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?
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Had sex
spoiler
But really, wasn’t a women-hating incel per-se, more socially inept nerd.
Worked to better myself. Lost some weight, became more talkative by being a DM in D&D, started more interesting hobbies other than watching anime and gaming, alcohol helps to get loose in social settings.
did you delete Facebook and lawyered up?
Facebook up, hit the lawyer, delete gym.
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.
Unhealthy, sure. But those are really not incel signs at all, but rather those of people with little to no self-esteem or other issues like depression and / or anxiety, or some other more niche issues & views.
I think they’re closely linked, one feeds the other. However incels never see these as solvable problems or things they should seek help on, but rather argue that there’s no way they can solve them. This becomes a vicious cycle because by believing they can’t change only makes things worse, making it even harder to pull themselves out
No. Incels don’t really see themselves as the issue, but rather women. They shove the blame completely away from themselves.
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.
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!
Ah, right. In a way that’s even better - you were stacking up comparably against competition.
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.
If your wife isn’t your best friend… troubles ahead. 🤭
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!”
- 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.
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.
Even if you only have a 10% chance of winning, if you take a chance like that 10 times then it’s more than 65% likely that you’ll succeed at least once
I love this story, thanks for sharing it.
Lucked out and made (and still have) a great friend who’d always call out my bullshit and also talk through what was wrong with my mindset and thoughts. God, I was insufferable
I used to be an incel, but probably not in the way you’d think. I mean it in the original use of the term, that is, I was a queer kid in a small town and there was not a single person in town I was attracted to who was also attracted to me.
I moved to a big city, and things got a bit better but I still had issues in meeting new people with meaningful connections. I expected to just stumble upon the perfect partner that loved me exactly as I was, even though I hated myself.
It wasn’t until someone basically slapped me in the face with the question, “Well, would you want to date YOU?” that it started to make sense. I was spending so much time looking for “the perfect partner” that I forgot to work on myself to become the perfect partner FOR that perfect partner. Once I stopped “looking” for them and instead started working on making myself a better person that things started falling into place.
The only person you have to live with your entire life is yourself, so make sure you love yourself first and people will be attracted to that. No one wants to be with someone who hates themselves and everyone around them.
Well stated. I had a blind date with a partner that was perfect on paper and overnight realized I did not present the way I wanted needed to for that opportunity. I immediately started dieting. After I got into the healthy BMI range I immediately noticed that people started treating me differently and I had significantly more opportunities. It’s hard to accept that the problem might be you, but that’s the path out.
Took a flight overseas.
Thailand? Japan?
'Nam.
Missouri 🤣
So you’re saying he has cousins there?
I was heading down that path in my teens. It basically took the intervention of my cousin, who started making me hang out with her friends. Realized that people can like me if I act like myself and treat them like people.
I don’t know if this counts since I was never the women hating type, but for a long time I suffered because I couldn’t figure out a way to have a girlfriend.
How I dealt with it? Understanding myself, mechanisms of social pressure, and the wrong motives I had for wanting to have a girlfriend.
It was always about proving something to others, rather than actually finding a life partner. Everyone around me constantly pestered me to find a gf, friends, family … All the media celebrates certain kinds of romantic relationships. I thought I’m worthless if I don’t do it as well.
Changing that mindset transformed me - I don’t have to put myself in situations I’m uncomfortable with, and I don’t have to pursue types of relationships defined by others.
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.
Some people like just negated into that way of thinking. I’m anti social and aware that I’m not a good person. That doesn’t mean that I wanna change. There’s a lot of way more awful and disgusting people out there getting laid, why not me?
The fact of life is that some people are just cursed to be alone.
Well said, thank you.
Self reflection can be a hard road. It’s not easy to admit that you aren’t the person you think you are, or worse that people think of you differently than you think they should - but if you embrace that and tackle it head on, truly wanting to be better, you can end up in a much better place.
A pithy way to say this is: “chase girls and they’ll run away. Chase your dreams and the girls will chase you.”
Honestly, I touched grass and made some good good friends. I matured and realized incel shit wasent very cash money. I wasent full incel but I was definitely on the path. I worked on myself a lot and really grew into just enjoying my hobbies. I learned that I wasent mature enough for a relationship and didn’t respect myself enough. I still have a lot to learn and will continue to learn and grow. Currently im in a nice relationship and around good friends
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 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.
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.
But isn’t the most effective way to prevent others from being harmed due to your own issues to simply isolate yourself from people who would potentially care? You cannot harm anyone but yourself if there is no one to see you struggling and trying to help.
None of your friends could possibly be hurt if you had zero friends.
I’ve gone through periods of time like that, but I don’t feel it’s necessarily the healthiest way to go. If you want to be isolated and dwell in depression, that’s absolutely a choice. I always felt better though spending time with either my brother or my one lifelong friend when things got that bad. I don’t think humans are meant to be totally alone for long.
Additionally, if you’re looking to improve your situation, being alone where it was just me and my self-destructive thoughts wasn’t the most productive environment. Ideally, you would be continuing to learn to be better around those people. Keeping isolated is just going to keep you comfortable alienating people.
Any introverts here? or ex introverts that would like to do an AMA come on over to https://lemmy.world/c/amarequests
Not an Incel, usually I have great interactions with women IRL and it more often than not lead to dates and relationships. What I absolutely suck at is meeting people.
I’m currently desperately trying to figure out how to meet more people kinda in general. I have a solid friend group a mix of married, single, and in-relationship people but all our hobbies usually aren’t conducive to meeting people. I’ve recently joined a 20s & 30s meet up group for random activities to hopefully meet some people and I’ve been trying to casually read or stuff in local places like Barnes and Nobel. It just feels hard to interact with strangers nowadays if there’s no medium to start the conversation.
I’ve looked into volunteering but all the opportunities are during my work hours so that’s out unfortunately. I’m an introvert so usually bars and the like are out of the question for me. Kinda just stuck. My life otherwise is actually in a pretty decent spot overall
Honestly… Two years in prison. Made me grow up and see how shitty I was as a person.
Mind if I ask you more? What was the nature of crime? How do you feel it changed you? It’s very rare nowadays to see stories of people who feel prison actually helped them becoming better people, and I’d love to know more.
Of course, only if you feel like talking about it; if not, this is alright!
