Why Rejection Is A Good Thing

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For the record, what I was referring to had nothing to do with wanting to talk a lot. I'm not much of a talker. But it's getting too off topic to try to explain what I mean again.

OK. To state it in a more simple way talking doesn't have a lot (if any) relevance whether I like a girl or not. I decide that long before I talk to her. If she evaluates me based on talking, then we would clash big time, but then girls that tend to do that won't "play the game" with me.

Could you explain how the law of large numbers applies here? Performing more experiments helps to bring the result closer to the expected value, but it can't change the expected value. Asking more people doesn't make you more attractive. If you fail 9 times, you may succeed the 10th time. If you fail 99 times, you'll probably going to fail the 100th time. If you failed 999 times then it's very likely that you will fail the 1000th time. Sure, you've got to try to succeed, but trying more doesn't change your chances.

The law of large numbers roughly states that the more events are allowed to occur, the odds that an extremely unlikely event will occur increase.

Let's say that odds of getting a date are 1:100. If you try 1 time, it's impossibly unlikely you'll get a date. If you try 99 tmes, it's unlikely you WON'T get a date. The reason being is a probability of something happening never reflects reality, nor does reality reflect probability. Just because something is extremely unlikely, as long as a possibility no matter how remote exists, your 1% success may happen the first attempt, the 56th attempt, 99th attempt, or 100th attempt, or anywhere in between. If there's going to be 1 success out of 100, every attempt brings you one step closer to success. So the more you try, the more odds shift in your favor.

And that's just making the attempt. That doesn't factor in other things you can do to influence the probability.

Some things that will help: Wide dating pool--have a large number of acquaintances you're in regular contact with and comfortable speaking with. Make a point of adding two people to that list every week, and do this until it becomes habit. Make no more than 3 attempts to get a date with any one of these--multiply 100 by 3 (if you really only have a 1% chance, then you just tripled your odds of getting a date). Build relationships OUTSIDE the LTR context. People are less likely to reject people they know. Actually BE interested in other people--everyone wants to feel special, so the more you make someone feel good about themselves, the more they want to hang out with you. The way to do that is show that you're interested in them and things that are important to them. It won't work if you're a fake. If you're overly complimentary to the point of cheap flattery, people will see right through that. Set off someone's creep detector and your chances just dropped to 0. Getting around that, having a genuine interest and SHOWING it without coming across as a fake, lavishing people with compliments without flattery, etc., are probably more difficult for aspies than for NTs. What I always did was figure out ways of being present without being intrusive. When I'm in new and uncomfortable situations, I just hang out. People tend to look at me and say, "ok, he's weird and awkward, but he's harmless." Sooner or later someone will feel sorry enough for me to speak, and that's when I hit them with questions about themselves. They're interested in my primarily because I'm a loner and they don't have anyone else to talk to at the moment. Now all of a sudden they're telling me their life stories and we're having a CONVERSATION.

At the end of the night that person doesn't really know much more about me than before we started. But that doesn't matter to me. What matters is I got to hang out with a cool person.

That kind of mentality will also modulate the odds of getting dates. It's a lot easier than it seems, you just have to get past the illusion of how difficult it is. Manipulating those odds can only work in your favor.

Thanks for clarification.

Two people a week is a lot for me. I work and study full-time so unfortunately I don't have enough spare time to meet that many new people. In order to increase my odds, I look for people who are similar to me. It didn't result in any relationships yet, but I did find a few friends this way. It's unlikely that I will ever be in a relationship, but at least I'm going to have friends. This year was the first year that someone remembered about my birthday (I got a few text messages from girls). It's not much, but it meant a lot for me.

Relying on the law of large numbers in this context is equivalent to doing guess-work in order to try to solve a math problem that has a known solution. It's not only ineffective, the proposed model doesn't account for the fact that each rejection will increase your depressive score, and decrease you confidence. Even worse (from my perspective) is that if you ask random girls for a date, some of them might actually say yes, but then since you asked a random girl, chances are big that she will decide she only wants a one or a few dates, which for me will increase the obsessive score (the later she does this the worse). Thus, using the law of large numbers in this context will inevitably lead to either being severely depressed or obsessive about somebody you cannot get over.

It's also quite unnecessary as there are ways that can be used to increase success. I don't want to calculate the square root of 1,000,000 by drawing a random number, calculating the square, compare, and then draw another random number until there is a match, so why would I want to do this in dating?

On the contrary, rejection hurts a lot when it's by someone you really like. Like if your dream guy or girl that you have been obsessing over for weeks doesn't like you back or rejects you, i'm sure that doesn't feel too good.

Well, if you're studying, the last thing you need to focus on are your social life and romantic relationships. Those things will only distract you. Never give up what you want for what you want RIGHT NOW. Make sense? The reward later will always be greater if you put it off because you'll have more freedom to pursue a wider variety of relationships. You do better studying without the added pressures of relationships and other outside commitments.

That aside, assuming no impediments to socializing, it's always more important and more productive to focus on building relationships with friends. The key to doing it is understanding that YOU are the least important and least significant person on the planet (to anyone else, that is). If you live your life in such a way that everyone else is more important than your own needs, then people will come out of the woodwork to help you. You'll have so many women who want to be with you that your toughest task is not dealing with rejection, but rather deciding who you'll reject yourself. Generous people have awesomeness oozing out of their pores, and it's irresistible.

If you've never put it into practice, implementing the Golden Rule might take a lot of time before you become hate-proof, i.e. immune to haters. But dealing with the concerns of others as more important than your own concerns will get you above the hate. If you want to attract friends and MOOS, this will get them every time.

Caveat: It doesn't work for fakes. If you aren't obsessed with loving everyone on the planet, you will fail.

Two things:

1. Not everyone has trouble getting a date. Some people have that killer combination of personality and means. Some people have a talent for the hard sell. And some people are dirty and manipulative enough to get dates they don't deserve. I don't have all the answers. All I know is given fixed odds of something happening randomly, the more times you repeat an event, the more likely you'll have success at least once.

2. You are focusing too much on negative emotions. I'm aware of the risks. But the benefits outweigh the risks. At the end of the day, you have a date, something you didn't have before. If all someone does is allow themselves to be guided by negative emotions, and decisions and attitudes towards dating are based on emotion, then that person is a victim of their own poor judgment. In short, leave emotion out of the decision-making process.

I mean, the whole point is to get past the emotional side of asking someone out. The more you do it, the more routine it becomes, the less of an emotional impact it's going to have. You can't count your initial successes by how many dates you get. You count your success by how many times you made someone smile, or the minutes in conversation you spent with someone, or how many times you made someone feel really good because you thought highly enough of her to ask her to coffee. Doesn't matter that she rejected you. What matters is she now knows you think she's cool enough to want to hang out with her. MOOS get a kick out of that kind of thing. Men AND women. Yes, I'm ok with women asking men out, but given social norms it's just a good idea for men to practice taking the initiative. Now, getting a date is what you WANT. Awesome people get dates. So if you want to get dates, start doing what awesome people do. It requires a whole different way of thinking, and the emotional side of rejection is just not a part of that way of thinking. The sooner you get past that, the easier it's going to be to ask someone out.


Because dating isn't a math problem in which the answer is immediately knowable. In dating, or anything probabilistically involving large numbers, the odds steadily increase in your favor with each rejection. It means you're one request closer to getting an actual date. It's all very Gaussian.

The other thing: You don't ACTUALLY know what the odds are. Bear in mind that I'm ASSUMING that odds are extremely low. Even with a 1% chance of success, that 1% COULD happen on the first try. What if the odds were ACTUALLY 50%? Again, you have no way of knowing that. With those kinds of odds, had you KNOWN that to begin with, would you be more or less encouraged to ask someone else out? It might as well be a near-certainty that if you ask 100 people out, you'll get AT LEAST one date. And that's being pessimistic…I'd say 10% would be more realistic, but I'm flying blind here and can't say I know that for a fact. 1% is just playing it safe because I don't actually believe it could possibly be that bad. I think I'm probably the biggest dork on the planet and apparently even I have some attractive qualities. Maybe some people have to work harder than I do, some less, but I'd rather have to ask 100 women out with a strong likelihood that I'd get ONE date than ask 2 people out with better odds and not even have THAT kind of certainty. Even 50/50 odds don't GUARANTEE an actual outcome of 1 rejection to 1 acceptance.

Right, but even if that was the case, I don't think it would help me a lot for somebody neurodiverse. It would probably make it even worse because the further down the road rejection happens the worse it is.



But I don't want a date, a one-night stand, or anything like that. I want a long-term emotional connection with somebody that is unlikely to dump me.



I know that is the NT way of doing it, but that strategy will only give me negative emotions because my ultimate goal is not a date, and I'd prefer a direct rejection rather than a date or two followed by the girl moving on to the next guy because I wasn't interesting enough.



I agree that dating isn't math, but I disagree that things improve with quantity. For me, things only improve with quality, meaning you select which girls to become interested and obsessed about based on how they behave towards you rather than just randomly asking girls for a date.



Odds depend to a huge degree what they communicate to you. In my experience, if I test them first without talking to them for a month, the ones that remain after that time are interested with an odds rate close to 100%, and the odds they will leave you once you get to know them are low. That's because you have already built a mutual attachment.

There's no real way to avoid that, though. I mean, not for anyone. The more routine something is, the more you adapt to it, the less of an emotional impact it's going to be.


Like I said, there are probably as many ways to accomplish this as there are people looking for a date. For the sake of this discussion, I'm less interested in the LTR phase as I am just getting to know someone. We don't do ourselves any favors if we walk into the situation with an agenda, regardless of how innocent it appears.


Meh…I'd still just be happy to have the opportunity to get to know someone a little better. Besides, I'm not worried about "being interesting enough." My mentality going into the situation is that she is far more interesting than I am. I'm just honored to get an hour with her to hear more about HER. I don't care if she finds me interesting, although that would be nice. And if she does move on to the next guy, good for her! That puts us both one step closer to finding the ideal person for each of us. And the next time we have coffee, I'll ask her how her date went…


Great if you can afford to be picky.

And I don't mean randomly asking girls for a date. I think you have to ask girls out that you actually KNOW. The trouble is how do you get to know so many girls without going out? 5 minutes on common turf, that's how. Take 5 minutes in passing, get on a topic that interests her, let her talk, call time when 5 minutes are up. You really want to know more and you're available at --:-- on mm/dd/yy. Lunch is on me. BAM…that's how you attempt to get a date with pretty much anyone you want within a few minutes of just meeting them.


Nothing wrong with that.

The law of large numbers, as opposed to quality, just means that if you really are purely picking at random, you eventually get close to 100% chance of actually getting a date the more you ask different people out. It's practically impossible that you CAN'T get a date that way. In reality, nobody actually does ask random women out, which boosts the odds. In reality, the nicer you are to people, the more willing they are to hang out with you--which, again, boosts the odds in your favor. Ultimately, what you want are repeat dates that end up being steady relationships in the long term. Eventually you'll want to narrow your dating pool to just those you can count on getting dates with. So at some point, you can cut those you have less a chance with and pretty much only date women who will go out with you on a regular basis. At that point, you can pretty much pick whoever you want an exclusive relationship with.

No, it doesn't feel good.. at all. But it's a part of life & it happens. Plus there's a lot to learn from it in the long run.. about yourself, how you react to things, how well you can learn to control your emotions vs. allow them to control you for too long, how to accept rejection and deal with it so it becomes easier etc.

When I was dealing with a very significant rejection I reminded myself that I wasn't losing anything I never had, I just wasn't gaining a relationship.. and that I was still just as whole as I was before the rejection & that it (the rejection) doesn't change my worth one iota. I found that thinking along these lines was quite helpful in accepting it and moving forward.

The thing is I don't want to adapt to dating rejection. I think I'll start a new thread about obsessive attachments and write down how this works for me and why it means I cannot do traditional dating, and why many other neurodiverse people shouldn't do it either. I'm fine with adapting to socialization in order to get along with strangers, but I'm not fine with compromising my needs in the friendship and relationship area.



If I liked people a little more, and wanted to have some friends, I would be fine with that approach, but then it would be for friendship only, and that's it. It would never go any further than that. I have quite some female friends, but those are people I've stumbled upon on the net, and they are all neurodiverse. We are not friends in the typical sense, but rather discuss things and help each other out on a regular basis.



I've been though that before. I don't ask girls I know for a date. They are in the friendzone.



Not at all. The chance of ending up dead (from suicide) is bigger than the chance of getting a useful date. If it doesn't go that wrong, it typically ends with giving up as self-esteem goes towards zero.