people who go to lots of these things are doing it and picking up buzzwords in place of "actualizing" themselves.
Ugh…I feel your pain!!!!
That sounds like something to avoid. I'm always vaguely disappointed when people I know post this motivational shit on Facebook.
You also have to remember that you can't object on relevancy grounds or asked and answered. ;). A more serious problem is that I find myself sometimes giving a lawyer's interpretation to what people say to me sometime. That means basically twisting words to my advantage. On the other hand, I might have done this before hand and become a lawyer because of it. I had a friend who got in trouble in high school once and when brought in for a disciplinary hearing had one of the school officials say "wait, don't let him talk for himself. He already thinks too much like a lawyer."
"You also assume opposition. "
YOU might.
I know plenty of attorneys who don't feel compelled to behave like that.
I've also known musicians who've argued with me about atheism on a first date.
(I was not the one doing the arguing, and I in fact tried to demur that the topic wasn't necessarily appropriate first-date conversation, but I was overruled, as it were.)
So I think your friends who suggested in your youth, as you told the story, that it was your personality that gave you the idea of selecting the profession, rather than the profession actively creating the personality and the professional in question having no choice about it, might have had some sort of point.
/tries not to perceive some sort of relationship or parallel between impulse to 'assume opposition' and dating struggles as stated
/fails
Looks like I found my new side project for a few weeks! I should be able to find or knock out that Python visitor code. Thanks Doc!
The hate that guy has gotten from some feminists and nearly all of the so-called "red pill" community is insane. That article you posted:
– "nerdy white guy"
-"pickup artist-flavor misogynist attitudes"
-" weird mathematician-pickup artist-hybrid view of women as mere data points"
-"Women are accessories he’s entitled to."
-" his meticulous creep-bot work does nothing to get him any more second dates"
That chick cannot comprehend a guy doing something to improve his chances as something positive. He should have just laid down and taken it.
And the hatred he and his girlfriend gets from the manospherean douchebags. Here's his own words:
-Congratulations Katie Heaney, you objectified me. Your counterparts are doing the same to my fiancee over here: http://bit.ly/1etDq9W
And the cause of the hate? Because she apparently has the nerve to have some pictures that aren't perfect. Apparently she dared to be without makeup or perfect clothes for a while. Wow, what a bitch. Let's burn her at the stake!
I followed that link to the Roosh V forum, and a piece of my soul died.
My God.
Oh, you see they are unPC and can openly and easily insult and deride people who are not flawless, so you can tell they are edgy and cool.
Jesus. It's almost like dealing with Randists and Marxists. Either you're with us…or you're against us. And if you're in the middle, you get hate from both orthodoxies.
Tbh, I don't think it's about ideology. It's about idiots and entitled jerks.
Someone on that forum posted an article about an innovative way to meet women. Within two posts, it degenerated into a non-stop orgy of posting, rating, and arguing about the ratings of photographs of Asian women no-one on that site has ever met. It's basically a photo-rating club over there.
For the record, I think Katie Heaney's article was ridiculous and annoying. But it's not really comparable to the shit going on in the manosphere, c'mon. Heaney's was just trolling a bit in an attempt to sell her book. That forum is a roiling pit of mutual masturbation and hate.
Heaney's attitude amounts to little more than a wacko impotently shaking her fist at the heavens. Annoying and insulting? Sure. But rare and, when encountered, easily dismissed as irrelevant. Because it is.
That kind of group-hate manosphere shit disturbs me a hell of a lot more. It seems to be both more common and more destructive. I am really, really glad that I'm a dude and don't have to be on the lookout for that in my own dating pool.
>For the record, I think Katie Heaney's article was ridiculous and annoying. But it's not really comparable to the shit going on in the manosphere, c'mon.
Oh yeah, I completely agree. I am actually sad that the guy(Chris McKinlay) found that page and read all the coments disparaging his fiance.
Yeah, one of my exes used to read either Roosh or Roissy (coincidentally, an ex who knows the "OKcupid hacker.") He claimed it was because he "liked the writing," and not because he subscribed to the beliefs. Shoulda been a flag.
Does OKC throw your picture to the 'you might like' section of tons of online users if you update your profile?
Yesterday, after reading this post, and noting the 97 words bit, I decided to check for a laugh how my profile fared volume-wise. It was fine, but I used this opportunity to rid it of stuff I didn't like — essentially erasing a couple of small paragraphs and more laconically rephrasing a few sentences.
And blimey, I started getting tons of visitors: more in 2 days that in the past month. And pretty weird: all non-locals (the closest was like 200 km, most much farther), not always with high match scores, and whose profiles sometimes don't even suggest anything that would align their searches in my direction.
Yup. That’s why regular small updates to up your profile visibility is a convenient “hack” that most regulars know.
While it may different for others, it doesn't seem particularly clever if all the attention you get is from irrelevant people.
It is a shame you can't hack it so people have to read about you before they decide to ignore your messages rather than doing it after noticing the little thumbnail of your main profile next to the message link in their inbox.
That would probably help people of all genders.
How would that help anyone? You can't force people to not be shallow by forcing their eyeballs to hit a profile. All that would do is make things more painful for people who get a ton of messages.
If someone wants to judge you by your thumbnail, let 'em. They are self-selecting out of the pool of people you want to deal with.
Certain dating services, like eHarmony, have experimented with this. For the most part, customers haven't liked that feature much.
Psychologically, I think the issue is that we don't feel like we're talking to a person without a face. More self-servingly, on a dating site if you read a great message and see it comes from someone who's totally not your type physically, it leaves you feeling disappointed. That's not good for the site's traffic long term.
First, how would you force someone to not ignore a message? If you remove site functionality until someone either responds to a message or looks at the sender's profile, all you'll do is make the whole process feel like a chore and discourage people from coming back. That just leads to more mail filling the boxes of more dead profiles.
Second, any site with read receipts will show you that the vast majority of messages do in fact get read. if your writing isn't good enough to intrigue them from a message, how are you expecting more of your writing to intrigue them?
I think he's talking about removing the picture that pops up next to the message, and making people go to the profile itself to see what someone looks like.
From the site's point of view, that would have the effect of encouraging everyone (even the really pretty people) to write good messages rather than send a "hi" or "spam." But I think GJ is right that psychological effects would trump that. It would also probably discourage people from uploading pictures to their profiles. Given that a significant minority of users want to hide their identity online and that almost everyone seems to dislike profiles that don't have pictures, that would be pretty bad for the site's business.
The idea was to make you read the message and maybe the profile before you get a picture. The best effect you could hope for is that people would open the message and scroll to the bottom to get the picture. Much like read receipts, the system has no way of knowing that you read the message, only that it appeared on your screen.
"if your writing isn't good enough to intrigue them from a message"
I had 1 person out of 15 go so far as to OPEN the message, nevermind read the thing. Add the ability to only get messages from people who have photos (like Plenty of Fish has), remove the thumbnail from next to the image in the person's inbox and add their photos to the end of the message (Plenty of Fish adds them to the top of the message if the setting I mentioned has been switched on).
What about women who clearly mention they are hesitant about meeting up in real life? Again, this seems only applicable to girls in america.
I think even 97 words is too many for your summary especially when you consider the entire profile as a whole is just that. The harder you try to sell yourself, the less attractive and intriguing you are, but at the same time, you can't just leave things blank and expect that to be interesting. As it is on okc, if you just limit yourself to writing one sentence per section, that's 9 sentences about you that a person has to go through and work with in order to learn about and decide if they want to go on a date with you. In total, my entire profile has 17 sentences with every section filled out (117 words total) and it's doing just as well if not better than most of the more detailed elaborate versions I've had over the years.
I'm also a huge fan of writing one sentence messages that just consist of asking 1 question about something they wrote on their profile like "Why do you like reading Cosmo?" if it's something they mentioned. It's quick and easy to for them to read and respond to, is challenging, but not too challenging, is something they care about and like, let's her share about and qualify herself, shows you're interested, but not too interested, shows you read her profile, etc.
It's like the way Tina Fey said to tell jokes. Just throw it out there unattached. Don't hammer home the punch line.
Deactivated my OKC account a while back, but I've bookmarked this page in case I ever want to start it up again. It never hurts to do a little market research
I hope Tinder is to OKC what Netflix was to Blockbuster.
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You may have described the only dating method that terrifies me more than being set up by my parents.
Ah, gotcha. I genuinely like Nabokov and mention that along with all my genre stuff, so I interpreted "love" in a generous way and was thinking of someone who'd read lots of Faulkner and responded to it.
If we're talking about someone whose favorite books are The Sound and the Fury, The Great Gatsby, and The Catcher in the Rye (all fine in their own right) and who doesn't mention anything else, then I totally feel you – that's someone who doesn't read but who wants to sound smart.
My feelings aren't necessarily in their control, but my feelings are influenced by someone's behavior. Someone coming up to me and telling me I'm freaking ugly shouldn't be surprised if that hurts my feelings.
I guess I don't see the point of broadening my dating options, if the options then include incompatible people. What's the point of that?
I disagree that you can't judge pre-emptively. If we're talking a cold meeting or a blind date, yeah, sure. But if we're still referencing online dating, it's PLENTY easy to judge early who I'm going to get along with and who I'm not.
I know who I am, and I know what I like, and I can pick out what I like pretty easily. Now that doesn't *guarantee* quality, as there are still unknown factors until you get to know someone. But I can absolutely say that everyone I would pick for a date is a person who fits my standards and who I selected with a good chance of quality. If a guy is just a "maybe" before I've even met him, I don't bother anymore.
I agree. Date 1 of 10 potential dates isn't any more like to be great than date 30 of 35.
"At the same time, there's no way of knowing beforehand which, if any, will be the right one. "
Really?? I can call mine pretty early. Maybe not pre-first date, but I'd say inside the first 30 minutes. Sounds weird, given my history, but I can tell pretty immediately which guys can go the distance and which ones are either going to reject me, or whom I'm not going to have a connection with.
Oh, I think there's a huge difference between pre-first date and 30 minutes in. I can't call it for a relationship or anything at that point, but there are a lot of people who I can kind of tell things aren't going to work with in 30 minutes or so (hell, sometimes it's more like 5…).
Well, you must be psychic, then. I can tell if we'll have fun on a date. I can reasonably estimate how well we'd get along long term. I can't tell which ones will have that spark. I'm also fairly laid back so my general level of how well I'd get along with someone long term is pretty high.
You have a choice in how to respond in any situation. If someone came up to you and told you you're freaking ugly, you have the choice to think, "They're right, I am freaking ugly. I'll go bury my head in the sand forever" OR to think, "Wow, what the f*** is this dude/chick's problem? Rude-ass motherf***er," OR "Right, like I'm gonna believe someone who wears socks with sandals" (okay, not a great example, I'm not a very fashion-y person, but you get it).
Of course, it's totally understandable to feel hurt and not happy about someone acting like that, but if you keep practicing looking at *their* behavior and relevance to your life rather than your own worth as a person, that stuff will hurt and affect you less and less over time, to the point that maybe you really don't care that someone else acted like a d***, because how does that honestly affect your life?
A person I want to be friends with acting as if I am unimportant to them affects my life quite a bit. I am not a robot; I will cut if bled, and while it's good not to hand over all of your emotional power to someone else, there's a point where we need to start taking some responsibility for the impact our behavior has on other people. Telling someone that your behavior that affects their feelings is somehow *their* problem is only kosher for so long.
I guess I haven't noticed much of a difference, for me personally. Like you I can't call relationship for a while but I can call "compatibility" by pre-date, and "connectivity" within 5-30 minutes. Maybe I'm just weird.
There also wouldn't be 150 posts in this thread if people didn't keep trying to tell me what I should think, what I should find attractive, and how I should feel about how people react to me.
Because it's apparently it's not just online dating that's off the table, it's all kinds of regular dating, since I don't enjoy casual sex, and I don't develop feelings for my friends. Oh, and I'm also a shitty partner since I don't have "options," and no one wants to date someone without options.
According to this board, I am just f*cked up in every direction, which I'm always thrilled to be reminded of.
I saw that article and I snapped my fingers in female appreciation.
**Telling someone that your behavior that affects their feelings is somehow *their* problem is only kosher for so long.**
I never said, "Act like a d*** and tell the other person it's their problem," I said that when someone is a d*** to you, here are some ways you can maybe manage the feelings that arise.
You said that someone who dates a lot of people, who tries to be openminded about the people they meet and go out with have no standards and don't find anyone special. Are you really surprised that about a lot of people read and thought "hey, I date/dated a lot of people and I felt like a lot of them were special. People aren't just numbers to me"? YOU made a judgement about people here, and they commented about it. You are free to do it your way. A lot of people are going to do it differently and if you ask for advice or comment on a public forum will probably get a lot of advice you don't agree with. I'll admit, I skimmed a lot of the comments, but I didn't see anyone telling you what to find attractive or that you're fucked up. If you're happy and satisfied with your dating life and your friendships, I think we would all be thrilled for you. I don't think writing people off based on (what seems to be) nothing else other than their level of social interaction is a good way to go. I, personally, find it hard to imagine that someone can be so put off by being social that nothing about that person's personality, interests, or even how they interact with you specifically can redeem them.
But if when someone is a dick, we always place emphasis on the victim ("Well manage your feelings!") instead of the aggressor ("Dude, quit being a dick!") after a while, it DOES send that message.
You only have control over your own behavior. You have no control over whether some random person acts like a d*** or not. There's absolutely nothing wrong with calling them on it and telling them how their behavior impacts you, it's just unproductive to place too much hope in their changing. It's more productive to focus on what you personally have control over.
I think you can say with some accuracy who you won't get along with. No one is talking about those people. No one is saying "man, that person hates all the things I love, I find him physically repulsive and his listed personal values questionable. Do you think he's free Friday night?" Put those people aside, we're not talking about them.
Now, the people that are left are people who you may or may not get along with and there's really no way to tell without spending some time with them.
But that isn't what *you're* doing. Yes, I only have control over me, but a wider culture can create some forms of social control. So if a jerk sees you telling me to control myself, instead of putting pressure on him to not be a jerk, that's an important distinction.
Yes, and we should work to change the culture. No one is arguing about that. I think the perception (for me) is that you're carrying around a lot of anger and bitterness that aren't helping you. You can't go back and not have been taken advantage of but you can learn to let go of the pain you're still carrying around from it, which in turn might open up additional options for you.
Not to say you should, just that its an option.