That's your problem right there. You're going to therapy due to lack of self confidence. Your intentions for that are good, but women hate men who are not sure of themselves. You have to find a way to fix that.
My advice is date a lot of women, to get an idea of what you like. Then after that, the next best one you find that comes closest to what you like, marry that one and settle down. Forget about finding anyone better, they may be out there, but you don’t have the time and your lives may not be compatible.
Don't bother with advice from here, get a coach to review video of you interacting with women, or go on group dates with someone who knows what they're doing and observe you and give you pointers.
1. It's frowned upon for you to talk to women in coffee shop, you can't get Tinder dates and you don't like getting matched with plus sized women, so marry a woman from 'back home', I think you can find a woman who is educated also. (And please don't flinch just because they're from home - otherwise you're doing the same thing other women are doing to you) Hurry up you're hitting the wall soon.
2. Learn to pray and meditate. (The grateful kind of praying and wishing things for others, as opposed to the wishing for things for yourself kind)
3. Make a friend with a psychologist and see him or her in private off the record. Best get one who is spiritual from your own religion.
Agree with this. It takes gonads and a willingness to embrace rejection in order to 'get results'. Many fellas can't/won't improve themselves on their own. My advice: group therapy. Hang-out/go-out with other men that have game. Be a wingman ( alcohol helps) . That is how it happened for me.
This may have been like 15 years ago, but I had a friend that was so bold that he once walked up to a stranger(girl) waiting in line to enter a bar and started making-out with her. Couldn't believe she didn't slap him!
Also, take advice from woman about how to dress metro and such but not on how to pick up woman. In fact do the opposite of what they say.
Edit: that's it. I'm writing a dating guide soon. I'm seeing this too often on HN.
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> I am equally unlikely to ever find a partner who would want children with me.
I've had this issue for 6 years (between 16 to 22). I was heavily involved with the pickup artist community at the time. I wouldn't call myself a pickup artist, since what I do isn't picking up women and it isn't an art. I just used whatever good advice they had lying around and used it. After 6 years, here are the cliff notes (I studied psychology as well, so you can bet this has some science behind it).
- The most important advice: only take advice you understand or are curious about and test whether it works for you. If it doesn't, that's completely fine. Advice in getting relationships does not have a one size fits all solution. Maybe this will be the case in the future, but for now, no one figured it out yet.
- Learn cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Read David Burns Intimate Connections and Feeling Good.
- Learn Mindfulness Meditation and other forms. Read Search Inside Yourself by Chade Meng-Tan.
- Finding a therapist is always a good idea. They can second those books and they can second CBT.
- Strength + cardiovascular exercise helps (strength for body posture, running for mental sharpness). The best way to get into this IMO is to simply lift a weight a couple of times until your heart starts beating a bit faster. Then when it is beating faster, notice how you're feeling slightly more in ecstacy than before (other than some slight muscle fatigue).
- Fix your fashion. A good fashion doesn't win women over. It is appreciated though. A bad fashion does let them run away. If you don't want them to run away, stay safe, have a good fashion.
- Read up on assorted mating theory and try to find women that are compatible with you personality-wise, and ask yourself where they'd hangout or how you'd recognize them. I was into artsy types, so anyone who looked like an artist, I'd introduce myself to. I have a high openess to experience, artsy people tend to as well. Do a big 5 personality test (no mbti/myer's briggs nonsense).
- Be careful with pickup artist advice. It's toxic and sexist as hell. The sexism is bullshit.
- This stuff is hard work. I have a friend who has slightly better looks than me (I'm not a pretty person, I'm average at best), but he has no initiative. His dates / relationships are far and few in between. I do think he's enjoying life though.
Those are my biggest tips, most are also quite science-backed.
Some personal findings:
- Getting a girlfriend won't fix your life. You need to take care of your own problems. The only thing it does, it enriches your life.
- You need to come from a place where you feel like you don't need a girlfriend, but it would simply be nice or fun or adventurous (or whatever positive emotion you can think about). The best way to do that is to cater to every single need that you have as much as possible without needing someone else to help you with it.
- You need to make your intentions clear as soon as you know them. I sometimes do it when I see a woman. I do steer clear from cliche's. If I think she's hot as hell, I try to mention that in its most eloquent form (e.g. I'd say she has a nice fashion sense, amazing energy and cute -- I would then go into specific detail). This makes things a lot less complicated. Be respectful about it. I always asked for permission to kiss women, verbally. This goes straight against pickup artist literature, but I found that it worked enough of the time and at least I had a good feeling about it to get verbal consent.
- It is a numbers game. You need volume, but if after a 1000 approaches you haven't even felt a real connection and kissed someone, you're doing something wrong and you need a coach. The problem: most coaches suck. The only one that I know is good is called Ratisse (personal experience but I was already nearly complete in what I needed to learn).
- You can be yourself. Except, you must also be: positive, optimistic and playful. Other than that, you can be yourself.
- You'll have more success approaching women by yourself than with friends. Reason: you're less threatening by yourself, and convey more open body language. The hyper charged version of this is traveling alone (warning: it can be tough at times, just meet people at hostels. If you don't know what to say then just introduce yourself to a group of people at hostels with "hi my name is <name> what are you guys doing in <place/country>?" And have a story ready as to why you think the country/place is genuinely amazing, don't fake the story, just tell a story from the heart. This does the trick often enough.).
- Try to come up with a method of dating women by focusing on your strenghts. Do this as fast as possible. My weakness: lack of humor. My strength: a shit ton of fantasy. My solution: approach women with fantastical stories that I'm making up out of thin air.
- It's the inside that counts, not the outside. The outside is fun, so are drugs or video games. But a good personality means guaranteed amazing sex no matter how she looks, so IMO looks are irrelevant even from a hedonic perspective. I've been with good looking women, but the best sex I've ever had wasn't from a good looking woman. The most amazing intimate moments didn't have any correlation with looks either (sometimes they were good looking). The only thing I had was that I became less insecure after having slept with a few good looking women (and ultimately realizing it was all nonsense).
I recommend Man Transformation. I also recommend the book The New Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz (updated edition by Dan Kennedy). You can listen to the entire book on YouTube or download it and listen to it while driving. I recommend listening to it at least 3 times a month apart. I also recommend doing the following:
1. The theater of mind exercises where you visualize yourself as successful with women. You must make your visualization script really vivid for it to have any effect. And you must not lose focus while visualizing. This is actually quite hard and the reason why most people get no value out of it.
2. The mental rehearsal exercises before you go out and talk to women. You must design your life such that you are constantly interacting with women. The easiest way to do this is to sign up for dance lessons. Salsa is my preferred one. Other ideas: Hang out at coffee shops, in busy areas (malls, near college campuses etc)
email me at honeydoilookfat [at] gmail [dot] com and I'll send you more tips. For all intents and purposes I have solved the women problem although it took me six years. Now I am working on the wealth problem!
Build self-confidence before worrying about women. Get used to making strong eye contact. Learn to smile at every opportunity. Read some self-help books like No More Mr. Nice Guy and Models by Mark Manson. Definitely take up some hobbies that are outside of your comfort zone (something that doesn't involve fixing syntax errors!). Do dance classes make you cringe? Great, you should sign up for that immediately. Watch Yes Man, the movie. Go to the gym and start lifting. Practice meditating everyday for just 8 minutes. Look up rejection therapy, it's an app that gives you a challenge everyday to get rejected. Rejection is good, you'll learn to just accept it and realize that it's not a big deal after all which will allow you to overcome your fears, loosen up, not give a fuck, and live your life on your own terms. You don't have to do all these things at once. Pursue them one by one and I promise you that amazing things will happen to you.
You're asian, so am I. It's very likely that you were raised by parents who only cared about our academics and accomplishments. Unfortunately, we were never taught how to be in touch with our emotions and sexuality. You will never be truly happy until you learn to become comfortable with expressing yourself freely. So with that said, you need to get used to getting out of your head and not try to overthink everything. As nerds, geeks, and hackers, our strongest trait is our ability to analyze things on a very intricate level. But this is bad when it comes to relationships because connecting with another human being is none of that, especially with women, who are very much emotional creatures by design. It's great that you are speaking out about this issue, not many can. Never be afraid to show vulnerability. Good luck on your journey and please keep us updated!
WTF!? I don't mean to be an insensitive dick, but for the love of God, please do not follow this guy's advice. Instead of huffing, go out and get some fresh pussy asap. Surround yourself with other people, especially girls. Be confident, despite your low self esteem and don't tell them you just got dumped or anything about your ex. Meet and approach as many women as possible. Don't act pathetic or shy and don't be afraid of rejection. You can't hit a home run if you never swing. Babe Ruth's batting average was .342, do the math. Realize that if this chick shit on you, she did you a favor by breaking up with you. There are a gazillion fish in the sea and you gotta go fishing A LOT to find the best one for you. When you find the right woman, it is amazing and, if you treat her right, she won't shit on you. If/when she does, realize that she wasn't the one and start over. STOP HUFFING, IDIOT.
What a waste of words, it is pretty simple and we all know what is important in this market, you just need to be the best version of yourself you can be in order to get the best women you can get. Just work on your looks, your money, your status in the world and whatever other personality parameter you can actually improve, that's the only way to improve your dating chances and much more important than any statistical glitches you might find in the system. But it is much harder to do so people want to find shortcuts.
I don't disagree and I think I should have clarified that if you're the type of young man who has trouble dating (in the sense that you find yourself to be awkward, or have mostly bad dates), and can't seem to connect with women, then do NOT do what I have suggested here. Get out there and take a lot of swings.
* register to a running race such as a 10k or half-marathon. It's a nice motivating goal and it will do a lot to ease your anxiety and depression
* pick up dancing. Options depend on what's available in your area. Salsa, or better swing. You will find a lot of people like you in swing. You don't need to date there, and you can make friends with people too, to start with. It's also good exercise
* Invest in a creative hobby. For example, look into cooking (instead of eating out), blogging regularly or put time into photography. This can take time but can be very fulfilling
These are really about working on you, instead of focusing on women. Put your heart into it. And then things will work out
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