2483 For You.
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Bless him, he’s trying to soften the blow as best he can.
Every so often someone will say something like “there’s no way someone could be as deluded about themselves as Reggie” to that I have one name that wins that argument: Elliot “The Supreme Gentleman” Rodger.
By comparison Reggie is small time. Reggie has had enough people get between him and the toxic mindset he has to avoid going all the way down the dark path that kind of thinking can get to. Sometimes a person who needs help breaking out of that kind of thought trap doesn’t get help in time and you have a very tragic result. I’m sure it would make a good story for things to go badly, but I don’t want to write it. That’s for someone else to do.
I did finally mostly get over my sinus issue. I’ve been more or less normal for a day and a half or so. It’s not 100% but I’m much closer to being a fully functioning human. I guess I don’t have anything else in particular to report so I’ll just remind everyone that Patreon and Subscribestar exist and have links just above here, and sign off until Wednesday.
23 Comments
Oh, Reggie is trying to hard to be a good person, look at him.
It did need to be said, though–and possibly that bluntly.
Reggie is someone who wants to do good, and thinks he *is* doing good, but he doesn’t have a lot of experience with it. I think he’s doing the best he can to maintain a friendship with this person he likes, without putting himself out there too much and without giving her the possible thought she should hold a flame for him. Thomas is wearing off on him.
Yeah, SO many people fail to realize “no, I’m not interested in you” is a KINDNESS. Most attempts at “letting them down gently” to preserve a friendship read more as “not right now” rather than “I’m not romantically interested in you”. That can lead to the less experienced and more idealistic (read: deluded by popular media from the last few decades) thinking they’ll have a shot if they just wait around and keep the torch burning, which causes them to miss or pass up other opportunities, potentially engage in some creepy behavior, etc.
Just rip the bandaid off, it might hurt more in the short term (arguably; I’m not sure getting rejected hurts less in the moment just because you’ve left a glimmer of false hope) but then they’ll get over it and move on.
If everyone involved is mature about it and willing to put forth the effort to maintain the friendship it WILL be stronger than if you accidentally string them along with false hope for a future that will never come, because the platonic relationship will be less sincere if one party is constantly waiting to “upgrade” to romantic partner. A crush will build into infatuation, and potentially obsession, if you let it fester, so kill any hope of the crush being requited and while the attraction won’t go away, it enables them to clear their head of the rose tinted goggles cast by the crush, which allows for a more stable ground upon which to build a strong friendship.
I’m still friends with several women who rejected my advances, and while I’m still attracted to them and would be open to a romantic relationship if they “changed their mind” and became attracted to me/interested in me for whatever reason, it is not a goal I am pursuing because I know they aren’t interested. I want a girlfriend, but I’m always happy to have more friends and I don’t wanna cut ties with good, interesting people just because they shot me down when I had a crush on them.
I can wholeheartedly concur.
I’ve been in a situation where we were REALLY infatuated with each other, but I was way more ready than she was. So she broke whatever we had off with that reason: not being ready.
So I waited, and everytime she would ‘flirt’ with me, I saw it as a chance, and then she got mad at me for trying again. We had a huge falling out because our expectations didn’t match and what I considered acting on mixed signals, she considered as creeping in spite of clear signals.
After the falling out we went 0 contact for a month or 3, and now we’re very good friends again. We talked it over, recognized that she was both wanting to be with me but at the same time affraid of it because of bad experiences in the past, and recognized that my flame burnt brighter than she could handle and that I have to reel it in a bit: I can go too much too fast.
We’re better off as friends, especially with the Geographical distance between us and lack of transportation/opportunity to visit.
We don’t talk much anymore, but there’s never any drama between us anymore.
I had the opposite problem, I spent 3.5 out of 4 years in high school holding the torch for a girl who in hindsight was totally uninterested, and as a result turned down offers from other girls who were actually interested in me as well as missed opportunities to make new connections that might have gone places. She never said she wasn’t interested in ME, she said she wanted to focus on her studies and thus didn’t have time for dating. I believed her up until I was working as an usher for the school musical and she came in clearly on a date with another classmate and I later saw her making out with him in the hallway during intermission. Thankfully I learned my lesson and have since just assumed that any rejections I get won’t change if I just wait around long enough, even if the stated reasoning can be expected to be temporary, it’s better that way.
I do ask clarifying questions for market research purposes, like if she cites circumstances I’ll ask if her answer would be different if those circumstances were different, so I can narrow down my target demographic, and if she does tell me she isn’t interested in me personally, I’ll ask follow up questions to try and find out why and if her reasoning is broadly applicable and thus represents things I might need or want to change or just narrow my target demographic further. Unfortunately these attempts at information gathering haven’t garnered any useful data since the girls with boyfriends either weren’t comfortable answering whether they would find my offer attractive in the absence of a relationship or didn’t have sufficient imagination to figure it out, and the girls who simply weren’t interested in me were either uncomfortable explaining in detail why I was an unattractive prospect or were insufficiently introspective to properly articulate it. I have been informed that this practice can come across as creepy, but nobody has been able to identify exactly why since I always make it clear I’m not arguing or trying to change their minds. I just want to understand things about social interactions that are apparently obvious to most people but because they’re obvious to most people they haven’t bothered to try to understand them well enough to articulate them properly and for whatever reason it makes people uncomfortable to try.
The reasons one is or isn’t interested in another person are often unconscious. You don’t know why. You can’t explain because your conscious, thinking mind just doesn’t know. These are mechanisms that evolved long before we had language or rational thought.
Reggie is a deeply intriguing character to me. He consistently swings wildly between “person I would find insufferable” to “overall honest and decent guy.” His mixture of narcissistic delusion and supportive blunt honesty is almost exhausting, but there is something to him…
These two characteristics are not mutually exclusive, if you think about it.
Part of me wants to Yahoogle Elliott Rodgers.
Reggie speaks here like he approaches women as often John does. It’s a bit…classy to lie about himself to make her feel better.
Also I think his character flaws are sui generis, which lessened his falling in with the incel set.
Reggie showing he’s got a heart under all that tin man
Really happy to hear that you had a positive turn for your health for once! Did you need to do anything specific to get the sinuses cleared up?
Not really. Just drank water and kept my eyes clean.
At least he will admit he’s not a hit with the ladies.
For all of his eccentricities, Reggie still ends up being sort of a stereotypical guy in a way; pissing contests with other men, or women like Carol, when there’s little to no reason for it, but won’t hurt the defenseless if he can avoid it. It’s like he’s telling a puppy to stay off the couch when all it wants to do is get in his lap.
He certainly is being polite and fair with her.
“Polite” isn’t a word I would use.
He’s giving her heavily backhanded compliments like “For YOU, taking a swing is brave” as if she should expect rejection EVERY time.
No. Not as if she *should* expect rejection. As if she *does* expect rejection.
I read it more as “as a lesser mortal, you can’t expect to succeed every time the way I can, so it’s brave of you to risk failure. Because he doesn’t see himself as capable of failing in this regard, he sees it as brave to risk failure.
It’s still a back-handed compliment, but he’s not expecting her to always fail, he’s impressed that she tries when failing is a possibility.
Reggie, stop talking like she’s lucky to even have a conversation with you.
You’re still slightly ahead in being a good man, don’t ruin it by being too… you.
I love that despite everything he’s basically saying “yea, everything you did was right, you didn’t make any mistakes, it’s just that some attractions aren’t mutual and that’s a fact we all have to live with”
I don’t know how, but your writing has the uncanny ability to hit me with words that i needed to hear/read at the time i needed them. I’ve been an avid reader for years now and this ain’t the first time I’ve been blind-sided emotionally. thank you
Happy to be of service.
I really enjoy your comic!
Welp Reggie, I give you 70 on execution but 90 on intention. It really does sound like he’s being honestly genuine. He knows that he has game but the way he said it… kinda… bugs me.