I’m an ex incel myself, but I’ve been seeing a few users here exhibiting the tell tale signs. “I’m not attractive enough”, “I don’t socialize correctly”, “I’ll never find a woman” - all extremely unhealthy attitudes.
Personally I burned through many friendships and ruined a lot of chances with women because I was in the incel community. The community warped my view of women so much that I made it even harder to meet women, I became my own worst enemy. I lost friends because all I could think of was how horrible it was that they had girlfriends.
I have a friend who helped me out of it. She was the one who started calling out my bad behavior for what it was, and I started on the long uphill path out of it. I’m now married and stable for well over a decade, but I still think back to those days, and it depresses me seeing other people causing this themselves and not being aware of it.
So, Lemmy, for those who have clawed out of it, what’s your story?
One thing you could try, if you haven’t, is dating someone you connect with, and have a fun time with, even without “romantic spark”. Attraction can be important in a relationship, but in a long term relationship spark often doesn’t last anyway, and it’s other things that actually keep people together. Getting along well, working well together, handling stress in complementary ways, etc, are all more valuable long term.
So just as an experiment you could try dating someone for something “long”, but not actually that long in the grand scheme of things. Maybe 3 months, roughly one season. Even if you’re not physically attracted to them, try dating them anyway. If it doesn’t work, you haven’t actually lost anything. Just a bit of time. And you will have officially “had a girlfriend”, and gained some amount of relationship experience, even if it wasn’t the best.
And if it just so happens that you’re just not an “early term” guy, buf you’re actually a pretty good “mid-term” guy, then that’s great! Keep going! You haven’t got a lot to lose, in a sense, so you’re available for experimentation.
Basically what you seem to be saying is that as long as you can connect in some way like shared interests and desires, they could be a good partner. They don’t have to be a superstar model for you to have a connection and also enjoy being intimate with them, which could easily be a strong enough motivation to spend the rest of your lives together or even end up starting a family. You could definitely fall in love with them.
Yeah basically! There’s a reason most romantic comedies end with them starting to date. It’s because that’s the zany exciting bit. After that part, the next 40 years or whatever is a roommate who lives in your home with you, and you do taxes together, and you eat dinner together, and you go to your shared friend’s homes to hang out, and maybe you teach weird little gremlins how to be humans, and you talk after work about how your day went, and what you’re planning to do in the future.
And that stuff can be great! But looking like a model doesn’t make that stuff much better. Even people who live with models probably “get over it” pretty quick. You can’t be in awe 18 hours a day every day for 15 years. But, having a shared foundation of experiences and mutual respect does make those things easier. Liking each other’s friends does too.
You can learn to love someone, and you can learn to find an attractive person unattractive through interaction.