“In the entire dataset, 29% of men said they never approached a woman in person before. 27% said it had been more than one year. This was larger for men in the age 18-25 group: 45% had never approached a woman in person,” according to the study.
A majority of single males surveyed reported fear as the main reason they do not approach women for dates in person. Fear of rejection and fear of social consequences were the two most common responses.
The data highlights a growing concern in the United States and abroad — loneliness. A 2023 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that almost half of U.S. adults report “measurable levels of loneliness.”
It's interesting to say the least. It seems as though the social repercussions and rejection are the most profound reason. While the fear of rejection is easy enough to digest. But I think the fear or social consequences is a relatively new construct.
From what I understand it's the fear of being viewed as a creep to approach a woman out of the blue. Which to me, is reasonable enough. But I don't think I have ever heard my old man or anyone of his generation bringing this to the table.
Yet I do remember asking my friends about picking up hints and whether or not men are really that bad at it. And most them saying the just don't want to risk misinterpreting it.
Perhaps there is an argument to be made that approaching women like this, has fallen out of social fashion. What do you guys think?
p.s. I hope this is casual enough of a conversation. I kinda screwed up my last one, I admit.
Edit: Here is a more detailed paper on the survey for those that are interested
Personally, from puberty through most of high school, I never approached any girls because I never had to--in my social setting it was totally normal and acceptable for girls to ask boys out, and I guess I was approachable enough, despite not being very popular, to get asked a fair amount. Yet I still had this culturally inherited concept that it should be me who was doing the asking, or at least learning how to do it. So I struggled with this a lot in my teenage years... part of the problem was that I also didn't have the stereotypical physical attraction to women, but a more personality-based one, so a lot of time was wasted trying to convert close platonic friendships into romantic relationships (maybe that works for some people, but not in my experience).
Ultimately, the woman I married was someone I approached without knowing her beforehand, but only after like weeks of making very mutual, not at all creepy eye contact walking back and forth on the same paths in the music center of our college campus. I think that's sort of the bare minimum: some signs of shared context, some shared interest or hobby, some smoke signals indicating mutual attraction. And for a minute I still thought maybe we were meant to be just friends, but obviously I was wrong, and part of how I know that is the way we met: with clear physical attraction established. This was all before dating apps, and I think I can see their appeal from that perspective; they reduce the uncertainty about "what kind of relationship is this going to become" to some extent.
Anyways, though, I'm pretty sure that I didn't have to put myself through the suffering of trying to "be a man" and build up the confidence to ask women out, because I was lucky to have a milieu in which they could comfortably take the lead. Heck, my wife might have been the one to break the tension eventually if it wasn't me. What I do regret, for sure, is the platonic friendships I lost with women during that phase in which I felt I was "supposed" to be converting them into girlfriends. The kind of reasoning that draws a direct line from changes in who is doing the asking out (for a variety of reasons) to male loneliness is really not helping any young men who are similarly confused.