Certainly haven’t followed it as a matter of conscious intent. I am pretty much only attracted to nerds (one of my personal rules, back when I was on the market, was that I would not date a guy who did not own a d20) and my reaction is that much of this is really horrible advice for the girl trawling the geek pool for a boyfriend.
For instance all the stuff about waiting for him to make the first move, expecting him to take the lead, etc, is just a recipe for two lovelorn nerds staring hopelessly at each other over the miniatures table (and never going any farther than that). I generally found it pretty easy to tell when a guy was into me, and I made some pretty blatant passes just to get the ball rolling.
For instance, with the man who is now my husband, I initiated our relationship by saying (this is a direct quote) “Hey, have you ever thought about you and me dating?” And I continued to take the lead in things like initiating our first kiss and the first time we went to bed together, because I knew I was a lot more experienced in that arena. On the other hand, most girls do like to be courted and I’m no exception, so there definitely was a point when I expected him to start taking the lead. But I didn’t expect him to guess where it was. I told him straight up, “hey, I’ve kind of been the instigator up until now, but we’re getting kind of serious and I’m not going to always be the one pushing our relationship to the next level. If we keep at this there are going to be a few milestones coming up—the first time someone says ‘I love you’ is the next one—and I’m not going to be the one to go first there, so, you know, just keep that in mind.” So he was the one to use the “L-word” first, and he proposed marriage, and so forth.
We did end up having a fight on Valentine’s Day, when I baked him cupcakes and he got me absolutely nothing, but the lesson I took away from that was not “dump him,” it was “use your words.” If I expect a present, I need to tell him, in English, that I want a present. Tone of voice does not count and neither does body language. He is not good with hints, even if they seem to me to be really, really obvious hints. He wants to do things that will make me happy, but he cannot be relied upon to guess what those things are. He and I are both much, much happier when I just tell him what I want.
So, “be mysterious” would have been terrible advice for me, and all that stuff about not signaling too much interest I think is counterproductive for “our kind” as well, since nerd guys often have a hard time picking up on it when a girl is flirting with them.
There are a few things in there that I think are useful. The old “never sleep with a guy before the third date” rule is one that I would probably endorse, except I would take out the “never.” But in general I think being slow to jump in bed with people is a good, self-protective strategy for women. “Don’t try to change him” is just good solid advice, and so is “don’t date a married man.” But yeah, I think for the gal batting her eyelashes at the company sysadmin, most of those rules are either not really applicable or downright counterproductive.
Which leads me to my objection to PUA stuff. I mean, a lot of it seems like harmless enough “Dumbo’s feather” type stuff—tricks to get shy guys to actually approach and interact with women in a way that signals confidence rather than desperation. I’m fine with all that and I can certainly see how it would be useful. But in the overarching philosophy—it just seems like an incredibly alienating view of women. I know there’s some lip-service to the idea of individual variation, but for the most part the PUA strategies encourage guys to see women almost like androids, all obeying the same script.
And from what I’ve seen of measurable differences between men and women, they exist as averages over large groups, but they are dwarfed by individual variances. Like, yes, men are on average taller and stronger than women. But Jill Mills could kick your ass. Women are human and as individuals we fall across the whole spectrum of human variance. All women are not alike, not any more than all men are alike.
So yeah, I don’t have much trouble believing that PUA “works” in terms of helping guys pick up at singles bars. I’m a lot more skeptical that it “works” across a broader spectrum of experience. I have my doubts about how well it would work on nerd girls (I courted a few of them in my wild youth, too.)
And ultimately I worry about the damage that the PUA mindset does to relations between men and women as human beings—lord knows, reading Roissy’s blog doesn’t leave me with a lot of hope for the species.
You are very unusual. I love nerds too, and am currently in an amazing relationship with one, but even I have my limits. He needed to pursue me or I wouldn’t have bothered. I was quite explicitly testing, and once he realized the game was one, he exceeded expectations. But yeah, there were a couple of months there when I thought, ‘To hell with this! If he’s not going to make a move at this point, he can’t know what he’s doing, and he certainly won’t be any good at the business...’
You are very unusual. I love nerds too, and am currently in an amazing relationship with one, but even I have my limits. He needed to pursue me or I wouldn’t have bothered.
If I hadn’t already had good evidence that he was crazy about me, I might have gone for more of that sort of testing, I don’t know.
At the time I had this idea that I was going to be San Francisco’s real-life superheroine. I would get a cape and a mask and call myself Mistra. I went as far as enrolling in a first-responder course and a Wing Chun class. I told Sam (now my husband, but at the time just a good friend) that he should be my sidekick, Fog Lad. He agreed to this plan. We started throwing around ideas for his costume.
Sometime after this it occurred to me literally in the shower that he must be in love with me, because I’m pretty sure guys don’t agree to run around the city in tights calling themselves Fog Lad unless they are desperately in love with some chick.
So I told him I thought we should date, and then everything just went extremely well from there. Sadly, once we fell into bed together, we kind of got distracted and I stopped going to Wing Chun class, and San Francisco never did get its ace crimefighting team.
That is just too adorable to be true! Tell me you made it up. If not, you may just have be the inspiration for the first romantic teen comedy superhero flick that is based off a true story!
This is true. We were (and are) in the same social group, so I didn’t need to go out of my way for repeated interaction. Had I met him once and he failed to pick up my sigs, then NO, we would NOT be together now… This reminds me of a conversation I had with Silas, in which he asked me, “How many dates until....?” And I stared at him for a moment and said, “What makes you think there would be a second if the first didn’t go so well?”
Great post. I loved your approach with your husband and think that in general, most people would be better off following it (especially women).
[PUA] just seems like an incredibly alienating view of women. I know there’s some lip-service to the idea of individual variation, but for the most part the PUA strategies encourage guys to see women almost like androids, all obeying the same script.
Your objection to PUA stuff is based on a certain view of PUA I don’t think is accurate. In fact, one of the most helpful things to me about PUA was the idea that each person has an individual set of “attraction switches” and it’s just a matter of finding them. This freed me up a lot.
And from what I’ve seen of measurable differences between men and women, they exist as averages over large groups, but they are dwarfed by individual variances.
I don’t really think this is an issue of the differences between men and women. In fact, I think most of the PUA ideas apply equally well to men and women, because they’re observations on human psychology. PUA gets applied mostly to women because it’s mostly men who go after women, not because women are so different than men. The relevant distinction here is “friends” vs. “people you are attracted to and want to go after”—a lot of PUA advice consists of distinguishing behaviors for these two categories—not men vs. women.
And ultimately I worry about the damage that the PUA mindset does to relations between men and women as human beings—lord knows, reading Roissy’s blog doesn’t leave me with a lot of hope for the species.
I’m tempted to say “but Roissy is an idiot who has nothing to do with PUA!” However, I’m wary of committing the One True Scotsmen fallacy, and I suppose I have to admit that there is a portion of the PUA blogosphere that is misogynistic. I don’t think that his blog is representative of most of the valuable stuff in the PUA community, and in fact his blog has been described as more of a “men going their own way” blog.
Your objection to PUA stuff is based on a certain view of PUA I don’t think is accurate. In fact, one of the most helpful things to me about PUA was the idea that each person has an individual set of “attraction switches” and it’s just a matter of finding them. This freed me up a lot.
Can you point me to a page that espouses that view? I googled for it and found this: http://www.seductionbase.com/seduction/cat/In_the_Middle/EC/218.html—but it seems the opposite of what you’re saying, as it’s a list of “attraction switches” that will supposedly work for “most women.” Now granted, they’re all generically good things (“TRUST” and “CONFIDENCE” and “CHEMISTRY” are all fine things in a relationship, sure) but there’s no mention of individual variation or any conception that different women may be looking for different things. Instead, the message is: flip these switches and “she’s really going to be into you”! And then at the end the author writes “I’d love to see another list: of the switches to flip for a ONS [One Night Stand] -- the switches that over-ride the social programming and make her crave that adventure and abandon. ” Like I said, it’s women as androids. Flip the switches, override the programming, badda bing badda boom.
It just seems like a juvenile fantasy—women as sex robots, available to anyone who knows the override code. Not the kind of outlook that’s actually going help a lonely guy make a genuine connection with a woman.
Well, this kind of systematizing and abstraction is really helpful when you don’t know what to do or how to start a relationship. And it’s useful to have some defaults that work pretty well, most of the time, before you get to know someone.
I actually think that seeing women as acting based on a specific pattern, that has reasons behind it and that can be understood with time and practice, rather than a baffling and impenetrable mystery, is exactly what will help a lonely guy make a genuine connection.
Can you point me to a page that espouses that view?
there’s no mention of individual variation or any conception that different women may be looking for different things.
I got the insight that everyone has different attraction switches from a conversation with someone, not a web page, and I’m not as familiar with what material is available online. However, HughRistik wrote twocomments about this topic with a few links to pages that might be relevant.
Your point of view has a lot in common with the indignation of theists that say the universe cannot be made of “cold numbers” or somesuch. As someone who’s had a lot of field practice and done a lot of homework, I can say this: the mating behavior of humans (men and women alike) is frighteningly predictable if you know the right variables to look at. Humans aren’t nearly as different as they think they are. Getting offended by this is like getting offended by the theory of relativity. Sure you can, but it will only get you so far.
I also just want to remark that, the first time I saw this happen on Less Wrong—where two people were getting into a discussion of escalating snarkiness, until one of them apologized and retracted a remark—I just about fell out of my chair. I mean, people don’t do that on the Internet! It actually clinched my interest in this forum and the material here.
I really wish your approach was not so unusual… You would be doing humanity (and nerds) a favour if you wrote your own guide to dating for women. I don’t think one book would change the insanity of human interaction, but it would probably help.
Certainly haven’t followed it as a matter of conscious intent. I am pretty much only attracted to nerds (one of my personal rules, back when I was on the market, was that I would not date a guy who did not own a d20) and my reaction is that much of this is really horrible advice for the girl trawling the geek pool for a boyfriend.
For instance all the stuff about waiting for him to make the first move, expecting him to take the lead, etc, is just a recipe for two lovelorn nerds staring hopelessly at each other over the miniatures table (and never going any farther than that). I generally found it pretty easy to tell when a guy was into me, and I made some pretty blatant passes just to get the ball rolling.
For instance, with the man who is now my husband, I initiated our relationship by saying (this is a direct quote) “Hey, have you ever thought about you and me dating?” And I continued to take the lead in things like initiating our first kiss and the first time we went to bed together, because I knew I was a lot more experienced in that arena. On the other hand, most girls do like to be courted and I’m no exception, so there definitely was a point when I expected him to start taking the lead. But I didn’t expect him to guess where it was. I told him straight up, “hey, I’ve kind of been the instigator up until now, but we’re getting kind of serious and I’m not going to always be the one pushing our relationship to the next level. If we keep at this there are going to be a few milestones coming up—the first time someone says ‘I love you’ is the next one—and I’m not going to be the one to go first there, so, you know, just keep that in mind.” So he was the one to use the “L-word” first, and he proposed marriage, and so forth.
We did end up having a fight on Valentine’s Day, when I baked him cupcakes and he got me absolutely nothing, but the lesson I took away from that was not “dump him,” it was “use your words.” If I expect a present, I need to tell him, in English, that I want a present. Tone of voice does not count and neither does body language. He is not good with hints, even if they seem to me to be really, really obvious hints. He wants to do things that will make me happy, but he cannot be relied upon to guess what those things are. He and I are both much, much happier when I just tell him what I want.
So, “be mysterious” would have been terrible advice for me, and all that stuff about not signaling too much interest I think is counterproductive for “our kind” as well, since nerd guys often have a hard time picking up on it when a girl is flirting with them.
There are a few things in there that I think are useful. The old “never sleep with a guy before the third date” rule is one that I would probably endorse, except I would take out the “never.” But in general I think being slow to jump in bed with people is a good, self-protective strategy for women. “Don’t try to change him” is just good solid advice, and so is “don’t date a married man.” But yeah, I think for the gal batting her eyelashes at the company sysadmin, most of those rules are either not really applicable or downright counterproductive.
Which leads me to my objection to PUA stuff. I mean, a lot of it seems like harmless enough “Dumbo’s feather” type stuff—tricks to get shy guys to actually approach and interact with women in a way that signals confidence rather than desperation. I’m fine with all that and I can certainly see how it would be useful. But in the overarching philosophy—it just seems like an incredibly alienating view of women. I know there’s some lip-service to the idea of individual variation, but for the most part the PUA strategies encourage guys to see women almost like androids, all obeying the same script.
And from what I’ve seen of measurable differences between men and women, they exist as averages over large groups, but they are dwarfed by individual variances. Like, yes, men are on average taller and stronger than women. But Jill Mills could kick your ass. Women are human and as individuals we fall across the whole spectrum of human variance. All women are not alike, not any more than all men are alike.
So yeah, I don’t have much trouble believing that PUA “works” in terms of helping guys pick up at singles bars. I’m a lot more skeptical that it “works” across a broader spectrum of experience. I have my doubts about how well it would work on nerd girls (I courted a few of them in my wild youth, too.)
And ultimately I worry about the damage that the PUA mindset does to relations between men and women as human beings—lord knows, reading Roissy’s blog doesn’t leave me with a lot of hope for the species.
You are very unusual. I love nerds too, and am currently in an amazing relationship with one, but even I have my limits. He needed to pursue me or I wouldn’t have bothered. I was quite explicitly testing, and once he realized the game was one, he exceeded expectations. But yeah, there were a couple of months there when I thought, ‘To hell with this! If he’s not going to make a move at this point, he can’t know what he’s doing, and he certainly won’t be any good at the business...’
If I hadn’t already had good evidence that he was crazy about me, I might have gone for more of that sort of testing, I don’t know.
At the time I had this idea that I was going to be San Francisco’s real-life superheroine. I would get a cape and a mask and call myself Mistra. I went as far as enrolling in a first-responder course and a Wing Chun class. I told Sam (now my husband, but at the time just a good friend) that he should be my sidekick, Fog Lad. He agreed to this plan. We started throwing around ideas for his costume.
Sometime after this it occurred to me literally in the shower that he must be in love with me, because I’m pretty sure guys don’t agree to run around the city in tights calling themselves Fog Lad unless they are desperately in love with some chick.
So I told him I thought we should date, and then everything just went extremely well from there. Sadly, once we fell into bed together, we kind of got distracted and I stopped going to Wing Chun class, and San Francisco never did get its ace crimefighting team.
That is just too adorable to be true! Tell me you made it up. If not, you may just have be the inspiration for the first romantic teen comedy superhero flick that is based off a true story!
Nope, it’s all true.
The RomCom version of Kick Ass would probably do very well at the box office.
Awesome.
A couple of months. Even that is a little unusual. :)
This is true. We were (and are) in the same social group, so I didn’t need to go out of my way for repeated interaction. Had I met him once and he failed to pick up my sigs, then NO, we would NOT be together now… This reminds me of a conversation I had with Silas, in which he asked me, “How many dates until....?” And I stared at him for a moment and said, “What makes you think there would be a second if the first didn’t go so well?”
By the ellipsis do you mean ‘sex’, and indicate that lack of it on the first date constitutes a failure? (Good for you if you know what you want!)
Yes.
Great post. I loved your approach with your husband and think that in general, most people would be better off following it (especially women).
Your objection to PUA stuff is based on a certain view of PUA I don’t think is accurate. In fact, one of the most helpful things to me about PUA was the idea that each person has an individual set of “attraction switches” and it’s just a matter of finding them. This freed me up a lot.
I don’t really think this is an issue of the differences between men and women. In fact, I think most of the PUA ideas apply equally well to men and women, because they’re observations on human psychology. PUA gets applied mostly to women because it’s mostly men who go after women, not because women are so different than men. The relevant distinction here is “friends” vs. “people you are attracted to and want to go after”—a lot of PUA advice consists of distinguishing behaviors for these two categories—not men vs. women.
I’m tempted to say “but Roissy is an idiot who has nothing to do with PUA!” However, I’m wary of committing the One True Scotsmen fallacy, and I suppose I have to admit that there is a portion of the PUA blogosphere that is misogynistic. I don’t think that his blog is representative of most of the valuable stuff in the PUA community, and in fact his blog has been described as more of a “men going their own way” blog.
Can you point me to a page that espouses that view? I googled for it and found this: http://www.seductionbase.com/seduction/cat/In_the_Middle/EC/218.html—but it seems the opposite of what you’re saying, as it’s a list of “attraction switches” that will supposedly work for “most women.” Now granted, they’re all generically good things (“TRUST” and “CONFIDENCE” and “CHEMISTRY” are all fine things in a relationship, sure) but there’s no mention of individual variation or any conception that different women may be looking for different things. Instead, the message is: flip these switches and “she’s really going to be into you”! And then at the end the author writes “I’d love to see another list: of the switches to flip for a ONS [One Night Stand] -- the switches that over-ride the social programming and make her crave that adventure and abandon. ” Like I said, it’s women as androids. Flip the switches, override the programming, badda bing badda boom.
It just seems like a juvenile fantasy—women as sex robots, available to anyone who knows the override code. Not the kind of outlook that’s actually going help a lonely guy make a genuine connection with a woman.
Well, this kind of systematizing and abstraction is really helpful when you don’t know what to do or how to start a relationship. And it’s useful to have some defaults that work pretty well, most of the time, before you get to know someone.
I actually think that seeing women as acting based on a specific pattern, that has reasons behind it and that can be understood with time and practice, rather than a baffling and impenetrable mystery, is exactly what will help a lonely guy make a genuine connection.
I got the insight that everyone has different attraction switches from a conversation with someone, not a web page, and I’m not as familiar with what material is available online. However, HughRistik wrote two comments about this topic with a few links to pages that might be relevant.
Why would a lonely guy want that? Aren’t you thinking of what a woman would want, instead?
Your point of view has a lot in common with the indignation of theists that say the universe cannot be made of “cold numbers” or somesuch. As someone who’s had a lot of field practice and done a lot of homework, I can say this: the mating behavior of humans (men and women alike) is frighteningly predictable if you know the right variables to look at. Humans aren’t nearly as different as they think they are. Getting offended by this is like getting offended by the theory of relativity. Sure you can, but it will only get you so far.
You put the same kind of confidence in PUA as you do in the theory of relativity? Really?
My experience leads me to different conclusions, yes.
Sorry. My comment wasn’t very thought out, so I deleted it immediately after posting. I’d rather not be having this argument here and now.
No problem. I deleted my reply to it as well.
I also just want to remark that, the first time I saw this happen on Less Wrong—where two people were getting into a discussion of escalating snarkiness, until one of them apologized and retracted a remark—I just about fell out of my chair. I mean, people don’t do that on the Internet! It actually clinched my interest in this forum and the material here.
Awesome. There is hope :)
This bodes well for the intended purpose of this site.
I really wish your approach was not so unusual… You would be doing humanity (and nerds) a favour if you wrote your own guide to dating for women. I don’t think one book would change the insanity of human interaction, but it would probably help.