Dr. NerdLove insists that no matter how fantastic you may be, there will inevitably be people who just aren’t into you and never will be, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
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I’m kind of a control freak. Seriously. There’s a reason why NerdLove Industries is pretty much a one man show: I have a hard time not being in control of things. I get twitchy if I’m riding shotgun instead of driving myself1. Hell, I barely tolerate cut-scenes in video games because Nathan Drake’s suddenly not doing the shit I tell him to do.
But… I had to learn how to be willing to give up control in dating. And to be perfectly honest, it was one of the best things I could have done. The need to try to control everything in dating is understandable – ambiguity and uncertainty can be intimidating after all – but more often than not, that need to try to account for everything ends up frustrating you and holding you back. Learning to relax your metaphorical grip on the reins can help loosen you up and give your social life the shake-up it needs.
Standing In The Way of Control
One thing I see all too often amongst guys is the need to somehow keep a hold of everything when they’re dating. Part of it is the desire to feel as though you’re the ultimate captain of your fate, rather than accepting that you are often at the mercy of forces and influences you can’t perceive, never mind affect. And part of it is, frankly, a way of managing fear. When you feel as though you have control over something, it’s no longer something that has power over you and, thus, you don’t have to fear it any more. This is one reason why pick-up is so popular; it promises to reduce dating to a system, something mechanical where you can always anticipate reaction B to stimulus A. It’s like running to GameFAQs to solve a perplexing puzzle – you’re told exactly what to say and when to get what you want. Why risk going for the kiss and getting the cheek – or worse, rejected entirely – when you can run the kino-escalation routine that inevitably leads with the “kiss close”? That’s the sort of certainty that people pay money for… and it’s something that nobody can actually give you. You simply can’t account for every variable, and you only frustrate yourself when you try. In fact, the tighter you hold on, the more everything slips through your fingers. You may as well be trying to hold smoke in your bare hands.
Part of dating – or any social experience, really – is coming to understand that there will always be things that you can’t control. Trying to change these is a waste of time that will only leave you more frustrated and confused than you were before. The sooner you learn to let go, the happier you will be.
There’s No Accounting For Taste
The first thing you have to accept is that everybody has their preferences… and sometimes those preferences simply don’t include you. This is the key complaint whenever guys complain that women “only date assholes”, “only date rich guys”, “fuck alphas and cheat on betas” , that 80% of the women only sleep with 20% of the men or that women only want jocks, musicians, movie stars, tall guys, buff guys, “hot” guys or engage in “creep shaming” of less-attractive men who have the temerity to approach them. The underlying complaint is “women only want quality X” when X = “NOT YOU”.
Whenever I hear people complain about how women – individually or as a collective whole – only like X guys, they are usually complaining that they weren’t given a chance and are being cruelly excluded from the sexual marketplace. The implication, of course, is that this is somehow unfair.
Frankly, it makes me wonder what their standard of comparison is.
The fact of the matter is that women – just like men – have their preferences. They may be superficial – someone who prefers gingers but won’t date brunettes, someone who will only date men taller than her or especially jacked guys – or they may go deeper. They may only date within their subculture, their religion or their political affiliation. They may not be willing to date vegans, smokers or meat eaters, men above a certain age or above a certain weight or the unemployed. For some these will be hard and firm deal breakers. Others may be willing to be flexible if the right person comes around.
You may be that right person. If you bring a lot to the table that that individual woman values – a great sense of humor, an incredible lifestyle, even just a sexy accent – you might inspire them to look past their preferences. But you might not. And there’s nothing you can do about this. Whinging about the “unfairness” of it all only makes you look like a child and demonstrates low emotional intelligence – an almost universally unattractive trait. All this does is mark you as someone who doesn’t believe that women have a right to be attracted to the people they like…. something to keep in mind next time a woman you think is below yourstandards hits on you.
You ultimately have two choices: you can try to change yourself to match what these women want or you can move on to find someone who is turned on by what you have to offer.
You Can’t Avoid Rejection
I’ve known far too many guys – nerds especially – who won’t make a move, even simply approaching someone, unless they feel that they are assured of 100% success, because they’re afraid of the sting of rejection. They don’t want to face even the slightest chance they might get rejected. Even the vaguest hint that things might go wrong is enough to wave them off. This is part of why Nice Guys prefer the Platonic Friend Back Door Gambit – it’s a way of insulating themselves against rejection. Why risk a definite “no” when you can try to insinuate yourself into her life and wear her down from the inside? Nice Guys thrive on keeping hope alive and rarely confess their feelings until outside influences – usually the woman getting a boyfriend – “forces” their hand.
Rejection is an inevitable part of dating. It sucks and it can hurt… but you can’t escape it. The various strategies men and women both employ to try to ward off rejection are a waste of time and energy.
For example: guys often write to me asking how to keep a girl from flaking on them. While you can prevent a flake-out, it’s both rare and difficult; no matter what social pressure or head games you try to bring to bear, the problem ultimately is that she’s just not that enthused to see you. She may have agreed to a date and thought better of it, she may have decided that she’s just not attracted to you after all, or she may have met someone else who cranks her gears in a way that you don’t. You could spend time trying to save the date… or you could accept that she’s not that into you and find someone else who is.
Women aren’t exempt from trying to avoid rejection, either. Any woman will tell you about worrying whether a guy is just interested in them for sex, or whether she slept with him “too soon”. The unwritten rule about not having sex until the third date (at the very minimum) is about trying to avoid appearing “too easy” and losing a guy’s respect. Most of The Rules involves trying to avoid rejection by constantly keeping a man off balance and perpetually in “chase” mode2
The problem about approaching any interaction with an eye towards avoiding rejection is that you’re ultimately not actually connecting with the person across from you. You’re spending so much time trying to get everything “right” to get that second (or third, for that matter) date that it becomes about the goal – the next date – rather than learning more about the person you’re with and whether the two of you are compatible.
Rejection hurts because we feel as though it’s a judgement of us as a person – as though we’ve been weighed, measured, and found wanting. Moreover, we feel frustrated and embarrassed for having invested so much in somebody else, only to have it all fall apart.
And yet, rejection just as often has nothing to do with you at all. You can do everything right and still get dropped after a couple of dates… or even shot down before you’ve gotten as far as her number, because sometimes it’s not about you. She may have come to the conclusion that she’s not ready to date anyone right now. He may have reconnected with an ex-girlfriend. Work may have piled up to the point that she simply doesn’t have time to date. He may like you as a person, but realized that he’s just not feeling any chemistry.
Sometimes it’s something you did. Sometimes – more often – it isn’t. In the end, it’s better not only to accept rejection as a part of the process, but to embrace it. More often than not, rejection is a sign that things would not have worked at all – there was some fundamental incompatibility and the two of you are better off looking elsewhere.
Accept rejection. Learn from it whenever you can. But don’t waste time trying to avoid it.
Love Isn’t Always Enough
One of the hardest lessons I had to learn was to accept that sometimes relationships just aren’t going to work out, no matter how much you want them to.
I was looking for a girlfriend – something serious. Maybe not leading directly to marriage but definitely something with long-term potential. She wasn’t. She was newly single and loving it; she was looking for something casual, more of a friends-with-benefits affair than anything that even smelled of commitment. And I, in my foolishness, was convinced that I could change her mind.
I couldn’t. All that happened was that I over-invested myself in a relationship that was never going to work; we wanted entirely different things out of life and my trying to ignore that only set me up for a break-up that left me an emotional wreck for nearly a year.
This happens all too often in the dating scene; two people with incompatible goals or lives trying to make it work because they really, really want it to. More often than not, one person ends up in deeper than the other, only to have everything yanked out from under them. You may want commitment; she may just want sex. You may want her all to yourself and she may be incapable of monogamy. You may want the house with the white picket fence and the 2.5 kids and she may want a foot-loose and fancy-free life of travelling the world whenever the whim takes her.
If you can accept that any relationship with them will be short term and embrace them for who they are rather than who you want them to be, then you can have a wonderful time while it lasts; with luck you can end on good terms and part as friends. However, all trying to force the other person into your mold is going to do is end in tears.
Not Everybody Is Going to Like You
Some people simply aren’t going to like you no matter what you do.
It doesn’t matter who you are; no matter how charming, handsome, sexy or otherwise God’s Gift To Women you may be, there will inevitably be people who just aren’t into you and never will be.
The sooner you learn to embrace this, the happier you will be. Getting caught up in trying to get that one specific person to like you – especially when all evidence says she won’t – is a waste of your time. It makes for great fodder for movies, but it in the real world, all it does is shred your self-esteem and keep you from finding the people who do like you.
Much like the men who twist themselves into knots trying to avoid rejection, many guys can’t accept that they are never going to go 5 for 5 with women… or even 3 for 5. Once again, pick-up is popular because it promises you the secrets to undeniable attraction, learning how to inspire uncontrollable lust in any woman you desire. They teach you that any girl is attainable, even if she has a boyfriend or a husband; it’s a tenet in many PUA circles that any woman will cheat given the right man. And so they teach techniques ”guaranteed” to win even the hardest heart over. Does she have a boyfriend? Here’s how you bring him down in her eyes so that you can get in her pants. Is she being cold, dismissive or even rude? Here’s how to dismantle her “bitch shield”. Some especially desperate guys study neuro-linguistic programming in order to try to sway women from being uninterested into madly in love with them… or at least unbelievably horny. And it’s all worthless. It’s part of a refusal to accept that there will always be some people you just won’t connect with, even if you want it so badly your balls ache with frustration. But just wanting something doesn’t make it happen and when you spend all of your time banging your head in against the wall, all that happens is that you get a headache.
This is one reason why it can be so hard to escape the Friend Zone; even if someone cares about you in his or her way, if they don’t have a romantic or sexual interest in you, you can’t make it happen. You can try to inspire those feelings. You can learn to be more attractive and desirable. But in the end, people want what they want and feel how they feel and you can’t change that. You can accept things and let go, or you can continue to waste your time and energy in a pointless fight that will get you nowhere at best or actively alienate the other person at worst.
There are literally millions of women out there in the world. The more time you spend trying to win over someone who doesn’t like you is time you’re losing to find someone who is looking for a guy like you.
Pain Is Inevitable. Suffering is Optional.
After talking about everything you can’t control, I want to focus on the one thing you can: yourself.
How you see the world and how it affects you is entirely up to you. You can let rejection destroy you or you can pick yourself up off the ground, dust yourself off and do better next time. You can focus on the negatives – all of the women who shoot you down, all of your failed relationships, all of the women you want who don’t want you back – or you can focus on the positive and all of the glorious potential arrayed before you. This is the value of an abundance mentality: you realize that no matter how bad things get, there’s always a new opportunity for things to get better. Yes, she may have rejected you. Congratulations, you’re now one step closer to finding the woman who is perfect for you.
Having a positive outlook on life directly affects your dating success. Someone who believes himself to be lucky is more likely to see the opportunities that come his way because he’s looking for them. A positive outlook is more attractive to others because we instinctively like positive people; they’re more fun to be around. They make us feel good about ourselves. Meanwhile, someone who is relentlessly negative and is wallowing in his suffering is going to radiate his anger, frustration and misery through every pore; it affects everything about you.
Finding the strength to keep going even in the face of repeated failure, to be willing to be optimistic even in the darkest times, can be difficult.
But in the end… it’s worth it.
Originally appeared at Paging Dr. NerdLove
Photo: Flickr/Eli Christman
Women date guys who ask them out, if they seem interesting. Then, when he turns out to be an asshole, women break up with those guys. If she wanted to date an asshole long term, she’d have married him, not broken up with him.
If you want to ask a woman out, do it within a short while of knowing her. Hanging around pretending to be somebody’s friend when you are secretly plotting sexual escapades in your head and getting angry at her for not giving you sex is quite rapey when you think about it.
Rapey does not exist. Using such a term is pathetic, STOP USING IT because you are destroying the believability of rape when you conflate it with things that are NOT RAPE. And most guys that stay around do so because society sends a message that best friends fall in love. It’s also that people do enjoy each others friendship, but feelings grow and it becomes frustrating to have those feelings not reciprocated. Very few men pretend to be someones friend to get a date, most are friends first n foremost because they enjoy friendship. There are plenty of women who… Read more »
The first thing you have to accept is that everybody has their preferences… and sometimes those preferences simply don’t include you. This is the key complaint whenever guys complain that women “only date assholes”, “only date rich guys”, “fuck alphas and cheat on betas” , that 80% of the women only sleep with 20% of the men or that women only want jocks, musicians, movie stars, tall guys, buff guys, “hot” guys or engage in “creep shaming” of less-attractive men who have the temerity to approach them. The underlying complaint is “women only want quality X” when X = “NOT… Read more »
Isn’t the “You Can’t Avoid Rejection” and “Not Everybody Is Going to Like You” chapters (among others) a contradiction to the “Abundance mentality” that NL is preaching in most other articles?
Hi
Can this report from an online dating site be the so call scientific evidence of what women prefer?
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/
This is silly.
Women do not pick their men after photos in real life.
Why trust reports like thus one?
Well, intelligent people DON’T trust those reports, because they know there’s nothing remotely scientific about internet polls.
This is just silly. Have you even read this report? Most internet polls are useless because they require that people self-report on their preferences and actions. The OKCupid blog gained widespread credibility and popularity by being one of the first dating sites to report on how users actually use the site. They were measuring people’s actions, not their words, which in many ways make their information more useful than anything you’ll read elsewhere about online dating. OKCupid actually received quite a bit of flak whenever they tried to use this data to increase the efficiency of their service (by splitting… Read more »
As you said yourself, OKCupid users are a self-selected group. The data cannot be extrapolated. Which is a more specific way of saying there’s nothing scientific about it. So, no. Not “just silly.”
Hi DD Earlier here on GMP more than one man tells us that women are attracted to only 20-30% of all men in their society. I have repeatedly asked for some links to that research,but get non. When I saw this article I asked those men if this was the source of this belief. When I said it is silly I mean it is silly to conclude from this report that all women are attracted to only 20-30% of men in their society. I was not thinking of the report as a guide to write profiles. Why some men push… Read more »
Read up on hypergamy. There is an issue currently in some western countries where many women want a man of EQUAL education, and because there are more women than men with a college degree it makes the total pool of eligible men smaller. They have to put aside hypergamy to find love. I think in the past it was more pronounced since women NEEDED a provider.
Humans also pick people based on personality, scent, etc. We’re still investigating the effects of pheromones on our behaviour AFAIK.
I think all this hookup culture in America make many men and women, struggling, angry, lonely, and bitter. I’m Asian guy, and in my country, its normal to see 25 year old guy who is still a virgin, even never have a relationship. Its also normal, even celebrated, for a man to lost her virginity to her wife in the wedding night. Most of my friend never go to bar and club in the weekend, we just go to restaurant, cafe, or theater. My 23 year old male friend is good looking, smart, great guitarist, and after he graduated from… Read more »
The message is not off the mark. You have a very good point. Perhaps it is just supposed to be like that. Perhaps we are in the wrong for expecting a sex, dating and relationship life. Its natural for men to “struggle” at something that is not meant to be in the first place. Maybe sex and female companionship is a privilege for men and not supposed to be for everyone. Monogamy artificially ensured for centuries that most men could have a woman. Now that it is slowly going out of favor it is giving men a taste of what… Read more »
One of the best articles I’ve read in a long while… However, I’d like to read something that digs more into the enigma of why we sometimes “fixate” on one particular woman, who rejects our advances, and cannot accept that it’s NOT us, and just move on. I think it’s in the psychology of wanting what you don’t think you can have…but what causes that?… I really don’t know. I do believe this…dissilusion is the child of illusion. The woman that I had it all wrong about, “in the end” – I think I was TRULY wrong about in the… Read more »
@Don Draper…
I have no sense of entitlement about any woman. If she is not for me, I simply move on, period. Why some men get angry over rejections has always puzzled me. Maybe because I have never chased a bunch of women. Most of my adult life I was either single or married or in relationships.
What really was a slap in the face was my ex wife. That was a real hurtful experience.
What happend with your ex wife that was hurtful for you Jules?
I don’t think you ar totally off base that women will go for the “bad boy”. But I also see this with men.
This goes for women too! so many blogs and articles are geared towards women on how to be sexier and more desirable to men. Truth is not every body will like you no matter what you do. Women say men like bitches and hence we have to all become bitches or act like them so men like us (sounds familiar guys?).
@Luzy…. “Women say men like bitches and hence we have to all become bitches or act like them so men like us (sounds familiar guys?).” I don’t like bitches. But, I don’t mind an assertive or even a woman with an edge. That’s how I would describe my girlfriend. She has an edge most of the time. She is a police officer and the job is stressful. What I do is relax her. Get her mind off the job. I take the edge off her by doing sweet little things like bubble baths, flowers, massage, massaging her feet, rubbing her… Read more »
Just lie. Sort out the details later.
Movies and TV?
That was a reply to iben
Dating with an agenda or objective to just hook up with another for a temporary reward is the fodder of the pickup industry. You could probably get the girl you’re after by putting on a persona that appeals to her tastes. But that success will be short lived as the “connection” you’ve made is based on deception. If you’re looking for a lasting relationship, the best bet in finding the person who will honestly fall for you is the one who gets to see the real you in the first place. NO need for deceptions, false bravado, or playing character… Read more »
“I have several likes regarding what I look for in a partner. Are they all necessary or deal breakers? NO.”
I think you speak for most people here, women included.
Dear Iben— Neil Strauss (author of “The Game”) would describe those men who complain as AFCs = “Average Frustrated Chumps”…ie., guys who are not properly socialized or learned to get over their shyness or fear of meeting people (or Asperger’s?)….Neil says that he never dated while in college which I find astounding since the school used to be a women’s college and full of very sociable, lovely females who enjoy engaging others in all kinds of fun events and activities….He says his former college buddies remarked on how different he was after he learned “The Game” (and how different he… Read more »
Hi dr.Nerdlove Is it true that you never respond to comments ? This sums up what some ( many)men share with us on GMP: ✺”. This is the key complaint whenever guys complain that women “only date assholes”, “only date rich guys”, “fuck alphas and cheat on betas” , that 80% of the women only sleep with 20% of the men or that women only want jocks, musicians, movie stars, tall guys, buff guys, “hot” guys or engage in “creep shaming” of less-attractive men who have the temerity to approach them. The underlying complaint is “women only want quality X”… Read more »
@Iben….
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-copeland/george-clooney-single_b_3581234.html?utm_hp_ref=fifty&ir=Fifty
From the mouth of a woman.
Great find. This should be required reading for every woman who ever posts on this site and/or who wonders where all the “good men” have gone. Romanticize bad boys enough and eventually we’ll all become one.
I hate to admit it but you do have a point. Men are seeing way too many examples of bad boys winning, just as women are seeing hot women winning over other qualities. But pay more attention to local people, I see plenty of mixed couples who have 1 hot, 1 not so hot, bad boy, good girl, bad girl, good boy, good good bad bad yadda yadda. Shy girls still get guys, but shy guys find it much much harder.
So, one woman confirms your suspicions, and suddenly all women MUST conform?
Megan
Is it not true that women have a different type for flings and a different type for marriage?
Is it not true that many women marry guys they wouldn’t have deemed hot enough for a no strings attached fling?
Some women do; others don’t. Here’s the shocking thng about women – WE’RE INDIVIDUALS, TOO.
Hi Megan
Well said 🙂
@Megan…
It is not ALL women.
However, I will say it is certainly more than 50%. I just do not understand why women want to deny the obvious? It is as we men are suppose to deny what we see with our own eyes on a daily basis. Why the denials?
What is so feared by women about being called out on the stuff they really do? Denying it will not make it go away!
“However, I will say it is certainly more than 50%.”
Based on what comprehensive study? Or am I to assume that your anecdotes are equivalent?
Women don’t want to “deny the obevious.” It’s just that some things aren’t so obvious to us. You’ve made seriously obnoxious comments about women on quite a few threads, now, and I’d like to know why exactly I’m expected to respect any of them as authoritative.
@Megan…
“….and I’d like to know why exactly I’m expected to respect any of them as authoritative.”
Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.
Yeah, that would probably be more convincing if you hadn’t just tried to persuade me.
“But from where do they all get this exactly same idea?”
Observation. It isn’t as bad as some make it out to be but there are general things that help each gender getting a partner. Men having wealth, social status, power, and women to be beautiful, have social status.
But from where do they all get this exactly same idea? Hi Iben, I think men get this idea from looking at what happens in the bar/club scene and the hook-up culture. They don’t look at the couples who are married or in LTR’s. Ofcourse in the hook up and bar scene only men who are “quite attractive” are able to do well, but I don’t know why success in these spheres is so important for today’s young men? It seems young men dont get the validation from getting married to one woman and dating several women and having hookups… Read more »
@Alina… “It seems young men dont get the validation from getting married to one woman and dating several women and having hookups / flings is the benchmark with which they validate themselves.” True. It’s because men now know that being married or in a LTR is the WORST place to be. These women the men are married to or in LTR women do not treat them as well as their past lovers (the women’s lovers). So, just what man wants to be treated like a second class citizen by you own damn wife? NO ONE! Waning sexual desire and lack… Read more »
Have you seen our media lately? It’s rife with this sorta stuff. But more to the point, part of it is that relationships and dating are fraught with thousands of points of possible rejection and if you’re super-afraid of that happening you’d rather go for the hookup scene where there’s at most only a handful of those points.