Former Incel

And being unable to determine who likes me can cause people to dislike me. I could pursue people who don't like me and be seen as a creep, or I could avoid people who do like me and they could take it as lack of interest on my part.

you are still shifting the blame onto women -- although possibly unintentional. i have had multiple friendships with men who behave like what you describe, and at no point is it ever my fault their behaviour is creepy. these are men i genuinely considered friends until they became more obsessive.

it is not the woman who is at fault when you wont give her personal space. it is not the woman who is at fault when you wont give her time alone and incessantly attempt to garner her attention. it is not the woman who is at fault when your behaviour changes for the worse. however, your post still places emphasis on the woman for creating these missunderstandings or for having the man labled a creep.

i hope this wasn't intentional on your part as you seem rather lovely otherwise, unless you just arent as reformed from incel depravity as you thought

How can I be "shifting the blame onto women" if the post is gender neutral? Read the post again and tell me where I said what gender each person is.

If you're nice to someone and they develop feelings for you, that isn't your fault. But if someone presumes that you're their friend because you explicitly tell them that you are, or if they presume that you're okay with a type of flirting because you've initiated it and you've never told them to stop, their presumption is completely reasonable.

Someone decides to do something "nice" and interact with you. Maybe they call you their friend. Maybe they flirt with you a little. Maybe they get a large group of people to show interest in you so you can feel popular.

You start to feel optimistic about this. You start to believe that maybe you're not as doomed to loneliness as you once thought.

You then play along in what seems like a completely reasonable way. Since they called you their friend, you assume that you're supposed to interact with them as often as they interact with their friends. Since they flirted with you, you assume that they like that type of interaction with you and you start initiating it.

They then start to find you annoying. They only wanted to feel like they're doing something nice, not to interact with you like a person who's company they actually enjoy and value.

But they don't tell you that they find you annoying, because they "don't want to hurt your feelings" or because they expect you to take a hint. They don't tell you that they find you annoying, but they do talk to their friends about how annoying you are.

Eventually, one of their friends tells you that you're annoying and to leave them alone. And you now have a reputation of being an obsessive creep.

Which group should you choose?

You may be tempted to choose the first group because of the attractive women. After all, you want attractive women to like you, and you don't want to settle for someone who you don't find attractive. So you try to fit in with the group that has attractive women, because the effort needed to fit in with that group and be liked by those women seems preferable over being stuck with the unattractive women in the other group.

The problem is that you're classifying those women the wrong way. Instead of classifying them as Group A being attractive women and Group B being unattractive women, you should classify them as Group A being cherrypicked women and Group B being random women.

Anytime you see a group of unattractive women, you should think of them as random women. It's normal to not find random people attractive, so it would make perfect sense that a group of random women will be mostly unattractive.

Even advice from women cannot always be trusted.

If you're a man who's looking for advice for how to interact with women, there can be different sources of advice that disagree with each other without any of them being flat out wrong. But there are some red flags that make advice dangerous to follow. And I noticed two main red flags here.

There's a promise of it working. She says that if you follow her advice, the woman will 100% fall in love with you. In reality, there is nothing you can do that will work every time. If you approach women with an expectation of a specific outcome, you're pretty much guaranteed to be a creep.

Another time when you see her, you touch her again in a similar way and she finds it creepy.

You may be wondering why this is happening. She liked it at first. So what changed?

The difference is that the first time it happened, you were carefully trying to read her boundaries. You were slowly experimenting to find out what she likes and what she doesn't. You started out using the default setting of how people in general should interact with people in general, and you then slowly increased the physical contact while each time making sure she has a reasonable way out. You were paying attention to what she initiates in order to make sure it's not one sided. Meanwhile, the second time, you were just copying the parts that you liked from the first time. The first time, you were doing everything the correct way. The second time, you went in with expectations.

It's absolutely true that "just be confident" doesn't work. The solution is accuracy, not confidence.

Some men approach women with too little confidence and assume that no woman could possibly want him. Some men approach women with too much confidence and interpret everything as a sign of interest. Both will fail.

It is true that more women prefer tall men than short men. But that's just a statistic. Each individual is wildly different. Some women want a big strong protector and some women want to be the strong one. Some women want a provider and some women want to be independent. Some women want a rich man and some women believe that all rich people are evil. Some women want a bodybuilder and some women prefer dad bods. Some women want a tall man and some women want to tower over their short king. There's no trait that's universally attractive.

I've seen multiple Instagram accounts of couples in which the woman is much taller than the man, and of very tall women who are single and openly prefer to be with a man much shorter. And those men are not celebrities.

But that's not how it works.

The world is filled with damaged adults. You have a lot more in common with damaged adults than with teenagers. You're much more likely to be understood by damaged adults than by teenagers.

You're trying to heal the damage from your teenage years. You have a lot in common with other adults who are also trying to heal the damage from their teenage years. You have very little in common with someone who's living their teenage years for the first time.

But all you're really doing is throwing off my ability to read signs of interest and making it seem like it's impossible for anyone to genuinely like me.

It feels good at first. I'm used to just going to school and going home, so it feels good to get invited somewhere. I'm used to being alone because no one likes me or because I don't know how to initiate interactions the correct way, so it feels good to have people approach me. I'm used to having zero chance of dating because everyone finds me weird or because I can't read signs of interest consistently enough to be able to pursue a partner, so it feels good to have someone attractive flirt with me or ask me to be their prom date.

But where does it go from there? Do I assume that you like me, try to continue the flirting or attempts at friendship, and have you see me as a stalker or creep? Or do I assume that you're just being nice and don't actually like me, stay away from you, and go right back to being hopelessly alone?

And think about how my family will treat me. If I complain to them about being disliked, they'll use your "charitable favor" as evidence that I'm just being negative. Then, when your act of "kindness" stops and I go back to being alone, they'll never again believe me when I desperately go out of my way to explain my struggles to them.

It's often hard to find good advice when neurodivergent traits are mistaken as signs of disinterest.

The only one that has any truth to it is that lack of reciprocation is a sign of disinterest. If you're initiating all of it and putting in all of the effort and they're only responding as if they have to, then that's a sign of disinterest.

Closed lip smiles? Some people think their teeth are ugly and don't like to show them. Some people just naturally don't show their teeth when they smile.

Facing you but not making typical eye contact? That's easily a neurodivergent trait.

Sighing? That could have so many meanings.

Their response lacks emotion? They could just be tired. Or they could just not show emotion in typical ways.

They light up when talking to someone else and not to you? Maybe they feel the need to mask their neurodivergence around others but feel safe being themself around you.