Dating

Conefed said:

While work is the most convenient location for selection, "don't shit where you eat" vibes

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That was the last bit of advice my dad ever gave me. After I got my first real job, I went home the next weekend to get some of my stuff. We were all sitting on the couch watching TV, a commercial came on and instead of flipping channels, Dad muted it and started asking me about the job. "Are there any pretty girls working there?" "I'm not sure, I haven't met everyone. It's mostly guys. There may be one or 2 in HR I guess." "Well, don't shit where ya eat boy. Don't shit where ya eat". Then the show came back on and he ignored questions from my mom and sister about what that meant. But I knew what it meant. I went back to my new home and he died the next weekend. So it wasn't exactly deathbed advice, but it was the last advice he ever gave me.

It has served me well. I've seen many office relationships go bad, and when they do, at least one of you has to find a new job. Interestingly, at my current company there are a handful of married couples who met at work and have been together for years. There are probably twice as many relationships that went the other way.

Punko said:

Try speaking to someone about your issues.

Ps. Try a hooker maybe.

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I will second the motion that hookers and strippers are way better than therapists. Cheaper, more fun, and therapists don't solve problems anyway. They listen until you solve the problem yourself.

Cad said:

Paying for social interaction is a rabbit hole that once you go down it some psychological connections that should not be broken can be broken and you can end up living an empty unsatisfying life.

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That goes for therapists too though, right? You're still paying for social interaction. If so I can get behind that, it should all be limited.

Cad said:

But look at the guys on here who talk a lot about hookers and strippers and ask if you want to end up like them.

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I don't talk about it a lot, but I was afraid of women until I was around 30. Afraid, as in no dating and unable to even form words around any woman I found remotely attractive. Strip club therapy is what cured me. I'm glad I did it because otherwise I wouldn't have been ready for my wife when she came along.

I have a friend who's a psychologist. Some day I'll ask him what he thinks of strip club therapy. He's also a pervert so I think he'll love it. I'm about 85% sure that's where I heard the thing about listening until the person solves their own problems.

Cad said:

What do you think caused your fear of women at that age? Any insight into that? No judgment, just wondering.

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Lots of ideas. The strippers never made me put it into words though. Started in Puberty (obviously) and it boiled down to not understanding them. Like, here's a thing I want, I don't know why I want it, but I do and I don't know how to get it. Oh, and they all talk, so if I fuck it up once she's going to tell every girl in the world. My world anyway. I'd seen them label other boys as creeps and it spread through the whole school instantly. So I put them on a pedestal with ropes around them not to be touched. The longer I waited to take a chance with a girl, the higher that pedestal got. I'm introverted and even though it's never been diagnosed, I suspect I've got a little bit of the 'tism, so I was naturally disinclined to want to deal with people. Even when girls showed interest in me, I ran away. One time I literally ran away from one who I had been crushing on for months.

Cad said:

Yea I think that happens to a lot of guys. And I think guys our age (assuming you're genX like me?) didn't necessarily HAVE to get with women at a young age since porn and the internet and video games exist. I think this problem was solved by necessity when "live woman" is the only opportunity.

Good on you for breaking out of it by whatever method. I wouldn't have thought strippers would help you break through that I would have thought it would make it worse, so maybe I need to re-think.

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I am gen X. I was about to say we didn't really have much porn, but I guess we did have magazines. I didn't see my first online game until college. I definitely threw myself into those games though.

Cad said:

Shit man I think I saw my first ascii titty when I was like 10 on a BBS with my Amiga in the mid-80's. By the time I went to college there was usenet. We didn't have online games but we had nightly LAN parties in college. It is amazing I still kept a girlfriend considering all that, thinking back.

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The internet was pretty much just usenet when I was in college, but we had text based D&D games called MUDs. You'd telnet into a server on a college campus somewhere and play with a bunch of people from all over. I'm not sure when HTML was actually invented but hardly anyone was using it yet. I don't think I downloaded a titty till after I graduated college. I either didn't know about those alt.binaries.erotica newsgroups, or my school blocked them.

Cad said:

Actual like video porn you had to get tapes.

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You didnt have a degenerate father who sold those for $20-30 a pop?

Tmac said:

So, I manage to get a lot of matches on dating apps, but I fkn fail at keeping these women engaged long enough to go on a date or even respond after we've matched. I realize that for every like a woman gives me cute chicks get 100 from men, so that figures.

If I slow play the text game they disappear. If I ask for a date super early they tend to disappear. The longer I've been on the app the worse it's gotten bc I went on 5 dates my first month on the app. Then several friends started giving me advice on what to do (when I didn't need it) and haven't been on a date in the last couple weeks.

It doesn't help that I'm outside a major city and don't want to drive 45 miles away to go on a date... lul

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What worked for me back when I bothered with that crap: Take things offline as quickly as possible. Slow burns and romance are fuckin' dead and buried, at least on those apps.

Send something funny as the first message that they might actually read/respond to (a question is good), then when you get a chat going, find out what they're into, where they're at, if they'd want to do something, take things offline quick. What usually worked for me was "I'm going to go to X some time this week, want to make a date out of it?" like I'm going to go do that thing regardless and not reliant on their answer. Then get a phone number and move things to text and send a few over the days leading up to the date, which is hopefully very soon. Like talking to someone on Thursday and making a plan for Friday kind of very soon. Friday usually worked pretty well for me 'cause chicks always seemed to have "plans" on Saturdays.

Course even doing all of that, sometimes they just ghost you the night of and drop off the face of the Earth so IDK.

Edit: Remembered a good one for opening question: "Know what the best thing about your profile is?" and if answered, point out something nice. Could also do "Know what the worst thing about your profile is?" (and probably get a higher response percentage, since people are so negative and the majority of women have such lousy self-esteem to begin with) and then follow that with "it doesn't have me in it anywhere" or something like that. After they answer of course.

My latest conundrum: My mom's dentist's receptionist is this gorgeous Brazilian girl, probably about 24-26 (so well over a decade my junior, not that it matters much 'cause everybody thinks I'm 28-30ish anyway until they find out otherwise).

We had such a good rapport the two times I ever met her / talked to her that after the first time my mom was commenting on all the body language cues the girl was giving me, like leaning over the desk towards me with her boobs squeezed together, and giving me "twinkly eyes" and smiling when we were having eye contact, stuff like that. My mom was like "she looked like she wanted to eat you" and she never says stuff like that about girls, so it was that obvious. She also didn't treat any other guys like this while we were there.

I've built relationships off of less than that on a first interaction. Second interaction was a little less flirty but still nice and she said it'd impress her if I came in next time knowing some phrases in Portuguese. So I went and learned a few, like "how's it going", "you look great", and "I don't know how to say anything else"

I'll see her again some time soon when my mom does the follow-up (which should be in the next week and a half or so) and I'd like to ask this chick what she's up to for Valentine's Day and maybe see if I can slide in and take her out.

Where's the conundrum, you ask? The conundrum is that I suck right now. I'm not in shape (after being in very good shape for like two decades, I've slid a lot in 2023 from overall depression). I still look good, but I'm not healthy, I'm low energy, I'm injury prone, I'm not someone I'd want to be with and I don't want to waste anybody's time. So my confidence level sucks now and certainly isn't at the level it needs to be to confidently address someone this gorgeous. I'm concerned I'll come off un-confidently or bungle my words or scare her off or any number of things. And of course the more I roll this around in my head, the more nervous I get and the less I even want to deal with it. Also feels like when my age comes up it's always a Thing with women in their 20's. Which is all I want to date, so...

Haven't cold asked anyone out in-person in a couple years without some sort of online communication first, so a lot of my approaching skills have atrophied. I can say that it definitely feels like I'd be jumping the gun if I asked her out now, but if I have another good conversation with her and the rapport is there, I could definitely ask at the end of that next conversation.

Not sure why I'm even writing all this stuff. I'll either do it or not do it, she'll either say yes or she's in a relationship already and inexplicably flirtatious with only me.

Rajaah said:

What worked for me back when I bothered with that crap: Take things offline as quickly as possible. Slow burns and romance are fuckin' dead and buried, at least on those apps.

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Absolutely. The less they have bumble/hinge/whatever open less chance of them getting distracted by newer shinier guy.

Rajaah said:

Where's the conundrum, you ask? The conundrum is that I suck right now. I'm not in shape (after being in very good shape for like two decades, I've slid a lot in 2023 from overall depression). I still look good, but I'm not healthy, I'm low energy, I'm injury prone, I'm not someone I'd want to be with and I don't want to waste anybody's time. So my confidence level sucks now and certainly isn't at the level it needs to be to confidently address someone this gorgeous. I'm concerned I'll come off un-confidently or bungle my words or scare her off or any number of things. And of course the more I roll this around in my head, the more nervous I get and the less I even want to deal with it. Also feels like when my age comes up it's always a Thing with women in their 20's. Which is all I want to date, so...

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Come up with a plan to improve yourself, spend a week or two implementing it then ask her out while continuing to improve yourself.

Cad said:

There were entire porn BBS's but they mostly just had like Playboy/Penthouse scans, shit like that. It was like a gold mine at the time. Actual like video porn you had to get tapes.

HTML really came about in 94-95 when NCSA Mosaic came out. Before that most "websites" were just gopher addresses and all text. I definitely played MUDs too, there were several that I played but I'm totally spacing on the names right now. I seem to remember one of them being a mafia game. Fun times. I also remember playing warcraft 1 and 2 a lot on Kali starting in '95 (my second year of college).

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Nuclear War, knife, infinity, kobra, enkidu, and two more who's names are escaping me. One was a diku mud and it might have been called diku. I didn't like that one. Too many fucking colors. Looked like it was coded by faggots.

My dad had a playboy collection in the garage. That was my gold mine. Maybe that's why I never discovered the BBSs. We never had a second phone line or any kind of internet access at the house.