Negative attitudes in men

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Space, I understand what you are saying. I have tryed doing that myself. But the "good" girls I have tryed to go out with have rejected me outright without giving me a chance at all. These are women that I have things in common with but they still think I'm screwed up someway and don't want to see the real me.

And people wonder why I'm so negitive/ bitter towards women.

I'd say stop trying now so you don't end up bitter like me.

I'm in the same boat. I think I have a realistic outlook on life that is shapped by my experiences. I don't expect good things to happen because I have no reason to expect them to. I'm 30 years old, live with my mother, have a job I don't like, unqualified for new jobs, no friends, I've never had a girlfriend at all, I can't participate in my special interests because I don't have the means to and spend my free time sitting in a chair in my living room with nothing else to look forward to.

But, Bataar, not all good things in life just happen to people. Good things are created by the individual. And it has so much to do with attitude.

This is an honest question - why do you still live with your mom? If it's finances, would it be possible to rent a room from someone or share an apartment, perhaps with other aspies?

If you have a job you don't like, that's a choice. Being qualified for a new job might mean going back to school to work toward something you are interested in.

What are your special interests? Why can't you participate in them? Are you able to drive or ride a bike? If you live at home, what do you do with the money earn?

I'm truly trying to understand the specifics of what you're going through, so please don't think I'm trying to be difficult. I think reading your post is so hard for me because even if you were a single man for the rest of your life, the world is still an amazing place with so much to offer, and it's sad that you would be content to sit in your living room because you believe there's nothing to look forward to.

TOS -- I agree with you that violent behavior and outbursts are almost always counterproductive, especially in small children.

However, when people treat us badly and actually threaten or coerce us, there comes a time when all of us need to put our foot down and take a stand. This goes against everything we've been taught by our parents and society -- after all, we're supposed to be polite, defer to the other person, not make waves, etc. But when some as*hole keeps pushing, intimidating us, taking away our dignity and opportunities, maybe even hurting us, you have to do something.

I've gotten a lot of practice at this in traffic, which I don't recommend -- I just go completely nuts. I foam at the mouth, I yell, I hang out the window, I let that person know that today they made a big mistake. I let them know that if we tangle, no matter what happens to me, they are not coming out of this unscathed. This is an extreme example.

The more civilized version of this is to let a person know that you are a tar baby, that whatever they do will only make it worse for them, that you will never forget, forgive, or give up. When faced with those prospects, difficult people become very reasonable. The key is that you have to stop caring about yourself at that point -- you just have to care about screwing up the other person as much as they are screwing you up. You need the rage of indignation. In this world, if you don't take care of your interests, no one else will, and some people will take what belongs to you.

AutisticMalcontent

I hear ya, buddy, It's very hard. Lots of effort, no results = depression and a sense of futility. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. If you don't invest, you will never, ever, get anything you want.

So here's both the smart part and the hard part -- invest where it matters and can do some good. Ever talk to a sports gambler who makes money consistently (they do exist) or a stock broker who beats the market most of the time? They don't let their ego or personal preferences get in the way. Yeah, they may like the Yankees, but when it comes to their money (i.e. your time in this case), they take the smart bet, not the "I love the Yankees" bet. Same goes for the market -- brokers may love something about a company, but if they know it's not going to get them where they need to go, they pass on the opportunity and look for a company that will make them money. The smart ones don't always win, but when they win, they win big, and they cut their losses so that they win more than they lose.

You need to do some smart investing. You need to go after return on your time and emotional investment. Yes, maybe you think a certain girl is perfect, but if she's not showing the signs that she's interested, it's a waste of your time. Spend 6 months developing a set of skills, about half of them observational (the other set should be social). Learn to know when a girl is interested. That's your winning bet or promising company. And bet on more than one at once -- something will come through.

Oh, and my usual advice -- find a hobby, work out (but don't overtrain), eat well, do well in your career, and make sure you are ready to handle a GF when the opportunity finally comes. Basically, when you land that fish, make sure you have a net to catch it in and know how to cook it.

Yeah, lots of metaphors, but that's me.

+100 Space, good advice above -- you're right on.

This is where I think you're really misleading people... By all means, you don't have to bend to everyone's wishes... and a little aggression on the road is often necessary (I learned this growing up in NJ, after all)... but by the same token, getting pissed off at everyone is only a means to further alienation from friends... I only started making friends when I stopped being an as*hole halfway through high school...

Exactly - so like my post in the other thread, don't get pissed off at everyone -- just that 1-3% of the population that won't play by the rules, the criminal/antisocial element, or the social version of these (social bullies and users). They will make a big threat display to get you to back down -- make yours back, but mean it.

I'm not advocating picking fights all over the place -- I don't do that, and I have not been in a real fight for my life yet (and hope not to be). However, when it is time to take that stand, take it, don't be a p****, don't back down, don't get victimized, and don't lose out. If you make it clear you have nothing to lose, and they have everything, the equation in their mind changes rapidly.

It goes from them thinking they are going to make a "profit" in some way off of you (prestige, your girlfriend, your money, your car, your social position in relation to them) to just trying to get out of the whole transaction without losing any of their own prestige (or an eye). This principle works on an individual level, and it scales up all the way to international politics. It's how we kept the Soviet Union from overrunning Western Europe for almost 40 years.

So yeah, use your judgment, and be wise with your actions, but when it's crunch time, you be the one crunching, not getting crunched. In the case of the bullies you mentioned in the other thread -- I would unleash every resource I had available -- the law, lawsuits, cops, teachers, friends, allies, whatever -- It's war, and it's on. Who is going to back down? Not me. Sure works well when I need s**t dealt with from people who won't cooperate. Not all force is violence -- my "big stick" metaphor is just that, just like Teddy Roosevelt's was. He clearly didn't literally mean a big stick, right? He meant force and will.

For whatever reason, I'm just a passionless person. Someone will be giving me advice for something, and all I see are the reasons the advice won't work. The flaws just jump out at me. I sit in my living room because I can't think of anything better to do. I can't think of a need or reason to go anywhere else.

Well, except for our view on pursuing women, we share close similarities. We both agree that not many girls our age are worth dating, and that party girls and pretty girls are not worth the time or effort.

You talk about "good girls", who are worthy of having relationships with, and who appreciate the more personal and intimate qualities of guys. You also acknowledge their rarity. My question would be this, If they are so rare and so hard to come by, why should one search for them? What is the motivation for going through so many bad relationships to find one "good" one. If anything, I would think bad relationships would make a person stop the pursuit because they see that the glass has been half empty on many occasions.

As for "the girls out of our league" who have a change of heart, grow up, stop dating jerks/bad guys, and start looking for nice guys- Forgive my sarcasm, but how "gracious" of them to change their minds and come back to us! You know, I see this thing as rather insulting. The girls we find physically attractive ignore and reject us for a long time, and when they realize that they won't be beautiful forever and realize that they don't like jerks, they come back seeking us, after all the time they spurned us? Does that not sound a bit convenient?

And of course, most of us guys will leap at the opportunity to finally date a girl out of league, who not so long ago rejected and ignored us. Maybe it is just me, maybe I can't understand the concept of forgiveness and letting bygones be bygones. But it seems to me that once girls out of league decide to "change", all the times they have ignored us and spurned us are magically forgotten.

They're not so rare -- you just have to look in the right places. The good chicks tend to congregate in some places, while the awful ones congregate in others. This is what makes it look like they are the majority, depending where you look.

He didn't actually say they were rare. He said they were hard to find, which is rather a different thing. (He also said that many are already in a relationship, reasonably enough. The woman's version of this is the saying "all of the good ones are married or gay". If you've never heard this saying, you haven't spent enough time listening to women.) They get easier to find if you stop looking at women as members of a largely homogenous group- Women- and start looking at them as individuals. From your previous post, I am guessing that a huge barrier for you is not seeing women as individuals. Instead they are members of the group Women. Why do I think that? Because of your response to his observation that older women, including shallow girls who have finally matured into women with depth, turn away from the "bad boys" they found attractive at 23 and look for other qualities. (He's absolutely right, by the way.) Your response to that was that you were pretty insulted and had no intention of being there for them after they spent years rejecting you. Except that any given older woman DIDN'T spend years rejecting you. She never even knew you. But you have to look at her as an individual, not as a representative of all the women who rejected you in the past. Once you see women as individuals and not as representatives for all women who have rejected you in the past, these "good women" will be easier to find.

The motivation for going through bad relationships to find the good one is that you learn something from every failed relationship. Every woman that you have a failed relationshup with teaches you something. The women's saying for this is "you've got to kiss a lot of toads before you find a prince". Again, if you haven't heard this saying before, you haven't spent enough time listening to women. It is the rare person indeed who has a long and happy marriage to the first person they have as a boyfriend or girlfriend. Failed relationships hurt, but in that hurt is growth and learning. If you avoid the failed relationships because you don't want to confront that potential pain...you won't ever have a good relationship.

You are going to have to do SOMETHING. Do something drastic. Take a job working on oilrigs in thailand, move across the country and get into construction work, go teach english in asia. This will get you out of mom's house, turn your world upside down and give you a new perspective, and maybe you'll be 1 step closer to finding a job. Staying in the deadlock and doing nothing just kills your spirit. I suggest geographical+work changes because those you can control, and they will drasticly change your outlook on life in a short period. The stuff you can't control, like how women and other people react to you, will suddenly not seem so important, and then before you know it those things will change too.

A relationship that fails isn't a failure if you tried to go for a decent girl who should be worth it. I don't say waste your life trying to find the right girl... just live your life for you and be the best man you can be, all the while be on the lookout for the goodgirl, so when she comes into your life you are ready for her.

It doesn't matter what we think, life is not fair and never will be. Hanging on to old hurts will guarantee failure. People are human... they can change too. I don't want to be bitter anymore or become a bitter old man one day, I'd rather give people a second chance than just stay bitter about my teen/college years for the rest of my life.

And of course I will add....part of being ready for her is knowing what makes relationships fail. This is best learned by experience. The catch is, that experience HURTS. There are those rare couples who make it to old age still married to their highschool sweetheart. But most people have at least one spectacularly painful failed relationship under their belts before they find The Right One. What makes it hurt- but is necessary- is that you don't know at the outset if this will be The One or will be a painful failed relationship. Space is absolutely right and good things only come to those who just get out there (and out of mom's house- also right about that!). The catch is, the pain of a failed relationship far exceeds the pain of being rejected by pretty girls (I am making this sound so great, aren't I?) but walking through that fire is a necessary path to learning what makes relationships work and learning that (the hard way) is how you get to a good relationship.

Ken, has it occurred to you that they did see the real you and that they just didn't like it? You seem to be incredibly negative with awful social skills and spelling and a feverish dark side. I once saw you say you wish the entire staff at Yahoo burns in hell because your personals profile accidentally got deleted.

A negative attitude denotes that you carry a lot of baggage, so much in fact that it bored its way into your core personality broadcasting that you wish to unload it upon the rest of the world. Nobody in thier right mind would want to carry the brunt of that.

Awesome job on shortly finishing school though. It's quite an accomplishment that will change your life a lot. Try to enter your new life optimistically, with a clean slate trying not to harbor any bad feelings from the past. No matter how much success you have, it's real hard to enjoy it with the mindset of a failure.

im usually a negative thinker, but one person on this planet changes that, my gf, im positive around her..to the extent that she teases me for being "cheesy" and "girly" or even "gay" (by the happiness definition, not sexual orientation lol). But unfortunately, i'm also fairly childish and over emotional with her, which has caused problems recently.