Using religion as a reason not to date me

Post Reply New Topic

No. Learning a new skill will benefit you in other areas. If your sole focus for change is to "Get a Girlfriend", then your desperation will show through, and you will be disappointed. Self-improvement for the sake of self-improvement is the goal of self-improvement. "Getting a Girlfriend" is a side-effect.Yes. Consider every social interaction with a person to be some type of 'test'. People judge each other all of the time, and their judgements may also change at any time.Because my advice is based solely on my experiences and my observations of other people's behavior over the 60+ years of my life. My success does not guaranty your success.

Adding that in the Killeen-Temple-Fort Hood area, the men who usually get girlfriends are “bad boys” and women here generally hate non-Christian men. I was raised to be a Christian but so many things destroyed my faith. Despite that, I am constantly pushed back towards the belief system that ruined my life.

If your really desperate QFT, you could try something like the mail-order bride route. I would of done that if I had the money & resources. I read a thread a while back on a different forum by a guy who married a woman from the Philippines a couple or a few years ago & they were happily married. Another thing I considered was taking in a woman who needed a place to stay for some reason. I knew a girl on a forum who was interested. She actually suggested it when I was complaining about hating sleeping alone partly due to being lonely & sleep disorders. I didn't have my own place thou things were sorta in the works but they were taking time. Before that when I complained about being single, I had people suggest that I find someone needing a place to stay.

I would never do that.

1) It won't fulfill what I want anyway. What I crave is to feel loved, but here I will feel used, not loved

2) Its very likely they will divorce me some time after they come since I won't be "useful" any more

3) I am not that rich. I am in debt myself as is. I don't want to get even deeper in debt.

Well, interestingly enough, what I am doing alligns more closely to the above-cited advice of yours than what you are doing. In my case, neither my career (physics+math) nor my other accomplishments (long distance running) were intended to attract a woman. But in your case your accomplishments (music) was.

Now, when a woman rejects me and I tell her I will change, I also tell her "I need to make this change for myself not just for you; so since I will have to do it anyway I might as well do it for you". And I happened to be right when I say this. The evidence for this is the simple fact that if a woman rejects me because I don't play an instrument (this never happened -- but lets take a hypothetical that she is a musician and she wants a fellow musician) I would *never* promise to learn to play an instrument. Each time I was promising to change it was always about basic social skills -- and I need to change this anyway. For example, right now I am at a conference where most attendees are males, and nobody seems to talk to me. I am upset about it because I can't make scientific connections. So don't I want to improve social skills to make those connections? If the answer is yes, then why not use interaction with a woman as an encouragement to do so?

I admit though that at the moment where I am having that argument with a woman my focus is that woman. But just the fact that this is what the focus is at the moment it doesn't mean that I am not telling the truth when I say I have other reasons to improve. I do have other reasons, yes; I just procrastinate. But the woman will be a catalyst that would stop me from procrastinating, thats what I am trying to say.



Thats not what I meant when I used the word "test". What I meant was that they didn't really judge me but they pretended that they did to see how I would react. That is what it sounded like in what you previosuly wrote. What you are saying now, however, is quite different. Now you are saying that women do, indeed, judge me negatively (not just pretend) it is just that my subsequent behavior can change their mind. This sounds a lot more believable, but that is not how I understood you previously.

The quote of yours that got me confused is this: "Some women also seem to reject a man's first advances just to see how he will react".

In any case, while the idea of women judging me negatively and then changing their mind is easier to believe, it raises two questions of its own:

a) I read some studies that show that it takes 30 seconds to make first impression and that first impression tend to stick. Are you saying you disagree with those results?

b) What about your responses to my other threads where you were telling me to give up on specific women as opposed to hoping that their mind would change?



Well, "statistically" it would. Or are you saying we now live in a different time and thats why what you saw few decades ago no longer applies?

By the way I weren't following your other posts. So are you married as of now or are you single? If you are married, at what age did you finally able to accomplish this?

You're holding yourself back.  Don't complicate the issue with "What Ifs..." and "Yeah, Buts...".

This is true.

There's something I don't understand, QFT: you mention quite often changes that you need to make anyway, for yourself too. Why don't you just start making these changes, thus making the whole arguing with people about whether you're capable or not of changing redundant?

Because I need to interract with people in order to make changes. To give you a music example, if your piano was taken away from you every time you don't play well and you had to buy a brand new piano, you would never learn to play. But that is what happens to me socially.

You could start with things where interaction isn't necessary, hygiene and grooming issues for instance and this would already improve significantly the way others perceive you.

Look, you're a smart guy and maybe due to your studies and lack of regular interaction with people you neglected your social development. If you'd put a fraction of the effort you've put in your studies in learning the basic rules of social interaction, manners and what most people are looking for and enjoy while interacting with others, you'd see a big improvement both in how others perceive you but also in how you interact with acquaintances and colleagues.

There are a lot of such resources online: just learn some of these things and start applying them. One thing though: just apply them and don't argue with people IRL about it or ask endless questions. A common issue that shows in most of your threads is how you ruin your interactions and relationships by arguing, lashing out and endlessly questioning everything others do and their motives.

If you want to argue or dissect every situation, gesture or word, do it here or join a debate club, that's fine.

I know I have alot more than my fair share of faults & issues but I truly believed that most any woman would grow to love me if she was willing to give me a real chance & put forth some effort into trying to make the relationship work herself instead of things being one-sided. The reason she would grow to love me is cuz of how devoted & affectionate I would be to her. I worshiped both my exes, a celeb crush(thou she has NO idea I even exist), & I worship my current girlfriend. I never stop doing my very best to be supportive. I was single & looking for 8 years straight without so much as a single date cuz women just wouldn't give me half a chance. They saw my disabilities & awkwardness instead of seeing my devotion. They saw their preconceived judgements & opinions of me & never saw the real me.

When it comes to mail order beides it's not me but them. I don't think they are capable of true love with *anyone* or else they won't go into this business. Hoping for mail order bride to love you is akin to hoping a prostitute would fall in love.

This goes for any issue with dating- but can truly be applied here. Try not focusing on what this woman or that woman says, take feedback about your behavior, and concentrate on yourself, instead of what "they" are doing wrong. It leads down a path that is hard to recover from. I'm Atheist and I don't date Christians because I don't want to. But, reading all this you wrote, honestly, complaining about what everyone else does wrong is super unattractive quality. Take ownership of your flaws, because you can't change other people. DBT when worked right with a therapist that is trained in it is very helpful for this, and autism-related concerns, in general.

You made some really good points on how I can change. And this begs the question: why don't women see the points you are making when they assume I can't change?

There are two important differences in the learning to play a music instrument example and your promise to change.
The first is that the guy learning a musical instrument learned something positive (i.e. interesting, entertaining) and you promise to stop something negative (i.e. stressful, upsetting).
The second is that the guy learning a musical instrument has already made the change. He can already play it. When you promise to change you haven't made the change yet.

People are not very impressed by those who say 'I would like to be able to play a musical instrument really well (but I haven't even started yet)' and not by those who say 'I am going to learn to play a musical instrument and become really great' either. They start being impressed when someone actually is great at playing their instrument.

A lot of people say they would like to be great at playing an instrument. Still quite a lot of people say that they are going to learn it. Fewer people actually become great.
The same is true for relationship partners with bad habits. Most promise to change. Most don't change.

Change is very possible, but a lot more people promise change than actually do it.

It's not necessarily the case that women don't believe that change is possible, they just know that in general the odds are low. Most don't know you well enough to know if this applies to you personally.
If someone learned to play an instrument well, it is 100% certain that they can play it well. If they say they will learn to play one well but haven't started, it is much more likely that they'll never learn it well than that they will. If someone already doesn't have nasty habits that damage relationships it is much more likely that they won't have any in the future than if someone behaves in a way that damages relationships and promises to stop.

First, read NorthWind's post, she makes excellent points.

Second, I'm talking theoretically about how you could change; I have no idea if you're going to actually do it or not.

Also, keep in mind that the people you're usually talking about don't really know you that well (so, if you didn't address these issues so far, how could they tell if you are really committed to doing it now?) and you should also take into account expectations related to your age: when someone old enough "to know better" is breaking pretty basic social rules, most will assume they do so on purpose.

If the issue is not that they don't think its possible but rather that they aren't sure, then why don't they say "I will trust that you change when I see it". Instead, they say "no don't change you have to be who you are" (even if it is at the cost of remaining single for the rest of my life).

This whole "be who you are" business I find quite frustrating too, they use that mantra as a rejection line.