6 ms·

I sincerely believe that I am a respectful, reasonably attractive, healthy, financially successful and emotionally mature person. I found dating so hopelessly

I sincerely believe that I am a respectful, reasonably attractive, healthy, financially successful and emotionally mature person. I found dating so hopelessly difficult in America, that I decided to literally learn another language and relocate to another country. I felt like I had no future in America because of that. The difference where I am now is night and day. I have had to decline more dates and advances, which never happened before. Which I feel confirms my belief in the toxicity of dating in America. In America, I had many women who were my close friends. They would regularly initiate conversations, share personal details of their life, and even stay at my home some days. In fact most of my friends were women. Although I have introspected on this greatly, and certainly have grown, I believe this is additional evidence that, perhaps, the problem is not me but the environment.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hgsgm 4y ago
A war helps thin out competition from other local men.
GalenErso 4y ago
There are so many people looking for respectful, reasonably attractive, healthy, financially successful and emotionally mature men. My guess is that your approach is the problem. Perhaps you don't go to the right places, or strike conversations with the right people (e.g. women too young or immature to recognize emotionally mature men). Maybe you should work on improving your social skills. Or maybe your self-perception doesn't match reality or other people's perceptions.
- jimbokun 4y ago
  Do you have any data to back up your claims?
- ShredKazoo 4y ago
  >There are so many people looking for respectful, reasonably attractive, healthy, financially successful and emotionally mature men. In what region?
- b800h 4y ago
  Both the article and the comment you're replying to suggest that isn't the case.
goethes_kind 4y ago
If you have many women as friends you are doing something good and bad at the same time. The good is that you can meet women and can interact with them and can get them to trust you. The bad is that you somehow give off all the wrong signals. Then you go abroad and you think the women are different, but they aren't. I have lived in three countries. You just have a higher value as an American man abroad. Ironically, this might result in you partnering up with a more superficial woman.
- medvezhenok 4y ago
  You should always strive to maximize your value in the dating market - any other strategy is self-defeating (note that you can settle after maximizing - that is totally allowed). That means you should try to meet women doing activities you excel at (relative to other people), demonstrating leadership qualities (giving talks at conferences, for ex.) or in GP's case, moving abroad. I'm not sure how the people you attract by doing these things are any more superficial than the rest; attraction to status-displaying qualities like this is built into the human genetics and goes way beyond intellectualization. Basically we think that we are advanced apes, but in practice we're really very fancy peacocks with brains :) Note that social status/leadership quality is actually more important than income (there's lots of anecdotal data that women would prefer a doctor over an engineer making the same income, because of social connotations).
  - tester756 4y ago
    If you're using "strategies" then you're already not genuine, thus not trustworthy, imo.
    - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
      Have you seen how women approach dating? Double standard much?
      - tester756 4y ago
        I didn't say anything about sex. Point stands regardless of sex.
bluetomcat 4y ago
> They would regularly initiate conversations, share personal details of their life As a non-American, what strikes me about young American females in particular is how talkative and expressive they are. I've never talked with them in person, but I've observed young tourist groups in Europe. They can be talking trivialities about their experiences in a self-assertive way non-stop, constantly littered with "I was like", "it was like", "he was like".
- penguin_booze 4y ago
  Ah, the Great American "like" metronome; the universal connective; the default prefix to all sentences.
francisofascii 4y ago
If only young women actually wanted all those desirable qualities. Maybe they do when they hit 40. I am hugely generalizing, but in America, young women want mercurial, adventurous, emotionally distant, confident sounding, tough guys. So so solve this problem, you have to either find women who desire your qualities, or build in some of these other qualities (confidence, adventurous, toughness) without turning into a jerk.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
red-iron-pine 4y ago
Are you a man or woman? Are you trying to date women? The implication is that you're a guy after girls, but that's not clear and I'm not sure what to take from that. And did you explain anything about why it is toxic, just a reflexive "it's bad mmmmmkay" and that you left -- but you didn't say what you went looking for, or what you found, and why it's better. Furthermore there is the "[probably rich] guy in a foreign country" thing, which may skew things further. Nor did you explain why, despite having a ton of female friends who stayed at your house, you weren't able to turn those into romantic options.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  >Nor did you explain why, despite having a ton of female friends who stayed at your house, you weren't able to turn those into romantic options. How is he supposed to answer that? The only way to get a definitive answer for your question is to find all the female friends, then arrest them and interrogate them for a week or so (to ensure they give honest answers). Assuming OP was actually interested in some of these women, it's very likely he doesn't know why they weren't interested, and normally people don't give honest answers about why they're not interested in being more than friends with someone, to avoid hurt feelings. What really galls me about these comments is that many people here, including you, seem to completely not understand that different countries have different cultures, and what things are considered attractive traits in romantic partners differ greatly from place to place. People are NOT the same in different parts of the world.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
medvezhenok 4y ago
I originally wrote this comment to someone else, but that parent comment was deleted, so I'll copy it here. I think you've done many of the right things - perhaps it was just bad luck. Depending on where you live - that could be another factor. Who is your competition? Who are women comparing you against? The other thing to note is - did the things you do for self-improvement actually improve your status, as the women would see it. Status is frequently linked to power (and not necessarily income), but not always. The other counterintuitive thing is that you want to be capable of evil, but choose to do good. I think a lot of people who are good people miss this point. It is crucial. If you have no capacity to commit evil, then by doing good you are showing no virtue - you are just acting by default. Develop your own dark side, learn to be selfish and then choose not to be (but don't go overboard). (lots of parallels here in popular stories - Harry Potter / Voldemort, Vampires, Werewolves, etc etc)
dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
>I sincerely believe that I am a respectful, Therein lies your 'problem'.
- ASalazarMX 4y ago
  Whoa, what's wrong with respecting other people? I assume your parent comment meant he doesn't respect them exclusively for being women and having fleshiness, but as a recognition of their qualities as human beings, if they're worth respecting. At least, that's what any sensible adult should do. You can admire someone for being a good leader, honest, brave, smart, etc., regardless of their sex.
cleribus 4y ago
Just out of curiosity, which is the country you have relocated to that seems to be much better than the US for dating?
- philangist 4y ago
  Not the OP but I relocated to Barcelona from New York City a year ago and my dating life has never been healthier or funner. Women here are the most open of anywhere I've been in the world. Now dating a young Russian artist who's very sweet and easygoing and I wish I'd moved here 4 years earlier.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

hgsgm 4y ago

A war helps thin out competition from other local men.

GalenErso 4y ago

There are so many people looking for respectful, reasonably attractive, healthy, financially successful and emotionally mature men. My guess is that your approach is the problem. Perhaps you don't go to the right places, or strike conversations with the right people (e.g. women too young or immature to recognize emotionally mature men). Maybe you should work on improving your social skills. Or maybe your self-perception doesn't match reality or other people's perceptions.

jimbokun 4y ago
Do you have any data to back up your claims?
ShredKazoo 4y ago
>There are so many people looking for respectful, reasonably attractive, healthy, financially successful and emotionally mature men. In what region?
b800h 4y ago
Both the article and the comment you're replying to suggest that isn't the case.

goethes_kind 4y ago

If you have many women as friends you are doing something good and bad at the same time. The good is that you can meet women and can interact with them and can get them to trust you. The bad is that you somehow give off all the wrong signals. Then you go abroad and you think the women are different, but they aren't. I have lived in three countries. You just have a higher value as an American man abroad. Ironically, this might result in you partnering up with a more superficial woman.

medvezhenok 4y ago
You should always strive to maximize your value in the dating market - any other strategy is self-defeating (note that you can settle after maximizing - that is totally allowed). That means you should try to meet women doing activities you excel at (relative to other people), demonstrating leadership qualities (giving talks at conferences, for ex.) or in GP's case, moving abroad. I'm not sure how the people you attract by doing these things are any more superficial than the rest; attraction to status-displaying qualities like this is built into the human genetics and goes way beyond intellectualization. Basically we think that we are advanced apes, but in practice we're really very fancy peacocks with brains :) Note that social status/leadership quality is actually more important than income (there's lots of anecdotal data that women would prefer a doctor over an engineer making the same income, because of social connotations).
- tester756 4y ago
  If you're using "strategies" then you're already not genuine, thus not trustworthy, imo.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    Have you seen how women approach dating? Double standard much?
    - tester756 4y ago
      I didn't say anything about sex. Point stands regardless of sex.

bluetomcat 4y ago

> They would regularly initiate conversations, share personal details of their life As a non-American, what strikes me about young American females in particular is how talkative and expressive they are. I've never talked with them in person, but I've observed young tourist groups in Europe. They can be talking trivialities about their experiences in a self-assertive way non-stop, constantly littered with "I was like", "it was like", "he was like".

penguin_booze 4y ago
Ah, the Great American "like" metronome; the universal connective; the default prefix to all sentences.

francisofascii 4y ago

If only young women actually wanted all those desirable qualities. Maybe they do when they hit 40. I am hugely generalizing, but in America, young women want mercurial, adventurous, emotionally distant, confident sounding, tough guys. So so solve this problem, you have to either find women who desire your qualities, or build in some of these other qualities (confidence, adventurous, toughness) without turning into a jerk.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

red-iron-pine 4y ago

Are you a man or woman? Are you trying to date women? The implication is that you're a guy after girls, but that's not clear and I'm not sure what to take from that. And did you explain anything about why it is toxic, just a reflexive "it's bad mmmmmkay" and that you left -- but you didn't say what you went looking for, or what you found, and why it's better. Furthermore there is the "[probably rich] guy in a foreign country" thing, which may skew things further. Nor did you explain why, despite having a ton of female friends who stayed at your house, you weren't able to turn those into romantic options.

midoridensha 4y ago
>Nor did you explain why, despite having a ton of female friends who stayed at your house, you weren't able to turn those into romantic options. How is he supposed to answer that? The only way to get a definitive answer for your question is to find all the female friends, then arrest them and interrogate them for a week or so (to ensure they give honest answers). Assuming OP was actually interested in some of these women, it's very likely he doesn't know why they weren't interested, and normally people don't give honest answers about why they're not interested in being more than friends with someone, to avoid hurt feelings. What really galls me about these comments is that many people here, including you, seem to completely not understand that different countries have different cultures, and what things are considered attractive traits in romantic partners differ greatly from place to place. People are NOT the same in different parts of the world.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

medvezhenok 4y ago

I originally wrote this comment to someone else, but that parent comment was deleted, so I'll copy it here. I think you've done many of the right things - perhaps it was just bad luck. Depending on where you live - that could be another factor. Who is your competition? Who are women comparing you against? The other thing to note is - did the things you do for self-improvement actually improve your status, as the women would see it. Status is frequently linked to power (and not necessarily income), but not always. The other counterintuitive thing is that you want to be capable of evil, but choose to do good. I think a lot of people who are good people miss this point. It is crucial. If you have no capacity to commit evil, then by doing good you are showing no virtue - you are just acting by default. Develop your own dark side, learn to be selfish and then choose not to be (but don't go overboard). (lots of parallels here in popular stories - Harry Potter / Voldemort, Vampires, Werewolves, etc etc)

dennis_jeeves1 4y ago

>I sincerely believe that I am a respectful, Therein lies your 'problem'.

ASalazarMX 4y ago
Whoa, what's wrong with respecting other people? I assume your parent comment meant he doesn't respect them exclusively for being women and having fleshiness, but as a recognition of their qualities as human beings, if they're worth respecting. At least, that's what any sensible adult should do. You can admire someone for being a good leader, honest, brave, smart, etc., regardless of their sex.

cleribus 4y ago

Just out of curiosity, which is the country you have relocated to that seems to be much better than the US for dating?

philangist 4y ago
Not the OP but I relocated to Barcelona from New York City a year ago and my dating life has never been healthier or funner. Women here are the most open of anywhere I've been in the world. Now dating a young Russian artist who's very sweet and easygoing and I wish I'd moved here 4 years earlier.