I Don't Deserve It

@Maverick_nc Smoking weed - any strain I've tried - gives me anxiety attacks unfortunately. I can barely stand getting a contact high. The only thing that calms me down is sex. Or venting, which is why I embarrass my future self with these posts. It's practically the only way I can find catharsis, because I don't believe anybody I know in my personal life would be capable of helping me deal with myself. Hi future self!

@Maverick_nc

I understand that nobody can have all the answers. You're right. I stumbled upon the same realization by way of Kierkegaard.

But I don't care if I don't have the answers to things that don't matter to me. The thing is, "romantic relationships" (to put it in short-hand) do matter. If they didn't, I wouldn't have even made this post. So that leaves me two choices.

1) I reach a point where my life is not negatively impacted by their absence. That is to say, whenever I encounter a beautiful female, I don't reflexively, privately daydream or fantasize about anything and feel emptiness as a result. I don't even mean with that specific individual; I mean that at a higher-level. I don't fantasize about being in a relationship, period. About anything cute or romantic, period. I don't worry about not ever having that at all, or feel a guilt-ridden jealousy toward the people who seem to have an endless supply of that. TL;DR is I have come to terms and accepted that they are beneath consideration.

2) The second is to figure out why I fail at them, or meta-fail at them by failing to even have the chance of failing at them, with the purpose of making the necessary changes that would allow me to fulfill that part of my life.

What Ezra calls overthinking, to me is a process every human mind is familiar with. Is this worth figuring out, or not? Do I care why I'm the worst basketball player in my friend group? To put it another way that gives more credit to your response, overthinking - to me - is when the subject is something that doesn't matter at any super-ordinate level.

This is why well-intended cliche responses like "it'll happen" or some variant thereof are entirely unhelpful to me. Even if it DID "just happen", subconsciously there is the knowledge that I never figured out what those problems were. And if the problem is *me*, or if I'm at least part of the problem (which is basically a given as long as one takes a modicum of self-responsibility), then it may as well have not "just happened" at all, as at any moment I could start saying or doing the things that have always been undermining me.

"It'll happen" is about as reassuring as saying "you have no control over it, and it's up to chance or some miraculous magic". I've suffered the consequences of rationales that end in cynical nihilism. I feel powerless enough as it is. That won't help, which is quite unfortunate, as it would seem that's all that most people need to hear. I don't know how I could ever be okay with living in absolute ignorance; it isn't bliss to me, because the bliss tends not to last very long and I'm very aware of that. This is why I've often entertained the idea that perhaps love is nothing more than an agreement to enter a total delusion. But that's actually too cynical for ME, of all people. I pondered on that for a while and I realized that if that turned out to be the case, I really had nothing to live for. I could kill myself without a qualm. And I didn't want that, and I wasn't convinced that "delusion" explained it anyway, so I needed to keep investigating.

However, I believe I know why "it'll happen" is the default response. The matter is so complex that you'd need to be a person's therapist for a decade, or at least a family member or close friend for majority of a person's life, to even have a clue as to what may be going on.

Is it the fault of society? Sure. Is that helpful? Yes, but not in the sense of controlling or changing society. Only in the sense of navigating it.

Is it my fault? I can safely assume yes. I can think of mistakes I've made, and I have my hypotheses. The ways in which it could be my fault though are manifold, and what might be a cause in one scenario with one particular person, may not be a causal factor whatsoever in another situation.

Is it their fault? Given the above, one can safely assume yes. I can also look to past experiences and point out the things that are deal-breakers with me.

Is it the fault of chance or happenstance or even fate? Yes, there's a certain undeniable arbitrariness to life. Yet again, as with society, to what degree is this helpful? Am I to resign to being at the mercy of fate? To throw up my hands and say "well, it's a numbers game, and by my calculations it would seem as if I'm trying to win Mega Millions"? I should think not.

As monstrous of a task as it is to try and sort it out, I honestly cannot accept the opposite, which would be to ignore it or repress it. In fact, I couldn't even accept that if I tried. Every time I so much as look at a merely remotely attractive female is enough to trigger an explosive chain-reaction of past experiences and reveries and anxieties and wants and hopes and dreams and doubts and knowledge and confusion.

Should an increase in beauty result in an increase in relational instability? No, but many people assume so, and such an assumption results in tacit support of this correlation. Just think of Barney Stinson's Law of Hot / Crazy.

I say that only because, aside from "it'll happen", another is to give up on attractiveness. It makes me laugh every time so I'm starting to think it isn't a serious suggestion, but a meme. I'm not going to give up and live the rest of my life knowing I settled because I was a quitter.

To end this long-winded rant, I find it necessary to mention that I do not expect or seek anything that would make a hypocrite of myself. I would not expect loyalty if I'm not loyal. I wouldn't expect honesty if I'm dishonest. I can't expect good communication if I'm not communicating.

I'm not asking for perfection, but I'm also not asking for too much. If I can achieve what I am asking for, so can somebody else. Just because they are a woman doesn't change that fact. If my standards are high than people must be setting the bar so low that they're laying it on the ground. And that's just not acceptable, in my opinion.

I've had people tell me that the only way to get what I want is through hook-up culture. That is to say, get what I want *except* for commitment and investment and "looking for anything, uhh, ya know, like, oh my Gawd, serious".

I've had people tell me to go to a church, ignoring the fact that I'm not religious in any traditional sense of the word, and ignoring the fact that I'm not really a fan of chastity and I think virgins are overrated, which is why I think Islam is overrated.

I'm waiting for some big-brain to find a middle-ground alternative, because the notion that values or characteristics like commitment and beauty and moderate intelligence and a moral compass and sex can't somehow go together in a remotely balanced way, is, well, dumb.

Anyway, I at least agree with you that it's necessary to give myself a break and worry about other things like going to school, writing, and work. That way my problems stay contained to one quadrant of my life; at least the other areas of my life are being addressed and getting better. I can't get so caught up in these issues that I completely neglect everything else. That would make everything much, much worse.

To be frank, focusing on "school, writing, and work" is all I try to do anymore, in hopes that I can achieve Option 1 that I mentioned toward the beginning of this response. The more I try to achieve being disaffected though, the more it seems an impossibility. Which is disappointing, as that would make this all very, very easy. I could take the easy way out AND not have a care in the world. No regret on my death bed. Wouldn't that have been nice.