A Different Perspective On The "Need" For Relation

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Just wanted to toss this out there, because I'm seeing a lot of people posting about not being kissed until after they reached 30, or maybe never, or not being able to find a partner, and such. I've got a different take on it, and I just wanted to offer the "other side," so to speak.

I was a pretty popular kid in high school; I was in bands and even though I didn't feel comfortable around too many people, I faked it well enough to get into a lot of relationships. This continued all throughout my 20s.

Almost all of the relationships were short-term entanglements, three months or less. I got bored easily, and having a really short attention span is not conducive to long-term scenarios.

Most ended badly, either because of my growing boredom, or because of their single-minded determination to turn me into the blah mainstream husband-father-creature, which I have no interest in becoming!

Today, if I'm going to be totally honest about it, I would gladly erase every one of those relationships from my personal history. Every single one. Because I would be a much better, much happier, much more stable and balanced person today, had I never met any of them.

What I'm trying to say is: Don't feel obligated to lament your being alone. There are much worse things in life. Because, in the end, maybe relationships are just more trouble than they're worth.

Your mileage may vary. Mine certainly hasn't.

I think what we're looking at is a biological urge to find a mate and reproduce before one's fertility runs dry. This made sense throughout most of human history, when most people lived until age 40 and thus had to reproduce like rabbits starting at 15 to ensure that 3 or 4 of their kids lived long enough to do the same. Infant mortality was sky high, and having 10 kids was the only way to ensure that 3 lived.

And since people died at 40, having a single partner for 20 years made sense. It takes a family to raise a kid, and with infant mortality sky high, a young couple needed to make a baby every 2 years in order to ensure the survival of their genes. I know that I was desperate for love and sex from age 10 to 25, and that it evaporated later on. The urge was so strong that I believe it was biologically based. Since aspies are cursed with the same urges as NTs, but with fewer ways to satisfy them, we get the "my life is lonely and I NEED sex!" posts.

In olden days, even aspies got to have a mate and reproduce, since a boy was usually forced to marry the first girl he got pregnant (and there was no birth control). Our society today is a 180 from what most of human history has been like, and our genes can't keep up. For most of human history, life has been sleep, farm, and f*ck, and die at 40. Hunter-gatherers had it even worse-sleep (with one eye open so nothing eats you), forage/hunt for months on end, and f*ck in the interregnums. We're still set up for that, and for regular famines, thus the need to store fat. The difference between a human and say a tiger is that the human can think logically about his urges and the tiger cannot. I have long thought that human sentience was more of a curse than a gift.

i respectfully disagree.

the reason is that the more relationships you are in, the more you grow in that area.

yes, some people dont actually want to be in a relationship, but for most people finding a significant other is the natural thing to do. its kind of like were built that way, i'd say.

i think a relationship is always worth it, even if in the end it doesnt work out. for me, im happy enough having a few memories of the person it didnt work out with, memories i wouldnt have had if i never tried. being in more relationships, as said before, also gives you the experience you need to both find what you are TRULY looking for, AND! have your 'relationship skills' solidified enough to be able to KEEP the person you want to be with if/when you happen to find this person.

a prime example of this is you. without dating, you wouldnt know what you are looking for, correct? you'd be at square one in that regard. you wouldnt know that some girls want to morph you into something that you arent, so you wouldnt know to stay away from the ones that tried to do that (or maybe you could have picked this up from experience like living, talking to people, and watching shows, etc. that depict how relationships work). if you didnt want to be in a relationship, you wouldnt have posted in the singles thread, either, stating what you dont want in a girl. it is your experience that led you to realize what you want and dont want from the relationship that you currently seek.

i think a better 'solution' to your perceived problem is to try to HELP the people who are in need, instead of telling them "Don't feel obligated to lament your being alone.".

i dont think giving up because one person says it MIGHT not be worth it is a logical course of action, either, especially when this person is not only a stranger to them, but he himself is also currently seeking the relationship that he says 'might not be worth it'.

First off, thanks for your opinion. Every relationship will test your limits and establish your needs and desires. If you dated a bunch of different women and realized being single is best, than good for you. At least now you know.

However, I just wanted to throw this out...If you continually do the same thing over and over you are going to get the same results....same applies to dating. Oftentimes they are called "relationship patterns" Its either how you deal with things or the people you go after. If you don't want to be that husband-father figure than you need to look for an independent woman...one that places a high importance on career or even travel.

Like I said, your mileage may vary.

You have a valid point about knowing what I want. It has taken me a considerable number of years to get a handle on this. However, I am now reasonably certain it doesn't exist. While it's true that this knowledge allows me to feel OK about not looking anymore, I have no way of knowing how (or even if) this circumstance is any "better" than the unknowable hypothetical about what my life would have been like had I never met any of those ex-girlfriends. Perhaps things would have been radically different. Perhaps that would have been a good thing, ultimately. There's no way to know.

Knowing what I want is, in the end, irrelevant if what I want does not exist, or if it exists but there is no way for me to obtain it. Maybe a "do-over" would put me on a different path, with a different end. I don't know.

As far as helping others in need, "Don't put too much emphasis on something that is likely to destroy major portions of your life" is about as helpful as I get in a situation like this. Andy Warhol said it best: "You can't tell anybody anything."

Sure, I'd like to meet somebody. And if someone comes along, great. But I'm not expecting anything beyond the standard mainstreamers and domesticatrices that always turn up....

Well, I have tried a number of independent women, thinking they would be less likely to exhibit the behaviors I'm trying to avoid. The problem is that they always start out telling me what I want to hear: "I don't want kids either, they're messy, they smell bad, they're too loud, they cause problems," etc. Three months later, they suddenly decide they can't live without a baby.

The thing that I can't figure out is this: if she wants a guy who's OK with being a parent, why not just go after that guy in the first place? Is there a scoring system where she gets extra points for converting a guy into his opposite?

I've had a number of them admit to me, after the breakups, that they always wanted kids, and were sure they could bring me around to their way of thinking if the relationships went on long enough. Seems a little presumptuous to me. Not to mention downright dishonest.

That biological clock thing is no joke for women. I've known a number of women who had no desire for kids, even hated kids ... and once they got into their late 20s or 30s their hormones FLIPPED out on them, and all of a sudden they were baby maniacs.

Which makes sense. If a woman does not have a baby in her life, her hormones completely backfire, causing reproductive medical problems like endomitriosis or ovarian cancer. I've known several women who had babies and gave them for adoption (or bore them for gay couples who were friends), just so they could set their hormones on the right track.

...

But I'm with you Lex on the "not interested in dating anymore" track. Much happier now. Went to a show last weekend and had a great time, mostly because I wasn't looking for a mate. Just had fun dancing.

The thing that puzzles me is I can go to YouTube and watch 182.994 consecutive videos about the "childfree lifestyle." It's actually kind of enlightening and encouraging. Until you find out that these people ONLY EXIST ON YOUTUBE!! !

As if YouTube is some sort of new country somewhere, maybe. I don't know. But in the "real" world (and I use the term loosely), I have met one girl who truly did not want kids. The one girlfriend I ever had who was worth it -- for awhile, anyway. She was absolutely brilliant, creative beyond measure (she even did the covers for my first two books), and unbelievably unstable. We tried. We tried, on and off, for about 11 years. Just couldn't make it work. Bottom line, she can't make a commitment and stick to it.

So now I'm thinking I've used up my lifetime quota of truly-childfree prospects. "One is all ya get, boyo!" Seems like it, anyway.

Well, that's the breaks, right? I'm OK with it. When I get lonely, I start thinking about what it was like being married, and it doesn't seem so horrible to be alone....

Could it be where you live? Where I live (big city), I know a ton of women who are child-free by choice, both in relationships/marriages and not in relationships/marriages. Also, what age-range are you dating? If you date child-free women in their 40's, I doubt you'll get many/any clamoring to change that, or you may meet women who are done with their child-rearing (chicks have all flown from the nest). You're in your late 30's, right?

mv, I think where I live is a HUGE factor. Back in 2009, I was in a serious car accident, and I basically had to move to Indiana to recuperate. I've been here almost three years now, and I haven't met anybody. It's a strange place. It's as if you don't exist unless your family has lived in this town for seventeen generations or you own 100 farm animals....

I don't have any family, so it's not like I can get up and go move in with Uncle Kurt or something. It's just a very strange time right now, strange environment, I do sometimes feel like I've ended up on some new planet where it's almost like the earth I know, but....not....quite....!

I agree, feeling broken or like the whole sytem is misfit can be depressing in a possibly nihilistic direction (which I've dealt with), however there is one bit of silver lining - those who see the degree of their own flaws in the matter are able to get around the sort of mysogenistic/mysandric/misanthropic tendencies that come from having never confronted it and believing that its society constantly doing something to you rather than it being at least half in your own court.

My luck has been one month relationships, things not working or missing each other in aim, etc.. I also realize that - while I at least see myself as a good person - I'm not particularly an emotionally warm or giving person and really don't have, at least on a relationship level, and I think it could be partly my sense of being under fire for genetic differences and not being able to show my best self but I'm not sure if that's all of it either. In a sense, IMO, if I've got nothing to give I really shouldn't worry about getting in because, if I'm not right for anyone - so be it, that's not particularly their problem.

I'm sorry about your accident but glad you had a good place to recover. I've never been there myself, but I have several friends from Indiana and it seems like a very conservative/traditional place unless you're somewhere like Bloomington (or another college town akin to it). My mother always complained when she had to travel to Indianapolis on business, she found it really stilting and "backwards". (she mainly traveled there in the 80's, though)

We have some traditions in the Northeast, too, but it's much easier (in my opinion) to break free and do what you want without your "community" sticking their noses and expectations in your business. There are also so many people here that you can find all kinds of people to interact with, according to your needs. I think the same thing is true of any large metropolitan area.

I wish you well. Can you move away? Say, to Chicago or that area?

Its this simple: the grass is always greener somewhere.
Most tall people wish they were a little smaller so that people didnt stare at them/most short people wish to be a little taller so they could blend in/those that blend in wish they were taller/smaller so that they´d be more noticed by others...

Having said that I understand your reasoning and theres no point on trying to create a fake personality to get into a relationship/no rush getting into one if you just arent ready.

As that dr seuss quote says“We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.” so pretending to be someone you are not is actually stopping you from finding a suitable match.

That's how I see it, too.

I wouldn't get involved with a French girl and then tell her, 90 days later, "Look, I need you to be Japanese."

that sucks if you are having bad luck finding women who don't want kids. they do exist, though.

some women (and some men) will change their minds as time passes. for myself, i strongly disliked kids and considered them disgusting parasites... until i got pregnant. life changes people. maybe your ex-girlfriend didn't consider kids until she was in a stable relationship with you and something shifted in her body and mind. people do change, so i would not take their early pronouncements as absolute preferences. it's how they feel *at-that-moment* not *forever-and-ever*.

mv asked this but i didn't see your answer. what age range have you been dating or seeking to date? your key might be women over 40 as many of them have adult children or have already established that they don't want kids.

When I was younger, I tended to get involved with older women, most of whom had kids. It was during this period when I realized that I had no interest in, nor aptitude for, being a parent. I also realized that the whole concept of being a parent made no sense to me.

More recently, I've been involved with younger women. My last gf, the only one I've ever known who truly did not want kids, was considerably younger. I have noticed that, on dating sites, there is a sort of cutoff point in age, above which EVERYBODY has kids. I estimate this cutoff point to be approximately age 25.

Not that this means a lot; as it turns out, even the ones who are 25 and childfree seem to focus on nothing other than babies and booze once you get to know them.

I'm really not interested in older women with grown kids. It isn't whether or not the kids are THERE (they're never really gone, even when they're "gone"), it's the fact that she ever had kids in the first place. It's the repro-mentality that baffles me, the whole concept that this is something that makes any sense to them at all. I can no more fathom why someone would want to reproduce than I can understand why they would take a gun and blow a hole through their own foot. "It hurts like hell and it's really going to hamper my mobility, but it's what society expects so I have to do it."

I've heard all the arguments why it's important to have kids, but a.) there are too many people in the world already, b.) I really couldn't care less about whether my name carries on into future generations, c.) I'm not self-absorbed enough (in the morbid, futuristic sense) to consider having kids for the purpose of ensuring there's someone to "take care of me" when I'm old and enfeebled, and d.) I have the attention span of a ret*d hamster and would not make a good parent.

There are people who are great parents, people who should have kids (or, at the very least, people who are more suited to it) -- I am not one of them. I will never be one of them.

I have been on another site for almost five years, and most of my friends on that site are single mothers. They are all wonderful people, and I love them dearly, but I would not get into a romantic relationship with them. They understand that, they accept me as I am, and they do not try to change me. I appreciate this; it's one reason I've been on that site so long.

I'm not saying anything negative about single mothers here. I have never been in their position. I'm just saying I don't understand the concept, the motivation, the reasoning behind having kids, and that this is not what I want in a relationship.

I also realize that having kids is an almost-universal expectation. When I was a kid, my mother wanted me to do something or other, and I asked her why. She said "You'll understand when you're older and have kids of your own." Not IF, but WHEN. For the longest time, I thought it was mandatory.

As I'm in a position where I live in a place where I know no one, the only way I will ever meet anyone is on line. And if it's true that there are no childfree women on line, I need to know that and deal with it.

I'm (reluctantly) OK with being alone the rest of my life, if that's how it has to be. I don't NEED anybody. Yes, it would be nice to have someone around sometimes, but I have yet to find anyone who's actually worth it.