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?
These are the cheat codes for having all the right attitudes and environment to find a person who wants to be more than friends. I think a lot of the other ways to get out of it would emerge from applying these.
Note that the more people realize the first, the less valid the last becomes. The fact that many of our societies are sexist create this artificial division where women hang out mostly with women and men with men, and we see each other as different. As someone who grew up in a post-communist Eastern European country, I gotta say, living in a society where women have men friends and men have women friends from an early age was absolutely spectacular. And it just breeds opportunities for developing social skills and romantic relationships. Often friends stay friends after the romance is over.