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I saw your comment and assumed that your first sentence was a terrible exaggeration, given your second sentence. But holy shit this article is basically just "

I saw your comment and assumed that your first sentence was a terrible exaggeration, given your second sentence. But holy shit this article is basically just "men are unhappy because men suck. They can be happy again, but only if they decide to stop sucking"

throwaway0a5e 4y ago
Don't forget the cherry on top where the way they suggest to improve one's self is not a way that is relevant for getting dates or in the early stages of a relationship. No matter who you want to "blame" for the underlying situation crap advice is still crap.
- CocaKoala 4y ago
  What's bad about the advice? It seems to flow pretty logically from the article. "Women want to date men who are emotionally available, good communicators, and who share values" means that your starting point to search for a relationship should be that you are emotionally available, good at communicating, and you have a clear concept of your values so that you can determine whether or not you share them with a potential partner. The advice to get to that state is "focus on mental health, including getting therapy if you need it" - that all seems correct to me. It's not relevant for getting dates, but getting dates is easy. It's extremely relevant for any stage of a relationship, including the early ones.
  - rmellow 4y ago
    > getting dates is easy Citation needed. I'm sure many here will vehemently disagree.
    - CocaKoala 4y ago
      Ask your friend if they want to get lunch with you - problem solved. "That's not a date" Why not? "My friends are all in relationships" Make more friends.
      - coldtea 4y ago
        - "I'm from a poor country and my family can't afford to eat" - "Be more lucky"
        CocaKoala 4y ago
        You are correct, the advice to achieve the third level of Maslow's Hierarchy does not address what you have to do in order to achieve the first two levels.
        coldtea 4y ago
        That was actually a parody of the third level advice given, just in lower level terms to highlight the absurdity...
        CocaKoala 4y ago
        The question was "how to get dates" - "how to get friends" is a different question. The easy way to get dates is to ask your friends on dates, and the easiest way to do that is to ask a friend to get lunch with you. What part of that reduces to "get lucky"?
        coldtea 4y ago
        First of all, that taken literally is just bad advice. You're friends with your friends, you don't ask them on dates. It basically translates to "try to get romantic with one of your friends [of your preferred sex]". Is that supposed to be how people get dates? So, I take it charitably that you meant "you ask people you know" (not your actual friends/buddies) on dates. Which is as good as saying "to get a job, just ask for one" to an unemployed person. To which the proper response is "Gee, why didn't I think of that..."
        CocaKoala 4y ago
        I disagree that it's bad advice - it can certainly be applied badly, but so can anything. You meet somebody, you become friends with them, you start dating them, you get married - that's an extremely natural arc. You shouldn't ask all your friends on dates (just like you shouldn't ask everybody you meet on a date) and you should be cognizant of hints that somebody isn't interested in dating you, but to say that somebody is EITHER a friend OR a romantic partner and there's no overlap between the two is strange to me. And this isn't the only way to get dates - dating apps certainly try and short-circuit the "be friends" part. But I've been friends with every girl I've dated before we started dating, including the woman I'm now married to. If you're not friends with somebody, even a little bit, why do you want to date them? edit: And of course, if you're going into friendships with the intention of trying to date the person, that might work out poorly. Meet somebody, be their friend, and if you're both open to something developing, it can happen. Asking them to have lunch is a way to start that.
- FeaturelessBug 4y ago
  Why do you hang your own self worth on getting a partner over bettering yourself as an individual and building relationships that don't center on romantic partnership?
  - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    Stop being dense. The author was offering up the tip as a way to improve one's dating prospects and even went so far as to imply the tip would specifically help with online dating. The tip was nothing of the sort and is specifically worse online than in person because the quality in question already doesn't show much until you're spending a lot of time together and shows less still through dating apps. IDK about your comment about self worth but you're the one who brought it up and it has a slight odor of projection. If you're average looks and average at text based communication getting first dates is not the bottleneck.
CocaKoala 4y ago
I'm honestly curious, can you point me to the lines that you think say "men suck" and "men should decide to stop sucking"? My read of it is that men should focus on their mental health and consider getting therapy if they need it, which I'm pulling from where it says > Level up your mental health game. That means getting into some individual therapy to address your skills gap. The skills gap it mentions is where it talks about how women express a desire for partners who "are emotionally available, good communicators, and share their values" - none of that is a value judgement in my reading. Those all seems like fairly reasonable things to want in a partner.
- nickff 4y ago
  The author implicitly assumes that these expectations are reasonable because women are scarcer on the apps, and that men improving in these areas will cause their situations to improve. This seems like a non-sequitur and an unproven assumption. It could be that the men are subject to victim-blaming, and/or that the women are asserting false pretenses because the real reasons are superficial and/or sound bad (i.e. men are too ugly or poor).
  - CocaKoala 4y ago
    It's hard to say that somebody's expectations for what they want in a parter are reasonable or unreasonable - you're allowed to decide who you spend your time with, and if that means you don't spend time with anybody, you're either satisfied with that or you change your expectations. If somebody says "I want to date somebody who is emotionally available", it's not anybody else's place to say "Wow that's completely unreasonable of you". Same thing when somebody says "I only want to date a man who's rich, taller than me, conventionally handsome, and will cater to my every whim" - do you meet that criteria? Maybe not, but they've decided that they only want to date exactly one person in the entire world and they're gonna hold out until they find exactly that person, who are you to tell them they're wrong? It's their life.
    - nickff 4y ago
      You're trusting that stated expectations are the same as actual revealed expectations, which is something I doubt in this area. If I'm right, men doing more of what women say they want will not lead to more relationship success for those men. I agree that it's hard to judge the reasonableness of other people's decisions, but I think that if they either fail to find what they are looking for (i.e. I expect a luxury car for the price of an econo-box, and am persistently disappointed), or expect more than they offer (i.e. I expect a partner who is equal or superior to me in all respects), the expectation may be unreasonable.

throwaway0a5e 4y ago

Don't forget the cherry on top where the way they suggest to improve one's self is not a way that is relevant for getting dates or in the early stages of a relationship. No matter who you want to "blame" for the underlying situation crap advice is still crap.

CocaKoala 4y ago
What's bad about the advice? It seems to flow pretty logically from the article. "Women want to date men who are emotionally available, good communicators, and who share values" means that your starting point to search for a relationship should be that you are emotionally available, good at communicating, and you have a clear concept of your values so that you can determine whether or not you share them with a potential partner. The advice to get to that state is "focus on mental health, including getting therapy if you need it" - that all seems correct to me. It's not relevant for getting dates, but getting dates is easy. It's extremely relevant for any stage of a relationship, including the early ones.
- rmellow 4y ago
  > getting dates is easy Citation needed. I'm sure many here will vehemently disagree.
  - CocaKoala 4y ago
    Ask your friend if they want to get lunch with you - problem solved. "That's not a date" Why not? "My friends are all in relationships" Make more friends.
    - coldtea 4y ago
      - "I'm from a poor country and my family can't afford to eat" - "Be more lucky"
      - CocaKoala 4y ago
        You are correct, the advice to achieve the third level of Maslow's Hierarchy does not address what you have to do in order to achieve the first two levels.
        coldtea 4y ago
        That was actually a parody of the third level advice given, just in lower level terms to highlight the absurdity...
        CocaKoala 4y ago
        The question was "how to get dates" - "how to get friends" is a different question. The easy way to get dates is to ask your friends on dates, and the easiest way to do that is to ask a friend to get lunch with you. What part of that reduces to "get lucky"?
        coldtea 4y ago
        First of all, that taken literally is just bad advice. You're friends with your friends, you don't ask them on dates. It basically translates to "try to get romantic with one of your friends [of your preferred sex]". Is that supposed to be how people get dates? So, I take it charitably that you meant "you ask people you know" (not your actual friends/buddies) on dates. Which is as good as saying "to get a job, just ask for one" to an unemployed person. To which the proper response is "Gee, why didn't I think of that..."
        CocaKoala 4y ago
        I disagree that it's bad advice - it can certainly be applied badly, but so can anything. You meet somebody, you become friends with them, you start dating them, you get married - that's an extremely natural arc. You shouldn't ask all your friends on dates (just like you shouldn't ask everybody you meet on a date) and you should be cognizant of hints that somebody isn't interested in dating you, but to say that somebody is EITHER a friend OR a romantic partner and there's no overlap between the two is strange to me. And this isn't the only way to get dates - dating apps certainly try and short-circuit the "be friends" part. But I've been friends with every girl I've dated before we started dating, including the woman I'm now married to. If you're not friends with somebody, even a little bit, why do you want to date them? edit: And of course, if you're going into friendships with the intention of trying to date the person, that might work out poorly. Meet somebody, be their friend, and if you're both open to something developing, it can happen. Asking them to have lunch is a way to start that.
FeaturelessBug 4y ago
Why do you hang your own self worth on getting a partner over bettering yourself as an individual and building relationships that don't center on romantic partnership?
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  Stop being dense. The author was offering up the tip as a way to improve one's dating prospects and even went so far as to imply the tip would specifically help with online dating. The tip was nothing of the sort and is specifically worse online than in person because the quality in question already doesn't show much until you're spending a lot of time together and shows less still through dating apps. IDK about your comment about self worth but you're the one who brought it up and it has a slight odor of projection. If you're average looks and average at text based communication getting first dates is not the bottleneck.

CocaKoala 4y ago

I'm honestly curious, can you point me to the lines that you think say "men suck" and "men should decide to stop sucking"? My read of it is that men should focus on their mental health and consider getting therapy if they need it, which I'm pulling from where it says > Level up your mental health game. That means getting into some individual therapy to address your skills gap. The skills gap it mentions is where it talks about how women express a desire for partners who "are emotionally available, good communicators, and share their values" - none of that is a value judgement in my reading. Those all seems like fairly reasonable things to want in a partner.

nickff 4y ago
The author implicitly assumes that these expectations are reasonable because women are scarcer on the apps, and that men improving in these areas will cause their situations to improve. This seems like a non-sequitur and an unproven assumption. It could be that the men are subject to victim-blaming, and/or that the women are asserting false pretenses because the real reasons are superficial and/or sound bad (i.e. men are too ugly or poor).
- CocaKoala 4y ago
  It's hard to say that somebody's expectations for what they want in a parter are reasonable or unreasonable - you're allowed to decide who you spend your time with, and if that means you don't spend time with anybody, you're either satisfied with that or you change your expectations. If somebody says "I want to date somebody who is emotionally available", it's not anybody else's place to say "Wow that's completely unreasonable of you". Same thing when somebody says "I only want to date a man who's rich, taller than me, conventionally handsome, and will cater to my every whim" - do you meet that criteria? Maybe not, but they've decided that they only want to date exactly one person in the entire world and they're gonna hold out until they find exactly that person, who are you to tell them they're wrong? It's their life.
  - nickff 4y ago
    You're trusting that stated expectations are the same as actual revealed expectations, which is something I doubt in this area. If I'm right, men doing more of what women say they want will not lead to more relationship success for those men. I agree that it's hard to judge the reasonableness of other people's decisions, but I think that if they either fail to find what they are looking for (i.e. I expect a luxury car for the price of an econo-box, and am persistently disappointed), or expect more than they offer (i.e. I expect a partner who is equal or superior to me in all respects), the expectation may be unreasonable.