I need to talk, even if it's useless

[Cicciograna]

I have been thinking about myself and life for some time. I feel the need to talk to someone, and yet those who are around me are not suitable, because they won't take me too seriously, because they can't give me any new perspective to make sense of my situation (which I feel being pretty common, after all, human relationships are hard to figure out), and - last but not least - because my personal attitude is to never burden my friends with my problems, they are mine to solve and they already have theirs.
But I feel the need to talk.

Some backstory. Please, forgive my wall of text...but I need to talk.
Always been rather alone, even if everybody loved me, always felt an emptyness in my life. Never had a girlfriend, not even in my teen years, before I was 21st years old. Not a kiss. Not a hug. Not a moment of intimacy. On the contrary, even though my ladyfriends loved me, even if they laughed with me, even if they found me fun, they never considered me anything more than a friend. To the point that I was told to my face that I was "harmless" to them. To the point that when one day I even remotely implied with one of them that I could be interested in her, she laughed in my face. One thing that really struck me down was this girl, perpetually looking for someone: she described me her "perfect man", and essentially made my identikit; then, when I somewhat hinted that I could be "thre right one", she annihilated me telling that "she wanted to be alone". Even if up to 5 minutes ago she was describing me the frustrarion she felt by being alone.

Struggle after struggle, I turn 21st and meet this girl, a person who, for the first time, seems to be genuinely interested to me. In the beginning I wasn't much into her, but then getting to know her I found out she was interesting and smart and fun, and we started dating.
We dated for A LONG time. Eight years, to be precise. The first woman I'd ever kissed, touched, held. We loved each other. We were planning to get married.
Until I found out that I didn't love her anymore. I'll spare you the details. It was wracking, for both. Our paths have diverged, and from what I hear, she's still struggling to recover. Yeah, hate me, I'm a monster. True, maybe staying with her without loving her would have been worse, but "I should have known better".
One year after leaving my ex, I get to talk to this other girl. She was an acquaintance of mine (and I confess that I liked her from the first moment I set my gaze upon her), but our interaction was almost zero. One day I commmented something under one of her pictures. We started to talk. We started to bond.
She was to marry another man.
Even if I knew it, her friendship was precious to me, and I kept chatting with her. Bad mistake. This time, yeah, I should have known better.
To be honest, I still wonder why she had to marry that man, whom she clearly didn't love. She yearned from romanticism, he didn't give any. She longed for culture, he was not particularly cultured. She wanted comfort, warmth, love, he didn't have any to spare. And she turned to me for those.
Oh, I gave her. The second woman I've ever kissed, touched, held.
It couldn't work. I should have known. It could not work, and indeed, it didn't.
My life brought me elsewhere, here in the US (I'm from Italy). During my absence, she lapsed away...even though when I came back, she seemed SO pleased to see me again. So pleased to be loved again. **** me.
Again, I will spare you the details. There was no point for me to love her, for she was to marry another man, and I should have known better. I don't really know the face she managed to wear to marry this man, after that night with me. At this point, it doesn't matter.
I left again, for good this time. I live here in the US now. She got married.

Here in the US I'm taking a PhD. I studied for all my life, and yet, I feel I can't remember anything. I studied Physics. I used to be a physicist, I felt a physicist. Don't get me wrong, I like what I do, even if from time to time the fact that I'm really starting to forget everything troubles me. Yeah, I'm really forgetting everything I knew. I never understood if this is commonplace, to forget stuff one knew so well, or if it's just me. I like what I do, but a PhD in Physics doesn't leave much time to look around, if you know what I mean, and if you add the fact that I am not good with girls, I don't have pickup lines, moves or that sort of ****, the result is that I am alone and without prospects to find a person for the entire duration of my graduate program. I am 31 y.o., now, I'll graduate at 36. Yeah, not a nice outlook, eh?
So, given that in my group of friends they're all married or engaged (and there aren't girls anyway), given that my classmates are all married or engaged (or not physically appealing - yes, don't forget it, I'm a monster, hate me, I dare to deem looks important! Boo, boo, you deserve to be alone!), given that I do not have the time or the possibility to go out and meet new people (I have oh so many problems with language - remember, I'm not a native English speaker) (and besides my paycheck doesn't allow me to offer drink after drink just to be rejected - and yes, I'd be rejected, because no girl would care about someone who simply doesn't understand what's she's saying in a bar) I resorted to online communities, and subscribed to Tinder (to have sex, yeah, boo, boo, et cetera) and OkCupid.
I should have known better.
Nothing at all from the first, in that, nothing AT ALL, never, ever. Do I really suck that bad? Probably. I don't feel ugly, I feel rather handsome: I'm not an Adonis, but I'm not bad. Too bad that the Universe doesn't care about one's beliefs, that's one of the things Physics taught me.
From OkCupid I had...not good results. I met a couple of girls, and with one things seemed to work. For, like, a couple of weeks, then she simply waned out from my existence. This is something I truly and deeply hate about people on this side of the Atlantic: if they lose interest, they just stop communicating. Not a word of explaination, not a goodbye. They just stop replying to messages, stop commenting, stop answering. It's infuriating to me. It WAS infuriating to me.
Nevertheless I pushed on with OkCupid. It's frustrating, it's truly frustrating. I recognize that there's a profoudn asymmetry between males and females on this community, but really, I always tried my best. I always read the profiles of those who interested me, I try to make interesting conversation, I tried to ask focused question, to stimulate reactions based on the interests of my interlocutors. I am met almost always with indifference. It's frustrating, and I can't get any more of it.

And then, in the end, something happened. I started losing interest. It's not worth the effort, and I'm tired to try and fail whatever I do, I'm tired to try to be noticed only to be ineluctabily ignored, I'm tired of living in the illusion that good things happen to good people, to think that hey, a smart person like you will surely be appreciated, you have always strived to go beyond the "Hey", or the "Sup?", or the "Hi cute" or stuff like that. Instead it doesn't work, and I'm tired. I stopped liking people. I stopped caring. I stopped looking around, or better, I still do it, but I reckon that whatever I do, it will be useless, because if everything goes well I'm going to get one reply, two at best, and then nothing. Why bother? Why care? "Be yourself", everybody says. What happens when you are yourself and it's never enough? What happens when being yourself doesn't do any good? "If you wait, you'll find the right one", they told me. You can't imagine how I HATE this sentence. If you wait, the laws of Physics dictate that the system will evolve towards the least energetic state and die there. Things DO NOT HAPPEN without a massive effort on my part, a massive effort whose final outcome is always failure.

And then, something else, even worse, happened. My mind now rejects any kind of relationship. If I think of myself with another person, I simply shudder. If I think of my self holding a woman, I recoil. If I figure myself in sexual intercourse with a girl, I simply think that sexual satisfaction can be more easily obtained alone. I don't think about having a family anymore. At all. It's something so alien to me that I can't think about it as a thing that can be. Not for me, at least. My sexual desire has plummeted. I just don't care about it any more. I practice self erotism, but it's just out of boredom, and seldom and seldom.
My word uttered nonsensical words such as "love is entropically unfavored", "Statistics are against relationships" and other **** like this. I've come to think that failure is unavoidable to me, when it comes to girls, simply from a statistical point of view. Some days it's okay, I live my life without caring, and being alone is not an issue. See, it's like I don't need to eat any more: it's a great thing, not having a need that once was biting.
But other days it's harder. Other days you remember that eating was good. I hate myself, because I keep thinking to the second girl whom I loved. What an idiot I am. Worse still, I never think about the first one, the one I have been with for eight yers. Eight years, and I've forgotten her. I am a monster. See, I feel like a monster, and try to rationalize I have come to the conclusion that I have to be some kind of monster, because bad things can't happen to good people, and in some way I deserve to be alone. It's almost refreshing to think like this: I won't be hurting anybody else!
It doesn't make any sense, I know, but I long for sense.

In the end, I feel empty. I stopped caring. I live for my PhD (for which I'm having...mixed results, I don't know). I stopped looking for a partner "in a meaningful way", where "in a meaningful way" means "with the intention and expectation of actually finding one". I just do it out of boredom, and less and less, because I'm tired of trying to get a response that will never arrive, whatever I say. Besides, even if for whatever strange turn of destiny I managed to know and meet someone, there would be so many issues, wuth me, with her, with whatever the ****, that it wouldn't work. I'm not interested in making it work, not anymore. I'm just tired.
There are other implications in my story, of course. Maybe I'm not that smart. Maybe I'm not that romantic. Maybe I'm not that interesting. Maybe I'm not handsome, brilliant, friendly, funny or whatever, whatever the hell a person may regard herself. Maybe I'm just a clown who pretends to be what he's not, and people see this and simply avoid me. It's too late to change, in this case.

And that's it. I just don't care about relationships, love and romanticism any more. My OkCupid is an entire lie, from the start to end. It just used to be true, but I should just delete it and leave it blank: who cares?
Okay, I'm done - which just means that I can't coherently write anymore, and frankly put, because I feel that this is useless, just a rant of a whiny dork who should have his **** together, shut his mouth and keep the hard work on, that the exam day is approaching and I can't remember even my name. Do what you want, admins, ban me if I cussed too much, do whatever you want.

[Razade]

It sounds like you've got it figured out. You're not in a place to want a relationship so stop looking for a relationship until you're ready again. There's a lot of...questionable choices in your long history with relationships but don't we all.

{scrubbed}

[Grinner]

It seems you understand what relationships entail quite well. Your physics metaphor, from what I've observed in my family, is actually quite apt. Long-term relationships are a lot of work, especially when kids get involved.


{scrubbed}

Arguments about finances are supposedly the best sign of impending divorce. That is to say, it's quite possible that financial stability is indeed the basis of most long-term relationships.

[Dodom]

{scrubbed}

Even suggesting it was ignoring his situation. If he was going to be happy with a marriage of convenience, he'd have stayed with the first girlfriend instead of splitting after realising the feelings were gone.

OP:
Now all I know from you is what you wrote just there so feel free to reject my reading as it can only be superficial.
If there's any advise I can give, it'd be: for now, do take a break from trying, just like you're talking of doing anyway.
The repeated "boo boo hate me" bits sound like you're feeling guilty yourself and want to protect yourself from others potentially joining in. You're not some idealised prince charming? You don't need to be told nobody is, you know that. I think on an intellectual level you already know how to deal with having your own priorities and desires and, yes, flaws, but feelings need more than being told for it to sink in, so I think removing the pressure and focusing on other interests for a while is a pretty wise decision. If you haven't, also give some thought on women not being idealised princesses either and not expecting ideal romance to come out of them.
Now, while taking a break is all good, if the desire to give up starts leaking on your other areas of interest, please consider consulting, if that's the beginning of a depression you probably don't want to let it take too much space in your life before doing something about it.

[2D8HP]

@Cicciograna,
If your looking for advice (you may very well just want the catharsis, of expressing your thoughts), it is well to still pursue relationships (I.e. connections/conversations) with other people, but avoid for now seeking "relationships" (romance).
In fact avoid thinking about your personal happiness much at all.
Instead pretend to take an interest in the well-being of others (collegues, students, grocery store clerks,, street beggers etc).
Ask them how their doing, pretend you care, maybe take a week off and volunteer for something like habitat for humanity.Tell jokes and try to get someone to smile. Do good work. Get outside your head and "fake it till you make it".
Even if you never get very happy, you'll at least have made the world a better place, and you may get some small satisfaction from that. In my experience happiness usually comes when your too busy to look for it.

[Glass Mouse]

Cicciograna, you have a lot of anger and a lot of self-loathing, most of it completely unwarranted. Calling yourself a monster is so out of proportion that that worries me way more than anything in your relationship history (which, honestly, sounds very ordinary). Have you ever been treated for depression? Have you considered seeking help? Seriously, therapy is not just for broken people, it's a fantastic tool for most people who are struggling with life and identity and happiness.

If you want to read my take on your history, venture onwards.


because my personal attitude is to never burden my friends with my problems, they are mine to solve and they already have theirs.

Start burdening them.

How do you feel when friends come to you for help? Do you feel trusted, almost honored, happy to be able to do something good for someone you love? Why wouldn't your friends feel the same way if you come to them?


Always been rather alone, even if everybody loved me, always felt an emptyness in my life. Never had a girlfriend, not even in my teen years, before I was 21st years old. Not a kiss. Not a hug. Not a moment of intimacy. On the contrary, even though my ladyfriends loved me, even if they laughed with me, even if they found me fun, they never considered me anything more than a friend. To the point that I was told to my face that I was "harmless" to them. To the point that when one day I even remotely implied with one of them that I could be interested in her, she laughed in my face. One thing that really struck me down was this girl, perpetually looking for someone: she described me her "perfect man", and essentially made my identikit; then, when I somewhat hinted that I could be "thre right one", she annihilated me telling that "she wanted to be alone". Even if up to 5 minutes ago she was describing me the frustrarion she felt by being alone.

That sucks, but frankly, having ****ty romantic luck in your teens is very common. Even the "lucky" ones generally found themselves in short, dramatic, bad relationships because teenagers are inexperienced. I'll easily believe that you were unluckier than most, but the fantastic thing about your teen years is that you eventually grow out of them, and you leave the fish bowl, and things get better. They did for you, too.

Again, I'm struck by your phrasing. You "always felt an emptyness in life". Have you examined this feeling outside of romantic relationships? Because it does not sound related.


Struggle after struggle, I turn 21st and meet this girl, a person who, for the first time, seems to be genuinely interested to me. In the beginning I wasn't much into her, but then getting to know her I found out she was interesting and smart and fun, and we started dating.
We dated for A LONG time. Eight years, to be precise. The first woman I'd ever kissed, touched, held. We loved each other. We were planning to get married.

Neat. Also a common development - bad teenage years, then growing up and finding love.


Until I found out that I didn't love her anymore. I'll spare you the details. It was wracking, for both. Our paths have diverged, and from what I hear, she's still struggling to recover. Yeah, hate me, I'm a monster. True, maybe staying with her without loving her would have been worse, but "I should have known better".

How in all blazes were you supposed to know better? You were entirely inexperienced at the time of the relationship's start, and humans are not actually able to control their emotions. The best we can do is act honestly and with integrity, such as not stringing someone along if we don't love them (anymore).

To hammer it in, that does not make you a monster! How on earth did you get it into your head that that is what it means? Who told you that? Who made you believe that lie?


One year after leaving my ex, I get to talk to this other girl. She was an acquaintance of mine (and I confess that I liked her from the first moment I set my gaze upon her), but our interaction was almost zero. One day I commmented something under one of her pictures. We started to talk. We started to bond.
She was to marry another man.
Even if I knew it, her friendship was precious to me, and I kept chatting with her. Bad mistake. This time, yeah, I should have known better.
To be honest, I still wonder why she had to marry that man, whom she clearly didn't love. She yearned from romanticism, he didn't give any. She longed for culture, he was not particularly cultured. She wanted comfort, warmth, love, he didn't have any to spare. And she turned to me for those.
Oh, I gave her. The second woman I've ever kissed, touched, held.
It couldn't work. I should have known. It could not work, and indeed, it didn't.
My life brought me elsewhere, here in the US (I'm from Italy). During my absence, she lapsed away...even though when I came back, she seemed SO pleased to see me again. So pleased to be loved again. **** me.
Again, I will spare you the details. There was no point for me to love her, for she was to marry another man, and I should have known better. I don't really know the face she managed to wear to marry this man, after that night with me. At this point, it doesn't matter.
I left again, for good this time. I live here in the US now. She got married.

Yeah, this one was a mess. Keeping up an affair with someone who doesn't want to leave their current partner is... not a wise course of action. Especially not when you're in love with them. That's a surefire recipe for heartbreak, which you learned. We have all done ****ty things in love at one point and another, and this one is yours. Learn from the mistake and don't do it again. That's all you can and should do going forward.


Here in the US I'm taking a PhD. I studied for all my life, and yet, I feel I can't remember anything. I studied Physics. I used to be a physicist, I felt a physicist. Don't get me wrong, I like what I do, even if from time to time the fact that I'm really starting to forget everything troubles me. Yeah, I'm really forgetting everything I knew. I never understood if this is commonplace, to forget stuff one knew so well, or if it's just me.

I'm sorry to keep armchair diagnosing you, but... this is one way depression manifests itself. Does your university has a councelor you can talk to?


I like what I do, but a PhD in Physics doesn't leave much time to look around, if you know what I mean, and if you add the fact that I am not good with girls, I don't have pickup lines, moves or that sort of ****, the result is that I am alone and without prospects to find a person for the entire duration of my graduate program.

Very few people have "moves". Most people find love by being kind and respectful in interactions with people of their preferred gender(s) and then lucking into someone who is compatible. Wasn't that how you found both your ex and your affair partner?


I am 31 y.o., now, I'll graduate at 36. Yeah, not a nice outlook, eh?

Eh. My boyfriend found me in his thirties. It's on the minority side, but nowhere close to despairing age. Hell, my 70-year old grandmother would've found herself with a new boyfriend if she hadn't been in the middle of a large relocation at the time.

Seriously. You've had two long-term relationships (yes, the affair counts, even if it was doomed on arrival), and now you're single at 31. That is common. It's so common it's practically boring.


So, given that in my group of friends they're all married or engaged (and there aren't girls anyway), given that my classmates are all married or engaged (or not physically appealing - yes, don't forget it, I'm a monster, hate me, I dare to deem looks important! Boo, boo, you deserve to be alone!), given that I do not have the time or the possibility to go out and meet new people (I have oh so many problems with language - remember, I'm not a native English speaker) (and besides my paycheck doesn't allow me to offer drink after drink just to be rejected - and yes, I'd be rejected, because no girl would care about someone who simply doesn't understand what's she's saying in a bar) I resorted to online communities, and subscribed to Tinder (to have sex, yeah, boo, boo, et cetera) and OkCupid.

Good. That's what online dating is for - people who are too busy to go socialising and people whose social circles have a drought of people you might be interested in.


I should have known better.
Nothing at all from the first, in that, nothing AT ALL, never, ever. Do I really suck that bad? Probably. I don't feel ugly, I feel rather handsome: I'm not an Adonis, but I'm not bad. Too bad that the Universe doesn't care about one's beliefs, that's one of the things Physics taught me.
From OkCupid I had...not good results. I met a couple of girls, and with one things seemed to work. For, like, a couple of weeks, then she simply waned out from my existence. This is something I truly and deeply hate about people on this side of the Atlantic: if they lose interest, they just stop communicating. Not a word of explaination, not a goodbye. They just stop replying to messages, stop commenting, stop answering. It's infuriating to me. It WAS infuriating to me.
Nevertheless I pushed on with OkCupid. It's frustrating, it's truly frustrating. I recognize that there's a profoudn asymmetry between males and females on this community, but really, I always tried my best. I always read the profiles of those who interested me, I try to make interesting conversation, I tried to ask focused question, to stimulate reactions based on the interests of my interlocutors. I am met almost always with indifference. It's frustrating, and I can't get any more of it.

We're back to something that's very common, and possibly even on the better side in terms of online dating experience. Meeting a couple of girls and then having it peter out is, I reiterate, very common. I agree that ghosting is bloody frustrating, but it's not a grave insult from fate, it's common casual dating behavior.


And then, in the end, something happened. I started losing interest. It's not worth the effort, and I'm tired to try and fail whatever I do, I'm tired to try to be noticed only to be ineluctabily ignored, I'm tired of living in the illusion that good things happen to good people, to think that hey, a smart person like you will surely be appreciated, you have always strived to go beyond the "Hey", or the "Sup?", or the "Hi cute" or stuff like that. Instead it doesn't work, and I'm tired. I stopped liking people. I stopped caring. I stopped looking around, or better, I still do it, but I reckon that whatever I do, it will be useless, because if everything goes well I'm going to get one reply, two at best, and then nothing. Why bother? Why care? "Be yourself", everybody says. What happens when you are yourself and it's never enough? What happens when being yourself doesn't do any good? "If you wait, you'll find the right one", they told me. You can't imagine how I HATE this sentence. If you wait, the laws of Physics dictate that the system will evolve towards the least energetic state and die there. Things DO NOT HAPPEN without a massive effort on my part, a massive effort whose final outcome is always failure.

And then, something else, even worse, happened. My mind now rejects any kind of relationship. If I think of myself with another person, I simply shudder. If I think of my self holding a woman, I recoil. If I figure myself in sexual intercourse with a girl, I simply think that sexual satisfaction can be more easily obtained alone. I don't think about having a family anymore. At all. It's something so alien to me that I can't think about it as a thing that can be. Not for me, at least. My sexual desire has plummeted. I just don't care about it any more. I practice self erotism, but it's just out of boredom, and seldom and seldom.

Burnout happens. If you take a break, you'll bounce back in time.


My word uttered nonsensical words such as "love is entropically unfavored", "Statistics are against relationships" and other **** like this. I've come to think that failure is unavoidable to me, when it comes to girls, simply from a statistical point of view. Some days it's okay, I live my life without caring, and being alone is not an issue. See, it's like I don't need to eat any more: it's a great thing, not having a need that once was biting.
But other days it's harder. Other days you remember that eating was good. I hate myself, because I keep thinking to the second girl whom I loved. What an idiot I am. Worse still, I never think about the first one, the one I have been with for eight yers. Eight years, and I've forgotten her. I am a monster. See, I feel like a monster, and try to rationalize I have come to the conclusion that I have to be some kind of monster, because bad things can't happen to good people, and in some way I deserve to be alone. It's almost refreshing to think like this: I won't be hurting anybody else!
It doesn't make any sense, I know, but I long for sense.


You need to break this mindset. It is beyond the scope of this thread, but I hope you at least know that these conclusions are not rooted in reality nor in any ethics shared by this society? I mean, I totally get that self-loathing and depression will whisper terrible things in your ear, but that's all it is. Do you know that?


In the end, I feel empty. I stopped caring. I live for my PhD (for which I'm having...mixed results, I don't know). I stopped looking for a partner "in a meaningful way", where "in a meaningful way" means "with the intention and expectation of actually finding one". I just do it out of boredom, and less and less, because I'm tired of trying to get a response that will never arrive, whatever I say. Besides, even if for whatever strange turn of destiny I managed to know and meet someone, there would be so many issues, wuth me, with her, with whatever the ****, that it wouldn't work. I'm not interested in making it work, not anymore. I'm just tired.

This is a good strategy. What brings you joy in life? Take the burnout energy and put it into your PhD, your hobbies, anything that makes you feel better.


There are other implications in my story, of course. Maybe I'm not that smart. Maybe I'm not that romantic. Maybe I'm not that interesting. Maybe I'm not handsome, brilliant, friendly, funny or whatever, whatever the hell a person may regard herself. Maybe I'm just a clown who pretends to be what he's not, and people see this and simply avoid me. It's too late to change, in this case.

You don't need to be either of those things. But you do need to find a way to break out of the story you tell/feel about yourself, where you're a perpetual loser and monster. You're not. You're a guy with slighly below average luck in love, and I'm pretty sure that the self-loathing is also the cause of that missing luck.

People don't actually want partners who are handsome, brilliant, friendly, funny, etc. They do want partners who care about something, partners who make them feel good about themselves, partners who make them feel loved, partners with whom they can have fun. Some of these things you can only give if you have a foundation of happiness and identity on which to build in the first place. I don't know enough about you to say how you should go about doing that, but it's definitely something you cannot do alone. Talk to your friends. Find a therapist. Whatever you need.

It worries me so much how you've taken a completely ordinary romantic history and spun it into this tale where you're a terrible monster who deserves to be alone. The two things are not related. Something in your head or your general history has convinced you to hate yourself, and you've colored everything else from there. Do you know that? I hope so much that you're just venting on a bad day, but if this is something you often feel, please please reach out to someone in your life.


@Cicciograna,
If your looking for advice (you may very well just want the catharsis, of expressing your thoughts), it is well to still pursue relationships (I.e. connections/conversations) with other people, but avoid for now seeking "relationships" (romance).
In fact avoid thinking about your personal happiness much at all.
Instead pretend to take an interest in the well-being of others (collegues, students, grocery store clerks,, street beggers etc).
Ask them how their doing, pretend you care, maybe take a week off and volunteer for something like habitat for humanity.Tell jokes and try to get someone to smile. Do good work. Get outside your head and "fake it till you make it".
Even if you never get very happy, you'll at least have made the world a better place, and you may get some small satisfaction from that. In my experience happiness usually comes when your too busy to look for it.

2D8HP, you asked for feedback in other threads, so I'll post here where it's relevant :-)

The first half is very good advice. Relationships are neat, but they don't actually fill that void of self-loathing and despair. Don't put a bandaid on a broken bone. Do the work to mend it instead - by, indeed, doing whatever you can to make yourself happy in the absence of a romantic relationship.

I'm not sure I'm thrilled about the "pretend to care" part of the advice, honestly. If someone is so far down that they literally cannot bring themselves to care about other people, I feel like they'd need way way way more help than "fake it 'til you make it" can bring.
I mean, "fake it 'til you make it" can do wonders for a ton of things, but it feels a little out of scope here. But then, I've never been so far into depression that I couldn't muster basic empathy (which sounds so horrible, and all the *hugs* to anyone reading who might feel like that), so what do I know.

Talking to strangers and trying to make the world a better place are fabulous pieces of advice in general, though.

[Murk]

I have nothing to say that Glass Mouse hasn't already said, so just read her post twice. It's worth it.

[Ceaon]

Cicciograna, I just want to say I read your post and I hope you will feel better. Listen to Glass Mouse, her advice is solid. And maybe look into getting some professional help or at least some help from your friends. They can make you feel better about yourself and/or help you grow to be a(n even) better person.

[veti]

Glass Mouse has already said most of what I'd think was good advice. I just wanted to enlarge on one paragraph:


My word uttered nonsensical words such as "love is entropically unfavored", "Statistics are against relationships" and other **** like this. I've come to think that failure is unavoidable to me, when it comes to girls, simply from a statistical point of view. [...] I hate myself, because I keep thinking to the second girl whom I loved. What an idiot I am. Worse still, I never think about the first one, the one I have been with for eight yers. Eight years, and I've forgotten her. I am a monster. See, I feel like a monster, and try to rationalize I have come to the conclusion that I have to be some kind of monster, because bad things can't happen to good people, and in some way I deserve to be alone. It's almost refreshing to think like this: I won't be hurting anybody else!
It doesn't make any sense, I know, but I long for sense.

You begin by calling the words "nonsensical", but then you seem to embrace them as valid. Let's start from the top:

"love is entropically unfavoured" - the feeling that most people call love is usually unsustainable and prone to burn out, this much is true. But that's feeling is really the least interesting part of "love". Love is a process, whereby a part of your soul is imprinted with a part of your partner's (and vice versa, if the love is reciprocated). This process goes on for as long as the two of you are together. You learn to like/enjoy the same things, to approve/disapprove of the same things. If you want a cold scientific explanation, I recommend Douglas Hofstadter, I am a Strange Loop - the first couple of chapters, at least.

"statistics are against relationships" - this is true if, and only if, you assume that there is a single "correct" answer to the question "who am I meant to be with?" Without going into religion, ask yourself if you do really believe that. I don't. I think there are probably thousands of people in the US with whom you could sustain a loving relationship, if you (mutually) decide to do so. Finding "the one" is hopeless, but picking one is just a matter of identifying someone with the correct qualifications.

Repeat after me: "I am not a monster. I have had less-than-optimal experiences, but above all they were experiences and I have learned from them. I will not intentionally hurt another, but hurt is a normal part of life; anyone entering a relationship always runs some risk, it is not in my gift to remove that risk from them, and I wouldn't even if I could, because that would be an unwarrantable intrusion on their agency - I will respect them enough as an adult to allow them to assess and run their own risks."

[lio45]

Hey, I'm pretty sure I recall you posting, you're in Princeton NJ right now, aren't you? At the time, you spoke of that ex (after ~8 years together, you two were breaking up) and I recall we discussed pizza! Aren't you from the Naples area? You were still in Italy then, but shopping for doctorates in the US.

I'm a physicist too so that struck me (plus, I have a good memory).

Haven't yet read Glass Mouse's post but I'm pretty sure it's sound advice!!

[Haruki-kun]

The Winged Mod: Thread re-opened after review.

[Cicciograna]

Okay, since the thread has been re-opened (thank you, Haruki), I guess it's time to reply properly and explain the situation.
First of all, I want to reassure you that I definitely feel better now: that rant has been the byproduct of a particularly stressful period, and I am reasonably sure that period is behind me. I could have faced it with more dignity, but sometimes it helps to vent out.
I want to thank all those who took the time to read my ramblings, and to write a proper reply, I'm going to address them in a while: no matter the tone or the contents of said replies, again, thank you if you lent ear to my pleas and chimed in to give your opinion.

Now, I'd like to clarify a couple of points.
First of all, no, even though it may seem that I have relationships figured out, I feel that I was not clear enough about this point: I have yet to understand how relationships work :-D The fact that as of now I don't feel attracted to women, and the thought of a relationship doesn't exactly appeal to me is merely a reaction to the prolonged solitude, and I'm not particularly happy about it: as I said the first time, it's like having lost appetite and the desire to eat. It's not a good thing, since eating is a pleasant activity, and while there are certainly positive aspects, I miss the pleasure of eating itself - or, in this case, being able to love.

Second, after re-reading my ramblings I reckon that it may appear as if I have a very poor opinion of myself. This is, at the same time, true and false: I regard myself as a very good piece of human being, I trust my intelligence, I deem myself as brilliant, smart and romantic, and even handsome, yeah. When I feel down, I think that, after all, I was able to move to an entirely different continent, start a graduate program in Physics, settle down here in the US, face all the problems one could face, and that all by myself, without any (or hardly any) help by those who generally we have in our lives, like family or friends. Now I'm settled, I have many friends that love me, I have carved a comfy spot for me, my apartment is nice, but of course in the beginning it has been HARD. And I was alone. And I made it. This must mean something.
On the other hand, as paradoxical as it may seem I DO suffer from having quite a low self-esteem. I feel that what I do is never enough, feel that "if I just had done this I could have achieved that, instead of settling for this other"; and I grow especially frustrated if I can't do something, if I feel I'm wasting too much time on a particular task. This means that I often regard poorly the work I do, and start thinking that others would expect more from me. It's as if it was never enough, and I tend to regard the shortcomings more than the successes.

So how does this fit my initial rant? Well, it pertains to the "monster" thing. I do not really feel a monster, but I feel that I made mistakes, some of which still haunt me, even if much less than in the past. It's hard to explain, but I feel that having made mistakes, which impacted other people, sort of makes me a negative person, even if I do have positive qualities; as if I had all the lucks in the world, and squandered them, hurting other people in the process: this would make me "a monster", some kind of cold-blooded beast that had much, and got rid of it. Then I mentioned (in sort of a sarcastic way) being a monster when I said that looks play an important role for me in the search for a partner: what the hell could I do? I don't say they're all, otherwise my target would be just bimbos, the stereotypical "pretty but dumb", but yeah, brains do not suffice. This is usually perceived as shallow, but I don't want to be hypocritical and admit that this is me.

Now, this is the reason the second lady was perfect for me (at least in my eyes): she was not only very brilliant and smart, she was also - and forgive my Belkarism - smokin' hot. And she liked me for what I was, and she even told me that she found me really handsome.
See, this is one of the reasons my self-esteem dropped in the years: even if I was perfect for her, and handsome too, she picked another man. As Physics goes, if a model doesn't match the data, the model is wrong: so if I think of myself as a man perfect for her - as in having all the features she could want - and she doesn't pick me, it means that, after all, I do not have those features. And this, in turn, extends to all the other girls: if I regard myself as a desirable person, but nobody desires me, then after all I'm not desirable. Nature doesn't care about personal opinions. Hence, I am worse than a not-good man: I am a not-good man who lives in the illusion of being good.

This cleared, I'll reply point by point to some of you.


@Cicciograna,
If your looking for advice (you may very well just want the catharsis, of expressing your thoughts), it is well to still pursue relationships (I.e. connections/conversations) with other people, but avoid for now seeking "relationships" (romance).
In fact avoid thinking about your personal happiness much at all.
Instead pretend to take an interest in the well-being of others (collegues, students, grocery store clerks,, street beggers etc).
Ask them how their doing, pretend you care, maybe take a week off and volunteer for something like habitat for humanity.Tell jokes and try to get someone to smile. Do good work. Get outside your head and "fake it till you make it".
Even if you never get very happy, you'll at least have made the world a better place, and you may get some small satisfaction from that. In my experience happiness usually comes when your too busy to look for it.
I don't need to "fake" interest, I'm genuinely interested in other people. I deeply care for my friends, I keep informed on their health, I ask them about their problems, I take time out of my time to help them if I can, and if I can't I just listen to them. All of my friends know that they can trust me, that I will lend ear to them, I try, whenever I can, to make their lives better. I've set as a goal for my life, as high sounding as it may be, that I should strive to make the world a better place than it was when I was born, and helping the people I love is one of the ways I can fulfill my goal.
After all, this is why my friends love me.



You begin by calling the words "nonsensical", but then you seem to embrace them as valid. Let's start from the top:

"love is entropically unfavoured" - the feeling that most people call love is usually unsustainable and prone to burn out, this much is true. But that's feeling is really the least interesting part of "love". Love is a process, whereby a part of your soul is imprinted with a part of your partner's (and vice versa, if the love is reciprocated). This process goes on for as long as the two of you are together. You learn to like/enjoy the same things, to approve/disapprove of the same things. If you want a cold scientific explanation, I recommend Douglas Hofstadter, I am a Strange Loop - the first couple of chapters, at least.

"statistics are against relationships" - this is true if, and only if, you assume that there is a single "correct" answer to the question "who am I meant to be with?" Without going into religion, ask yourself if you do really believe that. I don't. I think there are probably thousands of people in the US with whom you could sustain a loving relationship, if you (mutually) decide to do so. Finding "the one" is hopeless, but picking one is just a matter of identifying someone with the correct qualifications.

Repeat after me: "I am not a monster. I have had less-than-optimal experiences, but above all they were experiences and I have learned from them. I will not intentionally hurt another, but hurt is a normal part of life; anyone entering a relationship always runs some risk, it is not in my gift to remove that risk from them, and I wouldn't even if I could, because that would be an unwarrantable intrusion on their agency - I will respect them enough as an adult to allow them to assess and run their own risks."
See, I fully respect and support everything you said, starting from the interpretation that Love is something that is built, rather than found, the fact that there could be thousands of suitable people for me, and your final considerations on hurt and risks.
The problem is that, again, Statistics apparently plays against me. I don't know, maybe it is my scientific background or an analytical forma mentis, but I do not believe in luck. Simply put, I cannot believe the fact that my love experiences have been sub par due to "bad luck". If every single woman I met, save for one slash two - if you want to count also the second girl - has always rejected me, there must be something more than simply casuality. One or two women saying no is chance. Three or four are a hint. Five to ten are a clue. All of them minus two are a freaking rule. I have yet to understand what's wrong with me, especially since I changed looks, changed mindset, changed the way I treat them, whatever the premises the outcome has been always the same, no, no and no. And after a while it starts to be frustrating.
You say that during the process of Love "you learn to like/enjoy the same things, to approve/disapprove of the same things". That's already a very advanced situation.
Speaking of relationships you mention that "finding "the one" is hopeless, but picking one is just a matter of identifying someone with the correct qualifications". That's still one or more step farther than I've ever managed to arrive save for one slash two cases. Oh, I'd be more than happy to "pick someone I identified having the correct qualifications", but alas, nobody ever seems interested in "being picked": I do not even fear suffer again, but simply put, there's no risk such this, because nobody is interested in risking anything with me. I do not fear learning to swim: the problem is that I'm various miles far from the sea, and between me and the sea there's a wall.

Now, Glass Mouse, I wanted to especially thank you, because you gave the most complete and to-the-point reply. Thank you for taking the time to read and reply accordingly.

Cicciograna, you have a lot of anger and a lot of self-loathing, most of it completely unwarranted. Calling yourself a monster is so out of proportion that that worries me way more than anything in your relationship history (which, honestly, sounds very ordinary). Have you ever been treated for depression? Have you considered seeking help? Seriously, therapy is not just for broken people, it's a fantastic tool for most people who are struggling with life and identity and happiness.
I don't think I am depressed, and even if it was the case unfortunately I do not have time to get treated. I would really enjoy talking to a professionist, but simply put, I can't. In addition to time, there's also another issue: language. English is not my native language, and I still struggle a lot, I still make AN AWFUL LOT of mistakes, and wouldn't be able to keep a conversation like the one I'd like to have with a doctor. Just as a note, language is a steep barrier also when it comes to find a good match: I don't think anybody would tolerate to have to repeat two, three, four, many times what they've just said because I couldn't understand, and I wouldn't request this endeavour to anybody.


Start burdening them.

How do you feel when friends come to you for help? Do you feel trusted, almost honored, happy to be able to do something good for someone you love? Why wouldn't your friends feel the same way if you come to them?
Irrelevant. Or better, true, but that's not what I want to be for my friends. I want to be an asset, not a liability for my friends.



That sucks, but frankly, having ****ty romantic luck in your teens is very common. Even the "lucky" ones generally found themselves in short, dramatic, bad relationships because teenagers are inexperienced. I'll easily believe that you were unluckier than most, but the fantastic thing about your teen years is that you eventually grow out of them, and you leave the fish bowl, and things get better. They did for you, too.

Again, I'm struck by your phrasing. You "always felt an emptyness in life". Have you examined this feeling outside of romantic relationships? Because it does not sound related.
Heh, I would be more than happy to say that yes, all that happened was in the teen years. For the sake of brevity, I lumped many bad experiences among the ones I had during my teens, but no, alas I've experienced them even in my late twenties. The girl laughing in my face? I was 29. The girl telling me she wanted to be alone? I was 30. Yeah, the "no"s do not mind my age.


How in all blazes were you supposed to know better? You were entirely inexperienced at the time of the relationship's start, and humans are not actually able to control their emotions. The best we can do is act honestly and with integrity, such as not stringing someone along if we don't love them (anymore).

To hammer it in, that does not make you a monster! How on earth did you get it into your head that that is what it means? Who told you that? Who made you believe that lie?
Many of her friends - and she herself - told me. I never lent ears to these utterances, because I realize that emotions are not something we can control, and that it would have been various orders of magnitude worse if I stayed with a girl whom I didn't love anymore.
Or at least this is the rational response. The emotional one, of course, is much worse: I came to tear apart the life of a person I used to love, all in the blink of an eye. The sense of guilt has wracked me for a long, long time. It's not something I could control.


Yeah, this one was a mess. Keeping up an affair with someone who doesn't want to leave their current partner is... not a wise course of action. Especially not when you're in love with them. That's a surefire recipe for heartbreak, which you learned. We have all done ****ty things in love at one point and another, and this one is yours. Learn from the mistake and don't do it again. That's all you can and should do going forward.
She was in love with me too. I didn't want to sink in. She didn't reject me when I kissed her. She didn't refuse my touch. She kept coming back to me, asking for kisses, asking for poetry, asking for love. In the beginning, I could have wriggled free, but I was emotionally weak, I longed for new love, and she was all I could desire.


I'm sorry to keep armchair diagnosing you, but... this is one way depression manifests itself. Does your university has a councelor you can talk to?
Yes, it has. Same considerations as before.


Very few people have "moves". Most people find love by being kind and respectful in interactions with people of their preferred gender(s) and then lucking into someone who is compatible. Wasn't that how you found both your ex and your affair partner?
Yeah. Too bad that, again, statistics is against me. Just two out of "many" is too low a percentage, which in turn means that I'm lacking something.


Seriously. You've had two long-term relationships (yes, the affair counts, even if it was doomed on arrival), and now you're single at 31. That is common. It's so common it's practically boring.
Single and inexperienced. And no, the second one cannot be classified as a relationship, short- or long-term as it mught have been.


Good. That's what online dating is for - people who are too busy to go socialising and people whose social circles have a drought of people you might be interested in.

We're back to something that's very common, and possibly even on the better side in terms of online dating experience. Meeting a couple of girls and then having it peter out is, I reiterate, very common. I agree that ghosting is bloody frustrating, but it's not a grave insult from fate, it's common casual dating behavior.
Then I don't know what to do. Since it is pointless to simply go on and on and on, trying to stir up some kind of interest just to be met with plain indifference, I do not have other alternatives. Because even there, the response has been absolutely negligible compared to the effort I made to get people to even just notice me. Again, maybe I'm not that handsome, or that brilliant, or that whatever, for that matters. Nature dictates if a model is correct or not.


Burnout happens. If you take a break, you'll bounce back in time.
To start anew with the streak of failures? No thanks, I'll stay in burnout indefinitely.


You don't need to be either of those things. But you do need to find a way to break out of the story you tell/feel about yourself, where you're a perpetual loser and monster. You're not. You're a guy with slighly below average luck in love, and I'm pretty sure that the self-loathing is also the cause of that missing luck.

People don't actually want partners who are handsome, brilliant, friendly, funny, etc. They do want partners who care about something, partners who make them feel good about themselves, partners who make them feel loved, partners with whom they can have fun. Some of these things you can only give if you have a foundation of happiness and identity on which to build in the first place. I don't know enough about you to say how you should go about doing that, but it's definitely something you cannot do alone. Talk to your friends. Find a therapist. Whatever you need.
You don't find out if a partner is caring, reassuring, loving and funny unless you get to know them, like, establish an interaction of some kind; and you don't interact with people unless you find them handsome, brilliant, friendly, funny, etc. So yeah, you are right on what people want, but the problem is still the same: every swimming team would want me in, but remember, the sea is miles away from me.

In addition to that what people want completely baffles me. I've seen girls being treated worse than garbage by their partners (needless to say, they came to cry on my shoulder), I've seen girls being with completely unreliable men, being disrespected, mistreated, CHEATED UPON (hey, guess who was clearly cheated on by her now-husband? Yeah, my second girl. And she was ready to cheat on her soon-would-be husband less than one month before the marriage. Hey, great union, right?). And I feel I'm so much better than those men. And yet, I'm alone while they are not. That's FACT. So what do people want? I don't know, and I don't care anymore, as I came to realize that happen to be liked by a girl is pure randomness. What really drives me mad is that I am the way I am, perhaps better than may other people, and yet unable to find anybody. What does it mean? It means that probably I'm not even handsome, brilliant, friendly and yadda yadda.


It worries me so much how you've taken a completely ordinary romantic history and spun it into this tale where you're a terrible monster who deserves to be alone. The two things are not related. Something in your head or your general history has convinced you to hate yourself, and you've colored everything else from there. Do you know that? I hope so much that you're just venting on a bad day, but if this is something you often feel, please please reach out to someone in your life.
It's not a single romantic story. It's the entirety of my attempts to establish a relationship, that accounts in nothing more than a long and winding streak of failures. You can be firmly convinced you're able to fly on your own: the first time you jump from the cliff you get hurt, the second you get badly injured, the third you almost die, and if you care about yourself you just stop jumping and realize that no, you can't fly.

And last but not least...

Hey, I'm pretty sure I recall you posting, you're in Princeton NJ right now, aren't you? At the time, you spoke of that ex (after ~8 years together, you two were breaking up) and I recall we discussed pizza! Aren't you from the Naples area? You were still in Italy then, but shopping for doctorates in the US.

I'm a physicist too so that struck me (plus, I have a good memory).
Good memory indeed. I have been in Princeton for three months, two years ago, and yes, I'm from Naples. Right now, I'm in Philadelphia at Temple for my PhD :-)

Just to give you a last update, the last three or four days have been a real nightmare. Apparently the second girl is currently now in the US, and if I'm not mistaken, she's in Philly right now. I freaked out when I found out, and this caused me to undergo a lot of emotive stress which heavily impacted my performance as a graduate student (like in, I was unable to do basic math). In the beginning I thought she'd already passed through Philadelphia, and this really struck me down, because even if I don't want to see her...I kinda wanted to see her. For no reason. There's nothing I could expect from her (and by the way, she's here with her husband), but the fact that she didn't come to look for me saddened me, even if I loathed the possibility. Now I have reasons to suspect she's currently here: luckily, I've passed the paradoxical phase where I want and do not want to see her, but yeah, that's it.
My goodness what a terrible period is this.

[veti]

The problem is that, again, Statistics apparently plays against me. I don't know, maybe it is my scientific background or an analytical forma mentis, but I do not believe in luck. Simply put, I cannot believe the fact that my love experiences have been sub par due to "bad luck". If every single woman I met, save for one slash two - if you want to count also the second girl - has always rejected me, there must be something more than simply casuality. One or two women saying no is chance. Three or four are a hint. Five to ten are a clue. All of them minus two are a freaking rule. I have yet to understand what's wrong with me, especially since I changed looks, changed mindset, changed the way I treat them, whatever the premises the outcome has been always the same, no, no and no. And after a while it starts to be frustrating.

You don't believe in luck? Good, then you know that there's a reason, or (much more likely) a combination of reasons, why you haven't clicked yet.

"One or two women saying no" is chance - err... not exactly. Any number of women saying "no" is feedback. You're a scientist: take the feedback and feed it back into your selection-and-recruitment process. It's telling you that either you're selecting the wrong kind of women (because "willing to be interested in a relationship with me" should be pretty high on your list of criteria, so you should have some way of assessing that during the screening phase, before you even make a first approach - and if that process is giving you bad data, then it's worth focusing on it, because it can be improved), or there's something wrong with your method of approach, or both.

Whatever it is, it's not fate. It's not something you have to accept and live with. It's not "a freaking rule", or if it is, it's one you can change. It's just a matter of figuring out how.

[Cicciograna]

You don't believe in luck? Good, then you know that there's a reason, or (much more likely) a combination of reasons, why you haven't clicked yet.

"One or two women saying no" is chance - err... not exactly. Any number of women saying "no" is feedback. You're a scientist: take the feedback and feed it back into your selection-and-recruitment process. It's telling you that either you're selecting the wrong kind of women (because "willing to be interested in a relationship with me" should be pretty high on your list of criteria, so you should have some way of assessing that during the screening phase, before you even make a first approach - and if that process is giving you bad data, then it's worth focusing on it, because it can be improved), or there's something wrong with your method of approach, or both.

Whatever it is, it's not fate. It's not something you have to accept and live with. It's not "a freaking rule", or if it is, it's one you can change. It's just a matter of figuring out how.

Change approach, right. Which requires to enter in a different mindset than the one I would usually adopt. But then, what with the "always be yourself" bull****? I can change approach, no problem (actually yeah, problem, because it's not that easy to switch to different attitude)...but then what happens if the person I get to know prefers the different me? If she chooses to interact with me at all, after all...
Besides, it's not that I haven't tried. I tried to be different, I tried to be not nerdy, I tried to communicate, like others said, an aura of assurance, of high self-consciousness; I started dressing well, I danced, I tried to simply ignore women ("If you ignore them, they'll come to you!" was one of the suggestions I received - and loathed most), I tried not to be as present as I was for a possible interest of mine ("Don't be their friend!", other good suggestion)... [And keep in mind that I literally forced myself to behave like this, in a more neglectful way, because it would go against my temperament]
Do I have to tell you what was the outcome of these attempts? Oh, those I managed to know, yeah, what a great friend I am for them, probably the best friend they've ever had! Those I ignored or neglected, "Ciccio who?".
But then, even if we imagine, for the sake of this mind experiment, that I managed to "meet someone new". I have been rejected even when I was all the other person could desire - and I'm not referring just to my second lady. I have been turned down even when I was perfect. Why should I expect otherwise for someone I am less than perfect for?

Not to mention the fact that the number of women I know is limited, as well as the number of girls I am able to know. In the beginning I was happy of OkCupid, because "in theory" it allowed me to come into contact with many other people that my busy life would have otherwise prevented to know. It simply increased the sample of women that ignore me: and even on that board, I literally tried every possible combination of approaches, from the more elaborate, based on a careful reading of their profiles, a check of what they like and what they don't, culminating into what I would have perceived as interesting attempts to clearly establish some kind of stimulating conversation preluding to something more; to the crass and basic "Hey", "Sup'" and variations thereof. I tried to contact people matching my interests, people NOT matching my interests, people with whom the fuzzy algorithm of the website guaranteed "compatibility over 95%", those with whom the compatibility was less than 10%, people taken absolutely at random. Always the same story, save for one or two.
Unless you suggest me to remove any kind of quality cut on my side, settle for whatever I manage to lay my hands upon, even if I don't like her, and shut the mouth thanking whatever god that I found someone. Yeah, that sounds like a really nice alternative.
So yeah, there's surely something wrong, or a combination of many factors, but it is nothing I have control over, so as far as my ability to change reality extends, for all I know it is an immutable rule.

But then again, the problem is going to solve by itself. Given that I do not have time to go out, given that the girls I'm in contact with are off limits, given that OkCupid is too shaky to be a reliable source (and even then, the outcome is always the same), I've simply run out of possible candidates. Now all I have to do is keep my head down and work, 'cause I'm here to work, I actually have rights to stay here in the US because I work here. Not for looking for a partner.

EDIT: Heh, on OkCupid I have been ignored even by girls with whom I had been matched! I had "liked" her, she had "liked" me! I contacted them, only to be utterly and completely ignored! I mean, I get to suppose that those girls had checked me out, had liked what they'd seen, and pressed that "Like" button so (without even mentioning the fact that - whatever feminists say - in our society it's the man that "has to make the move") one would have expected them to be receptive and willing to at least start interacting and chatting, the step zero of getting to know each other. Eh, I guess this is feedback too, right?

[lio45]

She was in love with me too. I didn't want to sink in. She didn't reject me when I kissed her. She didn't refuse my touch. She kept coming back to me, asking for kisses, asking for poetry, asking for love. In the beginning, I could have wriggled free, but I was emotionally weak, I longed for new love, and she was all I could desire.

Any chance she could eventually divorce that guy? (He's cheating on her to boot, right?)

I mean, you're in love with her, she's in love with you, she finds you really handsome, you find her smokin' hot, both of you find the other intellectually stimulating... Sounds like a pretty damn good match.

[Cicciograna]

Any chance she could eventually divorce that guy? (He's cheating on her to boot, right?)

I mean, you're in love with her, she's in love with you, she finds you really handsome, you find her smokin' hot, both of you find the other intellectually stimulating... Sounds like a pretty damn good match.

Simply put, I don't see that coming. There are many reasons she wouldn't divorce from the guy, and it pains me to say that one of those is wealth. But there's more than that. So no, won't happen.

[lio45]

EDIT: Heh, on OkCupid I have been ignored even by girls with whom I had been matched! I had "liked" her, she had "liked" me! I contacted them, only to be utterly and completely ignored!

It's very normal to have an abysmal reply rate on sites like OKCupid. Your reply rate will also be extremely highly dependant on your approach. It's easy to "get it wrong".

Maybe something that could be helpful to you is to share bits of girls' profiles that you did contact and let us know how exactly you chose to approach them. The collective feedback you will get from us here might help identify a flaw or two and refine your ways of making contact to increase your reply rate (which will still remain incredibly low, as is the case for all of us!).

[lio45]

Simply put, I don't see that coming. There are many reasons she wouldn't divorce from the guy, and it pains me to say that one of those is wealth. But there's more than that. So no, won't happen.

If you play your cards right you can likely compete with that soon enough. For example, one of my physicist buddies (not even among the top in our cohort) recently landed a six figure job in Zürich upon getting his PhD. The CHF exchange rate these days is just the icing on the cake.

She will tolerate being cheated on? She will settle for a loveless married life? Really?

(Note that I'm not saying you wouldn't be better off forgetting about her; you very well might. It's just that... from what you shared, it doesn't seem hopeless yet to me.)

[lio45]

Also, have you considered mail ordering a Brazilian Bride? :P

[Cicciograna]

If you play your cards right you can likely compete with that soon enough. For example, one of my physicist buddies (not even among the top in our cohort) recently landed a six figure job in Zürich upon getting his PhD. The CHF exchange rate these days is just the icing on the cake.

She will tolerate being cheated on? She will settle for a loveless married life? Really?

(Note that I'm not saying you wouldn't be better off forgetting about her; you very well might. It's just that... from what you shared, it doesn't seem hopeless yet to me.)

It's not only that. This particular girl had some...issues, let's put it this way. Issues she didn't want to face, and that led her to live a very sheltered life. I always tried to convince her that she had to overcome her fears, because it was just unfair for her to give up many things she liked owing to her phobias; on the other hand, her current husband doesn't press her at all, he leaves her to live as she pleases, this very secretive existance that she leads.
So you see, she won't leave this person. This would mean having to face again the world without the silent consent to conduct the type of existance she wants.

And yeah, one of the reasons I accepted this PhD is the fact that hopefully in the future I'll be able to earn enough to live a comfortable existance

[Lethologica]

Cicciograna, I disagree with veti to some extent--or rather, I think he's only presenting part of the picture. Yes, it's true that you can change your approach according to feedback from women who say "no". But it's also true that no matter how you do things, if you ask, some people will say "no". If you optimize your screening and approach to avoid "no", that's not at all the same thing as optimizing to find a valuable "yes". In fact, it can be detrimental to finding a valuable "yes", especially if your optimization is to avoid the whole thing. So be careful about overcorrecting.


Change approach, right. Which requires to enter in a different mindset than the one I would usually adopt. But then, what with the "always be yourself" bull****? I can change approach, no problem (actually yeah, problem, because it's not that easy to switch to different attitude)...but then what happens if the person I get to know prefers the different me? If she chooses to interact with me at all, after all...
"Just be yourself" is pretty bad advice. It's a mischaracterization of some good advice, such as "Don't mislead the other person about who you are," and "Practice opening up with people who don't already know you well," and "Don't be someone you don't like just to get attention." The reason it's mischaracterization is that the phrasing also implies bad advice, like "Don't put in any effort," or "Don't try to improve yourself," or "Don't get outside your comfort zone."

I'm not commenting on you here, just the advice.


Besides, it's not that I haven't tried. I tried to be different, I tried to be not nerdy, I tried to communicate, like others said, an aura of assurance, of high self-consciousness; I started dressing well, I danced, I tried to simply ignore women ("If you ignore them, they'll come to you!" was one of the suggestions I received - and loathed most), I tried not to be as present as I was for a possible interest of mine ("Don't be their friend!", other good suggestion)... [And keep in mind that I literally forced myself to behave like this, in a more neglectful way, because it would go against my temperament]
Do I have to tell you what was the outcome of these attempts? Oh, those I managed to know, yeah, what a great friend I am for them, probably the best friend they've ever had! Those I ignored or neglected, "Ciccio who?".
But then, even if we imagine, for the sake of this mind experiment, that I managed to "meet someone new". I have been rejected even when I was all the other person could desire - and I'm not referring just to my second lady. I have been turned down even when I was perfect. Why should I expect otherwise for someone I am less than perfect for?
Because people's abstractions of what they'd like to be attracted to are not at all the same as what they're actually attracted to. Because attraction is a crapshoot. Because 'being' something is not enough to find a relationship. Because a large part of relationship fit is mutual desire for a relationship, and you appear to have disguised that so well the people you're trying to get to know don't even see it.


Unless you suggest me to remove any kind of quality cut on my side, settle for whatever I manage to lay my hands upon, even if I don't like her, and shut the mouth thanking whatever god that I found someone. Yeah, that sounds like a really nice alternative.
Well, don't leave us hanging--what sort of quality cut are you working with now? What are you looking for in a relationship?


EDIT: Heh, on OkCupid I have been ignored even by girls with whom I had been matched!
As lio said, this means pretty much nothing for online dating. Again, optimizing to minimize the number of girls who ignore or reject you is not a good way to find a girl who won't. Of course, nothing says you have to desire a relationship, but the idea of retracting into this ball of self-loathing defeatism because some girls ignored you isn't a good one.

[lio45]

And yeah, one of the reasons I accepted this PhD is the fact that hopefully in the future I'll be able to earn enough to live a comfortable existance

Yep! Money's indeed very useful. Just think of all the nice stuff one can buy with it: a Brazilian wife, a Thai wife, etc.
:)



(okay, okay, I'll stop now!)

[Cicciograna]

Cicciograna, I disagree with veti to some extent--or rather, I think he's only presenting part of the picture. Yes, it's true that you can change your approach according to feedback from women who say "no". But it's also true that no matter how you do things, if you ask, some people will say "no". If you optimize your screening and approach to avoid "no", that's not at all the same thing as optimizing to find a valuable "yes". In fact, it can be detrimental to finding a valuable "yes", especially if your optimization is to avoid the whole thing. So be careful about overcorrecting.
Since I have forcibly switched to online dating, I have taken a step back: I don't get "no" anymore. I don't get "yes", I don't get "**** you", I don't get "hey", I don't get anything at all. Online dating has been for me (except for one or two exceptions - which have been obtained via the usual approach, so nothing new under the sun, apparently getting a reply is absolutely random) a "Without Output Machine": no matter the input, the output is always void. There's nothing to optimize if there is no output at all.


"Just be yourself" is pretty bad advice. It's a mischaracterization of some good advice, such as "Don't mislead the other person about who you are," and "Practice opening up with people who don't already know you well," and "Don't be someone you don't like just to get attention." The reason it's mischaracterization is that the phrasing also implies bad advice, like "Don't put in any effort," or "Don't try to improve yourself," or "Don't get outside your comfort zone."

I'm not commenting on you here, just the advice.
I understand what you mean, and back inthe day I was the first to assert that relationships are based on compromises: it's coming together, to a common point where both the parties are comfortable. Of course, if the two parties are VERY far from the beginning, reaching a common point is going to be difficult: hence the validity of the "be yourself" statement. If I say, just to make a random example, that I do not like hunting, I would have hard time finding compromises with a hardened safari pro huntress, whose house is fileld with trophies from her hunting runs. Oh sure, to get to know her I could tell her that yeah, I own many rifles and love going out killing wild boars; but then, at some point, my bluff will fall.


Because people's abstractions of what they'd like to be attracted to are not at all the same as what they're actually attracted to. Because attraction is a crapshoot. Because 'being' something is not enough to find a relationship. Because a large part of relationship fit is mutual desire for a relationship, and you appear to have disguised that so well the people you're trying to get to know don't even see it.
Nothing is disguised, as the many, many conversations which I initiated and were left hanging can testify. I didn't hide my desire for a relationship, but again, I must reiterate, apparently my desire is not shared by anyone.



Well, don't leave us hanging--what sort of quality cut are you working with now? What are you looking for in a relationship?
None anymore, I'm so sick of people, especially on OkCupid, that I wouldn't want nothing at all, now.
Before? I wanted a smart person, someone to talk to about...everything. I have many interests, I'm interested in science and technology for obvious reasons, but I appreciate culture in all its forms: I would have wanted an artist, someone who knew more Art than me (it doesn't take much, even if I am an avid regular of museums and galleries, I regret being ignorant - but I'm trying to fill the spots), someone with whom to appreciate the sensuality of Art, with whom to lose myself in the contemplation of a picture, someone I could learn from; I would have wanted someone who liked romanticism, to whom I could recite poems, someone "feeling" romanticism, someone I could blissfully get lost through the streets of Paris with and be perfectly comfortable because hey, we are in Paris, the most romantic city in the world. I would have liked her nerdy, because hey, after all I'm a nerd, I play D&D, I'm into Fantasy, Sci-Fi, I play(ed) videogames, I would have liked to share these experiences with her; I would have liked an Internet expert, someone who knew the memes, knew the jokes, someone with the interest to spend hours on TVTropes or similar sites; and yeah, why not, a pretty lady: I didn't want a top model, but yes, as previously stated looks pay an important role to me. I would have wanted someone curious to learn from me too, someone to whom I could explain Physics, to whom I could tell all the things I know.

I didn't want all of this in a single person. This list might seem a very ambitious list, but these are just the things I would have liked to find in a girl...but I was more than willing to discover her, I wanted to understand her peculiarities, listen to her story, discover all her quirks, all her features, and make them mine too; because this is growing together, this is getting to know each other, this is being one, knowing the other, preserving each self, and together be something more than the sum of both.

All those beautiful things. All those things are now lost in time, like tears in rain.


As lio said, this means pretty much nothing for online dating. Again, optimizing to minimize the number of girls who ignore or reject you is not a good way to find a girl who won't. Of course, nothing says you have to desire a relationship, but the idea of retracting into this ball of self-loathing defeatism because some girls ignored you isn't a good one.
See, this is something that really got into me. I wanted to give. I wanted to give so much. I wanted to care for someone, I wanted to make her feel special, I wanted to cuddle, to make love, to be intimate: when you see that nobody wants the beautiful things you want to give, girl after girl after girl, you start growing ugly inside. You start thinking that if no one wants them, then they're not beautiful, and you're just lying to youself, pretending they are. And you start loathing yourself because you keep deluding yourself, day after day, failure after failure, until you get to the point when you grow accustomed to the fact that you are, after all, a bad person. This is why I loathe myself. The "defeatism" is just part of me: for apart from one experience, defeat is all I've known. To the hands of people who were worth way less then me. But you see, maybe this is just pride: maybe after all I'm not all that worthy.

[Lethologica]

I can't get to to all of this right now, but I'm feeling very strongly about this line:


This is why I loathe myself. The "defeatism" is just part of me: for apart from one experience, defeat is all I've known. To the hands of people who were worth way less then me. But you see, maybe this is just pride: maybe after all I'm not all that worthy.
Oooookay. Two things to say about this. First, yeah, maybe taking a break from seeking relationships is a good thing--you're in a terrible headspace and you should probably work on that. The first person who has to love you in a relationship is yourself. And it sounds like you're investing a tremendous amount of your validation in the abstract concept of being in a relationship with "a girl"--meaning you're lacking that validation precisely when you need it. You're creating a chicken-and-egg problem for yourself, and insecurity will poison a lot more than relationships, if you let it fester.

Second, insofar as you're being prideful here, it starts with how you regard others. The random woman who hasn't messaged you back on OkCupid isn't worth way less than you. The woman you dated for eight years before you split up isn't worth way less than you. If any sentiment you've expressed so far is unworthy, it's that one.

[Cicciograna]

Second, insofar as you're being prideful here, it starts with how you regard others. The random woman who hasn't messaged you back on OkCupid isn't worth way less than you. The woman you dated for eight years before you split up isn't worth way less than you. If any sentiment you've expressed so far is unworthy, it's that one.

Wait wait wait, I'm sorry, I was not entirely clear on this. I'm not referring to the women when I mentioned those who are worth less than me; but rather to the partners some of the girls I fancied choose as their own, who, in some cases, mistreated their fiancees badly. Needless to say, said fiancees used to come to cry on my shoulder.

Just to make it straight, I can't judge anybody on OkCupid, as I don't know anybody; and the woman I dated for 8 years is worth way MORE than me.

[Lethologica]

Ah, all right. Sorry for the confusion. Nothing you've written suggests you should ever consider yourself unworthy on that scale, in case it needs to be said. More later.

[Cicciograna]

Ah, all right. Sorry for the confusion. Nothing you've written suggests you should ever consider yourself unworthy on that scale, in case it needs to be said. More later.

No, you were right, I should have been more clear. And to clear any other doubts, when I talk about "being worth more" than the other guys, that's because the detailed stories of my ladyfriends gave me the impression that they were absoulte *******s to them.

[veti]

Nothing is disguised, as the many, many conversations which I initiated and were left hanging can testify. I didn't hide my desire for a relationship, but again, I must reiterate, apparently my desire is not shared by anyone.

Okay, well, here's a thing. Many people want a relationship. There are many levels of "relationship", from nodding acquaintance, through friend, lover, confidant, up to life partner, but when people say "I'm looking for A Relationship", they usually mean something toward the heavier end of that spectrum.

If you give someone you barely know the impression that you're looking to them as a potential life partner - you won't see most of them for dust, even if they might have been a perfect fit, because you're simply putting far too much pressure on them. Heck, if I thought you were looking at me like that, I'd cool you down faster than an ice bath.

There are exceptions, but in the normal way of things, relationships grow slowly. Don't reveal too much of yourself all at once. At the end of a good first date, the girl wants to know more about you - not less.


I didn't want all of this in a single person. This list might seem a very ambitious list, but these are just the things I would have liked to find in a girl...but I was more than willing to discover her, I wanted to understand her peculiarities, listen to her story, discover all her quirks, all her features, and make them mine too; because this is growing together, this is getting to know each other, this is being one, knowing the other, preserving each self, and together be something more than the sum of both.

Once again - a beautiful sentiment, but not a basis on which to start a relationship. If you spend all your time "wanting" these things, you'll give off a stench of neediness that can be detected at forty paces. Take a step back and focus on making friends. Not "cry on my shoulder" type friends, but "occasionally take in a movie or share a coffee" type friends. Don't try to get too intimate unless and until she's ready - that's how you get "friendzoned".


So yeah, there's surely something wrong, or a combination of many factors, but it is nothing I have control over, so as far as my ability to change reality extends, for all I know it is an immutable rule.

So... you don't believe in luck, but you do believe in - what, exactly? A gypsy curse? Karmic BO? Gnomes that live in your pockets and leer suggestively at attractive women when your back is turned? What is it that you think is "nothing you have control over"?

[Durzan]

Okay, so I can relate to you. I'm in about the same boat as you were in when you were 21... the same age I am right now, and have even been through similar experiences that you had.

I've never had a girlfriend, and I've only been on a handful of dates. I have never actually gotten in a bed with any of them, nor have I performed any one night stands... and I DO NOT WANT TO. I am more interested in emotional intimacy and developing a strong relationship, than I am in physical intimacy. Plus, I am a mormon, and as a general rule, mormons hold to avoiding sexual relations until after marriage, and even then, only with your spouse. This is just who I am, its as much a part of me as breathing.

With that being said, that doesn't mean I can't love people. Hell, I have two friends whom I managed to develop a strong love for... but who, for one reason or another, didn't ever return the feelings. Even now, I still love them. Both are married now, mormon girls tend to marry ASAP, but I would still move heaven and Earth just to help them... and should any harm come to them, then there will be hell to pay. This isn't out of any ill-found hope or jealousy, its just that my relationship with these two friends of mine were so profound and foundational to the man I've become, that I couldn't possibly stop loving them. I deliberately made that choice, and while I have quite a bit of heartache because of it, I would make that same choice over and over again.

Here's the thing... you can be attracted to someone. You can develop an attraction to someone you never thought you'd be attracted too. If you are able to start a relationship with that person then good for you. But... sometimes that attraction fades, or waxes and wanes. It happens; attraction is largely due to hormones. But attraction isn't love. It is the spark, not the flame. True love is a choice that you make. One that you make every day.

A similar choice you can make is to hope.

What really happened with you and your ex... at least from what I seem to be seeing... is that for one reason or another, the attraction that you had for her had faded or waned, and because of that you made a decision. Now, after hitting your 30's and facing so much heartache, your mind is actively reducing the hormone levels that cause attraction. I would guess it is a defense mechanism.

Thats all I really have to say. Take from it what you will.

[lio45]

Okay, well, here's a thing. Many people want a relationship. There are many levels of "relationship", from nodding acquaintance, through friend, lover, confidant, up to life partner, but when people say "I'm looking for A Relationship", they usually mean something toward the heavier end of that spectrum.

If you give someone you barely know the impression that you're looking to them as a potential life partner - you won't see most of them for dust, even if they might have been a perfect fit, because you're simply putting far too much pressure on them. Heck, if I thought you were looking at me like that, I'd cool you down faster than an ice bath.

There are exceptions, but in the normal way of things, relationships grow slowly. Don't reveal too much of yourself all at once. At the end of a good first date, the girl wants to know more about you - not less.



Once again - a beautiful sentiment, but not a basis on which to start a relationship. If you spend all your time "wanting" these things, you'll give off a stench of neediness that can be detected at forty paces. Take a step back and focus on making friends. Not "cry on my shoulder" type friends, but "occasionally take in a movie or share a coffee" type friends. Don't try to get too intimate unless and until she's ready - that's how you get "friendzoned".

Yeah, I would kind of agree with you on most things here.

Ciccio, you're likely "doing something wrong". It really, really doesn't take much of doing things wrong to make a huge difference in the results. Especially since this is the US, while you might have your own way of approaching girls tainted by the fact you're a born and bred Italian. There are very real cultural nuances in expected courtship processes and in such a cut-throat environment as online dating it really doesn't take much to take a super-desirable-bachelor-in-real-life's reply rate on these sites from the typical "close to zero" to an even worse "actually zero".

You're obviously highly intelligent, you have good career prospects, you have already been called handsome at least a few times so that's not the problem, and you're sweet and totally well-meaning. I would say you clearly have all the basics covered. That's the good news.

Again, my suggestion is that you share a bit more of what you're doing, to see if we can identify little "flaws" in your approach. That can only help (worst case, it doesn't help much) and you can still stay perfectly anonymous, if that's a worry for you.`

[SlyGuyMcFly]

A few things stand out to me in this conversation.


I feel the need to talk to someone, and yet those who are around me are not suitable, because they won't take me too seriously, because they can't give me any new perspective to make sense of my situation (which I feel being pretty common, after all, human relationships are hard to figure out), and - last but not least - because my personal attitude is to never burden my friends with my problems, they are mine to solve and they already have theirs.
But I feel the need to talk.

Glass Mouse said everything that needs to be said about this, but it bears repeating differently. This is a really, really hurtful attitude that is extremely common, more so in men, and more so in men from cultures where manliness is defined and demonstrated by being tough and "having your **** together". So, y'know, pretty much all of them.

The attitude is doubly hurtful because it hurts you and then hurts your friends and family. First it hurts you by stopping you from going and getting help. Not just help from other people, but also help from the other ways one can find advice and information on how to proceed when things are hard and we feel beat up. Then it hurts your family and friends because eventually they will find out you are not OK and just how not OK you are. The longer it takes? The more not-OK you are when they find out? The more it hurts them to find out. Because that's the flip-side to what Mouse says, they'll be hurt and confused that you did not extend your trust to them, just like they'll feel glad and honoured to offer their help if you ask for it.

It's possible all they can do to help is offer an understanding shoulder, but that's one helluva of thing to have when you need one to lean on! Seriously. Learn to ask for help, learn burden your friends with your problems. The thing is about burdens is they're only burdensome if they're yours. I can carry a dozen other people's problems around in my head no sweat, but even one of my own troubles will have me gasping for metaphorical oxygen. Getting all this off your chest on a friendly internet forum like this one is a great start though, so props for that!



"Just be yourself" is pretty bad advice. It's a mischaracterization of some good advice, such as "Don't mislead the other person about who you are," and "Practice opening up with people who don't already know you well," and "Don't be someone you don't like just to get attention." The reason it's mischaracterization is that the phrasing also implies bad advice, like "Don't put in any effort," or "Don't try to improve yourself," or "Don't get outside your comfort zone."

I agree that it's a generally worse version of other better advice. However, I think it is has some value if properly contextualised. A personal anecdote to illustrate my views on "just be yourself".

So yeah, I was 25 and in the process of dropping out of uni and just generally failing at life. Depression compounded with a gaming addiction and substance abuse and piles of denial meant I was in a bad, baaad space. I had as well a... let's call it an evolutionarily maladaptive degree of shyness and get panicky talking to girls in outside impersonal daily interactions. I'll also add I (subconciously) bought into the "nerds don't get girls" myth so heavily that a girl finding me attractive was such an alien concept I'd have sooner expected nerds to stop arguing on the internet. My attitude to romance could be summed up by the (then) factually true statement "Welp, I made out once a girl ten years ago. Guess that's as far as I was ever going to get".

And that's where I was when something wierd happened. A girl, a friend of a friend, started talking with me at a party. And by that I mean I listened, nodded and made vague sounds in what I hoped were the right places while wondering why this girl was making words in my direction. I spoke maybe a half-dozen actual sentences. When I got home I decided I was not unhappy that had happened, but I literally1 had no clue as to why. My best guess was "Uhhh, maybe this girl's just weird like that?" A week or so later our paths crossed again and she talked at me for a long time again and at a some point during the night, no warning, backed me into a wall and pounced on me like some sort of hungry snog-monster. One thing lead to another This girl lead me from one thing to another and sex happened. Confused, surprised and more than a little terrified as I was, it was nonetheless a great experience. "WHY IS THIS HAPPENING I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING WHY IS-"... You get the idea.

So, what had happened? I ended up dating this girl for a few months and eventually found out. Turns out, "shy and paralysed by panic" can be seen as "mysterious and aloof" if the lighting is just right. This girl already thought I was cute before talking to me and was thus predisposed to make a positive interpretation of events. So my "I'm cannot think of what to say" was interpreted as "he's the tough, silent type". My inability to read and respond to her attraction signals where taken as an invitation to be more direct, and so on and so forth. In short, she jumped on me because she felt I was seducing her with the old "tall, dark and mysterious" routine. She dated me because once it was clear that I was not some some suave Don Juan the shyness and the awkwardness was cute and endearing.

The point I'm going for is that whatever one thinks "being yourself" is, others will often think something else entirely. And it might be them, and not you, who are actually right! Put it this way, seeing how things turned out that night and after, who's version of events is true-er? Hers or mine? A more trivial example, if a guy thinks "I'm hot stuff and acting confident" and people around him are thinking "douche", then "douche" is the more accurate descriptor.

"Being yourself" can be looked at from the marketing perspective, so to speak. What and who we are is one thing, and how we present that is a very different matter. So yes, I am an introvert, and fairly shy still, and unless it's a topic I really like, I probably don't have much to say. But by not trying to hide my introversion and happily admitting to it, I seem confident in who I am. By only participating in conversations I actually find interesting and have something to say about, I appear better informed and more level-headed than most, and so on.

We can't really control how people choose to see us. but we can choose whether to hide our "true self" (whatever that is) or instead put it in the best light possible and trust people to know a good thing when they see it. And in that sense, I do think "just be yourself" is solid dating advice. It is, however, awful personal development advice!

Which leads me to:


I didn't want all of this in a single person. This list might seem a very ambitious list, but these are just the things I would have liked to find in a girl...but I was more than willing to discover her, I wanted to understand her peculiarities, listen to her story, discover all her quirks, all her features, and make them mine too; because this is growing together, this is getting to know each other, this is being one, knowing the other, preserving each self, and together be something more than the sum of both.


Once again - a beautiful sentiment, but not a basis on which to start a relationship. If you spend all your time "wanting" these things, you'll give off a stench of neediness that can be detected at forty paces. Take a step back and focus on making friends. Not "cry on my shoulder" type friends, but "occasionally take in a movie or share a coffee" type friends. Don't try to get too intimate unless and until she's ready - that's how you get "friendzoned".

I'll agree with Veti here, Cicciograna. Knowing what your endgame goal in a relationship is good, but that's an something you get to slowly and work towards over the medium and long term. Short term... Get to the point that type of relationship can happen. From what I'm reading here you need to get yourself into a good place first. Not an OK place or a not-bad place, but a good one. I'm no psychologist and cannot offer anything resembling a diagnostic but I can talk about my own experience. What what you describe, the things you're saying? Sounds an awful lot like stuff I'd say to myself in worse times and I was diagnosed with a depression and anxiety (A.K.A. the new normal) among other things. All I can say is that in my case therapy and an awful lot of help from my friends was what it took.

[Cicciograna]

All of you have given me many interesting answers. I'll ponder over some of the things that you have told me, about my approach with girls, about my expectations and about my general relationship with the other gender.

Suffice to say that I have regained my composture, at last, and I'm now in the mindset I want to be. I thank you for the time you took to reply and share your experiences with me, I'll keep you informed if anything interesting happens.

[TechnOkami]

You know, the OP's problems sound an awful lot like my own, and a side of SlyGuy's.

Oof... where to begin and how to summarize?

High School: floated through it, met my first girlfriend, general attitudes and personality didn't change all that much.

College: floating lead to drowning. Unresolved depression and anxieties + a lack of diligence, a hefty dose of video game playing, apathy, and a continuing to be messed up sleep schedule lead to a not very happy TechnO. Eventually I couldn't handle it and decided I needed to come home, recuperate, see a therapist, and attempt college a little a lot closer to home (I was a state away). I was still with my girlfriend of 7+ years at this time.

College closer to home made me realize that I didn't care about College, and having a lack of direction in the academic system and no motivation, I decided to eventually stop altogether. Before this, I broke up with my girlfriend. I was content and lazy in the relationship, and she wanted more. My passivity was hurting her, and I cared enough to not want to hurt her anymore, so I broke it up, for better or for worse.

This lead to a void of intimacy, which carried with me as I started looking for a job. Long story short I hooked up with a girl from my workplace. She wasn't interested in dating me, but she didn't mind hooking up every now and then. Relatively recently she stopped wanting to come over, and before/after doing so I became extremely self-reflective. I started to question myself, why I was feeling the way I was, the reasonings for my desires, my wants and needs, who and how I was as a person, etc. etc.

This is what I believe about what I've learned.

I've been under the delusion that I needed a relationship to be happy without ever really understanding what a relationship meant. Not being at peace with who I was and what I wanted was a thorough self setup for failure. I've conquered my anxieties. It no longer has the same stronghold over my life as it did, and I feel far more at peace because of it. While my creative endeavors have all but ground to a halt, I still play a crap-ton of games basically nightly, and because Twitch exists I can even make a living at it one day. I can actually stream now since the internet in my house got upgraded, and I'm really happy about that. I'm probably not going to go back to College. I should, but I don't like having to re-learn what I've already learned for the third time around. I'm never going to have a profession so math heavy that I will be solving complex equations on a daily basis and yet I am required to attend and pass these classes. I'm tired of it, and I'm too lazy and undisciplined to really put any effort towards a College education again.

Anyways, back onto relationships from that tangent.

I work at a grocery next to a college. I work with meat products day in and day out. Every day I see beautiful women walk in, roam around, buy thing, and then head back out. Sometimes they're alone, sometimes they're coupled with someone else. I wouldn't mind being in a relationship, I really wouldn't. The thing though is that I don't really do any of the extraverted things one would usually do to go out and meet people because I don't really enjoy going out. I am a gigantic homebody, because everything I like doing I can do in the comfort of the house I reside in. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to share what I do at home with someone else and be friends and potentially more because of it, but when I have a free day from work, all I want to do is be home, relaxing, playing video games. In fact, that's all I've ever really enjoyed doing, aside from looking at art online/youtube I suppose. But at the same time, while a relationship with someone would be nice, I don't need one to be happy, so why bother? I'm happy with where I am and who I am, and though I see these beautiful people all around me I don't know how to get them to see me like I see me. Plus, while most of them might be physically attractive, I know nothing about them, who they are, what they like, what they want, their interests, what they do, etc. Why should I bother working towards a relationship if it's so damn hard to get one, and even if I were to, like, I don't really like getting out. I'm happy and comfy at home, and I bet that a lot of the women out there would see me as boring because of it. And even if I could get someone to look past all that and date me anyways, that's still no guarantee that our relationship would be a success. Plus, like, I don't really want children. If anything I think I would be a neglectful parent.

I dunno, i just feel like you have to give so much to gain so little... I hope this all expresses how I feel accurately. Please ask me anything you want. I'm not shy to questions.

[Cicciograna]

I wanted to thank SlyGuyMcFly and TechnOkami for sharing their experiences: I admit that talking to people here has been therapeutic, and venting out some frustration definitely did good to me.

Just to give you a very quick update, I sort of got a date on OkCupid, and talked to another couple of girls (which then stopped to reply). Funny, apart from the fact that I'm not really interested in none of them, the fact that I was able to establish a kind of interaction right after I lamented not being able to do so is somewhat karmic and comical.

Yeah.

[lio45]

I wanted to thank SlyGuyMcFly and TechnOkami for sharing their experiences: I admit that talking to people here has been therapeutic, and venting out some frustration definitely did good to me.

Just to give you a very quick update, I sort of got a date on OkCupid, and talked to another couple of girls (which then stopped to reply). Funny, apart from the fact that I'm not really interested in none of them, the fact that I was able to establish a kind of interaction right after I lamented not being able to do so is somewhat karmic and comical.

Yeah.

Yep, that's a nice timing coincidence there :)

Even if you're not that interested, I would heartily recommend going on that date. It's not a commitment, it's just a date. That's what dates are for, "shopping" for a mate. Maybe you'll end up having more chemistry than you think, maybe not, but it's definitely worth a try, even if just for the extra bit experience and insight you'll gain on US ladies.

Wish you the best of luck!