I'm Not Doing Well

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My yearning for romance is really hitting me hard lately and making me quite depressed that I can't get the romantic affection I desperately crave. I feel such powerlessness over this, and the feelings just won't go away. I don't know how to appease my romantic desires.

University has been a bust. It seems I'm just incapable of getting assignments done, self-motivated study and asking for help. I have no idea what I'm going to do now.

My diet hasn't been great. I haven't been restricting myself at all really and I've gained like a third of the weight back that I lost since the start of the year.

It's becoming increasingly clear that I just can't get anything done without structure, and imposing structure on myself and sticking to it isn't easy. I think I have executive functioning issues and I don't know what to do about them.

I'm feeling pretty down on myself at the moment. I kinda wish I could just crawl into a hole and withdraw from the world. I can't see how things can improve from here. The unfulfilled romantic desires are really hard to deal with and they're making it difficult for me to sustain focus on anything else or get anything productive done.

Are you failing your courses, or passing them?

My nephew failed out of University….but went to another University, and got his degree.

Yes, and you’re not going to like this: you should put Romance in the back burner. Get involved with your University classmates as at least study partners.

Your situation with the emphasis on Romance is leading to your other problems, it seems.

It’s not over for you yet. You’re still young. I started University about 11 years after your age. I graduated with Honours at age 45.

I failed everything because I couldn't get the assignments done. I think I'm done with uni, so I'll have to figure something else out.

I can't put romance on the backburner any more than a starving person can put eating on the backburner. I can't stop thinking about it, especially because I can't avoid reminders of other people's romantic success, and I can't hush the strong desire I have for it. I can put it on the backburner insofar as doing nothing towards finding romance (I'm already pretty much doing that), but I can't expel the nagging desire to experience it.

And you're right that the romance stuff is exacerbating other problems. Even just having someone online to talk to romantically would go a long way towards helping me not be so down about the situation, but even that is something I'm having no success finding. I need some kind of romantic fulfilment now, even if not a serious relationship. The desire just isn't going to make itself scarce without something to satisfy it in some way.

Even goldfish has gotten a little soft and fatty during covid, so it seems about the norm that people have slipped in diet and exercise.

On the bright side, you’re still down 2/3rds of the weight you lost and remain ahead of where you were before you started!

Time to get disciplined on diet and exercise - especially getting more cardio in. I always find these things help me focus better, have better executive functions, and let me get back on track with tackling and completing projects when I know they’ve been piling up and I haven’t been as focused and productive as I could’ve been.

Also, it doesn’t hurt that diet and exercise typically makes one physically more attractive And mentally more stable/happy; so may assist in attracting a partner in the long run.

Really truly, while your list may seem like it has 8489572 things to tackle, IMO, if you commit to focusing on ONLY diet & exercise, the positive effects of those two will ripple out and help take care of all of the other issues. Sometimes you (and I) just need a moment like this to reflect on where we’re at and where we want to be and then make a game plan for how we’re going to get there - and then take action and just do it! (and if you’re not successful, try and try again.)


Can somewhat relate to the covid isolationism and lack of romantic partner feelings - so, I shift gears into a much happier coping mechanism: instead of dwelling on people who aren’t attracted to me and don’t love me that I wish maybe did, I push those thoughts out of my mind and think about people I do love who reciprocate - even if entirely non-romantic, it’s still a fantastic feeling to relive recent memories of holding one of the smallest babies in my life. Certainly a better and more constructive waste of time than reminding myself who’s not in my arms. And if no babies, maybe a puppy, and if no doggies, maybe a ______ - there’s bound to be a human, plant, or animal you care for that at least doesn’t mind your presence. Something is better than nothing.

This is true.


The way I lost the weight was exclusively through dietary changes. I cut out most of the things that were keeping me heavy, only allowing myself to have them on special occasions. In doing so lost 40kg, a third of my body weight from my heaviest of 120kg.

Having that structure, having rules that dictated when I was and wasn't allowed to have certain things really helped me stay on top of it, but my diet was still far from perfect, because I was focusing mainly on what not to eat rather than what to eat. Around October of last year, I went to a bar with my brother and some of his friends a few times, and I started to resent my self-imposed restrictions when everybody else got to drink alcohol and I wasn't allowing myself to. From there, I loosened my restrictions a bit, but that ended up being a slippery slope. It took several months for my self-imposed rules to erode, but those dietary restrictions I had have pretty much entirely lapsed now.

I still think about my diet, and I have an idea about what I want to do with it, but getting everything into motion is the tricky part. I'd like to appeal to the government's daily recommended servings guide for my meal decisions rather than my taste buds. I wouldnt have to be perfect with it every day, but that's what I'd be aiming for. My new rule would be that I'd be allowed to eat and drink outside of my new dietary plan in social situations that meet certain conditions, as well as on my birthday.

There are a couple of challenges I have with implementing this. The first one is that I'm a very picky eater. I'm willing to eat foods I don't particularly like in pursuit of my dietary goals, but there'll still be a lot of foods that I just can't eat because I can't cop the taste. The second challenge I have is that I'm not very skilled in the kitchen, and I don't enjoy cooking. I don't really know where to start with the implementation of my dietary goals, but what I do know is that I have a high chance of failing if I don't start with and stick to a structured approach.

As for exercise, improving my posture is something I really want to do, so that's where I'd be starting and what I'd be prioritising. I have some exercises that I want to do, but I'm even less of a fan of physical activity than I am with cooking. I've tried to establish a routine to get these exercises done about 5 days a week, and at my best attempt I managed to do them consistently for 6 weeks, but I faltered and ended up stopping doing them.

It's hard for me to find time to get the exercises done on days that I work, because I already have to get up much earlier than I'd ever choose to (5am), so getting them done in the morning isn't viable, but then when I get home from work, I'm too buggered to do them. The optimal time for me to get them done would be after work sometime after I've had an opportunity to have some time to myself to recuperate, but before going to bed obviously.

The problem is once I'm engaging in some kind of leisure activity, getting myself to stop doing that and start exercising is difficult, especially without some sort of routine prompt. I'm never going to do it of my own volition without some kind of structured standard to appeal to. I can try, and I have tried, but it never ends up working. Do you have any suggestions?



I agree that addressing some of the things I'm struggling with in a meaningful way would probably lend some momentum to others.



I have a few people in my life whom I appreciate and enjoy spending time with, and while I'm grateful for the time I spend with them and I'm grateful that they're in my life, thinking about and nurturing those familial relationships does nothing to detract from my incessant desire for something more romantic.

The things I care about most from a romantic relationship are desires I can't satisfy outside of interactions that contain romantic or sexual connotations. I wouldn't need to be in a serious relationship to keep these desires at bay for the time being. Even just getting to talk to a woman online whom I have some romantic interest in and who reciprocates, but with whom I have no real future due to distance or other factors would go a long way towards satisfying my incessant desire for romance, at least in the meantime. I thought I'd stumbled upon something like that a couple of months ago, and I started to feel markedly better. Unfortunately I'd misread the dynamic.

The point is that no interaction or other kind of relationship I have where there's a complete absence of romantic/sexual interest and attraction is going to be able to do anything to satisfy my romantic desires, or do anything to make me feel better about not having them fulfilled. There are other kinds of interactions that would help me cope in the meantime, but they would have to be of a romantic nature.

A lot of us have executive functioning issues.

One possible suggestion (dunno if this would work for you): Try to make some local autistic friends with similar issues, and agree to nag each other.


Ugh, sounds like you're caught in a vicious circle. Not getting anything else done also makes it harder to find an interested romantic partner, alas ....


Do you think you could learn a skilled manual trade (electrician, plumber, etc.?

I don't think this would work, at least for some things. Having the motivation/drive to get things done is one thing, but there's also figuring out how to approach what I need to get done.

While being nagged to get something done might help the thing become more present in my mind, demystifying the steps I need to take is probably more helpful, as figuring that out is a process in and of itself that is all too easy to put off if it ends up feeling like too much effort. With the uni assignments, I'd often find that I would have a bit of a difficult time figuring out the steps I needed to take to complete the assignment. That in conjunction with me putting off starting the assignments was a bad combination, as I ended up scrambling at the last minute trying to figure out what I even needed to do. It would have been very helpful for me to have made friends with others in my course so I'd have people to study with and help clarify things I hadn't entirely comprehended.

The only assignment I handed in that I did well at was the only group assignment I had to do for the semester, and I believe that's no coincidence. Being able to see how my group members were approaching their portions of the assignment helped demystify what I needed to do for mine. Plus, being held accountable by the group meant that I had more people to let down than just myself if I didn't get my part done. I certainly didn't want to be seen as an unreliable group member.

I think generally it's ideal for me to plan ahead and have structure, because I rarely use my time in a productive manner spontaneously, and it's uncommon for me to prioritise chores or other things I should get done over engaging in recreational activities unless/until I absolutely have to, or unless it slots in harmoniously for my plans for the day. This is especially true when I'm feeling down. I'm thinking about trying to implement a routine whereby I designate one chore to get done per day so I stay on top of everything without giving myself too much to do at a time.


Yeah, some days are definitely worse than others in that respect. On the flipside, if I had a romantic partner while studying, I'd probably be distracted from study and prioritise engaging with that person.

It probably wouldn't be fair to say that not having a romantic partner is entirely to blame for my not getting things done, but I'm less likely to have the motivation to do much of anything when I'm feeling sad and hopeless about my romantic situation, and more likely to be distracted by and preoccupied with negative thoughts and feelings.


That's not the direction I want to go down. I'm not much of a hands-on practical sort of person. I prefer using my brain to work things out than my body to build/fix things, so I'd probably prefer a more sedentary job.

I don't think study of any kind is off the table, but I probably won't try for something as comprehensive as a university degree. I'd probably rather study something where a narrower skillset is sufficient, where everything I'm learning is directly relevant to whatever I'm going to be doing on a day-to-day basis.

I've stumbled onto something that I think I might be able to do. I'll just need to do a bit more research on it.

Good luck with that, whatever it is. I hope it works out well for you.

If you ever again decide to go for something as comprehensive as a university degree, I would suggest that you prepare for it by learning a bunch of stuff ahead of time by using (1) online resources such a brilliant.org, in conjunction with (2) an informal study group.