It's often observed that there's a pipeline for a certain kind of lonely young man to find some right-wing personality who tells them that their lack of connection to other people and lack of romantic relationships isn't their fault -- it's the fault of e.g. feminism, liberalism, leftism, postmodern neomarxism, whatever series of words they want -- and then give them "pick up artist"-type advice on how to talk to women, usually in a very manipulative way that dehumanizes women.
I never participated in those communities because of the overt sexism, racism, homophobia, general right-wing beliefs, etc. But I do sometimes look at the people in those communities and think "There, but for the grace of god, go I." On paper, I have a lot in common with "incels", in that I'm 29 years old and have never had sex with another person, or been in a relationship, or even been on a capital-D Date.
(I'm going to be ranting a bit about myself here, and I realize that it's generally boring to read men complaining about how lonely they are. Leaving aside for the moment the question of why this is so common that it's become boring, I'll try to avoid being too self-pitying and stick to information and questions I think will be interesting or relatable to other people besides myself.)
I think a lot of people make all their dating mistakes in high school, so that by the time they're in their 20s, they've learned the basic dating scripts. I never learned that. I never even really got comfortable talking about sex and relationships -- my parents didn't talk to me about sex or dating, I never talked about it with my friends in high school, and I can't think of anyone in my life who I would be comfortable contacting to say "I have a crush on <person>, what should I do?" I don't have the vocabulary for it. I literally don't know what to do when I am attracted to someone. I know a bunch of things NOT to do -- e.g. obvious things like don't harass them, don't stalk them, don't abuse or manipulate them. In other words, don't be an asshole. Which is true enough as far as it goes, but those are just good rules on how I should treat EVERYONE, not specifically people I'm romantically interested in.
As far as positive actions I can take, the most I can figure is:
- Try to spend more time with that person, going on small outings at first (e.g. walks, coffee) to get to know them better.
- In general, take care of myself and my own life, on the reasoning that people are attracted to someone who has their life together. (Oh, and also because I'm a person who matters and my own health and happiness are important for their own sake, but whatever.)
- Put some more effort into my appearance -- improving my clothing style, having some kind of skin care routine, and maybe getting a better haircut seem like good low-hanging fruit.
Okay, but this is still just generally good life advice outside of dating. It still seems like there are a lot of steps between "take basic care of myself and spend time with other humans" and actually getting into a relationship with someone. I'm fortunate enough to know lots of happy couples, but it's like, I've never "watched" two people fall in love, you know? I have lots of models in my life of people who are good partners in an existing relationship, but that tells me nothing about the initial process of attracting someone. I don't know what the process is supposed to be like. And I don't want to rely too much on the fictional examples I've seen -- it's become a cliche to point out that movies and TV show very unrealistic depictions of how relationships develop. So that leaves me without any narratives to inform me. (Although, if anyone knows of any fictional examples of a developing relationship that they see as being healthy models, please let me know.)
I believe that my experiences are a bit unusual, but not that uncommon among men my age (and especially among men my age who use the internet a lot). It might be reasonable to ask why this is. And an online right-wing asshole would give an explanation that involves the top 10% of alpha males taking the top 50% of women for themselves, leaving omegas like me with nothing. Which is silly, but I wonder if this is one of the many cases where right-wingers have (a) correctly noticed that there is a problem that center-liberals have ignored, but (b) completely misdiagnosed it so they could put forward their own racist, sexist, just generally awful ideology.
So, with all that in mind, what I would really love to see is resources for dating advice that:
- Acknowledges that all people involved are humans deserving of respect. I really hate "seduction" advice, for any gender, that treats the person you're attracted to as a "mark" or a "victim" or someone you need to manipulate or deceive. If I thought that were a necessary part of starting a relationship, I'd rather die alone than deliberately abuse another person for my own gain. But -- as evidenced by the fact that I have friends who are in relationships and aren't assholes -- I don't think it should have to come to that.
- Acknowledges that dating and attraction are complicated, non-obvious things that warrant explicit explanations. It's a cliche that "Just be yourself" is bad advice, but alternatives like "Just spend time around other people and don't be an asshole and eventually someone will fuck you" aren't much better. I'm not sure if I would describe myself as autistic, but I have found that it is very helpful for me to have certain supposedly "common-sense" things about interacting with other people explicitly explained to me.
- Is specific to men, especially in a North American context. I'm sure there is some dating advice that applies to everyone, but the fact is, gender is (currently) something that has real effects on people's experiences, so it would surprise me if, for something as intrinsically gender-related as dating and attraction, there's not some good advice that's specific to men who are attracted to women.
This is a message of a more personal nature. I'll write another one about the social and political situation concerning heterosexual male dating advice.
I completely understand your situation. I was in the same place that you are until I was 25 and met my current GF. Our oldest child just celebrated her 10th birthday so for what it is worth you still have hope.
Being a teenager and young adult who didn't get the thing about dating was really, really horrible. I have a personality disorder that makes me excessively anxious about social relations that was undiagnosed until a year ago. Growing up I felt that everything about relating to other people was hard and scary and frustrating and I didn't know why I just couldn't be normal. It sucked being too afraid to ask questions in class and to have very few friends and to constantly being afraid what other people might think about you. The thing that stung the most was the lack of sex and romance. It confirmed my lack of self-worth and made relating to others in a romantic or sexual context even more difficult.
I figured out the term "involuntary celibacy" on my own and googled it. Back then it wasn't exclusively a term for right-wing misogyny and self-hate and I found an "incel" forum where I became part of the community. It was an inclusive and nice community where misogyny and homophobia was not tolerated at all. In hindsight having someone who could relate to my situation and who I could vent to really helped me and made me feel less weird and alone.
I also tried reading some PUA books but they didn't do anything for me. They're horribly superficial and all the advice was variations of "have the self-esteem to do this or that thing". This was useless to me as my problem was a lack of self-esteem.
What helped me was that I gradually opened up to myself about what I wanted emotionally and sexually. Instead of repeating internalised heteronormative guilt I gradually accepted my bisexuality and my crossdressing fetish. I started making dating profiles requesting that. At first just to toy with the idea but eventually in earnest and suddenly I met e woman who is now my GF. There were no embarrassing sexual secrets as I had sort of stumbled into being open about it in the first place.
I'm doing a lot better today than back then. I still have serious issues with self-esteem and socialising and if for some reason I were to no longer be with my GF being on the dating market again would be stressful and frustrating for me. I'm not totally cured but I feel a lot better.
My advice to anyone in your situation would be:
Thanks for your response.
I think you're right that I have trouble relating to people in general and my problems are not trivial, and that scares me. Worrying about what "could have been" seems like a recipe for depression and I'd rather avoid that.
I've been to therapists and counselors, and I've even specifically brought up that I have trouble relating to people, but I don't think I've gotten much value out of it. At no point has any professional I've talked to suggested "Based on what you've told me, maybe you have this specific, well-known disorder that we can actually do something about?" without me explicitly mentioning a disorder by name -- e.g. when I mentioned to a doctor that I thought I might have depression, it didn't take long to get a prescription for sertraline, but until I actually used the word "depression" by name, I was just seeing a counselor on a regular basis and getting nowhere. (In fact, the first time I said to a counselor that I thought I might have depression, they said something along the lines of "It sounds like you're self-diagnosing with depression. How does that make you feel?" which I didn't find useful.) Maybe I've just been unlucky, or maybe I have unrealistic expectations, but it's frustrating to constantly feel like I have to take the initiative in explaining to professionals how to do their jobs.
At least, that was my experience. If you have any advice on how to productively talk to a therapist, I am open to hearing it.
It sounds like you've had some really bad therapists. Suggesting diagnoses should not be the job of the patient.
I've had some bad experiences as well, like the general practitioner who diagnosed me with depression and social anxiety based on a single consultation, signed me up to some useless group therapy where people with all kinds of mental disorders were lumped together with almost no guidance from the group leaders and kept prescribing me the same dose of sertraline for years and years without ever bothering to check whether it was working.
I'm better off today. Now I have a real psychiatrist who actually makes sense and who can explain the mechanisms that makes me the way I do. She diagnosed me with avoidant personality disorder and ADHD and gave me a prescription for Ritalin. I'm also having good group therapy now (although it is temporarily shut down because of the pandemic) where we actually are getting somewhere.
For various reasons I never learned how to properly connect to my own emotions or how to read other people's emotions. A lot of the therapy I'm having is about becoming aware of my own emotions and analysing why other people react the way they do without immediately concluding that it is because they hate me. It's slow but it works.
Based on my own experience I would recommend seeing a proper psychiatrist.
Random question: Are there any books/resources you've found helpful in dealing with Avoidant Personality Disorder? I read a lot of books and sometimes I find that books written by professionals about a specific disorder are helpful to me (for example, I've never been diagnosed with ADHD, but I found that books about ADHD had advice that was useful for my own attention problems).
Ultimately, I would love to see an actual psychiatrist. I suspect it will be very expensive and hard to find a good one, though, even here in Canada. Which isn't to say I won't do it, but it is a very real obstacle.