Why aren't you in a relationship?

[Saponara_Immobile]

the thing is with looks I find like at least 50% of girls attractive enough physically, but out of that it's only gonna be like 10% of them that I might be matched with personality wise. So for me I won't look for the top 5 or 10% per cent lookswise straight away (as in the "headturners") as that wouldn't make sense probability wise of finding a good match.

[Progress]

Originally Posted by Johnni

Thing is you say she was OK looking and then said she was a good looking girl, which is it? lol. I asked the question that way cos i wasn't sure if you were referring to her as OK looking by what others have said about her or your own view. I have seen people i know who would say something like 'my girlfriend is pretty attractive most people would say'.

I think in my case due to my lack of female interaction/attention i have grown somewhat more hooked onto looks as the main important thing when it comes to attracting a partner. It's easy to blame how you look on why you havent had much success rather than other things or in my case not hardly doing things where i would meet women around my age.
If i had more experience in this area i think i would realise more that other things apart from looks would make me more attractive. For example if a woman seemed interested in me even though i thought she was way out of my 'league' that would kinda work against the notion that looks are the main thing and that people won't really be interested in someone unless they were on their same level of attractiveness.
I know before anyone says that things like 'leagues' dont really matter that much and people dont take much notice however when you dont have much experience with the opposite sex as i said before it's easy to get hooked onto the whole looks thing as the key aspect in someone finding another person attractive. We need a excuse as to why we are crap at this and our looks is a obvious candidate most times.

I also think that having something like BDD has made me more not shallow but too much aware of other people's looks. If anyone who has BDD will know we will notice minute aspects of our appearance and concentrate on them rather than look at ourseleves as a whole. So i would end up noticing aspects of a women's appearance maybe cos thats what i do with myself so i end up overanalysing her rather than just look at her naturally like everyone else would.

Right, see where you're coming from a bit more now. When you say 'We need an excuse why we are crap at this' is really interesting to me. I'm having real trouble getting another relationship and I do something similar except it's my personality I look at - I constantly focus on what I feel is my weak personality and blame this for my lack of success. What we need to do is get away from those thoughts somehow. The longer we go without a relationship the more we think our trait must be worse and worse. But it's only what we THINK it's not actually true. It's a vicious cycle. We're having a problem with it because our confidence is dented by lack of success and therefore reinforces of our negative thinking.

So the solution is..... mmmmm errrrr

I think it's a question of constantly telling ourselves some of our thinking is wrong and trying to build more confidence with little successes.

[Johnni]

Originally Posted by kramer

the thing is with looks I find like at least 50% of girls attractive enough physically, but out of that it's only gonna be like 10% of them that I might be matched with personality wise. So for me I won't look for the top 5 or 10% per cent lookswise straight away (as in the "headturners") as that wouldn't make sense probability wise of finding a good match.

So what do you look for first, looks or personality?
I think regardless of looks if you picked 100 women randomly only around 10 would match personality wise as you suggest thats not bad i think.
If someone still wants to be somewhat physcially attracted to their partner what would you look for first you reckon, physical attraction and hope your personalities match or sod looks and be more drawn to people who are similar to you and see how it goes and you may or may not ever be physically attracted to them.

[Johnni]

Originally Posted by Progress

Right, see where you're coming from a bit more now. When you say 'We need an excuse why we are crap at this' is really interesting to me. I'm having real trouble getting another relationship and I do something similar except it's my personality I look at - I constantly focus on what I feel is my weak personality and blame this for my lack of success. What we need to do is get away from those thoughts somehow. The longer we go without a relationship the more we think our trait must be worse and worse. But it's only what we THINK it's not actually true. It's a vicious cycle. We're having a problem with it because our confidence is dented by lack of success and therefore reinforces of our negative thinking.

So the solution is..... mmmmm errrrr

I think it's a question of constantly telling ourselves some of our thinking is wrong and trying to build more confidence with little successes.

I think everyone will have different hangups which may make them more frightened for pursuing a relationship and hinder their progress in pursuit of it. Where that negative aspect of ourselves comes from will be different to everyone. For me it's my physical appearance but i kinda know where that comes from. For you it's your personality, why do you think you vlame your personality for your lack of success?.

Unfortunately these hangups can be way off the mark and we can blame other things also as to our lack of success.
The insecurities SA ppl tend to have means typical things like women go for more alpha types of men is common and understandable on a site like this.

If you are interested in someone but dont have much success but see that person cop off with a more extroverted confident male (compared to yourself) it's easy to assume that she wanted that type of bloke that alot of us seem to label Alpha types'. That guy is something we are not therefore i didnt have a chance kinda of thing.
More than likely they were more succesful than us because they were more proactive in attracting her by talking/approaching her whereas if the SA guy actually talked to her more she may have gone with you rather than the more confident guy. Thats just another example of some of the reasons we may use for 'why we are crap at this' lol.

[Johnni]

Originally Posted by joinmartin

But the "it's all about the looks" lot adjust their beliefs so that any guy they see with a girl they think of as attractive becomes attractive.

People adjust what they see to fit in with the beliefs they already have.

Yeah i strongly agree with that.

[Progress]

Originally Posted by Johnni

I think everyone will have different hangups which may make them more frightened for pursuing a relationship and hinder their progress in pursuit of it. Where that negative aspect of ourselves comes from will be different to everyone. For me it's my physical appearance but i kinda know where that comes from. For you it's your personality, why do you think you blame your personality for your lack of success?.

Unfortunately these hangups can be way off the mark and we can blame other things also as to our lack of success.
The insecurities SA ppl tend to have means typical things like women go for more alpha types of men is common and understandable on a site like this.

If you are interested in someone but dont have much success but see that person cop off with a more extroverted confident male (compared to yourself) it's easy to assume that she wanted that type of bloke that alot of us seem to label Alpha types'. That guy is something we are not therefore i didnt have a chance kinda of thing.
More than likely they were more succesful than us because they were more proactive in attracting her by talking/approaching her whereas if the SA guy actually talked to her more she may have gone with you rather than the more confident guy. Thats just another example of some of the reasons we may use for 'why we are crap at this' lol.

Great question. When I was a kid I began to get unhappy with who I was. The things I liked weren't 'cool' so I wasn't cool. I wanted to be like the cool kids but wasn't because that just wasn't what I was like. So I was constantly trying to be someone different which is never going to work. Consequently I was attracted to the girls these other guys went out with but wouldn't stand a chance because they were not my type. You might say they were out of my league which might have some truth, but I think it's much more true (and more helpful) to say they were not my type. So what I need to work on now is to be more comfortable with the 'real' me and I'm far more likely to find the right match for me. This also explains why I split up with my last (and only) girlfriend. She did not quite fit in with the over inflated view I had of myself. But she was a perfect match for the 'real' me.

This could apply to the girl and Alpha male you talk about too. Maybe she is the type that is attracted to Alpha males, and more suited to Alpha males. If we spend our energy trying to become more like him then we are probably wasting our time. There are plenty of women who are attracted to non Alpha types and they are going to be more suited to us. So what we doing is trying to be something that we really are not. But what we should do is acknowledge and accept ourselves as we really are and then we will be attracted to the right match for us.

[Tom123]

Originally Posted by kramer

the thing is with looks I find like at least 50% of girls attractive enough physically, but out of that it's only gonna be like 10% of them that I might be matched with personality wise. So for me I won't look for the top 5 or 10% per cent lookswise straight away (as in the "headturners") as that wouldn't make sense probability wise of finding a good match.

I am very much the same to be honest and I've always found it unbelievably frustrating.

At Uni, I knew about 20 or so girls reasonably well. Out of those, there were 5/6 that I didn't find attractive looks wise. Out of the 14/15 others that I found attractive, there was only one found 1 who I would consider girlfriend material. It's not even that I'm being fussy, it's just that I never seem to have more than superficial relationship with most people.

I guess this is why I'm so put off by the whole dating thing because I've always found it extremely hard to connect with people despite having put myself out there in all different types of social setting. It's not like there is any sort of club or social group I can join to try and improve my chances because I wouldn't say my personality is particular suited to any interest I have.

[Johnni]

Originally Posted by Progress

This could apply to the girl and Alpha male you talk about too. Maybe she is the type that is attracted to Alpha males, and more suited to Alpha males. If we spend our energy trying to become more like him then we are probably wasting our time. There are plenty of women who are attracted to non Alpha types and they are going to be more suited to us. So what we doing is trying to be something that we really are not. But what we should do is acknowledge and accept ourselves as we really are and then we will be attracted to the right match for us.

I dont really like the Alpha term when it comes to dating. Yes there are men who are more Alpha than others in general but when it gets used on here i dont think the women went with the guy purely cos he was Alpha at all, theres more to it than just that. As people have described on this thread what attracts them to someone varies alot.
In the example i used she wasn't maybe attracted to Alpha types but i think its more about being attracted to certain personality types or that he made more effort in talking to her etc hence alot of guys assume the guy who got the girl was a alpha male thus further reinforces their own insecurities about their masculinity maybe.
As joinmartin said people adjust what they see to fit in with the beliefs they already have so they see a guy get lucky and assume he's alpha, super confident etc cos thats the opposite view they have of themselves so therefore believe women want the opposite of them cos they 'seen' it already but really what they saw was distorted.

[Johnni]

Originally Posted by Progress

Great question. When I was a kid I began to get unhappy with who I was. The things I liked weren't 'cool' so I wasn't cool. I wanted to be like the cool kids but wasn't because that just wasn't what I was like. So I was constantly trying to be someone different which is never going to work. Consequently I was attracted to the girls these other guys went out with but wouldn't stand a chance because they were not my type. You might say they were out of my league which might have some truth, but I think it's much more true (and more helpful) to say they were not my type. So what I need to work on now is to be more comfortable with the 'real' me and I'm far more likely to find the right match for me. This also explains why I split up with my last (and only) girlfriend. She did not quite fit in with the over inflated view I had of myself. But she was a perfect match for the 'real' me.

I think it's good that you can understand that it was more that the girls werent your type rather than just cos they were out of your league. So you wanted to be like the cool guys and thus wanted to be with the type of girl they went with also i presume.
I havent really thought about how my personality may play in me finding a partner. I havent really seen my personality as a stumbling block but then again havent really chatted up women who can then reject me maybe cos im boring etc lol. At school i hung arond other geeky kids yet i was also good at most sports so would also hang around with the 'jocks' so to speak.
But i do think i have to be more comfortable with the 'real' me however im finding it hard to know which one is me as i said in the thread a few pages back, its quite confusing as i act differently around different sets of people (some shy, some not) however thats more to do with how long i have known them for.

Ever think of trying it again with your ex or she taken now?