The Grand Inquisitor wrote:
I've been quite depressed lately to the point that I've been researching suicide methods.
I just honestly don't see my problems improving, and I'm not getting a sufficient quality of life while they're persisting. All I'm concerned about is making it so that I don't have to deal with these problems anymore, and my preference would be to solve them, but if I can't solve them, then I just don't want to live.
I'm not enjoying much about my life, and what little enjoyment I am getting is overshadowed by all the emotional torment I'm experiencing. I have nothing to look forward to, overall I'm not happy with my job, I have nothing to do and nowhere to go most of the time, but honestly I'm not motivated to do anything or go anywhere anyway.
Anyone who's familiar with my posts probably already knows where this is going - the girlfriend thing.
I'm 24 now, and I've wanted to experience romantic love with a burning passion since I was 12 years old. That's 12 years (or half my life) that has been spent with an extremely intense desire going unmet, and to add insult to injury, I can't escape exposure to or reminders of the fact that other people can get relationships and I can't.
I can't escape them on TV, the internet or in real life. There are just so many things that can trigger me that it's beyond a joke. Seeing couples in public, seeing posts online about people in relationships, even when family members want hugs I'm reminded of the fact that I'm not getting the hugs I truly want, and seeing or hearing about people dating that are younger than me triggers the absolute f*** out of me.
And even in the absence of reminders, I'm thinking of relationships and my perpetual inability to get one every day, and I'm just so tired of having this problem, I honestly can't overstate how fed up I am with it, but I don't see it changing and I'm never going to have any sort of contentment or peace of mind until it does.
The other day, I was reflecting on the question of why I want a relationship, and while there are probably about a dozen reasons, there were two that stuck out as easily the most important, but they're also pretty shallow. The first is that I want to feel desirable to someone I'm attracted to, and the second is that I want to experience what pretty much everyone else has experienced - what it's like to have a reciprocated infatuation with someone, what it's like to be in love, and all of the experiences that come with that.
I'm not meeting any women my age at the moment, but even if I was, who's going to want a suicidal, romantically inexperienced loser whose primary motivations for wanting a relationship are what I described above? Even if somebody was interested in me despite all of that, am I going to be interested in them?
Even if I got a relationship, it would be doomed to fail, because I'd be bothered by the fact that my partner had had previous romantic and sexual experience with other people while my only romantic and sexual experience was with them. And even if I got a relationship and that wasn't a problem, I'm never going to get over the fact that it took me until my mid 20s or later to have my first relationship. I might as well carve the word loser on my forehead because it's etched into my identity now and I'll never be able to make peace with my history. It'll never not be a sensitive subject, and I'm just not sure if it's even worth my while trying to get a relationship and all the rest of it when the damage might already be done, and even if it's not, my chances of getting a relationship seem ridiculously slim, and I have no patience or hope left.
This is only one out of two of the major issues that are making me contemplate suicide, but the other is so sensitive that I'm not sharing it publicly.
So to sum up, I'm overwhelmed with it all, I'm enjoying practically nothing about my life due to the issues I've described above overshadowing everything, my patience has run dry as it relates to trying to get a relationship, so if nothing changes soon, I'm going to do something drastic, and not only am I sick of experiencing the issues themselves, I'm sick of even having to think about them, but I also can't stop thinking about them until they're solved.
I know that nobody's going to have a magical answer for me, and the worst outcome is likely going to be how things turn out, but I'm really struggling and I don't know where else to turn.
I am 34 and I can relate. The gf/love thing is really disturbing to think about - the difference between people who are able to have relationships vs people with AS who cannot. The not so fun thing is that in a relationship I would be confused, disturbed, burdened, bored, excited, and would make my gf unhappy.
I would say that gf and love are not something you can control. And it may be not something you were born able to have.
While wheelchair disabled person know they cannot walk, us AS men may look like we can have gf and love, when in practice we cannot and our disability is thus not visible unless you see us try and fail.
I did know a guy who suicided because he could not have intimacy, gf or love. He wrote a book about it actually and it used to be on Amazon even. He would visit escorts and strippers as a replaced, but ultimately made him feel worse I believe.
Try to make the best of your life without a gf or love..
On the other hand, it is not like you have put effort into becoming happy, better dressed, better looking, better employed, and more attractive guy.. not saying putting effort would give you love or a gf, but if you dress up, work out, study, try to be employed better, work harder, do therapy to be happier and more in demand by women, that would increase your chances.. and actually, if you figure out how to do all of the above, you may attract a woman who will like you enough to be your gf and feel love for you?.. who knows. may I ask, why do you care so much?
I knew a clearly AS man who was 40, who started getting dressed better and his dating life picked up.. it was not a normal dating life, but he had sex once or twice and one woman was nice to him.. so my point is that while you clearly cannot have the dating life of a neurotypical man no matter how hard you try, you can experience having a gf and love partially if you put effort into all of the above. I know from experience.. when I was doing the above, I got opportunities, but when I stopped, the opportunities stopped. If you want to PM me with some pointers, I can guide you through what I have learned. I did not get a gf or love, but I went from nothing to a few opportunities I mean..
18 Sep 2020, 1:19 pm
