Nick,

You are creeping out lots of women, even ones that at various points in the process were into you. I'd suggest doing a little self-reflection and trying to figure out why that is.

I bet the most common scenario goes something like this:

On the date she gives you some body language and verbal cues to show she's not really into you, and she figures it's obvious you guys are not talking again once the date ends.

Then you text her and she ignores it hoping once again that is the last she'll ever hear from you, since if it wasn't clear from her during the date, it's certainly clear now.

Then you text again asking her out and she is like oh noes creepy stalker, but ignoring this will make it 100% clear to you that she's not interested unless you're a complete psycho stalker.

Then you text again AND message her on OKC and she starts to get scared and just hopes if she ignores you will go away, and basically just hopes that you don't come murder her.

Nick,

On the other hand, maybe they just all lost their phones and forgot their OKC passwords.

How does ignoring a text make any of this clear? From my perspective, she could just have easily have lost her phone, or failed to receive the message, or she just doesn't yet know her schedule. You know what would actually make this clear? Her responding that she doesn't want to go out again!

Obviously, I am doing something wrong just on the basis of how easy it is for me to get first dates compared to how hard it is to get second dates! But I have no idea how to figure out what this is. I have tried asking girls the reason on occasion, but you almost never get a useful response. This has been a consistent problem for the past year.

I'm terrible with texting, both getting upset if someone doesn't text me back within what I think is a polite amount of time, and also not keeping it light; discussing things in text that should be left for face to face conversations.

I was pathetic on the first issue in my last relationship and if I didn't get upset about it, we may still be together now. We had a huge argument at the end because I got fed up of silent treatment after an earlier small argument, which turned it into a bigger, end game argument with things said on both sides that were out of place, as we got on well up to then. There was usually an explanation each time she didn't get back to me, which, afterwards each time I believed she was being honest about, but with my personality and baggage I was paranoid and oversensitive about each time it was happening instead.


It didn't help that she was sharing a room with her sister at the time, and we had to text all the time instead of call each other. She then sometimes swapped her phone with her sister too.. because apparently that's what you do when you both don't have insurance and keep breaking phones. Still I could have not been a pussy and been cool with it regardless, and worked on the issue about it in my head, which I already accepted as a problem I have.

In my relationship previous to this last one, jealousy was a problem for me and caused damage (from the belief that very few people can be faithful, and not trusting a girl at all because of that), and I consciously dealt with it and improved on it a lot for this next one, but now from this relationship one lesson is not to be stupid about texts, and be cool about them whatever. If someone is really bad I can politely say it bothers me.

Going forward I'm going to try to be as about texting/ anyone getting back to me (whether it's a couple of dates or LTR) as I can and based on my improvement with jealousy I think I can improve on that fine too. People have different ideas in their heads about texting/communicating and that's it.


This post is overly long because I spent way too much time checking grammar, spelling and flow, then added too much when doing those checks. That's why I usually leave smaller but more rambling posts fyi

what if she lost her phone and whoever found it was texting you and saying she's not interested? if that's the case they prob have access to her OKC account as well so you should probably just show up at her house and see her in person.

Nick,

"she could just have easily have lost her phone, or failed to receive the message"

That's prob it.

Ja,

So you teach English?

Wow Nick, really didn't think it'd be possible for you to top the Indian girl fiasco but congrats on setting that bar up another notch.

Bro, El D wasn't genuinely agreeing with you. Noone understood what the deuce you meant in that passage of yours he quoted, so he said 'exactly' in jest, and he even told you that's what he meant afterwards.

Yeah, it's not hard to understand. You are quite physically attractive, on-paper desirable/eligible (job, erudition, manners), but permanently flawed from living a ridiculously safe life behind the confines of academia, and lacking in fluidity and a refined moral compass as a result. Those last two will kill you with the kind of women you seek.

Thus women are interested/attracted at various stages (you tick many of the early boxes for the unaware), but things don't gel because you simply lack the intellectual capacity and/or experience to understand the world and the human condition.

Your best bet is with a wholesome, forgiving woman with a professor fetish who takes a liking to you despite your philosophical shortcomings.
They believe you are a lost cause, and you kind of are - you responded some months ago that you are very happy with your life and seek no adventure or new ways of being. As if the Harvard bubble wrapped around you has any sane relationship to reality.

The best way to cure your dating problem to move somewhere like Bolivia or Eastern Europe for six months, where being a Harvard professor will simply get you mugged, and maybe even working or volunteering there. You'll come back with a fresh perspective.

We don't live by hard and fast rules Nick, as El has said. We accept the times that there is an unfortunate reason for lack of contact, unfortunate only for us as we may extrapolate any undue number of scenarios in our mind and this usually is harmful to our self-esteem, on the balance of probability that given the information the girl is not reciprocal in feeling.

I'm not saying that's likely at all. I'm just saying that responding is a much clearer signal than not responding. It's also much more respectful of the other person on the level of basic human decency.

Also, it's not completely far fetched that I could have sent the message wrong. I just texted a girl an hour ago, but entered the number wrong. If the person on the other end hadn't replied that I had a wrong number, I would have spent the next day at least annoyed at this girl for no reason!

Yes and surprise surprise it is a new career of mine, and teaching foreign beginners. My posts are terrible sometimes I have to agree now and write better.. but I have more important things to worry about like being mental about texts, and inept at getting dates.

I should have some TRs to write about here soon though. I should probably not be dating, 2 weeks after a break-up, but, I'm going to anyway and see how it feels, filled with regret from the last relationship.

FFS are you really a Harvard professor because you could not parody a cliche as well as you display in some of your posts?

Nick man get a grip!! To achieve what you have in becoming a Harvard professor you must be using like 2% of your capabilities on this kind of stuff. As El has said the real world is as deserving of your work and focus as the professor stuff. Right now you need to attend to the real world to achieve healthy goals. Normal living.

Nick

Sorry that might not be helpful.

Jamerc

I can feel the braveness in you but watch yourself as you seem to know that you may lose sight of what is good for you in certain heightened situations.
Detach yourself from your feelings towards your last relationship as much as you can if you need a new thing, or a new perspective but what is unresolved will most likely stay unresolved unless you allow it to heal. That is my 2 cents!

Small steps

To be fair, I am not a professor at Harvard. I've applied for that job twice, and don't think I ever really got a look.

Nick

You get the gist.

An hour or two is ridiculous imo. Don't want to be that guy, but the fact that being away from your phone for 2 hours means that you get disinvited somewhere is "lol technology is taking over" to me. But actually, this is why phone calls are nice where you get immediate feedback to your request.

I think that is going a bit overboard. Not every text merits a response, and a "had a good time, too" is one of those. She probably already said something like "that was fun" on the date, so she might just feel like she's being redundant saying that again.

But seriously, Nick, you are most definitely sending too many "just in case" texts. Once two messages aren't answered, it's about 99%, and the 1% of the time something crazy happened, she can get in touch with you.

That's a very interesting mix of languages. Though I do know a girl who "should" speak all of those: she's Canadian (with a korean mom and chinese dad) and I met her in Germany (but she was lazy and never learned German while she was here).

Nick,

Maybe print out a checklist survey she can fill out and give to you, or a flowchart w/ next steps for her to take?

The real world doesn't work the way you think it does. I suggest you find some sort of coach to teach you how to interact with people, because your social aptitude/intelligence seems really, really low. I'm not sure if it's a dating coach or life coach or what, but I'm sure there's someone who can help you.

Yes. I know and I would point out there is not much difference between Exactly! and Exactly! written down on a screen.
I believed that what I said had value and so I would not expect mocking - nor did I recognise the mocking as such.

Who's the fool?

I think the trolling of Nick is getting a little out of hand here if we've gotten to this point:

Our perception that he's failed to get the point from some ladies he's gone out with hasn't quite warranted the deep levels of psychoanalysis seen in the last page of this thread.

Either that or I should probably just quit cause there's def no hope for me if Nick needs a life coach.

I for one am not trolling. Nick's had good points and a salient point of view on things but that stuff is such a big alarm!!

Not to be alarmist!! 😀

You are. What you said was incomprehensible.

bucco - what's up! Hope things are well with you.

Jennitron - nice img.

Brown Gord - are you typing on a phone with really large thumbs in an oxygen-starved environment? It's really really hard to decipher what it is you're saying because of your grammar and punctuation.

Re: texting the night of - It's a good thing as long as you don't send a pathetic, long-winded message. Sending "hope you got back safe!" is good and shows that you're responsive and open; sending more than that starts to tread the line where you're saying too much.

The girl I asked to concert on Friday did just get back to me after 24 hours, and said she was busy this weekend with a bar mitzvah. She works for a synagogue, so this is somewhat believable, but I think it's probably a lost cause nevertheless.

My other best prospect for Friday also has specific other plans, but we set up date for Tuesday. So I have first dates planned for tomorrow, Saturday, and next Tuesday. But I'm a little annoyed I have no date for the one event I really want to go to!