I’m an attached guy similar age range to OP in PICK UP CULTURE.

Unlike OP, I managed to land a successful match on a dating app and have since gone steady.

However, I was single like him once and I respect his bravery to keep at his own game. I was there in that former pain. I can relate and empathise.

Some of the comments are plain unrealistic and socially unreasonable in their expectations to OP.

The OP brought up a few good points regarding white-knighted and self-virtuous behaviour. It reeks so toxically online. Speaks volumes on how socially inhumane people are.

OP has already stated his stagnating experiences in social events, school activities and the like. People are shaped by their experiences. Who are you to question?

Most of you can’t seem to relate that he felt pushed over the edge with no other option or space to interact with the opposite gender. Many of you are so easy to dismiss him for being dangerous and creepy by seeking to try approaching / talking up girls in public places. I guess society has dismissed you badly in your real-lives and make you miserable?

Hypocritically, if the OP wrote a salty rant on how no ladies have ever liked him, why he’s single, and some misogyny, all of you would instead be slamming him for not putting himself out there and being a whiny spoilsport.

OP has never expressed he is sore on his fate. Yet you all still slam him for trying. And even calling him out for being sore. Don’t get personal if you can’t get your facts right.

For those who mentioned Pickup Artist wannabe, the lame comparison reflects on yourself. Out of touch from Dating Apps? Dating Apps and writing Intros is also some form of “Pick-Up” behaviour. Albeit online, not in real life.

The Internet also doesn’t owe you a duty of care for tailor-worthy content. Some (not all) of you launched very personal attack towards the OP on this. If you have an annoying issue regarding OP’s long confession, no TL;DR or that punctuation is misused. That’s your own darn problem. Stop projecting your own illiteracy that onto the OP. You chose to read the confession, at your own will.

To those who mocked him for spending too much time over-formulating and asking OP to get his ass off to go outside. Don’t forget that OP already spent his past 2 years outside, away from keyboard, working on himself. Only spend I presume 1-2 hours to write his confession? Whilst for you yourself, I also see your name pop up so frequently on the comments section in NUSWhispers? Who should be the one getting his ass off the keyboard and stop being the justice warrior?

As a former single myself, I can totally relate to why many other guys continue to remain Single. Other than the usual issues people mention, what people DO NOT MENTION is peer pressure by society to be socially perfect in decorum. Upon having a track record that you creep girls out, you get socially condemned.

You got to learn that the problem isn’t necessarily on you and creep isn’t a total reflective indicator of your failures.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this is why so many guys give up and accept their fate to be single. And for the mental health rating to be so badly affected. A fear of judgment if they tried their own way to practice and work on it.

Single guys, if you have male friends who are stumping your social growth, overly supervising your image towards girls and being unreasonably critical on how you express yourself towards women, I beg you to reconsider your toxic “friendship” aka “brotherhood”.

It may be better to stand strong alone in your own struggle. A healthy balance of dating apps whilst finding confidence in your own way might work just fine.

When my sister was in uni she dated a married man who told her he’d leave his wife for her. When she got pregnant by him, possibly deliberately in an attempt to speed up his leaving his wife, he ended the affair and went MIA.

She was completely devastated and humiliated. She’s made it clear we’re not to tell her daughter about the affair, she said she’d tell her when she was old enough.

My niece is now 15 and it turns out my sister has been heavily discouraging her from asking questions about her biological father by saying she’s too traumatized to talk about it, implying it’s a way darker story than it is. My poor niece has just been assuming she’s the biological daughter of some monster. And worse, when she’s in trouble my sister has gotten into the habit of telling her she’s just like her father.

So, when my niece started tearfully confiding in me about how she has some anger issues so she’s afraid she’s going to turn out to be a monster like her biological father, I told her the truth. This has caused a huge rift between my sister and her daughter, and my sister is furious with me for telling a story it wasn’t my place to tell.

She claims she was going to tell her the truth when she was ready, but I don’t really believe her and I think she was doing a lot of damage to her daughter by withholding the truth and implying her biological father was a monster and comparing her to him.

Here is what netizen thinks:

• “When she was ready” would have been when her daughter found out, or her remarks of “You’re just like him” were finally unable to keep a grip on her.

• My great-grandmother told stories like this about my great-grandfather being a raging alcoholic. My cousin is doing a genealogy and turns out there’s a lot of evidence that he was nothing like her stories. Which is fun because we have loads of generational trauma from my grandfather on down that comes directly from her “you’re going to be just like him” comments.
  
• Hnm.. the sister manipulated the guy by getting pregnant on purpose and is now taking it out on her daughter. I smell a personality disorder.

Am a long-term working Mum with a daughter in NUS.

She has faced her fair share of dating and it has been quite a disaster. Either the boy had differences or that she faced bouts of being cheated on.

Most of her boyfriends were found either in school or on a dating app. Just because those boys went via the so-called “acceptable” means to find a date, doesn’t guarantee my approval nor did they treat my daughter properly.

As much as I don’t know enough on this specific boy, I have never seen anyone in ages writing sincere. wholesome notes to others. It is such a nostalgic throwback to my time of dating. Everything being much simpler, face-to-face and genuine.

I may still feel sceptical on behalf of my daughter given he is still a total stranger. However, I would still support my daughter to consider him a try.

At least my daughter would have already seen and vibed the boy in real life. Not like on those silly dating apps where whatever you see on a “profile” is not necessarily what you get in real life.

A mother’s instinct is unlikely to go wrong. I can at least sit right that he’s more likely to treat my daughter better than what she has already faced.

PS: Unless you have a daughter, stop using the “imagine xxx hit on your daughter” to put others down. You are not a parent yourself. Don’t speak on behalf of actual parents.

Question for my fellow NUS alumni: is there any point in staying long term at a company?

Worked for three years, annual increments were 7-15% at the same workplace. I started looking elsewhere and there were offers coming in with increases of 20-30% at different companies.

I left my previous workplace and have now worked at a different company for a year – but it seems like the annual raise is once again nothing compared to my ‘personal’ raise if I just hopped to a different company?

So what is the point of staying long term in any company? Experience? Can be gained regardless of which company it is.

Messy CV? No one really cares as long as you do proper work and have decent references.

Here are what netizens think:

• There are a few factors to consider for long term job. Work environment, colleagues, journey to work, promotion, mental health, etc. Prioritise which are the factors that will make you happy and contribute to you and your family benefits. Work-life balance. There is no prefect solution for this. Eventually you will figure out what is best for you.

• Money is everything loyalty is nothing, just jump nia. I worked in a company for 6 years, one day the company just liquidate whole company 1,000+ people all jobless. Go wherever the grass is greener and don’t look back.
• CV can modify one lah, no one will do a background check on you if your just a minor role, unless senior manager and above or GM or Director then people will check on you.

We talk so much about how it’s wrong to expect females to have stereotypically “feminine” behaviours, like being demure or doing housework. Sure, I agree. We shouldn’t be expected to do certain things because of gender attributes.

Why, then, is it completely ok the other way round? My guy friends are routinely dragged out by their partners or female friends for the sole purpose of being shopping bag carriers, drivers, and/or ATMs. We’re the de facto leftover food finishers whether we want to be or not. And no, not all guys are ok with cockroaches, nor do all of us have some innate DIY expertise, or whatever stereotypically “guy” thing we’re expected to do. Furthermore, asking these types of questions elicits banal responses like “who hurt you?” instead of any effort to understand.

Sure, some guys are ok with being “the guy”. But if there can be an expectation one way, then it should go the other way too. If not, then women can pay for and carry their own things, walk on any side of the road, and stomp their own darn pests.

Here are what netizens think:

• Some guys are perfectly happy to do it for their girls coz their love language is acts of service. Some girls love it when their guys do such things for them coz their love language is acts of service. As long as the girl reciprocates and the guy feels loved, I think its fine. If it’s one-sided, then just find someone else.

• All guys have an innate DIY expertise once puberty hits.

• I do everything except kill my own roaches. I ask my helper to do that. She’s a one-punch game. So she’s living proof that females can and will kill roaches when required.

I feel like this is something I can’t really talk to people about, and I really need to let it out in the world. Even my closest friends, although they have some idea, they don’t really know the extent of it. I’ve been in love with a guy for almost 6 years now. I don’t know if it’s love. I wouldn’t even know what to call it. We haven’t even spent that much time together, but it was truly love at first sight (or love at first meeting at least). The little time we’ve spent together in last few years has been eclectic. I’ve never felt the way that I feel with him with anyone else.

Now here’s where the thing gets complicated. I’ve been in a very very serious relationship for 5 years. Don’t get me wrong, I truly do love my boyfriend very very much, and I do see a future with him. We will probably get married one day. He’s perfect for me in all the right ways.

However, I can’t get the thought of the other guy out of my mind. I think of him every day, even when I don’t see him for months at a stretch. My body shakes every time I see him. I know he’s not good for me, and he’s quite manipulative but despite knowing all the bad things about him, I still can’t let him go. It’s been years, and I can’t let him go. I think it’s reciprocated from his side, and he’s expressed it subtly a few times, but he will never own up to it or have a genuine conversation and it because that’s just how he is. I am 100 percent sure he’s not right for me, but I still can’t move on from him. No matter what he does or what I hear about him. I can swear there’s something inexplainable between us. He even makes my body and mind respond in strange ways.

I love my boyfriend and know he’s the correct choice- he’s amazing too and he makes my life better by just being in it. I don’t know how to move on from the other guy- tried hating him, giving it time, tried everything but it’s been years and he still has the same effect on me.

What should I do?

My girlfriend recently came back from her overseas exchange, and I feel like she is a changed person.

She used to be so helpful and easy-going. Nowadays she only likes to argue and badmouth me, and she keeps talking about BTO.

She used to be very cute and innocent. Nowadays she likes to watch raunchy TV shows like Game of Thrones and she moves her head up and down when drinking BBT.

Sometimes I feel like breaking up with her, but I love her too much…

Here are what netizens think:

• Maybe other than BTO and BBT, she now also knows about BBC? Ask her.

• Prelims is just round the corner. Spend your time practising your essay-writing instead of this. Mai tu liao. You can submit this kinda story again after Oct.

• Learn good 3 years, learn bad 3 days: wisdom from old Chinese values. When girls are in 20s, they are very susceptible to influence and change. If they have wild heart, they change very fast. Maybe before you realise, she will be asking to break up. If u still want her, u need to steer her back and cultivate good values and habits before you no longer have influence. But if she still can’t, either you accept of you move on.

• All this time shes been showing u the surface only. Now she has shown u her true form. Nvr a gd thing when someone u love talks bad about u.

• She kena Gong Tao ah? And what’s wrong with Game of Thrones, it’s the best series I ever watch.

• wow u tan tio. Kin buy a bbt costume to wear

Can someone explain to me in very simple and pragmatic terms why I should spend a single sec trying to learn my dialect (Teochew) than to learn an actual useful language like French or German in addition to English and Mandarin?

A lot of people get all hostile about “remembering your roots” but I can’t remember a single instance in my life where I was paid for being able to do what my ancestors did. My grandfather used to have oil lamps, do I have to learn that? He drove a manual shift car? Should I learn that? Once he got sick and he picked some random wild plants from the side of the road and made tea out of it instead of eating his antibiotics. He died without having eaten a single pill that was prescribed to him by a Mount Elizabeth doctor. Should I learn that?

There needs to be a system by which people pick and choose which aspects of our ancestors’ lives we ought to learn from. What is that system? Based on usefulness? What is the metric?

It’s funny people advocate for things that isn’t fundamentally helpful to the actual struggles of life, most of which are material. Please let us advocate first making a living and then you can learn whatever obscure language or tradition if you have spare time.

Here are what netizens think:

• Learn what that interests you. Some people are interested in their roots so they want to learn the dialects. It’s to join in the conversation and be part of a tribe. I am hokkien so when I go Taiwan it’s so nice to understand hokkien. Not so good when I went HK since I don’t speak Cantonese or understand cantonese.

• Who knows one day you need to do business in 汕头 and it might be your ability to speak Teochew as a Singaporean that helped you clinch the deal of a lifetime. One should never say any language is useless. But if you feel it is useless, no one is forcing you to learn it.

• Learning a language connects you to more people, so yes it’s useful. Teochews are renowned for their business acumen and some have spent their entire lifetime speaking mainly teochew. Whether you wish to get in touch with your roots is up to you, just don’t belittle others who pick up the language to do so. Pragmatism is good but no need to get others on your bandwagon what.

• You wanna learn then learn. Dont wanna learn then dont. Nothing to do with oil lamps or eating random plants to cure sickness. Your grandfather’s gen’s mentality and knowledge not the same as now. You compare what? Lame.