Is it good to be bold and blunt?

[Kaim Argonar]

I'm a sweet and affable person at the root, but I also feel pretty smug, assholish, and indifferent. It's like two distinct personalities that continuously wrestle with one another.

I've had a few relationships in the past, but those were years ago. Out of attrition and solitude I sometimes feel bad now, which thankfully doesn't last long. It's not something I ever let show, or let take any control over my life, but I do hope to be genuinely appreciated for the new man I am now.

Over these last few months in college I've made a few attempts at approaching girls, which unfortunately were largely disappointing, but overall I feel much more talkative, reactive, and at ease with my social persona.

I don't sense that girls are cold to me or find me particularly unattractive, I guess that they seem to act friendly and normally.

I won't relent. I now want to try and find some new occasions to be around girls, but sometimes when I talk to people there is something that makes me sway. I'm a bit wary of showing my bolder side.

In conversations although I laugh, joke and am smiling plentifully, I also tend to get very smug and opinionated on most matters, except that I try not to show resentment, or come off as a pompous ass.

But what to make of this, those are the telltale traits of male confidence, aren't they? What I wouldn't want to do would be to come off as an overly cynical/negative guy, or to act in a way that would be perceived as hubris.

To counter this, every now and then I try to make witty remarks or jokes that are destined to make the other person relate to how I feel, and feel at ease her/himself, and that does seem to produce a good effect. If you can't always win someone else over, at least if you come off as a memorable individual with a lot of character and a backbone, that's good.

 

[xdreamz]

compared to the nice guy who masks his real thoughts with unneeded pleasentness...

yea i'd say it would be quite good.

 

[everywomanshero]

Well, I don't think it's good to be bold, I don't think it's bad to be bold. I think it's good to be cognitively complex and able to adapt to a number of different situations rather than relying on some empirical numbeing scheme (ex. I have a 70% chance of being liked if I am bold.) You seem to lean toward the humanist side anyway, so I am not going to spend a lot of time telling you what you already know.

Unfortunately, there isn't a simple answer. Something said with a straight face could be sarcastic but the same thing said with a big smile and a punching gesture to the shoulder could be seen as rapport building. It is the height of egocentrisism to think that one has some magical secret that allows him to compell all those whom he crosses to act in a specific manner. If this were true, such a person would quickly become the leader of the entire world and he would never have time to come here and tell everyone the magical secret even if he chose to share it.

My current approach to social situations is pretty laid back in attitude, slightly energetic in tone, and reasonably outgoing meaning I am usually striking up a conversation with someone. I rarely think about how to pick up a woman because I just assume a certain amount of desirable women will want me and so I don't have any reason to try "closing the sale" type thinking these days (not that it cannot be effective, but it's a warped way of thinking that isn't healthy over the long term). These are my opinions and things that work for me, it's just part of how I feel and think. For someone else it's totally different.

I think you might want to change the meaning of a conversation. To me a conversation is about connection and rapport building. It seems to me (and again, to each his own) a little strange to think of a conversation in terms of success or failure.