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Ask HN: Do you have a girlfriend? Is it good to have one?

by Nib on 12/11/14, 12:22 PM with 34 comments

• by phillc73 on 12/11/14, 1:04 PM

  I'd quite like a girlfriend, but don't think my wife would appreciate it.

  Your time will come, so don't let one nasty comment cloud your entire outlook. Eventually someone will come along, possibly under the most unlikely circumstances, and you'll make a connection. Relax and let it happen.

• by csixty4 on 12/11/14, 2:13 PM

  Been married twelve years & loving it. My wife is my friend, my lover, and my gaming rival.

  I wouldn't say she distracts me from my work. It's just that most of the time I'd rather snuggle with her and watch TV or play a round of Innovation than hack on code in my free time. Work time is work time, though. I work from home, but I set boundaries.

  If you're at the age where "everyone else works on making out with other people", then know that everyone else is still figuring it out, too. It's ok. Don't feel pressured to be in a relationship or think less of yourself if you're single. Let relationships happen on their own and you'll be much happier.

  Also, don't try to find somebody to love; try to be someone people can fall in love with. Be a good person, but not artificially good. Be friendly & supportive. Find yourself and find your passions - this is the time in your life to experiment with different hobbies, sports, and future careers. It's so much easier to fail at something and get back up on your feet again when you're young. Who knows, you may find theater or track to be more interesting than computers and there's nothing wrong with making a living from either.

• by hkarthik on 12/11/14, 3:09 PM

  A lot of programmers tend to be late bloomers to the dating scene. While some would see this as a negative, I actually see it as a positive. Dating can be a major distraction at a crucial time in a young person's life when they are getting an education, starting their careers, and beginning to build their financial history.

  I have seen friends and siblings in their 20s that expend a lot of time, energy, and money on the dating scene with very little to show for it by the time they reach their 30s.

  Many of my programmer friends, on the other hand, settled down fairly quickly (married their 1st or 2nd girlfriend) and could spend their formative years honing their skills, education, and careers. Also they could set themselves up better financially by paying down debts, acquiring assets, and saving for their future. By the time they hit their 30s, their careers are taking off, they have a very solid financial foundation, and they are on much better footing for future endeavors.

• by jgrahamc on 12/11/14, 12:37 PM

  And, a girl told me today that I'm a "lot more of a nerd", and an unlikely to find a girl for the rest of my life.

  That's a terrible thing for her to have said. Ignore that. It's just not true that programmers don't have girlfriends/boyfriends/husbands/wives.

• by cafard on 12/11/14, 2:26 PM

  Girlfriends might distract you from your work if they sit in your office or otherwise interrupt you at work. But plenty of noted programmers seem to have been happily married or otherwise involved with the appropriate sex.

  You are probably better off not meeting women in a context that is explicitly social. Find an activity where meeting them is a side effect, not the main point. Preferably this would be one where women are at least not outnumbered, as they might in softball and so on. Volunteering might be good.

  (Married more than 25 years.)

• by trcollinson on 12/11/14, 4:50 PM

  Reading this brought back some fantastic memories of my youth (that is sarcasm, teenage and early 20's years were not fantastic when it came to relationships). I am sorry someone would say something like that to you. Don't let her get to you though! To cheer you up, here's a joke from my youth (it will date me):

  A lawyer, a doctor, and a programmer sit at a bar. The lawyer says, "Boys, you need to try having a mistress! It is great. We do anything we want and my wife never finds out!"

  The Doctor looking shocked says, "Oh my no! There are so many problems with a relationship like this. Diseases, mental and emotional stress. Stick to your wife! That's the right way."

  The programmer looks in his drink and with a knowing smile tells them both, "The answer is, of course, to have both a wife and a mistress! Then you can tell your mistress you are with your wife, and tell your wife you are with your mistress, and have more time on the mainframe! The mainframe is always less busy late at night anyway." [1]

  I had a girlfriend! I was very happy when she said she would marry me. We are celebrating our anniversary this weekend. We have 6 kids together. I code a lot. I enjoy businesses. I play with my kids. I take my wife on dates. As everyone else in the thread has said, don't worry about what this girl thinks! You are the right young lady will find each other at the right time and everything will work out just fine.

  [1] For those that don't get the mainframe portion of the joke: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing

• by daeghnao on 12/11/14, 12:28 PM

  Where I work, most of the staff have partners - girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, wives. Just because one girl can't see a girl like her or people she knows being interested in you doesn't mean the end of the world. There are lots of different kinds of people making the world go round. The more different places you go, socialise, interact with people, the more you are likely to meet someone who might be into you.

• by mcv on 12/11/14, 4:29 PM

  I'm married. Met my wife when I was 32. Didn't really have a lot of experience with girls before that, but that didn't turn out to be much of a hindrance to being the happily married father of two kids today.

  Don't let social expectations and peer pressure push you into things you don't want or are not yet ready for. While I certainly would have liked to have a girlfriend when I was younger, I had no idea how to do go about that. Plenty of female friends; that wasn't the issue, but no true "girlfriend". At least one girl who otherwise liked me, mentioned that I was friend material rather than dating material.

  I now realize that I wasn't ready for it. Once I was ready for it (around 30-ish), I started dating, and soon found a woman who's way better than I dared to hope for. Don't be afraid to be too late; there's plenty of time to catch up later. (Though if you want kids, 30 is a good age to start catching up.)

  So do you need a girlfriend? Absolutely not. Is it nice to have one? If it's the right one, absolutely! Still, I do sometimes miss my alone time.

• by Jeremy1026 on 12/11/14, 2:31 PM

  No girlfriends for me, but I do have that one wife. Having a partner is great, and not a distraction at all. She understands and respects that I work from ~9am to ~3pm, and that if I'm in my office outside of those hours, I'm working. I could see some women being a bit more of a distraction, but you just need to lay out your ground rules early on in the relationship to make sure that they can be respected. (Don't sit down and say "these are the rules...!")

  While its true that you may be a big nerd, that's fine! Just have to find a girl that will sit down for some Battlestar Gallactica, Firefly, and Doctor Who with you. Who will help with your lego sets, and looks forward to a good game of MTG. Feel free to sub-out things listed above that you don't like with things that you do, and be willing to do the same for things she likes. You don't need to overlap 100%, but having some interests in common is always helpful.

• by Rooster61 on 12/11/14, 4:33 PM

  If you are both at the age of working on "making out with other people", I can assume you have quite a bit more living to do, and so does the girl. The funny thing about the teenage/young adult situation is that it's very easy to make broad, sweeping statements about the rest of someones life while having no clue what you are talking about.

  Think about this: That girl has no idea what the rest of your life will be like, nor her own. It's very silly to make a comment like that. Programmers have girlfriends/boyfriends just like any other profession.

  And as for the distractions, yes, girlfriends at your age can be a definite distraction. But that's part of the fun of teenage love. It is something new to explore and experience, but not something that everyone has to do.

  Don't sweat it. You'll find somebody.

• by codewritinfool on 12/11/14, 2:40 PM

  Pretty much the same thing others are saying. I've been married 17 years to a beautiful woman and I'm very geeky. Carry on with your life, don't rush things. Smile and say hello at every opportunity. It'll happen.

• by GFischer on 12/11/14, 3:06 PM

  How old are you? I did really badly with girls and women in general as a teenager and young adult, but I started connecting more when I grew up more, and my first stable relationship started at 29.

  I think I was a bit slow to develop emotionally, and I did not know how to relate to/interact with women (it sounds silly in retrospect, but it happened).

  I disagree a bit with the "relax and let it happen" advice, I think you have to actively do some activities to meet with people more, etc. if you find yourself not meeting girls.

  Edit: almost all the programmers/nerds I know in my age range have wives or girlfriends. Most didn't in their teens or early 20s.

• by pauleddie on 12/11/14, 2:16 PM

  That girl sounds like a horrible person who will probably end up alone herself for being so damn shallow. People like that are great learning experiences on the type of person you don't want to be.

  Yes programmers do have girlfriends and yes they can be distracting and by god that's a great thing to have! Moving from that point in life where you are focused on just one self orientated thing to caring about another and growing as a person is marvellous.

  I constantly aim to find distractions from work, also known as having a life :)

• by phlyingpenguin on 12/11/14, 1:55 PM

  Agreed with the rest of the folks here. I'm assuming that you're in the age range of high school, and I'm here to tell you that once high school is over (and that can take a year or two into college/work), everybody has to figure their own lives out and these labels do not matter. They don't matter now either as long as you pay no attention to them. Just be sure to get out and be social. You can't date a person you never meet!

• by partisan on 12/11/14, 3:07 PM

  "programmers don't usually have girlfriends"

  Uhhh, no.

  Life is like taking a trip. It's way more fun when you have someone to enjoy it with you. Your experience is enriched by their experience. That said, being single has it's merits as well, which I am sure the married among us remember a little too fondly and with rose colored glasses.

  Go to meetups. Not with the intention of meeting someone, but to meet other people and have fun. The rest will fall in place.

• by jasonkester on 12/11/14, 3:20 PM

  Talking to girls and negotiating salary are two things that us computer folk are historically bad at. We're actually bad at lots of things, but these two are unique in that rather than finding ways to get better at them, we instead proclaim them to be Impossible Things For Computer Programmers To Learn and refuse even attempt to get a little bit better at them.

  This is really strange.

  If you were bad at writing Objective-C code, but it was 2008 and knowing how to write Objective-C code would let you answer "Yes" to any of those dozen emails a week you were getting offering $150/hr to write Objective-C, what would you do? Would you perhaps spend a few hours learning how to do it?

  Now what if you were bad at negotiating? "No way. Negotiating is evil. They should just pay everybody the same. That'd be fair."

  Or dating? "No way. Talking to girls seems hard and scary. And I'd actually have to walk over there and talk to one of them."

  But here's the thing. It's only hard because you've never done it. Go do some of it and you'll find it's really not that bad.

• by philwelch on 12/11/14, 3:16 PM

  On my team of 8 at work, 2 are single and everyone else, including me, is married. And I'm polyamorous so I also have a girlfriend.

  If I stop to think about famous programmers, most of them are married too. Except Stallman.

  For me personally, I don't find it distracting at all, but rather very enriching and motivating.

• by opless on 12/11/14, 1:50 PM

  Idiots say idiotic things. Mostly idiots who have low self esteem. So bear that in mind when you interact with them.

  Sure there's a subset of society that rejects those that are 'geeky' or 'nerdy', but that's fine. They'd probably annoy you in the long run anyway.

  But everyone gets to be able to have relationships.

  Yes, relationships can be distracting ... but that's not a reason to not have one!

  The only real requirement is self-confidence, work on building on that and you'll find out that interesting people take notice! :-)

  Have fun and good luck!

• by Xdes on 12/11/14, 4:25 PM

  Honestly women are more of a bother than a benefit. Part of maturing is learning to reject nature for your own self interest. Women will use your precious time for unproductive and impractical activities. They require constant upkeep and they will try to shape you into their ideals (a lot more of a nerd).

  I do not need a woman to be happy. I do not need a woman to have children. There are plenty of children in need of a parent already (even if that is a single parent). Save for your own retirement and enjoy life.

• by AnotherMarc on 12/11/14, 7:44 PM

  Some good thoughts on here. Pretty graceless comment on her part. Without having any context, my first guess is that it speaks more to her issues than yours.

  I've been married for over 20 years. Met my wife shortly after I finally stopped working on making out with other people. If you're feeling pressure to find someone, it might show. You can be a total nerd (I was/am, and same with a lot of my friends). Just focus on being a decent, compassionate human being. Good things will happen from there.

• by KhalPanda on 12/11/14, 1:20 PM

  > I think programmers don't usually have girlfriends, do they ? I mean, do you ? Does it distract you from your work ?

  That's just not true, on either count. And work is work - it's absolutely normal for couples to have separate careers. Are bus drivers distracted from their work by their girlfriends?

  Unless of course you take your work home with you... but then I think you have other issues. :-)

• by nicholas73 on 12/11/14, 5:42 PM

  Better to make a fool of yourself now, than to regret not having tried later. Plus, if you don't try now, you will make a fool of yourself later anyway!

  Everyone learns through mistakes. Understand this and you won't care what others think.

• by davelnewton on 12/11/14, 2:15 PM

  * That was a terrible thing to say to a person. * There's no "usually".

• by chrisbennet on 12/12/14, 1:14 AM

  I once told a friend who was single at the time: "You are way too happy. We need to get you a woman!"

• by ada1981 on 12/11/14, 4:42 PM

  This chick wants to bang you and she has low self esteem.

• by MichaelCrawford on 12/11/14, 2:55 PM

  "No Woman No Cry".

  Be patient, my son - your time will come.

  I was quite the nerd when I was young, but much later became popular with women.