The Grand Inquisitor wrote:
Additionally, the things you mentioned about self-improvement are completely reasonable and valid, but there is an added layer of difficulty achieving those things when you are depressed, and the inability to ever have a romantic relationship or sex seems to have a tendency to be depression-inducing for people who want those things.
I found myself in something of a 'magic hole' where graduating college - not enough, getting a black belt in martial arts - not enough. Switching from accounting to programming - not enough.
The cons, or things I'm pretty sure keep me out - I'm avoidant/evasive of social contact with most people I don't know, won't look at people and smile, anyone who reminds me of someone I knew in a bad way who I haven't talked to (in an aclimating situation - like martial arts class) I won't talk to or even look at them until the ice is broken in some more natural way, that gives a lot of people a funny feeling about me and I know that it's a deal-breaker on 'in the door' behavior.
The reason I'd know about these things and not fix them - those behaviors are unfortunately CYA and they're there for a reason - ie. all of my life I've experienced doing what other people did and getting drastically different outcomes, ie. either quite negative or manically/unstabily positive, and i learned the hard way that there's just something in the micro-motions of my expressions that flips a psychotic trigger in people. The CYA behaviors inflict damage on my social potential but it seems like there's hardly any way around them.
On one hand I get that the point out of life is to dominate and stomp out difference/weakness, that the whole point is not understanding what can't conform because if it doesn't conform it should never come close to passing on genetic material and dating is seen as the pipeline to that. We could have a much more compassionate culture if people really understood the complexities a person can get tangled up in through no fault of their own but that raised the honest question - do people want that sort of culture? I get mixed signals on that.
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“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin