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:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Back when I was single and lonely I could have been at risk of tell myself something exactly backwards from that:
I never really cared about social approval from my peers, I just wanted a girlfriend
That is to say, the desire for female companionship was far stronger and deeper and more substantial than any possibility that it was invented. On the other hand, the longing for social approval, while it objectively was also very real, was somewhat ephimeral and certainly displacable (and especially displacable by romantic approval of a single woman), to the point that I can kind of imagine that if I was slightly different, I could have falsely convinced myself that I didn't really care about social approval at all, it was just a dimension of my romantic loneliness. (and to be fair, once in a serious relationship, non-romantic social contexts do change tremendously and diminish in importance. )
So, what's my point? N=1, but if you can convince yourself that maybe you don't even really want a girlfriend, you're certainly outside of what my experience with normal romantic longing was. Far enough that it's true that you never really cared? I can't tell you that. But if you're looking for an outside measurement check - the ability to hold that thought doesn't resonate with my experience of authentically wanting a romantic partner.
Maybe a better way to express my thought is: I had an idealized version of what having a girlfriend would look like and how it would change my life. That is what I cared about and wanted.
After getting a girlfriend and many subsequent post-breakup dating interactions I realized that girlfriends and romantic relationships look a lot different than what I had idealized. I no longer cared much about them after replacing my idealized version of these ideas with versions based on my experiences.
Another potential component of this is I sometimes want something (such as a job) because I think it will be greatly beneficial. If I can’t get it then I will fixate on how much better my life would be if I just had this one thing. Then once I finally get it I quickly stop caring very much about it because it didn’t have the benefit I was expecting.
I can certainly identify with the 'having an idealize girl' feeling, and the 'adjusting to an actual girl not meeting those ideals', and that led in my dating life to a lot of introspection about whether I needed to adjust my perception or find a better girl. But never anything like
Any grappling with comparisons to idealized fantasy girls was part of a deep desire to find real girls that fit the bill, never anything like disillusionment with dating girls generally.
All that to say, I can't really help ya. I hope you work through what you need to and decide what is best for you.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah. Evolution really really wants you to have kids (and you probably should!), so you'll have a strong drive for a romantic relationship independent from anything else.
More options
Context Copy link
Make that an N=2. When I've been single, I've had a healthy, happy, and normal social life with good long-term friends and a deep longing for romantic companionship (or at least sexual companionship that serves as a decent enough simulacrum for romance, even if it's not the real deal). In contrast, while romantically partnered, I have only very rarely felt that I didn't have enough of a social life outside of my relationship; the only time I can even think of was the government-imposed isolation of Covid. When considering romantic isolation, no amount of self-talk about objective material and platonic success even slightly moved the needle against being in dire need of a woman.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link