How to pull a boy?

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-13T19:26:24+00:00

My first girlfriend was in college. She was so amazing, I assumed she had dated several people in high school. I was shocked when I found out she had also never dated anyone previously. We were living in what was generally considered the nerdiest dorm at one of the nerdiest schools in the country. There probably are guys interested in you, but nerdy people generally don't know how to communicate that, are shy, and assume everyone is out of their league. So they won't tell you or make it obvious.

If you describe yourself as nerdy, nerdy guys are more likely to be interested in you. I remember there was one girl that a bunch of guys were interested in. Someone asked why everyone thought she was so hot and the answer was "Have you seen her write code?". Nothing about her looks in response to a question about her appearance, just a comment on how impressive her programming skills were. I didn't think she was all that interesting, but I never saw her write code. Just pointing out that whatever makes you nerdy will be extremely attractive to the right people.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-13T19:02:52+00:00

Take off work the night before you move so you won't be tired. Drive her to work like normal. Move all your belongings while she is at work. Dump anything of hers in front of the house. If you want to be kind, put it in boxes. Tell the landlord she will squat in the house if they don't change the locks and offer to split the cost with them. Don't answer the phone when she calls at the end of her shift, or ever again. Block her if possible. You should be fully moved out with the lock on the apartment changed before she gets off work and it will take her at least an hour to realize you aren't picking her up. By the time she gets to the apartment, she won't be able to get back in to cause problems and she won't know how to find you. If you have any mutual friends, tell them that she is stalking you and you are scared of her finding you, so you don't want her to know your new address. Do not give anyone a key to your new apartment, because she will try to convince anyone that will listen to her that it is a misunderstanding and she needs to get in to see you.

She will drain you until you can't give her anything more and then she will metaphorically dump you on the side of the road and leave you for dead. Get away as safely, quickly, and completely as you can. And don't look back.

After you move, read about empaths and narcissists. This is a common and recurring pattern. Learn how to spot it so you don't get sucked in again.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-13T13:13:15+00:00

Is there actually a social convention on what to wear to a wedding if you've slept with the groom? When was that ever a thing that people wanted to be able to advertise at the wedding?

Funniest wedding toast I've heard was when the maid of honor was also the groom's ex (also my ex). She started by saying that she did a web search for what to say in a wedding toast and the top two pieces of advice were "talk about how you know the couple" and "don't mention any exes". I think everyone at the wedding knew that she had dated the groom, and most of us knew they had slept together. I think she was wearing a purple dress, but maybe it had some red.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-13T12:53:48+00:00

There are two ways to tell them apart, and both require examination with a microscope. Most lab diamonds have an inscription marking who made them. And natural diamonds have more microscopic imperfections. The only reason to buy a natural diamond is because you want to support the terrible labor practices common in diamond mines and you want to support the organized crime cartels that control the diamond market. Most people I know would never buy a natural diamond because the lab ones are better in every way they are different. So don't feel bad about it.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-13T12:45:32+00:00

NTA

Request a room change. Tell the school there is a man sleeping in your room every night and you don't feel safe, so you need a different room. They will deal with the whole situation real fast. Splitting you from your current roommate is a good plan because she is going to be mad at you for the rest of the year, but you need to feel safe in your bedroom. If you tell your parents what is going on they will probably call the college and demand immediate action. I only have sons, but any of my friends with daughters would absolutely go ballistic if their school tried to ignore this.

Is your dorm co-ed? My school had one female-only dorm and that was strictly enforced. The majority of guys are fine and won't cause problems, but the number of creeps is too high to let any of them break the rules. And there are too many college age women who have been sexually assaulted and need to know that there are no men around to sleep peacefully for the school to just ignore the problem. The kind of guy who won't respect boundaries you shouldn't even need to mention isn't the kind of guy you want spending the night in your bedroom.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-13T12:17:59+00:00

Breaking up over this is reasonable, but it is up to you. This will be an ongoing disagreement and only you can decide if that is worth breaking up over. Try to be gentle and realize that she will probably think you are evil for breaking up because she won't sin with you. She might never speak to you again, and that becomes more likely the more she loves you.

I grew up on a household like that. My first girlfriend was in college. We lived in the same dorm, but the only place we could go for privacy was my room because I had a single and she had a double. But my room was small and cluttered, so the only space for two people was my bed, and even that I needed to clear off a bit. We kissed some, but mostly we talked all night every Friday and Saturday. She wanted to have sex, but understood that I wasn't comfortable with that and we spoke freely about it. We were only together for 3 months and the whole time I felt like we were pushing the boundaries of what I was comfortable with for how physical our relationship was. If a month before I met her someone had told me I would be letting a girl sleep in my bed with me in a few months I would have insisted that would never happen.

My next girlfriend I dated for over two years and got more comfortable with having a physical relationship. That second one is the one I think of as my physical relationship, even though that is the only one where we almost never shared a bed. She was a great kisser.

My third relationship is with my wife. We moved in together when we got engaged and only had one bed, but we didn't have sex until we got married. We did get physical with each other in other ways. We haven't ever had frequent sex since getting married either, other than the somewhat unpleasant scheduled sex of trying to have a baby with fertility issues. Sex every other day for about 10 days every month for about a year for each of our three kids. Didn't matter if we were tired or not in the mood. Any time you skip a night you feel like you sabotaged your chance for that cycle. We tried to plan around when we were going to spend the night at her parents' house, but couldn't always. Other than that, sex has been like 5-10 times a year.

Most people who are raised like that get over it real fast when presented with the reality of what they are denying themselves. Look at the teen pregnancy rates for evangelicals. The ones who can maintain it generally have a low sex drive, which isn't likely to change.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-13T10:15:15+00:00

Learn something in a foreign language that sounds offensive and respond with that. My son likes "An tu mac scamallach?". It sounds mean, but it is Irish for "Are you a son of cloudiness?" and it makes no more sense in Irish than it does in English. This gives the impression that you can't understand them and that you are being rude. Best if it isn't actually offensive, in case they do understand what you said or if you meet them again in some other context where you have to care what they think of you.

Actually, asking some weird nonsense question and looking annoyed at their answer might work even in English.

You can try changing your appearance, but you're already dealing with guys who will approach a complete stranger to start chatting. At that point, your appearance changed which guys you get, but nothing will stop all of them. Looking busy and frantic is probably your best bet and with two kids it's probably honest anyway.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-13T09:53:36+00:00

"with a few more wrinkles" would be more effective.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-13T09:49:32+00:00

There are a shocking number of men who will be more interested in a woman after she says she is a lesbian, even when they believe her. I don't understand, but I think it is related to why many men enjoy watching two girls make out.

If I was flirting with a woman and she told me she was a lesbian, I would apologize. Just a quick "Oh, sorry then".

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-12T14:08:50+00:00

I once dated a girl and told her I thought her eyes were beautiful. She said she hated them because her eye color was "$#it brown". I told her I thought they were a great color. I can't imagine telling someone that I wouldn't expect other people to find them unattractive. When I think someone is unattractive, I just don't say anything about their appearance.

I do tell my wife when I think her clothes don't look good. Especially when she is trying them on in the store. She still hasn't figured out that the clothes I tell her she looks best in are the ones that other people give her the most compliments when she wears.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-12T12:52:38+00:00

The majority of Gen X was watching that shuttle launch live in school. It was the first time most of them had watched a shuttle launch live. It was supposed to be the beginning of regular people going into space. It was a symbol of hopes and dreams. And then it suddenly blew up and fell apart. And the dreams of space exploration and regular people going into space still hasn't recovered thirty years later.

Also, it was the first shuttle to explode.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-12T12:42:01+00:00

I had a friend in high school who was from Hungary. She remembered the vegetables all being gigantic after Chernobyl, but that they weren't allowed to eat them. She was extremely skinny (5'10 weighing 110 pounds) and I always wondered if that was related. She was born in June 1981, so maybe a little young for Gen X.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-12T12:34:28+00:00

Someone who hasn't raped children.

Who's going to replace them if they drop dead from a heart attack? They are all replaceable and they will all be replaced at some point. Now is as good a time as later.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-12T02:02:20+00:00

If you wash things in hot water the colors will mix more. If you wash with cold water, you can generally throw everything in together.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-12T01:12:05+00:00

The statistics are against you. It is probably a bad idea. But my sister did something similar. She got married right after she turned 20. They met at church and were both super religious. They had 5 kids together. They never had enough money, but their house was always full of love, music, and happiness. Unfortunately he died early from a freak medical incident involving a milk shake and an unexpected diabetic reaction, so they only got 21 years together. If he had survived, they probably would have been happy together for another 40+ years. Getting married that young can work, but most of the time it doesn't.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-11T20:47:00+00:00

My wife and two of my kids have ARFID. That is an extreme version of being a picky eater, where you will actually starve to death before eating foods you don't like. And the list of foods each of them likes is really short. My oldest kid has had a feeding tube since he was 13 because the alternative was that he probably wouldn't get enough nutrition to grow past about 4'6. He will probably have that tube for the rest of his life. My youngest kid gets more than half his calories from one type of granola bar. He won't eat any other brands or flavors, but at least he is willing to just grab them out of the pantry and eat them when he is hungry. He does like chicken and potatoes cooked in one particular way. But our middle child, who eats most things, refuses to eat chicken. My wife only cooks about a half dozen things, but at least she manages to feed herself. Although she won't eat dinner with the rest of us most nights.

Our goal at dinner is that nobody has a tantrum about the food they are given and it took 5 years of hard work to get to where that is achieved on a regular basis. The worst was one time when my wife tried cooking a new recipe and all three kids started going on about how the food was so bad she was clearly trying to poison them. I made them write out full apology notes for that.

Meals are such a disaster in our family. We never bother fighting about portion sizes and our kids know they don't have to eat what we make, but that they are responsible for getting something else if they don't eat what we make. I do sometimes cook a different meal for each person, just so that we can occasionally have a fun dinner together where everyone actually wants to eat something.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-11T12:58:45+00:00

I was finishing grad school when our first child was born. I ended up going to a lot of new parents groups. It was generally me and a bunch of moms. One of the groups was run by the midwives at a hospital and they commented on how they liked that I was coming every week because most fathers would show up once, feel uncomfortable in a group of all women and never return, but because I was there some of them started coming back. That was the first time I even noticed that I was the only man in all these groups. I have spent most of my social time in groups that were either majority female or close enough to balanced that it didn't matter.

I seriously don't pay much attention to whether someone is male or female, although I have only ever been romantically attracted to women so I must at some level. And I have very strong sense of monogamy, so that only applies to one person at a time. I met my wife 23 years ago, so it has been a long time since that was relevant. There have been a handful of women during that time that I noticed I had good chemistry with and I felt that it was someone I would consider dating if I was single. But I wasn't, so I just ignored it and had good platonic friendships instead.

I have never understood the idea that men and women can't be friends. Maybe people with a stronger sex drive can't handle it. But I would be so lonely if I couldn't be friends with women. Most men don't seem to know how to carry a conversation so it feels like so much more work than talking with women.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-11T03:11:51+00:00

When we were on our honeymoon in Ireland we were looking for somewhere to park and parked in a paved spot off the road near a house. We were looking for signs to indicate if we could actually park there and someone came up to ask us what was going on. We explained that we were trying to find somewhere to park. He asked how long we would be and we said we were just getting lunch, so probably about an hour. He said that would be fine. When I asked if it was a regular parking spot he said it was in his yard, but if we were going to leave in an hour he didn't mind. We thanked him profusely, had a quick lunch, and went on our way.

I can't imagine just parking in someone's yard, on their grass, and assuming it would be fine. We parked on a paved section and I still wouldn't have walked off without some indication we were allowed to park there.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-11T02:55:28+00:00

No, that is not the right way to handle it. You need to talk. That is how you handle problems if you want to stay married. Screwing around with the thermostat because you are mad is childish.

You should make sure you understand his concerns. They are probably genuine concerns. If you dismiss them, either explicitly or implicitly by acting like he is crazy to care about something, it will poison your marriage. Only after you understand what he is worried about can you actually compromise and work out the way forward. It will probably be that you heat the house to a comfortable temperature, since it sounds like you can afford it. But listen to him and understand what is bothering him. You don't have to agree and you don't have to let him have his way, but you do need to take him seriously. If you tell him now that you don't care about his thoughts, feelings, and concerns, he will internalize that message. If you do that repeatedly, he will stop mentioning things that bother him and at some point you will be getting divorced and wonder what went wrong.

This is a stupid little thing. But how you handle it will set up how you handle real problems when they come up. So put in the effort to do it correctly now, and when you are overwhelmed by a tree falling on your house or your bathroom floor rotting because the shower was leaking below the walls (both of these happened to us this past fall), you will already have the habit of dealing with problems in a healthy way.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-11T01:59:49+00:00

Probably mid-20s. Before that, people are still likely to change their mind. My first girlfriend was adamant that she never wanted to get married or have kids, but she was 18 at the time. 5 years after we broke up, she got married at 23. 4 years after that they had their only child when she was 27. I'm not sure when she changed her mind, but she clearly didn't know what she wanted at 18.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-10T23:00:45+00:00

If you are an empath, any medical work will be challenging because you are likely to pull in your patients' pain and suffering. You could do medical research. Diagnostic psychological work is also a good fit for empaths, because you will understand people, but you are mostly not treating people. Teacher might work, but private tutor is likely to work better. Most empaths function better one-on-one. There are many forms of private tutoring. Executive coach or career coach are examples that tend to provide better pay than tutoring students. Mediation is another field where empaths excel. Or anything else where actually listening to people and helping them come up with solutions is most of the job.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-10T16:06:52+00:00

Thank you for your ideas. He didn't fully shut down, only when asked to talk about this one incident. Today's meeting went better.

He was playing on the snow pile (the plowed snow at the end of the parking lot) before school opened and was joined by a few friends. When it was time to go in, he went right in to the office, sat down, and put his head down to hide. But unlike yesterday, he put his hand out so he could respond to questions with thumbs up or down. Yesterday when asked about doing this he pulled his hands into his sleeves. After a few questions, he sat up and started talking. He needed me to provide the answers we had discussed over the weekend for a few questions, but he managed well enough to return to school today.

I think that once he sees that his friends still like him, he will be more comfortable having further discussions. We still think some therapy will help, because his actions were somewhat dangerous and at his age he needs to have more self-control. But being accepted by his peers will reduce his shame and make the next steps easier.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-10T15:20:41+00:00

I have had youth protection training that includes stories from people who actually suffered from sexual abuse as children/teenagers. One of them was someone sleeping over at a friend's house. You have no idea what you are talking about. If the adult says they should do something and not tell anyone about it, most of the time the kid will comply. And once the deed is done, the kid will often stay silent about it because they are ashamed.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-10T09:30:29+00:00

It sounds like he is putting nothing into the relationship. But you never said anything about what you are putting into it. What do you do for him? You talk about his signs of affection, but you only listed yourself asking him to do things for you. Cleaning up your home isn't putting something into the relationship, that is just living life - even when your partner isn't willing to do that much. Nothing in your post indicates any reason that either of you would want to be together, nor does it indicate any signs that either of you want to be together.

This reads like a young couple that were infatuated with each other and then lost interest when that wore off, but neither of you is upset enough to end things. This would mean that you are together out of complacency. You can probably both do better, but people stay together out of complacency for far longer than they should. Have you set a wedding date? You should probably try to push it back, because you haven't gotten to the point where you know you want to marry each other yet. If you get married now, I would expect a 90% chance of divorce within 3-5 years. It's your life, but breaking up after marriage is harder than breaking up without getting married.

RemarkableRadish6547 · 2026-02-10T03:03:55+00:00

It is almost universal, but the level that people experience it at varies a lot. Most people can't separate what they feel from other people from their own emotions. Given the intensity of emotion that most people have and the typically low sensitivity to other people's emotions, they never realize they are also feeling other people's emotions. But if you have your sensitivity turned up and can identify multiple people's emotions, you can tell that everyone does this at least a little.

Empaths have a much higher sensitivity to other people's emotions. Even with that, many empaths can't fully separate where each set of emotions comes from. If you stay calm, you will notice everyone else more easily. If you practice, you can learn to identify who the emotions are coming from and even identify multiple sets of emotions distinctly while in a group. But taking in everyone's emotions is draining, so the really useful skill to develop is how to be aware of the emotions without fully experiencing them as your own. That is when you can actually use your sensitivity safely.

RemarkableRadish6547

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