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Scrubbles @poptalk.scrubbles.tech

Ex-Incels, how did you dig yourself out?

I'm an ex incel myself, but I've been seeing a few users here exhibiting the tell tale signs. "I'm not attractive enough", "I don't socialize correctly", "I'll never find a woman" - all extremely unhealthy attitudes.

Personally I burned through many friendships and ruined a lot of chances with women because I was in the incel community. The community warped my view of women so much that I made it even harder to meet women, I became my own worst enemy. I lost friends because all I could think of was how horrible it was that they had girlfriends.

I have a friend who helped me out of it. She was the one who started calling out my bad behavior for what it was, and I started on the long uphill path out of it. I'm now married and stable for well over a decade, but I still think back to those days, and it depresses me seeing other people causing this themselves and not being aware of it.

So, Lemmy, for those who have clawed out of it, what's your story?

143 comments

  • I got asked out by a girl in high school I barely knew after feeling unlovable for most of my teens. I became fast friends with her female friends and it kinda helped me realize that women are just people.

    Later I broke up with her but stayed friends with everyone. Eventually I started dating one of her other friends, and we're still together 6 years later. Taught me that being friends with someone should probably come before a relationship, and the best way to get girl friends is to just hang around them and do normal friend stuff.

    Later I found out that the only reason I got asked out in the first place was because of a coin flip. If I lost that 50/50 I might still be an incel weirdo. Weird to think about.

    • Having good female friends can absolutely make a huge difference. I thought women were these nebulous things that I didn't know how to talk to. Turns out they're the exact same. There are some that like sports, there are others that like nerdy things. You can't just put people into boxes and say "you are a woman so you are like X". They're just like men, with different traits, and you can be best friends with women even if there is no intention to ever sleep with them.

      Hell some of my best friends were women, and after they uturned me about being an incel they started going to bat to help me out. "Hey we invited ____ along, we talked you up to them!"

    • The coin flip, chance concept is something I've dealt with too. I was fast going down the incel path in my mid 20s. One of my managers at work was given two tickets to a speed-dating event, his mother told him he "needs to find a girlfriend" so she can "be a grandmother". He didn't want to go. We were having fun talking to him about how awful a speed dating event would turn out to be.

      He said he would go if one of his friends came with him to the event (afterall, he had two tickets). He called so many of his friends, most were already in a relationship, or were busy that day, or just rejected the invitation. Then he started asking workmates at work, similar responses. Eventually he approached me, he knew I was single, knew I didn't have social life, knew I never spoke to women, he said it would be a good opportunity for me to put myself out there. My first inclination was to say "no way", "absolutely not". I'm not attractive and a bit autistic, I don't make a good first impression to anyone. The thought of awkwardly making small talk for 5 minutes at a time with 12 different women who were judging me based on first impressions, was the absolute opposite of my idea of a good time.

      Then I thought about it as a chance to help my colleague, he wasn't going to go unless I went with him, I wanted him to go, he wanted me to go, plus it was at a new bar that I'd heard good things about. At the very least I'd get to have some drinks with my work friend.

      The event was about as awkward and anxiety-inducing as I expected for the most part. Most women were much older than me, and clearly had zero interest in chatting to me. So I took the pressure off myself, I wasn't there to find a girlfriend, I didn't buy the ticket, I was there to support my friend. There were two women around my own age, who were not bad looking and I actually managed to hold a conversation with (the beers helped). At the end of the event you could write down the name of anyone you felt a connection with and the organisers would find mutual matches.

      Next day I find out I matched with one of the women I'd indicated. I got her contact details, and started talking to her via emails and SMS for a few months, getting to know each other better. Again I didn't put any pressure on myself, I didn't know this person, I didn't ask her to match with me, it was a "easy come, easy go" situation with zero stakes. After two months we eventually went on a real date, and turns out we were a great match. Two years later we were engaged. Today is our 10th wedding anniversary, and we have two kids.

      After we started dating I found out that she only went to the speed dating event as a support person to her friend. She didn't go in looking for a relationship either.

      That got me thinking about the odds of this happening. If my colleague didn't get given tickets from his mother, if any of his other friends weren't busy and went with him instead, if I didn't agree to go along with him, if she didn't go along with her friend for support, if I didn't write down her name at the end, if she didn't write down my name. The mind boggles. She told me it was a 50/50 whether she wrote down my name, just like you mentioned.

      When people say dating is a "numbers game", that doesn't need to be interpreted in a predatory or creepy way. I think this is what it is about, the chances of finding a connection with someone really is a chance, but the one thing you can do is find a way to make that chance non-zero.

      • Women are just people
      • It's alright to be just friends with women
      • Women are friends with other women

      These are the cheat codes for having all the right attitudes and environment to find a person who wants to be more than friends. I think a lot of the other ways to get out of it would emerge from applying these.

      Note that the more people realize the first, the less valid the last becomes. The fact that many of our societies are sexist create this artificial division where women hang out mostly with women and men with men, and we see each other as different. As someone who grew up in a post-communist Eastern European country, I gotta say, living in a society where women have men friends and men have women friends from an early age was absolutely spectacular. And it just breeds opportunities for developing social skills and romantic relationships. Often friends stay friends after the romance is over.

    • Taught me that being friends with someone should probably come before a relationship

      This has been my experience too. My wife is my wife but she is also my best friend.

    • She wouldn't have done it on the outcome of a coinflip if she wasn't at least partly interested.

      • She had a crush on two guys, I was one of them lol. The coin flip was to determine who to ask out. You're right though!

  • I don't think I was ever an incel, but back in 2011-12, I was being "red-pilled" on facebook. Goshdarned wimminz, they ruined everything!

    The first thing I want to say is how fucking ashamed I am to have fallen for that shit back then and I'm really fucking glad I managed to get out soon-ish. Perhaps ironically, what kept my sanity intact was that I was a very common target of "real men" because the FB groups would often attack the political left and communism with some of the stupidest takes I've seen in my life, like "Every failed African country is communist" or "Nazism was left leaning, it's National SOCIALISM!!!!!!!" - Younger me would see that shit, get pissed and write how wrong that was, which has led me to being banned from 2 groups back then.

    Now, how did I even end up there in the first place? Well, as nearly everyone else, I suppose, it felt like I wasn't getting what "the world" had promised me, a cis white man: a woman. I'm not bad looking, but my manners and social skill were caveman level for the most part, I rarely, if ever, thought about others, I just made rude remarks left and right because "haha fuck you". Of course, back then, I was deluded and saw myself as a gentleman, that disconnect between my own perception and reality (aka how others saw me) no doubt played a huge part in me feeling that I was wronged, that I wasn't getting any because of some fault within the system instead of myself. Once you're in this mindset, seeing posts that blame women for your problems make a lot of sense. It's not that I'm rude and deluded, it's women that are too picky, it's women that have terrible taste and go for "obviously low quality males", it's women that just want a man they can easily manipulate, etc etc.

    As I always fancied myself as left leaning politically, anything that was more political than "personal", like posts about women in the workforce (women should receive less because they'll ALWAYS get pregnant!), I'd just ignore and think they were stretching things a bit.

    SOOO, I got out of that. My recommendation for anyone that wants to get out of that mindset, the first thing I tell you is: stop fucking following and taking in ANY such incel content. Literally block everything that can remind you of that shit. That's step one. You don't need that in your life, you don't need to feel like you're in that specific group of losers. There are many better groups of "losers" to be part of

    Second, reassess yourself and compare how you view yourself vs reality, how others look at you. In a 10 second interaction with a random person on the street, what would they likely think of you? Any answer that is too extreme on the positive or negative means you're very likely deluded as I was with myself.

    Third, and perhaps most important, when it comes to having any relationship, amorous or not, is: what makes you interesting? "Nothing"? Then you better work on something, anything. Just because you're into nerd shit doesn't mean you have to be a nerd shit. I love anime, I love videogames, boardgames, tabletop RPGs, but I never undersell them as nerd shit, I always prop those things as these amazing hobbies I want to SHARE with others, and I'm always 100% ok with people that don't like them or don't want to try them (the latter mostly because of all the bad rep thanks to toxic nerd shits)

    Adding to the "what makes you interesting", expand your horizons a bit. Try something new and different, look for any group activities that are cheap or free near your job or your home. You are not the things you like, the things you like are part of what makes you you. You change, your tastes change, you grow up, don't think current you is too precious to change.

    • Thank you for your honesty and your story. I can agree that's one of the ways I got into it, I viewed myself as a catch and women had been conditioned to not want me, such a good person. The whole thing too, it's their fault for not realizing that it should be a good person instead of a hot person.

      Of course it never crossed my mind back then that they were with good people, and maybe I wasn't as great as I thought I was. I'm still pudgy and I still am bit too sarcastic, but that doesn't matter, my horrid views on women and myself did enough damage back then.

      Also all great advice. "Nice" isn't a personality. Nice is the bare minimum. You need to be a person, hobbies and geeky things are great. My wife and I started chatting because I talked about music I liked and lord of the rings lore. You are expected to be nice, it's a personality trait, one part of your personality.

    • First, I just wanted to say I am very proud of you. This is all tough to admit, and I really hope you share your story more. The fact you got yourself out is huge, and could really change things for others suffering from incel-dom.

      Second, "You are not the things you like, the things you like are part of what makes you you. You change, your tastes change, you grow up, don’t think current you is too precious to change." is a pretty great line.

      • Thanks. I can't even say that my life was shit back then, I always had a comfortable lower middle class environment, but due to a number of less than ideal family interactions and lack of self awareness (or maybe, just a lack of general maturity), I ended up in that hole. Calling women removed and every other type of misogynistic name felt like a relief, that I was getting back at who wronged me. Again, when you're in that kind of deluded mindset, it makes sense. I got a girlfriend around 3 years after leaving those groups and I told her about this dark time I had, and I'm grateful that she could see from my actions that I wasn't that piece of shit anymore, she barely even believed that I ever got there.

        I understand that not everyone will get out by themselves, some people will need external help, but anyone that feels like that something doesn't feel quite right in one specific post or another, there's hope they might get out of that. Like I said, the main thing that drove me away was that their general, ass-sourced toxicity turned against me because I was a stinky commie, but there were other stinky commies that ate that up and preferred to keep seeing women as inferior.

        On that line, the last part is what I felt a lot about myself, I often feared that I would "change too much" or that I "wouldn't be myself" anymore, completely ignoring that I was already different from whatever I was 4 years before that, which was also different from 4 years prior, and so on. Small epiphanies that helped me make sense of myself.

    • Hmmm.

      I never fell into the whole "the system is against me" idea, but I do struggle with self confidence.

      But you have a point there. If they are interesting to me, maybe I should share them more and ignore the inner voice of my ex cutting me down. Recently a friend told me "look, you aren't an incel in the slightest, but your look gives off incel vibes." It hurt, but she was right. I just needed to dress like I care a little. which isn't that hard.

      It's not like I really consider myself a nerd. I like painting minis way more than the game. I'm not great at video games, I just really enjoy the stories you can tell. I love science and history, and get way excited about things. I like hitting a golf ball and enjoy watching baseball.

      Maybe you opened my eyes to a better me just now. Maybe it's more I need to find joy in the things I like, rather than just doing them.

      I'll never be a professional painter. But the things I paint look cool. I'll never get into the PGA, but a birdie is always a brag.

      If I like me, others can like me too maybe.

      • I like painting minis way more than the game. I'm not great at video games, I just really enjoy the stories you can tell.

        Miniature painting is an amazing hobby to show people, everyone always gets amazed because "it's so small! How do you do it?" - even if your painting skills are subpar, simply being able to do anything is already enough to amaze anyone outside the hobby

        For videogames, I personally love anything that can be cooperative and/or chaotic. For story focused games, talking about the characters tends to be what gets people more interested in participating, much like fans of any movie or show enjoy talking about them. As proof: Tali Zora is the best girl in Mass Effect, Picard is the best Star Trek captain because he's pragmatic.

        Humans naturally love gossip! The key difference that can lead to interesting chats is asking people who "don't like games": "if you could control character ABC from the show, what would you do different?", that's usually what makes them understand why games with a story can be so interesting to play

        Maybe you opened my eyes to a better me just now. Maybe it's more I need to find joy in the things I like, rather than just doing them. (...) If I like me, others can like me too.

        Understanding and being able to explain why you like your stuff can certainly help, as you can then properly share with others why you like it, you understand the value of your skill and indeed, when you know your value, it's easier to like yourself. I really hope all these insights help you figure your own self 😊 (and anyone else that might be reading)

  • I fell down an incel-adjacent rabbithole when I was a teenager and young adult and while I was physically isolated (lived with my parents in the suburbs but my parents hadn't bothered to teach me to drive, so getting around was a royal pain in the butt. Realistically I could've done more but youth truly is wasted on the young) I then for "reasons" socially isolated myself by avoiding online communities where i could have met people. I had really bad acne that brought my self-esteem to zero (in hindsight the acne was about the 5th least attractive thing about me at that time) and was struggling to complete a college degree in the wrong field while also failing to work enough to be able to afford to move out (again, hindsight 20/20 I had things I could have done but didn't)

    Because I didn't interact with anyone outside of my household, my social skills never grew and probably deteriorated. I was depressed and felt trapped, I believed myself to be "too autistic" to do things that could help, and it was all around a pretty unhappy time in my life.

    I happened to meet my now-wife on an online dating site, and we've both reflected and determined we were both in similarly bad but different places at that time. She had gained a bunch of weight (I seem to have a wider attractive range for weight than most people so this wasn't a problem for me) and was moving on from her nth abusive boyfriend. Honestly my lack of social skills at the time made it so there were times where I flat out said something incredibly hurtful without realizing it. She's since told me that she put up with that because "at least I wasn't physically abusive" (single dudes, the bar you need to meet is so, so low)

    Anyways we both have since grown a lot as people and have both grown into fairly functioning adults. We both have more to grow (we both really need to get our respective executive dysfunctions under control), and sometimes we've grown apart, but we've kept growing back together.

  • I don't know if I'd have considered myself an incel, but there's definite cringe behavior in my past that would at least fall under incel behavior.

    Thinking about it now, I was just too focused on being what I thought would make me attractive to someone, mostly based on listening to other guys or media, and not actually getting to know the people I wanted to date and finding out what they wanted.

    I saw the people I liked more as a goal to reach in some gamified system, rather than as just another person who wanted to meet someone nice. Just not a lot of empathy going on. You can't just grind to an ideal character build and have some formula say, ok you've met the requirements, here is your achievement trophy.

    I'll assume you want an actual partner, and not just a fling, so it's going to be platonic one on one time that's going to get you closer to your goals. The "friend zone" is not a trap. The "friend zone" is a power up. You're spending time with someone you like. That's a win. Even if you aren't dating them, you've managed to find someone who wants to spend time with you and get to know you. It's getting you interacting better with other people and hopefully understanding and accommodating them better, not you just being self centered. It's making you a more interesting and rounded person. That guy is the real thing the right person will eventually want to date.

    You trying to date that particular person probably wouldn't work out, and being their friend is still a positive thing to your life. It's someone to commiserate with, to get to know your actions around a girl you can have mutual respect for, to learn what girls you like really care about and want to see in a relationship. She doesn't owe you love for you time. You owe her respect for her time, and she will give that back to you. It's the same as a guy friend. It's another member for your party. That's a strength, not a loss.

    Spend time with women without there being an ulterior motive, and you will learn a lot. For me, I liked strong willed, assertive women, and well... that lead me to get to know a lot of women that had no interest in men in that way, so it eliminated the whole dating part of the equation, and that took a lot of the pressure off there for trying to "win them over" in that regard, and to just learn women are people just like me, with the some wants, needs, confusion about dating, and all that.

    I ended up also finally talking to my doctor about depression, and that was the life altering experience that really made everything fall into place. My shit behavior, past and present at the time, was all my fault, but it turns out I had some things really stacked against me with my ability to cope and develop emotionally, that once I got that fixed, was a huge burden lifted from me.

    Once that was dealt with, I was in a whole new world and all relationships became much easier to understand. Guys and girls became all of a sudden much more relatable and understandable, and I was able to process other people's wants and needs instead of just my own, and it had taken too much of my resources just to make myself a barely functional person.

    I became able to learn empathy and that helped me become someone people were interested in knowing and loving, in friendship or in dating. It helps build and maintain good relationships. I can better know what I want, and how to better understand someone else's wants.

    I feel the incel/nice guy behavior is largely just people with underlying emotional issues they haven't figured out. You've got to realize other people won't complete you or can't be that missing piece. That's something you've got to figure out first. If that's getting meds to give you an even playing field, going to therapy, are just having someone you're accountable to to fix your shit behavior, ego, or selfishness, do what it takes to address it. Everything else is you making excuses, and until you fix that roadblock in yourself to building those deeper relationships, you're never going to have success.

    I look back, and regret so much of my life now, but what's done is done, and I can at least know I never want to act anywhere near that cringe again! But I can recognize it now, and stop it dead. I too just try to share my story when asked, and I hope to help save them some of that embarrassment and regret.

    • Thank you for opening up, I feel like your story (while I know is very personal to you), is one of many that many men feel, but are too nervous to confront. I think you hit the nail on the head. A relationship in the moment feels like the thing you need, but what you're actually needing is to feel content with yourself first. Once you work on yourself everything else falls into place.

      But you have to want to want that change, the world won't do it for you

      • Much like anything else, having that strong foundation of physical, emotional, and spiritual health within yourself is going to make adding outside relationships much easier.

        It's not like you have to be anywhere near perfect; you just needs to know your strengths and limitations. Having a personal handicap in common with someone can be a bond, or having complementary quirks can sometimes strengthen things for both of you if you are healthy about it. Like someone that knows they spend too much but has poor impulse control and someone that is too restrictive and needs some to say it's ok to reward yourself occasionally.

        We all just want happiness, and we think getting a girl, a fancy house/car, a pet, a child, whatever it is will fill that hole inside. But the problem is within, and that is where the solution needs to come from.

        When you rely on someone outside to complete you, you end up being that person that's drowning, and your struggle ends up taking your would-be rescuer down with you instead. Other people don't deserve suffering to try to fix you. Some may try, but that is seldom very successful, and you'll often just hurt those you care about. I've lost many friends and girlfriends that way.

        I think it's important to talk about these things, especially with other men. I grew up around selfish parents and never got to spend much time with people my own age, learning how to interact, and looking out only for me was a survival instinct. I felt it was weak to rely on others, to get help, to feel sad, etc. It was all really self destructive things, and I still have to fight constantly with myself trying to break free of it and enjoy my life. It makes it therapeutic to talk about it whenever it comes up, because it shows me in a good way my situation wasn't unique and others are in the same position. We can help each other get through it, and I'm not the type to pull the ladder up behind me and leave you to your own fate.

        As I said, I will never shake all the shitty things inside to people I cared about, and I can't fix most of those broken bonds of trust, but I can talk myself through my emotional scars with you all, and hopefully help you do less damage to yourselves. Trying to prevent some of this from repeating to someone else is about the only way to make up to myself for things I've done.

  • I'm too old to be an incel(tm); I was going through it back when the term incel was coined as a neutral descriptor. I'd like to think that I wouldn't have gone down that rabbit hole, because critical thinking comes very naturally to me, and the idea that it was women's fault didn't ever quite sit right with me. Women aren't a monolith; they don't get together and scheme. But if the incel phenomenon had been around, well, who knows? The camaraderie and validation of a group is incredibly beguiling.

    Anyway, I was dealing with depression, which brought along a lot of other problems that caused me to be deeply angry and unsatisfied with life. One thing that really woke me up, oddly, was the song Toledo by Dan Bern. Specifically, the lyrics, "Maybe all the things you thought you got coming to you / Ain't coming to you / Not in this life / And maybe all of the promises you thought were broken / Were never really made" In short, where was I getting the idea that life was fair, or that the universe owed me, well, anything? Not quite out of my posterior, because many cultural messages tell you that. But those messages are wrong.

    So I decided to make the best of what life gives me, work on my own issues, and to have fun and do interesting things solo. And wouldn't you know it, a year later...

    ...I was still single. What, do you buy into that trash about how you find "the one" when you stop looking? I'm still single years and years later. BUT! That's okay, because "giving up looking" isn't some fancy, new way of low-key actually-looking. The benefit has been being more satisfied with life, and doing fun and interesting things.

  • We didn't have the term incel when I was a young adult, but at 25 I had an experience that allowed me to realize I wasn't too far off from my peers, and decided to brute force my way to learning to socialize. My therapist suggested hunting down the local recovery community (which meant going to AA groups even though I wasn't an alcoholic) which got me to CoDependents Anonymous.

    As a note CoDA and SLAA (Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous) are full of people glad to fall off the wagon, which is a major plot point in Choke by Chuck Palahniuk. Before I got too involved, a very nice person yanked me from CoDA into the local kink community, who were the advanced class of consent, limits and boundaries training. This isn't to say they're perfect at it, but they get more into the nitty, especially those who engage in edge play. (Not to be confused with knife play, though there's some intersection.)

    That said, I became sexually active at 26, which is pretty late in the game, but a far leap from world records. Sir Isaac Newton died sexless and was obnoxious and proud of the fact. Incels often have nothing on the mathematics sector.

    < rant >

    The current state of how we regard our teens remains an issue to me, and at one point while Microsoft was fantasizing on how to get Cortana to fend off unwanted advances (Google's LLM would just ignore them and turn a come-on into a web-search), I was thinking of how a simulated girlfriend might teach incels how to engage others without scaring them off through trial and error and sheer practice. But now we have scary data-stealing e-girlfriends that prey on the lonely.

    Then with the rise of abstinence-only education, the alt-right and the eagerness of the Republican party to keep their War Boys ( witness me! ) as a voting bloc and recruitment pool for their militant wing, I realized US society doesn't have a strong interest in making things better for our newly-sex-starved teens since, as George Orwell observed, sexual frustration + three minutes of hate turns into a powerful tool for fascism-style civil wrangling, at least of the lumpinproletariat (the people who can't civics very well). Kids developing a healthy sexuality doesn't serve to turn the population into devout workers / soldiers glad to serve the ownership class.

    It also may be that we just don't like our own teens, and want to evict them (which might be a hunter-gatherer means to stir the gene pool. Gorillas do a similar thing) and the thinking ape actually sucks a thinking past some of our presupposed values like dominance hierarchy. Hence we worship athletes and fear smart, less physical guys will turn into supervillains, and this informs our incapacity to do anything about schoolyard bullying, or workplace bullying, or gunboat diplomacy.

    So, when it comes to my fellow incels, I'll borrow from Red Dragon (The Harris novel and two movies)

    I couldn't help feeling sorry for him. He wasn't born a monster; he was made one through years of abuse.

    < /rant >

  • Men: Stop fixating on the need to “get a woman”. Procreation is not how to win at life. No one virtuous is keeping score like that. All that “alpha/omega” stuff is trash. Stop everything you’re doing, trying and striving for. Spend some time genuinely at rest, not fixating on sex or work or entertainment or fitness, and think about yourself.

    Really examine the person that you are. Think about the good that you’ve done. Think about the harm that you’ve caused. Think of how you can nudge yourself towards being a better person; someone who is considerate to others feelings, someone who can help without expecting reciprocation. Start doing that stuff. Your reward for this work is inner peace, not babes and money and success.

    Self-reflection leaning towards kindness, forgiveness and genuine curiosity about yourself is the key to being the best you that you can be.

    It will take a long time. When you get frustrated, ask yourself what kind of reward you’re expecting. If that reward is anything besides “being a happier, more satisfied me”, work on refocusing yourself.

    Living like this will catch people’s attention. A word of warning: some will be emotional vampires who want to take advantage of you, and you’ll unfortunately have to live through a few relationships with those before you recognize them. But other people, more well-adjusted folks, will notice as well. Those are the kinds of people who can become life-long friends. And, in my experience, that’s where loving relationships start.

    Who knows? You might uncover some really important things about yourself along the way that you never realized were there before.

  • A lot of lonely days and nights where I was forced to do a lot of self introspection. I also had to be very honest with myself. I started to recognize bad behaviors, and how they impacted both myself and other people. I started therapy and taking depression medication, which helped out tremendously. I also had a wife who would challenge my behavior. Then I had two boys, and I swore that they’d never grow up to be like me; they’d be better than I ever was. That’s been my guiding light ever since.

    It’s a struggle, especially now that I’m back to being single, and trying to date again. I catch myself from dwelling in old behaviors - the self pity and loathing, jealousy of what others have. I no longer project blame onto other people. I admit my mistakes more readily, and I also ask forgiveness when I can.

    While I am not having much luck finding a woman to go out with, I am not upset about it. I am practicing patience, and using the time to better myself and my surroundings. I am looking for ways to make friends in my new community. It’s not very successful so far, but I’m sure over time that will change. In the meantime, I’ll keep putting I the effort.

    • I'm sorry you went through that, but I'm happy you are keeping your head through it. It sounds like you're keeping a healthy outlook

  • I was like that for a long time. I think I solved my problem by mostly thinking about my situation and the reasons for it and managed to separate fact from fiction. Something that also played a role was to - for a while - literally giving up. For a while I thought I would stay alone forever. For a while I was able to relax a little and not be that desparate, stressed guy who thought his time was running out. Who had to always think about opportunities to meet someone. I could just be myself. Desparation isn't a very attractive trait. I realized that there actually where quite a few women who seemed to show interest in me, but I never was able to see it, because I felt so beneath them. Them showing interest in me was unbelievable. In times where I didn't try to desparately meet women or get them to be interested in me I was much better at talking and being interested.

    I think I was lucky in having a rather rational way of thinking about problems. That's how i was able to understand myself and find a way out of this whole. What were the things that (I think) got me out of it:

    • I was able to think of women as just other humans.
    • They are not automatically miles above me and i would have to hope to get their attention out of luck
    • They sometimes are as desparate or unsure of themselves as I was. They were actually pretty glad if I was showing interest in them (previously I never dared to talk to them just for the sake of it, because I feared they would be annoyed as they would always be talked to by idiots like me).
    • I remembered something someone said to me as a teenager: " You will make 10 times as many friends in the time you try to get people to be interested in you If you instead show interest in other people". I realized that for a long while I had the mindset of "please pick me!" when i thought about women. I was the low being who would have to hope to be chosen. I was thinking about wearing interesting shirts, or doing interesting things so that someone of the "upper class" would find me worthy enough and talk to me. Only late in life I realized that other people - especially women - weren't some higher level being - some mythical alien creatures. They were a lot like myself, yearning to be recognized by other human beings. And that I wasn't that low as well and a lot of other people - especially ( again:) women - were quite happy if I showed interest in them. So for anyone reading this: It might be strange to ask other people their name or from where they are, what they do, what they like. what problems they have. But after a while your thinking changes. Then you might actually genuinely be interested in them. And a lot of them greatly appreaciates it. So: try to be for other people what you want them to be to you. And don't only talk to people who you want to get into bed. Just expand your perspective. talk to people.

    It's mostly just the mindset. If you're thinking your worthless and other people are unreachable, then your behavior will mirror this thinking.

    Another thing: I am quite glad that when I had this phase in my life "incel" culture wasn't a thing. At least there were no dark corners in the Internet offering me easy explanations for my problems. I came from a strange place, believing that women where heavenly creatures miles above my sorry existence, so maybe not that typical incel-vibe, but I am still not 100% sure that these women-hating incel-idiots would have turned me against 50% of the population.

  • I had two sisters and I was the only brother. If there is any way to tell you that you don't have any right, it's that. Trust me. They know more and they will fuck you up if you even try it.

    People have their own choices. Seeing it as a quest in a video game isn't a reality. It's a shared experience and they need to share it with you. If they don't, then it ain't right.

  • I'm not an incel. But according to modern internet I am because I'm virgin and I'm aware that no women would want to fuck me plus being a loser. I never clawed. There's your answer.

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