Discussion Do you feel lucky for being born a decade early?

I need a girl.

 

Well then, I guess your last post would prove educational enough for OP. People should have the right to protest their grievances, though. Your personal example is admirable, but not an objective measure for other people. From what I've seen of your posts, you sound like a great person, so your case has weight, based on that. On the other hand, male relationship language has rather competitive roots, so please factor that in, when thinking on this issue.

A prize for a male is the promise of a partner in life, which generally means somebody to strive along with for the common goal you mention. While part of the male population may not understand that rationally, it's built into the culture via established gender roles. Sadly, that's how society functions, so the wisest course of action is to learn and understand the differences between people, and how to personally overcome them.

 

Yeah... I guess you're right.

I just have a problem with words like "prize" when talking about women... My oldest brother was a big... Playboy? This kind of thing I guess, the type that would brag about how many girls he was able to kiss in a single party... Or rather, the type that would bet with his friends who would kiss more girls, with the winner getting a box of beer.

It just disgusts me to see people looking at it like that, so I tend to get in a bad mood when I hear this kind of term when talking about relationships.

People are not objects, people aren't prizes to be won over. It's true that society expects the men to take the initiative and try to "conquer" the girl's heart... And in all honesty, I prefer that, because I'm a terribly awkward person that hates taking the initiative and prefers to being led by the hand.

But I also know the same applies to men, not all are able to take the initiative, and many are shy and don't know how to approach the person they like... On my LDR, the one that confessed first was me, not my BF. It took me a lot of courage to do it, but I did it because I loved him, and I wanted to be with him.


I just think that people should whine less about their problems and start solving them... Can't get courage to confess to a girl? Go to the nearest nerd convention/library/gamestore/bookstore/park/school/casino/whatever and talk to a girl, become friends with her, grown acquainted, and see if you can see her as more than just a friend, if you want something more... If you do, gather up your courage and confess.

Feels like people expect to go out with someone without being friends first, which is honestly crazy for me, I would never go out with someone I didn't know well enough... Unless I was feeling deaperate enough to go to a dating site that is. (Not that dating sites are for the desperate, I'm saying that I personally wouldn't visit one unless I was desperate.)

 

Good argument. In my experience, while men use more degrading language towards women, a lot of women are frankly, no less competetive, neither are they any less "conquest" oriented. I'm of the opinion women are generally better button pushers and better at insulting the other gender, behind their backs, though.

Fear of rejection applies to both genders, yes. Nowadays the pressure on men to take risks is lower, since a lot of women, like you, do that first step often enough. However, a lot of people still retain their conservative gender role expectations, thus shyness in men has more social pressure mixed into it, than for women, or at least that's what a lot of men think. In my experience most people are egocentric, so a lot of men can't see the separate social pressures on women, that would cause them to shy away from confessing. For a lot of them, just the end result, the convention, is observed, and that observation is sometimes on the mark. Basically a lot of women just accept their role as non-initiators, and that raises complaints, as parts of gender roles are supposed to be obsolete nowadays. China is considered to be more conservative than The West in that regard, so the problems associated with conservative gender roles, would be of higher frequency there, which is why this thread exists in the first place.

Words of wisdom. The problem pointed out in the thread, however, was that women can be more picky and thus leave a majority of men frustrated, due to increased social and personal pressure on the individual to be desirable. So let's say you are surrounded by men, who desire you. You understand that, due to gender roles, a larger distance should be kept between you and males, lest the inexperienced dogs fall in love with you from the mere attention, as men tend to do (a situation I would be surprised if you've never gotten into). So you avoid making friends with more undesirable males, while competing with other women for desirable ones (to be friends with). But not only are you a person with your own taste and interests, you also are pressured to be friends with, and possibly enter into a relationship with the most desirable man possible. Now add in statistics, and suddenly you get more generally more attention, than you would usually, but still have pressure to retain dignity as a woman. So with 11 men and 10 women, the 10 women would be friends with a percentage of the 11 men that is sizable enough for the women, but statistically negligable for the men. These men don't even get the chance to gain sizable experience talking to women, and are surrounded by a larger number of men with the same plight.

The men know that and are frustrated, while the women also know that and have no reason to feel guilty for it, or rather some more noticable ones feel proud and are peer pressured into being even prouder. Meanwhile the parents of unsuccessful men feel their role as parent threatened by the child's lack of a partner. So the parents meddle, and suddely it becomes this big family to family affair, taking the control from the individual, who doesn't have enough experience to understand how to approach the other gender. This causes further frustration for both men and women. You suddenly have to make the best out of a situation where, regardless of gender, you are treated like livestock, and sold for the sake of a parent's pride. And this happens as punishment for being unsuccessful in relationships, before you gain any experience with such.

So let's say you then saw your playboy brother go through girls in this situation, while you yourself are subjected to a marriage interview (which is frankly worse than a dating website), and left undesired, because of somebody's inflated standard. Wouldn't you be angry? Isn't ranting on a forum even too little?

I'll admit though, people in general need to learn to be better at communicating with others, and it would benefit men greatly, if they made female friends properly.

 

I'm quite sure I could have born as a prince of some country hundred years ago and still don't have a girlfriend.

 

No, but you'd have at least a princess, if not a harem/concubines, so I see no reason to complain. Unless the princess is European.

 

Neither of those too, I guess.

 

Do you feel perhaps, that you would be a Prince Sage, then?

 

I agree, I only had nerd friends, so I don't really know much about women that go to those parties, but I assume they are just as competitive on "conquering" as many men as possible... Dunno if it reaches the point of making bets around it, but it wouldn't surprise me.

You made plenty of good points. *nod nod*

Gender Roles are still pretty strong overall, I mean, I never got the courage to be the initiator on any relationship aside the one with my boyfriend, I had just accepted that I shouldn't initiate... Love is a strange thing though, that completely changes our usual behaviors...

I think the role of non-initiator added together with the fear of rejection enda up making the gender role still a very consolidated thing... One can easily run away from their fears by simply saying that it's not their place to confess, that the man should take that initiative... I can imagine it must be pretty frustating on the other side as well, since they are expected to take that initiative even whe they aren't comfortable with it at all...

Running into the gender role could give me some peace of mind, while a man would only get more pressured by it... Seems very stressful.

I partially disagree with this part...

I think that the distance between genders can be pretty strong in environments such as middle/high school, but the older one gets, the smaller this gap becomes...

I have plenty of men friends, which were basically a bunch of nerds that saw me playing Magic The Gathering one day and came play with me... It was a really natural thing and we just started talking about the card game we loved... From that point on the talk derailed into videogames, manga, anime and all sort of stuff... I'm friends with most of them for some 8 years now (I'm 21, this happened in my middle school years).

After I got into college, I just started making friends with people naturally by... Not doing anything, really, just talking about classes or holidays or a particular professor and what not... Working together on projects and stuff...

It just didn't seem to have the gap that existed back when I was in middle/high school. (in which my only male friends were my Magic The Gathering Friends)

I think the "need" of separating genders ends up becoming smaller and smaller once you grow older.

Hmmmm, yeah, you do have a point there.

Arranged marriages aren't a thing on my country, but I definitely lost count of how many times I got nagged by my grandmother with a "Aren't you going to find a boyfriend already?", I'm pretty sure men must face something similar.

Just the sheer pressure and nagging from family due to the person in question being unable to find a significant other is already more than enough to cause a huge amount of stress... Which makes a forum rant be... Reasonable I guess. Being forced into an arranged marriage would only make it a lot worse.

I mean... Arranged marriages are a strange thing, becauase I don't think they are bad by themselves... If someone just doesn't know how to approach the other gender and is put on this kind of situation, they may grow into loving the other party by living together and sharing hardships together.

This is only possible if the will of both marriage candidates is respected though, if they are forced into the marriage, then it's just a recipe for disaster... It needs to be something they are both willing to go through, and they need to be able to choose rather or not to accept the candidate they were presented to.

 

Might be, but at least I'll leave a legacy like Isaac Newton.

 

I always feel disgusted when I hear other guys talk about women

 

Frankly, I've grown to be rather unjudgemental towards promiscuous women. I've also met such within nerd circles, especially in LARP communities. Imagine a personality, and there would be somebody possessing it somewhere out there. Which reminds me to finish up on that Slime quest I've been writing up...

With mature romance, most things are left unsaid, and the situation just follows its natural course, sink or swim. You had a long distance relationship, which is often a lot more dependant on words, which I think is deterimental to the aformentioned process, since the most common medium is text or voice. Basically with long distance relationships you are bound to have to confess, while real life relationships can "just happen". So on one hand the pressure is higher, because you have to verbalize everything, on the other hand the distance let's you off on some of the instinctive pressure you would normally feel. I'm not sure which type of pressure is worse. What do you figure?

Now if we go back to our arranged marriage problem, again a lot of the process doesn't follow natural chemistry, even though the people are allowed a say into it. It's a contractual thing, and that also requires verbalization of things such as compatability, interests (including financial ones, and not excluding hobbies and professional interests), looks, and etc which would normally require the people in question to judge by themselves, whether rationally or intuitively. Which brings us to:

Since the choice is too limited, and depends on (family) committee, I wouldn't be as optimistic, as to consider most candidate pairs to be really compatible. How much say the people in question have on the arrangement, would depend from family to family, and person to person, however the pressure is immense, so not only would it be hard for people to refuse incompatible marriage partners, they would also enter into the relationship reluctantly, which would be problematic for chemistry between them. At least that's my pessimistic opinion on this. Probably all kinds of situations exist within those bounds, but my focus is on the negative image, the arrangement would evoke in a person, who has to go through it, anyway.

You are right, that there is less distance between genders, as people mature. I'll point out, that not all people mature at the same rate. I would also assume, that you, being an obviously intelligent and more socially intelligent person than average, would be in the company of such peers, but the sentiment we're discussing is born out of that of more than just such people, as yourself, but also more common folk. It's a common sentiment, shared by many and, at least within my experience and knowledge, the majority of people's social intelligence is generally high school level, and with the biggest game changer for the majority, that is becoming a working adult, not having that much effect on that attribute, within the bounds of most professions, it would seem to me, that the distance between genders for most people, especially men, is respectively at the high school level.

Wow, this is an unexpectedly enjoyable discussion. Thank you, @AliceShiki.

 

Enjoy your next reincarnation. ;P

 

I think that is a good choice you made, and I honestly do the same.

Promiscuous men are "awesome" while promiscuous women are "sluts", which clearly makes no sense... I judge them both as people wasting their time by being treated as objects and treating their partners as objects.


Hmmmm... I never knew LARPs existed tbh... I think I didn't find any that seemed promiscuous among my circle, though that's probably because everyone I was friends with was socially awkward...

I can imagine someone a bit less socially awkward to suddenly become a celebrity though... I mean, there is a certain culture of idolizing gamers/nerd girls which is honestly sickening... Good thing it's not something that happens everywhere.

Good luck on the quest! ^^)/

I believe LDR are in generally worse, the advantage of being able to say your words calmly and thoughtfully disappears on voice chat, or at Real Time Chat or simply at moments you're in an emotional breakdown, because you keep on writing even though you know you should stop typing at the keyboard and keep those feelings for yourself... That was honestly how I confessed... >.>

Some people are not comfortable with physical contact, but that's something you can get over with time, as long as the partners talk things out and do things at a pace comfortable for both, it shouldn't be a problem...

I can honestly think of 0 advantages a LDR can have over a direct one... If anything, if you chose a bad partner for yourself, they can't go badmouthing you to your family/friends and/or hitting you in case things go wrong... But well, I don't consider a "in case things go wrong" situation an advantage.


It's particularly troublesome in case you aren't comfortable with voice chats, because you have almost no clue on what the other person is feeling while you talk, text is a medium that passes way too litte information.

It is as you said, a RL relationship can "just happen", while online, anything and everything needs to be done proactively, you won't even meet each other if you don't proactively go after it. And you can't even see if the other party has some problems if they don't tell you, for you can't see their expression or hear the trouble in their voice.

Overall, it's an experience I wouldn't recommend to anyone unless they really felt that the person they found online was the "right person", which is what I felt back then.

The pressure you might feel IRL by being together with your significant other isn't nearly as troublesome as all the downsides of being in a LDR IMHO.

Hmmmm... I tend to be optimistic about most things in life, but as someone that doesn't have arranged marriages on her country, I can only put a judgement based on what I heard from other people over the internet, which is... Limited, to say the least.

I believe that those can work, but not if they are decided based on the societal pressures that revolve leading to them, but rather, because of two people that are willing to go through it because they gave up on finding a partner by themselves.

Like... I know of someone that said they know people that went through arranged marriages and learned to love each other (I know, super vague, but it's what I have).

I know another person (a girl), that has a girlfriend that she has been with for some years and is really attached to and sentimentally involved with... However, she is engaged with a man due to her family's pressure.

Even so, she doesn't seem to particularly mind it, while I didn't directly ask for her opinion, it seems she doesn't dislike her fiance and is going to keep her relationship with her girlfriend... Which is a nice thing I think.

On the other hand, I know a man that has two branches of his family involved with politics and both branches want to marry him off to different families to strengthen their ties, and he completely dreads his marriage prospects.


That is essentjally what I had of contact with people in regarding to this topic... I believe the first one was probably something consensual rather than forced... The last 2 cases are obviously forced, but with different people involved and with different mindsets, which leads to very different outcomes.



Hmmmm... Overall though, I would agree that the common case would actually be something that comes out of sheer pressure and that leads to a terribly unhealthy environment, which is probably part of the reason why divorces are so common these days.

In essence, if something reaches someone with a negative image, it will probably lead to a negative outcome as well... And in case of something like marriage, that is supposedly a lifetime commitment, it's clearly a bad thing.

Hmmm... It is something I have a hard time relating to, but I can understand the thought process.

You are expected to mature as time passes, but maturity comes with experience, and if you don't get experience, your level of maturity might get stuck. Which is honestly a pretty scary thought... I dread not looking at me 5 years back and not thinking "wow, I was an idiot", because for me, that has always been a sign I matured.

I'd say that, more than becoming a working adult, one needs some important personal experience to overcome doubts and anxieties... A professional experience usually brings that, but it is not always the case, if someone doesn't carry emotional attachment to their work, it might not impact them as much as it should... At least on the maturity side, it can still have a lot of impacts on other areas.

Teehee, glad to help! I have been enjoying it as well! \(^^)/

 

This is sexist and objectifies women. ._.

 

From the recent rumors they say.... You change your waifu every 3 months

 

There's still forced marriages , even in europe , not to mention 2nd and 3rd rate countries..

 

The distinction between promiscuous men and women is slowly going away, I think. If anything, considering the very existence of people making the distinction as more common than it is, propagates it further.

You should give European LARP a try, at least once in your life. In countries such as Germany, and the Nordic countries, LARP can be said to be a known quality of local culture. I'd say that LARP in general is the meeting point between the socially awkward and more socially oriented nerds, and the experience itself is quite magical.

Nerd celebrities tend to be within the greater nerd community. While the fad you speak of does exist, I feel it has more to do with a part of society that's more likely to visit 9gag, than a specialized hobby website. Well except for video games, but those are way too common a hobby, to count as a nerd activity, nowadays imo.

Thanks, the format of a quest report has been an interesting change of pace, and I'm still rewriting and figuring out how to properly make it sound like one. It's quite fun.

Hmm, I haven't had the experience, since my first LDR was a number of relationships after the first one. Sounds nerve wracking, my sympathies.

LDRs have their own charm, as a lot of the romance has more to do with the imagination, than what you get from constantly being together IRL. They are best at avoiding problems, yes. Basically since you don't meet as much, and actually plan out things, you get a more favorable impression of each other, than you would usually. This can keep a romance going, where it wouldn't otherwise flourish, though that's hardly optimal in the long run.

Well, I guess you're right. If anything LDRs just have a few too many steps more than the typical relationship, but I still feel, that it's simply an additional set of challenges, and not that separate type of a relationship. If one is a more calculating person, they'd probably keep it to the level of flirting, and enter the actual relationship, when the situation permits, as does happen often.

You can't force a mindset, though. It's again best, if you work with what you're given, and are able to accept that, but as you point out, there are lots of different kinds of people. I guess it's a bit extreeme to think that the majority of people would fail to adapt. You might be right, that it's more likely for the opposite to happen.

Yes, exactly. And that's why it's tragic, since all parties involved may even have the best intentions, but in a lot of cases it may work out horribly, and ruin people's lives.

Well, my comment on the issue is more in line with psychological development paradigms, that put certain development periods to correspond with certain ages, which then correspond with certain lifetime events. I think your view on the issue is more flexible, considering it deals with just lifetime events, as a measure of maturity level, but I don't feel I can make an accurate statement, if I don't take more factors into account. It just happens that entering the job market is when these factors are supposed to converge to normally produce an adult individual.

 

Lol you can do it even now just like in the past - with a money Kings, emperors had the money and power. Peasants had neither money no choice. Had arranged marriages and could love some person, could be bullied and so on.

But you can become a muslim and free to have up to 4 (or 5 I don't know actually) wives

 

Deep hours. Deep conversations.