army1987 comments on Open Thread, June 2-15, 2013 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: TimS 02 June 2013 02:22AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 09 June 2013 02:58:58PM *  1 point [-]

Considering that in Western society, the man is traditionally the pursuer and the woman the pursued, this seems non-ideal,

What do you care what the traditional roles in Western society are, so long as you're both happy?

and considering that my male friends say stuff like "I'm going to go for Susan tonight"

What fraction of the time do they succeed? (And when they do, how do you know that part of the reason why they had picked Susan rather than Jane in the first place was that on some level they already knew that they had less of a chance with the latter than with the former?)

Comment author: gothgirl420666 09 June 2013 07:07:39PM 0 points [-]

What do you care what the traditional roles in Western society are, so long as you're both happy?

Presumably if women rarely initiate and instead expect men to approach them, a man who frequently approaches women will be much more likely to find sex/a relationship than a man who just waits around for women to do the initiating.

What fraction of the time do they succeed?

I don't know. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. But I am sure they succeed more than they would if, like me, they never tried.

(And when they do, how do you know that part of the reason why they had picked Susan rather than Jane in the first place was that on some level they already knew that they had less of a chance with the latter than with the former?)

That definitely is part of it.

Comment author: [deleted] 09 June 2013 08:00:12PM 0 points [-]

OK, I thought you meant something like “I used to be in a relationship, but it had been initiated by the woman, which is untraditional; we were uncomfortable with that, and eventually we broke up as a result”, rather than “I used to be in a relationship, then for whatever reason we broke up, but I hadn't been the one to initiate it so I don't know how to initiate another one”; never mind. (I have heard a few women make the latter complaint before, though none of them mentioned the traditional roles.)