Women with psychological problems and self hatred

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One major thing most women desire from a relationship is to feel wanted, to feel special and feel loved. This is something my female friends have told me and something I have observed. However, if a women has psychological problems (which many with autism do) then they probably undergo an immense amount of self hatred. This self hatred will mean they can never accept someone might love them, they will always be working to psychologically undermine any belief that someone loves them. Hence, a woman with strong self hatred cannot get what most woman can get from a relationship, that feeling of being wanted, meaning women with psychological problems are basically incapable of having successful relationships.

Do this make sense? It fits my best friend who has psychological problems and at the age of 30 has never had a relationship lasting more than 3 months. And if so, it means women who I'm mostly likely to connect with emotionally I cannot have relationships with.

While this may be true of your friend, I don't think you can universially say it applies to all female Aspies. I feel it applies to all Aspies, regardless of gender. It is hard to be part of a group that is looked down upon and ostracized. I feel all Aspies (myself included) have a problem with self-image.

Its probably true. Anyone with enormous self issues probably has more pressing problems than being with someone. It also applies to men.

I remember trying to go for such women. I was hoping that because of their own self esteem issues they won't be judging me and will try consider dating me. But for some reason it never worked. No matter how much they complain about no one wanting them, they STILL don't want to date me; in fact the get downright mean quite fast. And I didn't understand why. Am I "worse" than most men so that, no matter how desperate they are, *I* simply "don't count" no matter what?

Most of the people I have seen with low self esteem seem to need the other person for validation of their own worth. I know during my marriage, I used to think that I had to be worthwhile because my wife had been willing to marry and stay married to me. It was one of the hardest issues I had to face during the divorce.

When you've seen one woman ... you've seen one woman ...

^^that. I think many Aspies of both genders have some self-esteem issues, but I don't think everyone has them so severely that they would preclude a relationship.

~Kate

If they want to feel special, maybe they should start doing things that actually make them special. A carefully manicured, scented hand held out for money may have trouble gathering genuine feelings of love.



Feelings of self hatred can be deserved and appropriate. If people feel bad about themselves, sometimes it's because they should feel bad. Unpleasant feelings shouldn't be ignored, because they might serve a useful purpose by motivating one to become a better person. This may be the reason why trying to improve another's self esteem, by aiding and abetting in sweeping negative feelings under the rug, is unproductive and will ultimately go unappreciated.

Sorry, don't think I emphasized my point. By self hate and psychological problems I meant self destructive people who probably have a history of self harm and suicidal behavior, alongside other attempts to ruin their own lives. Many autistic people fit this but it is far from universal.

Here's my theory. Possibly naive if not completely sexist but lets see. Both men and women can love someone else, however, the desire for someone to be loving them back is far stronger in women. A man can be just so into a woman and, whilst certainly nice, being loved back really isn't so important. Whereas no matter how much a woman loves a man what really matters to her is what his feelings to her are as she has the desire to feel special and wanted. Therefore, a man's self hatred isn't so much of a problem as what he gets out of a relationship is loving someone else whereas women additionally desire strongly to be loved back which is slightly incompatible with self hatred and will always be an additional barrier that men with psychological problems do not face. Hence my best friend who actually does genuinely love someone and was with them yet made zero effort to make it work, she simply seems incompatible with relationships.

I disagree with you on this one. Despite being a man, in my case the desire to be loved back is VERY large. In fact, I have been asked few times whether I really like such and such girl or whether I just like the feeling of her liking me. White at first I didn't see the point (I confused these two things), in the retrospect I see that they were right. I mean if I look at the girls I liked, the MAIN reason I liked them was the fact that they liked me. So this means that the desire to be liked back actually dominates my liking them.

I would imagine that anyone who is desperate of any gender would probably feel the same way. So, given the amount of desperate men on this forum, I don't see why you are saying that men don't care about being liked back.

Yeah, for me, the feelings are much more important as well. I wouldn't be able to have a relationship with someone who did not love me.

It's one step further for me... if anything, the actual mechanism of attraction is wired up strangely for me, such that I only feel any attraction towards women that show interest in me. You could drop a perfect 10 playboy bunny in front of me and it wouldn't affect me in the slightest (to the point where people think i'm either gay or asexual), but just about the only thing a woman would have to do to make me attracted to her is to be attracted to me. But then again, no woman has ever been attracted to me. Some have feigned attraction to play some angle of some kind, but I still wonder if it's even possible for a woman to be attracted to who I am at all...

That is very similar to me/my experience except that I actually can feel attraction in varying degrees for any woman, but I only pursue those who manage to explicitly demonstrate some kind of interest in me. I'm sure some other women do occasionally, but it flies right over my head because they are relying on the incomprehensibly subtle (to an Aspie) standard social cues...

This has gotten me into quite a bit of trouble recently...

i've found that both men and women have an equal desire to have someone love them back. most people want to feel special and wanted.

and... women are no more insecure than men, though it may manifest differently depending on personality, cultural upbringing, etc. self-hatred can be a problem for any person, not just females.

your example of your friend and his girlfriend didn't really fit. a sense of self-esteem (or lack thereof) has nothing to do with dow much work a person puts into a relationship. insecure people can put in lots of effort, and secure people can put forth no effort at all. but i'd say that it's possible the amount of effort a person puts forth may be a better predictor of relationship success than psychological problems could be.

Well gawd, I guess I should just break up with the bf, since my food issues and past cutting habit/suicide attempts render me hopeless.