Seeing all long-term relationships as fundamentally boring

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100% agreed with your post.

and... my bold of your line is likely the best solution for OP.

Yup, I think you nailed it. Both of my friends are like that. They're joined at the hip 24/7 (except when sleeping on weekdays and working), and they do only what their girlfriends want. So annoying!! ! Plus, when one girlfriend gets passionate about something, like new flooring in her kitchen or an ISIS attack, she starts talking in a shrill voice that scares the daylights out of me. (Imagine a preteen girl screaming at a Justin Bieber concert; that's what it sounds like.) I would never want to be in that kind of relationship. But with my luck, that's exactly what my girlfriend will be like. That's why I stick to escorts, social interest groups, and platonic female friends.

It's perfectly natural and realistic to suspect your relationship would be similar to your friends if you all share similar traits, values and lifestyles.

And, with the media backing-up your perception of what LTR's are like, along with all of your friends, who may be similar to you, all ending up the same way once they all entered LTR's, perfectly reasonable to believe you would be just as likely as they are to end up in that kind of relationship.

It does sound however like you have different taste than your friends, as they are happy with their LTR's, but you'd hate to be in their shoes.

Anyway, just keep doing what you're doing OP.

You've continued to dance around the question: Do you actually want a relationship?

Now, when I say relationship, I mean YOUR idea of an IDEAL relationship.

As unlikely, as impossible as the idea sounds, would you want to, hypothetically, be in an LTR that fits the idea of what your dream LTR would be?

I'd take the comfort and stability of a long-term relationship any day than being single ever again.

Yours could be different because you get to choose the woman you'd enter into a relationship with. You're not your friends or a character on a sitcom...so what logical sense does it make to think without a doubt any relationship you get into will be boring based on other people who aren't you. Hell say you started dating a girl, it gets to the point of being a couple..then things start getting serious and she starts trying to boss you around or prevent you from non-boring activities then you could simply break up with them.

You can also decide how quick you're willing to go...its not like you have to completely and fully jump into a relationship right away you can take your time and should you not like any direction things are going you can break it off.

Are you attracted to girls like that and would willingly date one? If not why on earth would your girlfriend be like that? Do you think once it goes from a few casual first dates to a serious relationship she'll just morph into someone like your friends girlfriends or a wife on a sitcom?

Where do you get this idea that you have no say as to what sort of woman would be your girlfriend?

For most of my dating life, I didn't have a say in who my girlfriend was. I just dated whoever showed interest. Only in the last few years I learned to walk away when a first date sets off red flags. So hopefully, I'll use the skill to filter out boring girlfriends. In the meantime, the messages I'm getting from people and from the media are far from encouraging.

If I can find a relationship that consists of riding trains, dancing salsa, and exploring the unknown, then damn yeah, I want it! But that's as unrealistic as turning into a lion or living in outer space. And even then, as a lion, I can get shot by an American dentist (news reference), and in outer space, I have to worry about oxygen and use reprocessed urine for water.

@ everyone
This past Sunday, I actually had a fun time. We hung out together as usual. Only---oh, world of wonders!---we went to an outdoor batting cage place, instead of the usual dinners. Whether it was as a favor to me or to take advantage of the extra hour of daylight, I'll never know. Only for the first time in months, I felt happy and relaxed as a fifth wheel. I even turned to limited PUA acts, to raise my status among the girls; I kept it subtle enough to pass for garden-variety jokes or brotherly teasing, that their boyfriends didn't say anything. At the end, the girls even hugged me, even though our greetings are usually strictly verbal. Sadly, these outings are extremely rare among my friends nowadays.

First of all, I am from the Caribbean and I guarantee you, it is more frowned upon there than it is anywhere in North America (except maybe that town from Footloose).

Second, why can you not imagine a long-term girlfriend doing that? Sure, some girls are probably not going to be into it, but some =/= all. Just don't date the boring ones

Thirdly, nobody is saying you are required to have a long-term relationship. It is a personal preference. For example, I like long-term relationships, because then you still do the same things you would do if you were friends, but also sex

P.S. Almost every wacky and fun thing you have said is not in a relationship, I have done multiple times in every one of my relationships.

This post is interesting to me because I am a homebody female that likes routine, but I also like not being held back from doing whatever I want and always having to answer to someone. I like to keep my own identity and all I can see are people around me who are in long-term relationships who do the same things over and over again. You can see that one partner completely hates their life, yet they keep the charade going. This is the most bizarre thing in the world to me. I guess I would not understand because I don't have that need to always be around people like the majority of society does, but still, it seems like such a waste of a life to be that way.

Well, I did say "port of call", which implies touristy silliness. The street performer probably groaned in his mind, lol. But the thing is, cruises and dancing pretty much go hand-in-hand, so the mentality just spilled over onto the island. Either way, me and that girl started a dance mob, people had fun, and the performer probably made a fortune in tips from the crowd. Later on the ship, a few people recognized us and said hello.

Why can't I imagine a long-term girlfriend dancing with me in the street like that? I don't know. All I know is that serious long-term relationships are the epitome of boredom. After all, "serious" is the opposite of "fun". And when you make something serious long-term too, that's when I have a problem with it! Because that's what I observed in all my close friends. As soon as they started LTR's, they aged mentally by 30 years and made me not want to hang out with them anymore. Plus I'm sure their girlfriends see me as a second-class citizen, or even worse, "that guy". I, in turn, view them all as "boring old people" (despite respecting the elderly in general), and now gravitate more toward my more distant, casual friends, who continue to hang out and have real fun together.

As for "not dating the boring ones", who would that be?! No one I come across in my daily life, that's for sure. My idea of a relationship is like Bonnie and Clyde, minus the criminal element. Just taking on the city: riding trains, talking to strangers on trains, picking apart similarities between world languages, dancing in the streets, drinking on the sidewalk out of a brown bag (illegal in the US), and standing on a bridge illuminated by city lights. But again, I CAN'T imagine a long-term girlfriend being anything close to that. So your notion of a relationship being great friendship plus sex creates a cognitive dissonance in my mind. If anything, a relationship is nothing but boring nights at home and sleep-inducing dinner parties, in my eyes.

What I've discovered about myself is that I need my own space and don't want to feel obligated to have to talk to someone and hang out with them all the time. It just starts feeling draining like a constant chore after a while and I become miserable and turn in to a jerk even though I don't want to be. I've had a tendency in the past to date women that I had very little in common with though, so I'm sure that's a major issue when it comes to that. I think we as aspies can tend to settle on our relationships and friendships just because it is the easiest thing to do, it is almost like we can't be too picky because of what we might lack socially, or we end up alone, which isn't always a bad thing.

5. They get married, and something crazy happens during the wedding.




Yes, quite a lot of men are like this - except here they would be married.

"I have to ask my wife" - something that I hear it all the time, even for simple outings.

Male power is a myth, they are the manipulated gender in the household.

Boo you can't make such a sweeping statement. It discounts all the women who have been in controlling relationships.

I have female family who have been on the receiving end of the "where are you, who are you with, your world should only revolve around me" texts when they are out.

Women who began to be afraid of being too autonomous for fear of the consequences when they got home.

Male family members too have been in abusive relationships.

You've got to be careful who you end up with whether you are male or female.

What I was describing wasn't a form of abusive relationships, it simply what most married men do - in my observation.
"I have to ask my wife first" for every outing is a far cry from abuse, I don't know what more exactly happen in their houses, but like Aspie1 I do have observed a lot of men who stopped going out at all once got married because of their wives not wanting so - and it's funny.

I see my female friends doing the same. They say, I'll check with my husband first. It's not gender exclusive. I have female friends I see less often now they are in relationships.

Maybe they didn't want to be out in the first place and use their partners now as an excuse. Oh she/he says no, is less hurtful to the old friend than, no I don't want to. I used to go because I was bored and lonely and had nothing else to do.

Now they have someone else to spend time with.

Reminds me of this song:

The days before you came
Were really all the same
The greyness I used to call freedom
Endless nights out with the boys
The boasting and the noise
To think that I ever believed that

I know, right? I bet even George Washington (the first US president) had to ask Martha's (his wife) permission before going off to fight in the Valley Forge. Feminists love it, I'm sure, but I find this very sad. As well as yet another reason to avoid LTR's like the plague. Plus, I have tons of hobbies I absolutely love: social dancing, craft beers, flying small planes, railroad museums, etc. And the notion that one person keep me away from them with just the word "no", makes me sick to my stomach.

I doubt it. They used to be outgoing guys. Although especially in the later years, a little bit less so than me. Heck, I went on a cruise by myself, and met tons of people. Now, they're all homebodies, and even getting them to go to the gym with me---more of an errand than "fun" thing to do---is like pulling teeth.