Women in their 30’s stop liking “bad boys”?

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I think he’s a nice guy. I don’t think he’s a nasty guy.

I just feel, like others have stated, especially Amity, that he might have a depressive illness which is physiologically based.

I feel like Amity has been doing lots of studying of this sort of thing.

My opinion, stated many times, is that he should just stop allowing the past to paint his impressions. He should build upon his enjoyment of the concert. He should stop listening to those who have harebrained theories about something like “20% of the men get 80% of the women” based upon some alpha male sort of ideology. And try to stop letting his mother affect his life.

He should also enter into dialogue with others about his alternative musical tastes, rather than just lament about his lack of success.

And to continue that college course.

A couple things come to mind.

1. I agree with others that your mindset has to change if you want a relationship at any time. Also keep in mind that you also need to demonstrate to any potential partner that you either can bring something to the table in the short term (if you want a fling) or have a long term plan for your life that shows that you have your life in order.

2. You expressed a resentment towards men who put more focus on football, or don't pay as much attention to their partner. Now opposed to the opposite side if the coin (aside from abusing or harming someone), no women I have met are going to enjoy 24/7 contact either. A focus on passions in life will keep people grounded and healthy and better able to maintain healthy relationships. Some people have a passion for football. Yoi have yours too, right?

3. As a married man with a newborn, my situation is now about keeping my house in order and the baby healthy. But in order to get there, I had to do the things I elaborated on already (ie. Find a passion or hobby, plan out my life direction a little, etc.) But with a newborn does come some interesting consequences as well, most of them good consequences to deal with. Example, my blood pressure is somehow lower despite a 15 lb weight gain since his birth. Playing with the baby and seeing him smile plays a role with that.

So what mindset do you want to have?

I am full of respect for the pain behind the original question but the Gr. Inq. has made a number of very valid points.

Yes, a lot of well-meaning people told me reassuring things that turned out to be untrue, and that made me quite bitter for a while. There are alas no actual guarantees about what good stuff will happen and precisely when you can expect it to happen. But your best possible chance is in finding some way to live comfortably with yourself in your own head, because few women will want you for as long as that isn't the case, and I'm afraid it doesn't sound like that is the case right now.

Yup, know that feeling. But it's a feeling that is not going to make you attractive to anyone in any capacity, be it friend or husband or anything else. And anyway it's not realistic to impose deadlines on fate.

What you're actually doing right now is setting yourself up to "squander" your 30s, so your perfectly understandable fear of history repeating itself becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Only a fool keeps on doing the same thing and expects a different outcome (somebody well-known said that, not me, and no doubt someone here will be able to tell us who).

I agree it would be a bit of a waste if the girl of your dreams waited until you were 97 and incontinent before she turned up, but I'm happy to say I have discovered the fact that not everything I wanted has happened yet is not worrying me too much. There has to be a better-than-50% chance of some more good stuff happening before I die. That's good enough for me, in principle (albeit assuredly not always easy to live with in practice, which may explain why I've spent most of the past week permanently drunk).

I’ve actually been attacked by those who incidentally share some of my musical tastes. Luhluhluh is one of those people. It’s ok for her to like Mr. Bungle but she tells me I shouldn’t like them.



Then why did you claim posts like mine give you “intestinal distress”? That isn’t constructive criticism but ranting.



I would say it would be a complete waste, not just a bit at all. I don’t even want to live past my 50’s if things do not turn around for me.

Last edited by Marknis on 12 Oct 2019, 10:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It doesn't matter if you are nice or bad. When you have autism it provides a big stumbling block to forging relationships. Lets be honest it tends to make you perceive yourself as an outcast added to the fact that people most likely will treat you differently. Thats not something that appeals to women and after a certain age most are married. Those are the negatives and i think its important to recognize them. That doesn't mean one should abandon all hope but we shouldn't push too hard these assumptions that everyone is capable of having solid long term relationships, as in doing so we are setting up some people for failure.

O.K. well the only positive thing I can think of to say to that is, at least you are in principle prepared to give it that long. There's just no knowing what could come along during the interval between now and then, which in a way is part of the problem: it would be so much easier if someone could just hand you a schedule and say: "Here! This is what's going to happen, and when, so don't worry, good stuff is in your future, just be patient." I remember saying that often, when I was younger. It's even quoted in my psychiatric records from about 1995 or 1996 (had to go through them all a few years ago, so I could provide dates and diagnoses to to fill up some forms).

So, tentatively, maybe resolve to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and review the situation at age 55?

Wish I could guarantee you some specific events at some specific points in time. Truly I would if I could. You might still be impatient for them, but at least you'd have some definite dates to look forward to. However, I can guarantee that events can come along which surprise you and are more felicitous than your present-day self would readily believe right now.

Accepting that things are as they are is probably the hardest trick I've ever had to learn, but it's a trick that can be learned (for those of us who don't innately know how to do it), and it gets easier with practice, and by way of bonus material, people seem to like you a lot more when you come across as someone who's accepting that things are as they are.

I will not insult your intelligence by being so facile as to suggest if you plaster a smile on your face everything will suddenly magically get better (a suggestion which was frequently made to me in the past, and for which I was not grateful), but once you begin to accept that things are as they are, not only do you begin to be more likeable (which brings its own rewards, obviously), in fact your own suffering begins to lessen: depression and anxiety are, to some extent, tortures we inflict on ourselves, and you don't have to carry on doing that forever, you know?

Marknis finding a girlfriend will not magically dispel all your unhappiness, poof! Relationships tend to bring issues that we have to the surface and make them more acutely in need of resolving.
When you are able to see some positivity in your life, and I am not saying that negativity is your fault, you are more likely to attract a partner.

Very true, but on the other hand, if being single is itself specifically one of the biggest individual things you're depressed about (and I know what that's like: I lived there from 1986 to 1994 or so), then having a girlfriend does magically dispel that particular unhappiness at least, so that's one off the list.

Strongly agree. Unfortunately when you're in the place Marknis is describing, this kind of advice can tend to sound like a load of airy-fairy nonsense. I frequently dismissed it myself, for that exact reason, but then experience surprised me by demonstrating it really is true.

So.... tackling the depression is the first step. If a therapist hasn't helped in minimum six months then a new one is in order. Combined with medication it can give the boost necessary for a positive change .

Tend to agree. Finding a decent one is vital. Having the wrong one is demeaning and counterproductive.

That is a very personal, individual, subjective decision (sorry, next contestant Sybil Fawlty from Torquay, special subject The Bleeding Obvious...): the one really good psychotherapist I ever found, in among so many timewasters, supported my decision not to take any medication, because we agreed that if I wasn't actually in the deepest depths of the hell she was supposed to be winching me out of, then I wouldn't be able to describe it to her properly, and we wouldn't be able to confront the demons face to face and see exactly what we were up against and work out exactly how to deal with it.

If the medication lifts your mood or narrows the range of your emotions then your doctor and your family will be delighted, and so will the pharmaceutical industry and all the shareholders, but then when you get to the therapist's couch you may have forgotten precisely how you were thinking and what you were feeling when you were at your absolute worst, so then psychotherapy might not get the chance to work properly: if the effects are going to be lasting, you need to be able to pull absolutely every skeleton out of the closet, look each one in the eye, shake each one boldly by the hand, label and catalogue every single bone of every single one there is, then go right into the closet with a lantern, and go right to the very back of it, and make sure you've got out everything there was to get from in there; all that requires you to be very very wide awake and fully alert and thoroughly lucid, and so may not be possible if you're dosed up to the eyeballs.

This, incidentally, explains why my best friend (to name but one) decided to just take the medication and not continue therapy: she was, understandably, a bit freaked out by the dark and the skeletons. On the other hand, maybe I'm a masochist but now, in retrospect, I'm quietly proud of having done it the hard way, and five years ago even my drug-pushing psychiatrist finally agreed I didn't need any medication, so the effects of psychotherapy really were life-changing and long-lasting, albeit I still have some problems left to work on (but at least psychotherapy taught me how to work on them, so the process is on-going even though I haven't seen my therapist for years now).

Antidepressants did practically nothing for my depression, but did make my mind feel kind of fluffy or woolly. Without a doubt, therefore, psychotherapy would have done a lot less for me if I'd stayed on any of the medication I ever consented to try. And goodness knows what would have happened if I'd taken the lithium one psychiatrist was keen for me to be on for the rest of my life; I've heard lithium shuts off precisely the kind of extremes that the psychotherapy most urgently needed to deal with, so that would have torpedoed the whole effort (to the benefit of the pharmaceutical industry, of course, but very much not to my own true long-term benefit).

So I wouldn't dare advise someone I didn't personally know against medication, but it isn't necessarily right for everyone. The people who cook up these drugs seldom actually know how they work or what they do, and almost certainly don't personally have the kind of severe and complex problems we're talking about here.

Who's to say that romantic loneliness isn't the prime source of the unhappiness and depression though?

I don't think a change in therapists is always absolutely necessary after six months of little or no progress. Sometimes the lack of progress can have to do with not talking to the therapist about some of the things that need to be worked on. If Marknis uses the therapy sessions only to vent about the sadness he feels about being lonely, whilst it might be therapeutic, there probably won't be much quantifiable progress made, and that's not entirely the therapist's fault. I think Marknis should instead start working out what he wants out of life (not just romantically), and what he hopes to gain from the therapy sessions, and have the therapist help him work towards setting and achieving goals that are within his control to achieve.

The fact is, no therapist can magically help Marknis get a girlfriend, so if that's what he's hoping for out of the sessions, then of course he's going to be disappointed, and the therapist won't be able to help much.

Marknis, I think you should think long and hard about what you want to achieve from going to therapy, and whether those things are even things that the therapist can do much to help you achieve. The therapist can't do much to directly help you get a girlfriend, but they can probably help you sort out other areas of your life that are more within your control that will improve your chances of getting a girlfriend (diet, work situation, living situation, social skills, destructive things your mind tells you).

I haven't been in therapy for about three years now, but when I was in therapy, I was hoping that somehow the therapist could help me get a girlfriend, and while she suggested potential avenues that might work (but never did), there really wasn't much that she could do to help me with it, and so minimal progress was made.

I remember her coming right out and asking me what I wanted to get out of the sessions, and realising that I didn't have an answer to that question had me thinking a fair bit about it. At the time, I thought well you're the therapist, shouldn't you be the one who knows how to help me?, but I've since realised that it's pretty difficult to get anything other than some emotional support out of therapy if you don't even know what you want to get out of it, or you want to get something out of it that the therapist can't help you with much (like a girlfriend).

I've entertained the idea of going back to therapy, and if I do, I'll be mindful of what I want to get out of the therapy, and if I don't know if the therapist can help me with a particular thing, I'll come right out and ask them if/how they can assist me with it.

Except in the sense that if the therapist can eventually boost his self-esteem and alleviate his depression, and thus alter the way Marknis actually comes across to people in his everyday life, and maybe even motivate him to engage in a bit more interaction sometimes, then surely his chances of finding a girlfriend go up by about 100%?

Which still isn't a cast-iron guarantee, but in a way that particular desire to have a girlfriend could be harnessed as an incentive to persevere with the whole therapy thing. There were times when it worked for me, anyhow!

I'm obviously not a psychologist or anything like that, but the only ways I can think of to help people with low self-esteem feel good about themselves would be to correct cognitive distortions if any exist, or help them achieve goals that get them what they want and/or get closer to their ideal version of themselves. If Marknis achieves goals that get him closer to his ideal version of himself, like losing weight and moving away from being pre-diabetic for example, a boost in confidence and self-esteem will come with that. You gain confidence by envisioning an outcome and achieving it, and confidence and self-esteem are in many ways, pretty much the same thing.

What kinds of things did your therapist say to you to help boost your self-esteem and alleviate your depression about your situation?



https://absitomen.com/index.php?topic=331.0

That's really not fair, and out of order, especially considering you have been in the same position.

I think it is fair, maybe I worded it a bit to strongly though. These guys who think that all other men are bad, but won't work on their own personality really have a delusional view of the world. They're not perfect either. They need a reality check.

I'm not in a place right now where I should be in a relationship. I'm not sure I've actually stated that publically. So I'm working on building my platonic friendships at the moment. Trying to cope with my bad health and my job and looking for positive things to do. I'm taking steps to find happiness in life. What is Markins doing??

I've got a gut feeling in real life he's a quiet, polite type of person. If he served me at the library I'd think, "what a nice young man".

I really think I'm single because I'm quirky and haven't met someone on my wavelength. I was so upset about the last guy because we had so, so much in common it seemed perfect on paper. But we really didn't gel well when we were together. Something was off, but I don't know what. We just weren't right for each other. And that's ok. I'm not taking it to mean that I'm an awful person and all men must think that I'm too much of a nice girl not to date, or that guys only go for bad girls.

To be fair I actually do blame his parents. Mine were bad role models and my best friend when I was a teenager had unstable parents too, but my parents are quite proud of how far I've come, his don't seem supportive at all. I've got a really good sister too who supports and encourages me. She has a "normal" life and I'm an outlier, but she doesn't look down on me because of it. I'm lucky in that aspect I guess.

So we're not in the "same situation". I do think that I don't have to claw my way up out of as deep of hole as he has to.

Markins, you can't change where you came from, but you can change where you are going and it can be a very bright and fulfilling place.

I want you to be happy mate.

Somewhat agree. Some valid points were being raised there, but this particular comment really could hurt someone already in a lot of pain. Why would anyone here want to do that?

Oh, O.K. Since I began typing, Hurtloam has pretty much acknowledged this point. Let us move on.

Um. Well, of course those are among the ways, but I think in my own experience there was a lot more going on than those things. I think the "get closer to your ideal version of yourself" thing is the one that maybe rings the loudest bell with me. But first my therapist had to persuade me there even was anything good about me that I could start getting closer to, and then she had to kind of install a template in my head for actually having some sense of self, because apparently at the factory they forgot to fit me with one of those, and once we'd established the whole damned thing was likely to take years and I still wouldn't be 100% normal and fully functional at the end of it, then she also had to (figuratively) hold my hand and reassure me it was worth the effort. Which it sure as hell was, but jeepers, what a long journey...

Agree of course. But again, my therapist and I were starting from a place several stages back before that kind of place, if you see what I mean. In a way she had to actually build a whole human being from scratch. I think most mental health professionals, in my own case, tragically failed to appreciate the extent of the problem. Like fussing about a smouldering cigar butt in an ashtray when actually the whole damned building is on fire. Luckily, this one excellent psychotherapist had the intuition and the sensitivity to see that the problem was several sizes bigger than the profession usually has to address, and she was unafraid to give it her best shot. Sometimes she used to see me free of charge or half-price. She once inadvertently let slip that she relished the challenge of sorting me out! She was a feisty lady...

Agree. But this is only obvious to those of us who've managed to conjure up some. I started with absolutely none, if not negative amounts of. Again, many mental health professionals (and 99.9% of pesky amateur well-wishers) don't even realize it's possible to start from that bad a place. It's utterly beyond anything they can even imagine is actually possible.

Sorry if this makes me sound a Drama Queen; maybe I am, but the mainstream shrinks did less than nothing for me from 1995 to 2017 (when they eventually gave up; and I actually have a copy of the report officially admitting defeat!), and meanwhile this one feisty, self-employed, independent, private psychotherapist with the garish lipstick saved my life, and I'm still learning from her and and using what she taught me and benefiting from her input now, about five years since my last appointment with her.

Oh, wow! That is a big question! Can I get back to you on that? One thing I will say is, she had to say them repeatedly and passionately, and sometimes even angrily, over a period of years. The whole thing was so intense I'd stagger out of her house in no fit state to drive home: weak and shaking and on the verge of tears. It's going to take me some time to think how I can answer your entirely reasonable question in less than fifteen zillion words. Can I get back to you?

Thanks for taking the time to answer this off-topic and narcissistic enquiry!