Partially, as Ilya said, it’s difficult to explain. Some fathers do not have any good strategy; maybe they just had a lucky set of circumstances once, so their advice is for you to wait and hope that a similar lucky situation happens to you, too. Some fathers do have a good strategy, but are bad at explaining it by words; being a good teacher is a skill that many people simply do not have. Expecting a mother to give a reasonable advice does not make sense; unless she is a lesbian, she has no experience in the area of picking up girls. Her opinions in this area never had to pay rent, so they don’t have to reflect reality.
The remaining part is that other people do not care about your utility function as much as they do. Just because you don’t get pleasure from sex, it does not make their lives worse. Only your complaining is annoying. The advice “develop yourself and wait” simply means “quit annoying me”.
It looks almost as if a tacit understanding exists that adults need to set the sexually unfavored boys aside somehow
It seems to make evolutionary sense to not help other people’s sons reproduce.
Expecting a mother to give a reasonable advice does not make sense; unless she is a lesbian, she has no experience in the area of picking up girls. Her opinions in this area never had to pay rent, so they don’t have to reflect reality.
Mothers who manage to come up with good pick-up advice for sons might wind up with more grandkids on average. To the extent that accurate pick-up advice (or the ability to think of accurate pick-up advice) passes from one generation to the next, I’d expect parents to have otherwise-mysteriously accurate pick-up advice.
Not my mother. I tried to talk to her about my dating problems in my early 20′s, and Mom came up with, “Ask out the fat and ugly girls. They don’t have boyfriends.”
Needless to say, this “advice” astonished me, and in a bad way. You don’t normally expect your mother to express open contempt towards you.
Well, if you would have started with the less attractive girls, you could have gained more confidence and experience and slowly progress towards the more attractive ones. Imagine a parallel universe where you did exactly that. Which one of these universes would you rather be in, now?
(I am not sure if “starting here, then progressing there” was a part of the original advice, but I am trying to be charitable here. It is not necessarily a bad advice, maybe just not explained sufficiently.)
Also, the “fat and ugly” doesn’t have to be taken into extreme. There are many average girls without boyfriends simply because the boys around them fight for the few most attractive ones. Some of those boys will lose in the competition, and those who win will often get a spoiled princess that will probably cheat on them soon because she will get many attractive offers.
If you go for “average in attractiveness, but has a few traits that I personally prefer (traits that are not generally popular; such as being a nerd)”, you can get rather close to the optimal outcome… and yet as an overconfident young guy this would probable seem to you like settling down, because you imagine getting a princess plus the traits you personally prefer. Which is not impossible, just less likely, especially if are not one of the most attractive guys. (Similar advice applies to women, too; and most of them also hate to hear it.)
Well, if you would have started with the less attractive girls, you could have gained more confidence and experience and slowly progress towards the more attractive ones.
If only my mother had told me that. She could have said, ask out the average looking girls, preferably ones within a range of healthy weight, and then when you get your experience and confidence built up, try working your way up. And I would have found that advice helpful and constructive, and a signal that Mom thought that I had a shot at getting some of the better things in life.
No, in the context she meant that she thought I didn’t deserve any better. When I told this story to my friends at the time who had met my mother, they came away with the same impression. Decades later Mom wonders why I never had a girlfriend, I never got married and she doesn’t have any grandchildren.
Mom’s advice made no sense for another reason: How could I get sexual experience with fat and ugly women if the physiology on my end refused to cooperate?
All along I would have wanted to have some sexual experiences with average looking, even “nerdy,” women. But apparently in this iteration of the Matrix I had an unreasonable goal. So in my 50′s I have to budget money for a trip to a legal bordello in Nevada.
Some fathers do not have any good strategy; maybe they just had a lucky set of circumstances once, so their advice is for you to wait and hope that a similar lucky situation happens to you, too.
My father was 31 when he married my mother, aged 19, in 1958. I was born in November of 1959, so I don’t think Grandpa Langley had to stand behind Dad with his shotgun at the altar or anything like that. Dad told me very little about his adult life before he married Mom, and I suspect he just had little to tell in terms of experiences with women in his teens and 20′s. He might even have been a virgin when he got married.
Yet he had a pharmacy degree and he worked as a pharmacist, so he knew more about biology and medicine than most men in his generation. He must have filled prescriptions for contraceptives as well, so I can’t attribute his discomfort with advising me about sex to ignorance. That leaves relative inexperience as an explanation.
I suppose religion played a role in this sex-negativity, but we stopped going to church (a Southern Baptist one) when I was 14 (I never inquired into the reason, and I didn’t miss it); and the family just wasn’t overtly religious afterwards.
Multiple reasons for this.
Partially, as Ilya said, it’s difficult to explain. Some fathers do not have any good strategy; maybe they just had a lucky set of circumstances once, so their advice is for you to wait and hope that a similar lucky situation happens to you, too. Some fathers do have a good strategy, but are bad at explaining it by words; being a good teacher is a skill that many people simply do not have. Expecting a mother to give a reasonable advice does not make sense; unless she is a lesbian, she has no experience in the area of picking up girls. Her opinions in this area never had to pay rent, so they don’t have to reflect reality.
The remaining part is that other people do not care about your utility function as much as they do. Just because you don’t get pleasure from sex, it does not make their lives worse. Only your complaining is annoying. The advice “develop yourself and wait” simply means “quit annoying me”.
It seems to make evolutionary sense to not help other people’s sons reproduce.
Mothers who manage to come up with good pick-up advice for sons might wind up with more grandkids on average. To the extent that accurate pick-up advice (or the ability to think of accurate pick-up advice) passes from one generation to the next, I’d expect parents to have otherwise-mysteriously accurate pick-up advice.
Not my mother. I tried to talk to her about my dating problems in my early 20′s, and Mom came up with, “Ask out the fat and ugly girls. They don’t have boyfriends.”
Needless to say, this “advice” astonished me, and in a bad way. You don’t normally expect your mother to express open contempt towards you.
I have a friend who is very sexually experienced. I asked him how he did it and he said, “Lower your standards”.
To be sure, even if the selection effect I mention is non-negligible, it evidently isn’t strong enough to drive pick-up knowledge to fixation.
I suspect I’m missing something but I don’t discern that in what you quoted (although it does sound simplistic & exaggerated).
Well, if you would have started with the less attractive girls, you could have gained more confidence and experience and slowly progress towards the more attractive ones. Imagine a parallel universe where you did exactly that. Which one of these universes would you rather be in, now?
(I am not sure if “starting here, then progressing there” was a part of the original advice, but I am trying to be charitable here. It is not necessarily a bad advice, maybe just not explained sufficiently.)
Also, the “fat and ugly” doesn’t have to be taken into extreme. There are many average girls without boyfriends simply because the boys around them fight for the few most attractive ones. Some of those boys will lose in the competition, and those who win will often get a spoiled princess that will probably cheat on them soon because she will get many attractive offers.
If you go for “average in attractiveness, but has a few traits that I personally prefer (traits that are not generally popular; such as being a nerd)”, you can get rather close to the optimal outcome… and yet as an overconfident young guy this would probable seem to you like settling down, because you imagine getting a princess plus the traits you personally prefer. Which is not impossible, just less likely, especially if are not one of the most attractive guys. (Similar advice applies to women, too; and most of them also hate to hear it.)
If only my mother had told me that. She could have said, ask out the average looking girls, preferably ones within a range of healthy weight, and then when you get your experience and confidence built up, try working your way up. And I would have found that advice helpful and constructive, and a signal that Mom thought that I had a shot at getting some of the better things in life.
No, in the context she meant that she thought I didn’t deserve any better. When I told this story to my friends at the time who had met my mother, they came away with the same impression. Decades later Mom wonders why I never had a girlfriend, I never got married and she doesn’t have any grandchildren.
Mom’s advice made no sense for another reason: How could I get sexual experience with fat and ugly women if the physiology on my end refused to cooperate?
All along I would have wanted to have some sexual experiences with average looking, even “nerdy,” women. But apparently in this iteration of the Matrix I had an unreasonable goal. So in my 50′s I have to budget money for a trip to a legal bordello in Nevada.
My father was 31 when he married my mother, aged 19, in 1958. I was born in November of 1959, so I don’t think Grandpa Langley had to stand behind Dad with his shotgun at the altar or anything like that. Dad told me very little about his adult life before he married Mom, and I suspect he just had little to tell in terms of experiences with women in his teens and 20′s. He might even have been a virgin when he got married.
Yet he had a pharmacy degree and he worked as a pharmacist, so he knew more about biology and medicine than most men in his generation. He must have filled prescriptions for contraceptives as well, so I can’t attribute his discomfort with advising me about sex to ignorance. That leaves relative inexperience as an explanation.
I suppose religion played a role in this sex-negativity, but we stopped going to church (a Southern Baptist one) when I was 14 (I never inquired into the reason, and I didn’t miss it); and the family just wasn’t overtly religious afterwards.