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Notes -
Why do we expect and encourage the unattractive to have relationships? Yes. Disabled and ugly people deserve a shot at happiness. But there's a hell of a lot of suffering and tragedy that goes on there, and it may well be imprudent to bring children into that. If you're a dude who is 5'4" the least-bad outcome you can reasonably expect is marrying a woman twice your weight and watching her wind up in a nursing home age 44 because she sprained her ankle and couldn't take care of herself after that. And it only gets worse from there: I've known short guys who were with women that were child abusers. Serious shit - as in 'attempted murder' serious. It's no better for unattractive women: there's rapists and abusers and shitbags aplenty. Single motherhood isn't nice either.
I honestly don't get it: if you're unattractive as hell, whether that's partially in your control or not, dating and relationships will suck for you unless you are genuinely exceptional. The only short guy I knew that did OK with dating was a neurosurgery resident with enough charisma for a career in politics. The autistic woman I'm friends with - an emergency-medicine resident in California - wound up enduring a couple relationships with predatory, abusive shitbags before finding a decent guy. Shit fucking sucks, and there's a good chance that the best you're going to get is going to be straight up tragic.
It's a basic human need. It's also tied to other basic human goods (e.g. more social links tend to buffer people against swings in fortune, depression and a lack of life satisfaction). The assumption is strongly held that You can't get rid of it, it's why we're here.
Also, to be more cynical, people don't say this (even if they think it) because it implicitly carries the message that you see such societal dregs as less-than. I've never heard a well-adjusted male be told to give up or to perform some ubermensch-like act of will and dispel their desire for companionship. Even the women who say it are usually playacting. It would be alienating to the person. Might as well say the polite thing -"there's someone for everyone" - and let them sink or swim on their own.
So what? If you're not a genius working will involve some level of hardship. Does that mean you shouldn't work?
Also: there's no reason why you should exist on the same package as an "exceptional" person? Nobody would buy or be happy in a house if that was the metric.
Perhaps I was a maladjusted college student. But I was told - in college, by a man who I considered a friend - that it was best if I never had a partner; he believed that all I could get was basically prostitution on a long-term contract. I've had other friends tell me similar things. I understand desexualization. I understand the idea that some people are just shit partners and garbage in, garbage out.
No. But if your choice is between living in a tent in the woods, and living in a house that's fucking rotting and condemned, full of rats and black mold...the tent seems like the better option.
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