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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Not really incel in that I didn’t blame or resent women or anything but I was pretty low self-esteem (this years and years ago). Got my first job, started exercising, eating better, and literally within like 6 months of committing to just focusing on my own self-improvement and being comfortable with my own independence I met my future wife lol. That self-confidence may have led me to saying yes to invitations I otherwise either never would’ve received in the first place or never would’ve accepted.
So a combination of a) Being comfortable with yourself, by yourself, and not actively looking but rather letting things organically happen naturally, b) active self-improvement, and c) putting yourself out there a bit by way of hobbies and work, etc.
It really is amazing how quickly things turn around when you just focus on being a better human. Working on oneself is a great way to feel better all around. Then it usually follows that people will start being attractive. Someone who enjoys life and is fun to be around is a lot more attractive then someone who doesn’t see the point in doing anything and resents everyone.
Being comfortable with myself led to nothing in my life. I’m still a virgin in my 30s.
Being comfortable with myself
Are you really though? Because you don’t sound it from what you’ve written
I am, I don’t wanna change, I won’t wanna “improve” or being nicer just to be more “appetizeble”, faking myself into a “nice guy that is social with everyone and sees positives in everything, tries to not fight or disagree and works very hard for a better society and generic happy couple life” disgust me.
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
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.
Taking martial arts classes (specifically for me, Brazilian jiu jitsu). Coincidentally i met my current girlfriend there, but you shouldn’t expect to meet women there. Rather, it’s a way to stop thinking about women for two hours. I realized that back then my mind was constantly thinking non-stop if i’m attractive to women, what women like, how i can get one, etc. It’s those thought loops that make interaction so painful.
Literally anything that can get your mind off of women. Hot take; I wouldn’t advise going to a gym though, because still then you’re thinking about how to become more attractive by becoming fit. The goal is to work out to take your mind off things. Martial arts is perfect for this: you physically work out, and your mind is focused on your opponent.
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but l’ve been seeing a few users here exhibiting the tell tale signs. “I’m not attractive enough”, “I don’t socialize correctly”,
Oh god you’re talking about me aren’t you
I feel like I always had that “I don’t socialize correctly” vibes, always feeling like I’m out of context and weird and not cool.
But then I realized something.
Cool people are literally the same. They don’t do some special “cool” things, they just better fit the given community with their traits. I can be cool too, I just need a room of nerds!..and apparently YES, that’s all it took. Now I am cool in my circle, respected by my friends and they actually invite me to spend time with them and are happy when I can turn up. And I also have a girlfriend who adores me and is happy to spend every bit of time with me, too!
Also, all the culture, all the behaviors are all interconnected. You can absolutely have someone into national dances or writing books suddenly turn to hard rock and be completely integral with it! Behaviors, art forms, forms of expression constantly reappear in society, and a lot of what we see today we’ve seen centuries or millennia ago.
So whichever way you socialize, you are not doing it wrong. You are not weird or out of place - society always had people like you, society has them now, and your best bet is to find your people. You are not outdated or ahead of time - modern culture is not fundamentally different from anything that has been before or will be after. You are a real integral part of society, in whatever form you exist, and you create and form it.
