Success Does Not Equal Achievement

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My only long-term relationship was with a girl named Marie, and I no longer pursue romantic relationships of any kind, anything sexual, or even new friendships. People have argued to me that the fact I achieved a relationship that lasted a year and a half should be an encouraging sign.

Here's why the whole relationship with Marie shouldn't inspire hope. All the others are omitted here because, in truth, all my other relationships lasted a 1-4 weeks and were so insubstantial that they speak little to my ability to achieve much of anything. What's important to understand about how I managed to come by my relationship with Marie is that we're not talking about anything honorable or impressive. Meeting her in October of 2004, she was dating a guy named Mike who had violated trust with a girl I had dated that summer. This being the case, I had little moral problem waging a campaign to steal her from Mike. During this campaign, a truly Machiavellian gambit where I constantly hit on her but pretended I was too socially clueless to know what I was doing to keep everyone's guard down, I presented a version of myself which was not entirely honest. Everyone does this, to my understanding, pretending to like things you don't like, behaving better than you normally behave, making promises you have no WAY of keeping. The only long-term relationship I have ever had was won through treachery, deception, and manipulation. Of course, with such a weak foundation, the soil was fertile to grow the misery than ensued. This whole concept works in dating sites too. My honest profiles get nothing. Dishonest ones get a few responses. If I used a model's photo, I'd have many responses. So it is with no gladness that I reflect on my achievement, something that would not have been possible were I a good person.

-Frank

Your story reminds me of someone who lands a job by lying on his resume. Obviously, he got the job fraudulently, but in any event he had to PERFORM the job when he arrived. In a year and a half's time, I'd argue that even if he wasn't qualified, he did the job adequately.

Course, getting the job (in this case, the job of being in a relationship) and keeping it are two different skillsets. More than once, I've reflected that if I could just get past the harrowing part of MEETING a girl, I could be a damn good and successful boyfriend. I have learned since then that meeting girls is not REALLY the hard part, but for guys like us, it sure seems like it.

You speak like someone ready to give up, but not really wanting to. If you have a genuine desire to not be alone, then you owe it to yourself to keep trying. Lying, of course, fizzles out in the long term. But putting your best foot forward on a first meeting isn't a lie. The line is fine, but there nonetheless.

I agree with frankcritic. If you pretend to be someone you're not, a person won't fall in love with you... only with your fake self. Unfortunately, this kind of deception is promoted in the dating culture, because it's not enough to "just be yourself." Everyone has high expectations, yet very few people actually live up to those expectations. For example, that whole "confidence" thing... Confidence isn't something which you can just gain out of thin air. In fact, it can take your entire life before you become confident with yourself. Yet no woman (except, perhaps, a control freak) wants a man who isn't confident. Therefore many guys are forced to pretend to be confident in order to get girlfriends. They're also driven to pretend to be a lot of other things they're not, and it's only a matter of time before this all crumbles away and the relationship falls apart.

The whole dating system sickens me. I'm not a big enough con artist to participate in it. Hell, I'd probably have better luck being a lawyer or a politician than a "boyfriend"...

Everyone lies on their dating profile.

The idea is you should only put your best traits on there and completely ignore your worst traits. A dating site ad is an advertisement. You're trying to sell yourself. The only purpose of the ad is to initiate a real life meeting, not to get someone to fall in love with you.

Do what you can to get the real life meeting. Don't *lie* but don't tell the entire truth. You can even spin around your faults to make them appear as positives. For example, socially challenged can be spun around to shy... two completely different connotations.

Once you get that real life meeting then you should be more honest. Let them be the judge of your faults once you meet in real life, not you in your ad.

I just had to study this for a research paper. Trust me, everyone lies in their ads. Your ad is an ad. It's just like how an ad for a computer processor will list the best possible specs for the processor, when in reality very few applications will provide such a great result. They don't lie, they just don't tell the whole truth, but they have to do that because all the competition does the same thing.