I really must commend to you “The Dao of Steve” – it is vitally important to not care about the young woman’s answer when you are asking the question. Before… or after… you may care as much as your heart desires it, but you must remove all desire. You must become desireless when you ask. You will be far calmer for it, and calm creates confidence and confidence is attractive.
Also, I do recall – fwiw – this young woman at university. I found her utterly fetching. Charming, funny, physically quite my favorite type. We were friendly, but not in close circles, so there wasn’t much of the needy hanging out. I spent three years trying to muster the courage to ask her out and finally did. And she gave a very enthusiastic “yes” and we went off to have dinner…
…and it was the dullest, most uncomfortable, most tedious date I ever went on. Before or since. Absolutely zero chemistry. But you know what? I saw her years later on the street and it was awesome because I doubt I had thought about her for a moment after graduation until that moment. But all those other women who I didn’t ask? They still occupy little bits of my headspace and they really don’t deserve it. Ask her out, man.
Macbeth: If we should fail?
Lady Macbeth: We fail? But screw your courage to the sticking place, and we’ll not fail.
Being vulnerable, whether public speaking, asking a fetching paramour out, defending a dissertation are all nerve racking. This is not a boast: more women have asked me out than I have.
I think, in all circumstances, it should come down to this: friendship needs to be honest and bilateral. If one person in the relationship is there under false pretenses (e.g. doing things solely to work towards convincing the other party to begin a romantic relationship), then that’s bad.
I’m not good at admitting attraction, but after I do, if I’ve been rebuffed, I attempt to continue the friendship. If it’s too awkward for either of us, that’s a shame. But if we can continue the friendship, my understanding is that it’s never going to evolve into one of a romantic nature, that I should have no expectation of it ever doing so, and that, if it does, the next move is hers to make. I’ve already explicitly informed her of my interest, and she shut it down: that is the new default state. If she wants that state to change, she has to be the one to act to change it, and that action needs to be at least as explicit as the action she took to shut me down in the first place.
And to be clear this next sentence is not about you, but the thread in general: where things go sideways is when the ‘default state’ gets bitter and one sided.
I’ll let you know when I find the off switch for “desire.” Where did I put that manual?
Besides, I wouldn’t want to turn off the desire. It’s the rush of adrenaline which makes terrifying things fun. And “socially awkward” is who I am: if the person I’m trying to ask out can’t see that, and admire the courage that I have to muster to overcome that? Not worth having.
Oh, I know. I regret more the roads not taken than those I took and failed in the attempt. However, there’s no one currently occupying that bit of my headspace at the moment. Besides, I’m moving in a few months: timing is currently bad to begin what I would hope to be a long-term relationship.
Worth noting, though, that there was someone I did ask out a couple of weeks ago, despite the upcoming move (she was that great). Alas, the lass already had a paramour.
It does, I know, but only with practice. Cliff-diving also gets better with practice, but that isn’t much comfort when you’re standing on the edge, looking down.
Yes, but the problem isn’t getting thrown back, it’s that the gender norm for the gender I’m interested is “wait for the fish to jump into the boat,” not “bait a hook and line.”
I think one often does better, though, if you try to do the sorting earlier than later.
It’s certainly my experience that I knew I was romantically interested in particular women very early on and I think many hurt feelings can be avoided by setting that out up front, resolving it, and building a relationship (or not) based on clearing up that point. I’ve always taken it as a given that women know that pretty early on, too. Sure, it might develop later and if it does – bully for the both of you – but hanging around not telling people what you feel isn’t really respectful to the relationship and bound to cause resentment later.
Romantic feelings rarely happen later. I know half a dozen people where it did, and they are the exception. If romance isn’t reciprocated pretty quick–let’s say a year–the odds are low.
I’d stick with it being so close to “never” as to be indistinguishable from it, but I didn’t want to water down the affect of your internet bear hug, either.
MRAs are the Rule 63 version of 70s/80s RadFems. I dislike them both for what are ultimately the same reasons. Both groups promote ideas around gender that make my psychological personal safety alarms ring.
Unfortunatly there doesn’t appear to be a reasonable version of MRAs (yet), while there are plenty of reasonable feminists who are not RadFems (but may still be radical).
I rarely think about how intensely glad I am that I haven’t been dating for, like, 15 years. But holy crap am I ever glad not to be dealing with that right now. I was very much nervous to the point of paralysis, and clueless to the point of unintentional parody. I spent most of high school with a crush on a girl I was friends with - it never went anywhere, which in retrospect was probably positive for both of us.
A big retrospective thank you to a girl I met in university who, while not quite asking me out, nevertheless dropped hints as subtle as sledgehammers. It didn’t work out in the long term, but she changed my life
anyway, I end this friday drunkpost with the song it reminded me of:
I don’t know why
The people want to meet
When all they know is that
They’ll breed like rabbits in the end
Cause ordinary people on the street
They never know
But if they can’t be rabbits
They’ll be friends
Wow, this quickly blew up into a different discussion, which IMO is fine, because the faux Seuss wasn’t very good.
I am critical of “dating” also. People both for and against make it sound as if there was some real social protocol at work in this, but if there is any, it seems elusive. Sure, it would be great for people to know if they were interested in each other, and how interested, and what kind of interested. But the reality of it seems fairly random to me. Even “asking a person out” does not necessarily clarify to them (or even one’s self) how one feels about them.
Dismissing romantic love as being a sketchy ideal only brings other problems to the foreground. If all sexual relationships are ultimately just between friends, then does one, and how does one, determine which friendships have sexual components and which do not? People seem to be deliberately obscure about this sort of thing, systematically avoiding being either completely open or closed, and instead required some weird internested social rituals with varying degrees of ambiguity. So it’s hardly any wonder that many find such issues “difficult” or “confusing”.
Traditional modes of courtship had many. many problems, but they did offer clarity. It’s a price worth paying, but it’s certainly a price that was paid.
