Have you ever dated someone just to not be single?

[FilipJPhry]

Oh God. Yes. It was around September when I realized I'd be single around Christmas time, so I decided to look at some girls on fb. First good-tier I saw, I messaged. She introduced me to Reddit. I eventually dumped her in November and wound up being single for the holidays. Anyways, I regret going out with her in the first place because Reddit. The damn website is addictive, but also I've never seen a group of stupid people trying so hard to sound smart.

 

[axlryder]

yes, that's my point. Your experience is a bit odd. I don't know what your experience, thus the root of your views has been, but it's a bit odd.

"Someone has had different life experience than me? HOW CAN THIS BE!?"

Anyway, I'm getting the feeling you haven't been in a lot of relationships. Not exactly the person I want to be taking advice from.

"Oh, better just brush them off, saying that obviously don't have much experience at all."

Look, if you don't want to consider what I said, fine. That's your decision.

But don't try to rationalize it as if just because what I said is different from what you'd have expected that has to mean I don't know what I'm talking about.

As for how many relationships I've been in, my answer is "enough to know a thing or two about them".

No offense.

I'll settle for telling you that you really shouldn't assume stuff about other people because you're not comfortable with what they say; or because you're surprised by the conclusions they drew from their own experience.

Based on your previous statements, you seem to be under the impression that being in a relationship doesn't bring extremely useful and unique experience about relationships and people in general. That is a sentiment that echos a lack of experience with serious relationships or different kinds of partners. Learning how to balance yourself and accommodate your partner is a considerable and potentially difficult task. What's more, your experience runs contrary to the norm, that's what makes it odd. Not because it differs from my own. To be blunt, if some guy lasts 30 seconds and doesn't even know the basics of stimulating a girl, then likelyhood is he's probably not going to be all that impressive in the sack. Similarly, if a girl just lies there, well it's sort of like doing a warm corpse. Little awkward. You also presume I'm "uncomfortable" with what you say, but I honestly just think it sounds naive and silly, thus my dismissive attitude. Also, "enough to know a thing or two" could be one relationships for all I know. For one who claims I shouldn't be presumptuous, you yourself seem to be equally so.

 

[Skitty_McFluffernut]

Ask her out for a date. Since you're over your ex its time for you to move on. One date doesn't mean there's going to be a relationship. Take her out once and if you're not feeling it then don't ask her out again and if you still like her as a friend, hang out as friends. (Gal pals are a good asset, we tend to have female friends to hook up with) Even if she isn't your usual type you might as well give it a try. Sometimes you might find that a new type is what you needed all along. Good luck man.

 

[axlryder]

Ask her out for a date. Since you're over your ex its time for you to move on. One date doesn't mean there's going to be a relationship. Take her out once and if you're not feeling it then don't ask her out again and if you still like her as a friend, hang out as friends. (Gal pals are a good asset, we tend to have female friends to hook up with) Even if she isn't your usual type you might as well give it a try. Sometimes you might find that a new type is what you needed all along. Good luck man.

We've actually already been on a couple of "dates". It was fun. I asked her out tonight, actually. She said yes. We'll see where it goes from there.

 

[axlryder]

Oh God. Yes. It was around September when I realized I'd be single around Christmas time, so I decided to look at some girls on fb. First good-tier I saw, I messaged. She introduced me to Reddit. I eventually dumped her in November and wound up being single for the holidays. Anyways, I regret going out with her in the first place because Reddit. The damn website is addictive, but also I've never seen a group of stupid people trying so hard to sound smart.

People on Reddit try to sound smart?

 

[axlryder]

I stopped reading after "I'm rebounding if I haven't fucked anyone since my last GF". Unlike you and most other guys, I don't need sex at all. That's not condescending, btw, that's just how I am.

Why would you stop reading? That's pretty ignorant and kind of mean dude.

I'm giving you advice from the perspective of someone who knows A LOT about the subject of dating. I am a HUGE womanizer (call me a man slut if you like), however that does not mean I don't fall in love ever or anything. I may spend a lot of time making sure I look nice and might be a little over-confident around women, but I'm not an asshole and I'm genuinely trying to help you here. I've been through what you've been through a good 2 dozen times and I know what's up. Take my advice or not, but at least give me the respect to read it.

Don't misquote me, please. I said it's probably a rebound. I've had a rebound that lasted 6 months and I thought it was love for a good 3 of them. It may very well not be, but just be careful with that shit. You can spawn a rebound relationship and both end up really messed up.

Also, a rebound isn't just sex. It's actually about exactly what your thread is titled. You rebound because you don't like life as much without companionship. The way you phrased your entire first post makes it sound like you want to be with her because she's there and your ex isn't. I might be wrong, but it's not my intention to insult you or anything.

The most important bit of advice here is that you really shouldn't go straight from just knowing someone to dating them exclusively. It is too much of a step. Even a month of casual dating will give you a better idea of how well you both can relate to each other. Also, if either of you would like to see other people, you don't have to worry about jealousy (although this can be hard). I personally play "the game" during said casual dating period (wait a few days to call her, don't see her more than 2 times a week, etc.), but you should do this however it works for you. Just make sure you don't leap into something that could end up getting you both hurt.

Please just trust me on this one, I've been through a WHOLE LOT with women that is too much to go into at the moment (especially for being only 22) and I know what's up.

Okay okay, I was being unfair being so dismissive. I'm sorry. However, having read your post, and I'm sure you have plenty of experience, our fundamental viewpoints seem genuinely different. I've had a lot of experience with relationships as well. Not as much casual, but the number of relationships I've had is decently into the double digits. I much prefer to jump in once I get to know someone well enough that I think they're stable. I find things to get complicated and messy the longer I drag it out. I've been in many relationships for my age, even despite my drought these last two years. I know how things work. I'm well over my ex. It's been two years, I was fully over her after the first 6 months. We only dated for a year and a half. Point is, this isn't a rebound. Anyway, I already asked her out tonight and we're dating. I'm honestly feeling better about this already. She's a total sweetheart, so we'll see where this goes.

 

[Blondefool]

I would say that if you are creating a pro and con list (in your head) and asking an internet forum essentially to say 'it's ok' then it may not be the best idea.

I would assume that you don't know exactly how she feels about you e.g. she may be infatuated with you and it will only lead to you hurting her, which is a dick move.

 

[Hallow'sEve]

I did, but since I was honest with her we just ended up be fuck buddies

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

Its very dangerous to get into another relationship right after a break up rebound or not.

Your just not in the right emotional state to make good decisions at that moment.

As for myself yes I've done it. I fell in love with holding/being held as I sleep and waking up to someone smiling next to me. When I lost that it made me physically ill. -shrugs- Guess I'm not as lone gamer as I thought I was.

 

[VladG]

Yeah, tried that once. Wasn't that bad, but overall I found the minor nuisances typical of any relationship to be more annoying that being alone, so I ended it pretty fast. On the other hand we had little enough in common and it sounds that's not the case for you, so I say go for it.

At worst you'll just realize it's not really worth your time and effort, and you won't really have lost anything, at best you might just find you enjoy spending time with the person more than you expected to.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

Kind of, I dated this girl because I was trying to get over someone else. Needless to say, it didnt work out. I was desperate because I had been in love with this other girl for about 2 years even though she wasnt interested, and I wanted to try move on with my life.

I know it sounds really shallow of me but part of the reason I dumped her was because I didnt find her that attractive :/

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

How would I have less of a chance to end up destroying her emotionally if I somehow liked her lots and then got bored later? Also, I don't think people's initial feelings really determine the quality of a relationship, so preemptively calling it a shitty one sounds presumptuous.

I was saying you should go for it if you can deal with that guilt, some people can't deal with the guilt of leading someone on. I realised when I typed out my response that it was sounding provocative but I didn't care enough to change it. You might as well go for it if you have nothing better going for you.

 

[axlryder]

How would I have less of a chance to end up destroying her emotionally if I somehow liked her lots and then got bored later? Also, I don't think people's initial feelings really determine the quality of a relationship, so preemptively calling it a shitty one sounds presumptuous.

I was saying you should go for it if you can deal with that guilt, some people can't deal with the guilt of leading someone on. I realised when I typed out my response that it was sounding provocative but I didn't care enough to change it. You might as well go for it if you have nothing better going for you.

Of course, I'm not really leading her on as I've thoroughly explained in this thread, so I don't need to be guilty for doing that. I also already asked her out, so it's done. Also, if you realized you sounded provocative, why not change it? It would take like 10-30 seconds and that way you wouldn't have had to come back to respond to my inevitable retort to your fatalistic consent.

 

[axlryder]

Okay okay, I was being unfair being so dismissive. I'm sorry. However, having read your post, and I'm sure you have plenty of experience, our fundamental viewpoints seem genuinely different. I've had a lot of experience with relationships as well. Not as much casual, but the number of relationships I've had is decently into the double digits. I much prefer to jump in once I get to know someone well enough that I think they're stable. I find things to get complicated and messy the longer I drag it out. I've been in many relationships for my age, even despite my drought these last two years. I know how things work. I'm well over my ex. It's been two years, I was fully over her after the first 6 months. We only dated for a year and a half. Point is, this isn't a rebound. Anyway, I already asked her out tonight and we're dating. I'm honestly feeling better about this already. She's a total sweetheart, so we'll see where this goes.

I personally think relationship jumping without any casual dating is a VERY bad idea, but if it works out for you then who am I to judge? You are the most qualified person here to appraise your own situation with this girl, but I'd suggest to you that you take this relationship slowly.

If you're with her a month from now and you see her slowly becoming bi-polar, constantly saying she loves you and getting mad when you don't respond that you love her beck, calling you every single day, driving past your house, and/or "visiting" you at work every night to "accompany" home, don't say I didn't tell you so.

But again (and trust me this isn't meant to be condescending) if you're in highschool none of my advice is really applicable. Things are really simple when you know where you're SO is ALL THE TIME, so you can really just date whoever and however you please.

What you describe sounds like the sort of instability I wouldn't touch with a ten foot poll. Like I said, I gauge the girl well before I actually consider dating her. The crazy possessive sorts usually have tells.

 

[Vegosiux]

Based on your previous statements, you seem to be under the impression that being in a relationship doesn't bring extremely useful and unique experience about relationships and people in general.

Interesting. I never said that. Repeating; "You get experience from everything you do or don't do, except if you're comatose or something."

The "uniqueness and usefulness" part is something you made up and projected.

That is a sentiment that echos a lack of experience with serious relationships or different kinds of partners.

Maybe. There's just one little problem - that's not what I said. Merely what you wish I'd said.

Learning how to balance yourself and accommodate your partner is a considerable and potentially difficult task.

Oh gee, can you teach me what's 2+2 as well? That one's a toughie.

What's more, your experience runs contrary to the norm, that's what makes it odd.

So? You got some oddness censor built-in in that brain of yours, that refuses to let you see or consider odd things?

Not because it differs from my own. To be blunt, if some guy lasts 30 seconds and doesn't even know the basics of stimulating a girl, then likelyhood is he's probably not going to be all that impressive in the sack. Similarly, if a girl just lies there, well it's sort of like doing a warm corpse. Little awkward.

I don't see the relevance of this to what I said. Again, you're addressing what you wish I'd said, and not what I actually did say. Which is..."the quality of sex depends on more than just how good you are at it." See the word? "More"? As in, "in addition to"?

Why the hell are you spinning it as if I said how good you are at it doesn't matter at all? Because I didn't.

You also presume I'm "uncomfortable" with what you say, but I honestly just think it sounds naive and silly, thus my dismissive attitude.

TomAto, TomatOH; stop projecting. You don't like what you're hearing, so you dismiss it, we've all been there and done that. Some of us have moved on from it.

Also, "enough to know a thing or two" could be one relationships for all I know. For one who claims I shouldn't be presumptuous, you yourself seem to be equally so.

See, thing is, I know how many relationships I've been in. And I know what I know about them. You don't. You chose to assume and then went on to spin a little story to validate your assumption. Reality don't work that way, sorry.

 

[Snowbell]

I'm in pretty much the same situation. My breakup wasn't so bad (it was a horrid, HORRID relationship and I'm glad to be out of it) but now I'm single and not sure what to do. There's only one guy that I'm really interested in, but I'm not sure how many interests we share and I'm waiting to get to know him better before I ask him out on a date. Knowing how annoyingly shy I am, however, I might just let my feelings stew and not tell him XD

I say go for it, but keep in mind that if someone you really like comes along then you might not be able to go after them.

 

[Ignatz_Zwakh]

Yes and it didn't go very well. It usually ended with majorly hurt feelings on the other side of the relationship and me seeming like a total jackass.

 

[axlryder]

Based on your previous statements, you seem to be under the impression that being in a relationship doesn't bring extremely useful and unique experience about relationships and people in general.

Interesting. I never said that. Repeating; "You get experience from everything you do or don't do, except if you're comatose or something."

The "uniqueness and usefulness" part is something you made up and projected.

That is a sentiment that echos a lack of experience with serious relationships or different kinds of partners.

Maybe. There's just one little problem - that's not what I said. Merely what you wish I'd said.

Learning how to balance yourself and accommodate your partner is a considerable and potentially difficult task.

Oh gee, can you teach me what's 2+2 as well? That one's a toughie.

What's more, your experience runs contrary to the norm, that's what makes it odd.

So? You got some oddness censor built-in in that brain of yours, that refuses to let you see or consider odd things?

Not because it differs from my own. To be blunt, if some guy lasts 30 seconds and doesn't even know the basics of stimulating a girl, then likelyhood is he's probably not going to be all that impressive in the sack. Similarly, if a girl just lies there, well it's sort of like doing a warm corpse. Little awkward.

I don't see the relevance of this to what I said. Again, you're addressing what you wish I'd said, and not what I actually did say. Which is..."the quality of sex depends on more than just how good you are at it." See the word? "More"? As in, "in addition to"?

Why the hell are you spinning it as if I said how good you are at it doesn't matter at all? Because I didn't.

You also presume I'm "uncomfortable" with what you say, but I honestly just think it sounds naive and silly, thus my dismissive attitude.

TomAto, TomatOH; stop projecting. You don't like what you're hearing, so you dismiss it, we've all been there and done that. Some of us have moved on from it.

Also, "enough to know a thing or two" could be one relationships for all I know. For one who claims I shouldn't be presumptuous, you yourself seem to be equally so.

See, thing is, I know how many relationships I've been in. And I know what I know about them. You don't. You chose to assume and then went on to spin a little story to validate your assumption. Reality don't work that way, sorry.

Well you seem to have a total inability to glean extremely basic concepts or just awkward resistance to flow with natural conversation (by experience, of course I'm going to mean unique relational experience. Only an idiot wouldn't be able to gather that's what I'm talking about from the context. If I say you get experience from playing basketball as a reason why I play it, no one's going to say "well you get experience from eating too, herp!"). To actually point out "well you can get experience from anything" is a banal and pointless statement. So feeling the need to spell things out for you really only comes naturally. Similarly, to even bring up "depends on more than skill" is a another needless statement because it has nothing to do with what we were talking about. Skill is the primary factor in most people's minds when it comes to sex, thus me giving the example "experience is important for building skill". So even bringing up other factors in an example that's really not even debating the merits of what makes good sex implies you focus on other factors to the point where you'd derail an example just to interject that. That's odd. If that wasn't the case, then good job, you're just bad at conversations. What's more, you assuming I'm uncomfortable with what you're saying IS presuming, seeing as I genuinely just think your advice is stupid. You won't own that either. I also couldn't care less what you know because I have yet to hear anything useful or insightful come out of you. Seriously buddy, you're not that good at this whole "advice" thing.

 

[Vegosiux]

Well considering your total inability to glean extremely basic concepts (by experience, of course I'm going to mean unique relational experience. Only an idiot wouldn't be able to gather that's what I'm talking about). To actually point out "well get experience from anything" is a banal and pointless statement. So feeling thing need to spell things out for you really only comes naturally. Similarly, to even bring up "depends on more than" is a another needless statement because it has nothing to do with what we were talking about. Skill is the primary factor in most people's minds when it comes to sex, thus me giving the example "experience is important for building skill". so even bringing up other factors in an example that's really not even debating the merits of what makes good sex implies you focus on other factors to the point where you'd derail an example just to interject that. That's odd. What's more, you assuming I'm uncomfortable with what you're saying IS presuming, seeing as I genuinely just think your advice is stupid. Seriously buddy, you're not that good at this whole "advice" thing.

Look, "pal", why don't you just stop pretending you wanted advice (that I never actually offered past writing out my own view on things) in the first place.

Your passive-aggressive hostility toward everyone who doesn't fall in line with your train of thoughts and dares to have had different experience in life than you did kind of suggests you made this thread not to seek advice, but to validate yourself, to seek approval for what you set out to do, and confirmation that it's okay, acceptable and generally something a normal person would do.

See, I can do armchair psychology too, no problem. And I dare say I have at least a few years' worth more experience at that than you do. Same for relationships, really...

But you know what? I won't hold this attitude against you in the end. As I said, we've all been there, so to judge you for it would be sheer hypocrisy on my part.

You really aren't going to get far in life by dismissing everything you find "odd" though, I can tell you that much...even if my breath is wasted on you at the moment.

 

[axlryder]

Well considering your total inability to glean extremely basic concepts (by experience, of course I'm going to mean unique relational experience. Only an idiot wouldn't be able to gather that's what I'm talking about). To actually point out "well get experience from anything" is a banal and pointless statement. So feeling thing need to spell things out for you really only comes naturally. Similarly, to even bring up "depends on more than" is a another needless statement because it has nothing to do with what we were talking about. Skill is the primary factor in most people's minds when it comes to sex, thus me giving the example "experience is important for building skill". so even bringing up other factors in an example that's really not even debating the merits of what makes good sex implies you focus on other factors to the point where you'd derail an example just to interject that. That's odd. What's more, you assuming I'm uncomfortable with what you're saying IS presuming, seeing as I genuinely just think your advice is stupid. Seriously buddy, you're not that good at this whole "advice" thing.

Look, "pal", why don't you just stop pretending you wanted advice (that I never actually offered past writing out my own view on things) in the first place.

Your passive-aggressive hostility toward everyone who doesn't fall in line with your train of thoughts and dares to have had different experience in life than you did kind of suggests you made this thread not to seek advice, but to validate yourself, to seek approval for what you set out to do, and confirmation that it's okay, acceptable and generally something a normal person would do.

See, I can do armchair psychology too, no problem. And I dare say I have at least a few years' worth more experience at that than you do. Same for relationships, really...

But you know what? I won't hold this attitude against you in the end. As I said, we've all been there, so to judge you for it would be sheer hypocrisy on my part.

You really aren't going to get far in life by dismissing everything you find "odd" though, I can tell you that much...even if my breath is wasted on you at the moment.

Yes, but your terrible attempts at psychology are, well kind of terrible. You say I'm passive aggressive, yet I'm actively questioning those who would denounce my actions. This isn't out of a desire for self-validation, but instead out of a desire to question, what seems to be, mindlessly integrated cultural norms. As for us, well we've been exchanging blows for a while, but I doubt we're going to start actively name calling because that would result in inevitable mod wrath. Regardless, others have offered their advice and I've considered it, and I recognize the value in some of their words, even if I don't necessarily agree with it. Also, the experience I deemed odd had nothing to do with the topic of the thread (it was a response to an example), so it's fairly pointless anyway. Also, again, I couldn't care less how much experience you claim to have, as the wisdom derived from those experience has yet to really show up in this conversation.