Key Moment: How Dating Apps Break Male Confidence (LooksMaxxing Explained)

This is an excerpt from E174 about LooksMaxxing. 

Looksmaxxing has become one of the most talked-about trends among young men online — but what does it actually mean, and when does self-improvement become harmful?

This conversation looks at the deeper psychological forces behind the looksmaxxing trend: fear of rejection, low self-esteem, the desire to become more attractive, the pressure to “ascend,” and the belief that changing your face or body will solve your dating life.

We also ask what a healthier alternative might look like — one based on confidence, social skills, resilience, real-world relationships, self-worth and learning how to tolerate rejection.

Presented by Dr. Alex Curmi and Dr. Rosy Blunstone. Dr. Alex is a consultant psychiatrist and a UKCP registered psychotherapist in-training. Website: alexcurmitherapy.com

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Alex is not currently taking on new psychotherapy clients, if you are interested in working with Alex for focused behaviour change coaching , you can email - alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com with "Coaching" in the subject line.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I mean the first elephant in the room we have to acknowledge when we're talking about looks maxing is it seems to be for for the purposes of dating and romantic attraction. It's like that's why guys seem to be interested in looks maxing, because they're interested in dating and they feel like this is the path to to a successful dating life. And I guess the first question we have to ask is why? Why has this become a phenomenon in the first place? Because historically it hasn't really been the case that guys have felt that they have to obsess over their looks specifically to have a successful dating app, uh dating life. There's always been a minority of guys who might be really interested in fitness or bodybuilding, but this seems new. Do you have any thoughts on why this has become so prevalent amongst young men?

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Well, I I I think you've slightly hit on it a bit in your question, is I think the rise of dating apps and an online culture that is driven by and um obsessed with image. Um I think we have social media algorithms and platforms that are image-based, that is their purpose, um, and that um will algorithmically uh push um more extreme and more provocative views. Um but and this is linked with the Rise in Dating apps, which again are by their very nature image-based. Um, and I think an understanding that the way in which these apps work, which again not people are not always so aware of, um, it can be disappointing. Um if you're if you're somebody who perhaps in the real world doesn't feel that you would struggle to date, but online you're struggling to make these connections. And there may be lots of other reasons as well: work from home culture, increasing social isolation in terms of much more of a move online. Um, but I do think that when we try and make that link between looks maxing and dating, we gotta look at well, what's changed so much about dating? And I guess we would historically have dated people that were in our social field and maybe our our religious group, our our cultural kind of frame of reference and friends, colleagues, and that's changed, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Yeah, I guess it's something like people our age can take for granted the fact that we had a pre-internet phase of our lives, or certainly a pre-dating app and pre-social media phase of our lives. So I'm in my mid-30s, dating apps would have become a thing around the time I was, I guess, 24, 25. So I had my whole life before having to deal with this on any level. And what we don't realize is for people for whom this technology is native, they've never had that experience and they've never had that real world of experience, real world experience of what it's like to date someone purely through meeting them in real life. And so not only do you have the retreat online, but crucially you have the mistaking what happens online for reality. In other words, if my profile on my dating app isn't successful, that means that equals I am an unattractive person. And that's something that people like myself who have had some experience before dating app, would we don't necessarily can still be difficult for people who are older because it's still not particularly great for your self-esteem to feel like you can't get success on a dating app, but at least you have that experience of what life was like before, so you you're not fully equating your online success with reality.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Yeah, totally. And I think that there's a really interesting point about having had a life before in which you've learned a bit about who you're attracted to and how, and also a maybe a bit about rejection. And one of the things that seems to come up a lot is this fear of rejection, like almost pathological fear of rejection. And where has this come from in young people who seem to be the demographic to which looks maxing is most aligned, particularly young men? I I'm not sure that I grew up with quite the same fear of rejection. It's not something you like or look forward to, but I don't think I was really quite so afraid in the way that it seems that this community are.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

I mean, I think there's something really important to say on this about the dynamics of fear and anxiety. So I think the fear of rejection on some level, obviously, we know is always there. People, as you say, don't like to feel rejected. But the way we deal with anxiety, before we had no choice. Before technology, you either met people in person or you didn't meet them at all. And we know from the psychological literature that the best way to counteract anxiety, like you'll know this because of your cognitive behavioral work, is to slowly do the things that make you anxious and that makes you less anxious. Uh, and the number one thing you can do to increase your anxiety is to let that anxiety inform your behavior and decision making. So if you're interested in someone and you feel anxious about talking to them, the best thing you can do is to talk to them. The worst thing you can do is to retreat, to discuss it online with other people, and to form this like rumination and this narrative about perhaps why you could never date that person. That will cause your anxiety, it'll make you feel safer in the moment because you you're not having to deal with the anxiety there and then, but in the long term, it unconsciously feeds your anxiety and makes it much, much larger. So I think the fear of rejection is always there, and this retreat into the online world just heightens it and heightens it.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

Yeah, and the thing is that we're not um in through this, we're not testing out any of these hypotheses, we're making assumptions, this person would never be attracted to me, or I didn't get this role in life because I'm not as attractive as this other person, but we're not testing any of them out, and you know, that is the core of, as you say, cognitive behavioural therapy is this idea of we have to how do we learn that things are different to our perceived impression of it, or our assumption or hypothesis? How do we learn if we don't try, if we don't test it out? And I suppose this is the danger with this the rumination and the the um closing off of the conversation in an echo chamber that encourages it and amplifies it more and more, is a sense of well, don't put yourself in a position where you're potentially gonna learn that that person, it's not that they don't find you attractive, it's that they aren't homosexual or they, you know, are not interested in a relationship or whatever it might be. You're not gonna learn that. Instead, what you should do, and I'm not saying everyone says this, but for the purposes of you know, is smash your face with a hammer a little bit, and that'll probably change things. Like that the connection between the two is wild, um, and in no way really solves that underlying query that they have around what is attractiveness? Am I attractive and how am I going to meet someone to be with in the future?

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Yeah, and and to be honest, what I've also seen in my younger male coaching clients where we work on problems like this, like socializing and dating and forming relationships, is uh a lot of young men feel it's just unacceptable now, or they're worried at least that it's totally unacceptable to talk to someone that you're romantically interested in. And it feels like we've thrown the baby out of the bathwater on a little bit on this. Like, yes, of course, the extremes of male behavior as a man, if you're disrespecting women, if you're acting misogynistically, if you're just prioritizing your own needs over a woman's needs, that's a terrible thing. But it would be a mistake to totally throw out the idea of men approaching women in general, because men have been the romantic protagonists for forever culturally, you know, it is men who tend to approach women, and so the weird thing about looks maxing is it's almost like a reversal of this dynamic where the impression I get from my research is there's this almost unconscious fantasy that if I can looks max, and you know, I've been looks maxing for about five years now, just just kidding. But if you can if you can looks max, uh women will approach you the and your dating life will be solved that way, um, and that removes the the burden or the onus to have to do any of the hard work, to have to deal with rejection, to have to take that social risk. That's the impression I guess.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Yeah, agreed. And I couldn't say if that's true or not, but I I I struggle to imagine that it is, and so then the basis on which you're doing all of these things feels flawed because I think, as you've already said, historically I think people recognise men as the romantic protagonist. Um, I think that the underlying anxiety that you're speaking of, that men are saying, Well, we're worried about approaching um women in a romantic way, speaks to a wider anxiety that we have around what it is to interact with people we don't know socially, um, what is and isn't acceptable. I think we we've somehow lost um those those common rules that we used to just take for granted that you would just people just used to ask if you wanted a drink at the bar. I mean, it really was that simple, I think. It was, I mean, I was younger, but um, but it feels now that there's there's a lot more nuance and rules that understandably make people very anxious because you don't want to get it wrong. And I suppose it goes back to that idea of well, what's so bad about getting it wrong? What um and what are we not learning by not trying? Um, but also, yes, I think this idea that we can somehow um remove ourselves from the responsibility to uh to be the leader here, and actually, if I'm just incredibly good looking or optimized, I ascend. That's a word that they use, and and therefore through that things are easier, not just romantically, although that appear that is really at the crux of this, but it is linked, I believe, with some other views around sort of social status and um the halo effect a little bit, I think. But but the romantic relationship part is is the crux of it.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Something I'd like to ask you, Rosie, is because some women uh seem to be aware of this and some aren't. So, for any women out there who don't know, men generally speaking, like 95% of men, find the prospect of uh approaching a woman romantically, even in a totally respectful way, truly terrifying. And there would be men who might have served in the military, who might be pilots, who might be firemen, who might have very dangerous, risky jobs, and they can do that, but they they might find the prospect of talking to a woman very, very difficult. Is that something you're aware of? Because I think a lot of women, um, because they might be uh occasionally approached by the 5% of guys who just don't have an issue with it, get the impression that men find it easy. Is this something that you're aware of?

SPEAKER_01 11:50

No, genuinely no. Um, it wouldn't it would not have occurred to me um in sort of I suppose personal life that it would be something that consumed a man um outside of the five percent, as you say. Um I think that professionally it wouldn't surprise me to hear that, but then I'm obviously spending a lot of time with people who are very anxious and or you know depressed. Uh but I am surprised that it's as as uh significant as you say it is.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Yeah, and there's powerful you know evolutionary reasons for this, like the potential danger of approaching a woman you don't know in hunter-gatherer times was very high because if you didn't know them, that meant they belonged to a different tribe than you, which means you didn't know who that woman was associated with, you didn't know of what men that woman might be associated with, and therefore the danger of competing with that man, the danger of getting into a fight or an altercation. Uh, but also the you know the rejection from a woman has these powerful evolutionary implications. Obviously, not really, not now, not in the age of modernity and contraception and things like that. But in hunter-gatherer times, it's effectively a statement about your viability as a man. So there are reasons why. Obviously, this is a fear that we still have to contend with, but that's the problem with this online culture. Being able to retreat online means you don't have to go through this, in my opinion, very important almost rite of passage of learning how to uh assert yourself romantically with women in a way that is also respectful, in a way that is also kind and thoughtful, the the wonderful balance that we need to strike. And men are almost being deprived of this crucial rite of passage, I think.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Yeah, absolutely. And while understanding that they are um evolutionary background to why we may or may not be justified in feeling this way, we also have to unpin that um wider sort of idea about my viability as a potential mate with the reality of the culture and the time in which we live. Like, yes, of course, it your brain may well say, Oh, what does this mean about me more broadly as a person? But that's where the experience, the maturity comes in that says it says nothing about me as a person and my future. It's this person just isn't interested in me just now, and that's okay. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

Yeah, it's totally okay. It's something I learned with you know, making a podcast, putting stuff online. What you notice is some people will like what you put out, some people won't, most people will actually be indifferent, but that's totally okay because success in life isn't based on never failing or never getting rejected, it's on trying enough so that you can find enough of the people that vibe with you or who like you, who will like your podcast or your content, or who would go on a date um with you so you can make a you can have a viable life. You know, it's not about having a 10-on-10 success rate. And that that's the I almost feel sad about young men in this predicament because again, they're being deprived of this very important lesson.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Yeah, and I wonder at which point it it becomes okay to then approach somebody when how optimized do you need to be to be able to then face that rejection? Um and I fear that that goalpost will will perpetually be moving, you know. Um I oh well, the reason why um they rejected me was because to use an example, my my hunter eyes were not optimized or you know, mm there the the um amount of inches between my clavicles was a problem.