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From how I interpret your post, I assume you're trying to be charitable and not propose or imply that there's something "wrong" with (posters like) faceh so as to leave him with some hope, but I'd much prefer being told there is something wrong with me and that the game is rigged against me in the sense that I'm somehow inherently inept or dysgenic, than be told to
when platitudes of that sort have brought nothing but misery, humiliation, and further demolition of my self-esteem.
If I had Down's Syndrome, but had enough introspection to feel humiliation at my intellectual inability to pursue a serious college education, it would bring me no happiness to hear that I just need to "try harder" when what I'd really need is to be told that some things are beyond my abilities: then at least I'd be given my peer group's permission to come to terms with it. But for some reason, similar platitudes are reflexively dispensed in dating discourse regardless of the aptitudes of the people these platitudes are thrown at: "you are deeply awful and there's something very abnormal about you but also never give up, keep on trying to jump for that bone, you retarded little doggie" is - broadly speaking, referring to dating discourse as a whole - how absurd and cruel these juxtapositions sound to me, even if, in the more rigorous and careful context of your post, you are making a charitable distinction between faceh and the faceless guys you know that "something is wrong with."
Why can't people like me even be given the solace of hopelessness? I'm an aspie, my parents deprived me of peer socialization almost (they were blindsided by the internet, all the worse for me) entirely throughout my youth via isolationist homeschooling, my post high-school experiences were retarded by COVID lockdowns, and all my attempts at friendship crashed and burned because I'm a hollowed out pseudo-sociopathic social imitation machine (I still get to feel terrible about socially "lying" at people, so I wish I'd just been born a real sociopath who didn't care) who's never had a single positive response to "just being myself," so I'm well past the point of having normal relations with the opposite sex, and certainly not relations on the terms I'd have once looked for (not overweight, not a single mother, not a drug addict, not older than me, not prodigal). So at this point I really should give up hope and move on, which I try to do with public stoicism (really just another extension of habitual masking, so no biggie), but then I see all these platitudes thrown my way, and every time I do, for the briefest of moments I get just enough hope to torment myself with.
On the internet, people can't tell you're unfixably socially retarded over one (or zero) posts.
Not wrong! Honestly, on further consideration I even suppose that it's even a good heuristic to push people to struggle who plausibly are unfixable retards. Better to refuse emotional gratification to a few unfixables if it means you're on the safe side of ensuring people with decent odds who merely appear unfixable don't have peer permission to throw in the towel.
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So you haven't had much response from younger women who are 75th+-percentile slender and wholly unencumbered. Out of curiosity, what happened when you reached out to women who were slightly plump, slightly older than you, or divorced/had a kid in tow?
Drug addiction - especially if illegal - is a reasonable thing to have as a dealbreaker. For one, it smells like legal trouble and perhaps felony convictions. The rest aren't, really, unless they get people killed, maimed, or jailed.
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Firstly, if we are limiting the discussion to the mentioned attributes, with the exception of age (a condition which on retrospect I suppose I only included because it tends to correlate with accumulation and accentuation of other mentioned issues), why is it unreasonable for me to set as conditions my own characteristics (not with children, not overweight/obese)? I refuse to compromise on what I also expect of myself, and if that destroys my odds, so be it. Whether this is "punishment for entitlement" or "punishment for having standards" is a good Russell Conjugation.
Secondly, if it is, as I believe, psychological issues which inhibit my rapport with the opposite sex, then a relationship with someone sufficiently "low value" to initially entertain my eccentricities and chronic self-esteem issues would likely end up going badly in the long run.
This does loop back around to a rejoinder which I have come to accept: it is also perfectly reasonable and fits with my experience that most women are similarly unwilling to compromise on certain severe psychological and self-esteem issues in men, and that's not a standard I'd expect anyone to spontaneously drop.
Well, both of those features are much, much more important to men than they are to women. Some women may care, don't get me wrong - but numbers of women irl don't mind a potbelly if the guy is kind/confident/funny, and could cheerfully learn to love somebody else's cute kid in the right circumstances. So in saying "She shouldn't have 25BMI, because after all I don't have 25 BMI, and no kids because I don't have kids," you're trying to buy two things that are somewhat rare and highly valued, with two things that are nice but not especially highly valued. By contrast, charisma and good social skills do matter a lot for women's attraction, so your challenges there also align you at a somewhat lower percentile on the global scale, where to match properly you might have to make corresponding concessions in some domain of male attraction.
But surely that's just self-awareness, not despair? You're saying "My 1010 SATs/2.8 GPA didn't get me into Duke, guess it's miserable NEETdom and food stamps for me," but millions of people are living happy, fulfilled lives with community-college degrees. You're a good writer, you seem intelligent; you worry about long-term prospects with a "low-value" woman, but many of those plump ladies and single moms are very nice, smart and kind people who would at minimum be fun to get to know. Is it really better that you and all the plump/ slightly older/ kid-having ladies in your vicinity should be lonely and celibate, rather than compromise your standards to connect with each other?
My gut reaction is that there are some things I will never compromise on, particularly being a stepfather, but on consideration my reasoning extends beyond mere prejudice to further self-doubt. My prima facie reasoning for not wanting to raise another man's child is that I've seen too many relationships of that sort (no, not just online, but among friends and acquaintances) devolve into volatile and ultimately catastrophic affairs for everyone involved, but with the bulk of legal censure & penalty falling onto the man, and so I believe that no amount of mutual compromise will make it worth my trouble when women are given legal advantages (again, not just online drek, but personally known), and they are also prone to leveraging those advantages on what externally appears to be a whim - presumably due in part to the fault of the men for their lack of assertiveness and charisma.
But it is this latter point that most concerns me, because it implies a lack of male assertiveness and charisma is a catalyst for dooming relationships. As I fall into that category, that would make any relationship an anvil over my head: I can't play the odds because I bring the disaster with me. Put another way, even if the catalyst for poor outcomes isn't "single mothers" but "the sort of man who shacks up with them," the outcomes are still poor, I have reason to suspect I share a lot in common with those unfortunate men, I have no interest of participating in those outcomes, and those outcomes would have increased odds of occurring regardless of who I shack up with, single mother or no.
In short, it creates the possibility that that sort of low-charisma, low-assertiveness man will have long-term problems with any relationship, and perhaps out of a prejudice against single mothers or perhaps out of circumstance, I've only noticed the problems with relationships involving them.
Some things aren't worth taking risks on, especially when the payoff is low, the risks are enormous, and my disposition is the catalyst for those risks, meaning I may as well go double-or-nothing hoping to both overcome my own issues and satisfy my desires, rather than compromise because of those issues, and still court disaster long-term regardless of the compromise.
As for overweight women, well, that is just prejudice. I'm in the USA. Our fat is a special kind of fat, and the fatter that fat gets the more viscerally I am repulsed by it. If a woman can't establish herself as capable of maintaining a healthy weight, I'm going to assume that she's just going to keep getting fatter over time - again, based on experience, the sorts of people I see either maintain a healthy weight or proceed to obesity. And I cannot overstate how repulsed I am by obesity, to the point that I struggle not to grimace when I see obese people in public. I nervously peruse NIH & CDC obesity & overweight projections and wistfully browse coffee table books full of pictures from when such was not commonplace.
Start working in healthcare, or volunteering there. Ideally, it'd be a clinic or something in a rough part of town. That will give you a much better idea of the long-term health consequences of varying degrees of fatness.
Are you an insanely charismatic man in excellent shape, who's impeccably dressed and whose every word and gesture are a near world-class work of performance art? No? Plenty of people have happy relationships - or non-catastrophic relationships - with women with BMIs of 30, 40, 50, even 60.
Disgust is MUCH more malleable than most people think. Work in healthcare or something like that for a year or two. Your disgust response will calibrate itself better. You'll still dislike gross things - but they'll become dangerous to you, not gross - more like vats of acid than human shit.
Huh, this feels like the conclusion of a narrative arc. Never thought we'd hear this message from you, brother. And you're not wrong.
Did you ever find a girlfriend?
No, but people ask if I have kids. It seems odd. Like asking if I’ve climbed Everest.
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No, but a couple of years ago I became reconciled to the possibility of dealing with severe weight-related health problems in a partner in middle age. That isn't ideal - but What's Eating Gilbert Grape beats the crap out of kids with FAS, a mom on fentanyl maybe causing chaos and legal problems, or just plain crazy - as in 'felony child abuse' crazy. Therefore I don't consider fatness a dealbreaker until it makes them unable to do basic hygiene...although "a sprained ankle away from being bedridden" is a bit of a hard sell to me now. Five years from now I'd be OK with it to be honest.
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Well, it's not like you're signing the marriage license by asking a woman out; you could just enjoy learning about her and having a fun time together, day by day. I totally get the masochistic appeal of shutting oneself away in proud, bitterly high-minded self-isolation. But in the meantime you do miss out on the opportunity to share some potentially good (or at least interesting) company, to appreciate somebody's good points and be appreciated by them in turn.
You doubtless know that this means being viscerally repulsed by like 80% of adult men and 75% of adult women in the country, and as a smart guy you probably realize that such big feelings must be coming from a bunch of your own and your parents' stuff, not just from the bodies in front of you. Sometimes I look at old photos of working people, and those people are also tragically less beautiful than they should have been, through a similar combination of too little sleep, poor-quality food, shitty jobs, contaminated surroundings, illness, sorrow, sin and old trauma. I'm not sure any of us is all that beautiful, inside or out, but it would be hard to feel this stressed by it, and I'm sorry you're dealing with this.
I've really appreciated how reflective and fair-minded your responses are here; thank you! Hope better days are ahead for you.
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Because the hopelessness is a construct of your own making. With very few exceptions, most of romanceless men are not like someone with Down's Syndrome longing for a college education that is literally beyond his potential.
I am not religious, but I kind of sympathize with the Christian idea that despair is not just counterproductive, but sinful. Yes, it's comforting to escape into despair and hopelessness and just say "No matter what I do, it won't work, so no sense in trying." But sometimes things are hard and difficult but still doable, and you would just prefer not to do them.
I doubt there is something deeply awful and abnormal about you. Maybe there is, and if so I'm sorry, but I can't diagnose you personally. But I get that we are given a lot of really bad, if well-meaning advice, like "just be yourself." (I got that one too, and it did me no favors.) That said, when your life is not working out for you, contrary to the fellow I was just arguing with about how grand and free medieval peasants were, no one has ever lived in a period with more freedom to remake, reinvent, and choose our lives than today. That doesn't mean everyone gets to be happy and fulfilled and get everything they want, but every incel-type guy I've ever known has basically had no serious personal defects that would make him literally undatable, just a lot of bitterness and resentment and unwillingness to change or put in the necessary effort. Why do you see so many men who shouldn't "rate" (they are definitely not chads or three-6s) pulling relationships? Are they just blindly lucky? Or do they persevere with some luck and effort - maybe a lot of luck - but mostly persistence?
Hell, there is even the redpill- "Game" apparently works, though I personally dislike the manipulativeness of that entire scene.
I can't tell you not to give up and abandon hope, but I cannot honestly feel sorry for you if you do.
If you're on the spectrum, a relationship with someone who isn't morbidly obese, works a job, and isn't addicted to hard drugs or an otherwise terrible human being - as in "strangling their 10-year-old daughter over an argument" terrible is about as hard as climbing Everest. Or maybe Denali.
These days, Everest isn't that hard; the big obstacle for most reading this would be funding.
I know a lot more people on the spectrum who have decent relationships than I do people who've climbed Mt. Everest.
That's because of 1) motivation - if Everest was as easy as seeing the Grand Canyon, how many would go and 2) you probably hang out with many more autistic people than even somewhat casual mountaineers. The criteria I'd use is something like "Do you own an ice axe and crampons?"
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I think that those are all people who are not socially and emotionally malformed via catastrophic deprivation of peer relations during childhood and teenage, and - thank you, COVID - early adult development, and all I hear from the rest of this response is that the only way to receive sympathy from people who share your approximate perspective is to take my society-mandated optimism and bang my head against a wall, no stopping allowed. I will admit that an example of Down's Syndrome was excessive: strictly speaking there is some nonzero hope given a considerable effort on my part, but this demand for effort gets crueler as the minimum effort gets greater and the odds get worse, and I'd put my odds low enough and the prerequisite effort for those odds high enough that that extreme example is, if not equal, then congruent.
Then again, of course that's what I'd hear, what I'd say.
But I want to jump out of my personal gripes, my uncharitability: whatever my dissatisfaction, your perspective is a good one to hold. Denying pity to people like me is a healthy social tool, as refusing emotional gratification to a few terminal sad sacks is preferable to letting someone with a decent chance at some (hopefully prosocial) goal give up prematurely. After all, for all you know I'm lying about my chances - either to you, or to myself.
The exercise in futility is the point. The pointlessness is itself the point. You are building character through an exercise in futility.
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