I wish I had female friends

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As far as bitterness goes, at least in my case, I am bitter about the exact thing I complained about in OP. In other words, if women were to view me as a fellow human I would no longer be bitter at them.

As an evidence for that, up until I was 21, I wasn't aware about this issue and, accordingly, I weren't bitter at women back then either. Although, to be fair, I wasn't making female attention a central point of my life either: on the contrary I was assuming I didn't have time for friends of either gender much less a girlfriend since I just wanted to do physics; but random attention from females was sort of like an icing on a cake, and my response to it was neutral to somewhat positive. But starting from 21 onward I became desperate for both relationships with women as well as femake friends and that's what caused me to be one keenly aware of women not approaching me which caused me to be bitter.

But then again maybe other guys are bitter about different things I am bitter about. You see, even though I obsess BOTH about female friends AND romantic relationships, neither of them in my mind relate to sex. To me, they BOTH have to do with emotional validation, just a different kind of validation. For one thing, as a Christian, I don't believe in sex before marriage. But that's not even a point: up until the age of 22 I used to be atheist yet back then I didn't want sex either. Yes I had sexual fantasies about girls as well as wet dreams, but like I said earlier to me studying math and physics was a lot more important and I viewed everything else as a distraction. Why did it change at the age of 21? Well, because I became aware of EMOTIONAL ostracism by women that I weren't aware of previously about. Incidentally, my sex drive went down not up (since I was no longer a teen driven by hormons) but I started to obsess about women a lot more than I used to.

As far as wanting a girlfriend that's not about sex either. Rather, it's about the fact that other guys have girlfriends and I don't want to be "worse" than they are. And as far as female friends it's about the need of emotional support outside of that kind of competition. So you see both are emotional rather than sexual, just in a different way.

So you see, in my case it has nothing to do with sex. But apparently in case of other guys it does. So I am bitter at other guys for the fact that, by obsessing about sex, they ruined it for me. Quite frankly, I don't get why guys are obsessed about sex anyway. To me, emotional always surpasses physical by far. So it feels like the guys that are obsessed about sex don't have anything bigger to worry about. No wonder women view them as not fully guman: I would agree in fact. But in my case I very much do have bigger worries, like the emotional needs I described. That's why I am bitter about being lumped together with those other guys. Speaking of bitterness, I don't get why THEY are bitter though: lack of the physical is nothing to be bitter about.

Last edited by QFT on 02 Jul 2019, 3:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.

My goodness - the very last thing I want is emotional support - it always ends badly. I'm a firm believer in stoicism. Look at the British Royal Family (I don't mean the emotionally incontinent generation, but the generation of Charles and above).

I would say it's not as bad as it has been, but WP has been no stranger to misandry by any stretch and it certainly is not absent at present. In fairness.

QFT, I've seen your thread about Uber ratings. You could try an experiment: act towards the women you interact with as if they would publicly rate your interactions and see if anything changes

You also wrote:


What branch of Christianity?

As has been mentioned recently in other threads, some conservative Christian churches these days have a culture in which friendships between men and women are specifically discouraged, on the grounds that such friendships are seen as leading to what is considered to be illicit sex. You might want to find out if such an attitude is commonplace or encouraged in your church, and, if so, see if you can find a different church that doesn't have this attitude, and that you otherwise agree with.

I was born Jewish but then I came to believe in Jesus as an adult. I still keep Jewish practices too, so I am Messianic. There are, indeed, Messianic churches that do Jewish services, on Saturday, in the name of Jesus. But they aren't the only ones. Also Seventh Day Adventists, as well as United Church of God, observe sabbath on saturday and also keep Jewish dietary laws as well. So sometimes I go to those ones too -- but I haven't officially joined either one of the latter two since they believe in Ellen White and Armstrong, respectively -- both are modern prophets and I don't believe in modern prophets. So I consider myself Messianic since Messianic church doesn't believe in modern prophets either. But I go to those other churches anyway since I like to compare different flavors of sabbaterian churches.



I don't think these churches' beliefs are relevant to the bigger picture of what I am complaining about, since it doesn't address the question as to why the girls in my university don't approach me? I guess, if I go along your lines of reasoning, then part of the answer might be that I am in math department, and there there are mostly guys and just few girls. But why don't girls on campus approach me, or in the bus, or at the grocery store, and so forth?

Because, frankly, girls rarely approach guys.....even these days.

I've never been approached by a girl in my life----except once----and she was a Jesus Freak.

You sound like you feel entitled to a woman's attention. Neither sex is entitled to the other sex "approaching them"

I never approached a guy. I’m too shy for that.

I usually have met guys who were a friend of a mutual acquaintance.

Did I use the word "entitled"? No I didn't. Now, if women were talking to me because they are "supposed to", that wouldn't give me the validation that I want anyway. Case in point: uber drivers are encouraged to talk to their passengers because thats one of the parameters they are rated on. When I figured it out, I no longer feel better due to uber driver talking to me: he/she is just doing his/her job. But what I "want" to happen is for a woman to actually "want" to talk to me (which is part of why I want her to be the one approaching me since that would be an indication of her actually wanting to talk to me). I want to feel wanted and liked. And that is what I am not getting.

Now, what you are trying to say is that nobody is entitled to be wanted or liked. Well, but the implication of this is that people who are unwanted/unliked should just accept their predicament for the rest of their life? Well, how would you feel if you were totally ostracized since you aren't "entitled" to be liked by people?

Also, I am not the only one who says its bad to ostracize someone for the way that they are different. But each and every time someone says this, I can always shoot them down by saying "well, the person in question isn't entitled for the positive attention". So just how do you draw the line as to when you do that kind of twist and when you don't?

If what you are doing isn’t currently working, then why don’t you try something else?

Meet people who have common interests, make friends, and maybe you will find someone that way.

You’ll know if a woman wants to talk to you if she answers your calls. If she didn’t want to talk to you, she wouldn’t do it.

Other people aren’t responsible for our own happiness. We have to be willing to try other things if something isn’t working. We can’t expect someone else to do all the work for us if we are struggling with discontentment.

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 02 Jul 2019, 9:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Are you going to college now?

But one sex is disproportionately approached more, and the other must do the approaching or almost certainly remain single. Must be easy to dismiss the feelings of those in the latter camp when you're in the former.

There are a couple of members who have expressed misogynistic sentiments, but one could hardly say this site is running rampant with misogyny. Unless your threshold for what you categorise as misogynistic is quite low

Totally! Can you clarify what PUA sites are? I should probably know but I confess that I don't.

Friends who are girls or women have long been some of the most important friends I've had in my life going way back to when I was a kid. My last best friend back in grad school I got very close to and when she graduated and went back to Mexico 6 years ago I lost a huge part of my social support system. For the last 6 years I've had some women friends (one or 2 of whom were good friends) but nothing like what I'd had in the past. Until this year. I made a friend through my support group in the last few months and we have so much in common including one of our main SIs that now I've finally made a best friend who's also a woman. It's wonderful b/c I finally have someone I can do things with who likes spending alot of time w/me often. She's smart funny kind politically leftist (like me) and also very supportive.

All of this has made my life so much better but it's furthermore given me hope that I'll make more friends who are women and will eventually find a partner. The key thing is practice practice practice and that's what I've been doing and will continue to do.

I am 39, and I spent almost my entire life in school. I did my BA when I was 18-21, then I did my MS when I was 21-24, then I did my first ph.d. when I was 24-29, then I did postdocs when I was 29-34, then I started second ph.d. at 35, then I transferred at 36 into where I am currently doing the second ph.d. My first ph.d. was in Physics my second Ph.d. is in math.

If you ask me why I do all this schooling, basically I want to be a theoretical physicist, but it is very competitive and the competition is based on the number of publications. I have 29 papers on arXiv.org, but they don't count as publications since they aren't peer reviewed. What people normally do is they post something on arXiv.org and then immediately send it to the peer reviewed journal, so they have papers in both places: the only purpose of arXiv.org is to make others see papers quicker while they are still being reviewed for the journal. But in my case I don't seem to be able to convince journals to publish my work: its probably a combination of the fact that most of what I do isn't conventional and the fact that I don't seem to be good in communicating things altogether. So, out of those 29 papers, only 3 were published in peer review journals. Now, most people who want to be theoretical physicists have 15-20 papers, or even more, not 3. Thats why its pointless to even apply there until I get more publications.

In any case, the point I was trying to make is that, since I can't become a professor due to lack of publications, most people advise me I either teach in community college or liberal arts college, or I work in the lab. But I don't want any of those: I want to be a professor in theoretical physics. Thats why I decided to go back to do the second ph.d. so that I can have a "redo" and I hope that perhaps professors will help me get published. Now, doing second ph.d. in the same discipline as the first is silly. Thats why to make it look legid I seemingly changed disciplines: my first ph.d. is in physics, and my second ph.d. is in math. I still want to be a physicist rather than a mathematician. However, there are some people in math departments that do physics, although they are few and in between. So I don't care whether I will be a professor in physics department or in math department -- as long as I can do physics wherever I am at.

But I guess things aren't seem to be progressing like I have hoped. What I was hoping for was that if I were in grad school, the professors would feel obligated to help me edit my papers so that they can get published. I guess it sort of worked, but not nearly as much as its needed. I was able to convince one math professor to work with me on ONE of my papers -- the one that is related to his math work (and it took a long time to convince him it is related) but we aren't seem to be on the same page: he doesn't know physics and I don't know the math he is doing. So we were already working two years and still not making that much progress. Although I think one way to go about it is to just write a "math" paper with him, regarding the "math" aspects of my work -- and stop myself from trying to sell him the physics that motivated this math. So we will see.

In any case, the situation is that its easier to get physics papers published then it is to get math papers published, and, accordingly, in physics people have a lot more publications than in math. So, for physics, like I said I need 15-20 publications to be taken seriously. But for math 3 publications is normal. But those have to be in math journals not physics journals, so since the three publications I have are in physics jurnals I guess i need to do 3 other ones for math journals. So I guess the one I am working with that professor would be one of those three. In parallel to that, I am also working on a different publication -- regarding one of my other papers -- with a professor with whom I used to take an undergrad class a long time ago. Well thats not the school where I am currently a grad student, so he isn't obligated to help me, but he agreed to. So I guess IF both are successful, I would get 2 math publications which would make my situation much better. But that IF is a big IF. Like I said, getting things published in math journals is really difficult, which is precisely why less math publications are needed. So if I had all those trouble getting physics publications, it will only be that much more difficult with math publications. But then again, with that paper I am doing with a professor at a school where I was an undergrad, I got positive response from one of the referrees and was given a chance to rewrite the paper -- although it was shot down at the end. So I guess I might have some shot. I will see.

But back to answering your question, I am basically trying to stay in school for as long as it takes me to get better published so that I can get a professor job. So if this grad school won't be enough, then the next step after that would either be more postdocs, or to do a third ph.d. (the third ph.d. would be in philosophy -- meaning, philosophy of physics -- so that would be yet another way to look like I do a different field yet still do physics).