If all the young women you have known didn’t want to have their early sexual experiences with you, and if you assume that you have encountered a representative sample of them to show how other young women would likely have rejected you, why would you accept offers of sexual relationships with such women a few years later when their early behavior indicated that viewed you as second rate?
The prospect of getting into a situation where a sexually experienced woman, er, handles me, feels really gross and unsettling, considering how apparently women didn’t find me good enough for that purpose when they wanted to explore their own sexuality in their youth. “Next!” Oh, my turn now? Do I want to become one of those guys?
You talk about boys as if ugly duckling type fantasies weren’t popular among shy schoolgirls as well. Why wouldn’t you want to be approached by the kind of people who didn’t like you before? It feels good to be validated
You are not the same person you were ten years ago, either physically or psychologically. Even if you were not widely considered as attractive back then, that may have changed in the meantime. If that surprises you, it may be because you’re assuming you haven’t changed anything in ten years, which actually would be reason to worry.
People’s preferences shift over time. Those women, too, have changed in ten years. If they have been seeing you all this time, they may have noticed your changes and decided they liked the end result. If they lost contact ten years ago and are calling you now, they may have reexamined their memories of you under a more mature perspective. In either scenario, it’s obvious that their opinion of you has improved.
Not all men develop at the same rate. You may have been a late bloomer in your teen years, which may have reduced your chances as compared to other men of your generation, but if women are calling you, it appears to be playing in your favor now.
You appear to be interested in punishing the women who rejected you in the past. However, denying yourself what could be a good time could end up giving yourself more punishment than those women could notice. You don’t control their choices. There was no (legal) way you could have done so in your youth, nor should you expect to be able to do it now. The sooner you accept that, and release control over women’s choices, the sooner you will be able to let go of the bitterness that paralyzes you.
why would you accept offers of sexual relationships with such women a few years later
Because you prefer sex with “such women a few years later” (even if they “viewed you as second rate”) to no sex?
The prospect of getting into a situation where a sexually experienced woman, er, handles me, feels really gross and unsettling
Okay, maybe not you specifically. Well, it’s time for a survey… best taken outside of LessWrong (to get answers from more typical members of population, of course). My guess would be that most men would prefer sex with a woman who refused them ten years ago to no sex.
Speaking for myself, if every woman that refused me in the past would suddenly send me a message “hi Viliam, still interested in sex with me? no strings attached; just call me and you can have it”, I would call a few (but not all) of them, and would consider it a very happy outcome. (It would be of course different if the “no strings attached” part would be missing. Then it would be merely a lot of “sorry, that ship has already sailed”.)
If all the young women you have known didn’t want to have their early sexual experiences with you, and if you assume that you have encountered a representative sample of them to show how other young women would likely have rejected you, why would you accept offers of sexual relationships with such women a few years later when their early behavior indicated that viewed you as second rate?
The prospect of getting into a situation where a sexually experienced woman, er, handles me, feels really gross and unsettling, considering how apparently women didn’t find me good enough for that purpose when they wanted to explore their own sexuality in their youth. “Next!” Oh, my turn now? Do I want to become one of those guys?
I’m more interested in someone’s actual current opinion of my current self, than their counterfactual past opinion of my past self.
You talk about boys as if ugly duckling type fantasies weren’t popular among shy schoolgirls as well. Why wouldn’t you want to be approached by the kind of people who didn’t like you before? It feels good to be validated
There are several factors to consider:
You are not the same person you were ten years ago, either physically or psychologically. Even if you were not widely considered as attractive back then, that may have changed in the meantime. If that surprises you, it may be because you’re assuming you haven’t changed anything in ten years, which actually would be reason to worry.
People’s preferences shift over time. Those women, too, have changed in ten years. If they have been seeing you all this time, they may have noticed your changes and decided they liked the end result. If they lost contact ten years ago and are calling you now, they may have reexamined their memories of you under a more mature perspective. In either scenario, it’s obvious that their opinion of you has improved.
Not all men develop at the same rate. You may have been a late bloomer in your teen years, which may have reduced your chances as compared to other men of your generation, but if women are calling you, it appears to be playing in your favor now.
You appear to be interested in punishing the women who rejected you in the past. However, denying yourself what could be a good time could end up giving yourself more punishment than those women could notice. You don’t control their choices. There was no (legal) way you could have done so in your youth, nor should you expect to be able to do it now. The sooner you accept that, and release control over women’s choices, the sooner you will be able to let go of the bitterness that paralyzes you.
Because you prefer sex with “such women a few years later” (even if they “viewed you as second rate”) to no sex?
Okay, maybe not you specifically. Well, it’s time for a survey… best taken outside of LessWrong (to get answers from more typical members of population, of course). My guess would be that most men would prefer sex with a woman who refused them ten years ago to no sex.
Speaking for myself, if every woman that refused me in the past would suddenly send me a message “hi Viliam, still interested in sex with me? no strings attached; just call me and you can have it”, I would call a few (but not all) of them, and would consider it a very happy outcome. (It would be of course different if the “no strings attached” part would be missing. Then it would be merely a lot of “sorry, that ship has already sailed”.)