site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1320 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for April 22, 2026

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

No, by trap I mean male autists entering a relationship with a cluster B woman, specifically borderline or histrionic tendencies.

So, why are the autists more susceptible for falling for these women? Because they are more isolated and worse at reading people?

n=1 and those two factors definitely play their parts, but also - those types of woman are usually much less shy of showing direct, explicit interest in a guy and have no qualms about adapting their presentation to suit their interests (autistics tend to entirely miss the "traditional" green flags, and thus have no experience with courtship), and generally do most of the work of forming an attachment for him. The dreaded "I can fix her" impulse is also super effective against autistic-type mons, "reasonable" and "grounded" as they are (how hard can it be, really?). From the inside it definitely feels like a match made in heaven until the downsides slowly become apparent.

t. stepped on a landmine

A match made in heaven (hell). The naive and vulnerable vs the exploiter who can be most effective against such individuals.

I'd think being bad at reading people is exactly the reason why one would want to nope out of any relationship with a high-drama person. At least this is how it works for me. If you're bad at something, why get into a situation where your wellbeing may depend on being good at it?

You'd perhaps not have a benchmark to judge them against, and might be strung along by their interest in you.

Which is why, as a broad generality, I think (male) autists are prone to falling into the trap of a relationship with a cluster B woman. If they don't have a good benchmark to judge against (and perhaps have a bad benchmark like "women are crazy," which leads to "this woman is acting crazy, that's nothing unusual because all women are like that"), then they're less likely to see all the red flags for what the flags really are. They could be naive about other people's motivations (hence the quokka insult) and fail to recognize malicious or destructively selfish motivations under the woman's expressed interest in them.

As for why they might be prone to be targeted, they are likely presenting some behaviors (appearance of emotional stability, internal locus of control, unwillingness to go with the crowd, etc.) that histrionic/borderline types find attractive (see hysterical bonding proposed by McWilliams), and it's only later when the incompatibility in all these traits between the two people causes it all to end in tears.

and perhaps have a bad benchmark like "women are crazy," which leads to "this woman is acting crazy, that's nothing unusual because all women are like that"

Fortunately, I know for a fact it is not so (I am married to one of the counter-examples, but I know more than one). But it could be just my personal luck, could happen that I would never meet any.

Yes?

Id assume "worse at reading people" does most of the heavy lifting therr

I would suggest for, um, reasons, that Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a bigger risk. That thing where they decide that you are The Good Person and then chameleon-cloak themselves to appeal to you is super effective against quokkas.

This is why gatekeeping is super important. "Oh, you're telling me you're really into Curtis Yarvin after I mentioned him? Name 5 kings you'd grant absolute sovereignty."

As you describe it, that sounds more like BPD mirroring, but I'm not a doctor and don't even play one on tv.

The NPD version is more manipulative.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats