6 ms·

I'm seeing a trend in the replies here of the parent that might show an implicit bias towards a particular feeling of powerlessness in getting sex + companionsh

I'm seeing a trend in the replies here of the parent that might show an implicit bias towards a particular feeling of powerlessness in getting sex + companionship. If this is you, then know the following: in most cases, one is able to get an abundance of intimacy [1]. I know this because this was one of my life goals in my mid teens to early twenties. It was my first big achievement in life, for me anyway, I worked hard at it. Don't believe me? Checkout Sean Stephenson (RIP). If you think he dated the women of his dreams because he's wealthy, my experience suggests it's his charisma. I've learned that a huge part of it can be trained. The funny thing is, no one would call me charismatic, yet, I found my voice and a way to expose my personality in an attractive enough way to the women I want. I simply know the pain and if I can help other people not experience it, yea that would be an amazing use of my time. The average woman judges me to be a 6 by looks at best. My target group of women almost never praise me for my physical features but my personality instead. Judge for youerself: I'm tall, super skinny (most often the skinniest), have a very atypical face, so yea not in the top 1%. It took me 5 years to learn what I wanted to learn. And now I'm now I'm happy in that area of my life. For the past 8 years, I've had no issues related to lack of intimacy. If you need any dating advice, I'm by far not the best dating coach, and I am by far not the best seducer. But I'm a HN'er so, and I struggled a shit ton with this and learned a lot of it consciously. Also, my peak moments have been borderline insanely awesome. So there's that. Shoot me an email (see my profile) and I hope I can help a bit, any gender is welcome to email (I've seen some overlap in issues and approaches). In most cases, I've noticed, I can't help [2]. I wish I could share online resources, but it's a bit of a mine field since it really depends on how you learn and how you perceive the world. Or just do what I did and simply Google "how to get a girlfriend/<word_for_intimate_partner>" and go on a wild adventure that will lead to your future love life. When learning this on your own, remember to be: respectful, full of empathy (both cognitive and affective empathy [3]), playful, confident and kind (preferably, in that order). I know, it's a lot, I never said this would be easy ;-) [1] Intimacy being defined here as a mix of sex and companionship. Also, I say "most cases", since I know how terrible I was, but I also know that there are people even worse than me. In most cases, these people wouldn't be capable of applying any sort of logical thinking, so I suspect this isn't you. Also abundance: the feeling of "yep, I'm good :)" [2] I'm not a coach, just someone who wants to help. What I am struggling with when helping my friends is that: in general my friends didn't dare to experiment enough on their own. In some cases, this was even the case when I was able to give them exact counter evidence, tailored to every whim. So yea, if you at least aspire to want to be able to self-experiment, I might be able to help somewhat. I've done it :D [3] Cognitive empathy: you're able to understand why someone goes through a certain situation by understanding it logically. Example: someone falls, therefore they must be hurt, therefore they will appreciate help. Affective empathy: you're able to understand why someone goes through a certain situation by understanding it by feeling their pain. Example: someone falls (you feel it as well), by feeling their pain, you can feel that the person landed hard on his knee and by looking at their face and "feeling" their facial expressions, you feel their are in a huge distress. You now know that you need to calm them down and make sure their knee is cared for. ^ These two examples are quite simplictic.

Animats 6y ago
It's not hard. The whole "pick-up artist" thing did work. The classic book, by the way, is "Scoremanship", by Frank Grey. He was a salesman who'd had formal sales training, and realized that standard sales techniques could be repurposed for dating. That's less silly than the later stuff like "The Game".
- mettamage 6y ago
  I found it hard, but in all fairness, I haven't used sales tactics that much. I also didn't do The Game or The Mystery Method. I basically took another dating book's question "how can you find the women of your dreams with just your personality?" and took that as far as I could. Long story short (for me personally): use assortative mating theory to its fullest and most extreme. With that said, I have met other people who found it easy. It's definitely not an uncommon experience. Thanks for the book recommendation! That looks like such an old book (1969!), I'll take a peek.
starpilot 6y ago
> My target group of women almost never praise me for my physical features but my personality instead. Women do this in general because mentioning physical attractiveness among women is taboo. This is why a personality-focused, zero pictures version of Tinder would utterly fail. Do you think women would leap to such an app, finally being able to judge people by their wit and conversation skills and empathy? Of course not. They want photos. > Judge for youerself: I'm tall, super skinny (most often the skinniest), have a very atypical face, so yea not in the top 1%. Height gives an enormous advantage. The rest I can't comment on, but I suspect you're underselling yourself. If you're white and have a conventional appearance (even if not chiseled or model like), you're much more acceptable to a woman (and her friends, and her family) than a 5'6" Indian guy. What I've noticed is that any guy can fall to rock bottom, but not every guy can float to the top. There's a lot of privilege to go around. When people try to take credit for everything in their life, whether it's business/dating/athleticism or whatever, it's just trying to deny privilege and ascribe some fairness to a world that we all know is not. I know I'm privileged in some ways that hot guys are not. I mean Tucker Max is in therapy today.

Animats 6y ago

It's not hard. The whole "pick-up artist" thing did work. The classic book, by the way, is "Scoremanship", by Frank Grey. He was a salesman who'd had formal sales training, and realized that standard sales techniques could be repurposed for dating. That's less silly than the later stuff like "The Game".

mettamage 6y ago
I found it hard, but in all fairness, I haven't used sales tactics that much. I also didn't do The Game or The Mystery Method. I basically took another dating book's question "how can you find the women of your dreams with just your personality?" and took that as far as I could. Long story short (for me personally): use assortative mating theory to its fullest and most extreme. With that said, I have met other people who found it easy. It's definitely not an uncommon experience. Thanks for the book recommendation! That looks like such an old book (1969!), I'll take a peek.

starpilot 6y ago

> My target group of women almost never praise me for my physical features but my personality instead. Women do this in general because mentioning physical attractiveness among women is taboo. This is why a personality-focused, zero pictures version of Tinder would utterly fail. Do you think women would leap to such an app, finally being able to judge people by their wit and conversation skills and empathy? Of course not. They want photos. > Judge for youerself: I'm tall, super skinny (most often the skinniest), have a very atypical face, so yea not in the top 1%. Height gives an enormous advantage. The rest I can't comment on, but I suspect you're underselling yourself. If you're white and have a conventional appearance (even if not chiseled or model like), you're much more acceptable to a woman (and her friends, and her family) than a 5'6" Indian guy. What I've noticed is that any guy can fall to rock bottom, but not every guy can float to the top. There's a lot of privilege to go around. When people try to take credit for everything in their life, whether it's business/dating/athleticism or whatever, it's just trying to deny privilege and ascribe some fairness to a world that we all know is not. I know I'm privileged in some ways that hot guys are not. I mean Tucker Max is in therapy today.