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[Zrk2]

Protip: Start exercising. Even if only jogging a couple kilometers a day. When you see an improvement in how you look your confidence will improve, and when that happens suddenly holding a conversation with the opposite gender isn't nearly so hard.

Or so I've been lead to believe. We'll see how it works out in September when my (hopefully more fit self) again has access to girls with which to converse.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You're a little late on the jogging advice. That advice was advisilated all the way back on page 1.

[Hanslanda]

You're a little late on the jogging advice. That advice was advisilated all the way back on page 1.

*adds to dictionary*

[Zrk2]

Huh. Maybe I should start reading threads before I post in them.

[JoshuaFH]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Wow, haha...  Some pretty heavy stuff getting posted in this thread.  Not really sure if I should pitch in my two cents' worth or not.


Josh, you've been an active enough poster on here for long enough that even my sieve-brain remembers you to some extent (just like to point out that to absolutely everyone that I have avatar pictures turned off in my profile settings, as they irritate me).  You've always seemed like a nice, intelligent, THINKING (amazing how rare a quality that is) person through your writings, so on an objective level you're actually far and away ahead of the curve in regards to available dudes.

However, and I know this all too well myself, that's a really hard concept to truly wrap your head around.  Listen to LordBucket, s/he () sounds like she's got her head on straight.  I'm not generally that good at telling myself things just for the sake of them, because I usually have to fight my brain contradicting them the entire time and it never really feels like it's getting anywhere.  That's just me though.

Personally, what I did was just act like I was really self-confident.  But I didn't do it out of pretending to be.  What I did was use my altogether too well-developed sense of irony as a means of perpetuating a "joke".  I am absolutely not comfortable in most social situations, particularly with people I have the intent of making a good impression on (be they romantic interests or just random individuals), but I act like I'm absolutely in my element and completely assured of myself and my own incredible worth because, well...  Because it's so far from the truth I feel that it's really kinda funny.  But you know what?  It really has made a difference.  It's gotten far easier, and as I realize that it's actually working, I honestly do start feeling better about myself because now I know it *is* possible for me to survive situations like that.  And it turns into an actual upward spiral.  My ass no longer drenches in sweat anytime I talk with someone I'm not intimately comfortable with (yes, that was honestly an issue I had before.  I couldn't sit on vinyl chairs anytime I was expected to talk with someone).

I also had (still have, to a lesser degree) a cripplingly low opinion of myself.  Slow, awkward, dumb, ugly, what-have-you...  And I'm still working with it.  And I've gone through life with some truly awesome starting benefits that disprove all of those.  I always made friends quickly, have placed in the 1% of standardized state-wide tests (without regular schooling), scored higher than previously recorded scores on college-level exams after a couple weeks of half-assed studying, and have been blessed with looks that cause some truly hilarious results from time to time (I once caused a woman to walk into a shelf of goods at a local store, because she was staring at me).

As for my relationships?  Well...  My first "relationship" was a two-year engagement to a girl.  She was a few years older than I was, but then again I only had two years to my name when we started.  And yes, I fully intended to spend the rest of my life with that girl.  Then she dumped me.

My first "real" relationship lasted through three intense, passionate months where we were forced to spend a lot of time apart due to my being in the military.  I felt feelings I never thought possible, had true meaning in my life, and was willing to take on the world for her.  After she offered for me to move in after I finished my service, I agreed and cancelled all other plans, including my return ticket to the states (I was serving in Norway).  Four days before I was to be discharged, she broke up with me over Skypechat saying I was too good a person to be with her.

When I got back into "the scene", I kept up with the online dating I'd started in the military (I had reason for doing this, what with being on a military base in the middle of fuckoff-land), and wound up scaring a number of people off.  Then I bumped into a girl that I honestly hadn't expected to be much, but that I wound up getting such an intense chemistry with that things flew off the handle and we shortly thereafter became convinced we were each others' soul mates.

Then she revealed herself to be a selfish, angry, bipolar, batshit insane bitch who not only ruined my chances with another girl who really could have been a good match for me and who I still kick myself for hurting that bad, but who also poisoned my relations with anyone after I finally broke things off.  I'm still a little paranoid that people I talk with may suddenly go berserk or scream that it's over and I'm a horrible person.

Nice track record, eh?  Don't let it bother you.  Things are really looking up now.  I'm stronger and wiser for the bad things I've encountered, and now I've got a really close platonic-with-benefits (one that actually works, which is really really rare) relationship with one girl and a potential something-more that I'm leading up to.  Is there a chance things could horribly blow up in my face yet again?  Knowing me, it's probably not unlikely.  But it's a learning process and I'm getting better at it, and I'm really quite enjoying myself right now while dealing with attractive, intelligent people who love talking with me on a deeply emotional and intellectual level and additionally totally want to tap this.


Thanks for letting me rant pointlessly in a disjointed fashion (not that you had much say in the matter).  You'll do fine.


I mean, really...  If the guy who discovered the use of bags filled with vomit and blood as viable rations on below-freezing adventurer mode mountain treks can get a date, you're gonna be just hunky-dory. 

Thanks for giving me this insight into your own life Kagus, it means alot. I don't commune here as often as alot of the Bay12 regulars, but I consider everyone here to be my friend on some level, and it's always nice to learn more about my friends.

I still have a long way to go, but I hope that my trek through life can atleast be enjoyable.

[JoshuaFH]

So the cute girl I knew from HS and met again through happenstance actually friended me on FB. What do you know.

I sent her a friendly message, complete with bad pun about her job just to make it extra lighthearted, just asking how she's doing.

But I still feel disheartened, since even that made me kind of anxious. HS was four years ago, and it's plainly obvious she hasn't been wasting her life like I have. Just from the little I bother to see, she's been spending time having a full and rich life, while I still have so little to show after four years, I feel completely inadequate in comparison.

[Kagus]

But I still feel disheartened, since even that made me kind of anxious. HS was four years ago, and it's plainly obvious she hasn't been wasting her life like I have. Just from the little I bother to see, she's been spending time having a full and rich life, while I still have so little to show after four years, I feel completely inadequate in comparison.

Okay, I know from experience it's really easy and/or attractive to think these thoughts, but just stop.  Quit it.  If you find yourself going down the road of trying to compare the "validity" or "worth" of your life to someone else's, just knock it off.  Kill the thought process.  It serves absolutely no good purpose, is based solely off of false logic and biased negative assumptions and viewpoints, and is habit forming.

(Also, I challenge you to find a girl's profile on Facebook where it *doesn't* look like they've circumnavigated the globe a couple times and have billions of close friends...)


But whatever the case, IT DOESN'T MATTER.  You don't need a Nobel prize in anything in order to qualify for dating someone.  In all honesty, it'd probably only make it harder.  You don't need to have worked as the CEO of Time Warner, base jumped off the Empire State building, or indeed, eaten one of those giant burgers that are free if you can finish it in five minutes.

It's corny and cliched, which my spellchecker refuses to put in the proper accent marks for, but you really only need to be yourself.  If someone likes you, they like you for who you are.  It's very rare for someone to look at another person and think "Hmm, that looks like someone who's been to Peru...", because it's really just a non-issue.  Sure, I'm not saying it doesn't help conversation to have done lots of exciting and stupendifying things...  It gives you something to talk about.  But that's it.  That's not who you are.  Who you are is the person who did whatever it was you did.

Yay me for creating one of the most confusing paragraphs in this thread.


Want an example?  I've been talking with a very dear friend of mine, and she recently bumped into and subsequently took home one of her old exes.  No monkey business, but they did talk quite a bit and shared a night of intimacy, if not eroticism.  She told me that he's one of the people who she's just never really been able to get out of her head, and that she always winds up running into at some point or another.

This man is a junkie.  No really, he is.  He shoots up smack, is unemployed, and may or may not have completed high school.  She has, on a few occasions, had to drive out in the middle of the night and either save him from angry drug dealers or help him keep a grip on the world after going over the recommended dosage.  He's been this way as long as she's known him.


If a speed addict is still capable of having the characteristics deserving of a partner's affections, then god DAMN have you really got to screw up if you want to be "inadequate".



Lighthearted, asking how she's doing, bad pun...  You're doing a far better job than you realize.

[forsaken1111]

I agree with Kagus, and to further refine the point:

There is no measure by which you can quantify the worth of someone's life compared to another, because everyone values different things. If she has had a busy and full life since you last met, that gives you a lot to talk about, and for all you know she may need someone grounded to make her feel comfortable. The point is, you will never know until you talk to her, and if you let your own self-defeating feelings keep you from talking to her then you will never know. You will always wonder.

If you talk to her and it doesn't work out, then perhaps it wasn't meant to be... but at least then you would know and you can let that go and move on.

[LightlySpartan]

Alright, I used to think the same about myself. Maybe not in the same way, but I thought I was utterly hopeless and never gonna find any SO, or many friends for that matter. I was like that for years, eventually went to a therapist and then a psychiatrist. You may very well have a disorder or disease treatable with therapy and medication, or just therapy. And it involves more than just them, you have to put in a huge effort as well. If you don't exercise, start now. Doesn't have to be too much. If you have obsessive tendencies, you can see a doc about that. If you don't like how you look, change it! Go to a nice salon and ask them for advice. They will probably find something that can help you. If you have bad anxiety in new situations, just explain that to them. Something like Klonopin or Xanax might help you out a LOT. People might jump on me because those are considered abusable, and you can form a dependency on them, but if you manage it responsibly and use them to get yourself out of your comfort zone you gradually wont even need them anymore. I was a pretty much complete social failure in high school too, but I'm doing a lot better now, and I have plenty of stories and experience with how awkward things can feel at first and how to help. I didn't read the whole thread because I'm kinda busy but the title caught my eye and I wanna try and help you man. Feel free to PM me if you want any advice. You seem like a smart guy. Last word for now, fake it till you make it. If you pretend to have confidence itll come eventually.
One edit. Try to get to a psychiatrist at any cost, medication might not be a fix for everyone, but it can help you get out of a hole and you said earlier you didn't respond well to therapy. Be your own therapist. And don't turn to self medicating with street drugs or alcohol, even if it seems helpful at first it's a dead end sooner or later, thats just from my personal experience. Good luck man

[JoshuaFH]

Thanks Spartan, I feel I should also direct you to my exercise thread, just to show that I'm already exercising. It's around here somewhere.

I might see a psyche some time in the near future, though I don't know who it'll be, or when.

And @Kagus and Forsaken, thanks for the advice. I suppose my feelings thus far have been me wondering that, deep inside, I'm not sure if there's something missing. Something missing that everyone else has and was given to them naturally or through a normal childhood, and this places them at a natural advantage in the social world we live in. Even people that are fucked up that have this item are placed in an advantageous position over me. That my struggling to catch up is just me desperately trying to supplant the missing item with something, even a wrong piece, because I just want to function like other people function.

I've been stewing on your words for a few days now. I'll stew when I'm not sure what to say, and I'm still not sure exactly how to convey my thoughts how I want, but that above phrasing gets, at the very least, a closer idea of what I'm thinking.

[Hanslanda]

Thanks Spartan, I feel I should also direct you to my exercise thread, just to show that I'm already exercising. It's around here somewhere.

I might see a psyche some time in the near future, though I don't know who it'll be, or when.

And @Kagus and Forsaken, thanks for the advice. I suppose my feelings thus far have been me wondering that, deep inside, I'm not sure if there's something missing. Something missing that everyone else has and was given to them naturally or through a normal childhood, and this places them at a natural advantage in the social world we live in. Even people that are fucked up that have this item are placed in an advantageous position over me. That my struggling to catch up is just me desperately trying to supplant the missing item with something, even a wrong piece, because I just want to function like other people function.

I've been stewing on your words for a few days now. I'll stew when I'm not sure what to say, and I'm still not sure exactly how to convey my thoughts how I want, but that above phrasing gets, at the very least, a closer idea of what I'm thinking.

Urgh. :/ This explains exactly why I start using drugs, and exactly why it didn't work. Don't try and replace what you 'don't have'. You're different and it is a good thing. Be proud.

[Aqizzar]

And @Kagus and Forsaken, thanks for the advice. I suppose my feelings thus far have been me wondering that, deep inside, I'm not sure if there's something missing. Something missing that everyone else has and was given to them naturally or through a normal childhood, and this places them at a natural advantage in the social world we live in. Even people that are fucked up that have this item are placed in an advantageous position over me. That my struggling to catch up is just me desperately trying to supplant the missing item with something, even a wrong piece, because I just want to function like other people function.

Yeah... I've had that feeling more than a few times.  As long as this is here, if you don't mind I might as well blog about myself.  Maybe it'll give you some insight.  And consider it my way of saying thanks for making me think about something.

Spoiler: Bloggin' (click to show/hide)

I know I come from a line of people who didn't really have their heads screwed on straight, including my parents.  And I know my mother did drugs when she was pregnant.  But while it wouldn't surprise me to hear that I'm unbalanced down to my genes, I don't think it really matters either.  You gotta deal with the hand you're dealt.

I was actually a happy little kid.  In elementary school I made friends easy, even if I didn't have that many for very long (whatever long counts as at that age).  Looking back, I know I wasn't "popular", probably because I total goofball.  But I just didn't care, heck, growing up on cartoons told me being a punching bag was funny.  As is the way of things, all that changed when I was about twelve and my higher brain functions switched on, and suddenly I was totally self-conscious of being a dork right as everybody else took a lot more interest in pointing it out.

Much more importantly, my parents split up and I stayed with my father.  Without her around, he rapidly and pointedly regressed back into the rock'n'rolling teenager he always was at heart.  So right as my brain was being boiled in a stew of public school and puberty, Dad wanted to party all the time and wanted his only child to join in.  I'd spend all day being shat on by cool douchebags in a school system that punished people for fighting back more than it did for starting fights, then went home to be strapped to a dirt bike with a pipe in my mouth to bust ass in front of Dad's endless parade of 20-something deadbeat trailertrash friends.

It's not like I didn't have friends.  There's always a circle of nerds in any school, and mine was a good crew.  Heck, after the post-middle shakeup and before failing three classes, my first year of highschool was one of the best times of my life.  But we didn't hang out much outside of school, since we all came from screwed up homes and had to ask parents for transportation.  Even living with a semi-pro dragracer, I didn't learn how to drive until I moved out to live with my mother, because like fuck was Dad going to take the time to teach me or let me get in his car(s).  As an aside.

The point was, my life mainly revolved around hiding from the rest of the world, except for when I could hide inside a circle of people I trusted.  This was not helped by my desperate attempts to make a little identity for myself, which made me stick out more, which made me react which made me a target.  If anything, that just made me more determined to do what I wanted to do, because if you change that means they win, right?  At least early on, that crap kinda peters out in the 11th grade.  But if anything it was my home life that was doing the real damage.  I was pulled between conflicting desires to keep up with the cool and normal stuff Dad and his adult friends wanted me to do, and my stronger desire to not break bones, lose my mind, and be laughed at no matter how many times they said they were just playing around.  This was a conflict I resolved by barricading myself in a corner.  By the end, it turned into a fucked up dynamic of being the 'grown up' of the house despite not being allowed near 'grown up' stuff like money or keys.  I feel this becomes important later.

When it came to girls, looking back on it, I realized that there were probably a couple people who actually were interested in me, and a couple more I had a shot with.  Speaking as a psychiatrist (a dangerous pastime), I grew up as a lonely teenager with two circles of peers - one a group of other dateless-wonder teenagers, and the other a bunch of professional skirt-chasers with rather astounding success rates.  Basically I had a lot of bad adult perspective in an ill-equipped teen package.  I was extremely self-conscious of being a dorky looking guy with stunted social skills and no transportation or income and reputation as an unbalanced nerd, and I kinda thought the best I could look forward to in a relationship was people I'd be ashamed to be around, or short and violent flings.  Seeing my equally dorky friends occasionally succeed didn't boost my confidence either, even if I can't remember why.  Maybe being the prosaic urban cowboy of the circle was part of that identity I wouldn't give up.

There's a much more honest and accurate answer of course.  I wish I could say that I had a zero-success rate, but the first time it occurred to me to try I immediately decided I was hopeless until adulthood and went back to just surviving.  I don't think it was any particularly Freudian avoidance mechanism, just a deeply ingrained fear of doing anything that could be embarrassing.  So I was left with the quiet, simmering, personal embarrassment of being alone.

And I think I've blogged enough to leave out how all of that carried me into college and beyond.

If there's one root of the issue, it's that I think they problem might be that "thing" you're lacking.  There isn't a "thing", and as much as I used to believe that and still find myself thinking it, I know there's really not.  What those other people have is... I don't want to call it "confidence", because that implies its an active decision.  Really it's a lack of ability to care overly much.

If it's confidence, it's the confidence to face yourself.  There's no greater prison a man can construct than his own mind.  I spent most of my formative years rattling around in my own head, and it left me with a goddamn pile of neuroses.  Not the least being, that depression is addicting.  It talks to you like an addiction, it rules your actions like an addiction.  You can feel it pressing on your thoughts with a power as invisible and natural and inexplicable as hunger or sleep.

"Why do you want to go out there and make a fool of yourself?  You already know how it's going to end.  The fact that you're hearing this is proof enough.  You already failed at being a normal happy person, and now you're crippled.  The damage is already done, just give it up.  You know you belong here.  After every day of your whole life, it's downright comfortable, isn't it?  That's because it's home.  You already struck out at being anything, that one failure is enough.  Do you really want to go out there and prove you're an idiot, and have to come marching home with a bunch more failures to pile on the one you'll never escape?"

And if it's sounds like I'm wallowing in this, frankly it's because I am.  I try to give voice to these wordless pressures in my mind, because the more I try to explain them the more maudlin and ridiculous they sound.  I remember that I actually succeeded at things before, and that my fuckups didn't kill me.  I remember that I'm not the same person I was at 15, and I don't have to be.  I remember that however much I resented my mother for wanting to be my parent again, I can take her good advice without taking all of advice.  I remember my father breaking down in tears when he admitted how bad he'd fucked me up, and how proud he was of the adult I'd become despite him.

I remember that part of being so damn self-conscious is that the personality people know is one made of bits of pieces of all the influences in my life, the ones thrust on me and the ones that percolated in my brain, and it's a personality that's won me a lot of good times... when I stopped giving a shit about how I really felt.  When I realized that all that stuff that makes me feel so wasted on the inside is disproved and inaudible when I don't pay attention to it and just enjoy myself.  And every time I do, people who've known me before see the transformation and love it.

It doesn't go away.  It comes and goes in relation to my material life, and whenever that doesn't seem to be working out the pressure comes roaring back, and reminds me that I don't really want to leave my depression again.  Sometimes I have to trick myself into doing what I know I want to, and I know I'll be living inside my head for the rest of my life after all.  I never stop thinking about time I've wasted and chances I've blown.  But I always remember, eventually, that none of it will really matter if I can have a good time right now.  And all the failures and embarrassments might make me heat up like a little kid at the time, but none of that has the lingering pain of the feeling of doing nothing.


So, good luck Josh.  You deserve it.  And you've reminded me to stop staring at my hands in wordless fear whenever I get ready to send that email to my old friends I've been planning to send for a couple months.  They might not respond, and it might not turn out the way I wanted.  But at least I'll have tried, and that closure will at least be enough to convince myself that nothing's really gone wrong.  Even if I screwed up, knowing there's nothing more to be done will put it out of my mind so I can move on.

[Reudh]

This is why I love Bay12.
<- overflowing with endorphins atm for some reason despite preparing to travel two hours across the state for uni...

All of us here support each other. We validate each other. We help each other.

Look at this thread. Six pages already. Most other forums would've scoffed and trolled, not so us.

Josh, you're a fine lad and I can wholly empathise with your plight, and all I can say is "there's only one way but up".

I was similar to you and Aqizzar in that I lived in fear of the "What if I get embarrassed/annoyed/whatever" until quite recently. I fought to avoid contact with anyone who I believed would hurt me, and as a result people avoided contact with me.
"That's Reudh, he's really smart but also really weird. Only talk to him if you want to know something."

Like you, I was friends with both the Dateless Wonders and the Professional Skirtchasers.
Heh.

There was the two Dateless Wonders, a guy who was even more of a social cripple than I, and a half-French, half-Chinese Mauritian guy who appeared to be perpetually 14 even at 17. There was me, a depressed, self-hating geek who believed that he'd amount to nothing in life by virtue of his eccentric behaviour.

Then there was the Professional Skirtchasers. One was a Jamaican/English Australian guy who had an afro and spoke with a gangsta accent. Always keeping his afro in check, he was a good mate. There was another two who were twins; both Mauritian. They were getting all the girls and I envied them. I was the outlier of the group.

Then again; as I limped through highschool and barely passed, I took time to reassert myself and think a moment on what the fuck was going on. I went to a psych and found out I had been severely depressed (I had attempted suicide twice before, couldn't bring myself to inflict a severe injury though) and had mild Asperger's syndrome. Made sense.

I steeled myself and found that I had developed a defense mechanism: I just didn't care what others thought of me. My mother tried to tell me yesterday 'not to invite your second cousins to your 21st because they wouldn't for us' so I looked her in the eye and said 'this is my party, what's more is that why should they be the first to invite us to something? I cannot find out their character if I simply shunt them away.'

I dunno where I'm going with this, but I think what I mean is it ain't all bad. Look at the bright things in life. People can be fantastic, but they can be arseholes. There is two sides to the coin everywhere.

(Looking back, that group:)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Social cripple is still social cripple. nice enough guy but he removes himself from all.
Chinese/French manchild is now doing a metalworking apprenticeship and loving it, though there's little chance for flirting with girls.
English/Jamaican cool guy is a dropout after gettin' onto weed age 16. Doesn't do anything to my knowledge.
Younger Mauritian twin is a dropout after getting onto weed age 17. Got a girl pregnant and fled.
Older Mauritian twin is a dropout after getting onto weed age 15. Haven't heard anything of him.
I'm doing a Biomedical Science degree and my outlook on life is vastly improved from what it was a year, two years or three years ago.

[thryn]

So I got tired of reading about minecarts and wandered over here and boy howdy do I feel extra especially conspicuously old and female now.
However, I have boatloads of empathy for you all, since I was once myself ForverAlone Girl, carefully plotting my solo D&D adventures on graph paper while seemingly everyone else on earth was having sex and parties and sexy parties all the time always, and I feel like I should throw my two cents in for The Ladies:
First off, LordBucket's advice is super excellent and you should follow it.
Secondly, and this is a point others have made as well, the less you focus on GETTING A GIRLFRIEND, or even GIRLS in general, and the more you focus on making a happy and fulfilling life for yourself, the better off you will be. Don't fall into the trap of thinking you need to have the right job, the right car, or even the right body. Just find what you actually want for yourself - regardless of what anyone else thinks (hey, you might actually really fucking enjoy crochet, or underwater basket weaving, or picking up trash in the park) - and do it. Everything else will fall into place in due time, i.e. about six months after you actually, really, finally stop worrying about when this shit is going to fall into place already.

Anyway, if you want some more perspective from A Real Female Type Person Who Totally Actually Gets To Have Sex And Stuff Sometimes (I am married), ask away.

[Reudh]

Aye, that's a superb thing. I have tried more these days on merely focussing on fulfilling myself rather than hunting like a wounded crippled thing, and already I both feel happier and have more female attention.