Is love worth all the trouble?

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In another thread we've already discussed at length whether a majority of young Aspie males can or cannot get dates. I think most of us agree that they can, given some time and effort. This seems essentially correct to me; even I could, with lots of hard work and self-improvement, possibly, imaginably get a date. But what I want to ask you is this: do you really think it's worth all the effort, to go to all that trouble just to make ourselves more attractive to women? I mean, a date is only the first of many steps on the way to a fully mature relationship, and on that road there are many other pitfalls that could be difficult to negotiate for Aspies (or even some inexperienced NTs). Besides, many NTs can't maintain healthy long-term relationships even to save their lives (with either other NTs or Aspies), and I don't see why Aspies should be any better at this. Just have a look at the double digit divorce rates in almost all industrialized nations to get my point. So, I keep asking you this slightly philosophical question, why is love worth our while? Isn't it all an illusion anyway? And isn't all this energy better spent on education, careers, hobbies, or, in many cases, just staying alive in this complicated world? I'm not saying that these activities preclude the possibility of romance, but we must realize that everybody has a finite amount of vital energy, and that in Aspies this vital energy may be depleted a bit sooner, due to the stresses of survival.

Last edited by dddhgg on 02 Jan 2010, 12:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This is just how society has worked for the past thousand years. Get married, have kids, and work until you're dead, or have enough to actually retire. I see nothing wrong with it, as it's the standard you need for raising well-adapted kids.

I'm more against the culture we're developing right now. Everyone is becoming gluttonous and selfish. The few romantics out there are focused on finding 'the one', aka Mr. or Ms. "Perfect", and that's a recipe for disaster. We should focus on what we need to be happy, and using that as our standard.

If couples can do that, not focus on perfection, but simply being happy together, it can be a very nice, lasting relationship. People need to be responsible though, and that's one area modern society has begun lacking. A happy couple requires two responsible, loving individuals.

romantic love seems like a bit of an illusion, and it normally passes over time. long-term solid friendship with a caring partner is attainable, but only if we drop the search for absolute perfection. we're brought together by our similarities, but we grow through our differences. it's only if we can accept the other person isn't going to be exactly the person we want them to be that there's any hope of a long-term relationship. i know that's something i've struggled with in the past, probably related to my aspieness, but i'm trying to work past that now.

My advice - do the fixing up for your own self confidence but at the same time know how 'you' works, ie. don't steal from the best of yourself nor believe that you can completely amputate every weakness; humans aren't limitlessly malleable and certain faultlines you can struggle against and realize that you're fighting against them, at the cost of your own mental health, to where they're like elastic or rubber bands - every last ounce of effort is lost because any progress you think you made simply recoils back to your allowed genetic domain.

What you're ultimately looking for, if you want love, is someone who brings out the best in you and you do in them. You're looking for someone who honors you as an individual and can actually see the best of you. To do that, do what I said above - just work on the best of yourself. However, don't worry about being attractive to *most* women; that you may likely need you're brain removed and to have an extrovert placed in the remaining body - while it seems appealing you likely wouldn't like the end results either, bad things in long term relationships seem to happen to guys who get too much positive to tell up from down; ie. you don't want to waste your time with anything less than what's right for you and surprisingly or not being only attractive to some saves you a lot of hassle.

If I had it all to do over again, I might just concentrate on that and watch for a woman doing the same.

IMO, even a proper relationship isn't worth all the hassle. It gets stressful, arguments happen, and if you end up moving in together you lose your freedom.

At the moment I seriously can't be bothered putting myself through that crap anymore, I'm putting my effort into more important things at the moment.

Relationships are not worth it. Caring for people only gives you pain

But that's not true.
Yes, it is often frustrating, annoying, and stresses you out.
But still, it's nice to have friends, or at least to have some people you get along well with.

I wouldn't believe anyone who says they don't need other people on these forums.
Why would they be on a forum in the first place?

I've been struggling with the same question, though: is an actual relationship "worth" it?
I really need my own freedom, my own space, my alone time.
My last girlfriend took about all of that away from me, and it freaked me out. I broke up with her.

Ideally, I'd find some other girl with Asperger's who's interested in me, but what are the odds of that?

Yeh, it's kind of a baseless compulsion, alright.

I do need people to talk to, I agree. I also need people in general because I despise feeling alone. However, lately I realised that building up any sort or relationship with anybody, tying yourself to people is just not worth it. It's hard, painful and if you lose it, unbearable. If you have nothing (in this case no relationships), you have nothing to lose so theoretically you end up being better off.

I don't think anyone could ever be mutually interested in me either

I hate taking risks and I hate uncertainty but I don't think I'd ever forgive myself if I someday turn 50 and think to myself: "I've led a boring life." Not a bad life, but a boring life. No relationships, no action, no fire. Maybe I should take the risks and risk having a bad life rather than a boring life.

Then again, what if I won't find a calm life "boring"? I sure won't be missing out on "passion". My hobby is my passion.
But is it enough? For how long will it keep me occupied?

I often long for a girlfriend to talk to, to share thoughts with, to feel comfortable around.
Will that go away? Is it stupid to long for that? Should I give up? Should I keep hoping?

I often break my head over things like these but in the end I just think to myself: f**k it, it's not like I'm gonna hunt for a lover anyway. Because where will you meet someone? I really dislike going out, and I'm not going to school. So I'll just go on with my own life and see if anyone crosses my path. SOMEHOW. But I'm not going to push anyone away. I'll just... "go with the flow".

In short, my only problem with your way of looking at things is that I'd might come to regret it at later times.
Might miss out on something beautiful. Or something horrible, of course, but then at least I'll be able to say I tried.
And at least my life wouldn't have been a boring one.

You know Bach, you make a very good point. I think the problem is that a lot of people feel that they NEED romantic love to be content and happy. They feel it is a necessity of life, when it merely is a fortuitous occurrence that works for some and not others. I honestly believe the pursuit of love leads to embitterment and disappointment. When people search desperately for love, they only make themselves miserable, because they are searching for something that can't be readily achieved. They are putting the cart before the horse. They want the prize without going through the contest.

You are absolutely right when you say "isn't all this energy better spent on education, careers, hobbies, or, in many cases, just staying alive in this complicated world". It took me a while to figure this out, but it is absolutely true. With all that energy that you focus on to achieve love, you can invest all your interests into other facets: hobbies, career, education, etc.

The whole basis of practical love, theoretically, is based on stability. In order to be stable financially, and come across an independent individual, you need to get an education so that you can eventually get a good paying job, from which you can live on your own. Simultaneously, you can build friendships with co-workers, friends, etc and so forth, while pursuing personal interests and hobbies. And hopefully, through hanging around people with the same personal interests and hobbies as you, you'll find someone who you are romantically attracted to and the feeling might be mutual. And because you are independent and take care of yourself, the personal you are attracted to will find that attractive about you. It makes logically sense in that order.

Yes, yes, there is more to it than that, but it is a basic outline, and once you have secured a job and live on your own, and you're having trouble finding someone, you can look into books on how to attract the opposite sex, and look for places where you meet people with common interests. However, you are going to have to expose yourself to other people to get any kind of result.

Having been in a rather turbulent intense relationship myself, I can say that it was still worth it... that one month made me feel more alive than any other time in my otherwise drab existence...

Why are you afraid of leading a boring life? In the end, the vast majority of so-called boring people lead uninteresting yet more or less happy lives, with neither abnormally great joy nor abnormally great pain. I'm under the impression that people with so-called exciting or unusual lives generally "oscillate" more violently between happiness and misery, and I think one may be pleased for them if their "net happiness" (if one ever could define such a thing) is zero, or nearly so, at the end of the line. I think that it's very rare for people with non-boring lives to end up with a large surplus of happiness, though I could be wrong about this. Somehow Western civilization, perhaps under the influence of Romanticism, has come to regard a boring, bourgeois, merely comfortable life as something decidedly negative. Formerly this conviction was held only by a small, marginalized minority of artists and (pseudo)-intellectuals, but somehow it managed to spread out to society at large. This has resulted in an almost paranoid avoidance of everything which reeks of ennui and boredom, but all-too-often this is exactly counterproductive in the pursuit of happiness and contentment.

Personally, I would rather lead a boring life... it would mean less spontaneous crap for me to put up with. But I don't want to go through it alone... I want someone to share that life with.

I'd hate to have a boring life, but I'm not going to make it exciting with a relationship, I'm getting rich, moving to Monaco, etc