Who REALLY deserves more pity?

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nthach
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26 Nov 2010, 10:25 pm

emlion wrote:

leejosepho wrote:

emlion wrote:

There are lots of people out there. LOTS of support groups for the lonely!

Since you are aware of that and I am not, and if you know where to find them, please try to offer the OP some encouraging suggestions or advice.

Join a night course, join a club, go to your community centre, join a dance club, join ANY type of club that interests you just talk to people on the bus.
There are lots of ways to combat lonliness.

QFT

I've used the internet to my advantage. Now if I can just swallow my pride, drop my guard and talk to women to address my love life problems...

menintights
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26 Nov 2010, 10:44 pm

Sallamandrina wrote:

menintights wrote:

I think people who say "Loneliness isn't that bad compared to X, Y, and Z" don't know what it's really like to be lonely.

How easy is it to evaluate how much someone else is suffering?

It's not easy, which is why people need to shut up and stop pretending they know what they're talking about. It's easy to think you know how so-and-so feels, but most of the times you just don't. We all have different experiences to base our feelings on, and just because you think A is worse than B doesn't mean A is worse than B. Not only is that akin to comparing apples to oranges, but that also makes you come across as a prick.

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But those who didn't go through excruciating experiences as rape or losing a child have no right to speak so lightly of it. I'm sorry for the bluntness, but it makes them seem spoiled.

Yes, I agree, and for that reason I'm often annoyed by some people's self-inflicted sense of victimhood. However, as someone who's experienced A, B, C, and G through M, I also don't see why some people take it upon themselves to say something along the line of, "At least you didn't experience X, Y, and Z [which, by extension, makes the feelings you're currently having invalid]." Sometimes, it seems, the people who are always telling others to empathize are the same people who don't realize how much they need to look in the mirror.

hyperlexian
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26 Nov 2010, 10:50 pm

but... you're assuming that the people saying "loneliness is not as bad as X" have never experienced loneliness. and frankly, i don't think there is a single person on WP who has not experienced soul-crushing loneliness. those people who have experienced both loneliness and X seem to be well-equipped to compare the effect of the two.

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CaptainTrips222
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26 Nov 2010, 11:08 pm

leejosepho wrote:

hale_bopp wrote:

I fail to see how the fact these people "have a sex life" makes it any less awful dealing with cancer, rape and losing their house.

You have a warped opinion because you feel sorry for yourself that you aren't getting laid.

Sometimes we have to hear things within a limited context in order to understand them, and I believe the OP is being grossly misunderstood.

You're right. The OP should have chosen their words more carefully though. I've felt the same way before, but more like this: why do break ups/ gossip/ being fired get space in magazines, but dealing with being totally unwanted and not feeling accepted go ignored? When they did publish articles on it, I still couldn't relate. For years I couldn't do anything about it, and believe me I tried. Nothing worked. I just didn't know what I was doing wrong. So how could I even give crap about others' problems, when I would have given anything to be in their situation?

Smike
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26 Nov 2010, 11:20 pm

Would you have given anything to be in the situation of a woman who's been raped or a person who's lost their child?

hyperlexian
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26 Nov 2010, 11:20 pm

CaptainTrips222 wrote:

because those stories are about famous people, and we are not famous. the public doesn't care about Mrs. Johnson's divorce, or Mr. Smith's dismissal from work. they care about Brad Pitt or Sarah Jessica Parker.

when those same famous people deal with substance abuse, depression, suicide attempts, and so on, it does hit the newstands too.

anyway, there are lots of articles in magazines about being lonely or single or lovelorn. even off the internet, from a 3 second search:

http://www.hplusmagazine.com/editors-bl ... loneliness
http://selfempowermagazine.com/self-gro ... ness-help/
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m ... _87423974/

i think that people sometimes don't really want to help themselves. they'd rather just blame other poeple or the media for their problems.

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Chronos
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27 Nov 2010, 1:00 am

birdsandbugs wrote:

I noticed that on a lot of talk shows or popular magazines there are often many "sob stories" (no offense but most seem to be from women) of people who have all sorts of problems. These are things like "so and so cheated on me", "I was beaten", "I was raped", "my kid has cancer", "we almost lost our home", etc. Yet when you think about it, these are people who got involved in love lives and created families in the first place (which I will always beleive a lot of is through CHOICE). So my question is this: who truly deserves more pity? A person who has a problem as a result of having a sex life or a socially-challenged individual who has no sex life (and may or may not have other problems)? It always seems to me that this world caters to couples/families while loners like me often get overlooked. I don't know if it's because NTs think we're capable of anything on our own or they are afraid of us or think we're weird but pity and aid seem skewed to the more socially adept. Now I have many reason for being a loner but I AM lonely and get jealous of others that have social and sex lives. And yes pity sex or whatever would be awkward but I just wish people would look to the painful plight of the lonely for once. Am I wrong to think like this?

Are you one of those people who sit in a corner and quietly grow bitter and resentful that no one is paying attention to you? If so, no, you don't deserve pity in the context of the situations you presented.

People who are on talk shows are on talk shows because they spoke out and brought themselves to the attention of the public. You can't expect others to read your mind.

You are also mis-interpreting why people speak out about the things you listed. They are usually trying to raise awareness of something as a means to preventing it from happening again, or removing social stigma against the victims. For example, breast cancer used to be something that was not talked about in society, and women were dying because they were ignorant about it, or too embarrassed to seek medical treatment for it. When Ann Jillian got breast cancer, she went public with it, and began the process of educating women about it and removing the stigma of it, likely saving tens of thousands of lives.

CaptainTrips222
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27 Nov 2010, 3:56 am

hyperlexian wrote:

CaptainTrips222 wrote:

i think that people sometimes don't really want to help themselves. they'd rather just blame other poeple or the media for their problems.

Well I'm not one of them.....

birdsandbugs
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27 Nov 2010, 9:39 am

Good points all. I was merely CURIOUS as to the general concensus with this topic. I am not necessarily bitter about it, certainly not at home where I am doing what I enjoy. But it is work that sucks and getting off an unpleasant day at work was partly to blame for me to write that. Yes my original post could've been worded a lot better because I know people certainly didn't choose some of the things that happened to them. I mean no harm to anyone and feel for people with adversity. I understand that loneliness is not as painful as things like rape but it IS painful to it's own extent. Everyone is different and everyone has their own beleifs, even among us Aspies. The syndrome warps us all in different ways and gives us all different thoughts from NTs and even each other. But I don't mope around at home cursing another lonely saturday night (because I'm usually working then which is somewhat good) but rather I am gaming, watching Mythbusters from my DVR or doing something else I like.

leejosepho
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27 Nov 2010, 9:44 am

menintights wrote:

Sallamandrina wrote:

menintights wrote:

I think people who say "Loneliness isn't that bad compared to X, Y, and Z" don't know what it's really like to be lonely.

How easy is it to evaluate how much someone else is suffering?

It's not easy ...

... and that is a very important point. There might be many reasons the lonely do not get media attention or whatever else, but that does not make their suffering any less painful to *them* ... and each human being can only stand what s/he can stand. So, and even though the remainder of us must sometimes discern where our efforts to be helpful might be *best* spent, it is wrong to categorically ignore the troubles of others just because *we* might happen to believe they are relatively minor.

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Nambo
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27 Nov 2010, 9:58 am

From infancy, and all through childhood, I was severely abused, violently and emotionally, my only respite being the wonderfull years I spent in a childrens home.

Let me tell you, eternal loneliness if far worst that even being brought to near death as a victim of phsical child abuse.

And those of you who critise the op for likening "not getting laid" for other more serious problems, should look beyond the lieral meaning of those words and see the original poster, whilst being mistaken in highlighting that 1 aspect of lonliness, you can be sure there are a million other aspects as well as "not getting laid" that also accompany lonliness.

When you know you will never ever be loved by anyone, when you cannot drag yourself out of bed because you have to face another day of intolerable lonliness, they are other issues the OP could have brought up instead of the lack of sex part.

As for getting raped, Iam sure it is horrendously worst, I ve never been raped, but as a child Ive been kicked in the stomach, strangled, beaten with nail spiked planks of wood, those events are horrific, and they affect you for life, but they are not for every second of your waking life, lonliness is.

Sallamandrina
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27 Nov 2010, 10:17 am

menintights wrote:

Sallamandrina wrote:

menintights wrote:

I think people who say "Loneliness isn't that bad compared to X, Y, and Z" don't know what it's really like to be lonely.

How easy is it to evaluate how much someone else is suffering?

*First of all, my post was only incidentally directed at you - I know you don't subscribe to the "the world should bend over backwards for me" brigade.

Yes, that's what I meant - we have no way of measuring someone else's pain. But "the world" doesn't care anyway. The same people who show sympathy in those magazines and cry their eyes out at a soppy movie we'll act completely different when they meet an abuse victim - "they've been through that horror so they must be really messed up, you don't know when they'll turn psycho on you so I'd better keep my distance". I've recently been told in the Parents Forum that an abused child will not be able to break the cycle of violence, no matter how much therapy or knowledge they get, so they are doomed to perpetuate the abuse. It doesn't even matter that it's not correct, what matters is that this is the way people actually think and that's the way they'll treat you, while they go over themselves to seem sympathetic on forums and magazines.

One way or the other we all carry our burdens by ourselves, with very little help. Expect nothing from others - you'll be less disappointed and once in a while you'll have a nice surprise.

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Erisad
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27 Nov 2010, 10:32 am

emlion wrote:

How are things like getting raped and beaten through CHOICE?

Seriously, that's what I thought. No one wakes up thinking, "You know what? I would like to get raped today." :/

emlion
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27 Nov 2010, 10:49 am

Erisad wrote:

emlion wrote:

How are things like getting raped and beaten through CHOICE?

Seriously, that's what I thought. No one wakes up thinking, "You know what? I would like to get raped today." :/

Nope, surely the very definition of rape is sex against your will.

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27 Nov 2010, 10:54 am

emlion wrote:

Erisad wrote:

emlion wrote:

How are things like getting raped and beaten through CHOICE?

Seriously, that's what I thought. No one wakes up thinking, "You know what? I would like to get raped today." :/

Nope, surely the very definition of rape is sex against your will.

Maybe their confusing it with suprise sex

emlion
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27 Nov 2010, 10:57 am

:lol: haha - well i do enjoy surprise sex...

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