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This seems like very good, thorough, general advice. However, I wonder how many of us (heterosexual males reading Less Wrong) have romantic preferences that are as general. I realize that the "reading Less Wrong" part of that descriptor wasn't specified in the question, but it seems implied.
In general, a heterosexual man might describe the set of his potential romantic partners in the following way: a woman whom he finds physically attractive, with whom he shares interests, and with whom his personality is compatible. (That the woman is currently single is also important for many, including myself, but I recognize that it's less general than the former three, given the existence of polyamory/fidelity.)
However, for myself, I would add to this a fairly strict qualifier, that the woman is an atheist. I simply don't feel that I would be able to be emotionally intimate with a woman who holds an irrational, i.e. religious, worldview. Atheist doesn't necessarily mean rationalist, but religious almost definitely means irrational, i.e. P(rationalist|atheist) >> P(rationalist|religious), and even more so for P(would be open to rationality|atheist). I find it to be a sound heuristic that prevents me from embarking on relationships very likely doomed to failure. I doubt that I am alone among LWers in taking this into account.
Unfortunately, I have found it really damn hard to meet atheist women. I can count on one hand the number I have met in college. A large part of that is that I attend a science/engineering university which has a student body comprised of only ~30% women, but even then, my expectation before entering the university was that a population self-selected for interest in science/engineering would have a larger proportion of atheism than the general population. That expectation was not met by reality, and I recognized that I was confused, but trying to resolve that confusion (see below) didn't appreciably help my goal of meeting atheist women.
Studies have shown that women tend to be more religious than men. I also hypothesize that women who do select a science/engineering university are more likely to have gone to a private high school (76% of private schools are religious). As women tend to be socialized away from an interest in science, a stronger educational program than exists in the average public school might qualify as a "push" to counter that trend. I have met a fair number of women at this university who went to a religious school, but the sample size isn't large enough to confirm that hypothesis.
In any case, the problem remains: atheist women seem to be hard to find. The types of general activities you've suggested are good for socializing, but unlikely to have a larger-than-average atheist population. Are there activities similarly strong in socializing that would have a larger atheist population?
(Note: I don't mean to slight the obvious effort you put into this post; it's just that my own issues on this subject, and I suspect some others' issues as well, are more involved than just social awkwardness/inexperience.)
So this is an interesting challenge. My first thought is that it's actually a challenge shared by theists--Mormon men who want a Mormon wife, for example--but these people share a whole social structure (their religious community) that is already working to bring them together. Without this, atheists do face a special hurdle.
Wow, those numbers are high. Yes, when you're limited to 14 percent of women, general dating strategies become a lot less useful.
Other groups faced with numbers like these have to create (and advertise among themselves!) special spaces for meeting and flirting. (I'm thinking about gay bars now.)
I hope others can suggest more, but the only one I'm coming up with is political activism. If you are in the U.S.A., you could look for events put on through http://secular.org/ or any of the Member Organizations. Even though men are more likely to be atheists, women are more likely to be volunteers, so you may find that the gender balance evens out.
From what I recall, if you filter for "active in atheism/rationalism/secularism" you get an even stronger male skew than if you just filter for "atheist/rationalist/secular" =(
In-person groups too, not just talking about online advocacy?
In that case, I wonder if it might not be worth it to date in the wider pool, with the aim of finding a woman who is open to deconverting. Generally it's a bad idea to enter a relationship hoping to change the other person, but religion has long been a sort of special case: a lot of LTRs do involve one party or the other converting or at least modifying their religious views.
Otherwise, the numbers on this are just really daunting for atheist men.
This strikes me as a very high risk strategy, and probably a low reward one as well. Deconversion tends to take a long time, and even gentle attempts could strain a new relationship. Going by my own experience observing religious deconversions, it's likely to take months at the lower end, which you could have spent looking for someone else, and there's a high probability that it simply wouldn't work out, in which case your time investment is wasted.
The numbers for atheist men aren't very good, it's true, but keep in mind that a rationally minded intellectual is filtering rather strongly for atheists simply by looking for partners they're compatible with.
I recently began dating an old friend with conservative Christian religious beliefs. Obviously, I don't have the rationalists-only filter that DA has, and I don't want to deconvert her. (Her personal relationship with Jesus --that is, the mental feelings that she's constructed around the idea of Christ-- are important to her, and I don't want to destroy that.) Nevertheless, here's what's happened:
In conversation with me, she quickly clarified some nagging doubts about the inclusiveness (and other characteristics) of her old, conservative church. She's started attending a Congregationalist church instead. (For those unfamiliar with Christian denominations in North America, this is as liberal as you can get and still be explicitly Christian). For a while, she even considered attending the Unitarian Universalist church, since I would be willing to join it with her, but in the end she decided that it didn't fit.
When we started, I expected the relationship to founder on religious differences, but I agreed to give it a shot anyway. And I seem to have affected her religion instead. I'm not sure what this proves, even when restricted to the one example, but it's been a surprising few months for me.
In my view the ideology matters surprisingly little. Do not make the mistake of choosing your partner for having the right convictions.
If that's not something you care about in a relationship, by all means don't concern yourself with it. But if you feel like you have to decide not to care about your partner's convictions, then it's a significant issue, and one that's likely to surface in the future however you try to suppress it.
I meet many people were their religion has little or no practical influence on their daily lives. If you limit your partner search to the LW/similar cluster you might find it problematic to get a suitable partner. And even then ideological similarities are no guarantee for a happy relationship.
Might be interesting to poll what people look for.
Of course ideological similarities aren't a guarantee of a happy relationship; for me and for many others, they're necessary, but I know of nobody for whom they're sufficient.
Dating a person with religious beliefs which do not have a practical influence on their lives, I have tremendous difficulty respecting them. This is not a hypothetical matter, it's a mistake I've learned to avoid. I know people for whom it does not seem to be an issue, but anyone for whom it is is better off taking it seriously than following advice to exercise tolerance.
That sounds like a fair idea for discussion post. I'll make one later today, unless you feel like doing it first.
Poll made. It's been downvoted to -1, but hopefully the topic will not turn out to be that unwelcome on net.
Emphasis added to point out the non sequitur.
Also, my "atheist qualifier" is intended to prevent me from choosing a partner with the wrong convictions, not to encourage me to choose one simply for having the right convictions.
I have a dear friend who loves rationality, reads Methods rabidly, quotes 'That which can be destroyed...' at the top of her FB profile... and still identifies as Christian. She's young and has had the kind of sheltered upbringing that makes it possible to actually believe your religion without lots of doublethink.
I expect to have her deconverted within a year or two -- I'd have managed by now if we weren't half a state apart.
I would be interested to know how she responded to, for example, Chapter 39 "Pretending to be Wise, Pt 1".
I wonder if sending her to this site would help at all?
I suppose I could if I were in a hurry -- honestly rather do the job myself in this case.
That seems a little selfish to me.
That sounds like an exhausting process without a way to judge openness to atheism quickly. It seems like converting from one religion to another would be less jarring than dropping religion altogether, so I'm not sure how much better the numbers would actually become. Also, that sort of pressure seems like it could make the initial uphill climb of a relationship (getting to know the other person) into cliff-scaling.
I think you could suss it out on the first date. You might have to use some trial-and-error -- and conversations with other atheist men -- in order to come up with the perfect line that raises the question without coming off as overly aggressive, but you can get a pretty good picture of how committed a woman is to her religion just by asking her.
The general advice to people with specific requirements (I admit I'm getting this from Dan Savage's advice to people with particular sexual fetishes) is to disclose early, but to present it as a bonus rather than an onerous hurdle that must be overcome by potential prospects. So instead of "Just so you know, I have a foot fetish, so being with me means you're gonna have to be into that" the foot guy would say something like "Your shoes are super hot. I kind of have a thing for feet. Do you like footrubs?"
Following that formula, I think the thing to avoid would be lines like "Just so you know, I don't date religious wackos." Maybe something like "I'm an atheist, so I'm always looking for ways to celebrate earthly life on Sunday mornings. Do you like strawberries and mimosas?" That's just a stab at a formulation that could start the conversation without killing any romantic momentum you've got going at that point.
At the least, that advice presents a reasonably positive strategy, which is appreciated. My attempts to be realistic about this issue are certainly prone to drifting into the sort of pessimism that comes from spending my entire undergraduate career single.
Your situation is harder than the norm, it's true, but it's not impossible. There are atheist women out there, and you'll meet them if you're diligent about being social. It may just take you a little longer. I wish you luck!
Actually just the simple act of trying to book dates on a Sunday morning could give you a quick decision of Christian-or-not.
Or awake-in-the-morning or not.
True :)
But then you don't actually have to really make real plans for Sunday mornings... just ask if they're available then and see what they say when turning you down. "Sorry, I'd prefer the afternoon" is different to "Well, if you'd like you can come along to my church group" :)
Not necessarily. There are a fair number of Christians who strongly self-identify as Christian but don't go to church that regularly (in the US at least there are some very weird patterns. People claim in surveys to be going to church much more frequently than church attendance rates suggest.) This also won't rule out other common religious groups, such as semi-religious Jews.
Oh certainly - it's not universal, but more of a first-level filter.
I will look into that, thanks.
It's probably a little bit easier if you don't live in the U.S.; the U.S. is unusually religious when compared to other First World countries.
The reason to go into environments where you interact with a lot of women isn't only an issue of having a lot of opportunities. It's also a matter of practice.
Even if you don't like to date the woman at a dance class the class will still teach you basic skills about interacting with women.
If you don't have the practice with regularly interacting with women than you are unlikely to have success when you find a woman who would be a good match because she fulfills your criteria.
But the skills about interacting with women platonically aren't all of the skills about interacting with women romantically. The infamous so-called “friend-zone”, anyone?
(How comes I'm making a point nearly diametrically opposed to what I said 21 hours ago, anyway?)
The point is a good one. That said, as far as interacting with girls platonically goes dancing is rather far from the most emasculating influence.
I don't think it makes much sense to seperate skills into platonically/romantically.
If you look at some PUA who goes for a one-night stand "romantic" isn't the label I would use to describe the interaction. On the other hand it's a word that I could reasonable use to describe an intimite Bachata dance between two people who just meet.
The ability to be physically intimite with the opposing sex without getting tense is valuable.
In dance the man leads the woman. For a shy male that's a valuable skill to learn.
Dancing doesn't teach you everything. It doesn't teach you having good conversations. The things that it teaches you are still valuable.
In that context, I meant “romantic” as ‘leading to romance’, rather than the colloquial meaning. So I wouldn't call a dance between two people who aren't looking to sleep with one another “romantic”.
As was pointed out before in this thread, physically intimate while dancing != physically intimate while having sex. (And ISTM that the latter is the more common meaning of that phrase.)
Does that transfer to domains other than dancing? (And anyway, IME it's more accurate to say that the more experienced partner leads the less experienced partner. There are certain moves where from the outside it looks like the man is leading, but that's not necessarily what it feels like from the inside.)
In my scale of “platonic” vs “romantic”, having good conversations is even more platonic than dancing.
Disclaimer: I have taken extremely few dancing classes in my life, extremely few of which were partnered dances. OTOH, when I improvise people often ask me if I've been taking classes (but I'm not sure they are serious).
Getting good at sex and getting good at the things that lead to sex are two different things. The problem of nerds isn't that they have a lot of one-night stands but are bad at sex and therefore the girl doesn't want to see them after they have sex.
No, I don't think that many people think that sex is the only action that can be described as physically intimite. While sex is more physically intimite than dancing you can't conclude that dancing isn't physically intimite.
You might be right that the stuff that you dance in your first dance lesson isn't intimite. At the beginning you have to learn to move. When I dance I do have to be aware of the level of intimacy that the girl I'm dancing with is comfortable with.
On the one hand you do have girls that find a lead where the hand of the guy touches their hips too intimite for them. On the other there are girls with whom I can dance in a way where both of our arms are wrapped around each other and the whole body from face, chest, hips and legs touches each other.
I don't think that you can reasonably deny that dancing with full body contact is intimite.
The man chooses which moves happen at which time. If you are at a beginner class where the techer calls the moves, you know nothing about a dance and the girls who are there haven't yet learned that they aren't supposed to lead. It takes some time for a girl to learn to follow just as it takes time for a guy to learn to lead.
I meant A != B as in “A doesn't imply B or vice versa”. IOW, my point was that dancing doesn't necessarily lead to sex and sex isn't necessarily preceded by dancing -- especially the kind of dancing taught in classes, as opposed to the kind of dancing people improvise in night clubs. (Let me see if I can find the previous comment about this... EDIT: here.)
I said “more common”, not “only common”, but... [googles for
physical intimacy] Fair enough. But then again, stuff like hugging is also described as physically intimate, so it seems an overly broad concept to use in this context. (For example, I have no problem with being “physically intimate” in this sense with men even though I'm straight; or, women are often “physically intimate” with me in front of their boyfriends/husbands. (OTOH, I realize that there are cultural differences with this kind of stuff and what applies here in Italy needn't apply in (say) Canada -- but these are probably more about where the thresholds are than about the qualitative differences between the ends of the spectrum.))The point is not whether a given English word can be used to label a given behaviour, but whether skills learned in one domain (dance classes) transfer to another (trying to start a relationship). To some extent they do, but they are nowhere near either necessary (I know people in LTRs who pretty much can't dance at all) or sufficient (see the comment I'm going to link above).
And most women (I guess) haven't taken many dancing classes, so if you're taking dance classes to “basic skills about interacting with women [outside the class]”, you can't rely on a random woman knowing whether or not to lead. (Nor can I see what the big deal about this is -- indeed because they don't know that, they probably won't particularly care if you follow rather than leading.)
That's not something I argued.
If you take the average nerd and put him into physically intimicy with a girl he tenses up. It takes time and effort for him to relax.
Romantic chemistry that created in a dance context doesn't lead with the same probability to sex than the same chemistry outside of a dance context.
It's still romantic chemistry and when your brain learns to become comfortable with it in one context it can also handle it in other contexts much better.
You can learn the same skill through hugging. Basically you run around with a free hugs sign and do 15 minute hugs with the people who are willing to hold the hug that long.
Dancing isn't the only way to learn the useful skills that you can learn in dancing. The fact that someone doesn't dance in no way implies that he hasn't learned the same skills in other context.
That said a billionaire won't have much trouble getting into a long-term relationship even if all his skills relating to attracting woman are awful. There nearly nothing that is a necessary condition for getting into a relationship with a woman.
I don't advocate to rely on anything. There are woman who might lead. If you have however inhibitions to leading yourself you won't have success when a woman doesn't lead.
People don't feel emotions because of the knowledge that they have. Successful leading demonstrates power and power is sexy for evoluationary reasons.
Does it? IME, dancing with someone doesn't magically make me that much bolder in non-dancing situations than I already was (I can even remember at least one case when it actually made me more awkward), and I'd expect the effect to be even smaller if we were made to dance together in a class than if we did so on our own accord. I guess YMMV.
That would mainly teach me resistance to boredom (and it would likely kind-of make me look silly, though that's not necessarily a negative because counter-signalling). Probably not the best use of time.
Then why learn them by dancing (and in dance classes, rather than (say) night clubs), of all things? If it isn't the only way, it's unlikely a priori that it's the most efficient way.
(I was going to say “if a billionaire won't have much trouble getting into a long-term relationship, then making money is a skill related to attracting to women”, but the billionaire might just have inherited it or something.)
You only had a few lessons and that alone doesn't have much of an effect on your interaction with woman in general.
If that's true and you actually would find it boring you lack in the ability in the realm of perceiving the other person. Dancing helps with the perception part. For most people with asberger there a lot of anxiety that comes up during the process that can be worked through.
I know multiple guys who thought that a single 15 minute hug with another guy was an experience that was very worthwhile to overcome some of their anxiety.
The point I want to make is that two people who are both successful with woman might be successful due to different skills. One very strong skill allows you to succeed even if you have some weak points.
Is you dance something like Salsa, Bachata, Tango or Swing as a man you need to take dancing lessons before you go into night clubs where you can dance those dances. Once you moved actually can dance, I would advocate to go to the night clubs to also dance outside of lessons.
Why structured partner dance over a regular nightclub with pop music? Approaching in a nightclub enviroment is more likely to lead to stressful rejections. Those rejections tell your brain that it's right to show anxiety in those situations.
Why do I recommend it over the hugging route? Signing up and going to a dance class is relatively easy compared to print a free hug sign and go around with it. People have more resistance to doing the free hug exercise. Getting a stranger to practice a 15 minute hug isn't as straightforward either.
Have you tried using OkCupid? It allows you to filter by religion, and it appears to be the preferred dating site among Less Wrongers, and possibly young intellectuals in general. We already have a thread dedicated to optimizing your profile for positive attention, so it may worth trying out.
I haven't ventured into online dating, but if I do, I will keep OkCupid in mind.
From reading your whole comment, it seems this:
would be the easiest bit to change to remove the problem from your life.
I'm not interested in a relationship in which I can't interact honestly with the woman, because I wouldn't find it to be fulfilling. I'd rather be single than have to tiptoe around my romantic partner's irrational beliefs. Changing that implies either ceasing to care about rationality, or dramatically lowering my expectations for a relationship. Neither of those sounds particularly appealing.
Could you be comfortable with an agnostic? That would expand your pool somewhat.
Yes, most likely. I don't see much of a difference between agnosticism and atheism in practice. If a person doesn't know if God exists (agnostic), ey probably won't hold an active belief in God (atheist). There are exceptions to that, of course, but in a minority of cases.
Are you suggesting that a non-religious person would have no irrational beliefs to tiptoe around? This seems unlikely.
Are you suggesting that if you didn't tiptoe around religious beliefs that would be a problem? Because it seems that religious people are extra-resilient in their beliefs, so that might be less of an issue than you fear.
Are you suggesting that it isn't possible to have a relationship where one person is religious and another atheist without them having to fight about it or lie about it? That your relationships must have zero tolerance and absolute agreement on all points?
No, but a religious person is definitely going to have such beliefs.
Yes, I am. It's not a matter of resilience in beliefs; telling my significant other that I can't take their opinion on [evolution/gay marriage/abortion/insert religiously-tinted issue of your choice] at all seriously doesn't sound like a recipe for a harmonious relationship.
It's not possible for me, because I believe atheism is the rational position and religious belief is objectively unjustified. I don't think the idea that relationships between religious and nonreligious people are unlikely to succeed is an uncommon one; I've had religious friends express agreement with it.
This is a straw man argument, as I did not make such a statement.
Many people are religious without really examining the consequences of their beliefs. Also many people have religious beliefs that do not cause them to think irrationally about evolution, gay marriage, or abortion. I would expect many of these people to move toward atheism during a long-term relationship with a LessWronger.
Yes, I've made that argument for abortion. However, that generally doesn't stop such people from being extremely convinced of their beliefs. I haven't had any success changing someone's mind about abortion with the aforementioned argument, despite how obvious it becomes that the person is merely acting out instructions without thinking about them.
Those were meant as examples, not a definitive list of topics. There are very few people whose religious beliefs don't cause them to think irrationally about some important issue.
I understand that, but I would be setting myself up for disappointment to expect that from any specific romantic partner who fell into that category.
I realized this, but there seems to be a cluster in personspace of theists who are no less rational about the concepts on your list than the average atheist. If there are any topics that even these theists are irrational about, can you give examples?
Good point.
To be honest, I really haven't met enough theists in that cluster to be very confident about any examples. I can see the matter of church attendance (in general, in terms of the course of the relationship if it moves toward marriage, and later in terms of raising children) being an issue. It's not necessarily something that will come up right away, but I would see the specter of it hovering overhead. There's also the irrationality of religious beliefs themselves, e.g. the idea that God is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent, or the idea that Jesus performed miracles.
There are, in fact, plenty of couples who have diametrically opposed ideas on politics or religion. You just need to either a) agree to not discuss it or b) be willing to honestly debate and challenge each other without getting upset.
I agree that you should interact honestly and not tiptoe around what you think, but that doesn't mean you have to agree on everything, even religion.
For what it's worth, as irrational as religion is, I'm willing to bet that any atheist here has equally irrational ideas that they stick with.
Any atheist here, and equally irrational? That's a bet I'd take.
It's one thing to disagree with a person on a number of points, and another thing to be unable to respect their epistemology. On difficult matters, where it's hard to locate an error, you can consider another person's reasoning sound to respectable standards without agreeing with their conclusions (we're only human after all,) and on matters of opinion, disagreement does not necessarily imply conflict of epistemology. Religion falls into neither category.
I used to be open to relationships with religious individuals, but eventually I came to the realization that I had been putting more effort into convincing myself that I was tolerant than being realistic about my preferences. I couldn't be happy with such a relationship beyond the extremely short term.
Desrtopa makes the main points below; I'd like to add:
Even accepting that premise, the difference is that I'm willing to update my map. If a religious person had the same willingness, ey already would no longer be religious.