Post-Hibernation

[tiredofvampires]

ETA, after the edit window ran out:

 

I think you need to ask yourself to what extent you make and jealously guard the rules you do because they protect you and help create simple, less messy, formulaic answers to have the convenience to hide in. Challenging those essential ideas about lovability and viability would require taking risks that are painful and scary, and it's just a whole lot easier to figure out ways not to have the opportunity. You are running for cover, despite what appears to be a tough, truth-talking stance with yourself. Brutal honesty here, PTH. Of a most ironic nature, given who you are and what you've rejected.

[ProtestTheHero]

I think it's somewhat strange to make value judgments about probabilities.

 

I guess it would be pretty opportunistic of me to say that my mother is not over 50 quite yet, and she certainly wasn't when all this cheating was occurring. It would have been better for me to go back a little further and use the generation that didn't experience that 1968ish sexual revolution as an example of the kind of relationships that are dead now. That's not a good or a bad thing, it's just a thing, but it's not a very central point to what we're discussing so I won't belabor it.

 

I must say that I don't agree with the statement that people haven't changed, but I won't really go down that rabbit hole either.

 

I suppose that you and I are just very different. You say that we are more or less accountable for tending to the soil that produces the sort of fruit that our care would deserve. Fair enough -- but good farmers can still starve from a series of bad harvests. I would say that in my life, taking control and exerting my power has really only taken one form, and it's not what you'd advocate. Cruelty versus cruelty.

 

No one has ever had the chance to tell me I'm not enough. I'd have been too drunk to hear it.

 

If I could fix my flaws I'd probably be a lot more aggressive in my pursuit of women. Right now I just sort of let that happen in the moment. I just start talking to someone without any expectation and then I know I'll leave at some point without trying to escalate. I would probably still hang with the same group of people and hit up the same places.

 

Alas, no genie for me, and I really don't have a hell of a lot to work with without one.

 

Few things are as disappointing as the first few seconds of each and every new day when that reality hits me like a sledge hammer, and then I limp over to the bathroom and stare at someone no one wants.

 

The burden of existence. Sounds like something I'd have named one of my core bands.

[tiredofvampires]

A genie? I think even if a genie was uncorked and delivered whatever it was, the chances of dismissal would be pretty high.

 

It's kind of like something I get to thinking, sometimes. Even if that carpenter boy came back and said "Newsflash, y'all mic me up real good, cuz I got some hard-hittin' clarification to be doing -- there's a few things that got mistook since I last had dinner over here in these parts" and the planet fell silent to all but the drop of a pin, those big red elephants on the hill would listen, tap their fat knees, scoff, and say, "Who asked you?" /code

 

I think it's somewhat strange to make value judgments about probabilities.

 

I think you're going to have to quote me, because I'm not sure what you mean and what you're referencing.

 

I guess it would be pretty opportunistic of me to say that my mother is not over 50 quite yet, and she certainly wasn't when all this cheating was occurring. It would have been better for me to go back a little further and use the generation that didn't experience that 1968ish sexual revolution as an example of the kind of relationships that are dead now. That's not a good or a bad thing, it's just a thing, but it's not a very central point to what we're discussing so I won't belabor it.

 

Yeah, I think we can both agree this is a peripheral point, at best. I'm in your mom's generation, and so is anyone in about the 45-55-year-old range, so I'm lumping your mom's age in with the age bracket you were referencing as the more "relationship-oriented" one. If you meant 70, by "people over 50", I grant you that she is in a younger generation than that. But I don't really think people have been cheating more over the decades, or even centuries. Well, okay, maybe there's more cheating that when Protestants first landed in America, but maybe that's more about the advent of contraception in the 20th century (particularly, with the Pill) than any other change in history. Which doesn't mean people being more faithful at heart, but being less afraid of repercussions. And that's just the women. I'd lay down the only money I have on a bet that with men, nothing's changed in the frequency of infidelity over the millenia.

 

Anyway, yours truly was born in 1968, and I don't consider myself an anachronism because I've wanted a stable long-term relationship all my life. I spend a fair amount of time with women in their 20's, in the places I spend time, and the single ones are looking forward to families some day. The human race is still compelled to procreate the same, and with that, the duties (and desires) of families to create stable homes are still very much built into the human psyche. I do think that it's getting harder and harder to create lasting unions for a variety of reasons, and I think matrimony is not taking with the kind of seriousness it once was; but then again, that may balance out with the number of miserable marriages that are more easily ended without social stigma than in bygone eras. I think the DESIRE and INTENTION to live up to the vows, though, probably would be a fairly straight line, averaged over time. None of these statistics are based on data I've researched, but for the purposes of this post I'm using my best educated guesses. I don't even believe your mom went into marriage thinking she would wind up cheating. She simply didn't know herself. As many of us don't (though some are more self-aware than others, and she's clearly in the red on that score.)

 

I suppose that you and I are just very different. You say that we are more or less accountable for tending to the soil that produces the sort of fruit that our care would deserve. Fair enough -- but good farmers can still starve from a series of bad harvests. I would say that in my life, taking control and exerting my power has really only taken one form, and it's not what you'd advocate. Cruelty versus cruelty.

 

Well, I wasn't talking about taking power from returning cruelty for cruelty. I was talking more about doing something to enhance your chances of a better social situation, that brings out a greater sense of integration, less alienation, and perhaps even a chance of having some of those opportunities with women that scare you but would open the doors of your vision. I don't believe you are tending that soil, so I wouldn't call you a top-rate farmer, euphemistically speaking, at this point. Maybe that's where we disagree.

 

I want more for you than just feeling like a comedian/fun-bringer for the night. You are more than that. And you are wasting that more. I think if you wanted that, you could have it. But you don't mulch your crops, you don't rotate them, you don't water them or add nutrients, you just tell them to go fend for themselves. (strange way to end that analogy, lol...) And I was proposing reasons for that in my last post.

 

But while we're at it, I don't particularly think being cruel is ever being a good farmer, either, no matter who/what provoked you. That's just me banging away though at a point that I know sounds preachy and tired, so consider it a footnote.

 

No one has ever had the chance to tell me I'm not enough.

 

PRECISELY.

 

And it actually ends there.

 

Your defense, that is.

 

That's where my challenge begins.

[tiredofvampires]

Noting, as an anticlimactical but important postscript, that you're not a virgin. And you had a long-term relationship with a fairly experienced girl, albeit at a tender age. And that wasn't your last encounter with women, on a physical level.

 

So "no chance" is a matter of interpretation, I guess.

 

But I'm willing to frame this challenge as one looking forward, not backward.

[ProtestTheHero]

No, I am not a virgin, but there's a reason I haven't had sober sex since that tender age. Heavy drinking is pretty much the only context in which I am comfortable engaging someone physically because I'm going to be far too gone to register any disappointment or rudeness. I wouldn't even entertain the idea of sex outside the context of at least 6 shots of Jack Daniels. That's what I need to stop thinking about what she's thinking when I enter my most vulnerable place. That's what I need to disconnect from the fact that there's a person with a brain on the other end of this thinking thoughts.

 

I don't give people the chance to take swipes at me any more; I've experienced enough of that for several life times.

 

I'm a really, really good commercial and in that sense I accomplish one thing -- I get you to try something that you otherwise wouldn't want or need. I capture attention and then provide a substandard product, but the experience is flashy enough initially that I could be the next one-time-only mistake for any number of women. I have that ability, but I'm limited to that context.

 

You're in a club of one if you're placing any vote of confidence in me.

 

I'm not even really sure what you're challenging me to do. You make reference to the sightless but you can only talk like that if you think the corollary holds true -- that there's some group of "seers" out there to whom I would be incredibly present and viable. If they're not bar hopping or hitting downtown spots then where is Eden? At the starbucks or wine tasting? I guess I just don't understand your challenge.

 

You're criticizing a group of people at a certain place, but if you opened every door to every room packed with mid 20s people on a Saturday night you could make the same critique. There's nothing unique about what these people want.

[tiredofvampires]

I think you get the gist of my challenge, but first things first.

 

Heavy drinking is pretty much the only context in which I am comfortable engaging someone physically because I'm going to be far too gone to register any disappointment or rudeness. I wouldn't even entertain the idea of sex outside the context of at least 6 shots of Jack Daniels.

 

Okay, so in these cases, you were so drunk when you had sex that something might have been said to you and you wouldn't have even heard it?

[ProtestTheHero]

Well, I don't know that I'd assert that with any certainty because it's definitely incredibly paranoid to make that assumption. The point I'm making is that I do what I do to rob someone of the chance to do that to me. They could be calling me Lord Voldemort for all I know in some of those moments because my memory of it will be very hazy. I don't retain details after a certain point -- that's the point.

[tiredofvampires]

So you're saying that someone could have said something derogatory to you and it wouldn't have registered? You would not have been able to recount what was said, even if it was something that would hit up your brain with every red siren possible?

 

I can see how you would forget being called Lord Voldemort. You'd easily forget anything you'd like to be called, lol.

[tiredofvampires]

You're in a club of one if you're placing any vote of confidence in me.

 

and lol, I really don't think so...

[tiredofvampires]

Well sonofagun, I was just looking for something else and just ran into this:

 

 

 

Boom! The research did me in this case.

 

This should whet your appetite as an excerpt:

 

Should we be surprised that Millennials want the same things in life as previous generations? Not really. We know that despite more opportunities for casual sex than ever before, Millennials have fewer sex partners than any generation since WWII.

[ProtestTheHero]

It wouldn't have registered, no. That's why it's a prerequisite. I didn't have sex last Saturday, but I vaguely remember leaning in a little to kiss someone who then tensed up and I knew to go no further. She just said not here, and I don't remember the rest

[tiredofvampires]

Just wondering -- you're driving home in this state?

[tiredofvampires]

The reason of course I ask, is because based on things you've said before, you're never too drunk to drive home, which is what you'd have to be in this scenario you're describing. Also, you've said that since you got more concerned with your fitness, your alcohol consumption is at a level where you're buzzed, by not so hammered that you're almost "gone". You're not going in and out of being aware. Besideswhich, you're a heavyweight, so for you to get to the point that you'd not remember what was said to you and for things to just be a blur, you'd have to have a sky high blood alcohol level.

 

I don't see you endangering your limb, license, and reputation like that. You're not that much of a fool. So this surprises me, and something's not jibing.

 

I would also like to point out that you said you don't give people the opportunity to take swipes at you anymore -- but in a scenario where you'd be having sex so drunk that she could be calling you Lord Voldemort without your being cognizant of it, you're not giving her less of an opportunity to call you that.

 

So maybe you meant to say you're giving them the opportunity, you're just giving yourself less opportunity to know it?

[ProtestTheHero]

I don't drive back in that state. We crash at a friend's apartment downtown -- it's always a group of us that goes to this particular place and one of the dudes has a nice place near it. You can walk.

 

And yes, the opportunity for someone to insult me is still there, but my ability to hear it, process it, and remember it is gone. You summarized what I meant quite nicely in your last sentence.

 

The fitness thing -- I just eat less on days where I know I'm going to drink. I get drunk faster and it's less calories. It hasn't affected my weight because it's only happening 1-2x a week.

[ProtestTheHero]

Plus, in defense of the drinking (lol), it's really the only time I feel as if I'm not thinking anymore and just being. It's the only time I feel unburdened by everything, and sometimes I can even smile in a photo or something. I think this pic kind of looks like me, and usually I don't feel that way, and I was pretty gone at a friend's apartment when I took it.

 

I don't know.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]10901[/ATTACH]

[tiredofvampires]

That's a great pic. I would never suspect, looking at the picture, that you're wasted. Or that you suffer so much from self-rejection and doubt as you do. You're a perfectly cute guy, as cute guys go, who could pretty much get anyone.

 

The thing is, the smile is so disarming and sweet (if not a bit coy), it totally belies the seething cynicism just below the surface. LOL

 

Getting back to the business of your not being able to cut it physically in a relationship, I would hardly call one-night stands a good proving ground of anything. I'm going to take a wild guess the kinds of feedback you fear have never been uttered; but whether they were or not, and however you've gone about numbing yourself, these are not the circumstances that would in any way resemble a relationship where you've formed a bond with someone who wants you for YOU, and everything else then works itself out. WHICH IS WHAT HAPPENS ON THE REG IN ALL SOUND RELATIONSHIPS. It sounds trite, but it's trite because it's TRUE. So you're setting up situations that don't reflect what would go on in a relationship, the dynamics there, so nothing said to you in these hookups ought to be admitted to any kind of evaluation system whatsoever. They're just not representative of anything relationship-related except that you're male and she's female, and that's ALL.

 

The fact remains though that you DID have one relationship where you were not drunk all the time, and you were physical. That relationship did not end because you were physically inadequate. That's one thing you can't rewrite, reframe, or undo, PTH. That's engraved in the stone. So how are you accounting for that, and why is that not factoring in, in your view about what's in store for you with relationships?

[tiredofvampires]

And in defense of general anesthesia, when I had my appendix out, I topped drinking for not having to think anymore. It was quite relaxing.

[ProtestTheHero]

You are nice to say so, but I am quite literally incapable of seeing anything in that photo. I don't necessarily see something bad -- I just see nothing. I can't look at that and make an evaluation. It's water to me, absent of taste, texture, or any tangible description. I just look at it and I digest it through the filter of responses that I receive. I don't think cute is the first thought coming to the minds of the people who are evaluating me in the moment, the women who are deciding what the next hour or so is going to look like for the two of us. Maybe funny or interesting, but that's what I earn with words. It doesn't seem like my getup is doing me any favors.

 

I guess I can't really help the contrast between the surface and the feelings underneath it. The one thing I feel I can discern about my appearance is that I look soft. Whenever I offer up a sentence or two in person describing my feelings on an issue, I think it's stranger for people to process that than when I do it here.

 

When I was 17-18, an intelligent young lady with an astonishing number of sexual partners expressed an interest in an inexperienced, angst-driven guy because she wanted something different than the dudes she had already consumed. She wanted to be treated in a way she hadn't yet experienced, and she'd need a strange case to experience that.

 

I find myself looking back at that relationship and reframing it almost every time. I think most people capable of having a lot of casual sex at some point tire of the exercise. You might describe it as growing sick of fast food and wanting something more substantial. I think when she looked at the 17 year old me, she thought she had an opportunity for something other than fast food. I was so bewildered that anyone would take an interest in me that the whole thing was a haze at first. It was like I was floating -- everything was so surreal and fast.

 

It was affirming. I actually think that the confidence I was gaining through this relationship was actually its undoing. I stopped viewing myself as an incredibly marginal figure because of her, but that also affected how I treated her. I initially held her up as this snowflake among women, the one who found something worth valuing in me, and I had to show her she was right to take a chance on me. When I started to think that maybe I wasn't such a terrible option for other people I began to treat her in a healthier way. I didn't place her on a pedestal but I did respect her. I think she missed that version of me when the relationship became long-distance, and I think that's why she tried to make me jealous and then it ended.

 

I don't think that relationship is incredibly important outside of the ways it made me mature. It shouldn't be used as evidence of anything other than my own evolution. There is a very real possibility that without that experience, I would still have zero sexual experiences in my life. That was the first domino that made the rest fall. It gave me the opportunity to experience what a particular woman enjoyed, and I gained some perspective that I'd otherwise never have known from my own life.

 

Things change but in some ways they still stay the same. I'm again in a position where no one seems particularly interested in what I have to offer. No one is particularly thrilled with the packaging it comes in, either.

 

So it really makes me wonder what the hell is going on, or it makes me think that maybe you, TOV, just have incredibly niche taste when it comes to appearance.

[ProtestTheHero]

I went out to the same younger bar that gave me bad vibes again last night. It was not as bad this time. I just focused on being there with my friends and didn't try to talk to any women. A couple guys from work came in with their girlfriends and I did some shots with them, so that was cool.

 

I still feel a little out of place. It's a "guys like me" feeling. Do "guys like me" really think they can walk into this place and have a shot with someone. My initial aversion to the place was largely rooted in the fact that this is basically a "rate me 1 to 10" exercise. It's a pretty good place to get an idea of where you're at in relation to your age group. I didn't want to be under that spotlight. I didn't want to "ask" the question because I wasn't sure if I could handle the answer.

 

I've tried so hard to be the best physical version of myself recently. I've slowly overhauled my wardrobe and I've just been adding good piece after piece. I think I've pushed the limit of what I can reasonably expect to get out of this vessel. It still doesn't seem like it's enough. I'm less angry and more resigned now. If you try your very best at something and you know you left everything on the field and still lose, you can't really regret anything. I've posted in so many threads telling people not to settle for a self-diagnosis of "I am not enough," to push through and make improvements and then let the dust settle and assess where you're at with everything.

 

The dust has settled for me and I've put in a lot of work but the results are the same.

 

I guess sometimes I just wonder why I keep going. It's wrong to say that I'm plugging along because I acknowledge how little I know and how much things can change. It's wrong to say it's a product of anything that mature.

 

My life is just a series of obligations occasionally numbed by alcohol. I want to tap out so badly. I'm so drained because I'm never recharged by numinous or transcendent experiences like love, sex, or whatever.

 

I'm running on empty fully equipped with the knowledge that I have no reason to run at all. I'm certainly not sticking around for others -- there's nothing about the idea that makes me feel guilty.

 

There's just no reason at all for me to be here, so it must be cowardice. I guess I'm just not very courageous. I think eventually your heart hollows out to the point where you don't feel fear anymore. I guess the hole in my heart just isn't big enough and so I'm trapped.

 

I can't really blame anyone. We're dealt a genetic hand and we have to play it. Perhaps I just didn't play my cards very well, and now I'm so sapped of energy that I just don't want to play poker anymore.

[ProtestTheHero]

And, as anticipated, I offered up the same photo for feedback from more objective sources and the reviews were more in line with the responses I receive from people in real life. This would be one of those instances that would have been a body blow to me in the past but now it's just a broken record. It's just the way things have been and will be and my job is to process it and make decisions.

[tiredofvampires]

And where/who would these sources be? Some online thing?

 

And what do you mean, "responses you receive in real life"? What negative feedback do you receive in real life?

 

Have you received any positive feedback in real life lately? Anything you've recorded in this journal recently? Were they not objective?

[tiredofvampires]

I'm not sure what you think makes my taste "niche", whereas the small subset of people on this planet whom you are getting your values and social commandments from is NOT a "niche."

 

As a matter of fact, I'm probably the least niche in my taste than any person you know, including yourself.

 

In the last year, I've been involved with a guy who looked like Lance Armstrong (well, not his face -- he's plenty more attractive than Lance -- but all the rest) and a guy who is such an extreme of hippie-looking with his 3-foot-long dreads in both head hair and beard, even he has told me that he's somewhat uncomfortable with how many stares he gets out on the street. I've been with sharp-dressing polo shirt guys, and tattooed, cut-off-t-shirt-wearing, Camaro-driving cowboys. I've crushed on guys 6 and a half feet tall and 5 and a quarter feet tall. I've been into leather and long hair, exotic men wearing traditional Indian/Pakistani dress, and my first serious relationship involving sex was with a career-minded army grunt, who was either in uniform or could be any dude at a Springsteen concert. I once had a massive crush on one of my doctors, who had blue eyes (I love brown/hazel, don't care for blue), a bald head (baldness is usually a problem for me), and he wore loafers with cardigans. In just about every single case, there was something about them that became physically captivating to me completely beyond a single trait or even a number of traits. A few were lucky to be blessed with more universally-accepted good features, but in every case, there were imperfections that became part of what made them so hot. If you are taking anything from "objective" sources on the net, the one take-away you should have gotten by now from the relationship/gender hotbed of discussion that is ENA, is that women, by and large, are physically drawn to men through a very complex process that is more like alchemy than a fruit stand purchase. The latter is for men (very often) or girls -- not women. So keep that in mind.

 

So...it doesn't seem to me that I'm the one in the "niche" market with looks. Not that that will redeem my opinion, as it seems I've been disqualified. But that's not a new thing either. I don't accept the "age" card either, because there are as many women my age, as I'm sure you've noticed, milling about in the other places you frequent, who are trying to level the playing field with the younger ones. And age doesn't make one less discerning, in fact it sometimes makes one moreso. Take Justin Bieber's fan base -- need I say more? I have also been hit on by men in your age bracket, a few of them good-looking (and none of them "alternative"), so I'm not so ancient as to be irrelevant when it comes to circles of influence that might overlap with yours.

 

Not that I think we'd have to have overlapping circles to make my point, when part of my point, and my challenge, is that your NICHE sucks. lol, sorry, that's so blunt.

 

You've been told by numerous people in your real life that you're attractive, apart from women in a crowd that is still rating people's looks "1-10" post high-school. I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish by going there. Testing out your "skin", to see if it'll burn? And if you're just going for shots and watching the kids play, why would you use such an outing to gauge anything relating to this subject?

 

You've also had women in real life want to date you, and you've only been with really good-looking women. All this -- wiped away, gone, delete, delete, delete. Right?

 

And I'm not the only one on this forum in the past who has told you you're good-looking. At least a couple dozen women here, from headbangers to j.crew types have said you're a good-looking guy, and none of them had to post on your threads just to butter you up.

 

So it's not for lack of evidence that you reject a more benign conclusion about yourself. It's that you are obstinate in what you want to cherry pick from the data you're being fed. And, you're setting the controls in a certain way by carefully selecting a population that is guaranteed to support your hypothesis. If this were a scientific study, you'd be professionally ousted for your incompetence. It's not that you "want" to feel bad, it's that doing otherwise is foreign to you. But there is also an unwillingness to make room for anything else. That's the part that concerns me, because you can't ask for life to change your experience while you're being this passive.

 

If you're going to base your self-assessment on the opinions of teeny-boppers who take seriously their rating people on scales, with "likes" or thumbs-down, and count that as a meaningful activity, boy...are you laying your own trap. You seem to really, really need the validation of people who are not worth a vote.

 

Only you can decide this is a problem with your needs, and squarely that -- with looks being very much an arbitrary, depending on who's doing the looking. There IS nothing "objective" about looks -- it's ALL subjective, that's the truth. Even a general consensus isn't "objective", and where it concerns dating and love, etc., it's meaningless. Utterly meaningless to look for a consensus, since you're not going to be dating the general public.

 

You can always defeat me by finding your own preferred test group and calling it a consensus to prove your pre-existing theories. It's a search and find mission, really, just like going to a place where you know you feel bad in order to see if "a guy like me" is going to fit in better in December than he did in November. It's not good enough to be appreciated somewhere else more -- no, you have to go where you know all your triggers are to see if that wound can be re-opened or test people to close it.

 

I can go on a search-and-find mission to find guys who think I'm not attractive, and I'll get what I'm looking for, too. I can find the guys who would call me a loser, say I'm a weird chick, say I'm too intense. Any number of things. I've sent guys my picture on the dating site, after we've hit it off a bit emailing, and once I send my picture they disappear. I could take that as "a girl like me" not appealing to "a guy like them" or I could keep moving and find guys who will say hey, nice pic, or say they'd rather meet me in person to make up their minds. I can actually choose to discard people's opinions if they don't favor me, and it's not me being in denial -- it's me taking the ones that take me, and leaving the rest to GO FIND SOMEONE ELSE. I think that's incredibly reasonable and common sense, and has nothing to do with telling myself things to make myself feel good. I'm filtering out the ones that don't want me, and I'm even okay if they're in the majority. I asked you how many women in the room need to vote favorably on you, for you to feel okay, and you side-stepped that question, but it really does come down to that. If you're walking into a room of people and thinking, "am I the sort of guy who could...", either you need a certain quota of "likes" (when really one would be enough) or you're in an extremely homogenous environment, which is definitely an impediment (because 100 votes would be equal to one vote), or both.

 

What you're saying about your high school girlfriend is that she dated you for the novelty. Well, novelty wears off after a short time. Your relationship went on for over two years, and involved pledges from distant colleges. I would think by that time, if you weren't cutting it physically for her (or if your appearance turned her off), she, being smart, good-looking, and in demand, would have decided that she could now get something better, too. Her confidence would have grown as well. Instead, she started to play head games with you, like all immature people do, and just like anyone else's youthful relationship, it ended over head games and power plays and young love drama/silliness, and to a good extent, distance. It never had anything to do with your physical being, but you're just such a good spin doctor with yourself that you've found a way to make it that too, because otherwise, it would put too many cracks in the running narrative.

 

Perhaps without her, you might still be virginal. But since it did happen -- what did you do with that advantage, that small blessing? What have you done with it since?

 

It was affirming. There's no taking that back. And during it, you started to have a bit of confidence, to believe you could pull off having a girl. What happened to that? Too bad it faded like yesterday to an amnesiac. It's engraved into the stone, but for your purposes, it needs to be rewritten or just plain forgotten. You were given something, something to keep in your pocket -- and you've thrown it away.

 

I know you can't think of many good reasons to stick around, but I can tell you one: because you haven't really grasped the depths of your delusion yet. It's worth sticking around for that revelation. Or let me put it this way, because that presupposes you agree with me, which you don't.

 

You should stick around because it's guaranteed at your age that you're relatively deluded (and being depressed/mood-swingy doesn't help). And it's just not right to make a fateful decision when you're deluded any more than it is to chance getting behind the wheel after 20 shots.

 

I can't be happier I'll never be 26 again. It only gets better. For those of us whose teens sucked buffalo balls, the 20's are just a recovery period. It's the halfway house. Life begins after 30.

 

You need to stick around because you have yet to ask yourself, "AM I, PTH, SO FULL OF SHT ABOUT MYSELF THAT I CAN'T SEE STRAIGHT?" and earnestly go on a quest to answer that without rigging the lab.

 

But you'd have to actually start doing some things a bit differently, and that's where we come to our impasse.

[ProtestTheHero]

I believe that strangers are more likely to tell you the truth and so I asked strangers. I'm not discounting your opinion because I don't value it. I'm discounting it because you are kind, and I don't think you'd have the heart to be physically critical of me even if there were plenty of justifications for it. I'm not sure you have it in you to be that blunt regarding someone's appearance. People who don't care about you will be honest because they are completely unconcerned with how the person would process the information.

 

An affirming experience as I'd define it would be validation from someone I'd categorize as worth pursuing. The two casino women were not women that I'd have put effort into pursuing. They came to me. If there's one woman in a bar that I like that would also want me then that's enough. The issue is that the interest I receive is often from women older than myself, more out of shape than myself, or from people whose lives are in shambles and in me they find stability.

 

Obviously, the girl I was dating 17ish-19ish wasn't any of those things, but just as you're quick to describe the silliness of young love and the ways in which drama and obstacles manifest, I am equally as quick to say that the attention of a teenager as a teenager is not enough to have me floating around on cloud nine 7 years later.

 

If strangers tell me I'm not much to look at in the middle of a significant dry spell then things make sense. Those two things are aligned with one another. "You are cute and have a shot with x or y people based on your actions" does not reconcile with my experience.

 

I don't think my first serious GF dated me for the novelty. That's a little too reductionist. I wasn't juggling or breathing fire. I don't think she'd have ever grown tired of the way I was treating her.

 

I can guarantee you that I'm not waiting around for 30 to come and change things for me. Four more years of this and there won't be one redeeming quality left in me. I will be COMPLETELY crazy at that point. You can't be isolated for 7 years without going nuts.

 

I am hemorrhaging -- patience isn't an answer anymore...not when you're bleeding out.

[tiredofvampires]

I still want to know where you got that feedback and what it was, that seems to have triggered this meltdown.

 

"You are cute and have a shot with x or y people based on your actions" does not reconcile with my experience.

 

Is this what you're paraphrasing as mine? If so, let me restate it to be more accurate: "You are cute (certainly, cute "enough") to have a shot at someone going for you if you do something to ALTER the conditions of your experience." You have a hand in your experience. It doesn't just "happen to you." That's the part I was referring to as your passivity (and therefore, posture of helplessness in the face of "facts".)

[ProtestTheHero]

Not quite a meltdown -- I'm not hungover, so I didn't feel the need to do anything particularly destructive. I used reddit to get feedback.

 

What sort of conditions do you think would be conducive to my success? Stating that a change needs to be made is obviously not the same as recommending a specific kind of change. If we're back to meetup.com then the circle is complete and we both might as well smash our heads against the wall of our choice.