Climbing but not getting anywhere

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How can they be available when the odds are against me in ever establishing a relationship with them? And where did I say I didn't like them? I was just telling another poster I never ruled out overweight women.

When’s the last time you asked a former cheerleader out?

There's no way to know unless she says so but I haven't even tried to ask anyone out since that girl at the Barnes & Noble who I thought I was going to click with turned me down. I had gone through a string of failed attempts to make friends/girlfriends that I just got so burned out.

I wish others could understand why I want to die sometimes. Not only can I not even get a date, I've struggled to play the guitar since 2002 and my drawing ability can't improve. It's like my brain refuses to undergo neuroplasicity.

Speaking from experience, some women in those categories aren't especially fixated on finding someone within those categories, so long as they find someone who can maintain a conversation, reciprocate their affection and demonstrate interest and commitment. It turns out the one thing that unifies all demographics is humanity, and these needs exist on a deeper level than attachment to any given subculture.

Well...there you go. You don’t really know these women. You don’t know if the girl who will go out with you is there or not.

How many girls did you ask out before you burned out?

I can relate to both of these quite well as someone who formerly drew and played guitar and bass (not well x3).

Would it be a hijack to ask what sort of stuff you liked to play, type of guitar, etc?

Excellent point.

Some people look and act a certain way because they don’t have any other basis for comparison, no frame of reference. They are the way they are because there’s no point or advantage to standing out or being different. Had they been exposed to someone who doesn’t fit the mold, they’d probably go for it.

However, making assumptions will keep you from finding the right match among those women. It takes time to succeed, but it’s worth it if you’re stuck amid a single culture, demographic, or geographic location. The obvious solution is to move out and move on.

But if you can’t be with the one you love...

Here is a longshot. I only mention it because it happened in real life.

When I lived temporarily at a motel in North Hollywood, I met an interesting couple. They had a one year old child. The woman, from California, met her beau on an online dating site - and he lived in Australia. They hit it off, he bought a plane ticket to California, and the rest is history. Here are a few sites for aspies to mingle.

https://www.aspie-singles.com/

https://aspieology.com/

http://www.spectrumsingles.com/

http://www.nolongerlonely.com/

https://www.pof.com/

https://www.okcupid.com/

What's the point of answering you? You are just going to invalidate my struggles. That's all you ever do and so do my other detractors here.



I tried PoF back in the summer of '09. It was the first dating site I tried and truthfully, it made me exasperated with them. I didn't get any replies from anyone I messaged and no one messaged me first.

Last edited by Marknis on 09 Mar 2018, 5:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

He's not wrong, but his approach might be. Here we're telling you 'line up to get kicked in the liver again, every few hundred I get what I want, it might work for you' and ignoring that you've suffered all the rewardless kicks to the liver you can handle. On the one hand, you can't win the prize if you don't play the game, but we all have different rates of success and some empathy for your experience is deserved and needed (especially if that person wants to council you that you just need to keep playing).

Many of us have been where you are though, either to the point of wanting to give up (ugh, who needs to be with someone) or to the point of giving up (hmm, helium tank rental costs...).

Both yourself and anyone trying to offer advise are facing a dilemma. How to reduce the costs of the game (the emotional pain you feel when rejected) to an amount that's endurable to make continuing to play viable. If no one can address that aspect telling you to keep playing isn't actually helpful even if it's not actually wrong.

I’d settle for just playing.

I could be LESS helpful. I could say, hey, you’re just not cut out for relationships. Between your attitude and something else that I’d only know if I met you IRL, you creep girls out.

But I DON’T know that. I DO know Mark repeatedly says he avoids women and other people where he lives. I DO know Mark has made every effort to stay right where he lives. I DO know Mark has blamed me and many others for his lack of success.

I DO know Mark has made little to no effort to meet many women. And when I point that out, he runs and hides and blames everyone else for his apparent failure. I say “apparent” because I’m not assuming he’s a lost cause. I’m holding out for hope that he might get fed up with his own excuses and start making things happen.

And, to use your words, part of that involves much more liver-kicking than we like. I’ve paid my dues and regenerated a few dozen livers in the process. I’ve been there and know what that’s like. I know there are ways to shield your liver so that taking hits are more evenly distributed and feel more like a gentle shove.

The problem isn’t that Mark has gotten liver-kicked too many times. It’s that he quits after only a few of them. Like, count-em-on-one-hand few.

If you won’t use my approach, fine. Figure out what works and go with it. You WON’T figure that out by doing nothing.

@Marknis: if you want help and will accept it, post here. Validation is not help or advice. The Haven is plenty appropriate for being validated. Even I have my moments and stop by Haven every few years or so just to unload.

I do understand your frustration, though. I’m trying to get you to see that a large part of your problem is your unwillingness to connect with women.

At my personal worst after I dumped my fiancée, I figured that as hard as it was to get HER, as aweful as she was, there wouldn’t be anyone else. ONE girl showed interest in me and I chose to go for it. It ended badly. TWICE. I fell in with 3 girls (over time) who were in the middle of bad relationships. We connected over that. Things didn’t work out well with two of those, and the other almost got me killed. But I was beaten up emotionally enough by that point being in and out of love that fast didn’t really hurt so bad. I made moves on other girls and got rejected...but I figured my chances weren’t good to begin with, so I didn’t bother with taking any emotional stock in them.

My last gf before my wife was an amazing woman. If I had to choose again how to end my dating career, I’d not have done it any other way. It was sad and we both cried a lot. But in the end I got to be with my best friend and I’ve never been happier.

As far as success goes, I’d say I’m somewhere in the middle. I haven’t had a lot of girlfriends and, honestly, never cared to date that much. I accomplished my life goals, so, yeah, I won. At one end are the womanizers, the jerks, and the PUA types. At the other are 40-year old virgins. You aren’t in the worst possible position. You just need to do more.

Unwillingness to connect with women? Are you even reading my posts? I want to connect with women, I just can't seem to do it no matter what I try.

I've tried cold approaching, online dating, speed dating, calling a dating agency, paying on a 'fling site' out of desperation, and even going to a bible study. I have done a lot more than what you are implying.

As for avoiding women in my area, that only applies to redneck women, 'hoodrats', and hyper religious women. I occasionally see an alternative girl but they either tell me "I have a boyfriend/I am married." or "I am too busy." and it discourages me. My ex-friend, a bisexual and polyamorous woman, tried to introduce me to her female friends. One of them I had met before and wanted to get close to her but she looked uninterested while the other scowled at me the whole time.

Not a fan of the cold approach. That works if you set it up right, but that takes time. I still meet new people by working out, running on the track, etc. Once a week I run from one end of town to another and a few people have seen me do that and talk with me later. So you can make contacts by being a sort of weird, standout kind of guy, and that can turn into a friendship or more later on. I’ve gone from barely saying a word to anyone to getting names and other info from women jogging in the park. You have to be almost aggressive in developing those habits. I think that’s how people make the cold approach work. I’m not sure that’s the best bet for YOU, though. If you want to change that, you’ll need to work more on simply making friends.

I know you’ve done a lot of different things. What is it you’ve done that you’ve stuck with? Consistency is a powerful thing in dating.

I couldn't stick with most of the things I tried. Speed dating was expensive because I had to pay for gas, parking, and the session itself. Online dating I got burned out with for reasons I've already stated multiple times and the fact the gender ratio on those sites are highly imbalanced. Some things I couldn't even start such as the dating agency because it turned me down solely for only being a part time worker.

I thought I made a new friend in Austin after seeing and talking to her at the comic book store she worked at quite a number of times. She actually friended me on Facebook but never talked to me on there. I tried making friends on Meet Me but I was met with stunted conversations and foot dragging. When I went back to college, I was given "f**k off" signals by the girls I talked to and the previously mentioned Barnes and Noble incident happened around this time. I did try one more time during the summer with these twin girls who come to the library sometimes and was told I was nice (I've made small talk with them before) but that they don't hang out with others because they have trust issues. The chain of these interactions has damaged me in so many ways that I lose hope more and more each passing year.

There’s a reason people end up on online dating sites. You’re better off.

The money thing is a legit concern.

Comic book store girl was one step in the right direction. Make friends, build contacts in social media, etc. That’s GOOD. Do more of that.

College is for studying, not dating. True, a lot of people date in college, but relationships in college are complicated distractions.

What bothers me, though, is the eff-off signals you were getting. I wonder why. My first guess is those aren’t really the girls you need to approach in the first place. Always start by making friends. Making friends eliminates the kinds of barriers that earn you those signals. Get to know someone, hang out. I’m also curious as to what those signals actually were. There are all kinds of signals and it’s easy to misread people.