Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
This is something I've been mulling over for a while: if you aren't lucky and fairly determined, as a man - maybe as a human being - you need to decide where you want the ambulances and the tragedy if you want a relationship.
This is a stage that many people pass through at one point or another, and it is admirable to have strong enough personal or religious convictions to attempt it. Maybe that means being stoically resigned to being sexually assaulted or raped because you're a somewhat awkward but physically attractive mildly autistic 17-year-old girl who wants to experience life and have a family someday. In that model, you accept that you are going to need to kiss some frogs to find your prince. And you have an immune deficiency, so you genuinely make your peace with the fact that those frog kisses are likely to lead you to a couple of hospital stays that hopefully don't give you permanent damage. Maybe it means accepting that your girlfriend might stab you because you stuck it in crazy to get whatever wisdom comes from sex or relationships; maybe it means being maimed at 48 by your wife and the mother of your three children and winding up nearly dying, losing a limb, and spending three weeks in the local ICU.
I think that this is admirable and respectable, that in ages past men and women endured similar dangers in order to be worthy, and that war for men and childbirth for women have been how these tragedies played out until very recently.
What's your take on this?
My take is that though 'tough talk' is in vogue these days, the usual bromides of 'just self improve' or 'don't be a pussy' or whatever are not necessarily a spur to change. They may, in fact, serve as a defense against change. And I suspect that the change you are defending against is actually getting a girlfriend, and you use these horrible events like your friend getting stabbed or your own feels of unworthiness to avoid doing it. And of course, it is not hard to find unpleasant people on the internet who will join in on this. It's human nature to seek to identify others as inferior, and to hate them for it. I guess I understand this kind of behavior because I engage in it myself. It's easier to tell myself that I'm lazy, small, weak, unattractive and disgusting than it is for me to go out and talk to other men. And I sometimes seek out negative reinforcement on the internet, which is never in short supply in places like Reddit.
I don't really have a solution. But I don't really believe that tragedy and ambulances are inevitable features of having a relationship.
Been reading The Last Psychiatrist lately, by chance?
No, but his work lives rent free in my head.
Regardless, the logic is simple. Skookum comes here, moans, gets moaned at. Why does he do it? Because he wants it, on some level or another. Or because, on some level, he feels he deserves it. There are many possible angles. But as someone who has also strapped himself into a rollercoaster to deal with my lack of desire or drive or accomplishment or whatever, I sort of get it, and I personally find the 'sort yourself out, mate' routine to be totally pointless. Having others scold me for being small and weak and lazy didn't resolve my feelings of inferiority, it made them worse... and yet even knowing that's true, I still want it, I still seek it out. As Dostoevsky said, men can be as fond of suffering as they are of well-being.
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