The (Boogle Memorial) Dating Advice/Tips Thread

NathanialG wrote:
Luggage wrote:
ccesarano wrote:

good stuff

"Typical date with an American woman".

Nothing like that has ever happened to me on a date. Meet some different Western girls.

Ditto.

All [blank] women are the same is pretty ludicrous, and it sounds like it has more to do with your taste in women than all American women being awful.

It's similar to if you have that one friend who is only attracted to one "type", like the coked out alcoholic bass player in a punk band, and then they are continually surprised when every subsequent partner cheats/steals/otherwise hurts them. If that's what always happens, you may want to re-evaluate who you find yourself immediately attracted to.

Personally, I've been f*cked over and f*cked up in my own right an endless number of situations in a variety of new and exciting ways, so I guess we have different problems.

Aside from your immediate tastes in women, where you meet potential dates is a big factor as well. If you don't have a type, but you only meet women from a very specific environment, like at work or at bars or at the gym or whatever, that's almost the same thing (if those dates all aren't going well, I mean.) Expand your horizons.

What's the quote? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?

And if you were truly rational, you might realize that the odds are so numerous as to give you a damn good chance at finding a partner, short of having some sort of idealistic "one true fated love" concept of relationships, which would be the opposite of rational.

The baggage (luggage?) you bring one a date is just as responsible for the outcome as the other person's issues. It's just a date. It doesn't have to always be the first step to the rest of your lives together. That's a lot of pressure and expectations to put on having dinner.

At the risk of being banned:

unntrlaffinity wrote:

Awesome stuff

Duoae likes this! [Thumbs up!]

CheezePavilion wrote:
AnimeJ wrote:

If you're running into Female Doggo-princess american women, you just need to find different/better women. I think that could be said for anywhere though.

lostlobster wrote:

Yeah, there's no truth at all to that image. That's just a fantasy that some men like to project on women to make themselves feel better by putting women down. Guess what? Women are individuals! They're all different! Go forth and use this knowledge for good.

and let me make that duet a three part harmony: modern feminism isn't contradictory and confused, and it has nothing to do with any dating troubles anyone may have. In fact, if anything, it's responsible for your successes.

Maybe the ideal perspective of feminism is nice and helpful, but the number of feminists I have met wouldn't even be able to get along with each other, let alone be able to have successful relationships.

Then again, despite being a Christian I've had rough times meeting sane Christian people myself, so I guess we can't expect the most obvious folks to be the sane ones that actually follow what they claim to be teaching.

Luggage: Not to be joining the rest of the group, as I find that image to be true about one type of woman that is prevalent in this country. However, as everyone else says, it's not the only one. Also, you mention women in Israel, and yet you completely ignore that it is a drastically different culture.

To add to your argument, I think my brother, currently in South Korea, is hating women a lot more there than he ever did in America (and he's the one that thought the image I posted was one of the greatest things in the world). However, he still has a bias because every ferry he has taken to Japan has resulted in nice intelligent women liking him, but leaving him unable to afford frequent trips to sustain a relationship. So should we basically reduce that to "any woman that's not from Japan is a complete and manipulative Female Doggo with entitlement issues"?

If I were to blame personalities on anything, it would be the society itself, but even that is just playing the blame game. At some point we all become adults and are responsible for ourselves.

Jonman's relationship wisdom (TM) can be boiled down to 3 discrete bullet points.

  • All women are crazy, in different ways from one another.
  • All men are also crazy, usually in different ways from women.
  • A successful relationship is dependent on finding someone whose crazy is least incompatible with your own crazy.

Or, as Mrs Jonman puts it "He puts up with all my sh*t better than anyone else, and vice-versa."

I like Jonman's version. Now if I could find the women who can deal with my brand of weird.

Maybe the ideal perspective of feminism is nice and helpful, but the number of feminists I have met wouldn't even be able to get along with each other, let alone be able to have successful relationships.

So you're saying that feminism ruins women for relationships?

Luggage: Not to be joining the rest of the group, as I find that image to be true about one type of woman that is prevalent in this country. However, as everyone else says, it's not the only one. Also, you mention women in Israel, and yet you completely ignore that it is a drastically different culture.

I think you're lumping me in with this "everyone else" so I'm just going to clarify my position — I think that image and any attempt to pidgeonhole an entire sex or subset of an entire sex is unhelpful, reductionist bullsh*t.

lostlobster wrote:
Maybe the ideal perspective of feminism is nice and helpful, but the number of feminists I have met wouldn't even be able to get along with each other, let alone be able to have successful relationships.

So you're saying that feminism ruins women for relationships?

I think what ccessarano is saying, and I've experienced this myself, is that a lot of women don't seem to understand what feminism is.

Otherwise I agree with you.

And Jonman...

ccesarano wrote:
CheezePavilion wrote:
AnimeJ wrote:

If you're running into Female Doggo-princess american women, you just need to find different/better women. I think that could be said for anywhere though.

lostlobster wrote:

Yeah, there's no truth at all to that image. That's just a fantasy that some men like to project on women to make themselves feel better by putting women down. Guess what? Women are individuals! They're all different! Go forth and use this knowledge for good.

and let me make that duet a three part harmony: modern feminism isn't contradictory and confused, and it has nothing to do with any dating troubles anyone may have. In fact, if anything, it's responsible for your successes.

Maybe the ideal perspective of feminism is nice and helpful, but the number of feminists I have met wouldn't even be able to get along with each other, let alone be able to have successful relationships.

My most successful relationships have generally been with feminists.

Then again, despite being a Christian I've had rough times meeting sane Christian people myself, so I guess we can't expect the most obvious folks to be the sane ones that actually follow what they claim to be teaching.

I have found with feminism, you can. In fact, the most pro-male women I know are feminists.

Jonman wrote:

Jonman's relationship wisdom (TM) can be boiled down to 3 discrete bullet points.

  • All women are crazy, in different ways from one another.
  • All men are also crazy, usually in different ways from women.
  • A successful relationship is dependent on finding someone whose crazy is least incompatible with your own crazy.

Or, as Mrs Jonman puts it "He puts up with all my sh*t better than anyone else, and vice-versa."

My sister and I came to almost exactly the same conclusion after years of listening to each other grumble about relationships, although our version of the second point is "All men are idiots, but don't always show it".

Heck, most FEMINISTS will tell how you all about how contradictory and confused feminism is, right before they tell you that THEIR brand of feminism (an eclectic blend drawing influences from neo-this and Third Wave-that) is the one that really gets it right, and how that OTHER brand of feminism is a bunch of poor misguided fools, and how you should really read some stuff by Writers A and B, and C is good too, except when it comes to Issue X which she could not be more wrong about.

Just like how most leftist liberals will tell you that the centrist liberals are selling out their ideals and kowtowing to conservatives, and most centrist liberals will tell you that it's the radical leftist idiots who make it impossible to compromise and actually get anything done.

Like any political movement, there are feminists who use their "ism" as a jumping-off point for developing a well-thought-out personal ethos, and there are those who hide behind it to avoid dealing with their own personal issues or because it's their identity crisis flavor of the month. And, as with any political movement, the latter are usually going to outnumber the former, which has less to do with feminism and more to do with the nature of political movements.

Anyway, unntrlaffinity is pretty much right on the money. If you seem to always meet the same type of woman, it probably says as much about how you're looking as it does about any generalities you might draw about American women or Canadian women or Korean women or wherever you happen to be at the time.

hbi2k wrote:

Like any political movement, there are feminists who use their "ism" as a jumping-off point for developing a well-thought-out personal ethos, and there are those who hide behind it to avoid dealing with their own personal issues or because it's their identity crisis flavor of the month. And, as with any political movement, the latter are usually going to outnumber the former, which has less to do with feminism and more to do with the nature of political movements.

That's not my experience of feminists. Especially my experience as a heterosexual male.

CheezePavilion wrote:
hbi2k wrote:

Like any political movement, there are feminists who use their "ism" as a jumping-off point for developing a well-thought-out personal ethos, and there are those who hide behind it to avoid dealing with their own personal issues or because it's their identity crisis flavor of the month. And, as with any political movement, the latter are usually going to outnumber the former, which has less to do with feminism and more to do with the nature of political movements.

That's not my experience of feminists. Especially my experience as a heterosexual male.

In truth, we're all going off of anecdotal evidence, which isn't really evidence. It all will depend on who we hang out with. For example, all the vegans I know happen to be intelligent people that are rational about their life choice. Well, all but one.

But I bet you there are people who know more vegans like my one friend who has been more sick and more tired ever since she switched diets a couple years ago than my intelligent friends.

Which only feeds what unntrlfinity said about relationships on the whole.

Jonman wrote:

Jonman's relationship wisdom (TM) can be boiled down to 3 discrete bullet points.

  • All women are crazy, in different ways from one another.
  • All men are also crazy, usually in different ways from women.
  • A successful relationship is dependent on finding someone whose crazy is least incompatible with your own crazy.

Or, as Mrs Jonman puts it "He puts up with all my sh*t better than anyone else, and vice-versa."

Read this, for this is the truth to a successful relationship.

ccesarano wrote:
CheezePavilion wrote:
hbi2k wrote:

Like any political movement, there are feminists who use their "ism" as a jumping-off point for developing a well-thought-out personal ethos, and there are those who hide behind it to avoid dealing with their own personal issues or because it's their identity crisis flavor of the month. And, as with any political movement, the latter are usually going to outnumber the former, which has less to do with feminism and more to do with the nature of political movements.

That's not my experience of feminists. Especially my experience as a heterosexual male.

In truth, we're all going off of anecdotal evidence, which isn't really evidence.

Kinda late in the game for that, isn't it? Sort of a 'sour grapes' move to say in one post that the number of feminists you have met wouldn't even be able to get along with each other, let alone be able to have successful relationships, but then when someone posts to the contrary, call it all 'anecdotal evidence'?

Which only feeds what unntrlfinity said about relationships on the whole.

It does, but do realize that if you're complaining about feminists, you may want to re-evaluate who you find yourself immediately attracted to, because the problem has no more to do with feminism than the problem in his example has to do with playing bass.

There's a lot of psycho girls outside the US too, don't worry...

mudbunny wrote:
Jonman wrote:

Jonman's relationship wisdom (TM) can be boiled down to 3 discrete bullet points.

  • All women are crazy, in different ways from one another.
  • All men are also crazy, usually in different ways from women.
  • A successful relationship is dependent on finding someone whose crazy is least incompatible with your own crazy.

Or, as Mrs Jonman puts it "He puts up with all my sh*t better than anyone else, and vice-versa."

Read this, for this is the truth to a successful relationship.

I've always put it, "don't date anyone crazier than you are", but... yeah.

One of the many problems with trying to define what feminists are or are not is that, as has been previously stated, it is a constantly changing movement whose definition has changed over time and has different meanings to different people depending on which era or branch they're referring to.

Trying to tie someone's feminism to their relationship problems seems like perceiving a causation due to correlation. There are many, many, many male/female/other feminists out there who've haven't had it interfere with their ability to have healthy relationships. Those particular individuals don't make it on the radar, but the ones that do have a tendency to confirm your bias.

Amoebic wrote:

One of the many problems with trying to define what feminists are or are not is that, as has been previously stated, it is a constantly changing movement whose definition has changed over time and has different meanings to different people depending on which era or branch they're referring to.

Trying to tie someone's feminism to their relationship problems seems like perceiving a causation due to correlation. There are many, many, many male/female/other feminists out there who've haven't had it interfere with their ability to have healthy relationships. Those particular individuals don't make it on the radar, but the ones that do have a tendency to confirm your bias.

All very true. Add this to our tendency to make the same mistakes and go for the same people all the time and that can result in bitterness thanks to our own distorted perceptions.

Luggage wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:

Found out that my ex-girlfriend from college just got married and also just found out that the blonde loony I had been seeing off and on is shacked up with somebody I've known since elementary school. Bad week? Yeah, I'd say so.

Come to the dark side, Rat Boy. We've got beer, h**kers and more money than you can possibly spend.
Seriously though, from where I stand now, relationships just aren't worth the hassle. Especially not in central Europe (and, from what I've seen, the US), where girls are high maintenance and have a wrong sense of sophistication and entitlement.

Since this post started this whole tangent I'm going to call back to it.

Luggage, you just got out of a major relationship. You should not be doing any kind of dating right now. Spend some time alone, spend time with friends, go out drinking, have the odd hook-up. But dating is just going to be an emotional minefield and is best avoided.

I was told that a handy rule of thumb is to give half the period of your relationship before you try dating seriously again. I know yours was really long so that may not be palatable, but you do need to give it time.

CheezePavilion wrote:
ccesarano wrote:
CheezePavilion wrote:
hbi2k wrote:

Like any political movement, there are feminists who use their "ism" as a jumping-off point for developing a well-thought-out personal ethos, and there are those who hide behind it to avoid dealing with their own personal issues or because it's their identity crisis flavor of the month. And, as with any political movement, the latter are usually going to outnumber the former, which has less to do with feminism and more to do with the nature of political movements.

That's not my experience of feminists. Especially my experience as a heterosexual male.

In truth, we're all going off of anecdotal evidence, which isn't really evidence.

Kinda late in the game for that, isn't it? Sort of a 'sour grapes' move to say in one post that the number of feminists you have met wouldn't even be able to get along with each other, let alone be able to have successful relationships, but then when someone posts to the contrary, call it all 'anecdotal evidence'?

I think you're misinterpreting the intention of my statement, which was basically to say "we're all, including me, approaching this the wrong way". Yeah, it started because of my own anecdotal evidence, and in hindsight it's like a bunch of people arguing about why they liked/hated a movie for no better reason than they liked/hated the movie.

Of all the -isms I can think of, feminism is toward the bottom of the list of affiliations that could cause relationship problems with anyone who isn't an ass.

You want groups that will always give you trouble dating? How about fascism, racism, or chauvinism?

CheezePavilion wrote:
hbi2k wrote:

Like any political movement, there are feminists who use their "ism" as a jumping-off point for developing a well-thought-out personal ethos, and there are those who hide behind it to avoid dealing with their own personal issues or because it's their identity crisis flavor of the month. And, as with any political movement, the latter are usually going to outnumber the former, which has less to do with feminism and more to do with the nature of political movements.

That's not my experience of feminists. Especially my experience as a heterosexual male.

What exactly are you trying to accomplish here? They've had different experiences than you. Repeating that your experience was different over and over isn't a conversation.

Luggage's post was pretty dark, but sh*t happens and people get down about relationships. As long as in the end, you manage to find somebody that makes you happy and you treat them well, that's what counts.

PyromanFO wrote:
CheezePavilion wrote:
hbi2k wrote:

Like any political movement, there are feminists who use their "ism" as a jumping-off point for developing a well-thought-out personal ethos, and there are those who hide behind it to avoid dealing with their own personal issues or because it's their identity crisis flavor of the month. And, as with any political movement, the latter are usually going to outnumber the former, which has less to do with feminism and more to do with the nature of political movements.

That's not my experience of feminists. Especially my experience as a heterosexual male.

What exactly are you trying to accomplish here? They've had different experiences than you. Repeating that your experience was different over and over isn't a conversation.

Whether it is or not, it's contrary evidence. What I'm trying to accomplish is to get people to focus on their real problems, not just blame feminism on the basis of their limited experience.

Luggage's post was pretty dark, but sh*t happens and people get down about relationships. As long as in the end, you manage to find somebody that makes you happy and you treat them well, that's what counts.

It's not just about getting down about relationships--it's getting down about the gender you want to have that relationship with. Which doesn't really do a whole lot of good helping you find someone that makes you happy and that you will treat well.

And like you said, that's what counts.

ccesarano wrote:
CheezePavilion wrote:
ccesarano wrote:
CheezePavilion wrote:

That's not my experience of feminists. Especially my experience as a heterosexual male.

In truth, we're all going off of anecdotal evidence, which isn't really evidence.

Kinda late in the game for that, isn't it? Sort of a 'sour grapes' move to say in one post that the number of feminists you have met wouldn't even be able to get along with each other, let alone be able to have successful relationships, but then when someone posts to the contrary, call it all 'anecdotal evidence'?

I think you're misinterpreting the intention of my statement, which was basically to say "we're all, including me, approaching this the wrong way".

No, I'm not misinterpreting it--that's exactly what I mean when I say it's 'sour grapes'. When only you were approaching it that way, it was okay, but now that I'm approaching it that same way, we're all wrong.

Yeah, it started because of my own anecdotal evidence, and in hindsight it's like a bunch of people arguing about why they liked/hated a movie for no better reason than they liked/hated the movie.

No, it really isn't. We all haven't seen the same movie. You would like the movies I have seen, i.e., you would enjoy being in a relationship with feminists I have been with.

The Dating Advice/Tips should be: "feminism is objectively a good thing" not 'it's subjective and a matter of taste' and here's the kicker: if you're blaming feminism for your dating troubles, that means your dating troubles aren't feminist women, your problems may just be whatever brought you to thinking you should blame feminism in the first place.

edit: for example, you know those women who say things like "all men suck"? Ever notice they're not the ones having the good relationships? In my experience it's the women who actually like men and who don't blame men for their own problems who have the best relationships.

You don't want to be the male equivalent of those women who say "all men suck" do you?

wordsmythe wrote:

Of all the -isms I can think of, feminism is toward the bottom of the list of affiliations that could cause relationship problems with anyone who isn't an ass.

You want groups that will always give you trouble dating? How about fascism, racism, or chauvinism?

Feminism is just female chauvinism!!

CheezePavilion wrote:

When only you were approaching it that way, it was okay, but now that I'm approaching it that same way, we're all wrong.

You are interpreting it incorrectly because you're assuming I'm taking a confrontational approach that doesn't want to be wrong. I'm not looking to be right or wrong, just realizing that, oh, hey, my evidence means jack sh*t, we're all approaching this from the wrong angle.

I can see why people frequently get into arguments with you on here. It's not a debate, it's a confrontation, and thus someone has to win. At least, that's how it comes off. I'd like to discuss the potential state of modern feminism and use personal experience to further the topic, but that's not what this is about. Hell, I never even meant to bring it up as harming relationships as much as being a cause for the modern culture/society to be what it is. It just happened to carry off into God knows where, and now I apparently have sour grapes for arguing something I didn't really think I was arguing (which is, apparently, feminism causing issues in relationships, rather than different women having different ideas of what is and isn't female progression, be it in the bedroom or in the work place).

You guys think too much, just go out there and learn to dance

I'm not sure if that's dancing, or statutory rape.

WTF? How does that kid even know what he's supposed to do?

Does anyone else find that a bit sick?

I've kind of lost the thread now. But I think Amoebic had the most succinct response so far on the feminism topic. Although Wordsmythe is a close second.

ccesarano wrote:
CheezePavilion wrote:

When only you were approaching it that way, it was okay, but now that I'm approaching it that same way, we're all wrong.

You are interpreting it incorrectly because you're assuming I'm taking a confrontational approach that doesn't want to be wrong. I'm not looking to be right or wrong, just realizing that, oh, hey, my evidence means jack sh*t, we're all approaching this from the wrong angle.

I can see why people frequently get into arguments with you on here. It's not a debate, it's a confrontation, and thus someone has to win. At least, that's how it comes off.

I frequently get into arguments because I point out things people don't realize they are doing, because *they* don't realize how they come off. Even if you're not looking to be right or wrong, it's confrontational in this way: just because your evidence doesn't mean a hill of beans, that doesn't mean my evidence means a hill of beans too and that we're all approaching this from the wrong angle. If you want to say you alone are approaching this from the wrong angle, be my guest. When you start telling me what I'm doing is wrong--whatever you're also saying about yourself--that's confrontational.

If you think your grapes are sour, that's fine, but leave my grapes alone.

I think most of the people in this thread understood that some others were venting their frustrations and that there's no need to pick apart any of their points.

Jumping on people and kicking them in the balls for badly chosen wording isn't really helpful.