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Fat Tony @lemmy.world

Is the act of romantically approaching women out of date?

https://www.mystateline.com/news/national/almost-half-of-young-men-have-never-approached-a-woman-romantically-study/

“In the entire dataset, 29% of men said they never approached a woman in person before. 27% said it had been more than one year. This was larger for men in the age 18-25 group: 45% had never approached a woman in person,” according to the study.

A majority of single males surveyed reported fear as the main reason they do not approach women for dates in person. Fear of rejection and fear of social consequences were the two most common responses.

The data highlights a growing concern in the United States and abroad — loneliness. A 2023 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that almost half of U.S. adults report “measurable levels of loneliness.”

It's interesting to say the least. It seems as though the social repercussions and rejection are the most profound reason. While the fear of rejection is easy enough to digest. But I think the fear or social consequences is a relatively new construct.

From what I understand it's the fear of being viewed as a creep to approach a woman out of the blue. Which to me, is reasonable enough. But I don't think I have ever heard my old man or anyone of his generation bringing this to the table.

Yet I do remember asking my friends about picking up hints and whether or not men are really that bad at it. And most them saying the just don't want to risk misinterpreting it.

Perhaps there is an argument to be made that approaching women like this, has fallen out of social fashion. What do you guys think?

p.s. I hope this is casual enough of a conversation. I kinda screwed up my last one, I admit.

Edit: Here is a more detailed paper on the survey for those that are interested

170 comments

  • Don't know how old your father is, but at least among Gen X women, creepy men absolutely have been part of the discussion. It just wasn't a public discussion until much more recently. Hell, the fake phone number thing goes back to landlines.

    We're still at a point of significant cultural change in gender relations, and until an equilibrium point is reached, there's going to be apprehension about approaching others. To that end, it's important that we keep small gaffes made in good faith as social misdemeanors (to allow for opportunities to correct behavior) and not career-ending incidents. It only takes a quick browse of social media discussing one of these incidents to see why said apprehension exists.

    That said, I still don't think we're having enough conversations about consent around positions of authority and social hierarchy in general. Too many people don't understand that being nice to someone when you're on the clock isn't implied consent for continued interaction with that person off the clock. That's the light stuff; it can go all the way to gross stories about cops and women. It all stems back to authority and power imbalance. This might be more of an issue in the US than elsewhere; I think ideals of "equality" and "social mobility" are so ingrained in our culture that some Americans don't have the social intelligence around the very real stratification that exists at the workplace and elsewhere.

    Fear of rejection is a whole other problem that likely stems from everyone having more anxiety now. I was around a bunch of people in their late teens/early 20's a lot more than usual the past couple years and holy crap. I thought my social anxiety was bad. I don't know how these kids are going to function.

  • Ever since I was a young teen, I've been exposed to a lot of messaging about mean and harrassment and rape. I was already an extremely isolated kid, and it really drove me further away from women. I really didn't want to be a creep or make someone uncomfortable, and already had major self-esteem issues, and it really screwed me up tbh. Even during college, the school was super condescending about telling men not to rape people, and it really made me ashamed to be male. 2nd year, I started dating someone, but I just couldn't continue because I was so uncomfortable with it. I'm certainly an extreme case, but there is a lot of messaging out there affecting people, and not necessarily for the better. I've realized I'm trans since then, and apparently this is common in mtf people. In the end, I'm way more comfortable being with men, even though I'm generally less attracted to them physically in general. Anyways, I would LITERALLY NEVER approach a woman romantically in person, it has to be over a dating app of some sort where I know they're looking for something romantic and we can be upfront about needs and wants. That or they have to be very assertive and unambiguous in person, which very weirdly has actually happened to me.

  • I think both the "would you rather run into a man or a bear in the woods?" question for women and the "would you rather be emotionally vulnerable with a woman or a tree?" question for men scream loud and clear why there isn't much meeting in the middle on this issue.

    Women are still living in a world that by and large treats women as property and rape as something that women should just get used to.

    A woman in the US couldn't have her own bank account until 1974.

    Until 1993, marital rape wasn't recognized at the Federal level, and only some states had laws against it.

    So, up until just thirty-one years ago, raping your wife was cool and legal.

    Women are watching politicians try to control their bodily autonomy by making abortion illegal, and the same people pushing that also happen to be pushing for an end to "no fault divorce" because they don't like women having the choice of divorcing them.

    Women have so many good reasons to have had it up to here with men...

    Now, women aren't responsible for men's emotional well-being and men really should do more to support each other when it comes to being open and emotionally vulnerable, but the downside is that it means men, overall, generally feel like they can't actually be open with women without it hurting their chances, romantically.

    Much like it isn't every individual black person's job to educate every idiot white person they come in contact with, it's not every woman's job to educate every idiot man they come in contact with.

    However, this impacts men who are just trying to find a footing and may grow into better people, given the opportunity. However, the attitude of that you're not responsible for explaining leads to nobody explaining except... right-wing asshats who are pushing division and hate. So, because there aren't left-wing men speaking to how to handle these issues and providing healthy in-gender support for other men, we're leaving it all up to women to do all the educating, and I mean, I get it, they don't want to, they're kind of over it, and that's probably why they're pretty rude about it, to boot. And since they're saying no and bowing out, that means young men are left to listen to voices like Andrew Tate.

    I think both sides of this coin are doing each other a disservice. Women not having enough patience for men who could grow to be good men, and men not having enough self-reflection to realize that hanging your entire emotional stability on whether or not you are in a relationship is unhealthy, period.

    • I think both the “would you rather run into a man or a bear in the woods?” question for women and the “would you rather be emotionally vulnerable with a woman or a tree?” question for men scream loud and clear why there isn’t much meeting in the middle on this issue.

      I totally forgot about that one. And you're totally right! Seriously everything you've said here is an interesting take on the matter.

      However, the attitude of that you’re not responsible for explaining leads to nobody explaining except… right-wing asshats who are pushing division and hate.

      Would you say that perhaps an emphasis on social education (like in middle school or something) would be good first step to this? And not just to talk about what you shouldn't do but also when you in fact CAN try and make a move.

      • Back in the day they had things like "etiquette schools" (I guess they still do) with a focus on politeness and manners.

        Frankly, there can and should be a modern version of etiquette but focused on interpersonal relationships taught in school. The modern version would focus on things like consent, healthy emotional support structures, and healthy communication strategies.

        School itself is supposed to be a place to "live and learn" as it were when forming relationships, but it basically has very little adult stewardship of those concepts.

    • Who would've guessed! The "all men are horrible people" narrative is hurting non-horrible (the majority) men.

    • would you rather be emotionally vulnerable with a woman or a tree?

      Lol lol. I haven't heard that one. Tree, by far. The tree won't use it against me later. (which has happened enough times that I got the point, even from women who told me verbatim to be vulnerable. Yep, they still used it against me later.)

    • The problem with dating right now is that for centuries there was an order. Men were the dominant ones, and women were the submissive ones. In general, at least.

      Then WWII happened, and all the men went overseas, and all the women were brought into the workplace.

      Then the surviving men came back, and people tried to go back to what it was. They tried to have women go back to being home makers, and men go back to work.

      But the toothpaste was out of the tube. You had a major societial shift, in a very short time, and you can't go back like that.

      So now women wanted to work, and men were expected to work. You wanna know why the 50s were so ecconomically strong? It's because you had a two person income household in a one income per household society. Suddenly these people who grew up during the great depression, were now living in the strongest ecconomy in history. Prices needed a decade or two to catch up to the idea that women worked too.

      This began to crack the foundation of the idea that men were the dominant ones because they worked. Well, now women worked too. So they had to find another way to go back to the way things were.....but again, the toothpaste was out of the tube. The end result was that men increased the amount of rape through the 50s/60s/70s. Then in the 80s, women started fighting back on that front. I'm not saying they solved the issue, but prior to the 80s, there was zero resistance. Now there was.

      Suddenly you could be sued at work for grabbing a womans ass. Or talking the wrong way. You could be fired, even from high end jobs.

      The increase in resistance eventually lead to the mid 2010s where they overturned roe v wade. The pendulium had begun swinging the other way now. This is leading to more and more women being scared of men, because they don't know how far this is going to go.

      Now everyone has guns, the world for unrelated reasons is getting more and more divided and scared. And it doesn't matter that actual crime rates are going down through the decades. Most people falsely believe crime is increasing. So they will act and feel accordingly. Add that to the fact that something like 90% of rape goes unreported, and even among the reported rapes, only 1% of cases even see jail time over a year.

      So it becomes a toothless crime that rapists freely get away with. So women are preparing for a world where every man is out to hurt them. The same way police are trained to view every civilian as a threat.

      And I used to say they were worried over nothing, until I saw how men that WEREN'T me treated women. It was a case of me being an introvert, not seeing the world around me. There very much is a problem with how men treat women, and there is also very much a problem with how women treat men. There's also a problem with how men treat other men. And there's a problem with how women treat women.

      The whole concept of marriage is obsolete, yet it's treated as the end goal of a relationship. Women are treated as baby ovens. Men are treated as bank accounts. And all of society is just toxic in everyway.

      Because somewhere along the line, parents lost a sense of community, and teaching their children who to trust, and who not to. Instead they're told not to trust any strangers. Well all that does is cripple their social skills when they get to kindergarten. Day 1, they're surrounded by strangers. What are they supposed to do? Shut down, and have a room full of 30 kids not talking, not listening to the teacher?

      I had a guy when I was 14 say he liked my hair. I'm not gay, but he was, so I politely told him I appriciate it, but also I'm not gay. He thought I was. At no point did I feel he was a threat, or creepy. He was just shooting his shot at a destined to fail attempt at flirting. Oh well, things go these ways sometimes. I knew I could trust he wouldn't get violent.

      But when I was 18, a guy in his 40s, who gave off some real men in black vibes, the guy in the overalls who was filled with bugs, he said "You suuure do got purrrdyyyy skiiiin". And I knew NOT to trust this guy. He made my skin crawl, and I got out of there.

      And thats what we're not teaching kids today, because our parents didn't teach it to us. How to learn WHO to trust, and what signs to look for. People think judging others is a bad thing. It's not. It's a nuetral thing. Its a skill that allows you to assess people.

      Instead, we have a generation of people with no social skills, who feel that everyone from the other gender is out to get them. People list things like the ecconomy and threats of war as reasons people are having less kids now. I think it's because people aren't meeting. The traditional family is dead. All children now are accidents, which is why they wanted roe v wade overturned. To increase birthrates. Because republicans don't care about families. They care about having wage slaves working the machines at low costs.

      What people need to go back to is one person being in charge of the relationship, and one person being the caretaker. The genders on that don't matter. You need a leader, and a supporter. And right now, everyones fighting to be the leader because they think it sounds cool.

      Problem is, if you have two dominant types, all they do is fight, and eventually resent each other. If you have two submissive types, they just slowly drift apart and eventually the relationship falls apart.

      But if you have one dominant leader type, and one (or more) submissive supporter types, you can have a healthy relationship that lasts.

      The problem is, the toothpaste is out of the tube. And right now, theres so much hate and anger and division, that nobody is even TRYING to find a valid solution. It's all just one big power grab, leading to many to just stay out of the whole damn thing. Myself included.

  • I've noticed less interactions between strangers in general. I think there is a general anxiety issue and a fear of conversations going south/ people getting aggressive. Whether or not that's rational idk.

  • There's a lot hinging on the definition of "approach a woman in person" here, but the general conclusion of men being afraid of being labelled a creep tends to hold true in the people I know.

    I have a friend who made moves on a mutual friend. As far as I know, he didn't do anything egregious. Farthest either said he went was putting his arm around her shoulder on a couch after she came back to his place with him alone to watch something after they had been hanging out and flirting most of the day. Both say he stopped as soon as she made it clear she wasn't interested (okay, hand off, I'm going to ramble like a nerd about this show because I legitimately wanted to show you it on top of anything else that might happen). She refused to attend anything where he would be present for over a year and had some very strong opinions about just how much of a womanizing creep he was.

    So I've seen this sort of thing first hand.

    But I think in general throughout time, guys generally didn't go up to a complete strangers and ask them out.

    I approached my wife in person in a casual setting without any ulterior motives. We were both at a mutual friend's college graduation celebration. I knew precisely two people there, and they were chatting with other people. I had already exhausted small talk with most of the older family members of the graduate. I saw a woman off to the side not looking sure what to do with themselves and decided to try and start up a conversation. Maybe we could be awkward together. We ended up glued to each other keeping a conversation going for the rest of the event. Realized that night back home that I wanted to date her, and spent time checking out her facebook and talking to mutual friends to learn more about her before I asked her out via text. I even tried to make that casual, as I was inviting her to join me at a small local theater performance I was already going to either way, and dinner beforehand if she was interested. I didn't call it a date, just "hey I'm doing this thing that seems like something you'd enjoy, want to get dinner beforehand and come with?"

    She was the roommate of someone in my friend group, and I was told in no uncertain terms by our mutual friends that if I screwed it up or hurt her they would hurt me.

    So... yeah. Not going to flirt with a complete stranger for fear of being maced, or being socially ostracized by being labelled something like a creeper. Intense hesitation to date within or (in the case of my wife) on the periphery of my social groups lest I damage something.

    After the show, I was so direct with my now wife about what I was looking for that she had to tell me to slow down, because if we had a relationship some of those things wouldn't only be up to me. And I told it to her saying "Look, I don't want to make ultimatums, but I don't want to waste either of our time, or for things to get serious only for some core incompatibility to come up and leave us both hurt. If any of this is a deal breaker, let's get it out in the open now and we can continue as friends, because you're really cool and I'd hate to miss out on that just because things couldn't work out romantically."

    Ultimately things did work out, but it definitely wasn't the type of "courtship" people think of, or is shown in media.

    My parents didn't meet as complete strangers either. Most people I know in relationships didn't.

    • She was the roommate of someone in my friend group, and I was told in no uncertain terms by our mutual friends that if I screwed it up or hurt her they would hurt me.

      Kind of like the dad with the shotgun trope ;)

      Anyway thanks for the contribution. It's interesting. I'm starting to question whether this "norm" of approaching women out of the blue was ever "in of date" in the first place.

  • Personally, from puberty through most of high school, I never approached any girls because I never had to--in my social setting it was totally normal and acceptable for girls to ask boys out, and I guess I was approachable enough, despite not being very popular, to get asked a fair amount. Yet I still had this culturally inherited concept that it should be me who was doing the asking, or at least learning how to do it. So I struggled with this a lot in my teenage years... part of the problem was that I also didn't have the stereotypical physical attraction to women, but a more personality-based one, so a lot of time was wasted trying to convert close platonic friendships into romantic relationships (maybe that works for some people, but not in my experience).

    Ultimately, the woman I married was someone I approached without knowing her beforehand, but only after like weeks of making very mutual, not at all creepy eye contact walking back and forth on the same paths in the music center of our college campus. I think that's sort of the bare minimum: some signs of shared context, some shared interest or hobby, some smoke signals indicating mutual attraction. And for a minute I still thought maybe we were meant to be just friends, but obviously I was wrong, and part of how I know that is the way we met: with clear physical attraction established. This was all before dating apps, and I think I can see their appeal from that perspective; they reduce the uncertainty about "what kind of relationship is this going to become" to some extent.

    Anyways, though, I'm pretty sure that I didn't have to put myself through the suffering of trying to "be a man" and build up the confidence to ask women out, because I was lucky to have a milieu in which they could comfortably take the lead. Heck, my wife might have been the one to break the tension eventually if it wasn't me. What I do regret, for sure, is the platonic friendships I lost with women during that phase in which I felt I was "supposed" to be converting them into girlfriends. The kind of reasoning that draws a direct line from changes in who is doing the asking out (for a variety of reasons) to male loneliness is really not helping any young men who are similarly confused.

  • I approached a woman in a bar once back around 2009. after that it was nothing but tinder, I've got no clue how to figure out if a woman is interested in person.

  • The idea that a stranger cold approaching a woman was a significant factor in couplings is quite overblown. Most couples met through some sort of social grouping such as family, friends, religious gatherings, work, etc. This doesn't mean it didn't occur, just that it wasn't an overall productive method of finding a partner. As time has gone on, society has advanced to a place where women are too not only discuss openly about the problematic behaviors exhibited in cold approaches, but also be heard. The affect on young men is that most will not approach a woman due to the already present fear of rejection and the now added fear of being perceived as a creep.

    It is not necessarily a bad thing that this is going away, but the large issue that should be addressed is the loss of a community many (I'm speaking for the US here) face. Many young people are frustrated with the dating scene and their inability to find partners. A community not only allows for opportunities to meet potential partners but a framework to enforce (through social pressure) acceptable standards of conduct to ensure all parties are safe and comfortable. I don't have the answers, but we as a society need to figure it out. There has been unfortunate trend of this frustration driving young people to extremist ideology. This has been most prominent with young men, as is historically the case, but it is starting to take root with some young women as well.

170 comments