I (22M, American) was raised by a conservative family and taught traditional gender roles. I was told multiple times that that “gay” men (men who didn’t conform to traditional masculine gender expression) were ruining society and literally deserved to die, and that people out in the real world do the dirty work of disposing of them through stochastic violence.
Unfortunately, I turned out almost exactly how I wasn’t supposed to. I wanted to embody a cute and delicate masculinity, my true personality was caring, affectionate, and emotional, and I loved cute and pretty things. Ironically, I was so in love with feminine energy that I developed an emotionally intense heterosexual attraction to women, though in a way that was nothing like the typical straight model.
Long story short, I faced an entire childhood of ridicule and isolation and eventually developed an autoimmune disease with disabilities as a souvenir. I wanted to take my own life, but the Internet existed, so I numbed myself with endless slop content instead.
The progressive side of the Internet taught me that there are a lot of ways of being beyond the “conform or fucking die” model I was raised with. I learned that a minority of women actually could be attracted to me despite my utter disregard for the manliness rules, something I was blackpilled on before.
But I am still too scared to leave home. It is hard to motivate myself to do anything because the source of my fulfillment is to make people happy, but I can’t meet anyone because I’m frozen in fear. I still feel like everyone will hate me for being too feminine, and that the occasional stray vigilante will try to put a bullet in me. Even if I could defend myself, it feels too risky: I have to win every single time, while they only have to win once. On top of that, I am now visibly disabled, so I have to deal with ableism on top of everything else.
I can’t function this way. I’m not motivated to take care of myself or put effort into online college because I see no point to life if I can’t be social and authentic IRL. I literally just want to make people smile and feel cared for, but it feels like I’m too alien for people outside of a progressive echo chamber to accept me, and life will be full of constant gender policing, harassment, and threats of violence (especially because this is the U.S. we’re talking about). The most productive day of my life happened when I thought for a moment that I had a chance, but I fell back into my old habits once I started having doubts again.
It could be worth noting that I live in central Ohio, somewhat close to the city, so it’s not like I live in the middle of a rural hellscape. I also saw a non-binary androgynous person working at a clinic the other day, which seems like a good sign? I went to school in a more rural area, but of all of the people who seemed to like me, most of them were closer to the city.
If you have faced a similar situation, how did you make it through?
Yes I would also say a majority. The majority of women are attracted to nice men (i.e. "cute[,] … delicate[,] … caring affectionate, and emotional)
I want to believe this is true.
But because I have such a hard time talking to people I know, talking to people I don’t know is just… Not in the cards. I can’t just pass notes to women in a bar or a coffee shop, that would probably be weirder than anything I can think of.
So even if it is true, I won’t ever get to experience it.
I was in a similar spot - hated that I was so poorly skilled socially, felt like I couldn’t read a lot of social signals (I suspect I’m somewhere on the autistic spectrum), and hated that I felt like I was destined to be alone.
Couple of things helped me with this. First, I researched how flirting works. As in, I started reading research papers about it online. This was a few decades back, so I’m afraid I don’t have my notes anymore (and they’d probably be a little out of date now anyway); but I do remember that I got comfortable enough I could start experimenting with conversational approaches.
Next step was to practice. Any time I ended up in a socially comfortable setting with someone I didn’t know, I’d try to do some small talk. Keep it low stakes, try it out on people you don’t expect to see again, and see if you can get them to chat a bit. If it works, great! You’ve found a process that might work with others, and brightened someone’s day! If not, well, they’re not likely to remember you in two hours anyway.
After that, I started looking at online dating sites, and would practice the same process that I found worked for me - lighthearted jokes and expressing an interest in whatever they brought up, or what was on their profile; and following up with conversation about that. I have no idea if the same thing would work these days; I understand that the dating sites I used back then have gone downhill since. In my case, I had several first dates, ended up hitting it off with someone, and now we have two kids together!
I think the main thing is, to echo blarghly, see if you can get yourself comfortable interacting with people platonically. It’s likely something you’ll need to practice, and like anything else, it will be uncomfortable at first. Think of it as developing social muscles - it’s painful and intimidating, but if you stick with it, you’ll be able to do more and more with it.
(You mentioned you’re interested in speaking with women - if you’re a man, you might have an easier time if you know another woman who’s up for playing wingman for you. A man who’s already comfortably hanging out with a woman has a very different social profile from a “lone wolf”!)
The woman playing a wingman is probably easier anyway.
My guy friends suck at being a wingman and I suspect the autism has something to with that too.
The reality is I’m going to need to find someone neurodivergent that compliments my autism in order to have a chance at a healthy relationship and I have a strange relationship with numbers, probability, and an inability to accept things as they are.
Confirmed, that would be super weird. Don’t do that.
Instead, work on improving your ability to talk to people generally. First friends and family that you trust. Then work on meeting new people in structured social situations - new coworkers, hobby clubs. Then in unstructured social situations - bars, concerts, public events in the park, hiking on nature trails. Then, if you really want to, you can make typically non-social situations social - striking up conversations with cashiers at the grocery store, saying hello to neighbors walking around your neighborhood, saying hello to someone who looks like your kind of person at a museum.
This work is best done in tandem with working on yourself internally. Learning to love yourself and love your life unconditionally. The more you love yourself and love your life, the more people will like you, and the less any rejection will hurt.
As you become more comfortable and confident interacting with the world platonically, you can then start taking some baby steps into flirting. I don’t recommend thinking about it too much right now. Work on improving at talking to strangers first.
Yeah I’ll let you know how that goes.
I’m 34.
Sweet, so you still have 2/3 of your life ahead of you where you can improve!
I guess. There’s just too many sensory things going on during conversations for me to be able to focus enough on generating the words that I intend to come out of my mouth.
Most of the time I talk, I have to go on automatic, and people tend to get really pissed off because I tend to ignore the social rules mandated by neurotypicals. I don’t want to say I can’t improve it, it’s just something that hasn’t been impacted by anything I’ve tried with it.
The only real advantage I have now compared to any other point in my life is that I know I’m autistic.
Knowing is half the battle. The other half is believing you can improve and putting in the work.
What you said here reminds me of one of my favorite books - The Inner Game of Tennis. I don’t play tennis, but I still like the book. What you’re describing is the central problem of the book - how do you improve at a complex, fast paced skill like tennis (or conversations)? You don’t have time to think about the position of your elbow when the tennis ball is coming over the net, you just have to do it. It’s intuitive. But how do you improve at a skill that is intuitive?
The reality is, no one who is good at conversations is “trying” to say the right things in response to the other things they are seeing and hearing. They, just like you, simply act automatically.
Most likely what you need to do is to have more conversations where you just relax and go into automatic mode, and then notice how the conversation goes. And (as I mentioned before) work on loving yourself unconditionally.