[codesushi42]

Getting married is easy. And plenty of people don't want it. :) You'd be hard pressed to find a person who doesn't want to be a billionaire.

Try online dating, or go to a bar to meet a girl. It's a lot easier than you think, especially when you're gainfully employed.

[DanBC]

This is a little bit like telling someone with a phobia of spiders to just stop being scared of spiders.

[blfr]

If you have a phobia that impedes your life, you probably should overcome it. It's also easier to get over spiders, or get married than become a billionaire.

[DanBC]

Yes, if you have a phobia you should overcome it. We know that telling people to just get over it doesn't work. That's why we provide short courses of carefully planned therapy.

Similarly telling a lonely person to just get over it does nothing to help that person. It might even make things worse - increasing feelings of failure and hopelessness.

[yummyfajitas]

We know that telling people to just get over it doesn't work. That's why we provide short courses of carefully planned therapy.

These two sentences seem to contradict each other - the short courses of planned therapy are basically a therapist saying "get over it" and providing opportunities to ease into getting over it.

And in this particular case, I can state confidently that telling people to just get over it does work. I've done it with a number of people, mostly successfully. At first they think approaching women is just one of my firangi powers and completely impossible for a desi. Then they try it themselves and discover it works better for them than for me.

If you are in this situation, go to a pickup artist, red pill or other male self improvement subreddit and follow the FAQ. (Do NOT internalize the misogyny - that stuff is toxic.) Unless you are completely hideous in a manner that can't be fixed by lifting and eating right (read: facial disfigurement, muscular dystrophy) there is a simple program to follow to solve your problems.

[omegaham]

I'd refrain from the pickup artist / redpill subs, as the toxicity is genuinely pervasive, but the "just get out there and talk to people" advice is spot-on.

One thing that the FA crowd doesn't seem to realize is that you don't have to be attractive or even average to get into a relationship or friendship. Ugly people get laid all the time and have plenty of friends. The important thing is getting out there. And yes, it's hard. It's new, it's uncomfortable, and you suck at anything that you're new to. But the only way that you're going to get better at it is by getting out there and talking to more people.

[yummyfajitas]

There are core skills relating to attractiveness and not everyone picks them up intuitively. Without those skills, and without even knowing what they are, "get out there and talk to people" will be vastly less effective. Similarly, "just go to the gym and work out" will be far less effective than "follow starting strength".

Unfortunately the only people teaching those skills are redpill, pua, and similar sorts. I think this is mainly because many of the effective techniques contradict a lot of socially desirable dogma.

[anovikov]

In Slavic countries, men have to struggle with the opposite: how to avoid marriage at all costs.

[MrBuddyCasino]

Please elaborate - this could get interesting.

[anovikov]

I thought everyone is aware of that. Life of a Slavic man is sadly, similar to a life of an American black man [1], for the same reasons - poverty, low educational level, lack of opportunities, which causes crime and self-destructing behavior. Which results in that by the age of marriage, there is a shortage of men at least as bad as a shortage of black men in U.S. - except black women have a slim chance of getting into an interracial marriage - getting a European or other foreign guy for a Russian girl is more difficult.

Coupled with sexism meaning that women typically earn very little if anything, and their only chance to escape abject poverty is to get married, and because there are so many women for so few men and with nothing else to make the guy interested, pregnancy becomes the only option. To keep the guy married (especially given that divorce laws are very weak and not in general working in post-Soviet countries, and men lose little if they divorce), an extreme psychological pressure is required, which usually takes efforts of the whole girl's family. Except the very cynical guys, only chance to escape this is to keep as far from marriage as possible. This is probably why post-soviet population declines so fast.

Of course, the higher classes of society (e.g. coders) are exempt.

(the other side of this is domestic violence which is very common, and sometimes not even viewed as a problem, which is an even more sad side of the story)

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/20/upshot/missing...

[MrBuddyCasino]

Thanks. I don't think this is widely known.

[codesushi42]

The OP never mentioned he was scared of dating. He may have given up trying.

There's advice in the post, BTW. Did you read it?

In any case, there are far more many spouses than there are billionaires in this world.