. . . because you:
- are not very beautiful;
- don’t have a perfect body;
- are not rich;
- don’t have a college degree;
- don’t have money;
- don’t use makeup;
- are a feminist in the world of male chauvinist pigs;
- are a fighter for men’s rights in the world of vicious feminists;
- have children;
- are too smart;
- are too complex;
- are too good / nice / kind / perfect;
- have more values and are more moral than people around you;
- don’t sleep around;
- or any permutation thereof
you need to know that none of this has anything to do with your loneliness. You are lonely because you are a self-pitying condescending misanthrope who despises everybody around and people have no interest in engaging with somebody like that.
I know I have written this before, but yet again I’m getting regaled with the statements about how “nobody wants me because I don’t have much money nor am I a huge actor or musician.” Do people not realize how offensive this is to hear? There is an immediate suggestion in this very statement that all women are whores who are just waiting to hand themselves over to a higher bidder.
And if it offends me in an online conversation, imagine how people react when you approach them with this attitude in real life.
And one more thing while I’m at it. I’m not suggesting that anybody change themselves for the sake of a potential partner. Do I make an impression of somebody who would change to please some hypothetical stranger (or even a real person)? That’s a very stupid thing to do. Don’t, don’t change to please anybody or to attract suitors.
All I’m suggesting is that people look for reasons why they are not blissfully happy inside themselves. And if after they resolve the issues that prevent them from being happy, they choose not to be partnered at all, then that’s fantastic.
Human beings have an amazing capacity for happiness. Yet many of us spend our lives in misery with only small pockets of happiness here and there. Shouldn’t it be the opposite, though? Shouldn’t we see happiness as normal and misery as exceptional? When I look back on my life and realize how much needless pain, suffering and depression I experienced because wallowing suited my unhealthy purposes at the time, I feel horrified.
I’m in academia, folks. This means that I’m surrounded by peddlers of misery everywhere. Nobody likes to wallow in self-pity as much as academics (visit the site called College Misery if you don’t believe me). I hope I can be excused for creating a refuge from “the universe is so hoooooorrible” mentality on my own blog, eh?
Clarissa's Blog 
I think you are exaggerating. I know a woman my age who never had a date in high school because all the people at the high school knew that she was forbidden to go to movies by her strictly Xtian parents. There was nothing else to do in the small town; a date meant a movie. She did begin to date a little in college, but not before.
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I’m very obviously not addressing these posts to underage kids. This is for adults who have control over their lives, unlike minor children.
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Still, small towns are problematic, though.
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I know somebody who didn’t manage to find a date in New York during the three years she lived there. A beautiful, intelligent, highly educated woman, too.
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Yes, but NY is famous for this, people not talking to each other, too many people not being from there and all freaking out, all sorts of reasons. It seems you have to be a real extrovert like me to deal with social scenes in very large cities, or be from them so you know how to deal. I’d say much harder to find a relationship you want are very conservative
towns like Maringouin and area, where I live, and also SSA,
BA, BR (not a small town, but provincial). I think most guys 40+, esp. most white guys 40+, if they are raised in very
conservative/macho cultures and haven’t broken out of them
at all, just aren’t that interesting to spend a lot of time with,
and maybe not even to just sleep with.
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I know someone like that too, and blaming it on the city is just another excuse – I met my boyfriend online, yet my friend who has tried dating online keeps insisting every guy she met with offline is “weird” – of course I don’t expect her to continue to date guys that she doesn’t like, but it seems like she always starts out looking for all the flaws in a person as excuses for not being attracted to any of them.
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P.S. OK I was going to explain why it’s difficult for me, my ex, and my cool friend same age in another town to find people where we live. But more interesting is a student, 22, beset by fear of failure and blocked.
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“I’m in academia, folks. This means that I’m surrounded by peddlers of misery everywhere.”
This is the best.
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^^ ““I’m in academia, folks. This means that I’m surrounded by peddlers of misery everywhere.”” Yes indeed. That made me laugh. Especially because I just had to deal with a situation that involved people throwing their misery (and insecurity) at me. AND I let it get the better of me for the better part of yesterday. Some perspective and a couple of nice people later, and it’s not nearly so bad anymore.
But on a more serious note, while I agree with your premise, I disagree with some of it in practice. I’m not really into dating, but in my entire life, I have NEVER been asked out on a date. And that’s not because I think anything about myself along the lines of the list above. But then again, I’m not *terribly* lonely.
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Do you ask people out, though? I’ve known people who felt undesirable because they’d never been asked out, when it was really just that they always did the asking first.
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I’m incredibly shy and not terribly good at socializing (yay for being Autistic!) – I asked someone out once, but past that, I don’t really know how to go about doing so. I’m not exactly looking for a relationship (or really dating) and I’m not overly lonely, but I certainly don’t feel that negative about myself. But that doesn’t people find me desirable. So maybe I’m mostly unapproachable, but I don’t know how I would make myself more so. I’m just talking from my own perspective, though, not a broad-brush view, and I do agree that what is said above is generally true.
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It seems crazy that people should be lonely. I vaguely remember being that way in my early twenties. These days, it’s not company I crave, but the capacity to be alone with my thoughts. Mike and I have taken to camping in a forest, for a couple of days every so often, where we do nothing but sit in our tent and look at the trees. It’s extremely rewarding and refreshing, although I’d never thought it could be so.
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I wish I could send this to every single last person who *ever* posted in the dating/relationships section on Wrongplanet, because good G-d, they need to hear it. That place is a cesspool of self-pity.
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I knew somebody would appreciate this. 🙂 Thank you, my friend!
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When I started reading, I was immediately reminded of someone in particular who, for some reason, constantly dumped his “woman problems” on me. He basically reiterated about half of the points mentioned above, plus “I have Aspergers, no woman will ever love me!” So this resonated with me greatly, because I am soooo very sick of hearing them. Learned helplessness combined with a huge ego problem and an overinflated sense of entitlement made me want to grab him and yell “Get out of my neurotype! You’re embarrassing us all!”
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“an overinflated sense of entitlement made me want to grab him and yell “Get out of my neurotype! You’re embarrassing us all!””
– This is too good. 🙂 🙂
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“are too smart;
are too complex;”
A favourite among the undergrad/grad set. Yeah, we totally cannot comprehend your tragic genius.
Gotta say, I’m loving this series of posts from you. I’ve thought like this in the past, even cultivated some friendships that validated and enforced these destructive feelings. So easy and seductive to fall into this line of thinking. Glad I’m out of that.
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Thank you for the support, Stringer Bell!
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Nietzsche said it best. People tend to suffer from too much development of consciousness. The higher the civilization, the more they lose touch with their roots. I could have been one of those for whom relationships didn’t work out if I hadn’t taken a radical turn whilst I was still able to do so.
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But the higher the civilization, the fancier the toilets.
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Do you ever wonder why higher civilizations write a sign “to let” that is only one letter off from “toilet” What are they trying to tell us by this?
As a child, I also wondered why there was a guy called “physio the rapist”.
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“As a child, I also wondered why there was a guy called “physio the rapist”.”
– And thank you for killing this word for me for good. 🙂
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“higher civilizations write a sign “to let” ”
Well where I’m from they don’t do it like that but after all it is Texas.
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Being human means being lonely on occasion.
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