does a nice, shy, meek guy have a chance in hell?

[reveal]

im sorry i poste while drunk. im not going to be able to post at enworld again.

Nah, it makes you fit in better. We're all pretty much raging alcoholics here. I'm drunk right now!

 

[fusangite]

Oh my goodness...I almost fell out of my chair.

Same here. I laughed until I stopped.

 

[Belen]

i dont know what to do anymore. i dont have any hope left of ever meeting anyone. im 29 and have never had a girl even remotely attracted to me, despite going out and trying to meet people as much as i can. ive been told im good looking. ive been told im fun to be around. ive been told im too nice. i have no self confidence, but how do you have self confidence when you know that theres something so fundamentally repulsive about you to cause you to be 29 years old and never so much as kissed a woman? ive tried asking people what i need to change abuot myself, and i never get a straight answer. is it just that im nice, shy, meek, and polite, and these arent things that women want in a man? my very personailty is just so unmanly that the very idea of a romantic relationship with me is a joke?

i dont know what to do anymore. ive lost all hope and dont have much to live for if this is how my life is going to be. all ive ever wanted since i was a teenager was someone to love me, and ive never had anything even remotely resembling it. i used to be able to hide behind roleplaying and smother my pain in games, but i dont even have that anymore, everyone i gamed with having decided im not worth the effort to even speak to anymore. i post it here becuse i have no friends left, and no one i can talk too. i dont expect any answers, because i know there arent any. but the pain is just too much and i need to yell, or scream, or even just complain to someone. so i drink and hope to fall asleep and sometimes wish i wouldnt wake up in the morning.

My recommendation: Do not worry about love. Just try and get laid. You care too much right now, which is a serious turn off. You have a decided lack of experience, which is also a turn off.

You need to learn how to play the game and to have a little confidence. Not giving a damn works wonders. A little arrogance and a brazen attitude goes a long way.

I was a lot like you until I just decided to go ahead and make my own luck. If I saw a woman I liked, then I was direct. I was shot down 90% of the time, but you still get a date for every 10 women you approach.

Final advice: Be a guy, dude.

 

[Warrior Poet]

OK, first of all, can't be stressed enough, with regard to this:

so i drink and hope to fall asleep and sometimes wish i wouldnt wake up in the morning.

Please seek professional, medical help, in the form of counseling. Seriously. Get right with yourself. You'll never be right with anybody else until you're right with yourself. Check on your family medical history: is there a history of depression or alcoholism? Notify your doctor and counsellor.

Second, once you've worked on yourself, and gotten better, come back to this thread in six or eight months and carefully re-read what wolf70, Umbran, Dark Jezter, Rel, BOZ, and Fickle GM had to say. There's a common message in there, which I alluded to in my previous paragraph. By the way, you're 29? Young. I'm 32, still single, still meeting people, interested in some, not interested in others, still having a helluva lot of fun. One of my brothers got married for the first time at 42. You're young. Hang in there.

Next, with regard to this:

im sorry i poste while drunk. im not going to be able to post at enworld again.

Dude, don't sweat it. Feeling self-conscious? You've mentioned meekness. This is something you can laugh about, not retreat from.

Someone else mentioned something they learned in Tai Kwon Do. Here's one I learned from one of my aikido sensei: "Fall down seven times, stand up eight times."

And finally, this:

Only one man can help you now.

Thank you. By the way, where do I send the bill for the new computer monitor that shorted out from coffee spray?

Aaron? Counselling. Seriously. Before ANYTHING else. Get yourself right. Good luck, we're all pulling for you.

Warrior Poet

 

[LostSoul]

Since I moved to this new city, even though I have the same profile, a better photo, and the identical correspondence style, the rate at which I can turn initial contact into a date has dropped from 90% to 3%. Literally. No exaggeration. I'm still trying to piece together what's gone wrong on this front.

If you ever figure that out, I'd be interested to hear it. I moved here from out west too (although Calgary's different from Vancouver - I think that's where you were from). Not that there is all that much culture shock in the dating scene between the two cities. There is some though. Toronto girls seem to be more like American girls.

 

[fusangite]

If you ever figure that out, I'd be interested to hear it. I moved here from out west too (although Calgary's different from Vancouver - I think that's where you were from).

I can't make sense of it really. I moved here, in part, because Toronto has the same kind of cold, privacy-obsessed social dynamic Vancouver does. Everything else socially seems pretty much identical, except that people are more neighbourhood-oriented here.

If you're looking for another game; I'll be relaunching a campaign of mine that's been on hiatus come January.

 

[Umbran]

But I don't see Aaron's problem as being based around the dating thing at all. Something has caused him to start drinking heavily and lose contact with his friends; I think that's the problem we should be focusing on here. </i>

I don't believe that anyone, especially we who are not mental health professionals, are in any position to diagnose what his problem really is from a single message board post made while inebreated. It isn't exactly a state from which one gets reliable testimony about emotional states.

As I understand it, there are somewhat more maudlin drunks out there than folks with full-blown depression that requires professional help. And, even if he is depressed, our approach ain't so bad...

But I think it's a mistake to see Aaron's problem in this way at all. Guys who stop seeing their friends need to solve that problem first, before they can even think about more risky, emotionally intense kinds of relationships.

If he really is that depressed, just saying, "seek help" is unlikley to have much effect. People in the depths of depression are generally not motivated to help themselves. So, a bit of a lift from the examples of other lives may get him up a notch to where he can take effective steps to help himself. He needs hope before he'll take action. Luckily, there's hope to be found.

C'mon -- where's the guy with all that statistical skill you display on other threads? What portion of the male population needs to be engaged in reproduction for that to keep going? I believe a significantly smaller proportion than currently are.

What portion needs to be engaged, from a biological sense, is not relevant. We aren't talking about procreation of the species, we're talking about love. Traditionally, humans pair up. The US Census Bureau says that about 75% of people aged 18 years and up have been married at some point.

 

[BSF]

Aaron,
I proposed to my wife for one solid reason. We don't need each other. We want to spend our time together and we enjoy ourselves, as well as each other.

Getting a girlfriend/spouse/whatever isn't going to 'fix' anything for you. I will reiterate what has already been said several times. You must be confident and comfortable with yourself before you go any further.

So how do you get confident? Hey man, play to your strengths. You know what you do well. So do them well! Does that get you in contact with women? Probably not. The point is you need to know what your self value is before you can hope that others will appreciate it. Because, and trust me on this, you do have self value. You just aren't allowing yourself to see it right now.

Take off the blinders, get help if you are depressed, find your groove and understand that you bring something to the world. Then understand that you don't need anybody else to get through life. Do you want somebody else to share life with? Sure you do. But it isn't a requirement.

Now, once you understand that you have value and you are a contributor to the world in general, you will understand why people should listen to you. I don't know enough about you to tell you what this is. But even if I could, it would just be words until you believe it yourself.

Knowing that, realize that women are people. They aren't objects, they aren't unattainable, they aren't all for you. Like all people, you won't mesh with all of them. In the worst case scenario, you ask out a girl and learn that she wasn't as comaptible with you as you had thought she might be. In the best case, you find somebody as interesting as you that you get along with wonderfully.

Where do you meet women? Well, everywhere really. But you might want to expand out your hobbies a bit to diversify. I would suggest taking a dance class. Yeah, I know that sounds odd and maybe stupid. But let me explain.

In a dance class, you will be

• getting exercise
• gaining confidence in a new skill
• forced to interact with many new people, most notably women
• have an enforced social agenda on a regular basis

In short, you will be exercising and practising social skills. You will be gaining confidence and you will even be able to go out dancing with girls during and after the classes. Even if you are just a mediocre dancer, you can do just fine. Many girls like to dance. But when you say "Let's go out dancing, I know this great place that plays samba music.", most girls will be surprised and impressed that you know how to samba.

Of course, you can apply the same general idea to different activities. The point is get out and do something to improve your life, have fun doing it, and if you find somebody to have a relationship with, that's great too.

 

[Warrior Poet]

I'd like to add BardStephenFox's post to the list of posts to review later that I mentioned earlier (what an appallingly constructed sentence). Wise words.

Warrior Poet

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Let me give another vote for dance class. In college, a friend of mine signed up for a ballet class. After 2 weeks, he was the only male in a group of 20 + women. He was in absolute heaven...he went out with over half of them that semester.