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I don't think I'm ugly[0], but it is hard to be sure! ;) I have a friend of mine who is short (generally considered a disadvantage) and who has one miserable p

by com2kid 13y ago

I don't think I'm ugly[0], but it is hard to be sure! ;) I have a friend of mine who is short (generally considered a disadvantage) and who has one miserable picture, but his messages are good enough that he has a good success rate on OKC. (His messages also violate every guideline, they are at least 5 paragraphs long and very in depth!) The problem is, it is disheartening in the extreme. Spending years going to the gym and getting in shape, get promotions at work, buy a house, all for naught. Doing the math, I figured it'd take me a 3 or 4 dozen dates to get used to socializing with women in a dating environment. The problem is in the last 2 years my success rate at getting dates has plummeted, I used to be able get a date a week w/o issue, now, months upon months of work to get one date. Ugh. This obviously sets back progress of skill acquisition. It is annoying, I am one of those people who is otherwise successful, but the amount of contact I had with women before joining my current team @ work was almost nil, so an entire skillset[1] isn't there. OKC helps because it creates a way by which to meet women (for reference only one of my friends has any contact with women either!), but it involves what distinctly looks like black magic to be successful on it. [0]http://ak2.okccdn.com/php/load_okc_image.php/images/150x150/558x800/395x23/1056x684/0/16548340405924187691.jpeg http://ak2.okccdn.com/php/load_okc_image.php/images/150x150/... [1]Recognizing non-verbal cross-gender communications. A subset of non-verbal communications in general of course, but there are (thankfully!) now good written resources on general purpose non-verbal communications.

mjmahone17 13y ago
Join a dance program. Your issue seems to be lack of confidence around women in general, not specifically in a dating environment. Get comfortable with your body in an environment where a lot of women are. And don't try to date the women you dance with, at least not initially. Dance is just an easy thing to join: you could also go to underground music venues, join a co-ed softball/volleyball/tae kwon do team, take arts classes at a community college or join a book club at your library.
- stevewillows 13y ago
  This is fantastic advice! I think dancing above all others will speed up the process of confidence around the ladies.
- crazygringo 13y ago
  I second the dance idea -- I took up salsa dancing and similar styles years ago, for a couple years straight, and it made a huge difference. Your posture, your comfort around women, your confidence -- it'll do wonders.
- com2kid 13y ago
  Getting used to people touching is already sort of weird. It is odd because of how different it is even amongst Americans. Being born and raised in Seattle, guys never really hug (hah some days the handshake is even uncertain!), but I have recently made friends with groups from other areas of the countries and it is interesting seeing different standards of expected physical interaction. But yeah, dance classes have been recommended to me. I'm doing improv right now, which is already helping a good deal, it is a different set of experiences.
- innertracks 13y ago
  Another vote for dancing! I used to dread dancing for many years. Then I found tango. Argentine Tango has been an amazing positive dimension to add to my life. My confidence in social settings in general and particularly with women has been greatly improved. It's a great balance to programming and problem solving activities, too.
vidarh 13y ago
Online dating is tilted much more in favour of women odds wise than "real life dating". If you are at all able to approach a woman in real life and introduce yourself, do that instead. You'll get far more social interactions far faster (you don't even need to successfully ask anyone out to start improving). As suggested elsewhere - joining a dance group or something is great for an easy environment for introductions. But even walking up to total strangers on the street and introducing yourself typically gets better responses than online dating. Where online dating beats "real life" is in using sheer volume to compensate.
keerthiko 13y ago
I can't say this is advice, but more of personal anecdotes that may give you some insight you might be missing. I started using OkC to prove to an unreasonably paranoid (male) friend who was somewhat desperate to get a girlfriend that he should try it. He was based in Boston, myself in San Francisco. I would check profiles out from both locations and link him ones that I thought he might like. I was mostly just enjoying poking around the first month. I seriously approached the first girl that I did only because she played StarCraft. Ironically, the most dates (5) with a single girl off OkC I went on was with that first girl! What worked for me there was picking a characteristic to look for that isn't "the sum of all features that would make my ideal girlfriend/wife" to find a person. And not something generic like "games" or "math" or "music." In my experience, even a specific TV show or music taste is not something people really relate over (I tried following a TV show to get along better with a girl I had a huge crush on who raved about it). If there's something specific you spend a lot of time on that you care about, try to find that. Talk about that. Try to find someone you would just love to geek out with, not because you're lonely and/or in need of a partner. A lot of my other approaches were very similar to your messages. Asking lots of questions, showing an interest, proving I read their profile. Even though girls always demand you show you read their profile, dont ask that much. Just one question TOPS in a single message. Don't be that ridiculously interested in knowing everything about her so quickly. Just imagine the progression you had with getting to know your closest friend you know. It didn't start with you sitting across a table bombarding each other with questions. Pick one thing that catches your interest that you think would roll well. Go from there. It's all about playing on your interpersonal strengths (everyone has something here). Mine is in being ridiculously passionate about a few topics (eg: education, women in technology, cross-culture romances) fairly popular among women in my preferred demographic. I am also even more passionate about game design and experience design, but I try not to get into that unless the girl expresses interest. And I always lay the disclaimer of how much I'm going to geek out when we get there. I too am uncomfortable with people-touching (although I very much wanted to not be!), so it took a while to get over that. Your weakness seems to be general communication discomfort around women. Takes a little getting used to. Of course you will get frustrated, but if you let any frustration show, it will heavily backfire. So try to keep a check on it! However, as you can probably gather from my comment above, I think OkC (and online dating in general) is a difficult medium to make more than a superficial connection via. Context is everything. "Met online" just doesn't spark the magic. You need to have a better genesis story to even put you and the partner in the right mood. Good luck! PS: You're most certainly not unattractive. There's definitely a significant segment of women which definitely intersects the set that you'd be interested in that would find you attractive, and that's all that matters.
yitchelle 13y ago
Back in the day when chat rooms were filled with actual people rather bots, this was a great place to talk with the other gender without much fear. I actually meet my wife through a MSN Chat room. I think that one big disadvantage for those who work in a highly technical field (engineer, scientist etc), contact with the ladies are quite few, this means opportunities for interaction will be significantly smaller.

by com2kid 13y ago

mjmahone17 13y ago

Join a dance program. Your issue seems to be lack of confidence around women in general, not specifically in a dating environment. Get comfortable with your body in an environment where a lot of women are. And don't try to date the women you dance with, at least not initially. Dance is just an easy thing to join: you could also go to underground music venues, join a co-ed softball/volleyball/tae kwon do team, take arts classes at a community college or join a book club at your library.

stevewillows 13y ago
This is fantastic advice! I think dancing above all others will speed up the process of confidence around the ladies.
crazygringo 13y ago
I second the dance idea -- I took up salsa dancing and similar styles years ago, for a couple years straight, and it made a huge difference. Your posture, your comfort around women, your confidence -- it'll do wonders.
com2kid 13y ago
Getting used to people touching is already sort of weird. It is odd because of how different it is even amongst Americans. Being born and raised in Seattle, guys never really hug (hah some days the handshake is even uncertain!), but I have recently made friends with groups from other areas of the countries and it is interesting seeing different standards of expected physical interaction. But yeah, dance classes have been recommended to me. I'm doing improv right now, which is already helping a good deal, it is a different set of experiences.
innertracks 13y ago
Another vote for dancing! I used to dread dancing for many years. Then I found tango. Argentine Tango has been an amazing positive dimension to add to my life. My confidence in social settings in general and particularly with women has been greatly improved. It's a great balance to programming and problem solving activities, too.

vidarh 13y ago

Online dating is tilted much more in favour of women odds wise than "real life dating". If you are at all able to approach a woman in real life and introduce yourself, do that instead. You'll get far more social interactions far faster (you don't even need to successfully ask anyone out to start improving). As suggested elsewhere - joining a dance group or something is great for an easy environment for introductions. But even walking up to total strangers on the street and introducing yourself typically gets better responses than online dating. Where online dating beats "real life" is in using sheer volume to compensate.

keerthiko 13y ago

I can't say this is advice, but more of personal anecdotes that may give you some insight you might be missing. I started using OkC to prove to an unreasonably paranoid (male) friend who was somewhat desperate to get a girlfriend that he should try it. He was based in Boston, myself in San Francisco. I would check profiles out from both locations and link him ones that I thought he might like. I was mostly just enjoying poking around the first month. I seriously approached the first girl that I did only because she played StarCraft. Ironically, the most dates (5) with a single girl off OkC I went on was with that first girl! What worked for me there was picking a characteristic to look for that isn't "the sum of all features that would make my ideal girlfriend/wife" to find a person. And not something generic like "games" or "math" or "music." In my experience, even a specific TV show or music taste is not something people really relate over (I tried following a TV show to get along better with a girl I had a huge crush on who raved about it). If there's something specific you spend a lot of time on that you care about, try to find that. Talk about that. Try to find someone you would just love to geek out with, not because you're lonely and/or in need of a partner. A lot of my other approaches were very similar to your messages. Asking lots of questions, showing an interest, proving I read their profile. Even though girls always demand you show you read their profile, dont ask that much. Just one question TOPS in a single message. Don't be that ridiculously interested in knowing everything about her so quickly. Just imagine the progression you had with getting to know your closest friend you know. It didn't start with you sitting across a table bombarding each other with questions. Pick one thing that catches your interest that you think would roll well. Go from there. It's all about playing on your interpersonal strengths (everyone has something here). Mine is in being ridiculously passionate about a few topics (eg: education, women in technology, cross-culture romances) fairly popular among women in my preferred demographic. I am also even more passionate about game design and experience design, but I try not to get into that unless the girl expresses interest. And I always lay the disclaimer of how much I'm going to geek out when we get there. I too am uncomfortable with people-touching (although I very much wanted to not be!), so it took a while to get over that. Your weakness seems to be general communication discomfort around women. Takes a little getting used to. Of course you will get frustrated, but if you let any frustration show, it will heavily backfire. So try to keep a check on it! However, as you can probably gather from my comment above, I think OkC (and online dating in general) is a difficult medium to make more than a superficial connection via. Context is everything. "Met online" just doesn't spark the magic. You need to have a better genesis story to even put you and the partner in the right mood. Good luck! PS: You're most certainly not unattractive. There's definitely a significant segment of women which definitely intersects the set that you'd be interested in that would find you attractive, and that's all that matters.

yitchelle 13y ago

Back in the day when chat rooms were filled with actual people rather bots, this was a great place to talk with the other gender without much fear. I actually meet my wife through a MSN Chat room. I think that one big disadvantage for those who work in a highly technical field (engineer, scientist etc), contact with the ladies are quite few, this means opportunities for interaction will be significantly smaller.