Is Confidence really Key?

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For years, I've always heard girls talk about how a guy needs to be confident to win them over. It sounded plausible for a while, until I more recently took a look at more couples I knew.

- There's one guy who quit high school, continues to get fired from job after job, spends all day playing Rock Band, and yet always seems to be in a relationship even if they don't always work out.
- There's another guy I know who caves in to his workaholic habits, wastes all his money on comic books and XBox games, and continues to fail meeting even the simplest goals in his life. Yet his girlfriend always keeps clinging to him.
- I even knew one humorless nut at one time who did nothing but hang around potting smoke and complaining about how he didn't have money for rent. That guy had two girlfriends.

None of these people really have anything going for them. No sense of humor, no ambition, they don't even respect their own girlfriends. So is confidence really something people are attracted to?

I came to some interesting conclusions after analyzing their girlfriends. They weren't so great themselves. Sure, they weren't bad in the looks department - but when it came to confidence, they were just as big of losers as the guys they were dating. Unambitious girls dated unambitious guys. Boring girls with boring guys. Even those douchebags at clubs are always surrounded by hot douchettes. I'm seeing it in all the couples around me now. Even the stable ones seem to have some common baggage.

This is still a hypothetical question buzzing around in my head, but does anyone else think that having similar insecurities can be just as effective as being confident?

Last edited by Scorpio82 on 04 Mar 2009, 3:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That would suck, I would personally like an interesting GF and I am boring.

You're confusing self-confidence and the urge to improve upon onesself..

Basically, the two are diametrically opposed.
The three blokes you described, even the girls, are VERY self-confident: They believe in their own capabilities, they do what THEY choose...and they don't FOR A SECOND doubt their own awesome. They BELIEVE they are AOK. That gives them an Inner Calm.....

However, self-improvement has to come from acknowledging that things CAN be done better. That saving up IS good. That you AREN'T at your summit yet, and that things CAN turn to crap quickly..... No Inner Calm there. A future, a LIFE even, but no Inner Calm.

The fact that these people don't have ambition makes them laid-back. That makes them attractive. Sick, but it's true.

Apparently, you seem to favour working on stuff that matters. If so, just do that..... Just don't make the mistake of squirreling about the room constantly making small adjustments to your existence.... That's over the top, and that, combined with the psychotherapist's territory of Self-Loathing(Which I won't touch upon) are what makes Good People unattractive to certain ladies.... Stupid ladies, mind you, so in it's entirity, I don't advise you to alter anything, because what I described makes for a good wenchrepellant

I'm not that ambitious. Outside of romance issues, I'm also fairly laid back... It hasn't made me attractive at all...

Actually, confidence is the underlying factor in what you're concluding. I believe the definition of confidence is "feeling that you're good enough". It's much easier to feel good enough for people with similar shortcomings since they can't hold yours against you.

I'm pretty okay with myself, but you're right - maybe my examples aren't the best if you haven't met the people (they practically wallow in self-loathing.)

I should have mentioned it before, but what got me thinking about this was when a friend invited me over to come talk to her boyfriend about his suicidal tendencies a few weeks ago. I was in a psychotherapy program last year, and she thought I might be able to convince him to sign up. He'd always been like this since they started dating, so this got me questioning if other things besides confidence can be at work - or if people just relate to confidence differently.

It's possible. I've been more confident lately and I've been getting more attention at college. It's from guys though but my point is that confidence makes one more appealing to others.

I mostly agree with this. Though without knowing these people first hand, I'm in no place to make assumptions since they could be ill founded, if you know what I mean.

There are plenty of guys lacking in confidence that get girls. The girls themselves are, as has been said, probably lacking in confidence themselves. For instance, look at all the battered womens' shelters out there; these women have grown up battered, and continue the trend they've always known with men who are lacking in confidence and using a compensatory strategy of violence to assert their place in society and overcome their sense of inadequacy. This makes sense as a dynamic, does it not?

What I seem to see a lot of on here is the mentality of, "If that guy can get a girl and he's a douchebag, so should I!" Well, great logic and all, but consider the fact that these guys are probably using compensation techniques that get girls. Take the extreme narcissists out there. Are they confident? Absolutely not in the slightest. But their strategy may look like it, or have other superficial benefits, or play off of what the women themselves grew up with as children with abusive dads.

But when it really comes down to it, it's all about owning women, not loving them, in this quest for 'contentment'. Not that women aren't also sometimes guilty of this, but this board seems to be filled with guys who are after some sort of product, rather than a relationship. Right there, unless you get a girl who's self esteem has been battered to s**t, quite frankly no woman with any sense of self is going to subject herself to that behaviour, unless she's also very young and/or naive.

So do you guys want love, or a woman who clings to you and who possibly feels terrible inside? Honestly?

Everyone has some really interesting opinions on this subject.

It probably comes to down to finding somebody on the same level then. A lot of guys (and even I was guilty of this) spend so much time wondering what other men are doing right, that we don't even see what's wrong with the girls they're with. But then, from their perspective, nothing is wrong because they're already sharing a common connection with somebody, even if we don't understand it ourselves.

Actually, this puts the term "be yourself" into a better perspective, as cliched as that term is. Confidence seems to embody everything about us - our baggage, ambitions, interests, emotions, tastes, etc. It's not about trying to be better than other people, or about trying to meet different standards. We should easily connect with the right people as long as we're not trying to be someone else when we meet them. So I guess confidence IS key as long we know what it means.

Neat! I learned something today!

Well, we've all got problems. I feel like I still have a career ahead of me, and that I have a lot of things going for me socially as well. Plenty of guys my age don't have any of those things but relationships seem to come naturally to them. I can't say what they have going for them that I don't have, but they probably feel much more assured about their prospects of having a family than I do - if they don't already have one.

Confidence is needed but you still need status, social skills, looks, friends, etc. Saying that confidence is all that matters isn't true... Women look for a lot more than just that.

Confidance without ability isn't always good.

Without conscious effort someone who's habitually in relationships will continue that pattern. Someone who's habitually single will do the same.

What sort of confidence are we talking about? There are many who I have met - frequently artists - whose behaviors are eccentric, are not financially stable, have various habits, yet possess a... self-assurance, a confidence in self despite the circumstance. Sometimes it is deserved, other times it is borne of ignorance, yet more from contrivance... but there is a confidence there nonetheless. What one person sees in another is not going to be simply categorized or cataloged, in my opinion.


M.

But it's probably better than no ability and no confidence. No?

But it can 'work' if there aren't any actual demonstrations of ability needed to hold onto a position (or whatever). It amazes me how far some people get on image and talk, sometimes.