site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2617 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for September 20, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I'm no expert on this, but off the bat, there are two things I believe you did wrong.

One is that you did it via text. Text might be okay for relationships that form over text (e.g. OLD or internet friends), but if she's someone you have any sort of IRL contact with, I believe finding a way to ask her out face to face would have been better.

Two is that you hedged with the last part, showing a lack of confidence in your part. If you had ended it before the "if you're interested," that alone would have made the message much better. Even better yet, remove the part that starts with "I think" and ends with "pretty and." Just state your intent and desire, and let her do the work of shooting you down if she chooses to. Preceding with compliments just screams insecurity to my eyes.

There's, of course, always the possibility of the zeroth thing you might have done wrong, which is just not being attractive. This is the biggest factor that dominates all other factors, including the content and medium of your request, which could very well have had literally zero impact on the results, depending on how "wrong" you were on this. But that's outside the scope of this post.

There's, of course, always the possibility of the zeroth thing you might have done wrong, which is just not being attractive.

This is likely to be the problem if this sort of response is a common occurrence to OP. Attractive guys (who a girl has previously met in person) do not normally get ghosted because the text wasn't framed perfectly.

Thanks for the reply. In-person wasn’t really a practical option; we meet too rarely and only in group settings.

I agree that saying

I just want to say that you're really kind and intelligent and interesting and pretty and I'd like to go on a date with you

Would have been better but I find it hard to imagine that (especially with someone she knows irl) this is ever enough to make any difference.

Yeah, fair enough, probably "much better" was overselling it, and it's not the kind of thing that would have allowed some threshold to be crossed. Like you allude to, that it's IRL acquaintance is pretty significant.

There's a threshold of "begging for a date" beyond which the text has minimal chances of actually leading to a date, and I agree that that rewording is still past that threshold. Reword it some more though and I think the chance of success does increase markedly.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats