In my twenties I decided the answer to everything was getting better at approaching women.
I wasn’t a natural candidate. I was shy and introverted, I painted fantasy miniatures, I built model kits and I read constantly. None of that is a promising foundation for the project I set myself.
I learned the techniques anyway, and then went completely all in. My brain does that with anything it decides to hyperfocus on. I did it for years and I got results.
I can report on those results, because I ran the experiment properly and for long enough to get a clean answer. I was no more comfortable around women at the end of it than at the start. I’d simply gotten good at a performance that let me avoid finding out.
Why can the technique work and change nothing?
Because it hits the target it aims at and the target is the wrong one.
The loneliness industry sells marriage as the exit, and I most want men to hear that it wasn’t one for me.
The techniques aren’t fraudulent. Some of them do reliably produce the outcome they describe, so the industry keeps going and the men in it can point at results. I got results. That’s not in dispute. What none of it produced was ease. I was still tense in the room. I was executing something instead of talking to somebody, and the tension underneath never moved, because a performance isn’t the same as being comfortable and doing one well proves nothing about the other.
The pitch works because it never names the real objective. It sells you a method for the visible problem and stays silent about the invisible one, and the invisible one is the reason anybody buys.
What did all that technique cost?
Years, and an amount of money I’ve chosen not to add up.
The time is the part people underestimate. Doing this seriously is a second job. The going out, the talking, the recovery, the constant low-level performance. I had that time and I spent it on this. That meant I didn’t spend it on anything that adds up.
The other cost was the avoidance. It was an expensive, time-consuming way of not dealing with my own issues, and it was extremely effective at that. As long as I had a method to run, I never had to stand in a room without one and find out how that felt. That’s the function it served. I didn’t understand that at the time and would have argued with anybody who suggested it.
Does marriage cure shyness?
No. The loneliness industry sells marriage as the exit, and I most want men to hear that it wasn’t one for me.
Twelve and a half years to a woman who turned out to be a frigid narcissist with an even more narcissistic son.
I thought marriage would solve the emptiness that the other approach hadn’t. Wrong again. Instead of hundreds of meaningless encounters I got one long, soul-crushing relationship that taught me how all those patterns play out when you’re trapped with somebody for years.
The marriage ended when she died after an eight-year chronic illness. She had asthma and lung disease and she wouldn’t stop her two-pack-a-day smoking habit. I won’t pretend I was devastated. Being alone attracts sympathy. Being with the wrong person does more damage and gets none.
What finally made a shy man comfortable around women?
A camera, which I didn’t see coming.
After the marriage ended I became a photographer specializing in women performers. Reenactors, models, actresses, belly dancers, at one point mermaids. Hundreds and hundreds of shoots.
The entire job was making somebody comfortable enough to be photographed well. Talking, putting them at ease, understanding what they wanted the images to do, then getting out of the way and doing the work. Nothing else was on the table, because nothing else could be. It was a professional relationship with a deliverable.
That was the first time in my life I spent hundreds of hours with women where I wanted nothing from the interaction except to do the job well.
And somewhere in there the tension went. I stopped bracing. I could talk to a woman the way I talk to anybody. That sounds like a low bar and wasn’t one I’d ever cleared.
I don’t think the camera was magic. I think the absence of an objective was, and the sheer volume of ordinary practice.
What’s wrong with most advice for men who feel awkward around women?
That most of the advice you’ve been getting is complete horseshit, and that it’s solving the wrong problem on purpose, because the problem you have doesn’t have a product attached.
I’m not going to tell you that women are wonderful creatures who deserve your worship. I’m also not going to tell you they’re evil and out to destroy you. They’re people with their own needs, drives and patterns of behavior, and understanding those patterns and your own is the whole of it.
If you’re not comfortable around women, technique won’t make you comfortable. It’ll make you effective while remaining uncomfortable, and that’s worse, because it hides the problem behind results. Neither will a relationship fix it, and the wrong one makes it considerably worse. What fixed it for me was hundreds of ordinary interactions with a job attached and nothing else at stake.
| Approach | What happened | Did it bring comfort? |
|---|---|---|
| Learning technique | Years of effort and money; it got results and served as avoidance | No. Still tense in the room, performing instead of talking |
| Marriage | Twelve and a half years in one long, soul-crushing relationship | No. The wrong relationship made it considerably worse |
| Photographing women performers | Hundreds of shoots where the job was putting somebody at ease | Yes. The tension went, with no objective and lots of ordinary practice |
That sounds like weak advice compared with a system. Systems are appealing because they promise control over something that feels uncontrollable. The appeal is the sales mechanism and proves nothing about whether the system works.
The book on this: The Relationship BULLSHIT Men Fall For is 148 pages on the advice men are sold about women, what each piece of it costs, and what was left once I stopped taking any of it.
My take
Technique won’t fix being uncomfortable around women. It makes you effective while you stay uncomfortable, and that’s worse because the results hide the problem. A relationship won’t fix it either. What worked for me was hundreds of ordinary interactions with a job attached and nothing else at stake. Find that for yourself, some role where the work is putting people at ease. Stop buying systems that promise control.
What should you ask yourself before going all in on a hobby?
Name what you’re really after. If the answer is comfort instead of conquest, no amount of success at the second one will deliver the first.
Count the time, beyond the money. Two years of evenings is two years of evenings and you don’t get them back.
Be suspicious of anything sold as a system. The people selling systems for this are earning from the system, and the loneliness is the raw material.
Don’t treat a relationship as the exit. It’s a separate thing with its own requirements and it won’t do the job you’re hoping for.
Find work that puts you around the people you’re tense around, with a job to do. Repetition without an agenda did more for me than every technique combined, and I found it entirely by accident.
I still have the miniatures. Painting them was what I was doing before I decided I needed to become somebody else. Being the person who paints miniatures and reads books was never the problem. Not being able to stand comfortably in a room was, and that turned out to be fixable by ordinary practice and not by becoming a different man.
Shy men get sold a lot of nonsense. The Relationship BULLSHIT Men Fall For is what thirty-odd years of trying everything taught me, from a man who kept notes and has no system to sell.
