Only sunshine for the helpy

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It looks like you are coming closer to the solution by posting here. I don't have any insight or advice to give. I personally don't believe that you will go the rest of your life without a love relationship, but you probably won't have one for a long time considering your life circumstances.

I hope you keep posting because I can relate to your feelings. I wish you had better therapists--people who listened to you instead of trying to fix you.

In most western countries, the demographics are such that, amongst people below the age of 40, there are more single men than single women. Over the age of 50, there are more single women than single men. Researchers also find a tendency for people to marry other people who are "similar" to them. I strongly suspect that most of the well adjusted, successful people, have already paired up by the time they reach the age of 40. So in that sense, your analysis of your situation seems accurate.

On the specific issue of therapists / counsellors ("helpy therapeutic people"), although many psychotherapists describe their style as "eclectic", modern psychotherapy is dominated by cognitive behavioural approaches ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_ ... al_therapy ), which focus on taking action to change thoughts and behaviours. In fact, a cognitive behavioural therapist would probably view your belief that you will never find a suitable partner, and hence never have another serious relationship, as "magnifying negatives" and "catastrophizing", and respond with snippy comments like, "You'll just have to give up on the idea of having another relationship, then". Person-centered therapy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person-centered_therapy , or Rogerian, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Rogers ; see also http://psych.fullerton.edu/mbirnbaum/psych101/Eliza.htm ) and/or existential therapy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_therapy ) might be more in tune with what you are seeking. There are other schools of psychotherapy, especially Jungian, that make a big deal over the transition periods and stages of life (such as middle age), but I am not sure how helpful those would be. Finally, there is also bibliotherapy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotherapy ), which uses reading (and in some cases writing) as a method for resolving complex problems.

- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246578/

I don't get why you need therapists to accept this reality, I am way younger than you and yet I am totally convinced I am not a relationship-material; not for a very long time at least.
I had just accepted it and didn't ask a single helpy.
(and psychologically-wise It should be worse for me because you already experienced all relationships stages in life, including parenting, while I never did).

Sooo...just deal with it (and I mean that in polite way).

Edit:Maybe the helpies are doing you no favor because they would remind you of what you don't have, I bet they tell you how nice good relationships are and worth the effort...bla bla.
Seriously, you would be more mentally at ease without consulting helpies.

Edit2: That's why I said in my first reply to just give up; you've tried everything for years and all failed, there's no shame in giving up.

Long ago I totally bewildered some poor HMO psych scheduler by asking if they had any Jungians on staff. My dreams -- which are generally pretty vivid things -- had been incredibly boring for about a month, and it was driving me crazy. It was like waking up after eight hours of meetings, night after night. They featured a lot of real estate tours, actually. So dull.

They didn't have any Jungians. Just those poor benighted CBTers.

Well -- that works if your mode of existence is just to motor through life unreflectively. The problem's not the acceptance of the stark proposal -- no more significant romantic relationships, possibly ever -- the problem's in wrapping the head around what that means. It has a lot to do with how one lives and relates to the rest of the world, and what a good and satisfying life might be -- and there is the matter of grief, too.

Shame isn't a factor, I have nothing to be ashamed of. Even if I hadn't tried for years, there's no reason for shame there. It's not required to couple up, not a moral failing if you don't.

My ex (bf, with AS) is not way younger than me, but he's never gotten as far as marriage; no children. No home -- for him, home is still his parents' house. The gap between himself and his sibs, himself and his school friends has widened a lot. It's had profound effects on him and his relationships with others, but they've taken him by surprise, and they leave him going in circles of self-blame, second-guessing. It's only one reason why looking ahead and coming to terms with meanings is important.

What Logan5 said about Rogerian and existential therapy is pretty right on. The problem is finding a good smart therapist. A while back I tried going to talk to a Rogerian -- he'd been an English major, too, at a good lib-arts school, so I was hopeful -- but he just wasn't so good at either listening or thinking, and he kept jumping in to finish my sentences, and then it'd take a long time to convince him he'd finished them wrong.

Oh, and Logan5 -- the thing about similar people pairing up, yeah, that's a big problem. Always has been, and a bigger one the older I've gotten, just because there's less trouble I'm willing to deal with. I know this sort of thing bothers some people here, but the IQ's pretty darn high, and I've got several formal backgrounds, but am not much interested in career ladders, visible signs of success. There's a few other things, too. When my daughter's grown, I'll move back closer to where I grew up, and there'll be more people with backgrounds like mine...might be easier, but there still might not be anyone. There just aren't a lot of people like me. My last two boyfriends were, but one's dead now and the other -- not so much like me -- just isn't in any shape to handle a relationship. There are a couple other guys I keep in touch with, but they're halfway around the world. The odds of an appropriate person showing up locally are, I figure, pretty much nil.

I have a scientific question to ask. How can a person stop longing for an intimate relationship when most people are programmed biologically to feel a NEED for intimate relationships?

You masturbate, that would solve the sexual urge part.

And you live your life for other things, that would make you forget the nees you mentioned.

I think I finally get what you are looking for. You're not looking for practical solutions or advice.
You just want to talk it out with someone who can discuss it eloquently with fancy vocabulary and philosophical mumbo-jumbo.
I guess it is hard to find a therapist who can meet your expectations.
What you need is a some sort of support group that consists of people who are going through the same situation; people with abundant literary references and IQs as high as yours to discuss away "what it means".
But again, the chances of finding a group of that kind of people are probably as slim as you finding a suitable man for relationship.
Maybe you can find a place on the web to do it. Perhaps you can start a thread on a philosophy forum?

I wish you could show us a snip of an ideal discourse you are hoping to have with your helpy.

If you are that genius then why didn't/don't you join Mensa?

Because it's a load of sad boring guys hung up on numerical measurements of intelligence? I mention IQ only as a break from saying "very bright". But it's silly to take the IQ test itself very seriously.

Much of the convo with my late bf would suit just fine. The brightest person, and one of the most talented and funniest people, I've ever met. He had a massively parallel mind, and, as his brother said, understood -- everything. But Princeton drove him to alcoholism before he understood why he wasn't getting on there. I was just thinking about that tonight, because I have to avoid insulting some people at work this week and it won't be easy.

And you're right, there isn't a group. There aren't any practical solutions, either. And there are very few people in the same situation. I get tired of DIY but I don't think there's any choice.

Helpy as a noun, that's nice.

Lol As you can see, English is not my first language so I didn't realize until you pointed it out that "the helpy" in the thread title is an adjectival noun and you cannot use it without "the" and use it as a singular noun. But since it is a made up word, I'm gonna make it a noun now.
Plural = Helpies

No, it is not silly; it is the best measurement for intelligence, I find the well-done IQ tests reflect greatly human intelligence.

It's no coincidence that scientists score highly on it, and it's no coincidence that super good pianist children always score high; savant cases aside.

I recall well at school that those who scored high were the same who take high grades; I did apply an IQ test on family once as experiment and mom scored highest (140), no surprise because she's a mathematician and always was first in whole university, brother scored 135 and he was always a brilliant straight-As student while my Dad, sister and I scored respectively 100, 100, 115, and we were all average students and struggled at times.

I don't know why there are so many people who bash the IQ concept; honestly I find it fairly accurate for school performance, chosen majors and general intelligence in most cases.

iirc, the IQ test was originally introduced for school children, to try and find which ones in a class may need extra help, and to show there may be age-appropriate developmental differences/variations across an age group, rather than that there are 'normal/standard' children, and deviations from this. Considering this, I don't find it unusual that there is a correlation between a measured IQ and academic performance. (Though if so my own is an exception)

But where I would part is that IQ measures some sort of innate, immutable thing in the brain, as surely and consistently as my height measures how tall I am. I can measure my height repeatedly every day for three months - I won't grow any taller. I could measure my IQ every day for three months - not only would there be variation, I reckon I would score a fair bit higher at then end than at the beginning. If IQ were to be meaningful as anything more than a more 'abstract' academic test, that improvement should be impossible.

What's more, I've met Mensa members. There seems little connection between being a Mensa member and having a wide and nuanced psychological acuity, which seems to be more in the area of what the OP is looking for.

She can then join some exceptional poetry/philosophical/writers group or whatever she's genius about.
She won't find any by venting on WP.

However do you know? It seems to me the OP has, at least, found some people who understand the problem, and who she has found talking with helpful.