The DoubtingThomas dating / relationships MEGATHREAD

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Yo, DT, real talk fam. Imma tell yaz how ta get dat 4$$. First, you gotta look fly:



Pop some sweet kicks:



Fresh skins:



Get dat Cristal:



Yo, you be swimmin' in dat honey, bruh.

- Doc

[_Analytics]

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

The top definition of "game" at Urban Dictionary is:

"It's CONFIDENTLY using your attributes, characteristics, and overall personality to win the affection of the woman you want. You can't have game if you don't know yourself; you can't be confident in what you're ignorant of.

Game is playing the cards you're dealt and WINNING; turning your positives into swagger (not 'swag') and your negatives into charm."

That is the sense in which I meant it.

Of the books you recommended, the one I have read is Strauss's. I stand by my position that it's a bad book in general as an inspiration to find romantic partners or cure loneliness and it is a terrible idea to recommend it to DT with his particular foibles on display.

I wish you would evaluate the post in the context of everything I said. My main advice was in the four books you didn't read, not the book I mentioned as an afterthought.

Here is a quote from the end of the book that I dare not name and that nobody should ever read, especially DT:

"We were all searching outside ourselves for our missing pieces, and we were all looking in the wrong direction. Instead of finding ourselves, we’d lost our sense of self. Mystery didn’t have the answers. A blonde 10 in a two-set at the Standard didn’t have the answers. The answers were to be found within. To win the game was to leave it."

[_EAllusion]

The top definition of "game" at Urban Dictionary is:

"It's CONFIDENTLY using your attributes, characteristics, and overall personality to win the affection of the woman you want. You can't have game if you don't know yourself; you can't be confident in what you're ignorant of.

Game is playing the cards you're dealt and WINNING; turning your positives into swagger (not 'swag') and your negatives into charm."

Heh. The quote keeps going from there:

Symps would have you believe that 'game' means blindly acquiescing to a woman's whims and going along to get along with an ulterior motive in mind (usually sex). Those are just cons and fakes who prey on insecure, attention whores because they believe a quality woman would NEVER appreciate the man he REALLY is. They lack game, so if they assume this about themselves, they are ultimately right.

Sometimes the cards in your deck are insufficient, you didn't exude the right amount of confidence, or maybe you were TOO confident and it came off as arrogance. When that happens, you just charge it to the game, learn from it, and keep it moving.

An expert of game can pull any woman he wants, but that doesn't mean he can pull EVERY woman. See, a person with game can read a woman before even talking to her; he knows if the woman he's scoping would dig his rap or not and an expert of game doesn't want a woman that wouldn't want him, so his success rate is much higher. When you've gotten to this level, you're a MACK.

I don't know if you should be pointing to Player McPlay over here and going, "Yeah, what he said."

"Game" just means seducing women. It comes across as sleazy and shallow, which is why the female posters' eyes got wide when you said it. Especially when you are recommending "The Game" in the same post.

I wish you would evaluate the post in the context of everything I said. My main advice was in the four books you didn't read, not the book I mentioned as an afterthought.

Here is a quote from the end of the book that I dare not name and that nobody should ever read, especially DT:

Funny that the person who wrote those words wrote a follow up book on how-to PUA tactics for his audience and taught paid courses on how to run game on women.

I'm saying you're telling a person vulnerable to radicalization to go check out a popular conduit to radicalization. This is bad advice. Then you play it off as just letting him know that people can transform their personalities - like reading Mein Kampf for the lesson that you can accomplish great things if you really set your mind to it. "The Game" also encourages its readers to see finding women and relationships in a certain light that isn't good.

You can name whatever you want. I'm just suggesting some things are a bad influence, especially on certain people. Why not have him read Elliot Rodger's manifesto while you're at it. You know, to prove that if you're willing to make sacrifices, you too can be famous.

[_canpakes]

I don’t understand what the problem is. I’m pretty sure that just using the right razor* will compel attractive women who don’t even know you to approach and stroke your cheeks.

*i think it needs to have at least 7 blades to work, though.

[_Analytics]

Hey DT,

I just wanted to restate for the record the advice that I gave to you the other day.

I happened to be at a professional conference today, and the adventurer Jamie Clarke was the keynote speaker. Jamie talked about his life and how he climbed Mount Everest. He talked about when he was in high school and he asked a girl out and she said no. He asked her, “why not?” She responded by saying “something about personal hygiene and some dental issues.” He said that after getting several similar responses from different girls to that question, he wondered if the problem was in fact himself.

This led to his method for achieving goals. Take action, get feedback, make yourself better, and take more action. He said, and I quote, “Life and love are number games.” Let me emphasize that just because he said that love is a game doesn’t mean he endorses some disreputable characters who also consider love to be a game. His point was that just as you are selective with who you date, girls will be selective with who they date. Thus, you need to do two things. First, make yourself as attractive as possible. Second, get out there, start conversations, and ask girls out. Be bold. If they say no figure out why, and based on their feedback try your hardest to make yourself more attractive.

With that in mind, here are some books I’d suggest you read:

First, read, The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism by Olivia Fox Cabane. Cabane is a keynote speaker for Fortune 500 companies and a top-tier coach to business executives. She developed models and techniques for understanding and explaining Charisma for Harvard University, MIT, UC Berkeley and Stanford. The basic premise of her book is that it is a myth that charisma is an intrinsic quality of humans. According to her, the reality is that charisma is a set of behaviors that can be turned on, turned off, and learned by anyone. Charisma is driven by displaying the qualities of being powerful, warm, and present. She teaches that there are hundreds of little body movements that are needed to successfully display power, warmth, and presence, and that the best way to display these things is the way a method actor would—by going through mental exercises to actually feel power, warmth and presence. If you go through the exercises in the book, you’ll be able to actually learn to be Charismatic.

The second book I recommend is called No More Mr. Nice Guy by Dr. Robert Glover, Ph.D. Dr. Glover teaches that “Mr. Nice Guy Syndrome” is depending upon the approval of women for happiness. You need to read the book to get the full gist of it, but the basic idea is that you are a “nice guy” if you are especially nice to women, but only because you want them to reward you for your niceness in a passive-aggressive way. This leads to frustration by both you and the women in your life. He says the opposite of crazy is still crazy—just in a different way. The goal of not being a Mr. Nice Guy isn’t to be the opposite of nice (i.e. a dick). Rather, it is to be an integrated human being who isn’t reliant upon a woman for happiness. If you do this, ironically you become more attractive to women because you are a self-assured, confident man. I don’t know if this book meets your actual needs, but I suspect you might find it helpful.

Next, I suggest you read The Noble Art of Seducing Women by Kezia Noble. Kezia is a dating coach from England who provides her perspective as a woman for how guys can make themselves more attractive to women. She offers lots of practical advice, such as the importance of wearing nice shoes, to tips on how to be an interesting conversationalist who will intrigue women rather than bore them or creep them out.

Finally, I suggest you read Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear. This book does an excellent job of explaining the latest science about how habits are formed and how you can create the habits you want and break the habits you don’t want and thereby engineer the life that you want.

Related to that, I think a ton of problems that we have go back to how we eat and how we use our bodies. If you create the habit of eating a plant-based diet and exercising an hour a day, you will go a long way towards making yourself more attractive.

Remember that just as you are selective for the girls you want to date, they will be selective about who they want to date. The solution to this is to make yourself as good as you can be and to get out there and meet as many people as possible. There are some books that show how nerds that had been unsuccessful in the romance department were able to make themselves extremely attractive to very selective girls, but those books shall not be named. The point is that if you take control of your life by making yourself better and getting out there and meeting lots of people, you can have more success with the opposite sex.

Finally, I am an anonymous stranger on the Internet offering unsolicited advice.You shouldn’t take such advice from anybody without first consulting a mental health professional who is fully apprised of your specific situation.

[_DoubtingThomas]

You managed to turn that into something vaguely creepy where you announce on a message board that you like ''em young.

To be honest I am afraid of STDs. It is riskier to date women in their mid-20s according to the second chart "People Living With Diagnosed HIV by Age, 2015, United States". According to the data it would be wiser and safer for me to date a girl in her late teens or early 20s. I can use a condom, but it wouldn't protect me much from diseases like syphilis or HPV.

https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/group/age/older ... index.html

Sure, physical attractiveness is something both men and women look for in a partner. It's not a coincidence that couples' attractiveness tend to approximately line up. Is it healthy to make finding a person you regard as "beautiful" a deal-breaking focus of having a relationship while you also talk about inability to meet people? No, not at all.

So should I date a woman that I am not physically attracted to?

[_DoubtingThomas]

It depends. Do you want to go to a bar? Do you enjoy going to a bar? Are you comfortable in a bar?

Not really.

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

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

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

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

So far no luck on dating apps.

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

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

I am all stressed out from work.

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

I simply want to enjoy life.

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

I have no life in our meaningless universe.

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

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

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

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

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

I have to go, but thanks for your advice.

[_Lemmie]

You managed to turn that into something vaguely creepy where you announce on a message board that you like ''em young.

To be honest I am afraid of STDs. It is riskier to date women in their mid-20s according to the second chart "People Living With Diagnosed HIV by Age, 2015, United States". According to the data it would be wiser and safer for me to date a girl in her late teens or early 20s. I can use a condom, but it wouldn't protect me much from diseases like syphilis or HPV.

https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/group/age/older ... index.html

Nope.

Incidence and prevalence estimates suggest that young people aged 15–24 years acquire half of all new STDs1 and that one in four sexually active adolescent females has an STD, such as chlamydia or human papillomavirus (HPV).2

Compared with older adults, sexually active adolescents aged 15–19 years and young adults aged 20–24 years are at higher risk of acquiring STDs for a combination of behavioral, biological, and cultural reasons.

https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats17/adolescents.htm

So should I date a woman that I am not physically attracted to?

That's not what he said. You missed his point entirely, and yes, you still come across as very creepy. A man in his mid-30s looking for a teenager with the only requirement that she be beautiful is creepy.

[_Analytics]

What is the outer-limits of how much younger your partner can be?

Several years ago I heard this discussed on NPR, and somebody suggested a mathematical formula: Take your age, divide by two, and add 7 years. That's the youngest you can go. For example, if you are 24, the youngest you should date is 19 (24/2 - 7 = 19). If you are 40, the youngest you can date is 27. Etc.

[_DoubtingThomas]

Nope.

Your quote says "acquire". Older adults already have them.