Friendzone

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Yes she was. So were several other people.

You're right that the vast majority of women aren't sadistic. You're right that BaneBear's female friends were almost certainly not trying to hurt him or use him. They were most probably not aware that BaneBear was attracted to them. They probably just thought of him as another one of his friends.

Now if we say that BaneBear's goal is to get a girlfriend, you're right that he was going about it in the wrong way. And someone should tell him the right way without being patronising.

Just because BaneBear did something not very smart, that doesn't make it impossible for someone else to have patronized him. He did something wrong. Aurora wants to tell him not to do that. Fine. Aurora (and a few other people) tell him not to do that in a really patronising way.

So yes it was wrong of him to befriend girls for the sole purpose of entering into a relationship with them and it was also wrong of Aurora to be really patronising to him and it was also wrong of me to be really patronising to her.

The trouble is, people tend to think in absolutes. They think that if two people enter into a debate, if one person is wrong about one thing, that means the other person is automatically 100% right about everything they said.


People should stop thinking in absolutes.I agree with you that BaneBear's first paragraph is wrong. It's OK to tell him it's wrong (without being patronizing about it).

BaneBear's second paragraph? He wants to know how to attract women. This is an OK question. Fnord said BaneBear has to earn it. This is BaneBear asking how to earn it, not saying that he should get it without doing anything (not that I disagree with Fnord's sentiment that relationships are an earnable commodity like a salary).

So if people say BaneBear should work in improving himself, he never said he shouldn't. He just wanted to know how to go about improving himself. That's not entitlement.

BaneBear said he wants to evict all women from his life who do that to him. I don't think the women did anything wrong but it would be wrong to say that BaneBear is continuing to be friend's with women who aren't into him because he wants to defriend them.

So that's not him trying to be friends in hopes that women will like him (anymore). That's him not being friends with women in hopes they'll like him (anymore).

Yes he was doing that in the recent past and yes that was bad but before you tell him to stop doing that, remember that in his original post he said he's already going to stop doing that. His last sentance is him saying he will not do that again. So there's no need to tell him not to do that when in his opening post he already said he's not going to do that again.

Instead of tell him what he should do (he already knows he shouldn't do it now) why not tell him what he should do?

What he wanted to know was what should he do to make himself more attractive to women. He doesn't want to know that so he can befriend women with the deceptive purpose of luring them into a relationship. On the contrary he wants to know so he can be upfront with women and enter directly into a relationship.

No deception needed. No false kindness needed (not that BaneBear said he did anything kind to them, though I agree that it was deceptive. Good thing he's already stopped doing that).

(Sidenote: in other L&D threads, if a guy says he wants to approach women directly, someone will often tell him he should be friends for a while first. I guess there's just no pleasing people).

So since I have little dating experience (I've only been on a handful of dates) could someone kindly offer some dating tips or asking girls out tips so that after 11 pages of mispurposed tangent this thread can finally fulfil its original intended purpose.

(And no, asking for advice on how to ask girls out is not PUA stuff. If no one ever asked anyone out the human species would die out. Yes it's PUA to use deception to ask girls out.)

edit: Apologies to Outrider for me saying no one had given any dating advice because Outrider already had given some good dating tips (I may use one of them myself, no more formal attire for dates).

Last edited by RetroGamer87 on 21 Jan 2016, 3:28 am, edited 1 time in total.

And yet many women *DO* get asked out by men regardless of what these women do! They often don't need to sit around waiting for it to happen. And many other women flirt with men they're attracted to to get his attention in the hopes that he'll make the first move. FYI sometimes women make the first move, but only with men who are exceptionally desirable. So yeah, men do get asked out, but only the lucky few.

The dating market is driven by demand more than by supply(and the latter only becomes an issue when there is an extreme scarcity of one party). And overall, the net demand for women by men exceeds the net demand for men by women. Your flowery, convoluted words will not change this. I am making an inductive generalization but you might want to look at online dating statistics at who sends the first message. Women often complain in their profiles about guys bombarding them with messages while men complain in forums about women not replying to their messages.

Dating isn't entirely easy for anyone but suppose it's true that women have the upper hand, S0 WUT?!?
Whining about this won't change a dayamn thang kids! I acknowledge that women don't owe men anything and vice versa.
Banebear and pals: You cannot change the rules of the game, you can only change your approach and learn how to play by them.

I'm not buying the premise that men have to ask women out or the corollary that women have to be asked out.

Here's why. In my (admitedly limited) experience, most dating scenarios are initiated by the woman and always in a subtle way. i.e. the woman asks if the guy is interested (and by extension wants to go out with her) in a subtle way and then the man answers in an overt way.

If the man's answer eventually takes the form of a question e.g. "Do you want to go out with me", that question is more a request for confirmation that the guy read the girl's signal right than a question in itself.

As you say, women may seem desperate if they try too long to get a guy's attention. Sometimes it's the guy's fault for not noticing, sometimes it's the girl's fault for not having good flirting skills.

The myth that guys spontaneously ask girls out without any prior prompting may be what makes a few girls wonder why they've never been asked out. Perhaps they were just waiting for a guy to ask them out without realizing they have to do something first.

This myth may also lead to some guys who buy it to get chastised by girls they asked out who didn't show any prior signs of interest.

Oddly enough, all these people who say "just be more confident and ask some random girl out" don't really seem to understand how it works. I'd say that feel-good confident stuff is bad advice. Confidence is good but without direction it's blind.Unfortutaly that kind of thinking is equally prevalent in both sexes.

Wait... I thought if a woman flirts, that counts as making the first move since its effectively the prime mover. Am I wrong?Pretty women have the other hand. Unfortunately for women who don't match conventional standards of beauty, getting a date can be exceptionally difficult.

You grew up with an older sister? That makes a huge difference. Someone who grew up as an only child may have far less knowledge of women than you do.

Here's a fascinating link. See point 5.
http://www.leelofland.com/wordpress/15- ... iblings-2/
Better yet I'll save you the trouble;
Life is isn't fair. I'm not saying it is or that it should be. Just bear in mind that not everyone grew up with an older sister. Their basic observation skills may not come into play if they had less opportunity to observe young women's behavior in a close setting.

No. That my input is less valuable than that of your imagined females.


No worries.

O.o

I know many women get asked out. Loads of them. And many, many men ask women out and succeed. I know this by looking at the world around me and seeing many, many couples. They're all over the damn shop!

Now, if we're looking to compare here, we'd need to be sure what 'succees' counts as. If a man asks out a woman he is interested in and she says 'yes', that's success. So, the corollary success would be a woman being asked out by a man she is interested in. Men do not, by definition, ask out women they have no interest in. If one would not say 'I know you have no interest in Mary, but try asking her out', then nor can one say 'I know you have no interest in Mark, but he did ask you out. Why not go out with him?'.

But of course, a number of men ask and do not succeed. And a number of women are never asked.

My point about women being asked out was that it is the corollary - the necessary 'other half' - to men having to ask women out. And that further, waiting to be asked out isn't exactly easy either, and that there's ups and downs on both sides.



My words may be flowery - I hope they are; it's how I get the ladies - but they are not convoluted. My reasoning is clear and precise.

My online dating experience was about balanced, in terms of first message sent.

I disagree about your 'net demand' remark, though it may be hard to measure. If you have in mind (and obviously we're in the heterosexual monogamous paradigm here) the number of men vs the number of women looking for a relationship, I'd say that's pretty much balanced. It'll never be 1:1, obviously, but close enough. If you're talking about 'asking out' or 'making a move', I would expect to see more men than women do this because we still have the cultural hangover of 'men ask (are active), women are asked (are passive)'. It's hard to weigh up a demand when those 'demanding' only have a passive role. If we consider 'demand' by presence on dating sites and the dating scene at large, again, that's pretty much balanced.

What I think we're looking at is first, that cultural hangover of 'men ask, women get asked'. That is changing, thank God, but it's still there (its presence varying in terms of nationality, local social/cultural mores, age group etc) . I then think, in terms of dating websites, there's a number of men who send a LOT of messages in a 'throw enough balls at a coconut' kind of way. These messages will have little specific content as to the woman's profile, her interests etc, but rather be 'hey hun ur gorjus wanna chat' kind of things. In meat space, this is a bit like a man walking down the street shouting his vague interest to no-one in particular, hoping someone responds.



And suppose it's true that men have the upper hand? Or, suppose there is no upper hand to be had, but the notion of such is a matter of bias and projection?

Oh, I don't either. I do think that was a strong cultural norm that has weakened over time, though it is still there. Rather, it was an illustrative point about corollaries. IF men are the ones who ask, THEN women have to wait to be asked.



I'd sort of agree. I think on both sides there's hedging, hesitant non-verbal/indirect stuff before a man will ask a woman out. I'd imagine he'll want to be sure he won't be rebuffed, and she'll want to reassure she won't rebuff him. As such, it can be quite hard to pinpoint what it was that started them down that path, who showed interest first, or if they both sensed it at the same time.

I wouldn't go so far as to ascribe fault. I think it's just one of the common mishaps of the human condition. The subtleties of non-verbal/indirect communication can be a nightmare for the neurotypical, let alone the non-typical.

"Do you think Sean likes me? We had a real deep conversation yesterday, and I felt like he was opening up, and you know Sean. And his eyes... What does it mean?"

"I was talking to Chrissie, and I ended up telling her about stuff that was on my mind, that I didn't even know was on my mind. She was real easy to talk to. And she had this smile and this brow thing. What does it mean? I think she likes me. Do you think she like me?"

And so on.



I think you have a point here. 'Asking out' happens in a context.

If one goes to a singles bar/night, the context is fairly clear. If a woman is waiting for a train, alone on a platform, just wanting to get home and have something warm to eat, and a man comes up to her and, for all her 'I do not want to talk to anyone' stuff going on (headphones in, pointed absorption in smartphone or book) and her polite-but-closed responses he keeps trying to talk to her in a 'chatting up' way - that's a different context.

And yes, between acquaintences (co-workers, classmates etc), the context may take some time to develop from the small flirtations to bolder moves before, as sure as he can be of the response, the man asks the woman out. And again, mis-readings and non-readings happen a lot.

Oddly - or perhaps not - any relationship I've had, I've fallen into. I have not directly asked out, nor have I been asked out. I have not 'dated'. That said, the background for these was meeting each other through dating medium (personals in the back of a music magazine, voice ad phone dating, online dating), so I don't know if contact through that counts as 'asking out'.



That was interesting. My immediate household was one of a single mother and older sister. My larger family, thanks to the absence of my dad and the presence of all three of my cousins being girls, was female heavy.

I don't know that I have any particular 'knowledge' of women because of this. Certainly I'm not 'wise in the ways of women' (after all, there's no 'women' to be 'wise in the ways of'). People still baffle me, regardless of gender.

What I do have is an awareness. I saw the things they went through to try and get and keep boyfriends. I heard the fretting and the s**t they had to deal with, saw the hours in front of mirrors. I saw my mother change from a warm, good-humoured person into a callous one, eventually throwing her kids under the bus in order to try and hold onto the man who is now my stepfather. And from this I have nothing but scorn for the notion that women have it easy, that they don't have to do anything, that it's all handed to them.

I am far more at ease around women than I am men, but I don't think women are more at ease around me than any other man. And this should be put in the context that I am generally uneasy around people.

I'm aware of the difficulties men have. I am a man. I've lived my life as a man - more importantly, being addressed as a man. I watch the media, I read stories, and I understand the various messages being addressed to me. But I've also spent a long time around women, and understand the idea they in any way have it 'easy' is so much moronic bilge.




Huh? People tend to have different opinions. Joan may prefer a more direct approach, and Kate may prefer a more drawn out/built up one. Any advice is ultimately up to the advised, of what makes most sense to them in the situation.

So women sometimes have to wait and be patient..............whoop-dee-doo! But this corollary is an assumption on your part. Men do not *have* to ask women out but if they want to actually get a date, well, nothing ventured nothing gained.

In terms of online dating, I did an experiment of creating a fake female profile on Okcupid using random photos from FB profiles and I noticed that this fake profile was constantly getting multiple messages every single day. Plenty of women do send the first message online if they're interested but according to oktrends women get initial messages far more frequently than men do and overall receive more attention from male users in aggregate than vice versa.

It's not simply that women are taught to be passive, it's that having guys do the chasing makes them feel more desirable than when they have to chase men. The more attractive a woman is physically, the more often she gets asked out. I daresay that asking guys out IRL requires women to swallow their pride and many aren't willing to bother since there are places they can go where guys will hit on them(like bars and clubs).

The corollary is that men and women have interchangeable roles in the dating/mating game when I see far too much evidence to the contrary.

And what is your evidence that the ratio of single men to single women is 1:1? You don't seem to comprehend that even if the ratio is close to 1:1, if one sex is in greater demand overall than the other that will skew the mating dynamic in their favor. Biology DOES play a role in dating whether you like it or not and there is decades of research to back this up. The consequences of sex are ultimately much greater for women then for men. So even if the singles ratio is 1:1, women are harder to please and more selective which in turn in makes the net demand for women higher than for men

Cl personals for my city has 1 woman for 10 guys posting looking for love a day.
So for every woman looking for a relationship she has 10 guys to choose from. It's no wonder women here are so picky.

I really don't think the societal norms have really weakened that much--except maybe within bohemian/avant-garde/academic circles.

Outside of these circles, it's still quite the norm for the guy to ask the girl out on a date.

I've lived 55 years. I've only been asked out once--when I was 17 and she was 16. She turned out to be a Jesus freak.

You may be right be right but you should be glad you don't live in China, were the former one child policy lead to a preference for sons over daughters, meaning that at the moment the ratio between the sexes for the 20 - 30 year old crowd is not 1:1. Over there, the young men significantly outnumber the young women, making it really hard for young men to get a date. For this reason, there are millions of young men in China who are single.

Also be glad you don't live in a society that practices polygamy. That practice led to a large imbalance in the gender ratio, creating an underclass majority of men who'd go their whole lives being single. These lives were often short, as the ruling minority would often try to rebalance the gender ratio by sending the young men off to die in war. Imagine being expected to loyally die for some rich guy who selfishly married all your potential girlfriends.

So men sometimes have to ask women out......whoop-de-dooo!

See, I can do that. Not sure what the point is.

The corollary is the one that comes up in the statement, often thrown around in these parts, that 'it's not fair, men always have to ask women out'. That was all I intended it to be. I think RetroGamer87 had an interesting point about the nuanced test-signals of flirtation that occur before any interest is explicitly vocalised.



Yeah, I know. I already talked about that.



Yes, and men like to chase women as it makes them feel all powerful and 'on the hunt' and ug ug.

You can't see a scenario where women are taught their value is in being desired and chased? Where men are taught their role is in chasing, their value in getting the woman to agree? You don't think that's something that plays out time and again in the media?



And yet they do change. Women do approach men in a direct manner. How confusing.



I did not say it was 1:1. That would be a momentary fluke of numbers. But I do assume a roughly equal number of heterosexual men and heterosexual women in the population at large. A brief Google tells me that the UK 2011 census recorded 31 million men and 32.2 million women.

Link

If, for sake of argument, everyone paired up in a heterosexual fashion, that would leave 1.2 million women on their lonesome tod. There will be homosexual people (and couples) and bisexual people, as well as asexuals, and then there's polyamorous arrangements and good old cheating. But I'm assuming these things either put an equal dent in the numbers, or don't have much impact.

So, again, I assume a roughly equal number of heterosexual single men and women seeking monogamous relationships. Remember: any time a woman finds a man, a man has found a woman. If a man is alone, so is a woman.

I can only think you're basically saying women are happier to stay single than men are. I think that's certainly possible, stereotypes be damned. Do you have any research on this?

I don't doubt biology plays a part - how can it not? But there is clearly no inherent, immutable, unstoppable part of the XX chromosome that stops women from asking men out, or from chasing men or in sleeping around. We're still dealing with the social upheaval wrought by the contraceptive pill and the sexual revolution. A social upheaval that could not have happened were biology as narrow in possibility and prescriptive in outcome as is often supposed by essentialists.

I don't think there has to be some inherent 'brake' on women incase they end up with an accidental pregnancy, any more than I need an inherent 'brake' to stop me from jumping off of high places. I have a conscious mind for that. An interesting study here would be the age at which most accidental pregnancies occur. I would assume teenhood, as bodies mature faster than the understanding of them, and immaturity is more likely to see one engage in reckless behaviour than when older and with a fuller appreciation of that risk.

I think it reasonable to assume a certain caution on the part of women (though again, see what happened with the pill/sexual revolution). I do not think this means they want men less than men want women, and nor do I think it produces an 'imbalance' that makes it harder for men to find someone than women.

I am not arguing against biology. I am in fact arguing in favour of an understanding of human biology that allows for the many ways in which humans get together, be it for the night or the rest of their lives, whoever approached whoever first and whatever they got up to. That what it is to be male or female (or indeed inbetween) is not found in a theory derived from a statistical outcome from a narrowly conceived experiment or study, but rather in the facts of the variety of myriad ways humans live their lives, now and throughout history.

Speaking of which, have a read of this:

http://www.alternet.org/sex-amp-relatio ... h-more-men

I get that in most cases men do the asking but isn't that a good thing for men?

I think it's women who get the short end of the stick for not being the ones who ask (usually).

Shy men probably prefer things to be the other way round.