Out riding fences
Jul. 27th, 2005 01:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinWe all know that there are lots of lonely, geeky guys on the Internet who are looking for love and have little idea how to go about it, many of whom remind me startlingly of myself circa ten years ago. In recent weeks particuarly there's been a lot of chatter about and by them. I've often been bothered by the fact that I can't give them much really useful advice about how to deal with their situation, even though I was in it for a long time.
However, I do think they get lots of identifiably bad advice, which I will now critique using the recognized psychological technique of dissecting the lyrics of the Eagles song "Desperado".
1. "Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?"
Oh, that'll help. The impression seems to be that these young men have absolutely no idea that being alone is worse than not being alone, and just need a good kick in the pants to make them not be chicken any more, or perhaps just a reminder of how they're losing all their highs and lows, and ain't it funny how the feeling goes away? (I think they now have serotonin reuptake inhibitors for that.)
The important thing to realize here is that these young men (if they're anything like me) are usually deeply ashamed of themselves; they're pretty sure that there's something wrong with them that has kept them from correct romantic functioning, and are terrified that this might be incurable, in part because of...
2. "You better let somebody love you, before it's too late."
Aagh, not the deadline!
Granted, we're all on deadline; life is short (and for women who wish to breed, childbearing age is shorter, though I think this concern is pretty far from the minds of most lonely hetero guys).
But one thing that constantly terrified me was that there was a clock ticking that would render me completely unlovable within the decade, and that time had perhaps already run out. People were paying attention; people would quiz me; and the longer I went without kissing a girl, the older I got without sexual experience, the more weird and creepy in the minds of the world I would become, until my oddness would radiate from me as an aura and scare women away forever.
As far as I know, though, the only people who actually care much about these statistics are other men and particularly male comedy writers. I suppose there are women who prefer experienced partners, but that wasn't likely to be uppermost in the mind of someone I'd be compatible with anyway. And it wasn't. In fact, to the extent that there is an effect here, I suspect it becomes less of a concern as you get older rather than more, since your prospective partners are also older, more emotionally mature, and less likely to be hung up on something as dumb as this. Stressing "before it's too late" is not helping.†
3. "It seems to me some fine things have been laid upon your table, but you only want the ones that you can't get."
Now here we have something with a considerable amount of truth in it (if expressed in unfortunate language). In my experience, lonely nerdboys do spend an unreasonable amount of time pining after the ones that they can't get, and will sometimes reject real opportunities that would have been good for them.
This is often phrased in rueful terms by women: "they say they're interested in what's inside, but they still want the skinny blondes with big breasts." That is part of the problem. However, I'm not sure this is precisely the way to state the crux of the lonely nerdboy's problem either. (After all, this is also the trouble with men who are not lonely nerdboys!)
I think that many young men of fertile imagination and limited grasp of social cues make it worse for themselves in part because they have an old romantic ideal of courtship that is still visible in TV shows and movies: the young man first identifies an inamorata who gives him powerful fluttery feelings, then he pursues her, and unreasonable doggedness in this pursuit is considered admirable. There's a tendency to try to follow this script, then get hung up at the pursuit stage, because actually trying to do this is pretty scary, far scarier than just casually dating people you find sort of interesting (especially if the inamorata is already a friend of yours, which is often how it goes).
When the guy hears that his problem is that he's too chicken about approaching women, he won't think of keeping options open and broadening his statistics; he'll think in terms of this kind of amorous chase game. Then the pursuit acquires an additional element in his mind, that it's the challenge that will transform him into a different kind of person who laughs at this kind of fear. Worst of all, when he actually does make a move, he's both an absurd nervous wreck, and so fixated on the poor girl of his dreams that it'll devastate him when, as is likely, she gets creeped out and wants him to back off. Backing off, in his mind, isn't moving on; it isn't just giving up on this one person; it's giving up at Love, possibly forever. The project of personal transformation has failed.
He'll probably be too preoccupied through all this to notice genuine interest from somebody else, or he'll think there's no chemistry there because he doesn't feel the thrilling amalgam of obsession and shuddering terror that he associates with True Love.
So is the answer that he shouldn't reject anybody—that he should go for the first opportunity that comes along? Of course not. There is nothing evil about rejecting potential romantic partners; it happens. But it's going to be hard for him to be picky in a good way when he's busy with chase games, even if they're mostly in his head.
At least, that was how it was for me, for far too long. Fortunately, when you get into this state, one thing that does seem to help (though it is contrary to almost every piece of advice you'll hear) is to just take a couple of years off chasing women while you get your head together and remember how people actually act.
† Note: A variant of this concern is Ferris Bueller's Fallacy (thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lots42 for making the Which Fictional Character Would You Punch? post that reminded me of this). You may recall that while the esteemed Mr. Bueller's concerns about his friend Cameron mostly revolved around Cameron's father, one of his many conversations with the fourth wall concerned Cameron's lack of dating experience, and how if it went on very much longer (bearing in mind that these people are supposed to be teenagers in high school) it would mess with Cameron's head in such a way that any woman who finally Put The Sex On To Him would be able to dominate him completely. The line caused me unreasonable terror in my youth. Admittedly it bears a vague resemblance to the process I described in part 3 above, but the time scale and causative factors are all wrong. As far as I know there is no evidence for the described effect in controlled studies conducted in a John Hughes-free environment.
However, I do think they get lots of identifiably bad advice, which I will now critique using the recognized psychological technique of dissecting the lyrics of the Eagles song "Desperado".
1. "Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?"
Oh, that'll help. The impression seems to be that these young men have absolutely no idea that being alone is worse than not being alone, and just need a good kick in the pants to make them not be chicken any more, or perhaps just a reminder of how they're losing all their highs and lows, and ain't it funny how the feeling goes away? (I think they now have serotonin reuptake inhibitors for that.)
The important thing to realize here is that these young men (if they're anything like me) are usually deeply ashamed of themselves; they're pretty sure that there's something wrong with them that has kept them from correct romantic functioning, and are terrified that this might be incurable, in part because of...
2. "You better let somebody love you, before it's too late."
Aagh, not the deadline!
Granted, we're all on deadline; life is short (and for women who wish to breed, childbearing age is shorter, though I think this concern is pretty far from the minds of most lonely hetero guys).
But one thing that constantly terrified me was that there was a clock ticking that would render me completely unlovable within the decade, and that time had perhaps already run out. People were paying attention; people would quiz me; and the longer I went without kissing a girl, the older I got without sexual experience, the more weird and creepy in the minds of the world I would become, until my oddness would radiate from me as an aura and scare women away forever.
As far as I know, though, the only people who actually care much about these statistics are other men and particularly male comedy writers. I suppose there are women who prefer experienced partners, but that wasn't likely to be uppermost in the mind of someone I'd be compatible with anyway. And it wasn't. In fact, to the extent that there is an effect here, I suspect it becomes less of a concern as you get older rather than more, since your prospective partners are also older, more emotionally mature, and less likely to be hung up on something as dumb as this. Stressing "before it's too late" is not helping.†
3. "It seems to me some fine things have been laid upon your table, but you only want the ones that you can't get."
Now here we have something with a considerable amount of truth in it (if expressed in unfortunate language). In my experience, lonely nerdboys do spend an unreasonable amount of time pining after the ones that they can't get, and will sometimes reject real opportunities that would have been good for them.
This is often phrased in rueful terms by women: "they say they're interested in what's inside, but they still want the skinny blondes with big breasts." That is part of the problem. However, I'm not sure this is precisely the way to state the crux of the lonely nerdboy's problem either. (After all, this is also the trouble with men who are not lonely nerdboys!)
I think that many young men of fertile imagination and limited grasp of social cues make it worse for themselves in part because they have an old romantic ideal of courtship that is still visible in TV shows and movies: the young man first identifies an inamorata who gives him powerful fluttery feelings, then he pursues her, and unreasonable doggedness in this pursuit is considered admirable. There's a tendency to try to follow this script, then get hung up at the pursuit stage, because actually trying to do this is pretty scary, far scarier than just casually dating people you find sort of interesting (especially if the inamorata is already a friend of yours, which is often how it goes).
When the guy hears that his problem is that he's too chicken about approaching women, he won't think of keeping options open and broadening his statistics; he'll think in terms of this kind of amorous chase game. Then the pursuit acquires an additional element in his mind, that it's the challenge that will transform him into a different kind of person who laughs at this kind of fear. Worst of all, when he actually does make a move, he's both an absurd nervous wreck, and so fixated on the poor girl of his dreams that it'll devastate him when, as is likely, she gets creeped out and wants him to back off. Backing off, in his mind, isn't moving on; it isn't just giving up on this one person; it's giving up at Love, possibly forever. The project of personal transformation has failed.
He'll probably be too preoccupied through all this to notice genuine interest from somebody else, or he'll think there's no chemistry there because he doesn't feel the thrilling amalgam of obsession and shuddering terror that he associates with True Love.
So is the answer that he shouldn't reject anybody—that he should go for the first opportunity that comes along? Of course not. There is nothing evil about rejecting potential romantic partners; it happens. But it's going to be hard for him to be picky in a good way when he's busy with chase games, even if they're mostly in his head.
At least, that was how it was for me, for far too long. Fortunately, when you get into this state, one thing that does seem to help (though it is contrary to almost every piece of advice you'll hear) is to just take a couple of years off chasing women while you get your head together and remember how people actually act.
† Note: A variant of this concern is Ferris Bueller's Fallacy (thanks to
lots42 for making the Which Fictional Character Would You Punch? post that reminded me of this). You may recall that while the esteemed Mr. Bueller's concerns about his friend Cameron mostly revolved around Cameron's father, one of his many conversations with the fourth wall concerned Cameron's lack of dating experience, and how if it went on very much longer (bearing in mind that these people are supposed to be teenagers in high school) it would mess with Cameron's head in such a way that any woman who finally Put The Sex On To Him would be able to dominate him completely. The line caused me unreasonable terror in my youth. Admittedly it bears a vague resemblance to the process I described in part 3 above, but the time scale and causative factors are all wrong. As far as I know there is no evidence for the described effect in controlled studies conducted in a John Hughes-free environment.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-07-27 10:20 am (UTC)You're right -- I think most people have those feelings one way or another as children, but either don't recognized them or are too ashamed of them and repress the memories.
Shame is a sad thing.