I have given up trying to find a girlfriend. Even though, I am outgoing, have hobbies (I dance, which is actually filled with women), go to parties, talk to plenty of women. But I keep hearing the same thing over and over again: “I am just not so into skinny guys.”
I think this is fair from the woman’s perspective. I for one am only motivated to date attractive women. So, them not wanting to settle for less actually makes very good sense to me. There is absolutely no hate or bitterness regarding that. Fuck all that: ‘all women are whores’-noise.
That being said, I think I should just consider myself celibate by virtue of my own standards. But now bitterness is starting to take hold of me. Bitterness about my life and to me as a person. As I said I am very outgoing and don’t want to become the cynical asshole around my friends.
So how do I stop this?
Edit: I go to the gym on a regular basis.
I am 6’ 6" and most of my life I’ve been between 145 to 165. So incredibly skinny, always under weight. I never struggled with women as an adult, but I also didn’t chase too many shallow women. When I was young i certainly got told by a few that they weren’t into skinny guys, but it was almost always by people that were incredibly socially controlled people, the type to “keep up with the Joneses” so to speak. Once I stopped chasing after people for the wrong reasons things improved dramatically.
Do you have close friends that are women? I wonder if there is a communication aspect to this if not. Do you date outside your culture? I grew up around mostly white rural Christians and they were more judgy about being skinny than other cultural groups, in my experience. Maybe something about rural people doing a lot more hard labor and it being culturally homogeneous.
You have the stats of one of the most attractive skinny guys I’ve been with. I was also way skinny at that point in my life (5’9" 115lb - I am 150 now at midlife and people seem to see even this as thin somehow, I don’t understand it), which made things a little awkward but I really think very tall and skinny is one of the ideal body types for a man, and you are so tall I think most women would perceive you as ‘bigger than them’ even if you are close in mass.
Also the best lover I ever had was a guy a couple inches shorter than me and whip lean and not even socially ‘normal’. Husband now is my height, strong as fuck and padded, and like OP seems to fear being ‘skinny’, as a lady this is an almost incomprehensible fear, I have feared being fat always but skinny is fine.
Yeah I’m only 10 lbs more than my wife and she is 5’ tall. I was the last in a long line of tall, usually thin, men for her. It’s definitely a type for some.
In addition to the advice already given, I would suggest you look at mental attractiveness as well as physical attractiveness. Physical attractiveness can be a ton of fun but then when you actually start living with the person if they aren’t mentally attractive/compatible with your personality then they can be really hard to live with. Look for someone genuine and kind and into the same sort of things you are.
Do YOU love yourself for who you are? Do you accept yourself and all your imperfections? Is there anything you are not happy with about yourself that you can change?
This is all that matters. Stop trying to push things and appreciate what you have. If there is something about yourself that you can change, then change it. Otherwise, stop worrying about what others think and learn to love yourself.
When you figure this out and learn this, everything else will follow. How can others love you, if you don’t even love yourself?
I’m not sure you age but from what I understand, many people between 20-40 have been having issues finding genuine relationships and “situationships” are on the rise. I know several people that claim to be happy having 2-3 half commited partners (whom often also have other partners), but i don’t believe they are that happy, especially compared to a genuine relationship.
As others had said try to just stick to your own personallity and focus on your own happiness, changing yourself or your standards just to get laid often doesn’t work. When i was going through a phase of depression i started seeing a partner whom couldn’t commit to me the way i desired, but i stuck around anyway because it was a nice distraction from my life. A few months later we called it offand there was a fair amount of emotional pain. The relationship was kinda of toxic as well and I’ll probably carry scars from it into my next one. Even just the memories, good or bad, are constant distraction some times. My overall point is don’t commit to it if its not what you genuinely want, good relationships have been on the decline for a while so its not always your fault if you can’t establish one.
Is your region particularly conservative?
I’ve heard more right-leaning people associate largeness with masculinity. Being in a blue state, I hear a lot of women talk about liking skinny guys.
But then again, the same people who say that can find bigger guys they like too. Sooo size probably isn’t the main factor here.
Get in the gym guy
You need to drink your way to weight gain.
Try 4 meals a day if you can but get some big calorie drinks in you.
Stop looking at the weight in the gym and start looking at the weight on the scales.
But I’m (athletic) skinny and punched out of my weight loads. How? I don’t fucking know. Think girls are just really comfortable around me and for some that works, usually the cute quiet ones. Or sometimes I been blackout drunk and magic happens.
Edit: Just get really drunk and lower your standards. I’ve done that too.
After my last gf it took me 4 years to find someone. I was going through grief on the prospect of being single for a long time. Then when the acceptance hit I rode it like it was the last step on grief. I just do me, meaning I watch movies by myself, eat out by myself, do stuff by myself. Most of my friends are couples so it’s easy to escape a crowd. I had my best vacation by booking 4 days earlier than the group and stay at a hostel and join randoms in their adventure. Sometimes it’s awkward but I didn’t try too hard so when one experience sucks I went to the next one. TLDR: I drown myself with hobbies and things I like to do and didn’t actively look for someone. But when it feels like going for someone then I date.
Most people’s body will change as they age. I haven’t met many who don’t age or never get injured or both. Selecting a partner primarily based on their current appearance means you are using criteria suitable only for short term relationships.
Have you tried working out and getting bigger?
I have, I go to gym about three times a week.
Going to the gym won’t make you less skinny. Eating more at a surplus will. Also 1g protein/lb of body weight per day.
Cast a wider net. Maybe the place you are in is too small for you. Save up money and travel to inexpensive places. Focus on your happiness, it will be obvious to others and make you more appealing.
You only want to date attractive women. You aren’t attracted to many women. Those ones don’t seem attracted to you.
Does that sound right?
That’s a nonstandard combination, and that’s ok. You might be Ace, but not Aro. An Ace person (or someone elsewhere on the sexuality spectrum) could hold women to a high beauty standard for aesthetic reasons. While still having low requirements for the romantic side (i.e. be willing to compromise to get romance)
Figuring out yourself will then dictate your dating approach. If you are Ace, then finding a beautiful Ace girlfriend is not the same approach as finding a straight one.
All I know is, my desire for sex would (did) easily override some arbitrary beauty requirement. I think most generic straight guys would agree. So if this isn’t happening, it’s worth your time to ask why.
I really wish people would stop commenting that someone has this or that identity when they just want a normal life. Having trouble finding a girlfriend? Maybe you don’t want sex! Like what? Stop normalizing this.
I’ll stop as soon as it IS normalized, so that those people who actually are Ace don’t waste fallout their life wondering why they’re unhappy.
TLDR: be happy to be alone, truly and genuinely. then it won’t matter if you find a partner, but you will be able to choose them with a clear mind if you do.
I’m basically a complete flip of you physically but I had the same problem for a loooooooooong time. I’m a tall, strong, heavy woman, and all i kept hearing was “you’re beautiful, I just don’t want someone taller/stronger/heavier than me”. I totally get it, I didn’t want to be taller/stronger/heavier than my partner either. But I’m like Fezzik- “it’s not my fault I’m the biggest and the strongest, I don’t even exercise”. except I did do cardio to try to slim down, I’m just built to survive famine I guess. ¯\(◉‿◉)/¯
What I didn’t understand was the ones who said they just wanted to be friends, because i just wasn’t their type, but would happily be fuck buddies, so long as we kept it hush hush. ಠಗಠ
Anyway, eventually after a bunch of very bad attempts at relationships where I took way more BS than I should have because I was just that hungry for affection, I decided I was just better off being single forever. I couldn’t seem to find a decent person who was attracted to me both physically and intellectually, so I decided to just stop looking. Not just stop looking, stop wanting. I actively wanted to be single for the rest of my life, in large part because I was just tired of the pain of being lonely. Like, “Jesus titty fucking Christ, we’re gonna cry ourselves to sleep because we’re SOOOO sad we’re alone AGAIN?! FFS, JUST STAHP!” So I stopped wanting a partner. I found I had so much more time and energy to do the things I was passionate about when I wasn’t futzing with all that stuff. I became the queen of getting shit done, remodeled my house myself, landscaped my yard, built a garden, went to the gym regularly, did weight lifting till I maxed out all the leg machines at the gym, and got close to maxing some of the upper body ones too. I was happy being single. I WANTED to be single. I craved my free time, the peace i found in solitude was better by orders of magnitude than any of the toxic relationships I’d clung to in the past.
After about two and a half years of that, a long time friend/ acquaintance started coming to me for massage ( I’m a deep tissue massage therapist with a focus on injury recovery and pain relief) and we would just talk throughout the sessions. Politics, philosophy, movies, anime, music, goals, food… Just everything. Eventually, after we’d just spent two more hours talking in the car after the two hours talking in the session, he said “Sooo… you know I’m flirting with you sometimes, right?” I turned him down. I said, more or less, “I’m happy single, I’ve had such a garbage time dating that I can’t pretend I’m not a decent part of the problem. I value our friendship and don’t want to hurt your feelings, and I’m not NOT attracted to you, I just don’t want to date ever again.” He was completely chill, said “no worries, no is no even if you’re attracted to me too. if you ever change your mind, let me know.” And he dropped it, never brought it up again… And fuck if that wasn’t the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. We kept being friends and talking and spending time together, talking about goals and wants and life plans and we found that our wants and goals in life were so in line it was uncanny. Importantly, neither of us wanted to get married, neither of us wanted kids, neither of us wanted to live with a partner ever again… It seemed like I could keep my peace, my space, my autonomy, AND have a partner who cared about my mind and emotions while also finding me wildly attractive. So we talked about what dating would look like and agreed to try it. It’s been 2.5 years so far and I’ve never been happier in a relationship. I still think if we stopped being romantically involved I’d probably prefer to go back to staying single, but I’m happy with him as a partner.
I tell you the whole story, kinda long and rambling as it is, because I don’t think I could have found a happy relationship if I had continued to want one with the same frantic energy as I had previously. I don’t think I would have been a person who could be as open and honest as I was with who I was if I’d still wanted a partner when we started to really get to know each other. I don’t think I was a whole person when I was looking for my “other half” and I don’t know if you can really find a good match if you’re not a whole entire person on your own. If I could distill the idea down to it’s core, I think it would be: be happy to be alone, truly and genuinely. then it won’t matter if you find a partner, but you will be able to choose them with a clear mind if you do.
I wish I could upvote this more than once
Well, technically no one is stopping you.
“I just don’t want someone taller/stronger/heavier than me”
I hate this so much. It’s the inverse of women who will only date tall men.
Speaking for myself, I like women. And that means all kinds. It’s so hard for me to imagine seeing a woman who falls outside the “standard” and being turned off by that alone.
I stopped being so upset by it once I started examining social systems and propaganda. If you’ve been conditioned your whole life to think of women as weaker and smaller and someone to be protected to maintain your “manly state”, someone who doesn’t fit that mold is a threat to your subconscious sense of self worth. Same for women who don’t want to date shorter men, “if I’m not the property of someone who’s the biggest and the strongest, I’m worth less to this society.”
‘Society’ thinks men who are smaller than their woman are weak, and that the woman must be defective or she’d be with someone who ‘fits’ better. They’re dead wrong, but that’s the unexamined subconscious judgement that our society has conditioned into people. It’s easy to be less upset with individual people when you realize they just haven’t had the space to examine the abusive systems they’re forced to exist within.
It’s true that the more you want something, the harder it can be to obtain lol
Sometimes you just have to be zen about it and then it can happen naturally.
Comments like these are why I love lemmy.
be happy to be alone
That was a very moving story. I going to try this. Hell or high water I will try. Not for the possible prospects but for me. Thank you for sharing!
Also:
¯\(◉‿◉)/¯ ಠಗಠ
I like these.
Yay! I’m glad it helped. X) As to the faces, I use Gboard and there’s a ASCII art library in the list of emoji/gif options. It’s quite entertaining. (￣³￣) ⊂(・﹏・⊂) ᕦ(ಠ_ಠ)ᕤ (ノ｀Д´)ノ彡┻━┻
( ๑‾̀◡‾́)σ» then you also may like these
Hell or high water I will try. Not for the possible prospects but for me.
This is the right mindset!
This is why I feel like the whole “body positivity” movement is a god damn joke. It’s mostly about women who love munching cake more than having unclogged arteries. In the last decade we got so many shows and movies where the characters can be morbidly obese and everybody should praise them for their bravery. We got even plus sized manikins in stores, wow.
But I dare you to name a single character from a show or movie that is skinny (not jacked skinny, but skinny skinny) that isn’t a crackhead junkie, some psycho or a basement dweller with his eyes glued to a screen?
Hell, just name a Hollywood actor that is skinny?
I know one, DJ Qualms, who’s arguably most famous role is a disabled person. Great.
I really don’t blame women for not preferring skinny guys, I blame Hollywood for 3 decades of horrible PR.
That’s a very surface level glance at the movement. Don’t get me wrong, it is about women who “love munching on cake” because those women should be able to do whatever the fuck they want and still be respected and treated with dignity(
I also can’t ignore that it’s an issue for fat women, but not fat men?) . You don’t have to find fat people attractive, hell, you don’t even have to like them, but that doesn’t mean that person should be condemned to a life of solitude and ridicule until their body is good enough for society. Life is too short for that. Even if you’re working towards health, you should still get to experience the world today. However, that’s one piece of of the movement, it is also about stopping the “real women have curves” ideas, and putting body types against each other. It’s about how leading men are showing casually jacked forms like that’s just what the average guy looks like. It’s about men not drinking water before shoots to see their muscles better, even if it leaves them dangerously dehydrated. It’s about men who are ridiculed or turned down for their height alone. It’s about men like OP who think their body type isn’t good enough, it’s about the women OP met who automatically deemed OP’s value by his apperence. If your complaint is that there aren’t enough representations of male body types, that is part of the body positivity movement. These desires are not opposed to each other, but to do one, you have to do the other. You can’t have a message of “All these bodies are great, except those.” It shouldn’t matter how the body got the way it is, or even if the body is healthy. It deserves respect. I don’t chastise and belittle thin people, or even “too thin” people, and go, “you need to eat a sandwich. You need to lift weights. I’m just worry about your health after all. God, just eat more. It’s not hard.” If they’re not friends or family, it’s none of my fucking business.For some reason fat people feeling good and desirable about their bodies seems like the worst fucking thing for whatever reason. We have had people doing all kinds of drugs and harmful practices to stay thin, or avoid that ridicule. Fat shouldn’t be a social death knell. A condition, sure. Not healthy, fine. Not worth being seen or existing? Not fine.
We got even plus sized manikins in stores, wow.
you do know that’s because plus-sized clothing exists too, right? Do you expect stores to just not display their clothes simpy because they’re for fat people, or…?
But I dare you to name a single character from a show or movie that is skinny (not jacked skinny, but skinny skinny) that isn’t a crackhead junkie, some psycho or a basement dweller with his eyes glued to a screen?
Victor, from Arcane; Ben Wyatt, from Parks and Recreation; Gareth Keenan, from The Office (UK); Ken Cosgrove from Mad Men. I’m sure there are many more, but that’s just who I could think of off the top of my head.
I absolutely agree that there should be better representation of men’s (and women’s, imo) body types, including skinny men. But you’re really overestimating the quantity and quality of decent representation of fat women in roles that don’t rely on steroetypes. By that, I mean: isn’t unhinged/shrill/creepy/portrayed as gross or undesirable because she’s fat (and sometimes old)/there solely and shallowly as “the funny fat woman”. The majority of roles played by women, especially prominent ones, are still played by thin women.
Fat female characters are relatable and important to have because—whether you like it or not—fat women exist in real life. One simply existing in media does not inherently come with a statement condoning any particular lifestyle as you seem to be implying.
I know one, DJ Qualms, who’s arguably most famous role is a disabled person. Great.
…and? That’s a bad thing to you?
OP is asking about not becoming bitter, here you are, spreading nothing but bitterness.
Oh no, that’s like not me at all /s.
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