As a shy man, I remember the difficulties of being single, particularly in my twenties when it was expected of me to spend my time at bars and clubs. It would take me weeks to work up the nerve to approaching a woman. Once I did work up the nerve, I would be so stressed out that I only made the woman uncomfortable when I was approached her. Most advice stated that all a shy man had to do was “be confident” which was frustrating, as if my shyness were some switch I could turn on or off at will. I was never able to follow this advice but I was still able to find great success with dating.
What Worked for Me
The thing that most advice givers get wrong when approaching shyness is to assume that the only way to fix the problem is to change the person. I could not disagree with this more. If you can change the situation, the person can remain the same and still have success. Consider this: many shy people can be confident in well defined situations. The shyest guy in the world can still act with confidence at work or on a basketball team because they have comfort within their well-defined role. Most shy people will admit that there are situations where they act with great confidence.
With that in mind, I strongly recommend trying online dating for any shy men out there. I personally had amazing success with it and here are my reasons why:
1. People are there to date. Online dating provides the boundaries that many shy men need. There is no need to worry if she already has a boyfriend, if she is looking to date or if she is close enough to your age to ask out. These women are using these services for one purpose: to meet single men. Shy men are often guilty of over-thinking situations and this helps remove most of that problem.
2. Rejection is easier to handle. This is true for many reasons but I will just discuss a couple. First, rejection normally comes in the absence of a response. Rarely do you have to deal with some awkward situation where you instantly regret approaching the woman – she will either respond or she won’t. Second, you are not putting your day-to-day relationships with women at risk. Ask a woman from work out and you may be dealing with uncomfortable silences for the next six months. Ask a woman out online and get turned down and you are likely to never see her again.
3. You will see confidence gains both online and offline. This was very true for me as I started finding many dates online. When I had two first dates scheduled for the next week and I met a woman I was interested in at a bar, it did not matter nearly so much when she turned me down. I still had two dates to look forward to!
4. You are changing your situation, not yourself. I hated the idea that many people try to sell that says the only way you will meet someone is if you make yourself into something else. I don’t want to lie about who I am just so I can convince someone to date me. Isn’t that building a relationship on a lie? I was able to be shy and still have great success dating when I used the internet. I did not have to change myself to have success and nothing made me happier than proving that all bad advice that said I had to do otherwise was wrong.
Do Not Believe the Bad Advice
You can be yourself and have success. I am now happily married and never had to lie once to my wife about my personality. Do not obsess with changing yourself. Change your situation to one that you can work well within and it will make a world of difference.
Brad Miller runs the a blog called Little Red Rails, dedicated to providing online dating advice and tips. He struggled with dating for many years but eventually found online dating to be a great solution. He dated online aggressively for a year, doing very poorly at first but through some hard learning found great success, eventually leading him to meeting his wife. His site covers everything from general topics like eHarmony prices to more specific topics like creating your dating profile.
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