It’s also kind of shitty to make all extracurricular activities into dating events imo
You are telling me im not allowed to date. I personally hate going out to social events alone, its nerve racking, it makes my skin crawl. The ONLY reason I would consider it is because the alternative is I will never meet new people, and thus I will have a dating pool of 0 people. You don’t go out to social groups like some sort of creep hitting on every person, you go out to find people you enjoy spending time with, and maybe some of them are also people you consider pursuing romantically.
People should have a space away from that pressure.
Id argue that a social group is not and should never be that place, and that if you think it should be you should reflect on what responsibility a person has for their own emotions.
As someone who is overly worried about making myself an outcast for ever admitting my intentions with someone, but who knows this is just a fabrication of my own fear of rejection, it really upsets me to hear someone effectively confirming my own neurotic fabricated mindset. But again, this is my emotion, and is my own responsibility.
Honestly for me the best way to meet single is to have married friends who can play matchmaker
While this might work for you, id warn against externalizing the responsibility of finding you a date, because if they stop doing it, you stop dating.
I mean the flip side of what you are saying is that people aren’t allowed to have a social life free from romantic pursuit. Yes, it’s a thin line to walk but you are only seeing the view from a person with limited romantic opportunities, not the person who is tired of every social interaction being hijacked by dude number 67897 “out to find people you enjoy spending time with, and maybe some of them are also people you consider pursuing romantically.”
Like I totally get your perspective here. Doing things, and then… Organic relationship with no pressure. That’s ideal. The problem is that horny dudes hold this ideal in their head, and then use it to justify blowing up every coed activity in existence. You might think, “ok, if she says no, I’ll drop it” but the counterpoint is that this ritual becomes a chore for the other side of the fence. You are socially awkward, now imagine that any time you socialize in a group you have to awkwardly defend against someone’s iterative advances. And that this happens so often, it begins to color the way you interact with every acquaintance.
Yes, meeting people in group settings often leads to dates. But going into those settings with the intention to find a date is a recipe for problems. This is a subtle, but important distinction which seems lost on a lot of people.
But going into those settings with the intention to find a date is a recipe for problems
Here is the disconnect. You are working in the context of the fumbling weirdo who doesn’t understand when the answer is no, or d-bag who thinks its just playing hard to get and he needs to pursue harder, the person that is just “on the hunt” all the time. First you are missing the context of the thread, they were never talking about them, and we cannot always be saying ideas and opinions with 20 disclaimers all the time (this message doesn’t mean go out and treat social groups like speed dating, etc…) However to avoid those people you are making a blanket statement to everyone that people shouldn’t go and socialize and attempt to find romantic partners because we might accidentally enable a group of people who were going to do that anyways.
Unfortunately there will always be clumsy/annoying/overly-aggressive pursuits, and i can appreciate how exhausting that must be; but at the same time, I have to deal with mindless assholes everywhere, men who for whatever reason let their ego steer every interaction of their whole life (small dick energy), while it might be their fault that they could recolor how i perceive socializing, it is my responsibility to accept this is a fact of life, that it is unavoidable without extreme anti-social costs on myself, and learn to deal with it the best way i can. We cannot change others, we can only change how we react and feel about others.
I am also guessing this might be a difference of social bubbles, id imagine you might be in your 20’s, or maybe in a place in the world where its more acceptable for men to be uncaring about a persons comfort with being approached, this kind of stuff is quite rare in my social groups. If one of my friends was being made uncomfortable in this type of situation they would only need to flash the “I’m uncomfortable eyes” to the group and someone would go calmly pull them out of it and back into the group, and if it was a person in the group doing that, and couldn’t move on, they would be removed from the group.
You are telling me im not allowed to date. I personally hate going out to social events alone, its nerve racking, it makes my skin crawl. The ONLY reason I would consider it is because the alternative is I will never meet new people, and thus I will have a dating pool of 0 people. You don’t go out to social groups like some sort of creep hitting on every person, you go out to find people you enjoy spending time with, and maybe some of them are also people you consider pursuing romantically.
Id argue that a social group is not and should never be that place, and that if you think it should be you should reflect on what responsibility a person has for their own emotions.
As someone who is overly worried about making myself an outcast for ever admitting my intentions with someone, but who knows this is just a fabrication of my own fear of rejection, it really upsets me to hear someone effectively confirming my own neurotic fabricated mindset. But again, this is my emotion, and is my own responsibility.
While this might work for you, id warn against externalizing the responsibility of finding you a date, because if they stop doing it, you stop dating.
I mean the flip side of what you are saying is that people aren’t allowed to have a social life free from romantic pursuit. Yes, it’s a thin line to walk but you are only seeing the view from a person with limited romantic opportunities, not the person who is tired of every social interaction being hijacked by dude number 67897 “out to find people you enjoy spending time with, and maybe some of them are also people you consider pursuing romantically.”
Like I totally get your perspective here. Doing things, and then… Organic relationship with no pressure. That’s ideal. The problem is that horny dudes hold this ideal in their head, and then use it to justify blowing up every coed activity in existence. You might think, “ok, if she says no, I’ll drop it” but the counterpoint is that this ritual becomes a chore for the other side of the fence. You are socially awkward, now imagine that any time you socialize in a group you have to awkwardly defend against someone’s iterative advances. And that this happens so often, it begins to color the way you interact with every acquaintance.
Yes, meeting people in group settings often leads to dates. But going into those settings with the intention to find a date is a recipe for problems. This is a subtle, but important distinction which seems lost on a lot of people.
Here is the disconnect. You are working in the context of the fumbling weirdo who doesn’t understand when the answer is no, or d-bag who thinks its just playing hard to get and he needs to pursue harder, the person that is just “on the hunt” all the time. First you are missing the context of the thread, they were never talking about them, and we cannot always be saying ideas and opinions with 20 disclaimers all the time (this message doesn’t mean go out and treat social groups like speed dating, etc…) However to avoid those people you are making a blanket statement to everyone that people shouldn’t go and socialize and attempt to find romantic partners because we might accidentally enable a group of people who were going to do that anyways.
Unfortunately there will always be clumsy/annoying/overly-aggressive pursuits, and i can appreciate how exhausting that must be; but at the same time, I have to deal with mindless assholes everywhere, men who for whatever reason let their ego steer every interaction of their whole life (small dick energy), while it might be their fault that they could recolor how i perceive socializing, it is my responsibility to accept this is a fact of life, that it is unavoidable without extreme anti-social costs on myself, and learn to deal with it the best way i can. We cannot change others, we can only change how we react and feel about others.
I am also guessing this might be a difference of social bubbles, id imagine you might be in your 20’s, or maybe in a place in the world where its more acceptable for men to be uncaring about a persons comfort with being approached, this kind of stuff is quite rare in my social groups. If one of my friends was being made uncomfortable in this type of situation they would only need to flash the “I’m uncomfortable eyes” to the group and someone would go calmly pull them out of it and back into the group, and if it was a person in the group doing that, and couldn’t move on, they would be removed from the group.