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Wellness Wednesday for May 3, 2023

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).

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I feel as if I am extremely unattractive due to autism and subpar physical appearance; while I have friends, dating has been almost impossible for me. While I have solid career prospects as a medical student, I believe that it is very unlikely that I will ever have an average partner. I do not think that any remotely "good" outcome is remotely realistic; at this point, it is about picking the least bad option, rather than a nonexistent and fundamentally unrealistic "good" option...at the end of the day, it has become abundantly clear to me that it is about deciding where I want the ambulances, or the lights and sirens: what institution will my partner be in and out of?

Given this: is there any set of skills that I might benefit from learning in order to be not only a good father and husband but nurse and caretaker for a partner? I know that my medical education will give me the technical skills to handle it, but medical school does not teach how to merge the roles of partner and caregiver. She might be 400 pounds and a sprained ankle away from immobility - and that is honestly one of the better things that could happen. It beats things like looking the other way at alcoholism or drug addiction. Yes, I am aware that there is "a hell of a lot of 'average' out there between prom queen and obese drug addict" but average is deeply unrealistic for me. That ain't happening any more than I'm going to discover some hidden, great athletic talent and start playing baseball for the Yankees, or compete in the Olympics.

How might I plan for things like 'my wife needs home health aides at age 45 because she can't take care of herself' or how to deal with my kids' (justifiable) disappointment at or anger at their mom because she literally ate up their college fund, or because there were a lot of experiences that they simply could not have because of their mother's size? It'd be the same way with anything else...if it was drug addiction, you've got the same problems plus or minus issues with law enforcement. If it was something like mental illness that manifested itself through terrible life choices and abuse, that'd be even worse.

In addition: how might I advertise that I am willing to go on this journey with someone: to sit by their side in the hospital because they've had a pulmonary embolism at 29. To look at wheelchairs and walkers with them in their thirties. To be their nurse and caretaker - or to work hard at medicine to earn enough to pay home health aides. How might I signal that I am not only able but willing to be that kind of caretaker?

Buddy, if you're a med student and on track to becoming a doctor, you really have to have fallen down the ugly tree, hit every branch and ended up with a pinecone in your ass for you to end up dating someone so decidedly below average.

Presumably you're a US med student, so you're on track to making around $250k a year unless the AIs take yer jerbs, at which point you can easily end up with hot women lining up to date you while employing herculean amounts of patience in the face of your autism.

In order of sense and sensibility:

  1. Workout. Can't cure ugly, but big muscles can distract from an unfortunate appearance.

  2. Look forward to a hot nurse or some other woman, who if not outright gold-digging, still has a vested interest in landing a decent guy, showing up in form-fitting scrubs to tease your decidedly non-autistic dick until you get the message.

  3. Visit Thailand. Fuck hot women. Adopt one and her water buffalo for the long haul.

  • I'm no slouch in the weight room: bench 225 squat 315 dead 345 weigh 160lb @ 5'6". I suppose I could try to look like a physique bodybuilder or something lol.

  • I am not sure that $250k is enough to get a Western woman to be with someone she finds disgusting on a visceral, biological level. I suppose that people vary in their disgust tolerance. Certainly my time as a medical student has really altered my feelings around disgust...I don't mind it as much, it doesn't matter as much. Some of my classmates feel differently, some feel the same way. I'd suspect that you need around a million a year to get someone to put up with that kind of disgust...I've heard that Silicon Valley was packed with fit multimillionaire virgins!

  • Sounds like that is asking to be divorced. Worse, if you are unlucky and she's quite disgusted by you. Not that there is anything at all wrong with that; I'd do the same in her shoes!

I am not sure that $250k is enough to get a Western woman to be with someone she finds disgusting on a visceral, biological level.

.. what makes you so ugly ? Being prematurely bald ?

Being too short ? Deformed, unusual face ?

Or is it all a mental problem, body dysmorphia ?

Premature baldness plus subpar facial appearance and 5’6” stature. Nothing that a medical professional would call a deformity, though I might benefit from jaw surgery.

Then you’ve got the autism to add to that. There have been studies that showed that neurotypicals (that’s normal people) judged autists as awkward based on two seconds of footage of them socially interacting, and even from snapshots of social interaction. That might not be a physical deformity, but it sure functions an awful lot like one, if people can be like “That guy’s awkward” after watching him talk to his friend across the room. For two seconds.

As such…I think a million a year sounds closer to what it would take to get someone who’s not morbidly obese, can work a full time job, not a danger to herself or others, and not addicted to hard drugs to endure that kind of disgust. I don’t blame people for that…I mean, it’d take a lot of convincing to get most people to be with someone they were viscerally disgusted by!