I don’t know if it is because I might be compulsively questioning my emotions in general putting thing out of focus but when it comes to romance I often find myself often utterly confused; I’ve been in three relatively short (monogamous) relationships—relationships that I have actively perused or at least tangoed—with women that I genuinely liked and felt attracted to, but a feeling of “you are probably not romantically interested in her” or “probably not on the same wave length as you” always seems to hang over me, in relationships and even some times during brief sparks of interest. I find myself only being able to think romantically about idolised images of people without the constant guilty feeling . . .
Unfortunately I am one of those infamous people. But if stray I’ll promise to get back to you.
Even though my narrow-mindedness might have ruled “practice” out of the question (I realize your preference might have done so as well) I’m awfully curious of what this “practice” might have consisted of? (I feel just like child).
A naive method is simply to use available opportunities to observe the development, or failure to develop, of various types of interest, both in yourself and in others. Now I don’t claim an advantage in this area.
However, simply practicing a lot with no underlying techniques is often very inefficient, as Raemon points out about drawing. Long-time Less Wrong readers have skills in integrating data, running experiments, luminosity and going outside defaults that can prove extremely useful in figuring out how your interest manifests and what increases or lessens it; not to mention willingness and even eagerness to figure it out rather than throwing a fit if you don’t spontaneously emit bluebirds at the required step in the dating instruction manual.
Moreover, once you start to recognize what romantic interest feels like and what courting styles spark it in you, you’ll have to learn how to apply them in practice, even if they’re common enough ones that you can start from cultural templates. You’ll get good at this faster with someone who practices LW-style conflict resolution, has repertoried feelings other than “like” and “like-like” and interpersonal relationships other than “friend”, “friend with benefits” and “soulmate”, and has experience with compromising on nonstandard preferences.
An example of this would be exchanging comments with people who are interested in you, and measure your reactions to them directly asking you out, flirting more or less obviously, or leaving the topic entirely off the table and hoping interest develops on its own.
This is probably the best relationship advice I’ve ever got, as far as a can remember. But there are a few general obstacles that need to be addressed before I’m actually able to widely applying a strategy.
Motivation: Of course other things go into motivation but I think that expectancy of success and cost failure (rejection) are the biggest hurdles for a lot of people (including me).
Feedback: Sometimes it’s not so easy to really know if a person is interested in you or whether one particular strategy working or not. You could ask but “asking” about peoples reactions can sometimes (in my experience) be intrepid as a way of saying that your VERY interested in that person.
I don’t know if I make ANY sense but again thanks for your advice, I will try to apply it. I could get back to you if I strike gold(?).
You might want to think of asking people out as asking for the option of developing and acting on mutual interest, rather than saying “Let’s suck face now”.
The cost of rejection is usually extremely low. You feel slightly awkward and disappointed for a few minutes, then go back to acting less flirty than the average Victorian priest.
I’m bad at reading people, but if you’re just asking “Are they at all interested?”, asking them out is the way to go. And if you get a “yes” to that, it creates a situation where it’s acceptable to test more or less directly how interested they are.
Your incredible questioning/self-examination is not that unusual. If you’re not sure of your feelings it says less about the (potential) relationship than it does about you. And all it says about you is that you have high levels of self-consciousness, really. The longer a relationship lasts the more ending it, or having it ended on you is likely to hurt, even if you don’t think you fit well together etc.
Alcohol relaxes people and makes them maudlin. As such it can be a good way to get relatively sane, sobre people to discuss their feelings together. Drinking excessively (whatever that means in context) can also get people to speak freely and give them an excuse to “not remember” the next day.
You’re probably going to get over her, even if it doesn’t feel like it.
Any relationship or fling is likely to make the getting-over-it period shorter.
One idealises people and while I may advise you, or anyone else, I give advice. Feel free to PM me, if for some reason you’d like to.
Sorry for taking so long to answer, but I think you might have misunderstood my problem slightly, I don’t have any problem with getting over anyone—at the moment). I do agree that a couple of beers helps out with suppressing excessive self-questioning, but my problem is really—though I’m making progress—that I don’t know what I’m feeling as well as feeling guilt about not not feeling butterflies in my tummy and the likes.
Adding to the pile of comments:
I don’t know if it is because I might be compulsively questioning my emotions in general putting thing out of focus but when it comes to romance I often find myself often utterly confused; I’ve been in three relatively short (monogamous) relationships—relationships that I have actively perused or at least tangoed—with women that I genuinely liked and felt attracted to, but a feeling of “you are probably not romantically interested in her” or “probably not on the same wave length as you” always seems to hang over me, in relationships and even some times during brief sparks of interest. I find myself only being able to think romantically about idolised images of people without the constant guilty feeling . . .
Any advise?
Wanna practice? ;-)
(Wait, you’re not one of those “straight” people I keep hearing about, are you?)
Unfortunately I am one of those infamous people. But if stray I’ll promise to get back to you. Even though my narrow-mindedness might have ruled “practice” out of the question (I realize your preference might have done so as well) I’m awfully curious of what this “practice” might have consisted of? (I feel just like child).
A naive method is simply to use available opportunities to observe the development, or failure to develop, of various types of interest, both in yourself and in others. Now I don’t claim an advantage in this area.
However, simply practicing a lot with no underlying techniques is often very inefficient, as Raemon points out about drawing. Long-time Less Wrong readers have skills in integrating data, running experiments, luminosity and going outside defaults that can prove extremely useful in figuring out how your interest manifests and what increases or lessens it; not to mention willingness and even eagerness to figure it out rather than throwing a fit if you don’t spontaneously emit bluebirds at the required step in the dating instruction manual.
Moreover, once you start to recognize what romantic interest feels like and what courting styles spark it in you, you’ll have to learn how to apply them in practice, even if they’re common enough ones that you can start from cultural templates. You’ll get good at this faster with someone who practices LW-style conflict resolution, has repertoried feelings other than “like” and “like-like” and interpersonal relationships other than “friend”, “friend with benefits” and “soulmate”, and has experience with compromising on nonstandard preferences.
An example of this would be exchanging comments with people who are interested in you, and measure your reactions to them directly asking you out, flirting more or less obviously, or leaving the topic entirely off the table and hoping interest develops on its own.
This is probably the best relationship advice I’ve ever got, as far as a can remember. But there are a few general obstacles that need to be addressed before I’m actually able to widely applying a strategy.
Motivation: Of course other things go into motivation but I think that expectancy of success and cost failure (rejection) are the biggest hurdles for a lot of people (including me).
Feedback: Sometimes it’s not so easy to really know if a person is interested in you or whether one particular strategy working or not. You could ask but “asking” about peoples reactions can sometimes (in my experience) be intrepid as a way of saying that your VERY interested in that person.
I don’t know if I make ANY sense but again thanks for your advice, I will try to apply it. I could get back to you if I strike gold(?).
You might want to think of asking people out as asking for the option of developing and acting on mutual interest, rather than saying “Let’s suck face now”.
The cost of rejection is usually extremely low. You feel slightly awkward and disappointed for a few minutes, then go back to acting less flirty than the average Victorian priest.
I’m bad at reading people, but if you’re just asking “Are they at all interested?”, asking them out is the way to go. And if you get a “yes” to that, it creates a situation where it’s acceptable to test more or less directly how interested they are.
This comes from personal experience, not reading.
Your incredible questioning/self-examination is not that unusual. If you’re not sure of your feelings it says less about the (potential) relationship than it does about you. And all it says about you is that you have high levels of self-consciousness, really. The longer a relationship lasts the more ending it, or having it ended on you is likely to hurt, even if you don’t think you fit well together etc.
Alcohol relaxes people and makes them maudlin. As such it can be a good way to get relatively sane, sobre people to discuss their feelings together. Drinking excessively (whatever that means in context) can also get people to speak freely and give them an excuse to “not remember” the next day.
You’re probably going to get over her, even if it doesn’t feel like it. Any relationship or fling is likely to make the getting-over-it period shorter.
One idealises people and while I may advise you, or anyone else, I give advice. Feel free to PM me, if for some reason you’d like to.
Sorry for taking so long to answer, but I think you might have misunderstood my problem slightly, I don’t have any problem with getting over anyone—at the moment). I do agree that a couple of beers helps out with suppressing excessive self-questioning, but my problem is really—though I’m making progress—that I don’t know what I’m feeling as well as feeling guilt about not not feeling butterflies in my tummy and the likes.
Anyway thanks for your advise—and the offer!