There's some very specific thought patterns / mental hangups that you've articulated super well, and it's the first time in forever that I've seen them outside my own head. So, thank you for writing this!
Damn girl. You are very in your head, and while that might give you fuel for writing, I'm pretty sure it's quite counterproductive for the boyfriend problem.
My advice -
Do cold plunges. They basically rewire your brain and make you not hate yourself. They might not sound fun, but they are incredibly effective. You don't need anything fancy to start, you can just throw some ice packs in your bathtub and it'll work reasonably well.
Take up some physical hobby or spend a lot of time doing something very embodied. Yoga is probably the best thing for this, but any sport, dancing, gymnastics, rock climbing, etc. is also great.
Stretch and strengthen your lower body - your hamstrings and hip flexors in particular.
Do some things that let you lose your sense of self temporarily/get you out of your head - dancing in the club, going to concerts or sports events where you lose yourself in the energy of the crowd, getting drunk, etc.
Look up lovingkindness meditation and do it.
I hope these help. A big part of finding someone is just getting yourself into a healthy mental and physical state where you're open to connecting with them.
>I actually have insane amounts of psychological body dysmorphia because I can’t understand what the average person’s experience of me might be ... I started reading erotica written from a guy’s perspective and taking notes on it.
well there's an internal experience I never thought I'd see so specifically named in writing. I don't have any bad advice, just, this was affecting & weirdly helpful to read.
I feel like this is actually a fairly common failure mode, contrary to the reputation of incels as NEETs living in their parents' basement.
First, there is an absence of formative romantic experiences during high school (either due to controlling parents, or just maturing relatively late) and university (usually by entering some gender-bifurcated field, like engineering, or writing).
Secondly, some combination of anxiety, autism, or bad experiences, causes one to close themselves off and become oblivious to interest cues.
Then you enter the job market, you find other ways to deal with your desire for social interaction (work, hobbies), and sex (porn, smut), and you just end up forgetting that dating is an option available to you.
Eventually one might decide to try for a relationship, but there is strong psychological resistance:
* Since you are starting late, there is probably a strong sense of time pressure
* You have basically no idea how you are supposed to behave within a long-term relationship, so even if you get one you feel like it is doomed to failure
* Therefore, you feel that only a clear opportunity with a perfect match is likely to work out. But this causes a scarcity mindset and further pressure.
The most common advice is to go red-pill or have a party-girl phase because your advisors are correctly noting that your problem is that your barriers and the pressure you are putting on yourself is way too high. But this path probably works better for guys, because after putting in the work they can realize that they are desirable after all (the only trick being to hang up after you get the message). Whereas for girls, you already know that people want you, the problem is pivoting that into a long-term relationship (outside of attracting someone with a savior complex, idk).
Probably the solution is not to read stuff (also I probably have more or less the same problem, so you know, cura te ipsum), but here are some resources which might be helpful:
Haha, I appreciate the accurate summary of what leads up to this. I am mutuals with many of these wonderful writers and had already imbibed this advice and even had the pleasure of discussing it w them. It surely informed the basis for this piece. Thanks for your input.
I am not a licensed clinical psychologist, but I am married to one, and growing up it turns out a lot of my friends were autistic but weren't diagnosed until much later in their adult lives. After reading over your writing, a lot of issues that you experienced were identical to the social problems that they faced growing up as well, especially for my female autistic friends.
"Dawn doesn’t know how to respond, and the whole situation is emotionally loaded and messy and definitely driven by the fact that she has no one to tell her what she’s doing wrong or how to fix it."
It's pretty relevant that you chose this as an example because even though it's on a movie screen the problem Dawn has is an everyday occurrence for autistic women. Society socializes women to smile through their teeth during discomfort in order to be pleasant and not burden those around them. So even if a problem was to arise it would just be brushed off as "it's fine" without genuinely addressing concerns from all parties involved. Regina George talks shit behind your back for not being able to read between the lines instead of teaching you and telling you what you did wrong directly. So autistic women rarely get the chance to develop healthy boundaries because society tells them to just "smile and carry on" and their female peers do the same thing. For interactions with guys there's always a dance/performance that both parties have to go through because of social conditioning so being honest and straight forward is rare and if anything frowned upon, which only further hurts autistic women because they literally NEED direct and even blunt communication at times, especially when they're overanalyzing every social interaction because of previous traumatizing experiences from not being able to read a situation correctly. Asian parents just strictly and unemotionally order their kids to follow their rules so eventually you just lose trust in their guidance all together which only further limits sources of genuine care. At this point life is so confusing and disingenuous that romanticizing the idea of finding a mate and that it will solve all your problems probably just comes from a desperate need to finally be accepted that has been cultivating since childhood.
All of this leads to what a lot of autistic adults experience as "Imposter Syndrome". On paper, you can be kind, smart, attractive, but then why do you feel so incapable and unworthy all the time? It should be soooo easy to fit in because you have everything checked on the list of being "normal and successful" yet still feel like such an outcast. Most of this just stems from using the wrong checklist in life because everyone else was using the same checklist, and that's one of the major barriers to actually understanding yourself. There's probably a good reason why you're most comfortable processing and expressing your feelings with writing. Similar to art there are no concrete rules that you need to follow and no social structures to hold you into a person that you're "supposed be" and you're actually able to express how you truly are unmasked and unfiltered.
The journey is the destination. First you need to realize you're different, then you can feel "normal" because a fish shouldn't be judged on their ability to climb a tree.
There's some very specific thought patterns / mental hangups that you've articulated super well, and it's the first time in forever that I've seen them outside my own head. So, thank you for writing this!
thank you :)
Damn girl. You are very in your head, and while that might give you fuel for writing, I'm pretty sure it's quite counterproductive for the boyfriend problem.
My advice -
Do cold plunges. They basically rewire your brain and make you not hate yourself. They might not sound fun, but they are incredibly effective. You don't need anything fancy to start, you can just throw some ice packs in your bathtub and it'll work reasonably well.
Take up some physical hobby or spend a lot of time doing something very embodied. Yoga is probably the best thing for this, but any sport, dancing, gymnastics, rock climbing, etc. is also great.
Stretch and strengthen your lower body - your hamstrings and hip flexors in particular.
Do some things that let you lose your sense of self temporarily/get you out of your head - dancing in the club, going to concerts or sports events where you lose yourself in the energy of the crowd, getting drunk, etc.
Look up lovingkindness meditation and do it.
I hope these help. A big part of finding someone is just getting yourself into a healthy mental and physical state where you're open to connecting with them.
Ok, thanks!
>I actually have insane amounts of psychological body dysmorphia because I can’t understand what the average person’s experience of me might be ... I started reading erotica written from a guy’s perspective and taking notes on it.
well there's an internal experience I never thought I'd see so specifically named in writing. I don't have any bad advice, just, this was affecting & weirdly helpful to read.
I feel like this is actually a fairly common failure mode, contrary to the reputation of incels as NEETs living in their parents' basement.
First, there is an absence of formative romantic experiences during high school (either due to controlling parents, or just maturing relatively late) and university (usually by entering some gender-bifurcated field, like engineering, or writing).
Secondly, some combination of anxiety, autism, or bad experiences, causes one to close themselves off and become oblivious to interest cues.
Then you enter the job market, you find other ways to deal with your desire for social interaction (work, hobbies), and sex (porn, smut), and you just end up forgetting that dating is an option available to you.
Eventually one might decide to try for a relationship, but there is strong psychological resistance:
* Since you are starting late, there is probably a strong sense of time pressure
* You have basically no idea how you are supposed to behave within a long-term relationship, so even if you get one you feel like it is doomed to failure
* Therefore, you feel that only a clear opportunity with a perfect match is likely to work out. But this causes a scarcity mindset and further pressure.
The most common advice is to go red-pill or have a party-girl phase because your advisors are correctly noting that your problem is that your barriers and the pressure you are putting on yourself is way too high. But this path probably works better for guys, because after putting in the work they can realize that they are desirable after all (the only trick being to hang up after you get the message). Whereas for girls, you already know that people want you, the problem is pivoting that into a long-term relationship (outside of attracting someone with a savior complex, idk).
Probably the solution is not to read stuff (also I probably have more or less the same problem, so you know, cura te ipsum), but here are some resources which might be helpful:
Recognizing and sending cues:
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/493853.Love_Signals
* https://www.sympatheticopposition.com/p/how-and-why-to-be-ladylike-for-women
* https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/shy-nerds-please-stop-accidentally
Being socially open:
* https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/friends-missed
* https://www.bitsofwonder.co/p/how-to-make-a-lot-of-friends
Being responsive:
* https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/what-the-humans-like-is-responsiveness
* https://x.com/goblinodds/status/1913853232474214762
Being proactive:
* https://www.secondperson.dating/p/navigation-by-moonlight
Attachment:
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2153780.Hold_Me_Tight
Haha, I appreciate the accurate summary of what leads up to this. I am mutuals with many of these wonderful writers and had already imbibed this advice and even had the pleasure of discussing it w them. It surely informed the basis for this piece. Thanks for your input.
I don't have *exactly* the same experience but I relate to this and the post too strongly not to thank you for the reading recommendations.
I am not a licensed clinical psychologist, but I am married to one, and growing up it turns out a lot of my friends were autistic but weren't diagnosed until much later in their adult lives. After reading over your writing, a lot of issues that you experienced were identical to the social problems that they faced growing up as well, especially for my female autistic friends.
"Dawn doesn’t know how to respond, and the whole situation is emotionally loaded and messy and definitely driven by the fact that she has no one to tell her what she’s doing wrong or how to fix it."
It's pretty relevant that you chose this as an example because even though it's on a movie screen the problem Dawn has is an everyday occurrence for autistic women. Society socializes women to smile through their teeth during discomfort in order to be pleasant and not burden those around them. So even if a problem was to arise it would just be brushed off as "it's fine" without genuinely addressing concerns from all parties involved. Regina George talks shit behind your back for not being able to read between the lines instead of teaching you and telling you what you did wrong directly. So autistic women rarely get the chance to develop healthy boundaries because society tells them to just "smile and carry on" and their female peers do the same thing. For interactions with guys there's always a dance/performance that both parties have to go through because of social conditioning so being honest and straight forward is rare and if anything frowned upon, which only further hurts autistic women because they literally NEED direct and even blunt communication at times, especially when they're overanalyzing every social interaction because of previous traumatizing experiences from not being able to read a situation correctly. Asian parents just strictly and unemotionally order their kids to follow their rules so eventually you just lose trust in their guidance all together which only further limits sources of genuine care. At this point life is so confusing and disingenuous that romanticizing the idea of finding a mate and that it will solve all your problems probably just comes from a desperate need to finally be accepted that has been cultivating since childhood.
All of this leads to what a lot of autistic adults experience as "Imposter Syndrome". On paper, you can be kind, smart, attractive, but then why do you feel so incapable and unworthy all the time? It should be soooo easy to fit in because you have everything checked on the list of being "normal and successful" yet still feel like such an outcast. Most of this just stems from using the wrong checklist in life because everyone else was using the same checklist, and that's one of the major barriers to actually understanding yourself. There's probably a good reason why you're most comfortable processing and expressing your feelings with writing. Similar to art there are no concrete rules that you need to follow and no social structures to hold you into a person that you're "supposed be" and you're actually able to express how you truly are unmasked and unfiltered.
The journey is the destination. First you need to realize you're different, then you can feel "normal" because a fish shouldn't be judged on their ability to climb a tree.