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:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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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.
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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.
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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?
Damn, sounds like you want to court my wife.
Anyways, there's something wrong with you. Seriously. What the hell would you get out of a relationship with such a wreck?
Humility, strength, perhaps children. Why should I be celibate for life, if I can instead be in a relationship with someone that needs a nurse and caretaker - and gain whatever unique wisdom comes from sex and relationships from that experience?
I've known guys who've had it worse. Two Aspies I know had their girlfriends try to stab them. One succeeded and blocked the knife, the other very nearly died from blood loss but made a full recovery. They're in happy relationships with nice people now.
You want unique wisdom, then go and ask the people who had the experience. I mean, it seems you bought into the notion that you can generate personality traits or attractiveness or valuable experiences by going through with some zany scheme, and you also seem to be genuinely mentally ill to the point of holding ridiculous delusions as factual truths, but maybe you'll manage to consider the following: Other people have done what you consider your best path forward. Go and talk to them. Ask them about how great it is to be married to mental and biological failure. Ask them how much they get out of their lives when most of it is spent propping up that which fails to give reason to its existence beyond a hole between its legs. Maybe take a good look at them, figure out whether they're the kind that made their peace with fate and are waiting for death to release them from the shitshow they failed to extricate themselves from, or whether they're deluding themselves into thinking that what they're doing will ever get any better, or even that it's valuable. Also try to figure out how much of a burden their ward is on the people around them.
Your ideas are wrong, all wrong, and I am unreasonably angry about someone wanting to throw themselves and everyone around them into decades of misery. But it's none of my business. Go ahead, make the biggest mistake of your life. We all die eventually, and what does it matter whether you turned your life into an existential horror show. From what you wrote so far it seems your mind is beyond reason or repair, so all we can do is accept your planned self-destruction. Easy to do, since I don't know you.
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