Cause I don't think that there is anywhere in the world where I belong, or where anybody would actually like me no matter what I do, or how much I try to do right by other people.
I don't wanna go outside, or do anything anymore.
You’re describing my failed experience with every club in college lol
“Oh, I’ve heard some good things about the DSA! Aren’t leftists supposed to be somewhat accepting? I am a little awkward, so maybe I’ll find a place there.”
LMFAO
It's literally me
I don't feel like I fit anywhere either, and I'm so weird the notion of someone liking me for me and just accepting me as I am feels... far-fetched at best. I'm also so sensitive to rejection that I'm kind of paralyzed by the fear of doing the wrong thing. Kinda gave up on dating again for the moment after getting ghosted by a girl I made plans with after sending her a pic and never getting one back. Felt like a knife in the heart, like it does every time
I've been trying to focus on finding peace first right now. Been mulling over a lot of trauma and harmful thoughts. Realized I've been trying to fit a mold when what I need is to get to know myself. If I'm not comfortable in my own skin I'll never figure out what I want or how to get it.
getting ghosted really does suck. im not super rejection sensitive and the first couple of times it happened on those apps i felt like shit for weeks. it does seem to get better with more rejections, though. also, accepting that I am not a mind reader and that they are not necessarily rejecting my entire person but something that I can't really pinpoint or that they just had something or someone else going on has been somewhat helpful. anyway, I guess one more adaptive way of coping ( that sweet sweet copium lol ) with it is treating it like a series of experiments that i'm conducting to figure out what works best in certain situations which depersonalizes it a bit and makes it less painful and more like a game, which is what a lot of the early stages of dating are anyway, at least until you get to the more real connection stage, which frankly im still struggling to get to. getting laid != intimacy either, at least based on a lot of my experiences, necessarily but its still nice for its own sake lol
I'm well aware that just getting laid won't help fix my loneliness on deeper levels, and don't feel confident enough in my looks or charm to get hookups anyway. If anything I think meaningless sex would make me feel worse in the long run; they like my body or using me for sex, but not me. That would still hurt.
I've made a lot of progress just doing research and turning shit over in my head in the past few months. I'm taking a vacation at the end of the month, a cabin up in the mountains for a little under a week, then the remainder of two weeks at home. Want to focus on my writing and my art, actually flesh out the world I've been building in my head for a while now, and give my characters the attention they really deserve. I'm starting to let myself feel joy in writing again, and time and again I'm finding people are impressed just by the fact that I write, let alone that I'm pretty good at it. Hell, I've got to have hammered out more than a hundred pages of scattered notes and unfinished content since the start of the year. That's something.
re the sex thing that was me trying to explore how i feel as ive definitely have had a hard time confusing sex with intimacy in the past but yeah lots of people are ahead of me in that regard lol
re writing, honestly dude that sounds fucking awesome. there are people that like people that write lol. i guess you could bring up your writing in conversations and stuff and get into circles of people that do that and share your stuff with them and get into some kind of writing-related friend group or something. dunno, my last attempt at writing didn't last very long lol
I know intimacy is what I really want and sex is something that can follow naturally from that. I'm embarrassed about how little I've gotten and how long it's been but I need to get over that insecurity or it will ooze out of every pore. Going to the gym is helping with my pain and anxiety, and is getting me back on the weight loss train too. I'm sure I'll have an easier time getting dates then.
In the meantime I think I need to focus on building good habits, and stop cringing about how my creative work is not Good Enough so I can actually work on it long enough to refine it. And goddamn do I need this vacation that's coming up.
re the sex thing that was me trying to explore how i feel as ive definitely have had a hard time confusing sex with intimacy in the past but yeah lots of people are ahead of me in that regard lol
On this matter...
I really just want to be able to participate.
I hate the idea of not being able to do something (particularly something of social consequence; which this is whether we like to acknowledge it or not), that near everybody else gets to do, just cause of how I was born.
And not even because of some kind of physical impairment (i.e. I couldn't even if there was no social barrier), but only cause (at least by experience) nobody else would ever say "Yes".
i get what you mean to a certain extent. i sometimes feel excluded from sex too, sometimes for years on end, though most recently most of that was due to my own desire to be excluded from certain types of social interractions and situations and keeping to myself and not putting myself out there in enough quantity to get that.
that said though, if you are asking for it genuinely and in a socially appropriate manner (when you got reasonable expectations they want it too, after some amount of conversations where they basically let you know they want you etc) eventually you'll find someone who wants to do it with you. i feel like its a numbers game and also can be highly stressful process but yeah i guess mostly id encourage you to never give up regardless.
Feel like I could’ve written this post
Not having friends is such a shitty spot to be in bc how do you ask someone to hang out 1 on 1? Most friends I see in public are groups 😮💨
The alternative is getting good at masking and submitting to the reality that you're just gonna have boring surface level conversations for the rest of your life. It's arguably even more of a hollowing experience.
The only people I actually get on with are also neurodivergent.
I don't think I know any "normal" people.
"We're all mad here. If you weren't mad you wouldn't be here."
I have autism, adhd, and a couple other things that idk that I wanna talk about right now.
You are right about the name thing, but it wasn't my initial preference. My original account got banned cause I got snippy with people one too many times, and I deleted my second one cause I didn't like it anymore.
I just feel like I can't ever be happy about anything. Being around other people is incredibly burdensome; not just in terms of trying to "be normal", but in terms of well... "accepting my place", I guess.
recently ive been learning about the importance of watching your own self-talk to yourself. treat yourself better than how others are or have been treating you your entire life. assuming you are not a cop or business owner or something, I'd say you deserve love, even if its only from yourself, for now, so try being kinder to yourself. if you need to not be around people for a while to self-soothe and sleep and watch movies or whatever, that's cool too. if its a chronic thing you may wanna try forcing yourself outside regardless.
i barely managed to pull myself outside today. today i slept much longer than usual but it was heavenly tbh. got transported to another realm (the dream world) for a few hours instead of grinding at work, which was nice. when i did finally pull myself out and saw the sun and some people it gave me a little bit more energy. nothing phenomenal but dialing in diet, minimal social exposure, sleep and exercise does help with depression and beyond that there are some free group therapy and addiction-like recovery groups you can do, sometimes therapists will give hardship discounts, so you can do therapy relatively cheap for a few months and if you have insurance you can pursue better options as well but yeah, keep on keepin on, life is hard and we are all fighting in various ways just to make it through the day. i hope you feel better
i barely managed to pull myself outside today. today i slept much longer than usual but it was heavenly tbh. got transported to another realm (the dream world) for a few hours instead of grinding at work, which was nice. when i did finally pull myself out and saw the sun and some people it gave me a little bit more energy. nothing phenomenal but dialing in diet, minimal social exposure, sleep and exercise does help with depression and beyond that there are some free group therapy and addiction-like recovery groups you can do, sometimes therapists will give hardship discounts, so you can do therapy relatively cheap for a few months and if you have insurance you can pursue better options as well but yeah, keep on keepin on, life is hard and we are all fighting in various ways just to make it through the day. i hope you feel better
I don't usually have dreams, actually, I've found. I don't know why this is, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with how deeply I'm sleeping. I just don't dream very much; or none that I can remember.
I actually try to be really particular about diet & sleep; I cook almost all my own food, and I try & eat stuff that is actually nutritious & in what I think are reasonable proportions. Stuff like oats, eggs, milk, beef stew with lots of vegtables in it, chicken w/ brocolli & rice, as well as hand fruits with some of my meals/as snacks during the day.
I also try to keep up with exercise as much as I feel like I can. I used to do a 3-day a week full-body weightlifting split, with an emphasis on a lot of volume; but for the next 3-6 months I'm gonna be working on a 5/3/1 program because I want to focus on putting more weight on the bar right now.
I try hard to present myself as best as I can as well, keeping up with regular hygene of course, but also trying to stay clean shaven, with a decent & well-groomed haircut, and I even wear cologne.
But like none of these things really do anything to help me communicate with other people, or I don't feel like I have any meaningful communication with anybody over the course of any given day.
nice, you really got the diet, exercise and general appearance/hygiene stuff dialed in. Im currently having to redo my workouts because i got a shoulder injury from weights but hey I recently started being able to do pullups and have been getting a bunch of enjoyment off that, as it was a long term goal i finally achieved. sleep is a rough one, i also rarely dream. today I did. i usually sleep between 5-6 hours a day but I do also catch up whenever I can and that's usually when i dream. i did a whopping 13.5 hours of sleep today, so maybe that was it lol. maybe its a little maladaptive to do that but I felt I really needed it and I don't do it super often.
connecting to people can be rough. i get my own kind of burnouts too but I haven't gotten any diagnosis and based on the online tests i take i think i am on the lower end of the spectrum for autism and adhd, so our experiences may not be comparble, tbh, especially if you are further on that spectrum. i have found a few close comrades that I can sometimes connect to but its hard and have been having difficulties getting real intimacy needs met due to avoidant attachment style, having been in bad relationships with friends in the past, which has made me even more avoidant, and being really picky as to who i want to associate with in general.
dunno, maybe talking to other nd folks that share your special interests can be fun. I definitely enjoy talking to people about communism and nerd shit like linux, for example, that gives me a kick, even if we don't connect super deeper than that.
even NT people say relationships are hard and you kind of have to try over and over again until you click with someone, so i think even "normal" people got a bunch difficulties with it and have a hard time finding their groove.
i mean my work colleagues seem to be better adjusted and have partners and significant others and stuff but then lot of my comrades don't and are also battling with finding the right people they can connect with, so dunno. some of my coworkers are also very ND and look like they are still struggling even after getting some of those intimacy and connection needs met, but yeah, maybe im not the best person for advice on that lol. some of the more experienced relationship folks on here may have better tips on how to find your groove but yeah, those are some of the things that have been working to an extent with me.
There are actually a lot of smaller-scale religious communes. I live near one.
Yeah I know this feeling all to well. I had no friends for a while, then made a few good friends at work. But even still I just feel this disconnect. Do they earnestly enjoy my company or do they tolerate me? Do I actually even like them, or do i just stick around so i dont feel alone anymore? I hate going out to bars and stuff too. I sort of feel like I'm watching a movie of other people's lives, which only heightens my alienation.
Right now I've actually been seeing this girl. And like she's cool and all but...I just feel weird about it. I should be into it. Isn't that what every sad lonely guy wants? A girl that's pretty into him? And yet I just kinda don't want to be bothered. I feel like you - I just don't want to do anything anymore. I don't know what I want or who I want to be around. Maybe nothing and nobody?
I've been very stressed due to medical stuff the past few months, so much so that I've had straight up dissociative/derealization episodes. So yeah, just existing lately has been exhausting and depressing. The lows get lower and so do the (increasingly rare) highs.
I’ve been on the dating apps for a bit now to make friends or find a relationship. When I do find cool people who say they want to be friends, it never ends up panning out. Idk how I am being perceived in the moment, it could be that they’re saying “they want to be friends” because they want to let me down easy but I don’t take that lightly when I hear those words. The best relationships in my life at the moment are friendships and since those apps are usually just made to find a fuck buddy/situationship, I’m never able to get this point across
As a result, I find myself in a similar position as a lot of people on this com. I used to long for sex and a girlfriend, until I got it last year and realized it wasn’t as good as I expected. Now I’m back to square one and know that all I want is to be happy
I don't know what "to be happy" means, besides a laundry list of components that are never all aligned.
I used to long for sex and a girlfriend, until I got it last year and realized it wasn’t as good as I expected
why not?
those apps are usually just made to find a fuck buddy/situationship
god I wish I could get a fuck buddy or situationship out of those lousy apps. or from anywhere honestly.
