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Weekly relationship advice thread go, this time I'll be the starter
surprisingly.Through an extremely unlikely chain of circumstances, last year I acquired an irregular interlocutor on one of my hobbies, shortly turned regular interlocutor, and over a ~year eventually tangled and mutated into a basically full-on long distance relationship because it turns out there are girls on the Internet, even in the most unexpected corners.
It's... not going well. Being a resigned ex-rat wizard a decade out of RL practice is setting me back a lot, and I am physically feeling my lack of social experience, recently more than ever when we are having fights nearly every day. I increasingly feel we are not speaking the same language, as it were - specifically, it turns out despite proclaiming myself a vanillachad I am really bad at displays of affection when I can't be physically present, and not only can I not make them sound natural but I can barely make them come out sometimes, because to me they always sound like empty platitudes even when I genuinely mean it, and I fear them being seen as such. My anime-protag-tier obliviousness to signals and shit is also not serving me well here, because a woman genuinely being romantically attracted to me is uh, a novel experience. As I understand there is a lot of frustration on the other side because I've been oblivious to it for a long time, and I internalized it properly very late. I can only hope it's not too late.
I sense we are approaching critical mass, and despite the repeated emotional damage (on both sides) I am determined to try and salvage this. I'm not sure how bullshit/placebo the idea of the five love languages is, but it seems like a useful heuristic here to couch what I see as my main problem - as in, me being a pretty stereotypical nerd/sperg/techie who never expected to actually have a fallible human heart. I sincerely wish to Actually Change My Mind, for reasons not limited to romantic ones, but it does not come easy even in what I consider an almost best case scenario (I genuinely wonder how she puts up with my sperg shit for this long).
How do you deal with "language" mismatches in relationships? Is it possible to learn someone's "preferred" language, or more generally properly internalize displays of affection so it comes more naturally? (e.g she obviously needs compliments and affectionate words but it doesn't come naturally to me, I'm more of a stoic/silent/protective type which doesn't translate well to LD) Is my difficulty with it a sign of
autismsomething else, like platonic attraction, since I'm led to believe it should come naturally if you truly capital-L Love someone?Girl here. @kky makes a great point about starting fights (especially with big reconciliations) sometimes being an unconscious bid to restore emotional intimacy when the relationship feels stuck.
Note that although Words of Affection or whatever are the official Love Language, the actual underlying currency is attention, intimacy and low-key daily consideration. There's solid evolutionary reason that many women respond to this, because if a partner is fundamentally not interested in a woman as a person, if he gets no great positive utility from caring for her and knowing she's happy day-to-day, if he's not the kind of guy who can notice and spontaneously help if she or a kid are struggling, then that's a very dangerous partner to risk a potentially difficult pregnancy plus years of infant caregiving with.
If paying mechanical compliments feels too weird, with many women you can also maintain feelings of relational care and intimacy in other ways:
Asking more questions, especially about her emotional state or other intimate topics as a follow-up to superficial life updates ("how did you feel about that?" "wow, was that really hard on you, given [past trend]?" "what are you really excited about this week?"). There's a list of random intimate questions called The 36 Questions to Fall In Love circulating somewhere, with some good possibilities if you need ideas.
If you ask a question about feelings, not offering pushback or disagreement about the feelings themselves, just affectionately validating. If you think she's 100% wrong and crazy in a situation, you can express generic care like "you are trying so hard, wish I could be there to give you a hug."
Remembering her answers to past questions and actively following up in a supportive way ("what happened with that big work project, anyway? were you happy with how it turned out? what is Sharon scheming about these days?"). If you can, try to compliment any admirable things about her approach and validate that her negative feelings are OK to feel.
Sharing little intimate details about your own feelings, hopes, dreams, fears, vulnerabilities as a way of requesting care from her (nothing actually icky/humiliating unless it's in the past). This is the Ben Franklin Effect for emotional labor and it works really well: just look at how many romance heroes have tragic backstories requiring the heroine's sympathy.
Engineering any little acts of care so that they also express low-key attention- so don't just send an article link, send an article relevant to something she mentioned, with a note "your mentioning __ got me thinking about __ and I thought I'd send this. I love that we can explore this together!"
Man I really have a whole talmud to properly internalize heh, thanks for the advice. I really like the idea of Ben Franklining here but that might be temporarily off the table given the current situation.
Well uh see, that's... kind of the crux here. I am very interested in her, I care for her greatly and derive a lot of satisfaction from
my savior complexdoing it (in fact I have inflicted quite a bit of my residual rat programming on the unwitting gal, to which she took pretty well even). The problem is twofold: I can't express it "visibly", and accordingly my acts of service as it were don't scan to her as explicitly romantic gestures (which she needs), even as she acknowledges the care in the same breath.I know this is going to look like a massive red flag from her but I assure you I really am that oblivious, the anime comparison wasn't metaphorical, so at least some frustration on her part is warranted here. To be perfectly blunt, I am the type of nigga to be texted "please educate me :3" at night and respond with "actually I think you're taking your lessons well so far, good job!". This has not been bad enough in the past, but the rift is growing, even as she clearly still perceives me as a potential partner and continues to reject dates IRL in my favor.
This is not to say that I don't feel frustrated too; if the above sounds like mixed signals - yes they fucking are, so to some extent I stubbornly hope that if a woman sends you mixed signals, she herself is confused and wants to be told what to think about us, and that I can learn how to drill that into her before the rift is unsalvageable.
Hard to say much without specific examples. But if this is an AFAB person and she's saying she feels cared for but not romanced, or seems appreciative but also a little disappointed, then possible issues could be
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I’m gonna be real with you here. This specific relationship is probably not gonna work out. However, that doesn’t mean it was a mistake. It’s learning how to be in a relationship, and most centrally, that women can be attracted to you. I get that it’s new, but it’s probably going to keep happening, especially if you keep hanging around places with women (hopefully offline soon enough).
@FiveHourMarathon is on the money with the specifics. Women love feeling special and attended to. Something he didn’t mention, but I should, is that some women experience this in the form of a fight. This is the borderline case in a nutshell. Women who get into relationships online are fairly likely to be borderline, if not maladjusted in other ways. The pattern to watch out for is volatility. She will draw away, try to make you mad, try to make you jealous, and start a fight in some capacity. Then, after the fight, she will get much more clingy and attached. Even otherwise normal women will do this from time to time, to a minor extent, if they’re feeling understimulated or stressed in the relationship, as a sort of way of venting and then getting affection, but in borderlines this is extreme and constant.
If she has concrete things she wants out of you, and providing them makes her happier, then you’re in a good spot. If she’s impossible to satisfy, see the notes above, and bail when it gets to be too much. I hope it’s not the case, there is a very good chance that it’s just the kind of ordinary fighting that men and women get up to (note: NOT a bad thing, my now-wife and I fought a ton when we were first dating, things got way better), but it’s the kind of thing that can waste years of your life and hair off your head if not handled right.
Also, love is not really best thought of as a natural expression of deep and abiding emotions. Save that for the chicks. Love is about day-to-day duties of caring for and about another human. That means doing things that feel artificial until they become second nature. Why? Because you care about the person, and you want them to be happy. It will feel good too when you get it just right. So don’t lose hope on that front, and don’t forget to ask for what matters to you, too.
Finally, for the whole “how can she like me” thing, never forget that a woman’s heart is ever a mystery to men. Frequently to other women, and themselves, too. Even if there’s an explanation, there’s no way you could ever get it, not least because you’re not gay. (I think.) So don’t stress it. It’s just how things are sometimes.
Thanks for the advice.
Not gonna lie I am seeing something similar lately, but it wasn't really there before I don't think, so I chalk it up to approaching critical mass.
This is mostly how I know what she wants, because (to damn with faint praise) she shows remarkable explicitness/honesty for a woman and has been pretty consistently patient with explaining things to my autistic ass, even during fights. It's actually a big part of why I want to salvage this because this uh... doesn't seem to be a common trait.
Basically I see my problem as, pardon the parlance, having to System 2 my way out of what is really a System 1 problem - my goal is to try and make "giving her what she wants" natural/instinctive instead of deliberative.
That's exactly how I see it to be fair, it's also why I asked whether my difficulty with it is a symptom of something else - like maybe if I actually cared or cared more, it would've been much easier to do.
Thankfully not heh, but I am
unwillinglylearning about the jo/y/s and tri/u/mphs of human relationships, although my last gf was a literal fujo so I have practice if nothing else.More options
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It’s unclear if you’ve met in meatspace, much less if you’ve banged her. If you haven’t gotten culo out of the interlocution, then she’s more of a high maintainence internet penpal than a long distance girlfriend, and that might be the chief issue rather than LDR management.
My longest running still-live casual relationship is long distance and is now well past five years. We can go weeks without texting each other. Usually our communication only ramps up when we’re coordinating logistics for me visiting.
No, we haven't met (yet) but I'm lining up my autumn schedule
or just getting fired soon.Funny you mention it because this specific word is as close as it gets to a trigger for her heh, I used it once in an unrelated context (describing another woman) and she never lived it down, even bringing it up during said fights occasionally. Not exactly a red flag but it stood out enough to nootice.
:laughingcrying_emoji:
Has she ever acknowledged the irony of her being persistently extra over the phrase “high maintenance”?
YOLO; funemployment is a general value-add when it comes to freeing-up schedule.
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Brother, I saw the words "emotional damage" in your initial post and combined with the fact you haven't even had sex?
This isn't worth it, this isn't worth it at all. Run, run run run and put your energy (and newly learned lessons) into someone who you can actually see/smell/touch, also also hopefully who generates less emotional damage
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Been a while since I've dealt with an LDR, but some simple mechanical advice:
As a man, you probably only contact people when you have something to say to them, and typically only when you need something from them. You aren't contacting her just to chat and show general affection, you're contacting her to solve a problem (often one that rhymes with "she wants me to call her") or when you're horny or to organize something.
Your goal in an LDR is to tie her into your life, show her you are thinking about her, so that she doesn't feel so far away.
Send her pics of your day. Not necessarily selfies of you, but just of funny advertisements, pretty wildflowers, or traffic jams, or your workout equipment, or the sky, or a screenshot of your phone when a song is playing that "reminds you of her." She's the person you want to share these things with, and when you see them she's the person you think of, and you wish she was there.
Send her articles you read that you think she might be interested in, then discuss them. Ideally, she's interested in the same articles you would be reading anyway, but we can't all be so lucky, so be prepared to invest a little time finding articles she will like. "Hey, I saw this, what's your take?" Then throw in some lovey dovey before/after along the lines of "I'm so happy I have you, there's no one else I trust/believe/is smart enough/gets it/shares my values who I can talk about this with." Makes her feel valued, and brings you closer.
Utilize the work of others. You have trouble doing expressions of affection, but luckily there's a huge industrial complex online of people producing sappy content. There's an effectively infinite quantity of content on twitter (and probably other places) that's a picture of two cute animals, or an historical painting, or hell of two literal spoons, with the caption "us if we were..." She will like that.
Good luck my friend.
All good advice, thanks. These are things I know I should do but aren't in the habit of actually doing them casually, will work on it.
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I'll go the opposite the other commenters here. I'm started being in an international LD relationship about 6 years ago. I arranged for us to meet for a week within 6 months of starting the relationship. After that, COVID made meeting again difficult, but I arranged for her to come visit me for some months regardless. We were married before she went back home. She moved in permanently with me in 2023.
It's super basic bitch pop-psych but the most important thing to remember is that venting from a woman is not a prompt for you to fix an issue and absolutely not a prompt for you to try and dedramatise the issue. It's a prompt for you to say an "empty platitude" like "oh, that sucks, I hope things gets better". It's hard because your rational brain is telling you the issues can be fixed, or that she just needs a different perspective. Vast majority of the time, this is not helpful.
The empty platitudes might feel empty to you, but if you actually love her then they are not empty if you're saying them to help her feel better.
Hahahaha! No. If I were to ask any man I know in a long-term straight relationship I will get the same lament; "it's like we're talking a different language". It's a miracle humanity managed to pair bond for so long. Marriage (and serious relationships that are indistinguishable from marriages) are hard, it's not a capital L Love issue; it's a two completely different human beings with different lives, histories and wildly different brain chemistry are trying to get on the same page to act as one. Both people need to learn to at least understand the other's language, and ideally talk it at least a bit.
That is actually good advice, thanks! Looking back I see exactly these attempts starting fights on their own.
Also a pretty good
copemindset to view these things through, thank you.Tangent, but I always wondered if a big part of the persisting popular perception of Love at First Sight and True Soulmates and stuff like that is just couples/parents downplaying their struggles after the fact to strengthen their bond and/or to reassure their children. Maybe I'm an outlier, but for me attraction (in a romantic sense) was never a 0-to-100 flash of inspiration, it was always me gradually growing interested in a person as I learn about their life and language, not noticing it sinking in until at some point the realization hits out of left field.
Wait, you have never been struck by the thunderbolt?
We should have a poll. I thought it happened to everyone, although not too frequently.
Personally, I've been hit by the thunderbolt before, but I think it's not an indicator of any kind of compatibility, but our biology's attempt at getting people who are failing to pair bond to reproduce regardless.
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Maybe some people really find someone where everything is effortless. Maybe those people also embody the work advice "if you love what you do you'll never work a day in your life". Maybe those people are lying to themselves, or maybe they aren't. I have to work at my career and I have to work at my marriage. I didn't make the maximum effort and maximum difficulty choices for both, but I'm not sure the unicorn effortless ones existed for either, at least for me.
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I am an LDR vet(unfortunately) and have to echo that getting into meatspace as a goal is key.
How much emotional damage have you all inflicted on you? I ask because my first girlfriend was sourced the same way yours was. I was in the same position. The difference was that I was ~15 years old, so the years I wasted on a sub-optimal relationship could at least be considered "below the line".
In terms of showing affection and truly feeling it, I've found it helpful to actually think about what they do for me and what is awesome about them. You can forget these things when involved with someone for a long time.
If you're struggling too much to do this, it may have less to do with aspergers and more to do with them not being great. I'd need to know more about her to give more specific help.
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Long distance relationships aren't real, without a concrete plan to become a short distance relationship. Preferably you've at least traveled to meet this person already?
I made the terrible mistake of getting into a LDR as an early 20's super nerd who'd barely interacted with women, at least not successfully. The novelty of "Somebody likes me!" was nice, but actually meeting torpedo'd it so fucking hard. Granted, this was the mid 00's and things were a little bit different socio-culturally. But it turns out, the sort of woman who is desperate enough to latch onto a long distance relationship is even worse than the sort of man who does. Consider all your flaws, and reasons you can't find a real relationship near you, and understand that along axis you don't even realize exist, she's probably worse.
That said, the strategy I pursued after that might not even be available anymore, so who knows.
This is not my first LD rodeo either (insert "clown dies in second rodeo" meme here), and likewise that ended in disaster very quickly upon actual contact; the difference being that one crashed and burned through no real fault of my own, whereas here the main culprit is, far as I can tell, mostly me and my autism.
On the contrary, I'm actually in mild disbelief that a person like her is hanging on random Bolivian melon farming forums at all, much less contacting me first and developing interest. She has her flaws but welp, so do I. Making it work despite that is part of the point, no?
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I generally don't think long distance relationships are good idea. We are meat-world creatures not built for constant online communication. Do you have any plans to be near this woman geographically in the near future?
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