“In the entire dataset, 29% of men said they never approached a woman in person before. 27% said it had been more than one year. This was larger for men in the age 18-25 group: 45% had never approached a woman in person,” according to the study.
A majority of single males surveyed reported fear as the main reason they do not approach women for dates in person. Fear of rejection and fear of social consequences were the two most common responses.
The data highlights a growing concern in the United States and abroad — loneliness. A 2023 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that almost half of U.S. adults report “measurable levels of loneliness.”
It’s interesting to say the least. It seems as though the social repercussions and rejection are the most profound reason. While the fear of rejection is easy enough to digest. But I think the fear or social consequences is a relatively new construct.
From what I understand it’s the fear of being viewed as a creep to approach a woman out of the blue. Which to me, is reasonable enough. But I don’t think I have ever heard my old man or anyone of his generation bringing this to the table.
Yet I do remember asking my friends about picking up hints and whether or not men are really that bad at it. And most them saying the just don’t want to risk misinterpreting it.
Perhaps there is an argument to be made that approaching women like this, has fallen out of social fashion. What do you guys think?
p.s. I hope this is casual enough of a conversation. I kinda screwed up my last one, I admit.
Edit: Here is a more detailed paper on the survey for those that are interested
I find most men approach women for sex. I think men need to learn to approach women for friendship.
I’ve never approached a woman. Is terrifying and not worth the humiliation.
What’s the worst thing that can happen? That they say no? Because that’s effectively what happens if you don’t even try.
When thinking back on my life it’s not things I failed at that I regret, it’s the things I didn’t even try.
The worst thing that can reasonably happen is she actively makes fun of you to others, especially if she was already your friend or acquaintance. Saying no is usually the BEST case scenario if they’re not interested. Some people are just nasty and enjoy hurting others if it inflates their own ego.
Even in a best-case scenario, people are going to find out you were shot down, which is already pretty humiliating, especially if you share friends.
I personally would never ask someone out in person unless I was already close friends with them and trusted them with that level of power over me.
They can use social humiliation, which is way worse than not trying.
“Ugh who the fuck are you, get out of here you fucking weirdo. Why are strange men approaching me? UGH! Get away!”
It hasn’t happened to me but I’ve seen it happen. The guy imo was behaving normally and reasonably. I think the girl just didn’t want to bother. Fucking shameful on the girl’s behalf when she could have politely turned him down.
What kind of awful, shallow people are you approaching? Pre-screen for people who don’t talk like that, to start with.
Ok, but then you can just move on with your life and realize she’s not the one for you…
If you’re just approaching a random girl she probably isn’t going to remember you in a couple weeks unless you are being super fucking creepy, and for sure no one in the general public is going to remember you 15 minutes later
The worst case is you crit fail the social interaction abd get some new trauma that drives you even further away from aocial interaction 👍
Ridicule from peers. - Anecdotal evidence: there was a streamer that found herself in a situation where a guy tried to ask a other girl out. Instead of congratulating him on his braveness or pitying him for rejection, the streamer choose to laugh at his absurd circumstances where he got rejected in front of thousands of people. Even if she wanted to pity him, this moment sends a message that discourages asking girls out.
That video is unwatchable so I don’t know the details, but maybe just don’t stream you asking someone out? I’d be willing to bet that the risk of being ridiculed for asking is lower than the chance of her saying yes. The realistic worst case scenario is that she says no than you and you’re back exactly where you started from.
I feel like this whole conversation is so alienating. You talk to people. You interact with people. Some of them are women. Some of the women you interact with are really cool. Maybe you find them attractive. So you say, “hey I know this is kind of a random encounter, but I’d like to see you again. Is there any chance we could hang out and go see a movie or get dinner or something?”
You aren’t making first contact with an alien species. It’s just people. Someone you’re interested in, who might be interested in you. Don’t bring a whole lot of baggage to the dance, just see if they want to go out. Have something in mind to do.
Maybe that’s how you could spend your off time. Engage in something creative. Have tickets to a show or a play or something that you do regularly that you can invite them along on. Listen to live music at some venue. Go to a pokémon tournament if that’s your bag. Just something you can invite them along to, and if they don’t want to come ask what they want to do.
If you don’t like anything that sounds like depression. Or just… I can’t say this nicely… Really boring? Why would I want to hang out with someone who has no interests , hobbies, or passions? Nevermind go on a date with them.
I dunno, my mother married a boring man for 11 years. Why not me? Then she re married another boring man, less responsible and with alcoholic problems. Again, why not me?
Get this - if they don’t have similar interests it probably wasn’t going to work anyway.
If you don’t like anything, never go out, how would somebody every get to meet and know you? And I don’t mean go out partying or anything, I mean literally go out.
I dunno. But I can’t force myself to become something I don’t wanna be. What’s worse being a shut in or being miserable outside faking a smile when you’re suffering and cringing thinking “why I’m here?”
I went out to the park, movies, arcades alone for years. I’m done, if the world hates me this much then there’s nothing I can do about it.
Perhaps you’re right. Maybe we are dissecting a casual social affair a little too much. But then again I do wonder, what do you make of the 45% statistic?
I think the survey is talking about talking to strangers, which is always difficult. I’ve been a salesman several different times, including car sales, and it’s hard to connect with a stranger. But it isn’t a skill one needs to learn.
What would make you approach a woman you’ve never met or spoken to? It could only be her looks, and she knows that. So instantly you’re shallow, to say the least.
Don’t do that. Just get involved in things that are coed in life; work, church, clubs, theater, classes, you name it. Natural socialization. Be yourself. Have fun doing things, then look around at the people having fun with you. And just talk to them.
Let’s stop idolizing pick-up artists. Because they ARE creepy.
Whoa, how is it shallow to be attracted to someone’s looks? What a weird take. We’re not doing married at first sight.
Yeah, there’s something about a person you find attractive and you want to get to know them better.
You’ve found your fun circle and talked them up and down. Now how do I pick one to pursue romantically? Can’t do how attractive I find them because that’s apparently shallow. Do I try a random lottery? Or the order I first met them?
https://datepsychology.com/risk-aversion-and-dating/
I did some digging and according to this. 77% of women 18 - 30 want to be approached more. I don’t know about pick up artists. But I wonder if a respectful way of approaching women could in fact be taught.
Agree. This kind of thing only ever seems to come up in regards to to heterosexual dating and it really imo diminishes the entire whole complex humans that are on both sides of the hypothetical interaction. You’re not talking to ~A Woman~* you’re talking to a person, who might or might not like you depending on 8374684 possible factors about the situation or their/your personality.
I think it IS getting out of date. It seems to me the modern approach is to contact the woman in a friendly manner without asking her out on a date, which is mostly a more comfortable situation for both sides and can lead to a date in the future if both sides feel like there’s chemistry there.
I think both the “would you rather run into a man or a bear in the woods?” question for women and the “would you rather be emotionally vulnerable with a woman or a tree?” question for men scream loud and clear why there isn’t much meeting in the middle on this issue.
Women are still living in a world that by and large treats women as property and rape as something that women should just get used to.
A woman in the US couldn’t have her own bank account until 1974.
Until 1993, marital rape wasn’t recognized at the Federal level, and only some states had laws against it.
So, up until just thirty-one years ago, raping your wife was cool and legal.
Women are watching politicians try to control their bodily autonomy by making abortion illegal, and the same people pushing that also happen to be pushing for an end to “no fault divorce” because they don’t like women having the choice of divorcing them.
Women have so many good reasons to have had it up to here with men…
Now, women aren’t responsible for men’s emotional well-being and men really should do more to support each other when it comes to being open and emotionally vulnerable, but the downside is that it means men, overall, generally feel like they can’t actually be open with women without it hurting their chances, romantically.
Much like it isn’t every individual black person’s job to educate every idiot white person they come in contact with, it’s not every woman’s job to educate every idiot man they come in contact with.
However, this impacts men who are just trying to find a footing and may grow into better people, given the opportunity. However, the attitude of that you’re not responsible for explaining leads to nobody explaining except… right-wing asshats who are pushing division and hate. So, because there aren’t left-wing men speaking to how to handle these issues and providing healthy in-gender support for other men, we’re leaving it all up to women to do all the educating, and I mean, I get it, they don’t want to, they’re kind of over it, and that’s probably why they’re pretty rude about it, to boot. And since they’re saying no and bowing out, that means young men are left to listen to voices like Andrew Tate.
I think both sides of this coin are doing each other a disservice. Women not having enough patience for men who could grow to be good men, and men not having enough self-reflection to realize that hanging your entire emotional stability on whether or not you are in a relationship is unhealthy, period.
The problem with dating right now is that for centuries there was an order. Men were the dominant ones, and women were the submissive ones. In general, at least.
Then WWII happened, and all the men went overseas, and all the women were brought into the workplace.
Then the surviving men came back, and people tried to go back to what it was. They tried to have women go back to being home makers, and men go back to work.
But the toothpaste was out of the tube. You had a major societial shift, in a very short time, and you can’t go back like that.
So now women wanted to work, and men were expected to work. You wanna know why the 50s were so ecconomically strong? It’s because you had a two person income household in a one income per household society. Suddenly these people who grew up during the great depression, were now living in the strongest ecconomy in history. Prices needed a decade or two to catch up to the idea that women worked too.
This began to crack the foundation of the idea that men were the dominant ones because they worked. Well, now women worked too. So they had to find another way to go back to the way things were…but again, the toothpaste was out of the tube. The end result was that men increased the amount of rape through the 50s/60s/70s. Then in the 80s, women started fighting back on that front. I’m not saying they solved the issue, but prior to the 80s, there was zero resistance. Now there was.
Suddenly you could be sued at work for grabbing a womans ass. Or talking the wrong way. You could be fired, even from high end jobs.
The increase in resistance eventually lead to the mid 2010s where they overturned roe v wade. The pendulium had begun swinging the other way now. This is leading to more and more women being scared of men, because they don’t know how far this is going to go.
Now everyone has guns, the world for unrelated reasons is getting more and more divided and scared. And it doesn’t matter that actual crime rates are going down through the decades. Most people falsely believe crime is increasing. So they will act and feel accordingly. Add that to the fact that something like 90% of rape goes unreported, and even among the reported rapes, only 1% of cases even see jail time over a year.
So it becomes a toothless crime that rapists freely get away with. So women are preparing for a world where every man is out to hurt them. The same way police are trained to view every civilian as a threat.
And I used to say they were worried over nothing, until I saw how men that WEREN’T me treated women. It was a case of me being an introvert, not seeing the world around me. There very much is a problem with how men treat women, and there is also very much a problem with how women treat men. There’s also a problem with how men treat other men. And there’s a problem with how women treat women.
The whole concept of marriage is obsolete, yet it’s treated as the end goal of a relationship. Women are treated as baby ovens. Men are treated as bank accounts. And all of society is just toxic in everyway.
Because somewhere along the line, parents lost a sense of community, and teaching their children who to trust, and who not to. Instead they’re told not to trust any strangers. Well all that does is cripple their social skills when they get to kindergarten. Day 1, they’re surrounded by strangers. What are they supposed to do? Shut down, and have a room full of 30 kids not talking, not listening to the teacher?
I had a guy when I was 14 say he liked my hair. I’m not gay, but he was, so I politely told him I appriciate it, but also I’m not gay. He thought I was. At no point did I feel he was a threat, or creepy. He was just shooting his shot at a destined to fail attempt at flirting. Oh well, things go these ways sometimes. I knew I could trust he wouldn’t get violent.
But when I was 18, a guy in his 40s, who gave off some real men in black vibes, the guy in the overalls who was filled with bugs, he said “You suuure do got purrrdyyyy skiiiin”. And I knew NOT to trust this guy. He made my skin crawl, and I got out of there.
And thats what we’re not teaching kids today, because our parents didn’t teach it to us. How to learn WHO to trust, and what signs to look for. People think judging others is a bad thing. It’s not. It’s a nuetral thing. Its a skill that allows you to assess people.
Instead, we have a generation of people with no social skills, who feel that everyone from the other gender is out to get them. People list things like the ecconomy and threats of war as reasons people are having less kids now. I think it’s because people aren’t meeting. The traditional family is dead. All children now are accidents, which is why they wanted roe v wade overturned. To increase birthrates. Because republicans don’t care about families. They care about having wage slaves working the machines at low costs.
What people need to go back to is one person being in charge of the relationship, and one person being the caretaker. The genders on that don’t matter. You need a leader, and a supporter. And right now, everyones fighting to be the leader because they think it sounds cool.
Problem is, if you have two dominant types, all they do is fight, and eventually resent each other. If you have two submissive types, they just slowly drift apart and eventually the relationship falls apart.
But if you have one dominant leader type, and one (or more) submissive supporter types, you can have a healthy relationship that lasts.
The problem is, the toothpaste is out of the tube. And right now, theres so much hate and anger and division, that nobody is even TRYING to find a valid solution. It’s all just one big power grab, leading to many to just stay out of the whole damn thing. Myself included.
I think both the “would you rather run into a man or a bear in the woods?” question for women and the “would you rather be emotionally vulnerable with a woman or a tree?” question for men scream loud and clear why there isn’t much meeting in the middle on this issue.
I totally forgot about that one. And you’re totally right! Seriously everything you’ve said here is an interesting take on the matter.
However, the attitude of that you’re not responsible for explaining leads to nobody explaining except… right-wing asshats who are pushing division and hate.
Would you say that perhaps an emphasis on social education (like in middle school or something) would be good first step to this? And not just to talk about what you shouldn’t do but also when you in fact CAN try and make a move.
Back in the day they had things like “etiquette schools” (I guess they still do) with a focus on politeness and manners.
Frankly, there can and should be a modern version of etiquette but focused on interpersonal relationships taught in school. The modern version would focus on things like consent, healthy emotional support structures, and health communication strategies.
School itself is supposed to be a place to “live and learn” as it were when forming relationships, but it basically has very little adult stewardship of those concepts.
School today is nightmare with everybody filming everybody. If you are a young person doing young person mistakes, it will probably filmed and put on the internet.
I can only speak from my experience because it is the only one I’ve lived, but being a young man with hormonal changes and no male role model in my life, my life would have been way harder today since I made many gaffes that a young man usually makes.
The only difference is that it wasn’t filmed and I had a chance to become better, instead of ridiculed by the whole world.
would you rather be emotionally vulnerable with a woman or a tree?
Lol lol. I haven’t heard that one. Tree, by far. The tree won’t use it against me later. (which has happened enough times that I got the point, even from women who told me verbatim to be vulnerable. Yep, they still used it against me later.)
