Ask Lemmy

Not an Incel, usually I have great interactions with women IRL and it more often than not lead to dates and relationships. What I absolutely suck at is meeting people.

I'm currently desperately trying to figure out how to meet more people kinda in general. I have a solid friend group a mix of married, single, and in-relationship people but all our hobbies usually aren't conducive to meeting people. I've recently joined a 20s & 30s meet up group for random activities to hopefully meet some people and I've been trying to casually read or stuff in local places like Barnes and Nobel. It just feels hard to interact with strangers nowadays if there's no medium to start the conversation.

I've looked into volunteering but all the opportunities are during my work hours so that's out unfortunately. I'm an introvert so usually bars and the like are out of the question for me. Kinda just stuck. My life otherwise is actually in a pretty decent spot overall

I was like that for a long time. I think I solved my problem by mostly thinking about my situation and the reasons for it and managed to separate fact from fiction. Something that also played a role was to - for a while - literally giving up. For a while I thought I would stay alone forever. For a while I was able to relax a little and not be that desparate, stressed guy who thought his time was running out. Who had to always think about opportunities to meet someone. I could just be myself. Desparation isn't a very attractive trait. I realized that there actually where quite a few women who seemed to show interest in me, but I never was able to see it, because I felt so beneath them. Them showing interest in me was unbelievable. In times where I didn't try to desparately meet women or get them to be interested in me I was much better at talking and being interested.

I think I was lucky in having a rather rational way of thinking about problems. That's how i was able to understand myself and find a way out of this whole. What were the things that (I think) got me out of it:

• I was able to think of women as just other humans.
• They are not automatically miles above me and i would have to hope to get their attention out of luck
• They sometimes are as desparate or unsure of themselves as I was. They were actually pretty glad if I was showing interest in them (previously I never dared to talk to them just for the sake of it, because I feared they would be annoyed as they would always be talked to by idiots like me).
• I remembered something someone said to me as a teenager: " You will make 10 times as many friends in the time you try to get people to be interested in you If you instead show interest in other people". I realized that for a long while I had the mindset of "please pick me!" when i thought about women. I was the low being who would have to hope to be chosen. I was thinking about wearing interesting shirts, or doing interesting things so that someone of the "upper class" would find me worthy enough and talk to me. Only late in life I realized that other people - especially women - weren't some higher level being - some mythical alien creatures. They were a lot like myself, yearning to be recognized by other human beings. And that I wasn't that low as well and a lot of other people - especially ( again:) women - were quite happy if I showed interest in them. So for anyone reading this: It might be strange to ask other people their name or from where they are, what they do, what they like. what problems they have. But after a while your thinking changes. Then you might actually genuinely be interested in them. And a lot of them greatly appreaciates it. So: try to be for other people what you want them to be to you. And don't only talk to people who you want to get into bed. Just expand your perspective. talk to people.

It's mostly just the mindset. If you're thinking your worthless and other people are unreachable, then your behavior will mirror this thinking.

Another thing: I am quite glad that when I had this phase in my life "incel" culture wasn't a thing. At least there were no dark corners in the Internet offering me easy explanations for my problems. I came from a strange place, believing that women where heavenly creatures miles above my sorry existence, so maybe not that typical incel-vibe, but I am still not 100% sure that these women-hating incel-idiots would have turned me against 50% of the population.

Not exactly answering the question here but I am wondering about whether or not this counts as inceldom.

So here's the deal with me. I am an ugly person who is only attracted to attractive women. I have tried dating women who were, for a lack of better term, "looks-matched". But even though we actually connected really well I just couldn't develop any romantic feelings for them because of their looks.

Now this has left me in a situation where I am certain I will never get a girlfriend. My beauty standards are just too high. But I do not blame women for this. It's perfectly reasonable for attractive people to want attractive partners. Hell, that's pretty much my standard as well when it comes to dating (except I'm not physically attractive). So whadaya gonna do?

I met practically a femcel who's very sweet and we were very respectful with each other and clicked with one another which changed my view on women.

I'm an ex incel myself, but I've been seeing a few users here exhibiting the tell tale signs. "I'm not attractive enough", "I don't socialize correctly", "I'll never find a woman" - all extremely unhealthy attitudes.

Unhealthy, sure. But those are really not incel signs at all, but rather those of people with little to no self-esteem or other issues like depression and / or anxiety, or some other more niche issues & views.

Still trying to find that out. A harsh lesson I learned a while ago is to not open up about your frustrations because you're only going to make yourself a target.

I recently paid £90 for a three month Hinge X subscription and even after two weeks of near-constant use, I've had zero new matches. I'm starting to think that my Hinge profile may be shadowbanned and that Match Group actually scammed me.

On two online dating subreddits I posted screenshots of my profile and asked for advice. One was given a very harsh and rude response by a power tripping cuck of a moderator and was swiftly removed for reasons I don't understand. Apparently I didn't fully read the Great Text Wall of China he erected on the stickied thread. No use arguing with him because I feel like he's one of those pricks who will just ban and modmail mute me. The other one got downvoted with no reply whatsoever.

Bad experiences with the Reddit community aside, I've been frustrated with women and how they treated me, but even I look at a lot of incel forums and their misogynist rhetoric with disgust.

The most I got involved with the manosphere was posting in r/TheRedPill a decade ago. I left that community because it was becoming increasingly toxic, and when I found out about the beliefs of some of their biggest influencers (i.e. Roosh V being an advocate for legalizing spousal rape), I felt like I wanted nothing more to do with them.