The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Notes -
Things are going slightly better. I still believe that I am fundamentally unlovable due to autism and subpar physical appearance, but I've realized - just like my dad taught me with respect to work performance - that if I'm going to avoid terrible outcomes, I need to be in the top ten percent. That just gets you a seat at the table...just like top-10-percent performance at work is table stakes for an Aspie to get a job, keep food on the table, and not be living in the ghetto or trailerpark dodging bullets and assholes chasing you with knives. I've got to look like I could compete in physique bodybuilding competitions, be impeccably dressed, and be extremely kind AND make...hmm...maybe a million a year? just to have a chance at a relationship with someone that isn't going to wind up with someone in some kind of institution or other. There is nothing wrong with this...that's just how it is.
So I've been practicing speaking better, learning facial expressions, and being graceful. I believe that the average person - the average Joe - is every bit as good socially as an English longbowman was at archery seven hundred years ago, or as good as his Mongolian counterpart was on horseback. That they can go years without making a blunder large enough to be put into words (at least, while sober), that every smile, every gesture, every laugh is as graceful, as effortless, and as beautiful as a concert pianist's music or a professional ballerina's grace. To be better than this takes immense determination and talent, but I hope to be tolerable at some point...to not subtly repulse people because I laughed for a fraction of a second too long at a joke.
I don't know if anyone on the spectrum has ever become above-average socially. Maybe Aella, but she's a special case...I'm a dude, and short of independently advancing medical science I'll never be pretty or beautiful. But I hope that I can be charismatic enough to not only have a large social circle but convince someone to willingly and freely endure something they find disgusting. That's a hard thing to do...but there have been average people that have pulled it off.
A question, for all of you: If you have ever seen anyone who was charismatic enough to inspire people to willingly endure disgust, or misery, or chronic pain simply to make THEM happy, how did they do it?
You’re in medical school, right? That’s probably in a college town? Important info
Yeah, it's a college town. Even so...why does this matter? A good makeup artist can do good work on a hog, and this is admirable, but it's still a hog.
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What is your goal here? To establish meaningful relationships? Is that actually what you want? There are many lonely people in the world who would be happy to find a friend, but friendship is not about what a person can do for you, it’s about what you can do for them.
If you’re just looking for people to fluff your ego or be your servant, it ain’t gonna happen.
I can have friendship. It is probable that I can have a lot of friends. I do not think that a romantic relationship that is better than being alone is a realistic goal for me, however.
It’s not realistic at your current level of self-esteem, I would agree.
If you’re simply looking for a woman, regardless of personality, many commenters here have suggested a “mail-order bride” type from Southeast Asia or Eastern Europe. And they’re not wrong. Millions of women would kill to move to the US even if it meant marrying a person with autism.
I would take these suggestions seriously. But I get the impression you want a woman to fall in love with you, not because you think that’s more romantic or respectable, but because it will pump up your ego. I think your desire for a relationship is a bit misplaced. Trust me, a relationship does not heal your insecurities, that has to come from within.
Why the hell wouldn't she simply leave me as soon as the ink is dry on the green card? Not blaming her - I'd do the same damn thing in her shoes.
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This is of course subjective. How did you come to this realization? People online who post pictures tend to be in the top quartile.
For the autism: professional diagnoses. For the physical appearance: measuring tapes are pretty objective, and even if my face was average I’d still be 5’6”. The two together are probably too much for me to overcome…if I was 6’2” and had a great-looking face, or if I was neurotypical, I’d probably be OK. Without having to decide where I want the ambulances if I wanted a partner.
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Dude you are doing this all wrong. You don't need to be super hot or perfect or whatever you're trying to do. You need to be nice to yourself, accept yourself with all the flaws you have, understand that you're doing your best and nobody's perfect, stop comparing yourself to others. Just be happy with who you are. Otherwise you are playing an impossible game that leads only to misery.
Do whatever you have to do to change your mindset, don't do whatever you have to do to chase perfection or charisma or whatever. You sound insufferable because you can't accept the good parts of yourself so if someone admired any of your qualities, you're so hard on yourself that you'll repulse anyone who wants to show affection toward you. This is a horrible way to live, for yourself and for the people around you, so you owe it to yourself and others to get your shit together, show kindness and gratefulness toward yourself and those around you and stop comparing yourself to anyone you think is better off than you. They're probably going through all sorts of horrors that you can't see, just like you are.
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Your writing is quite good (the claims themselves less so). Why wouldn't the same intelligence that lets you do that apply to being 'social' as well? Both are about communicating with or having a certain impact on people.
This is hilariously false. Where'd you get that impression? Small blunders happen pretty frequently. Large blunders still happen with some frequency. From the smallest things like 'you're talking to someone, intend to say one word but say another, and they get confused' to something like 'you suggest a restaurant / activity, everyone goes to it, turns out they all hate it' to ...
I'm still struggling to understand how you came to believe all of this. Could you narrate, like, a recent particular five to ten-minute period where all of your normal acquaintances were acting like impeccable socialites while you made a bunch of blunders? As that's apparently the normal state of your life?
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Slavoj Zizek travels the world speaking to paying audiences of intellectuals, has been married four times and he has two children. According to wikipedia his third wife was an Argentinian model. His current wife is thirty years younger than him. The precondition for how he did it was in not dismissing it as impossible or insurmountable. He achieved those outcomes despite being a flabby book-nerd who can't get six words into a sentence without twitching, stimming and flecking his t-shirt with spittle.
Stephen Hawking had three children and his wife married him despite his being diagnosed with a condition that would condemn him to life in a motorised wheelchair. Later he divorced his wife in order to marry one of his full-time carers. He spoke through a computer and his most graceful gesture would look like a mild spasm if anyone else did it.
I'm not saying you'll get married to a model if you ""just be yourself"". All I'm saying is that there are normal average women out there who don't need you to be an impeccably dressed millionaire bodybuilder before they'll give you a chance.
That's all you need. Achieve the same outcome enough times and eventually things begin to go well.
Muggsy Bogues played in the NBA at 5'3". I'm taller than him. Does that mean I too can play NBA ball... maybe ditch medicine for the Golden State Warriors?
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Hmm. About the cult leaders: William Penn did something like this in 1670 with twelve jurors who went two days without food or drink, then spent nine weeks in jail because they refused to convict him. Bushel’s Case is the only one that I’m aware of, but I’m far from a historian. William Penn was a remarkably charismatic aristocrat…like the difference between, say, LeBron James or Michael Jordan and the second-string point guard for the Golden State Warriors, whose name you likely don’t know unless you follow basketball. Penn, however - unlike me - was doing what he did for some concept of the greater good. I cannot see how people like me having families and making more like me - more people who cause mild biological offense simply by existing, who activate systems of bias and prejudice almost as central to our nature as human beings as the feelings we feel about deformed people - feelings, I might add, that are either inborn or learned by six months of age. Months, not years. Six month old infants prefer attractive people to ugly ones. I can understand and accept that people like me ought to be celibate for the greater good, and should dedicate their lives to something prosocial in exchange for ordinary social inclusion. I understand the idea that we ought to be expected never to express a single shred of interest in sex or relationships, either: if we did, we might get the idea that we, like other “normal” people, had a right to shoot our shot (but not to never be rejected or some bullshit like that) like anyone else. There is value to that: we might become resentful and find ways to fuck up the social fabric that we all depend on or something.
I do not understand why we are encouraged to have relationships, given that it is likely that lights and sirens, institutions and social workers, tragedy and misery, will be involved. The best I can come up with is that I’ve earned some kind of dispensation by being a medical student, and people assume and hope that physicians can say “Not today” to personal misery and tragedy the same way they do for their hospital patients. Who knows: maybe we can figure out how to get good outcomes for our 400lb wives, or be good husbands and fathers if our wives decide to try and stab us, or some other miserable crap like that. And…maybe, and this is a hell of a stretch - I can’t quite understand - it’s better to contribute by making the next generation in these conditions than to be celibate.
I might have been exaggerating about the Mongols and ballerinas, but I think that people like this are maybe 95th percentile at best? The longbowmen I wasn’t joking about; John Smythe c. 1300 was an ordinary village blacksmith that could pull a 130lb bow and hit a dinner plate at a football field. Same with the barrel-maker in the next village over. This was ordinary. That is the ability that I think average people have. Someone that’s say, a salesman? Definitely comparable to a professional musician or something like that. And I have a friend that’s a professional musician, another that became a professional golfer. Know a couple guys that hold state powerlifting records.
You talk so much about your supposed ugliness. Have you posted a picture of yourself so far?
I talk about being unattractive. My physical appearance is...20th percentile, I'd say. Not Quasimodo, but not at all good. Add autism to that, and it's not looking good at all. I will contend that autism functions in more or less the same way as physical deformity or ugliness. Someone could watch me talking with my friends and form a durable opinion on my awkwardness after just a couple seconds. A single still photo would be enough.
Please show, don't tell.
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Bro, that's not top 10%... that's top 1 in 10^4 or 10^5, how many kind millionaire bodybuilders do you see walking around in daily life? top-10-percent isn't that hard to do...
I'm 5'6 and ugly. AND on the spectrum. This is table stakes to get someone average, for someone like me.
How ugly are you exactly? I doubt you are uglier than Bukowski (who's photo I posted in response to one of your previous rants) and I would lay million to one that he was a bigger asshole -- and that guy was pulling chicks without trouble before his semi-success as an author. (in fact his first wife, who he married before he got super-ugly, was by far the worst looking. How do I know? He told her so all the time, and put it in his (unpublished, for quite a while) books. Like I said -- asshole)
You know what people like about Bukowski? He was the most honest author in history; I presume he was similar in person.
Maybe try that.
Not in a "be yourself" kind of way -- more of a "be honest with yourself and others" kind of way.
I do recommend alcohol in this case.
I think that being on the spectrum puts me in the bottom five percent for attractiveness. As I am now…I think my level of attractiveness is “just barely attractive enough for people to not be openly surprised or disgusted that I want a relationship” or “attractive enough not to be desexualized (in the disability theorist sense)” or “attractive enough that people at least pretend to be surprised that I’ve never had a relationship”. As far as my physical appearance…my face is 25th percentile perhaps, I’m 5’6”. I also think that Bukowski’s not all that ugly…maybe ruggedly handsome, or ruggedly masculine, not that bad compared to men his age. He’s neither morbidly obese nor deformed, and he’s six feet tall to boot.
I believe that being on the spectrum more or less functions the same way as deformity. Yes, you can learn ways to compensate; yes, you can learn social skill. But people make durable judgments about us from still photos of us interacting with friends, or two seconds of video…no, it’s not quite the same as someone that’s been burned in a house fire, but the snap judgment is still there and I’d argue the mechanism is similar.
I’ve tried alcohol. Tried pot, went to Oregon (where it’s legal) to try shrooms. Several times. I had a nice experience once, felt a bit more socially perceptive (and this was confirmed by a close friend), but it’s not enough.
Even if Bukowski was ugly: Muggsy Bogues played in the NBA at 5’3”. I’m taller than him. Does that mean that I, too, can play professional basketball?
Very few people play professional basketball. Finding a relationship is something considerably easier and something the majority of people can do - though it has become more difficult in recent years. In addition, professional sports are inherently competitive - there are a fixed number of slots on teams that people fight and compete for. Whereas the number of relationships is elastic.
I understand your frustrations. I frequently wonder if I will die alone. I believe that I am very unattractive, have an unattractive body (despite going to the gym), and have a repellent personality. On the other hand, other gay men, when I interact with them, often show interest in me and compliment me and often seem genuinely surprised at my lack of romantic success. Though I know my thoughts are irrational and it's wrong of me to have them, I've never been able to control them.
I don't think this is true. Do you judge others so quickly?
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I think you are mistaken. It's probably not your fault you've been hoodwinked by a bunch of people who want to medicalize everything. Nobody cares if you are "on the spectrum".
Come on now: https://tommygirard.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/bukowski-and-his-wife-linda.jpg
The dude is fucking ugly. The wife is perhaps not a prize, but she doesn't weigh 400 pounds and is considerably younger than him. And if you think your personality is a barrier, have a look into some of his antics. Your social awkwardness will not stand up, I guarantee.
Maybe if you travel back to 1980 and try really hard? IDK, are you good at basketball? Anyways you are not trying to play in the NBA, you are trying to play 21 on the corner lot -- NBA would be marrying Christie Brinkley or something, you should not try to do that.
Not sure I would recommend reading Bukowski personally, but he is full of tips for various life situations:
He looks old, not ugly.
There's not as many pictures of him when he's younger, but he's pretty ugly then too -- he had bad acne for one thing, the scars of which you can still see when he's older.
Anyways the point is that he was pulling much younger chicks when he was old and ugly -- his first wife (when he was pretty young) was the ugliest one.
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