something_else

I have a very strange relationship with social anxiety. No one would call me socially anxious, at least not anymore. I’ve been backpacking for 8 months, partying, having fun, making lots of friends around the world, getting laid. Not something you usually associate with someone who has crippling social anxiety. From an outsiders perspective on my life, my social anxiety is essentially cured. But internally I am still often extremely anxious over some random basic social interactions. Like right now some guy in a hostel bathroom was asking me about my shaver and if it was good and I was literally sweating from anxiety over this extremely basic conversation. At times like this I wonder, have I really made any progress at all? I have all of these results, but I still fundamentally feel a sense of being weird, different and socially inadequate in my core. In short, up until now I feel like I learnt how to ‘fake it’ and be fairly confident around others, but I still haven’t fixed the root feeling of social incompetence that is fuelling the core of my anxiety. I feel like I need to address this in order to make any further progress, so I’m wondering if anyone has experienced anything similar and has any advice. Thank you

During the daytime in college focus on making friends and expanding your social circle. Join a bunch of clubs and societies that interest you. The more friends you have the more you end up naturally talking to girls without it really being an ‘approach’ which is kind of the ideal scenario. If you wanna do ‘approaches’ in the pickup sense then just go to clubs and parties. 80% of the guys there are trying to get laid, it’s college. You’ll only get a bad reputation talking to girls in those settings if you’re really really creepy.

If you jerked off a few times a week without judging yourself for it your lust would probably be much more manageable. Lust is a normal emotion, it’s only a problem when you start to repress it and form hefty negative beliefs around it.

There are probably statistics for this kind of thing. And if there aren’t then how do you even expect us to answer your question? Lol Just Google this and see what you can find if you really care.

This is an over generalisation, but it probably does have a grain of truth. Evolutionarily it makes a bit of sense, a man wants to know that the children he is raising have HIS genetics and if a woman sleeps with another man then he doesn’t know for sure that his kids are his. On the other hand a woman who would have needed a man for protection and resources is perhaps more concerned about her man leaving her and giving his love, and thus protection and resources, to another woman. Again, vast over-generalisation but I think this is roughly why you notice this dynamic occasionally. In most cases neither party, M or F, likes hearing that the other is fucking another person.

This is exactly what you have to learn to do when you solo travel, but it’s far more socially acceptable. Approaching random strangers on the street is 95% of the time pretty weird thing to do, and you might actually make your problem worse if that’s what the course involves. You want to find places where approaching new groups and strangers is socially acceptable and learn to do it there. Night clubs and hostels are probably the two best environments on the planet for it and you don’t need to pay 4k to just go to these places and push yourself to be sociable and chat to people.

Spend $4k on a backpacking trip to Asia and stay in sociable hostels instead. Way better than any coaching, I would imagine. Certainly better value for money. The coaching is likely going to be very forced and artificial. Find ways to naturally be in sociable environments and chat to new people. The best way I found was travel and backpacking, it’s improved my social skills x100

I got a D in calculus in my first year of university. Anything pure maths did not compute in my brain at all. Now I’m working as a programmer making good money and none of my grades really mattered. It’s not an easy class. You’re also surrounded by people who are incredibly smart, like, top 1% in the world kind of smart. Not being able to compete with them in their chosen field is nothing to be ashamed of. You’re being too hard on yourself. Now you know this field isn’t for you, you can spend your time finding the one that is right. Honestly my BIGGEST regret from university is not that I didn’t get better grades, but that I didn’t take advantage of such a great opportunity to be social, have fun, and build up a network.

Why did he threaten you?

A lot of European states are becoming increasingly polarised too. Not as much as the US but it’s still increasing.

@mr_engineer Bro are you drunk

Mate what are you actually doing with your life besides moaning on the internet

Not if you do it in social places like a normal person

Most of the guys I knew in uni were having a lot of sex, and I studied computing science. And I was a total nerd in uni. And I’m also in Britain too. If you are friends with nerdy unsociable people who aren’t getting laid, you’re going to end up meeting the same fate. But that’s something that is in your power to change. In fact university is about as easy as it ever gets to change that so get your ass moving. Because the risk for having random casual sex with guys is high for women. A woman may have to raise his child if she gets pregnant. Plus the man may hurt her. The cost of being perceived as a slut is also still very high. Once a girl has chosen you, everything changes. Fairly safe sexual pleasure with no stigma is always available and from experience at this point some women will start to want sex even more than men want.

I got laid a fuck ton when I consistently went to nightclubs that had really good smoking areas, or had sections where there was no music so you could talk. These are sociable parts of a club where you don’t have to rely too heavily on something like dancing or non-verbal body language to stand out, because those are not my strengths. I stayed a 30 second walk away from the entrance to a nightclub with something like this for a couple of years, and I lost count of how many times I got laid there. Logistics and somewhere that it’s super easy for you to meet new people are pretty much the keys to having a lot of casual sex if that’s what you want. Backpacking in SE Asia has also been pretty great for getting laid. Again, very sociable lifestyle, very easy to meet people and most girls who are backpacking are very chill, pro-hookup and pro casual sex.

From a guy’s perspective, what matters is appealing to the majority of women on dating apps, not just individual woman’s preferences like yours. If you don't catch the eye of the 50%+ normies, you won’t even appear on the card stack of the 10% of interesting women you want. Entertaining profiles stand out more than simple profiles (unless you’re very handsome), so men use them to attract a broad audience. It’s about broad appeal, not targeting specific types.

Women also like to know if they look attractive in their photos. When you vote on women’s photos to get karma, all those women are voting on men’s pics for karma too. And plenty of them are attractive.

I’ve used Photofeeler extensively. My best pics are rated between 9.5 and 9.8, yet they don’t yield the spectacular matches on Tinder you might expect from photos in the top 5% to 2%. While these remain my best-performing pics on dating apps, Photofeeler’s top 2% isn’t equivalent to top 2% on dating apps. Overall, it’s a useful tool for double-checking your photos if you use it right, but it has limitations. Focus less on the number rating and more on the No/Somewhat/Yes/Very votes. To be effective for online dating, your photos need some ‘Very’ votes. A picture rated 9 with mostly ‘Yes’ votes might not perform well because it’s likely that you look handsome enough, but that you look boring in that pic. Basically ‘Yes’ means you’re good-looking enough, but ‘Very’ indicates you’re both good looking AND you evoke some emotion in her, which is crucial for online dating photos. Additionally, ask female friends to review your profile for qualitative feedback. It’s usually very valuable, but remember to get opinions from several women since their views on what makes an attractive male profile vary widely.

Yes, it’s fine. Just pick the right clubs. Some places can be iffy about people on their own (M or F), so don’t be discouraged if you encounter a place like that. Just go somewhere else that doesn’t care. A really good tip is to make friends with people in the queue when you’re waiting to get in. And to be honest, just have the mindset of making friends with everyone. Thats what turned going to clubs from something I forced myself to do to meet women into something I actually enjoyed doing.

This is a pretty standard experience when trying to date girls. It’s frustrating as hell but you have to become desensitised to it so it doesn’t bother you. You kinda have two options. Either you play the game and don’t become too invested, you just play it cool and see how it goes. Or you decide that this kind of gamey behaviour is a deal breaker for you and politely move on to a girl who is more direct.

It’s totally normal to enjoy looking at sexual body parts of the opposite sex. As long as you don’t stare creepily, no one cares if you take a glance. It’s normal human behaviour. Training your mind to repress natural sexual urges like that is a pretty bad idea. Maybe you come from a culture that has already repressed some natural human behaviour against your will

If your texting skills aren’t great just send a playful/flirty message saying you’d love to take her out for a coffee on a certain day. Don’t overthink it too hard. If she’s interested, which it sounds like she is, she’ll make it easy as long as you don’t say anything weird. You could even ask ChatGPT to write you some texts for inspiration if you like. But ask it to be less formal and more playful since it tends to be a bit robotic by default. And ask it for 10 different messages and choose the best one, maybe tweak it a bit. You could try and build some chemistry over text and then build that up to asking her out for a coffee or something. Some people are good at that. If you know what you’re doing that can work pretty well, especially with gen Z who like texting.

Yea very true! I think this is true for both genders actually. Men are also quite attracted to women who are fundamentally feminine but have some masculine qualities or hobbies. Think gamer girls or nerdy women. I guess many of us are attracted to well rounded people.

What negative impact does casual sex have? If you practice safe sex and aren’t sex addicted or something, I can’t really think of many. Humans have been partying since we were chimps. Partying helps you build social relationships, be playful, have fun, not take life too seriously, and remove the stick from your ass. All very valuable things for living a good and rewarding life. I had the same mindset as you until my early twenties. I was pretty miserable and lonely. I used this “I’m too wise to enjoy partying” shtick as a way to soothe my ego from the pain of missing out on social events when I was younger, and also to avoid the things was deeply scared of: socialising and other people. Now I’m backpacking the world. I party a fair bit, but through this very intense socialising I’ve grown so much that I almost don’t recognise the person I was a year or two ago. What I realised is that part of the reason I was so socially anxious was a lack of fun, positive social experiences to teach my brain that being around people is actually a good thing, and they are not a threat to me. I’m not saying that partying is the key to a happy life, but I think almost everyone benefits from being able to let loose and have some carefree fun now and then. Living life constantly tense, with a stick all the way up your ass, is very uncomfortable.

This could just be a one off thing. But if it’s a consistent pattern then the vibe you are giving off might be threatening or creepy. Maybe you are breaking some basic rules of socialisation which you must follow in order to make others feel safe around you. Talking to people at night on the street (esp if it’s not a busy street) is the kind of setting where you have to show that you are friendly and mean no harm within the first 5 seconds or you’re going to run into a lot of trouble. Dont come up from behind a girl or approach girls you haven’t made a bit of eye contact with first. And you can’t just start with a deadpan ‘hi’. You have to include some kind of conversation starter that shows you aren’t a robot or a weirdo. Even just something like “Hey! Are you having a great night?” Or something like that. Be fun, friendly and high energy.