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Uncle Robin's Advice for Lovelorn Geeks
Don't Waste Your Time on Geek Girls
Here you are, an obsessed coder and all that, spending 2/3 of your waking time online and clicking on Slashdot five times a day. Wouldn't it be nice if you could find a woman who shares your interests?
No!
A woman just like you wouldn't be there for you when you wanted a hug. She'd be obsessively coding or posting on Slashdot herself, and would brush you off when you needed her. What you really want is a woman who will be there for you when you get tired of staring at your monitor and need some loving, but will leave you alone and not demand your attention when you're busy. You don't want a Geek Girl. You want a woman who is willing and able to meet a geek's needs, which is not the same thing at all.
Men involved in activities that demand long periods of intense concentration (programmers, artists, writers, musicians, etc.) need women who will respect what they do and help them do it well, not women who compete with them.
We need what are now called "old fashioned girls" who don't mind cooking our meals, rubbing our sore shoulders, and running our bath water for us. There are plenty of these women out there. They're as eager to find you as you are to find them. The trick is sorting through the 6 billion people on this planet to find the woman who is right for you instead of wasting your time on women with whom you cannot possibly build a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship.
Forget the Girls in Playboy
The silicone-enhanced babes you see posing in skin mags and on porn Web sites aren't interested in you. Neither are the blondies you see hanging on football players' arms, and even if one of them suddenly decides you'd be a nice change after the other men she's had in her life, you'll probably be disappointed with her.
I've gone out with more than a few "hot babes" in my time (I wasn't always married) and I generally found them to be more trouble than they were worth. Women who look great aren't necessarily good in bed, and those who have learned how to use their looks as a tool to manipulate men will almost always make your life miserable in the long run. If nothing else, they're expensive. Do you have any idea how much someone like Pamela Anderson spends on clothes, makeup, and cosmetic surgery every year? Trust me: it's more than you can afford unless you're a rock star or the CEO of Oracle (Hi, Larry!), and even then it's more than she's probably worth.
When you take off their clothes and their makeup, many "hot" women are really rather plain. The trick is to find a woman who doesn't spend a lot of time and money cuting herself up, but is pleasant to hold once all the packaging is removed. She'll be more likely to want some cuddling than the vain ones, and, unlike them, will concentrate on loving you instead of worrying about getting her hair messed up.
Practical hint: ever notice how, at a dance or in a bar, 90% of the men try to glom on to 10% of the women? Be smarter than those guys! Pay attention to the women who look nice but unspectacular and are being ignored because they aren't perfectly dressed or made up. The best software usually doesn't come in the fanciest box, right? The same goes for girls.
It's Okay to be Tongue-Tied
Don't worry about other men being "smooth talkers" while you're not. Many, possibly most, of your male ancestors were even less verbal than you, but they still managed to reproduce. (See your mirror for evidence.) Women don't always choose men based on slick opening lines. Indeed, many women tend to be put off by prepared "seduction" speeches, and prefer an honest, if slightly tongue-tied, guy to one who who comes across as having practiced pickup lines for hours on end.
And your clothes don't make all that much difference to women as long as they're appropriate for the time and place. Be clean and neat. That's all you need.
A woman who is only interested in your designer outfits is not only likely to be too shallow for you, but may also be interested in seeing you only in your fancy clothes, not out of them. This is not the right woman for you!
There's More to Life Than Computing
The biggest mistake I see computer-obsessed men make when getting to know women is to talk about nothing but computer stuff all the time. My wife uses her computer all day long as a working tool, but neither knows nor cares what kind of NIC (a 3Com) or how much RAM (64 MB) it has inside. If I want to discuss PC hardware I do it with male friends, not with my wife.
The best way to handle a conversation with a woman, especially one you've just met, is to find out what interests her. Ask her questions! Not whether she likes to be tied to the bed with ribbons and have her tummy tongue-tickled (at least not on a first date) but about her hopes and dreams in life, favorite TV shows, and other general interest things like that. Work and school are usually safe conversational starting points.
You've heard this before, but body language is more important than your words. So look at the girl! I mean her eyes, not her breasts. Don't cross your arms and legs as though you're trying to protect yourself from her. If you want to touch her arm, and she's close, go ahead. Maybe she'll touch you back. If your touch wasn't overly intrusive, returning it will be a natural, almost instinctive, reaction on her part.
You're a little shy and awkward? No big deal. She may be just as shy as you are. Don't push her. If she finds you at all attractive, she'll find subtle ways to be close to you without making it look as if she's being pushy.
And if the girl finds you unattractive, she'll let you know that, too (so you can dump her before you get too serious). Paying attention is the key to picking up the signals either way. If you're having trouble understanding the lady's vibes, ask questions! All females come with HOWTOs. Verbal ones. Ask them questions like, "Does this feel good?" and they'll answer. They also like honest compliments, so if you touch the back of her hand and it makes you feel all warm inside, go ahead and say, "Touching the back of your hand makes me feel all warm inside."
That's certainly a lot classier than, "You got nice boobs," which is a statement virtually guaranteed to put off almost any woman who isn't selling her body for drug money.
In other words, you don't have to be slick with women, but being stupid or crude with them gets you nowhere. (Unless you like stupid, crude women.)
Teenagers Take Heart: It Gets Better
All teenage boys are idiots when it comes to girls. And teenage girls are idiots when it comes to boys. The girls who laugh at you in high school laugh because they're nervous and, if you're exceptionally bright, posibly because they're a little bit scared of you. Sooner or later those same girls will get over their stupid crushes on Ricky Martin (in my time it was Ringo Starr), and other unreachable figures, and decide to look seriously at guys like you. This change generally comes between the ages of 18 and 25. Meanwhile, you may have matured a bit yourself by then, so that when the ditzy girls of today turn into tomorrow's adult women, you will no longer look or act like the dork they thought you were in high school
One warning: be gracious, not obnoxious, to girls you find ugly at the age of 15 or 16. There was a girl named Jessica who had a slight crush on me in high school for some unkown reason. She had horrible acne, bad posture, braces, ugly glasses, and wore tacky, faded dresses. She was also a straight-A student -- and slightly arrogant about it. I was not nice to this girl. Hardly anyone was -- except a very ordinary, slightly geeky guy named Mike.
At 18, Jessica suddenly changed. It was like a movie makeover. She got new glasses and the braces came off. She got a better wardrobe, her acne cleared up, and she stopped being stuck-up about her academic achievements. And she grew ... breasts. She took longer than most to develop in the chest department, but the results were worth waiting for. You know the rest of the story. It was Mike all the way. I'd blown my chance by being a jerk. I still have a flat spot on my forehead from banging it against the wall over Jessica.
Women Are More Complicated than Computers
I think this is why so many guys hide their heads in their monitors instead of going out and meeting women. Understanding women is harder than figuring out the hardest computer game, harder even than setting up a secure 200-client network running *BSD. But women can offer more satisfaction than even an overclocked, dual-Celeron workstation, so learning how to deal with them is worth the extra effort.
I believe the greatest frustration about women for men who are used to dealing with Open Source software is that you cannot fix flaws you find in them. You pretty much have no choice but to take them the way they are. For example, my wife likes to redecorate frequently, which sometimes annoys me, but I've learned to shrug my shoulders and call this part of her personality a feature, not a bug, and to accept it with the same good grace with which I accept a certain respected coworker's unique approach to the English language.
But I take pride in the fact that I am just as much of a mystery to my wife as she is to me, and that she can't change my source code any more than I can change hers.
Perhaps this is the true secret of finding a woman to love: knowing that there is no such thing as a perfect female, but that a woman worth loving is worth loving in spite of her imperfections, just as you are worth loving in spite of your imperfections -- to at least one woman in this world, who is probably sitting alone right now, wishing she could find a fine, brilliant (if slightly shy) man like you to fill that big, empty spot in her life.
I'm seeing a lot of posts here that I think are a but unfair against the author. Just because he's touting this as advice for the "Lovelorn Geek" does not mean all lovelorn geeks are his target audience. Naturally each and every "geek" will have his own level of social abilities and may or may not need any of this advice. Figure it out.
Some of his advice did sound a bit "old school" or un-PC to some of you, but face it: there are both men and women out there who would be perfectly happy in such a relationship. They're not trying to oppress feminism, they're just trying to get into a "traditional" relationship, which may have been the way they've been raised. Personally, that isn't me, but the advice STILL APPLIES.
I've sought and dated a couple of "geek" girls in my time, and I doubt that I would intentionally seek out another. It's not that we didn't get along great or didn't have a good time while we were together, but these women didn't *challenge* me in the ways I wanted to be challenged. Now, I'm not saying that there *aren't* geek girls out there who can still geek it up but have an immensely healty appetite in other things, but in my experience a person tends to only have one major hobby, and if computers are it, computers are it. When you put two of these types geeks together in the same place for the rest of their lives, you (as a pair) tend to lack any desire to do anything else but geek.
Find a woman that's your *complement*, not your *supplement*. Nobody's perfect, and if you can find a partner that is strong in the areas you are weak, and you can accept and love each other despite (or by way of) those inconsistencies, together you can do anything.
THAT's the kind of relationship I want, and his advice applies.
It's like women are not even people to the author... just some kind of ``pleasure automata'' to serve, not dissimilar to those computers which give so much satisfaction. A few choice quotes:
``I want a wife who'll give me a blowjob, rub my feet, and have dinner ready for me when I get home from a long day of hacking. I'd like a wife who is my personal slave, because, hey, that's all marriage really is.''
How's that for a big sweeping generalization, (All glamorous women ``aren't worth it,'') coupled with objectification. (Women == software.)
Yeah, because really the issue here is how male geeks can get chicks without changing any aspect of themselves! Obviously our author can't think outside of his box...
``But you know, no woman would stand a chance of giving the same satisfaction as running a beowulf cluster,'' as if women and computers are even remotely comparable in some way.
``In fact, I originally though about GPLing our marriage, but wasn't too fond of the free distribution clause, so settled on a proprietary fork of BSD.''
The primary trouble with geeks meeting people is not so much any misunderstandings of social etiquette and (possibly lack of) associated skills, but the unwillingness to stop thinking of the external world in terms of a computer-related mindset. The above article does nothing to persuade its readers to move beyond the ``all the world's a computer and we are but its processes'' mentality, yet ditching such a fixed and limited schema is imperative not only for meeting other people who don't share such a schema, but for personal growth and maturation.
People (including women) aren't automata, there's no ``system'' for ``getting'' them, and instead of analyzing people and trying to find the perfect one, analyze yourself and change into the person who will attract people you're interested in.
There's much more to life than computers and /.
NetBSD: the cathedral vs the bizzare.
> compete for...for what?
Cycles, bandwidth, disk space... important stuff like that.
Hmm. *ponder*
Going out with a geek girl as an excuse to upgrade the home network. Definite possibilities there 8-)
I'm married to a geek (my wife and I are both CS PhDs), and I couldn't be happier. I know many other such couples who are also happy. It is not a question of whether she uses computers, but whether she's on the same wavelength as you. Do you enjoy the same books? Can you hold each other's interest in conversation? Do you get the same jokes? Do you like the same friends? Having a close intellectual relationship, along with a close emotional relationship, can be very fulfilling.
I also find that my wife is more understanding when I do something a non-geek would consider just too wierd, like staying up until dawn hacking or playing with some new toy. She understands, 'cause she's been there.
Translation: if you are insensitive to your partner's needs, then you don't want a partner like you. We're agreed on that point, but on the same count, what would she want with you? Being a geek is no excuse for being insensitive.I find that my wife is more understanding when I do something a non-geek would consider just too wierd, like staying up until dawn hacking or playing with some new toy. She understands, 'cause she's been there. We cut each other some slack, 'cause we recognize when the other person is in that place. Also, we hack together. Each of us spends more time at the computer than a non-geek partner would consider reasonable, but since we have two linux boxes and DSL, there's no resource conflict, so what's the problem?
I can't begin to list the number of ways I find this offensive. Well, actually, I can, and will:I would like to take this oppurtunity to invite all of you to take one more look at the topic this was posted under.. What's that? It's.. humor..? That's right everyone! I'll agree, however, that if you take this article dead seriously, it's highly offensive. However, I don't think you should.
~ Kish
The problem is that the article misrepresented "geek girls" in a poor light and it did so to a very large audience. Who, might I ask, are geek girls supposed to find a date with? Your "traditional" male is frightened of geek girls due to superiority/inferiority of intellect issues and now geek males have been informed that geek girls are undesirable.
This also begs the question: why can't geek girls be supportive, compassionate, and loving? The truth is that geek females range in their capacity to fulfill these qualities just as much as your geek male. Certainly there are geek males who are compassionate. It's the blanket condemnation of geek females that is problematic.
Another /.er made the statement that a woman needs to serve the geek in question selflessly because that's what love is about: being selfless. I won't dispute that - but the original article failed to make the point that a man need be just as selfless. Guys need to be willing to drop coding for a night because sometimes their partner needs them too. Love is about give and take, and both parties need to be willing to give.
George Will: Even the continents drift.
Got to disagree with you there, Roblimo. I'll disclaim by stating that everybody has different tastes in what they're looking for in a SO, but here's my take on this one:
Find someone who can and will drag your ass out of your chair every so often. Find someone who you feel is on par with you - they don't have to know computers, but they'd better be able to hold the line in a decent discussion without all of this "well, I'm sure you know best" crap that some people seem to be stuck with (my experience is with women, but I know guys who are like this).
IMHO, the best lover and companion isn't someone who caters after you 24/7. It should be a tit-for-tat type deal; I wash, you dry. Hell, some of the best relationship moments I've had have even revolved around disagreements -- remember, competition is a Good Thing(tm). If she just lets you win all the time, you'll get soft. Of course, the caveat to this is that you both always have to know that, in the final analysis, you're always on the other person's side before anyone elses.
It's sappy, but the best example I can think of for this sort of relationship is from "Mad About You", that series with Helen Hunt and Paul Riser. Love each other, support each other, but most important: be one another's best friend.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
But there's a trick to "getting girls to like you." It's not a magic potion or a pick-up line - nothing will make a girl like you. (It has to come from the heart.) But a girl can discover that they like you by getting to know you - and here's the tricky part. Be friends with girls first!
It's hard for a lot of guys, particularly guys (like me) who've, in the past, only ever struck out. But if you see a girl you like, and you want to give a relationship a chance at being real, you can't rush it. Strike up a conversation, spend time with her - and don't rush anything! Believe me, you can wait. You've done it in the past, haven't you?
The simple fact is, you wouldn't want to be intimately involved (and no, I'm not just referring to sex) with someone who you wouldn't want to be at least friends with. A relationship is about communication and openness, and those require trust - and you have to develop trust over time. Be friends with girls; not only will you gain knowledge about the way an extra X chromosome makes a human's mind work, but you might just find that people do, in fact, like you for who you are. It's not so big a jump from "She's my friend" to "She's my girlfriend," after all.
But I have problems when "Uncle Robin" excludes entire female populations from consideration. When he says, no geek girls, and don't think too much about the really pretty ones either, isn't he going against the whole idea of considering people on their own merits, as opposed to group affiliation? Granted, "pretty" girls who spend a lot of time on their outsides sometimes, maybe often, have rotten insides. But how is it that a geek girl "competes" in an unhealthful way? Don't you want someone who can UNDERSTAND when you're talking about a problem at the office/boxen/latest Linux convention? Or would you rather have a very nice girl, who is clueless when it comes to what you DO 80 hours a week, fix you some cookies and run a nice hot bath?
I mean, come ON. I'm a (pseudo)geek girl. I have a geek man. We get along famously. If anything, I'm MORE accepting of his computer obssession because I share some of it. A woman who doesn't Get It may not Get You.
Just, all I'm saying is, don't just banish us from consideration with a flick of the finger because we're too much like you, or might compete for...for what?
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
If you thought this was smart, please avoid books on NLP and head straight for Erving Goffman, whom you can thank for ideas like "personal space." NLP (when yanked out of the theoretical realm and applied in genuine flirty-type social situations)is fraught with silly assumptions.
F'rinstance, if a girl was flirting with you, and you "intentionally match your conversation partner's state & style of communication," you are essentially emulating heteronormative female flirtation behavior, which might be endearing to a bi-punk-chick, but will almost certainly put off a girl who expects you to flirt in the manner of a straight boy, such as the old-fashioned girls cited in the article above.
(Furthermore, if your Jedi mind trick actually works on the lady, think of the shame when she finds your bookmark on the "how to get laid" chapter of your silly New Age concieve-of-the-human-mind-as-a-hunk-of-programma
If you really need to read about this sort of non-verbal social communication, head straight for _Interaction_Ritual_, by the aforementioned Goffman, for a chaper on (I think) "Embarassment and Social Form."
oh, and BTW: sorry for the anthro jargon. Heteronormative means basically "according to norms for straight people."