Women in their 30’s stop liking “bad boys”?

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I think it is fair, maybe I worded it a bit to strongly though. These guys who think that all other men are bad, but won't work on their own personality really have a delusional view of the world. They're not perfect either. They need a reality check.

I'm not in a place right now where I should be in a relationship. I'm not sure I've actually stated that publically. So I'm working on building my platonic friendships at the moment. Trying to cope with my bad health and my job and looking for positive things to do. I'm taking steps to find happiness in life. What is Markins doing??

I've got a gut feeling in real life he's a quiet, polite type of person. If he served me at the library I'd think, "what a nice young man".

I really think I'm single because I'm quirky and haven't met someone on my wavelength. I was so upset about the last guy because we had so, so much in common it seemed perfect on paper. But we really didn't gel well when we were together. Something was off, but I don't know what. We just weren't right for each other. And that's ok. I'm not taking it to mean that I'm an awful person and all men must think that I'm too much of a nice girl not to date, or that guys only go for bad girls.

To be fair I actually do blame his parents. Mine were bad role models and my best friend when I was a teenager had unstable parents too, but my parents are quite proud of how far I've come, his don't seem supportive at all. I've got a really good sister too who supports and encourages me. She has a "normal" life and I'm an outlier, but she doesn't look down on me because of it. I'm lucky in that aspect I guess.

So we're not in the "same situation". I do think that I don't have to claw my way up out of as deep of hole as he has to.

Markins, you can't change where you came from, but you can change where you are going and it can be a very bright and fulfilling place.

I want you to be happy mate.

Somewhat agree. Some valid points were being raised there, but this particular comment really could hurt someone already in a lot of pain. Why would anyone here want to do that?

Oh, O.K. Since I began typing, Hurtloam has pretty much acknowledged this point. Let us move on.

Um. Well, of course those are among the ways, but I think in my own experience there was a lot more going on than those things. I think the "get closer to your ideal version of yourself" thing is the one that maybe rings the loudest bell with me. But first my therapist had to persuade me there even was anything good about me that I could start getting closer to, and then she had to kind of install a template in my head for actually having some sense of self, because apparently at the factory they forgot to fit me with one of those, and once we'd established the whole damned thing was likely to take years and I still wouldn't be 100% normal and fully functional at the end of it, then she also had to (figuratively) hold my hand and reassure me it was worth the effort. Which it sure as hell was, but jeepers, what a long journey...

Agree of course. But again, my therapist and I were starting from a place several stages back before that kind of place, if you see what I mean. In a way she had to actually build a whole human being from scratch. I think most mental health professionals, in my own case, tragically failed to appreciate the extent of the problem. Like fussing about a smouldering cigar butt in an ashtray when actually the whole damned building is on fire. Luckily, this one excellent psychotherapist had the intuition and the sensitivity to see that the problem was several sizes bigger than the profession usually has to address, and she was unafraid to give it her best shot. Sometimes she used to see me free of charge or half-price. She once inadvertently let slip that she relished the challenge of sorting me out! She was a feisty lady...

Agree. But this is only obvious to those of us who've managed to conjure up some. I started with absolutely none, if not negative amounts of. Again, many mental health professionals (and 99.9% of pesky amateur well-wishers) don't even realize it's possible to start from that bad a place. It's utterly beyond anything they can even imagine is actually possible.

Sorry if this makes me sound a Drama Queen; maybe I am, but the mainstream shrinks did less than nothing for me from 1995 to 2017 (when they eventually gave up; and I actually have a copy of the report officially admitting defeat!), and meanwhile this one feisty, self-employed, independent, private psychotherapist with the garish lipstick saved my life, and I'm still learning from her and and using what she taught me and benefiting from her input now, about five years since my last appointment with her.

Oh, wow! That is a big question! Can I get back to you on that? One thing I will say is, she had to say them repeatedly and passionately, and sometimes even angrily, over a period of years. The whole thing was so intense I'd stagger out of her house in no fit state to drive home: weak and shaking and on the verge of tears. It's going to take me some time to think how I can answer your entirely reasonable question in less than fifteen zillion words. Can I get back to you?

Thanks for taking the time to answer this off-topic and narcissistic enquiry!

Passionately agree here!

Last edited by Raphael F on 13 Oct 2019, 7:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

Really good points.

When I had therapy I did have a specific reason in mind. I was ill. I wanted to find ways to cope with it and hopefully get better. It was fatigued. I was always tired, always stressed. That sounds mild, but it was seriously impacting my life.

The therapist worked out that I wasn't dealing with my emotions or really even acknowledging them. So she would talk me through how I felt about things going on in my life. She gave me homework to do. It wasn't just her listening to me waffling on. It was productive.

I'd like to do something like that again, but I've moved too far away from her now. I'm trying to remember what I was supposed to keep in my diary. It was stuff like if I started feeling ill, what emotion was I feeling? Where was I? Did something trigger it? What could I do to deal with the negative emotion? If it wasn't something I could change, like say dealing with a parent, could I go and do something positive just for myself instead, like go for a walk.

It was the "how to deal with the emotion" that she helped me with. And a times where I was struggling to describe the emotion she was very good at drawing me out to get to the bottom of it.

It was overall, a very positive experience.

I've never visited a therapist in my entire life so far.

Except....massage therapists.

I probably wouldn't have either if I hadn't had this particular therapist recommended to me.

I couldn't cope without regular massages. My muscles get very tense. I go for deep tissue massage to get those knots out.

Tut tut Boo.

You should try body-to-body.

1. Unlike almost every other mental health professional I ever saw over a 21½-year period, this therapist did not seek to deny or play down the terribleness of my situation. She didn’t let me vamp it up, either: strictly no Drama Queens allowed on her sofa! But the profession doesn’t, in general, bother to acknowledge that if you’re worried about something such as being unable to pay your rent or your coalman, this is in fact a rational thing to be depressed and anxious about, and a genuine and serious thing to be complaining about, rather than merely yet another sad sign of how divorced from reality you are or another reason to give you pills.

2. From age 10 to age 30 or so, I was horribly, horribly good at turning any positive input around and throwing it back in someone’s face. This therapist, however, was one tenacious debater. My last ever Community Psychiatric Nurse, for instance, would only shrug her shoulders and give up, when I started being negative. This psychotherapist would be on me fiercely, straight away, and if I was trying to argue black was white, she’d chase me round and round and round the houses until I was forced to admit, grudgingly, that black was in fact black, and always had been. I have a feeling she’d be onto Marknis like a ton of bricks, if he came out with something excessively negative. This psychotherapist demonstrated to me beyond all possible doubt that I was actually creating my own living hell by being so pathologically negative; it took ferocious perseverance on her part, but bit by bit she did it.

3. She listened to what I said, and seldom interrupted, and she gave me time to think (my processing speed is very slow, so I need time to think, especially when discussing big stuff, which of course we were). She often proved that she’d been listening to me by recalling something I’d said weeks or months or years before. She invariably demonstrated that she’d been listening to me by replying with things which had some actual bearing on what I was trying to say. In my experience of the mental health profession, this is highly unusual! But I feel it’s an approach with quite a lot going for it...

So here's hoping Marknis may be able to find someone similarly unconventional in this respect.

4. She told me positive things about myself—which, in my experience of the profession, is just about unheard-of—and she told me them passionately and repeatedly, and wherever possible she adduced one of my own stories in evidence, e.g., “Well, X wouldn’t have reacted the way you said he did if he actually thought you were as useless as you think you are, would he? Why would he say that if he thought you had nothing going for you? Come on, Raphael, for goodness’ sake! Are you so determined to hate yourself?”

It sounds to me as if Marknis could do with a dose of that, maybe?

5. She demonstrated her sincerity—I think involuntarily—by sometimes being literally on the edge of her armchair and shaking with rage when I told her stuff about my childhood (which was a tad dysfunctional, I suppose: other professionals have used phrases such as “personality damage” and “emotional abuse”, but never mind that now). So when she told me positive things about myself with similar passion, it was pretty hard for me to presuppose that she was only saying nice things about me for the sake of saying them and because she was (sometimes) getting paid to tell me them. She also allowed a one-hour slot to extend into 90 minutes or two hours, unless she had another patient immediately after me. It was hard for even me to believe she didn’t mean the positive things she was saying, if she was so often prepared to do that for me. In short, she made it inescapably clear, over time, that she genuinely cared and genuinely could see good stuff in me: in my experience the mental health profession doesn’t normally do that. It would be good if Marknis could get himself someone genuine/sincere like her, I feel; I only wish I knew how and where he could.

6. She actively looked for problems to fix. In general, the mental health profession seems to want as easy a life as possible: the professionals want to reduce and simplify your problem to a few bullet-points, and then once they’re satisfied that they’ve ticked each one of those few simple bullet-points, they call it “Job Done” and head off to the golf course or the coffee house. That never worked for me, and it doesn’t sound like it’ll work for Marknis either. This psychotherapist would pounce on any and every sign of dysfunctionality or negativity or self-hatred or whatever, and highlight it loudly as an issue for us to work on. Her success rate in fixing them all was less than 100%, but her success rate in at least seeing them was just about 100%. I tend to suspect Marknis needs a really thorough bottom-up overhaul and rebuild like that, not just a lick of paint and a squirt of oil which is all you get from some so-called professionals (apologies to Marknis, if that’s too personal: of course I don’t actually know you).

7. And over the years she practically taught me how to be my own psychotherapist, so now I can carry on working on my remaining problems myself; with the benefit of the Asperger’s diagnosis—which she pushed me to push for (getting an Asperger’s diagnosis where I live is practically impossible)—making sense of some of the stuff she never resolved has suddenly become lots easier.

And all this was achieved without medication, unless you count the cannabis I smoked in industrial quantities when I got home from her house to process that week’s session.

So, er, does that answer your question? Best I can do, if I'm ever going to have a bath and get dressed to-day.

My last therapist used my sessions for job search so I could become a real man since no woman would date me without a real job.

My situation is hopeless

I believe at any age the main factor of attractiveness is social status.

Whether being a "bad boy" is attractive highly depends of the social context you live in. In high school settings we know "bad boys" have a relatively high social status. In adult life, this is only the case within lower class people and relatively dangerous neighborhoods; for the most part, social status in adults is highly determined by the things owned (house, car, job), self-esteem, and the synergy happening between the two.

Sorry your experience with that therapist was so unsuccessful. The very fact you now feel your situation is hopeless demonstrates it was not the right therapist for you.

Sincerely respect your feeling that your situation is hopeless. I've spent too many years of my life feeling the same. Luckily psychotherapy changed that, in my case. If you were to find a better therapist, maybe either your situation could be improved or your fear that it's hopeless could be dispelled.

But again there are those who find medication is a better and simpler way of achieving the same end.

Incidentally, despite my having been permanently signed off as "away with the faeries" and completely incapable of earning a living, a few women have, from time to time, occasionally, been interested in me. No denying affluence can help, but that's an attribute I've almost never possessed, and there's been no correlation between my employment status or bank balance and my success (or lack of success) with women.

Believing that my situation was hopeless was, in retrospect, something of a turn-off for women. And even in the realms of Platonic friendship, actually.

So psychotherapy did help me to find girlfriends, in a very real way: it enabled me to start feeling less hopeless, and hey presto I was a less unattractive person! Even while my physical body was ageing, and thus becoming less desirable, my personality was magically improving and becoming more desirable. So this illustrates what is possible.

So, may I venture to wish you good luck? There's no denying you need some of that, too...
Agree it can be a powerful factor, but again my own experience proves other factors can supervene. Also the most successful womanizer I know is short, fat, not especially good-looking, and has never had any money: he does it all on personality; so again, working on one's personality really could be a big help, and at least it's something constructive one can actually do (often we can't change our social status or our employment status, but we can work on our personality, yeah?).

100% agree self-esteem is part of the recipe for success. Whatever self-esteem I may now fragilely possess, I owe it all to psychotherapy.

While it is true that "loving" someone for their wealth, prestige and power is more of a business transaction than a real relationship, avoiding those who have little or nothing to offer simply makes sense, and avoiding negative people whose only interest is themselves as victims makes even more sense.  No one wants a relationship with a perpetually negative person, because while negative people tend to limit themselves and be their own worst enemies, they also tend to drag other people down with them.

People who have been in Hurtloam's position and come out of it have the personal experiences that justify their observations. Thus, people like Hurtloam are more qualified to make these observations and to give advice than other people who can only assume to know what they are talking about. Unfortunately, the honesty and bluntness of people like Hurtloam also tends to drive away the same people who have the greatest need to change.

Yeah, Raphael is doing a very good job at being empathetic and explaining how he got things to turn around for him. I'm not quite do good at putting things into words.

A big stick isnt tge best mitivator sometimes.

But at least you get their attention.