Dealing with contradictions

Justwannaread3 · 2024-09-09T21:18:12+00:00

I think you know that turning your frustrations outward and “blaming” women for not dating you (declining to date you is not finding you invisible) isn’t the solution here.

I think you probably know that there are plenty of women who find themselves in unhealthy situations for all sorts of reasons, and that they may feel stuck for all sorts of reasons.

I think you probably know that the “man hating” you see is overblown by social media algorithms and that a couple’s consensual sex life is their business.

I think you probably know that there are women who would “bring to the table” even more than you.

You sound like a reasonable person. I believe in you that you understand all of this.

Dating sucks. Dating apps suck and are shallow and are primarily men. Meeting someone you click with who clicks with you is hard.

I also suggest heading to r/incelexit if you’re interested in more opinions from women.

Personal_Dirt3089 · 2024-09-09T21:05:33+00:00

The modern world of apps is horrible for people over 30, especially guys since the gender ratio is really packed with guys.

Anyways, get the "nice guy" thing out of your head, that's black and white thinking. Being a passive aggressive people pleasing indecisive self righteous doormat is not nice, it's just insincere and hard to connect with. I have also seen some very abusive people call themselves "nice".

Also, stop putting women on a pedestal . Just because she is cute does not mean she lives this wholesome drama free life.

If you meet a woman that hates men, or thinks in adversarial terms, seriously, do not go out with her. Understand how to read red flags, even if she is attractive. Some of those women basically just think in a genderflipped version of the redpill.

Even your framing of "mature women" as a hive mind speaks to how you need to stop thinking in black and white ways and seeing broad groups, in this case around half the species, as a hive mind.

luridlurker · 2024-09-09T21:34:28+00:00

I watch "mature" women get with men who treat them like shit and here is me being a gentleman and trying to genuinely get to know a woman as a person yet ending up getting ignored/rejected. You can understand my frustration.

Not just here, but especially here, you seem to make a large number of assumptions about other people and their internal state.

What does treating them like shit look like to you? There's plenty of women who don't care if you open doors for them or buy them things or deal out pleasantries like "please" and "thank you" - they just want to be treated like a human. What might be "shit treatment" to you looking in from the outside, might just be a fine dynamic to the people involved because they feel a real connection.

If treating them like shit is cheating and lying and all that - you're looking at people who have problems. Issues with self worth, looking for validation in the wrong place etc. Don't expect that dynamic to make sense without empathy for what lack of self worth will do to someone.

Hell, there are women in this sub that I've seen repeat that men are now effectively useless

You seem to think of men and women as a monolith, and you seem to be surrounded by people who do the same. To me, this sounds like a problem of not knowing yourself or what you want.

what on earth do women bring to the table? Is that bad for me to say that?

It's not wrong for you to say that, but women don't bring jack and shit to the table. Men don't either. An individual brings something. You should change up this question a bit. What do you as an individual not as "a man" bring to things? What are you looking for to compliment that? If your list of complimentory values/skills/abilities is "has vagina, looks nice, acts nice, will fuck, wants kids with you" that's way too generic to be of interest to any individual of substance. No one wants to fill a niche like that because no one (but the very desperate) wants to go unseen like that.

la_flaneuse23 · 2024-09-10T10:56:45+00:00

Long post, sorry in advance!

I’ve read through your post as well as all of the comments and your replies to them and I think I have an inkling of what may be occurring. I can tell you genuinely want to figure this out and are coming here in good faith, but there are several patterns I’m seeing in your approach and thought process that, in my opinion, are holding you back.

Now, this is NOT meant to be an attack, and hopefully, you’ll find my observations helpful despite being direct. I don’t like to speak in generalities, so I’ll break each of these points down for you because I think once you reflect on them, you may see why things haven’t been working out. Again, these are NOT meant to tear you down, they’re just the observations from someone on the internet who’s hoping to help you get unstuck.

Okay, let’s begin:

Observation #1: You seem to have a very transactional approach to dating. — Asking a woman “what do you bring to the table” really means “what makes you think you deserve me?” It comes across as entitled, arrogant, and judgmental. It reduces the entirety of a relationship to a business deal/transaction and creates a dynamic where people are keeping score on who offers more. If you’re a man who wants to have biological kids with a woman and expect her to risk her life carrying them, it’s a ridiculous question (for the record, I don’t care for arguments that reduce people to their sexual reproductive organs, but this is said to highlight how problematic the question is). Furthermore, this question is a dog is whistle to traditional gender roles where there’s an implicit expectation that women should bring something like domestic skills, beauty, or sexual availability, while men bring financial stability or status. Historically, marriage was the legal transaction of a father turning ownership of his daughter over to the husband, and that just shouldn’t sit well with anyone in the 21st century. If you’ve said this to any woman, they’ve most likely written you off for that statement alone.

Observation # 2: It appears that you’re prioritizing surface-level qualities over emotional and personal connection. — The way you describe women focuses a lot on their appearance (fitness, femininity) or behaviors you want (loyalty, respect), but you don’t really talk about who they are as individuals. Tbh, these are traits similar to what one would expect from a show dog. It seems like your focus is on what a woman can provide externally (see point one)—whether that’s loyalty, sexual compatibility, or not having an ego—and these are all surface-level traits. Real compatibility comes from shared emotional connection, mutual respect, and understanding. Are you genuinely getting to know women as individuals, or are you mostly focused on how they measure up to this set of traits you’ve decided are important?

Observation #3: It sounds like you’re more comfortable with a woman who defers to you rather than being your equal. — You’ve said you want a woman who’s “humble” and doesn’t have an ego, isn’t arrogant, and that you don’t want to compete with her. This makes it sound like you may be uncomfortable with women who are assertive, confident, successful in their own right, or challenge you in any way. A healthy relationship should be between equals, where both people feel secure, respected, and able to assert themselves. Again, this is just how it appears based on what you’ve written; reality may be different, but your responses lead me to make these observations.

Observation #4: You’re coming across as if you’re entitled to a particular kind of woman. — I know you’ve accomplished a lot: owning a home outright (in one of the most expensive real estate markets, no less), being in great shape, having no debt, and affording relatively expensive hobbies. Those are all great things to be proud of, but the way you’ve listed them out as though they’re reasons why women should want you makes it sound like you’re expecting them to reward you for your personal achievements. People want to be seen and appreciated for who they are, not for how they can fit into your pre-constructed life plan. Just because you’ve checked off certain boxes doesn’t mean you’re automatically entitled to a woman’s time, attention, or affection. The connection you seem to want isn’t going to be based on what you can provide materially, it’s about emotional intimacy, mutual respect, and vulnerability.

xweert123 · 2024-09-09T21:09:52+00:00

Something I strongly recommend is looking at the pinned thread on this subreddit; the redpill detox subreddit specifically. It covers a lot of these topics in great detail and shows actual, real science and studies behind how people work.

The long and short of it is, humans are extremely diverse and complex and there's no one-size-fits-all solution for dating. Women are just as complex as men are and in general it's important to understand that the best way to date is to make friends and form genuine connections, not to actively "look", if that makes sense. It feels counter-intuitive, but, generally, most people who formed long-lasting relationships didn't find them through just randomly meeting the love of their life in public. Besides that, you need to understand that humans tend to focus on finding negatives; focusing on those negatives can often result in you overlooking everything else. Just because you THINK nobody says that misandry is bad, doesn't mean that's actually true.

Some other things to keep in mind are;

Dating apps and such are profit based and are severely oversaturated with men; they are horrible places to actually find dates on and very rarely work out. If you aren't going to invest lots of money into those platforms, you aren't going to find much success. This is extensively documented and there are countless studies proving how unrealistic it is for the vast majority of people. Make sure you don't tie your self-worth to such apps.

Have you ever heard of the phrase, "You don't notice how many planes are in the sky until you start looking for them, and now that you're looking, there's suddenly tons of planes in the sky"? Keep that in mind when you seek answers or see things you don't like. Most people who are living healthy lives and haven't struggled with relationships or get caught up in stupid internet nonsense tend to not be the ones giving advice and teaching people how to be successful, or making sweeping statements towards people. In that vein, when you're trying to find answers, that means the only people shouting from the rooftops about these sorts of things are the ones that are insecure, struggling, have trauma, and don't actually have the answers. (After all, if they had their marbles all put together, why are they struggling, too?) So, in that regard, that should be a clue that there's probably something more to this discourse than meets the eye if there's so many "contradictions".

Normal, healthy minded people, aren't participating in gender wars and hating men/women, so you end up only focusing on the things that upset you the most, since, well, everyone else just isn't talking about the topic, since they typically don't need to. Normal people are simply out and about, living normal lives, and not taxing their mind on subjects like this. I, for example, only became present on this subreddit because I had a friend who fell down the exredpill pipeline, and wanted advice on how to help him overcome his insecurities.

Case-in-point, you mentioned how there's women on this exredpill subreddit that play into the gender war hysteria you speak negatively about. The fact that there's people who [i]say[/i] those things don't matter in-and-of itself; the overwhelming majority of exredpill users on this subreddit simply do not agree with that type of rhetoric, whether it be demonizing men OR women, so it's not wise to just ignore everything else that is said or believed by the entire rest of the subreddit solely because you saw some users say awful things. Misandry is bad; the vast majority of people agree with that. And it's best to ignore or dismiss people who are misandric or prejudiced in any other way. Their words only hold power if you allow them to hold power.

Think-Fan-2858 · 2024-09-09T21:51:55+00:00

First few lines sounded like i was reading about myself, so i sympathize, OP. It's hard to be completely cohesive here because there are a lot of many different topics, but i hope you understand:

First off, i disagree completely with the other commenter here suggesting you should stop being nice to women. The problem with self-described "nice guys" isn't that they're good to other people, it's that they often do things at the expense of their own self-respect or expect something (mostly sexual favours) in return, when that's just how you should treat everyone else. I do think though, there is a lot of overlap between former nice guys and playing it overly safe, and then you get rejected not because you didn't "check enough boxes" for a romantic partner, but because the women you're talking to simply think you're giving friend vibes and not flirting with them.

Another aspect is that you're approaching relationships with a binary idea of being deserving or not of love. A good example of this is that you shut off your relationships until you were able to change careers, and you seem to now be surprised things aren't exactly working now you have your life together.
It's true that some attitudes don't help in dating at all, and that maybe depending on where you are in life it's probably wise to take a break for a while, but this isn't exactly a very straightforward process for most people.
Men get frustrated at this quite often because redpill/manosphere thinking paints a pretty simple scenario: if you're a 'chad', tall, make good money, muscular, you're gonna have no problem, and that simply isn't true (e.g rise of gymcel culture). People are their own amalgama of preferences and you're not gonna be compatible with most of others, and that's completely okay. Find whoever you like and likes you back, and keep them in your life

Also i agree with other comments about gender warfare being highly inflated by social media. There's also the issue that on the internet you're getting a somewhat biased sample of people, and that's just because the people who are actually satisfied with their relationships are just out there living their lives and not posting about their spouse online.

Difficult_Ferret2838 · 2024-09-09T20:51:07+00:00

Sounds like you are still stuck in the nice guy complex.

Dealing with contradictions

Comments

5: I'll have to think on this one more but good stuff, thank you.

8: Good point, I'll reflect on this more. I feel like I've dated a number of women this year which I feel like I compromised many of my standards and it just lead to an unhappy outcome so trying to be less rigid hasn't lead me anywhere but I'll stay flexible.

Title	Dealing with contradictions
Author	MeanSeaworthiness6
Upvotes	1
Comments	78
Date	September 9, 2024 8:40 PM UTC (1 year ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/ExRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/exredpill/comments/1fczvrh/dealing_with_contradictions/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/ExRedPill/dealing-with-contradictions.1529931 https://theredarchive.com/post/1529931