Should I be with an older woman?

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Getting healthy and getting a job you like that allows you to live in manner you enjoy are empirically Good Things. (Hard things too! For which congrats are in order!).

You see the world in black and white -- and dating isn't like that. There's ambiguity. There's no single right way to get a girlfriend. Nothing's automatic or guaranteed and you're struggling against that .

This is an interesting take on entitlement:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... nerds.html

One teacher not wanting you despite you having lost weight is just that - one not interested girl. Nothing to lose sleep over.

You don't have to give up online dating altogether, but you might have better luck if you invited local girls out for a quick coffee after exchanging just a few messages instead of proposing to strangers overseas. Meet people IRL - ask friends to set you up, join clubs, tag along with your colleagues for post-work drinks.

You really, really can't expect a relationship that's typed 98% of the time.

Yes that's true. I know I should stop comparing myself but it's hard to stop, it's like mental self-harm. I keep on seeing these young couples and comparing myself to them, feeling subnormal, than I think of the girls who liked me when I was a teeanager and how if I'd responded differently I could have dated them. I think of the girl from community college who liked me when I was 20 and how I could have dated her.

8 years later and I'm back in community college. I see all these 18 or 19 year old university students. I look over their shoulder and read their notes, I see calculus and premed jargon but I'm not smart enough to understand it. They're younger than me yet they're smarter than me, if only I'd tried harder in school and not been lazy I'd understand calculus, I would have gone to university in my late teens like normal and enjoyed a healthy campus social life and seen interesting subcultures and been exposed to novel ideas and ways of thinking that I will never know about.

This is my thought process everyday. I know it's wrong, I know I should stop but I just can't. The counselor at work thinks I need to see a psychologist, she's probably right. The last psychologist I saw didn't help much, she just said I can't possibly be depressed because I have a great life. I don't know if I have a great life because I can't look at my life with impartiality but if I did and I still felt said wouldn't that be the definition of depression?I really want to believe it's ok, it would make my life so much easier but it's hard for me to think like that.

Especially when I do things to please other people and afterwards they actually seem happier with me. I lost weight through an unhealthy combination of semi-starvation and amphetamines. For a long time I actually felt guilty every time I ate. It was unhealthy and yet people reacted very positively, they said I looked great, they said I looked healthier.

When I was younger I wanted to stay home and play games not work. Then I got depressed and felt inadequate because everyone else has a job. My family wanted me to get a job, they accused me of being a burden on the tax payer, maybe they were right.

After I got a job, my family and everyone else reacted very positively, they congratulated me. That's why I started wanting to live my life to "please people". Because when I do some people act impressed and stop complaining about me. Everyone except for eligible girls that is.

There were circumstances in my life that prevented me from doing certain things but when I tell people about them they say I'm "making excuses". Statistics say people with uneducated parents don't do well academically but when I tell people that they just say I should try extra hard and they expect me to do just as well as everyone else. They expect me to get the same grades working my way through college as some trust fund kid who has a lot more time and energy than me because he doesn't have to work. I had no academic guidance from my parents, my cousins got all the guidance they could want. But I can't say that because it's "making excuses". Our culture is all about underdog stories but that doesn't work so well in real life.

I know it is hard, but your well-being and happiness are important and you are worth every effort. It's hard to make the strides forward and not see the results you've worked hard to achieve. It's hard to see others seemingly leap forward while you feel like your feet are stuck in cement. Self-compassion is hard. It's hard to hear others tell you how much 'improved' you are when you feel lost, alone, and unwell.

But, you're worth it. The universe isn't a fair place. It sometimes puts you back even when you do everything you can to move forward. But sometimes, it also pushes you unexpectedly into a good place.

If you look back even at this thread, you can see that you've made a tough decision, and have been honest about what you want and what you're frustrated about. You can acknowledge when you've made the right choice, even when the outcome means someone's feelings are hurt. You know when someone isn't treating you with respect. Now, try treating yourself with more compassion, trust, and respect, and don't give up. Sure, you'll slip. That's not proof that you're a loser, it's proof that this s**t is hard.

Also, when people go to any other kind of doctor, they are encouraged to get a second opinion or switch doctors if they aren't getting the help they need. A mental health care professional is no different. The psychologist not helping you isn't proof that another one can't, or won't. Sounds like the one you saw didn't help you. There's nothing wrong with looking for another one, perhaps one more familiar with people on the spectrum.

It says you live in Adelaide(AUS) which as a population over 1 million. Now Australia is not *too* small of a country and haven't you tried looking to meet women who at least live in Australia rather than from foreign countries? This mail-order bride thing clearly isn't working for you that well. Now if you're a gamer, get on gaming forums and try to make friends and meet female gamers there(in your own country).

*sigh* It's pretty astonishing how similar Australian culture is to America...... So many underdog-to-topdog/rags-to-riches tales but real life just ain't like that for most people.

You really need to find a mental health professional who is actually familiar with autism spectrum disorders. Sounds like the psychologists and counselors you're seeing really don't get it. If gaming is your hobby, you should not only do it in your spare time as much as you'd like, but try to meet OTHER people with the same hobby. Because in fact, there are a lot of people out there who love it and not all of them are male.

He should just change a bit the way he thinks about women and relationships, perhaps.

Yep, I know. I have nothing against those who went from rags to riches but I think those people should be thought as the rare exceptions, not the expected norm. I don't like this idea that with enough "pluckiness" any poor youth can bootstrap himself out of poverty without any help. 1% can, the other 99% can't.

Income inequality is one thing but what I missed most of all in my youth was guidance. I know other youths get help from their parents and their school in getting into higher study. My parents knew nothing of that and surprisingly my high school didn't properly explain the system too me.

I think my poor neighborhood high school wanted to increase the number of graduates so in the last year of my schooling they kept on drilling into us that we must get SACE (high school diploma) but they didn't mention ATAR once (University entrance score). Later I spoke to other students and they said their schools mentioned ATAR frequently. When I chose my subjects the counselor didn't mention about half of them were not ATAR approved, meaning regardless of my grades, ATAR counts them for zero. Regardless of grades I needed to have six ATAR subjects, I had three.

And then my snobbish rich aunt told me the reason I didn't get into university was because I didn't try hard enough. She went to a private school, she sent her kids to a private school and she recently worked out a very detailed plan for her daughter to get into veterinary college.

I went onto another forum and asked them if coming from a poor background and going to school in a poor neighborhood (funded by property tax in a neighborhood with not much in the way of property) and having uneducated parents made any difference in later academic success. The response came back that it should make no difference so long as the pauper student "tries harder" and that without middle-class parents he should just work his way through college.

What makes education inequality hard for me to accept is when those who benefit from it deny it's existence. When they have a head start on me and then they say I failed because I was lazy and they succeeded because they worked hard. Yes they worked hard but they still had a head start, hard work doesn't account for all factors.

We do not live in a meritocracy, we never have. What's worse is we now live in a false meritocracy. In the middle ages the peasant accepted he was a peasant the the nobleman accepted that the peasant was a peasant. Nowadays the nobleman blames the peasant for not becoming wealthy. The false meritocracy makes it seem as though it's the poor's fault for not having enough merit.

Also I think there's an education arms race going on, an arms race always leads to overspending. Nowadays even for a position that doesn't require a degree, a guy with a degree will often be chosen, this means everyone needs to have one when 50 years ago less than half the population had one. The arms race is a tragedy of the commons that leads to unnecessary expenditure of effort to keep up with other people who are unnecessarily expending effort to keep up with you.

In other words, when you grade on a curve, only 20% of people will get an A. I can accept that. But what I can't accept is when they expect everyone to get an A. You can't fit 100% of the class into the top 20%. Even if everyone tried twice as hard the top 20% would still contain the same number of students.

That's a metaphor for society. We compete for the top spot, which is fine, but we say the 80% didn't try hard enough. We tell them if only they tried harder all of them would get into the top 20%. There's been talk of making Year 12 mandatory in South Australia because it was observed that the most educated people were more likely to be employed. That still won't fit 100% of the population into the top bracket when there are less jobs than workers in the state. It was they who finished when not forced to that were the most driven.

I think the most insulting part of class warfare is how our culture seeks to blame the poor for being poor, while those with rich parents congratulate themselves for succeeding on their own merit.The psycholoist I had actually was a specialist in ASD. I think I need to find another one.

I have no doubt there are plenty of gamer girls and I understand it would be good for me to meet one but it's just hard for me to go from knowing a girl to dating her. In meatspace or on non-dating websites it's really hard for me to take the first step from friendship to dating.

Trying that can lead to some awkward moments between friends and acquaintances. At least on a dating site I know they're single and seeking a guy to date. I know that they reject me because they just dislike me, rather than reject me because they weren't looking for a date in the first place and get told this isn't the right venue to be asking girls out.

In the past I've made friends with girls with the intention of dating them but after a few weeks when I asked them out they acted quite shocked and the friendship died within a few awkward days.

I don't really play games as much as I used to or otherwise socialize. Between work and community college I feel like I'm going flat-out. I don't work and study every waking moment but the wakeful hours that aren't work and study must be spent on restful activities. I don't consider video games to be restful, there a hobby for when I have energy to spare. When I have little spare time and energy I'm unlikely to engage in any unnecessary socializing. I couldn't do it on the weekends, being a Mon-Fri worker weekends are the time I do the most work on assignments. For me weekends aren't for rest or socializing, they're the hardest part of the week.

Joining a new club and getting to know everyone there is possible for me but it takes a lot of energy and at the moment I feel quite exhausted already. I'm thinking of dropping out after this year because I find being a worker student to be difficult and in some ways it's not necessary when I already have a job. Unfortunately the reason I started was to keep up with the joneses.

Also the trouble with gaming forums is that they're not region specific. If I chat on a gaming forum I'm not guaranteed to find girls who live in Australia. Just like on this forum, the participants will certainly be spread all over the world.

True, this. My ex is currently playing Archeage, and at least one third of the other players are women. Listening to his teamspeak, it sounds like a fair proportion of these are younger women (in their 20's-30's). MMO players can be very social and friendly in game, and I've known people who met and got together that way. There are whole guilds which meet up in RL once or twice a year, and migrate from one MMO to another or span multiple MMO's.

These are all valid points. You are reasoning very wisely, not making excuses, no matter what anyone says. This is life, for most people on the planet. Some are way worse off than you (speaking globally), and a few are better off. I do wish you understood how intelligent and resilient you really are, though. Recognizing your strengths is important, and it looks to me as if you have been actively discouraged from doing so.

That said, you might benefit from traveling to another country and living/working there for a while. The social environment and culture you're currently embedded in is not the only one. There are other cultures which have different values and priorities. It looks as if the one you grew up in has become confining, even suffocating, for you.