A VERY serious issue regarding singlehood, dating

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I never suggested that it was. I know that worker bees don't, as an evolutionary function of bees, reproduce. But that's honeybees, NOT people. Maybe it isn't "necessary", but that does not change the fact that we didn't evolve to be LGBT. That's a purely social phenomenon that some have decided is cool, but it's a disordered way of thinking, in my opinion. I'm not a psychiatrist, so anything I say ought to be consumed with more than a few grains of salt. I apologize if there are people here who can't handle me or anyone else having this opinion. It's not like I want LGBTs to NOT be allowed a voice in social matters or to be denied employment or other such opportunities just because they're wired wrong. As long as they aren't criminals breaking the law, they ought to have the same rights as you and me. Am I right? Why should MY opinions invalidate everything? It's my point of view, nothing more.

Look man, I did not intend to suggest that being childless or not trained to operate cars was in any way a disorder. I think you people have misinterpreted what was simply my opinion about LGBT-ness as some sort of slight against either them or yourselves or something that I don't know what it is.

I agree with you. When it comes down to it, any job is better than none. It's just that I don't like thinking that the only work I'll ever be able to do is menial labor. I don't mind helping with stuff like that, but I'd prefer to make some use of the diploma I got back in 2000-2001 in computer technology. Otherwise, that time in vo-tech school was utterly wasted. But please don't think that I don't wrestle with this in my head every day. As for going back to school, I think that's a fool's errand at this stage of my life. I don't see it really helping me, and the huge $50,000-plus debt is just, no, not gonna do that. I don't even have that much in my savings account. There is no way I'm going to go into my bank and beg them to give me a loan that I'll never be able to pay back because whatever field I chose to take doesn't have any job openings and I'm doing exactly as you said - flipping burgers at the local Mickey D's.

But, you've got me thinking more about my options. I don't know how much of a "college"-level education I could actually get free of charge. I know there are some things, courseware, et cetera, that's available on YouTube and elsewhere that I could possibly check out for free. The real problem is the actual exams and accreditation at the end. That stuff is real payware and it ain't cheap. Maybe my mom would allow me to draw from my savings to pay for it (I don't have enough in my regular checking account now to pay from there) or maybe she'd do that just like she did me today with my latest eBay spree buying processors for my chip collection. I don't want to say the trust isn't there, but I'm not exactly feeling like I'm trusted today. And keep in mind that all of that is a waste if I can't actually get hired and use that training. I want to avoid unnecessary waste, if possible. Maybe that needs to include my collecting habits, too.

I had two different reactions reading your post:

1. In theory, there can be someone for anyone, the question is whether or not you are casting a wide enough net to actually meet the compatible person.

Solution: cast your net as wide as possible. Get out of the house and into activities you enjoy and/or put you in contact with other people, whether that be clubs, game store magic nights, a job, or volunteer work. Don't worry whether or not your choices put you in direct contact with eligible women. As your circle widens, so does the possibility of someone knowing someone. Is it feasible to bike where you live? There is no reason you couldn't bike where you need to go, and the cost investment is a lot less than a car. Plus it gets you in shape, which increases attractiveness.

2. When you talk about wanting someone who is "beautiful" and "wanting the good things in life" but measuring that by totally artificial things, it makes me feel like you aren't ready for a relationship. Your posts aren't reading to me like you actually understand what the "good things in life" actually are. The person for you isn't a trophy or a toy; she will be a thinking person, and you need to spend some time considering how you plan to enhance HER life, not just what your dream woman looks and acts like in the hopes of putting her on display inside your life. Are you funny? Are you artistic? Or musical? Are you an amazing cook? Are you willing to devote yourself to figuring out how to pleasure her, even if it means forgoing your own pleasure some days? Are you a good listener for days the world has been unfair to her and she just needs to unload? Can you keep a house clean? Most of us don't end up with someone the world considers beautiful or handsome; we end up with someone who is beautiful or handsome to us, uniquely, often because of things other people may never notice.

Do you know what you NEED, as v what you might want? They are very different things.

Recommendation: Work on developing interpersonal relationships outside of your immediate family so that you can understand better how real world people think, and how the give and take of interpersonal exchange works. Start with friendships that are real; hold off on thinking about dating for a while. Step outside of the "I want" mentality and really think about what a relationship could mean in your life, and what you might bring to the table. Your eventual romantic partner would be the person you share your complete and messy self with and, more importantly, this would be someone you give freedom to be their complete and messy self, which may not be very beautiful first thing in the morning or ten years down the road. Try to understand what a real relationship looks like, instead of trying to write a screenplay.

The most important rule about standards from my understanding is that you need to achieve them yourself. By all means look for a hot woman as long as you look good yourself.

It's a two way street with me. I think both men and women are being unrealistic if they insist on a partner who's a high achiever on some way when they themselves are struggling. For me I would want a woman that works and ideally drives. I don't want to come home after a very long week to a partner who's a second job in her own right. Someone like that can never work out for me long term and I just categories partners like that as short term fun and nothing more. Not people to have a serious relationship and instead friends with benefits.

It's also worth getting a job even stacking shelves. Everyone needs to start somewhere and considering you appear to have no paid work experience you can't really turn your nose up to a job like that. I stacked shelves as my first job and stacking shelves is almost a cliché first job that nobody is truly "above".

Also why does your mother control your finances when you're in your 40s? You need to get that sorted out ASAP and become responsible with money. You're at an age now where you shouldn't have you ask your mother for access to your own money and obviously that's unsexy as hell for women.

You can't expect a woman you described to get serious with you when you haven't gotten serious with yourself, especially at 40+.

I know what you mean. I have a degree in speech pathology, and I’m not using it.

I’ve been a civil servant for 40 years.

Maybe this might be an option for you?

Take a civil service test, or get a job as a “provisional” in the civil service, then take the test.

There is no shame in being a civil service clerk. And the health benefits are unsurpassed.

Google: Federal jobs, state jobs, city jobs, county jobs.

I think even a job where travel costs a fortune for him is a good option to start with. At least it's giving him work experience and a foothold to allow him to get better jobs which are easier to travel to.

I heard civil service is also a good job in pretty much all of the developed world.

Given only the criteria you have stated throughout this thread, I have to conclude that your chances of getting exactly what you want are very slim. In your situation, even having criteria seems unreasonable — you may have to settle for whatever woman shows you the most personal interest and give up any hope for a woman to exist solely for making your own fantasies real.

Or alternatively, pay for a woman to satisfy those fantasies for an occasional period of time only.

From my view, every time a specific condition is added into the mix, the chances of finding the OP his dream woman goes down. Much like rolling 6s over and over and over again with a six sided die. The only way that I can see him improve his chances is to either lower the number of conditions or increase his attractiveness to the opposite sex. One is much easier to do than the other, but the choice is his to make.

There is some truth to the idea that "Beggars cannot be choosers".

You need to take whatever job you can get, even if it's not great. Then use that as a stepping stone to get to a better job. Yeah, it sucks, but you need to do uncomfortable things in order to get the result you want.

You need a job as a first step to get money for a car and to meet real life friends. If a job is unbearable, you can leave it and find another one, but at least try.

Most people don't have this luxury of choosing to not work just because they don't like the jobs that are open. They have to work to eat. They have to work or else they get evicted. Your parents are enabling you to just sit around and not work.



If you're living off of other people's money and not working, you shouldn't be impractical with it. Live within your means, buy practical things, save up what you can for a car.



Yeah, but you don't get those jobs with a blank resume. The person with a work history is more likely to get those jobs than a person without one. You start out with a mediocre and work up to a better job, but the longer you wait, the further away you'll be from having the job you want.

I don't know if anyone is still following this thread, but I've been thinking about it today and I feel that it needs updating. I know this is coming a few days before Valentine's Day so I'll try not to get too negative. Mostly, this will be an update and some thoughts relating to the replies I've received on this (and thanks, by the way, to those of you who replied).

I know a couple replies suggested that I start looking for work. I have some issues with that. Probably the biggest issue is the type of personality I have. I've taken the time to talk to my mom about this and one of the things she pointed out to me is that I don't like being told what to do. Which is true, I seem to be far too openly opinionated and free-thinking to be compatible with modern-day work and school environments. I thought that I had lost my job at Cybertronics in January 2009 because of the economy. That did play a role, but from the discussion I had with my mom, I learned that because of my unwillingness to submit to being told what to do by a "superior figure", I might have made a bad impression on the man who hired me to work as my dad's assistant due to some unwillingness to take orders cooperatively.

The thing is, I don't mind helping if what I'm being recruited to help with is something I can do. But I don't take kindly to just being bossed around like I'm some sort of slave or robot. I just don't. I'm so used to just being free to do my own thing without much resistance. Because of this, I am inherently incompatible with work and school environments. I don't really get along too well with "superiors" and this makes a situation where the boss or whoever can't deal with me. I would say that employers simply don't know how to effectively work with people like me since they are very used to having control and power over others and a total free spirit like me breaks that model in fundamentally inharmonious and incompatible ways and most bosses can't seem to handle that. They want their power and control over me and I demand my freedom from power and control. A good example of an unstoppable force slamming into an impenetrable wall.

Further aggravating this is my proneness toward being very open and opinionated, which has led to me reacting unfavorably to instruction and talking "out of turn". None of which are things present-day employers or school teachers can deal with because, again, their game is control and power and MY game is to AVOID being controlled and having someone having power over me. I like my freedom, simple as that. I'm willing to cooperate, but only if it's in conditions where I'm actually allowed freedom and some semblance of self-agency. Of course, this isn't how society seems to work at present, and I can't expect to be allowed to work under anyone when it's like this. So there's that.

And now, for the updates regarding my financial and disability situation. As you might remember, I mentioned that I received an inheritance from my grandparents back in late 2020. I still have that money in savings, but it's considerably reduced and I want to explain why.

It seems that life in America is one of taxation. There's really no good way I can put that. After receiving my money, I still continued to get SSI until around Thanksgiving of 2021. My dad handed me a big packet that came from the SSA that basically informed me that the US government was not only taking my SSI benefits away, all of them, but because I had continued to received SSI AFTER I got the cash, they were going to take $10,000 out of my $28,000-some savings to "repay the overpaid SSI benefits". Yep, you read that right. Good ol' Uncle Sam STOLE ten grand from me. You can only imagine how INCENSED I became after that. It resulted in a LONG discussion with my mom about the situation going forward, how it might affect the financial stability of the family (good news...not as badly as feared, but I'm still ten thousand dollars poorer) and what, if anything, could be done legally to challenge and/or reverse the SSA's decisions to impoverish me. Unfortunately, NOTHING really can be done legally because we don't have the money to pay for a lawyer, even if we had, the likelihood of me winning such a case is basically zero and I'd wind up losing the REST of my inheritance in the process. Just. Not. Worth it!

So, I am ten grand less wealthy than I was when I first posted this thread. At least I still have Medicaid, thank GOD I still have Medicaid. I was worried that they took my capacity to pay for health care too, but from what my mom told me, Medicaid is the STATE government where I live, NOT the fed. And in Louisiana, there is NO asset limit on individual Medicaid eligibility. But there IS an asset limit on SSI - $2,000. A measly TWO GRAND is ALL I am allowed to have to my name and be able to get ANY SSI benefits from the federal government. I don't know WHO came up with that because the poverty limit is around $13,000 in the United States. Our whole system is completely corrupt, broken by design, and it pains me to wonder what life is like for the physically handicapped or the elderly who can't afford Medicare coverage and can't get around as well as I can with no assistance.

I still have just over $15,000 (down from $17,000-ish - I gave my mom and dad $2,500 last summer to help them buy a new car since their Mazda was, and still is as far as I know as of now, in the shop awaiting repairs on the computer to be completed). So, I'm not completely wiped out, but it's still a huge drop from what I went in with.

Maybe nobody cares. Maybe I shouldn't even be putting this up here. I don't know. But I know one thing: If I DON'T post, whoever that might have the resources and knowledge to help me won't be able to help me as they won't even know I exist and that I would need any help. And if I post and nobody ever even sees this, but the forum moderators allow it to stay up, at least it isn't bottled up inside me, festering and stewing, causing me unneeded stress, grief and agony. It's at least a journal entry where I can let out my feelings and thoughts in a controlled manner. And hey! Maybe somebody will come along with some insight and consolation to help ease my woes. I'm trying to be optimistic here, something I'm NOTORIOUSLY BAD at. And it is my hope that whoever does find and read this can better understand my issues and maybe have some compassion, not that they weren't having compassion before.

How do you still have so much money?

Some questions:

1) What have you done, so far, with your interests in computer technology and electronics? For example, have you ever had a relevant job of any kind? If so, what kind of job? Have you ever created anything, on a hobbyist basis, that you think is worthwhile and potentially marketable to the right people, even if you didn't get paid for it?

2) What is your level of education?

EDIT: Perhaps you might want to consider beefing up your skills using cheap (much cheaper than college courses, at least) online resources, such as the ones listed here.

EDIT: You mentioned that you live in the New Orleans area. You might want to contact the Autism Society of Greater New Orleans, to see if they can refer you to any relevant local resources.

EDIT: Ask you parents to let you have some more practice driving! (in some safe place, of course.) You obviously need to learn to drive (safely) IF it's at all possible for you to do so.

Well, basically I've spent very little of it as of now, and what I spent, I spent frugally. The amounts I gave are AFTER I spent 2021 buying processor and other chips for my collection as well as a new laptop PC and accessories for it, plus the $2,500 I gave my folks for the car and more chips bought for my birthday and Christmas in 2022.

I have a self-imposed policy of spending no more than $50 per item and a target total order limit of $100. So far, I have successfully stuck to those limits and will continue doing so. Amazon and eBay are amazing places for me to get stuff like that, often for as little as $5 to $20 per item, depending on what I'm buying. Plus, my dad is still working. He works two jobs, though not at the same time on the same days. One of his jobs, Walmart, pays a bit better than his original job at Cybertronics (which he's still working at to this day). My brother is also working and between them, we are able to make ends meet for the most part without having to draw out of my savings. And given that that money is in a savings account (thank you Capital One 360 Checking and Savings!), it earns interest.

As of my last statement, I was getting an earned APY of 3.17%. That translated to an amount paid for December 2022 of $40.60. As long as I keep money in that savings account, it will continue to earn more interest and hopefully grow. I am trying to keep as much of my funds as I can so that I'll have something to fall back on in lean times.

I'm just majorly fortunate that our government didn't decide to take all of my money away. I feared that they'd just up and confiscate all of my inheritance and I'd have nothing at all. Even now, I'm still looking back over my shoulder, checking to make sure they're not sneaking up behind me to rape me again. You just can't trust government to do anything right.

Mona, I have a GED plus a Diploma in Computer Technology. That's the extent of my education. As for what I've done up to now with my interests, not a whole lot.

I have built a few things that could be considered hobby projects. I've built LED arrays, a project box power supply with DIN sockets for testing and experimenting with LEDs on plug-in assemblies. I had started on building an RGB million-color flashlight DIY project I saw in an issue of Make Magazine, but as of now, I've done nothing further with it. I need still some parts that I have had difficulty finding and that project kind of got shelved due to my shift of focus toward my chip collecting hobby. The only job I've ever held was assembly assistant to my dad at his job at Cybertronics. But that was from March 2007 to the end of January 2009 and I haven't been employed since. I'm pretty sure, based on what I've discovered from talking with my mom, that my failure to take orders from my boss as well as being too open and talking out of turn, among other things, did more to lose me my job than the bad economic conditions of 2009.

Given this, I'm leery to want to work. Part of it is physical strain and lack of energy most days and part of it is fear and reluctance coupled with depleted motivation to want to do anything other than draw on my computer, play video games and consume music and video content all day long. I doubt seriously that my hand-soldered creations could ever be "desirable" in the standard commercial sense. Mostly, I did that for personal enjoyment and curiosity, though I have toyed off and on with the idea of making things like that to sell. The big problem with that is my hobbies then become work and I'm not keen on just wringing all the energy out of my hobbies like that. That's not enjoyable and I've met people online who have struggled with that very problem (I'm on DeviantArt and that's mostly where I've met people like that).

In order for me to actually start making stuff full-time as my "job", I'd need probably a LOT more money than what I've got now. Given how poor I am, I'm more than certain a bank will never lend me credit and I don't want that anyway since that would mean I'm a debtor. These days, with A.I. taking over more and more human work, there may be no point to me making electronic goods if A.I. bots end up doing that better, faster and cheaper.

I've looked into coding, but every time I start on something, I work on it for a short time, put it down and typically never return to it. Getting into coding has been THE most difficult thing for me to follow through on and I'm not sure if that's due to my lackluster motivation or if I truly can't get my brain to process it the way other autistic people seem to. I'm even wondering if I'm even on the spectrum or if there's something else wrong with me that I'll never be able to get diagnosed. Everything about me is a train wreck. I'm so fundamentally broken that it's not funny.

I'll give your linked resources some thought. And hopefully this kind of answers your questions. I know it's long and very rambly, but I do appreciate your taking the time to reach out.