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?
In my very limited experience, the one characteristic that seems pretty universal to incels is the inability to have casual, no pressure small talk with anyone, especially with those of the opposite gender (or whatever gender you like).
Small talk is a skill like anything else. It must be practiced and honed. The easiest way to do this is just by being interested in what the person is saying. You don’t have to be funny or quippy. Just be curious about their life and you’ll find that most of small talk is just being able to go back and forth about a topic.
The best advice I’ve heard along those lines is: “It’s more important to be interested than interesting”
Ironically, I reckon the more interested you are in people and things, the more interesting you become, because you learn and gain a more diverse understanding of the world, and then you are able to interact with more depth with more people.
It is also okay not to be good a “small talk”. I quite frankly hate it and for the most part i tend to overwhelm people in conversations. Now i am happily married and we still sometimes end up just talking all night, because we engage in conversations we both find meaningful.
Weirdly enough and quite annoyingly now that i am married and built some confidence, a lot of women are hitting on me, and seemingly unfazed by me stating the fact that i am married. Had to cut out a few people from my life because of that.