The reason I didn’t focus on empathy in my previous comment is because I didn’t see any reason to think that would be useful to you guys. In my view, we have problems that empathy can’t solve. I see now that it would probably be good if I detail some of my empathetic experiences because there’s a need to feel like women care and also explain why empathy can’t solve the problems I listed. So I did both.
I met a really sweet guy on a dating site that I have things in common with and we started having wonderful conversations. Then I started to notice Asperger’s symptoms. Instead of rejecting him immediately, I started giving him information about how he was coming across. We both decided that we were not romantically compatible (for unrelated reasons) but we talked frequently over the next year or so, and I kept giving him information to help him socially. I care about him a lot and it makes me sad to think of him ending up alone, so I helped as much as I could.
I make a point of letting guys know if they make a mistake, with few exceptions. If they seem beyond helping (the occasional crazies), I may back away slowly and vanish. If they send me a message on a dating site that ignores my profile, I ignore them. Otherwise they’ll usually get some type of error message from me. I know they need feedback.
There have been three situations in the recent past where I met someone I really liked, but they made a mistake. In each of these three situations, I pointed out the mistake but kept talking to them because I liked them and was hoping they’d come around (well in one case I was hoping that my initial assessment was wrong). I don’t do this for every kind of mistake. It really depends on what it is. Sometimes I meet someone I really like but I know I can’t save it, so I won’t try (though I usually tell them why I’m not continuing). But if I think there’s a reasonable chance, I’ll try.
It’s not like I’m not understanding. It’s that there are big problems that no amount of understanding can overcome. Let’s look at each of the big problems I listed for a minute. Please consider that I am not deeming these “problems that understanding will not overcome” for arbitrary reasons. Everyone is naive when they’re young, me included. Due to this, I got to find out the hard way that certain things will doom a new connection and that there’s nothing I can do about it. Here is why they doom new connections:
Bias about incompatibilities and overly optimistic probability estimates
Imagine telling someone that you’re not sure you’re what they wanted, and they just brush it off and want to proceed anyway. If they’re not willing to talk realistically about these things, a few problems result. First, when other people believe we’re more compatible than we are, I find it unacceptable to continue to knowingly allow them to believe that. I feel a sense of responsibility about not leading people on, so this situation is unacceptable to me—I can’t allow it. Second, I have to wonder whether they’re leading me on. If they aren’t willing to really look at a potential incompatibility and give me an honest answer, I may very well end up in a relationship that ends in heartbreak because I thought the person would accept something about me that they couldn’t. If they’re unwilling to face the truth to and make sure to tell me about these things in the beginning, they run a high risk of leading me on by accident. When people feel strongly attracted and that causes them bias like this, it’s really, really hard to get through to them. When I have tried to get through to them, this has resulted in me burning out on trying. Worse, it breaks my trust (I can’t trust them not to lead me on). The combination of not feeling okay with allowing them to be led on, not trusting that they won’t lead me on and being burnt out by trying to wake them up results in an extremely risky situation that is likely to lead to heartbreak for one or both of us. Since there’s no way to get an accurate idea of our compatibility in that situation, if I notice they’re stuck on optimism bias, I quit.
Early Attachment
When people are attached, they act like they need things from me and expect me to fulfill those needs. Rewind to my teenage years when I had trouble saying no: if people acted like they needed things from me, I would try to make them happy. Since I wasn’t doing these things based on a mutually beneficial relationship, I would inevitably burn out—I was trying to meet their needs, but wasn’t getting my own needs met. You run out of juice that way. What’s worse is that when you’re doing something because you feel expected to instead of out of a genuine sense of love and connection, it’s obvious. The result is that they sense this, and they demand more affection to compensate. For that reason, the burnout comes on rapidly. Of course, people who are attached too early don’t see the flaw in being attached too early. If they did, they wouldn’t become attached too early—or maybe they don’t know how to avoid it. It’s for those reasons, I think, that they never seem to go “Yes, I am attached too early.” and take responsibility for their own needs. Instead, when the difference in attachment is noticed, their solution is to try anything they can think of to get me attached, too. We all know how hard it can be to stay rational in emotional situations. We know that relationships are governed by reality the same way everything else is. Therefore we can easily see that it’s both important and difficult to stay rational regarding relationship decisions. Being subjected to somebody you like trying to make you feel attached to them puts you in a risky situation where you’re likely to become irrational and make a relationship decision that explodes later on. Anyone who has experienced the misery of heartbreak can surely imagine how terrifying it is to be in a situation where you’re rational enough to see that it’s likely, but not certain you’ll be strong enough to resist temptation. For that reason, people put in this situation tend to run screaming.
Moving too fast / expectations
The main reason moving too fast is unworkable for me is that it creates expectations I can’t fulfill, and the reason unreasonable expectations are unworkable is because people don’t let you change their expectations—instead, they are judging you by those expectations. For instance, they expect me to have more intense feelings for them than I’m ready for. Being unable to produce these, and unwilling to lie, I must tell them that I’m not feeling as interested as they are. If they really are expecting me to move as fast as they do the reaction I’ve had is that they assume I’m never going to be interested because I’m not intensely interested right away. Then they go into sour grapes mode. Attempting to convince them that I’m not sour would be hard enough in and of itself, but I’d also have to convince them that their expectations were unrealistic. That would come across like whining about being rejected or attempting to circumvent the person’s judgment. When someone rejects me, it’s best to respect their decision—no matter what it was based on—and move along.
I do understand that a lot of guys feel like they’re going to be alone forever. I’ve had those feelings, too. Don’t think that women don’t ever feel that. It’s worse for the guys because of the gender ratio, but it’s not like we can’t relate at all. Finding the right person is hard. I am complicated, and this results in there being a lot of incompatibilities to consider. It’s not easy for me, either.
The truth is, I have no idea how I would ever make dysfunctional behaviors like these work for me in a dating context. It seems ill advised to even attempt to do that, so I won’t. You said “oozing desperation is not a good romantic strategy, but it’s not just due to simple social ineptitude or inexperience.” and what I’m saying is “social ineptitude and inexperience do not just reek of desperation, they make dating broken in ways I can’t work with.” I hope you see the reason why I focused on these things in my post is not because I’m not empathetic but because, from my point of view, the biggest problem is that a lot of guys don’t realize that the things they are doing make the connection unhealthy and dysfunctional.
It seems to be a common attitude that the women need to realize that the guys are having a really hard time just finding the sorts of women they like, let alone getting the practice needed for good social skills. I do realize this. In fact, I do not see the gender ratio problem as being “due to creepers”—to me, that’s just another symptom of a different underlying cause which is nobody’s fault.
It’s actually a very good example of the tragedy of the commons. Individually, going after every woman they meet seems like it should improve their chances; collectively, it ends up driving women away and reducing everyone’s chances. We would expect rationalist/skeptic/etc. guys to figure this out, but they often don’t. Why is this?
I think they get sucked in by the experience. It takes a lot of emotional control to fight back things like optimism bias, attachment and unrealistic expectations when you’re compelled by mating instincts, pressured by hormones and lifelong romantic dreams are clouding your mind. It doesn’t surprise me that a lot of intelligent guys act like they’re sort of “drunk” on the experience.
I developed emotional control through meditation to prevent myself from taking a “drunken” approach to romance. That’s what I’d recommend for anyone having these problems.
Thank you very much for the thorough reply. I understand your position and experiences a lot better now, and I think we are broadly in agreement about what needs to happen on each side. I recognize that understanding alone is not going to solve these problems, especially in individual cases, but I think it’s an important component for longer-term improvement. Judging from this post, you clearly do have empathy, and I could not reasonably ask any more in that regard than what you have already demonstrated.
The reason I didn’t focus on empathy in my previous comment is because I didn’t see any reason to think that would be useful to you guys. In my view, we have problems that empathy can’t solve. I see now that it would probably be good if I detail some of my empathetic experiences because there’s a need to feel like women care and also explain why empathy can’t solve the problems I listed. So I did both.
I met a really sweet guy on a dating site that I have things in common with and we started having wonderful conversations. Then I started to notice Asperger’s symptoms. Instead of rejecting him immediately, I started giving him information about how he was coming across. We both decided that we were not romantically compatible (for unrelated reasons) but we talked frequently over the next year or so, and I kept giving him information to help him socially. I care about him a lot and it makes me sad to think of him ending up alone, so I helped as much as I could.
I make a point of letting guys know if they make a mistake, with few exceptions. If they seem beyond helping (the occasional crazies), I may back away slowly and vanish. If they send me a message on a dating site that ignores my profile, I ignore them. Otherwise they’ll usually get some type of error message from me. I know they need feedback.
There have been three situations in the recent past where I met someone I really liked, but they made a mistake. In each of these three situations, I pointed out the mistake but kept talking to them because I liked them and was hoping they’d come around (well in one case I was hoping that my initial assessment was wrong). I don’t do this for every kind of mistake. It really depends on what it is. Sometimes I meet someone I really like but I know I can’t save it, so I won’t try (though I usually tell them why I’m not continuing). But if I think there’s a reasonable chance, I’ll try.
It’s not like I’m not understanding. It’s that there are big problems that no amount of understanding can overcome. Let’s look at each of the big problems I listed for a minute. Please consider that I am not deeming these “problems that understanding will not overcome” for arbitrary reasons. Everyone is naive when they’re young, me included. Due to this, I got to find out the hard way that certain things will doom a new connection and that there’s nothing I can do about it. Here is why they doom new connections:
Bias about incompatibilities and overly optimistic probability estimates
Imagine telling someone that you’re not sure you’re what they wanted, and they just brush it off and want to proceed anyway. If they’re not willing to talk realistically about these things, a few problems result. First, when other people believe we’re more compatible than we are, I find it unacceptable to continue to knowingly allow them to believe that. I feel a sense of responsibility about not leading people on, so this situation is unacceptable to me—I can’t allow it. Second, I have to wonder whether they’re leading me on. If they aren’t willing to really look at a potential incompatibility and give me an honest answer, I may very well end up in a relationship that ends in heartbreak because I thought the person would accept something about me that they couldn’t. If they’re unwilling to face the truth to and make sure to tell me about these things in the beginning, they run a high risk of leading me on by accident. When people feel strongly attracted and that causes them bias like this, it’s really, really hard to get through to them. When I have tried to get through to them, this has resulted in me burning out on trying. Worse, it breaks my trust (I can’t trust them not to lead me on). The combination of not feeling okay with allowing them to be led on, not trusting that they won’t lead me on and being burnt out by trying to wake them up results in an extremely risky situation that is likely to lead to heartbreak for one or both of us. Since there’s no way to get an accurate idea of our compatibility in that situation, if I notice they’re stuck on optimism bias, I quit.
Early Attachment
When people are attached, they act like they need things from me and expect me to fulfill those needs. Rewind to my teenage years when I had trouble saying no: if people acted like they needed things from me, I would try to make them happy. Since I wasn’t doing these things based on a mutually beneficial relationship, I would inevitably burn out—I was trying to meet their needs, but wasn’t getting my own needs met. You run out of juice that way. What’s worse is that when you’re doing something because you feel expected to instead of out of a genuine sense of love and connection, it’s obvious. The result is that they sense this, and they demand more affection to compensate. For that reason, the burnout comes on rapidly. Of course, people who are attached too early don’t see the flaw in being attached too early. If they did, they wouldn’t become attached too early—or maybe they don’t know how to avoid it. It’s for those reasons, I think, that they never seem to go “Yes, I am attached too early.” and take responsibility for their own needs. Instead, when the difference in attachment is noticed, their solution is to try anything they can think of to get me attached, too. We all know how hard it can be to stay rational in emotional situations. We know that relationships are governed by reality the same way everything else is. Therefore we can easily see that it’s both important and difficult to stay rational regarding relationship decisions. Being subjected to somebody you like trying to make you feel attached to them puts you in a risky situation where you’re likely to become irrational and make a relationship decision that explodes later on. Anyone who has experienced the misery of heartbreak can surely imagine how terrifying it is to be in a situation where you’re rational enough to see that it’s likely, but not certain you’ll be strong enough to resist temptation. For that reason, people put in this situation tend to run screaming.
Moving too fast / expectations
The main reason moving too fast is unworkable for me is that it creates expectations I can’t fulfill, and the reason unreasonable expectations are unworkable is because people don’t let you change their expectations—instead, they are judging you by those expectations. For instance, they expect me to have more intense feelings for them than I’m ready for. Being unable to produce these, and unwilling to lie, I must tell them that I’m not feeling as interested as they are. If they really are expecting me to move as fast as they do the reaction I’ve had is that they assume I’m never going to be interested because I’m not intensely interested right away. Then they go into sour grapes mode. Attempting to convince them that I’m not sour would be hard enough in and of itself, but I’d also have to convince them that their expectations were unrealistic. That would come across like whining about being rejected or attempting to circumvent the person’s judgment. When someone rejects me, it’s best to respect their decision—no matter what it was based on—and move along.
I do understand that a lot of guys feel like they’re going to be alone forever. I’ve had those feelings, too. Don’t think that women don’t ever feel that. It’s worse for the guys because of the gender ratio, but it’s not like we can’t relate at all. Finding the right person is hard. I am complicated, and this results in there being a lot of incompatibilities to consider. It’s not easy for me, either.
The truth is, I have no idea how I would ever make dysfunctional behaviors like these work for me in a dating context. It seems ill advised to even attempt to do that, so I won’t. You said “oozing desperation is not a good romantic strategy, but it’s not just due to simple social ineptitude or inexperience.” and what I’m saying is “social ineptitude and inexperience do not just reek of desperation, they make dating broken in ways I can’t work with.” I hope you see the reason why I focused on these things in my post is not because I’m not empathetic but because, from my point of view, the biggest problem is that a lot of guys don’t realize that the things they are doing make the connection unhealthy and dysfunctional.
It seems to be a common attitude that the women need to realize that the guys are having a really hard time just finding the sorts of women they like, let alone getting the practice needed for good social skills. I do realize this. In fact, I do not see the gender ratio problem as being “due to creepers”—to me, that’s just another symptom of a different underlying cause which is nobody’s fault.
I think they get sucked in by the experience. It takes a lot of emotional control to fight back things like optimism bias, attachment and unrealistic expectations when you’re compelled by mating instincts, pressured by hormones and lifelong romantic dreams are clouding your mind. It doesn’t surprise me that a lot of intelligent guys act like they’re sort of “drunk” on the experience.
I developed emotional control through meditation to prevent myself from taking a “drunken” approach to romance. That’s what I’d recommend for anyone having these problems.
Thank you very much for the thorough reply. I understand your position and experiences a lot better now, and I think we are broadly in agreement about what needs to happen on each side. I recognize that understanding alone is not going to solve these problems, especially in individual cases, but I think it’s an important component for longer-term improvement. Judging from this post, you clearly do have empathy, and I could not reasonably ask any more in that regard than what you have already demonstrated.