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Imagine being afraid of the ‘friend zone’
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this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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chapotraphouse
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At one time I thought I’d try my hand at being a “leftist dating advice” person, just given my perspective as being now over 40 and in a long term relationship. But I’ve since come to the opinion that all generic dating advice is mostly pointless. Trying to understand what you are doing wrong (or right) in dating is just too specific to each individual person, IMO. We all just have too many blind spots when it comes to ourselves. Not to mention so much of getting dating right is “be like this but don’t go too far in the other direction either”.
I spent so much time and energy in my single days trying to read up on dating advice and try to figure out what I was doing wrong. But ultimately what I was going wrong was a few things that were hyper-specific to myself, and generic dating advice wouldn’t mention that or if it did, I didn’t realize it applied to me.
I guess if I had any dating advice, it would be to ignore generic dating advice and try and have people in your life (friends, family, even exes) who know you well and will be brutally honest with you. And you have to be brutally honest with yourself, or otherwise you will never be able to internalize what other people tell you.
That, and being with someone is also a leftist, sympathetic to your political views, or at least apolitical but cool if you want to do praxis or occasionally rant about stuff like how capitalism evolved out of feudalism is pretty dang important.
So I'm kind of torn on this, because of how I keep hearing about romantic relationships causing orgs to basically implode. It's like there are so few leftists that when people meet in an org it becomes desperate people meeting other desperate people and basically forgetting the whole point of the org.
I don't know, in my experience they'll never be brutally honest with you. Actually, they may not even know what to tell you in the first place and they may actually think that you're "a catch" so to speak and "who wouldn't want to date you!" I actually think hiring a dating coach might not be a bad idea, because they can assess you and actually give you good advice. And it would be specifically tailored to you.
Yeah I guess in my head, I was thinking specifically outside of leftist orgs you’re involved in. Can be pretty problematic if you value at all the work the org does. Honestly I think relationships with folks who aren’t leftist can work well so long as they’re broadly sympathetic to your views.
And I also agree that it’s hard for even friends or people close to you to figure out your issues. Not to mention there’s plenty of folks who don’t have friends like that in their lives. I like the idea of a dating coach. Also, I think if you work on being radically honest with yourself, you might be able to help yourself some. Like with myself, I think deep down I knew my problem was actually taking those first steps and taking chances, but I never wanted to admit it to myself.
That's essentially what the PUAs from the 2000s were. It was only towards the end of the 2000s and the early 2010s that you started to see that stuff morph into the "manosphere" and "red pill" stuff you see today.
you think the pua's of the 2000s weren't misogynistic?
I'm sure there was some there but it was mostly just guys who had gotten rejected a lot trying to figure out how to be more confident, dress better, and learn how to talk to women. Later on people started to mix politics in with it (i.e. "women are only like this cuz of feminism, liberalism, etc.")
it was always creepy from the get go, you familiar with Neil Strauss? you might benefit from hearing about his experience. like this is not good.
Yeah I know who he is. He actually had trouble with women even though he had backstage passes as a writing for rolling stone magazine. It wasn't until after he learned the dating skills that he was able to be better with women.
Maybe a therapist? Not like, in an accusatory 'you need therapy' kind of way - I just mean they could fill much the same role as you describe a dating coach filling, while also helping you deal with some of the rejection sensitivity that is often at the root of dating anxiety.
I mean I guess, but... I hate to use this term, but I think the therapist is only going to give you "blue pill" advice like "be yourself" or other useless platitudes. Unless the therapist has themselves dealt with this and somehow conquered it, I highly doubt a therapist would help.
a good therapist, on seeing a person come in and say "I'm troubled by this problem", will see if the problem is fixable. If you're super stressed because you're working 60 hours a week, your therapist should say "stop working 60 hours a week, and here's some techniques to ease the symptoms while you figure out how to stop doing that".
Bad luck dating is only somewhat fixable, since you can't control the minds of others. So a good therapist should push you to get better at dating if that's what you want, but also help you to become happier being single. (Drifting off-topic, I think being happily single is a lot easier after you've dated a bit, and now have the self-confidence that comes from knowing you could get laid if you felt like it but don't want to. Which may be one reason why single women are generally happier than single men. I hope this doesn't come across as mean but I'm clocking you as a younger, relatively inexperienced dude?)
My current therapist encourages me to trip shrooms and explore Hegel because that is what works for me. If you find a good one then they will quickly realize the traditional line of advice isn't what you're looking for. That said, I've also seen my share of awful therapists so I understand your hesitancy.