It’s a safe bet that for all the confusions and humiliations of dating, most men will still try to be nice guys who say “please” and avoid asking a woman about her sexual history until, say, the third date.

Wait, what? Do people usually ask about sexual histories…ever? That seems very strange to me, for two reasons:

1.That’s kind of personal information, you know? None of your business.
2. I’m FAR more interested in my date’s sexual future, if you know what I mean.

PG: I am not sure what you mean by “a bad thing.” I think self-reliance is a good goal even if it is not always achievable.

I agree with both of you. NK appears to be concerned that the drive for self reliance leads to weakness of solitude, the separation of the strong from the weak, and a fear of asking for help. PG appears concerned that reliance upon others leads to weakness of ability and confidence in oneself, each concerned with the perils found in the opposite extreme. As with most things in life, these forces are functional when they balance one another. We are entitled to depend on others, because others are entitled to depend upon us. Both must be true is we are to be our brother’s and sister’s keepers.

A state of self-reliance, or true independence, one without attachment, is ideally never a goal, but it is a valid transitional state that is useful to achieve in between our youth (when we are most dependent) and our adulthood (when we must be our most dependable). At least, as I see it.

@PG - just so you know, I’m considering resuming our last discussion, PG. You and Daisy raised some pointed questions to me that I felt I left dangling.

You cannot be serious. I’m a baby boomer, happily married for thirty years, and several guy friends from middle school remain close. I’m godmother to two children…kids of BOYS I went to school with. College brought other enduring friendships.

Good Heavens, back in the early seventies, we were figuring out that friendship between the sexes is not only possible, but desirable and necessary, and frankly, quite easily done. Food/ entertainment rituals and mutual assistance commitments continue to this day.

And I see the same thing happening with our three boys…all married, and still getting together with women friends from their teenage years…admittedly, beer blasts and concerts have given way to backyard BBQ’s and Euchre Night, and child sitting exchanges…

…but the fact remains…average men and women do seek out and maintain friendships with one another.

Most men would make lousy friends for most women, and vice versa. The average guy finds women to be dull, prattling, and neurotic, and the average woman finds men to be brutish, insensitive, and perverted…. and they both think that they have terrible taste.

wow, I find this statement very sad.

I don’t have any theories on this; I’m just curious. I would have expected today’s twentysomethings to have overcome some of this stuff. I would have expected the rise of geek culture and the greater acceptance of geekiness in both genders to mean that the kind of male geeks who typified the NiceGuys of my generation (Gen X/Gen Jones; I’m 42) would have more opportunities to get to know women who appreciate them for themselves, and therefore more opportunities for positive romantic relationships. I would have expected people who, as a generation, were more likely to have been raised in non-”traditional” families to have more flexible expectations of gender roles than the quoted SYMs do. I’m just surprised that so little seems to have changed. Maybe I watch too much TV, and assume that the Chuck-and-Sarah/Leonard-and-Penny dynamic is more common than it actually is. :-)

You have more faith in the safety net than I do. In my experience, people tend to fall through the cracks, eg there’s a huge drive in the UK to reclassify disabled people as fit to work, without necessarily taking their needs or the potential availability of suitable work into consideration.

But I find the whole idea of self-reliance suspect. We all start our lives dependant on other people, and most of us are going to end our lives the same way. I think maybe we’d be healthier as a society if we could accept that a bit more.

I don’t think shyness is something that can be outgrown by sheer will. I’ve been shy all my life, and thankfully asexual pre-transition. If anything, I’m thankful for the patriarchal gender role component that makes men more likely to ask women out, or I’d never get a date.

Note that I do have a lot of baggage that caused or contributed to shyness, but it was there before it all. I remember being shy at seeing my god-parents as a very young child, and it wasn’t the first time I’d seen them.

For the segment of NiceGuys for whom shyness is the issue, its the role who’s at cause, putting them in a bind “you tell her how you feel, or you live alone forever, because she won’t hit on you”. While not as prevalent as in yesteryears by a pretty good margin, it’s still the expectation.

But I would like to pull out this tangent:

“It turns out that men and women are a lot alike. There may be minor differences, but nothing that can’t be figured out by asking questions.” (see also a few of the comments such as 9 and 29)

Asking questions is a behavior more accommodating to females than males, on average. See the works of Michael Gurian on this; allowing for overlap and “bridge brains”, women are more likely to feel comfortable solving problems and achieving goals by words and relationships than men are. Again, with all the necessary disclaimers, many men and boys will be more uncomfortable using verbal tools than nonverbal ones.

Where’s the mention that this could be difficult for men? And, in fact, that it might be beyond their control that it could be difficult?

Refusal to recognize this — insisting that “just ask her” is always a more effective and, in fact, more ethically correct strategy than any other — is like telling people who are thirsty they should “just drink the milk.” Yes, there are ways for lactose-intolerant folks to drink milk, but at least acknowledge their need for consideration, accommodation, and possibly a different approach.

[Gurian and his fellow researchers and coauthors might well take this further and say that the male tendencies toward process-focus and system-protection are reflected by a desire for a script like the traditional "man calls, man holds door, etc." But that's me free-associating, not something I've specifically seen in the three of their books that I've read.]

I am not sure what you mean by “a bad thing.” I think self-reliance is a good goal even if it is not always achievable.

If a woman gets married at 14, has three kids and few viable wage skills, she’s going to be dependent on another to support her and those children. In a good society, the “another” won’t have to be a man; it can be a large social group that supports her, whether in becoming self-reliant or for as long as she needs it.

However, in the society we have of five-year welfare limits and barriers to employment for those with little education and the responsibility for child care, she’s more likely to have to rely on an individual person, probably a husband or boyfriend, or at best her parents or another relative. Due to that dependence, she will not be able to act independently of the demands of the person supporting her; she will be obligated to submit. The demands might be annoying but tolerable (living with her parents again, she has a 10pm curfew), or recognizably abusive (her boyfriend forbids her to have friends).

I’m not sure how ableism comes into this; someone who is disabled from being able to work generally is eligible for government assistance that isn’t time-limited, and therefore isn’t relying on a single individual.

.

.

.

I’m sorry, I just couldn’t resist.

Seriously. Ableism.

I don’t think this is always going to be possible, and I feel slightly uncomfortable with the idea that having to rely on others is a bad thing. Yes, there’s a potential for abuse, but the abuse is the bad thing, not the reliance.

Most men would make lousy friends for most women, and vice versa. The average guy finds women to be dull, prattling, and neurotic, and the average woman finds men to be brutish, insensitive, and perverted…. and they both think that they have terrible taste.

Now I’m not sure if my friends of the opposite sex are all somehow non-average, or if they have some murky motive for pretending to be friends with me. SiF, no wonder you’re pessimistic — you seem to live a Hobbesian emotional world.

Why should one only be able to fulfill those needs that are based on pre-set roles? I’m pretty decent at the working and supporting myself part of life, but really kind of depend on my partner to organize me. Before I got together with him, I had an unmet need which a partner could fill, albeit not a traditional one. Most people need or desire companionship, friendship, regular sex, help raising children, help conceiving children, continuity and all sorts of other things that a relationship can provide, whether traditional or not.

And yeah, I have no data to support that assertion. I just tend to think that the patriarchy is a force of nature as much as society, and so the patriarchal roles come naturally for people in the middle of the bell curve.

And to clarify further, I hate it. I despise the idea.

I’m just pessimistic.