A Young Man's Life In America

I went bowling with one of my friends who I recently met. As we were driving back from the bowling alley, a lot of the things I'd been thinking for a while came together. It started with me declaring in the car that I've figured out the main reason why guys are afraid to approach girls, and it's not what they think. He ended up agreeing with me, and together we explored some topics which I would like to share with you.

A young man in America is often troubled by the subject of meeting attractive girls he wants to date. Not everyone would admit it, but this is an issue for most guys. Those who know me know I've made a diligent study of the subject. I feel like I'm ready to write a essay on it, and here it is. I'll keep it short.


Starting Conversations -- Approach Anxiety

We actually picked up another friend of mine, V, to go bowling with us. There, we found several groups of girls and guys bowling together. As we were leaving I pointed to an attractive girl and asked V whether he thought she was good looking. He agreed. There were two guys bowling with her. I then told him I'd seriously give him $100 if he came up to her and got her phone number. He had nothing to lose and $100 to gain, but he backed out of it.

Many girls don't realize that guys are very reluctant to approach them, especially the good looking ones. Why can't they be confident? That's attractive, after all. Indeed, many guys say they lack the "balls" to approach girls they fancy. They consider doing it, then they just start thinking they can't do it.

Here's the main reason why: you don't have anything relevant to talk about. From my own self-analysis and from limited "testing", I've noticed that if there's any main reason for approach anxiety in guys, it is this. Yeah, the girl may reject the guy's advances (of course she won't say yes to everyone). Actually, it would most likely be worse if the girl simply ignored him and an awkward situation would be created. In fact, approach anxiety is really the fear of awkward situations.

And this fear is actually correct -- because in fact, the main deciding factor for whether a conversation with a stranger will be awkward or not, whether it be a man or a woman, is whether you have anything relevant to talk about.

Here is a short list of examples, to illustrate:

• At the bowling alley, if you came up to a girl and asked "Hi, what's your name?" she would size you up, and if she decided she really liked you she'd answer, otherwise she'd brush you off. How is the name relevant at this point?
  
• At a supermarket, if you came up to a girl and started saying something completely irrelevant, she'd either brush you off or ignore you and try to leave. If you asked her about where the cereal was, she'd either tell you or say she didn't know.
  
• If you are taking a class with a girl, you can be the nerdiest, weirdest-looking guy in the class, but if you approach her after class is over asking something relevant, such as when the homework was assigned, she will answer.
  

Suppose a man starts talking to a woman he doesn't know. Either he is talking about something relevant to the situation, or he is bullshitting, and if he is bullshitting, it's only because he wants to get to know her. That's why this is the catalyst. We are at a point in our society that if a man starts talking to a woman he doesn't know, he is usually perceived as "hitting on her. "

Here would be a refreshing sign of maturity: men secure in themselves would approach beautiful women just to talk, with absolutely no intention of finding out if they're single, asking them out on a date, getting into any kind of relationship with them, and so forth

Male-Female Social Dynamics

Here's a concise scientific sketch. The following factors come into play to explain the current male-female dynamics in America:

• For a woman, sex is a bigger deal than for a man, for physical and emotional reasons. Physical consequences may include pregnancy. Societies have developed labels for women who have frequent sex with multiple partners, such as "slut" and women obviously don't want to be labeled this way.
  
• A woman is instinctively concerned about being safe and therefore usually goes out with friends.
• All healthy men have powerful sexual urges starting from puberty. Usually, they are initially attracted to a woman based on her physical appearance.
• When this attraction happens in a man, he wants to get to make the woman's acquaintance, and if they hit it off, develop a relationship with her.
• It is at this point usually that approach anxiety kicks in for many guys. Others simply ignore this feeling and accost the woman in various ways.
  
• Therefore, the beautiful women (by men's standards) get "hit on" a lot. They are used to this and are confident that they can always get physically attractive sexual partner if they want one. They don't think of it as a challenge, like men do. Instead, they are free to worry about other things.
• A woman's challenge is to get into a good relationship. The ironic thing is that a beautiful woman has a small chance of being approached by nice, tactful guys, because they will all have the same reaction to her -- a keen feeling of attraction, which only moments later will underscore the fear of awkward situations when they considers approaching her (and they do), punctuated by the memory -- false but quite compelling -- that risk of rejection is higher when a girl is "out of your league".
• Thus many women complain about not being able to find decent guys, and many guys complain about not being able to approach beautiful women.
• It's hard to break out of this cycle for one individual, let alone an entire society.
  

Where Are All The Pretty Girls?

As I talked further with my new friend, he told me he didn't have a problem talking to them girls, his main issue was where to find all those nice girls in the first place. They were all there in college, but where would we meet them now? That set me thinking, "if I was a single girl, where would I be?" And here's what I realized:

• If I'm an educated, active girl, I most likely have a job after college. I spend 9-5 at my workplace, and then go home, usually on some kind of public transportation.
• If I am a sociable, single girl, I go out with a group of friends in the evening or on weekends. I go to clubs, lounges and other fun places, but always with a group of other girls and guys. Other times I relax at home, maybe going online once in a while to chat with my friends.

So the a contemporary American guy has a few limited options:

1. His best bet is to find a girl who's single through his network of friends. If he was lucky to develop this network earlier in his life, he's in good shape. More on that in the next section.
2. During the day, he can meet women at his workplace. Of course, unless his job involves visiting other places, he can't exactly meet women elsewhere (unless you count a waitress or a store clerk). If he works in a male-dominated job, well -- tough luck during the day.
3. At night, he can find the women out with their friends at fun "hang outs", such as lounges, clubs, bowling alleys, and so forth. The only place where I can think of single women going consistently by themselves is a bar. Since women are almost always in groups, he'd have to start talking to the whole group, and then find out whether any of the girls in the group are single. That means that these days, if a man wants to find and date an attractive woman during the evening, he has to brush up on his group conversation (things such as storytelling, getting people excited, etc.) Also, he doesn't want to look like a weirdo coming over by himself (fear of being perceived badly), so it would behoove him to bring a friend to join him. In other words, a man shouldn't go out alone either.
4. From the above observations, we see that most guys with tech jobs or other "geeky" male-dominated jobs have to learn to approach groups of people in the evening, if they want to have more success meeting women. Firefighters and men in other "cool" male-dominated jobs can go out drinking with their buddies to a bar, and try to meet women there, being part of a group.
   
5. Online dating services
   
6. He can try to be creative and sign up for dance classes, yoga classes, or whatever else.
7. He can meet women in transition -- on a lunch break, on the train, etc. but once again, in most situations he will find nothing relevant to talk about. If there is no apparent reason for him to be talking to a woman (which is true in most random situation) the conversation can quickly turn awkward -- and everyone wants to avoid that.

Why Is This True Of All My Friends?

I can tell you that I would be very hard pressed to find an attractive girl to date through my network of friends. Most of my friends, while they are nice, intelligent, interesting guys, have the very same "girl problems" exemplified in the fact that when a group of them gets together, 90% of the time there are twice as many guys as girls in that group, and none of the girls are dating those guys, whether or not they are single.

A lot of this approach anxiety stuff is a total mystery to girls, in fact it bores them when I tell them it's true about guys. Why can't the guy just be confident and engage them? Often people have this notion that confidence can be switched on at will. Actually, success breeds confidence. And this is where I get to my theory about why some guys "have it" and others don't.

I have seen many times that our experience shapes how we think about the world and our own inner psyche. Growing up poor, growing up small, tall, fat, friendless, all shape you psychologically as a young adult, which is expected. I haven't been there but I'd wager the same is true of all stages in a person's life. Previous experiences matter a lot.

So I'd say those who formed a good circle of friends early on never worry about making friends. Similarly those who had sex in their early to middle teens never worry so much about attracting girls. And that's the thing -- if something is not a big deal for you, you do it much more easily and success breeds confidence, which brings even more success as you continue in your confident lifestyle.

On the other hand, I'd say that, as a general rule, those guys who did well in school and college are the ones who are far from being "ladies' men". That's because they focused on studies, while their peers were out "getting laid". They also seeked out and socialized with other intellectual guys -- who, while able to provide each other with stimulating conversation about science, history, philosophy, or whatever else -- were in the same predicament. If some of them gained access to other cliques in high school or college, the less academically responsible ones, they would have an opportunity to further their social and sexual experience.

There are other factors that commonly cause "girl troubles", most notably religion-related ones, which prevent the growing adolescent boy from socially and sexually developing with the same easy as other teenagers. All of these have effects later in life. As for my friends, I'd say I tend to hang out with smart, educated guys but these are the same guys who had the above experiences.

As my newfound friend put it, it's so wrong that the intelligent, nice guys who would be such good relationship material for the women are the ones that aren't met much by women.