I mean, I think the problem you are talking about is actually a solution. You ditched a bunch of people who were your “friends”, but who didn’t actually care about you. Good! That’s what you should do! Building a good social circle isn’t about being friends with literally everyone, and it isn’t about staying friends with people who don’t value you - it is about finding the people who value you for who you are, and who actually give a shit about you.
Your abusive upbringing, your experience having bad friends - I don’t wanna say that shit doesn’t suck. But my advice here is to look for the lesson that you can learn. I’m not religious, and “everything happens for a reason” doesn’t resonate for me - but I do believe that in every painful human experience, there is an opportunity for growth and learning if you look for it. So with your shitty friends, you learned something about how you don’t like to be treated. You learned about some personal standards you will hold future friends to. Same with every other time you got taken advantage of - you learned what shitty people do, how they manipulate you, what warning signs to look out for. Every time you have a shit experience, you learn more and more about how to identify the assholes so you can filter them out of your life quickly and efficiently.
The fact that you are comfortable doing things solo is great. Being able to feel good and get shit done on your own is a foundation of living well. But at the same time, I wouldn’t use it as an excuse to retreat from social life. However far you can go solo, whatever you can accomplish, however good you can feel, I guarantee that you’ll be able to go farther and get there faster, with less effort, with friends - good friends.
I am trying to rebuild my life, and part of it has to involve (early on… as early as possible actually) to get a girlfriend.
This is an awesome goal, and I 100% support you. However, I recommend you reframe this to “I want to rebuild my life, and part of it is becoming the type of man who is confident in his ability to get a girlfriend.” Because when your goal is just “get a girlfriend”, you can end up with someone who isn’t a good match for you just because that was your goal. And if you don’t feel confident that you can get another girlfriend, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking “well, she’s good enough, it’s not like I could do any better” or “I don’t like it when she does that, but I better not say anything or she’ll leave.”
I always keep a small circle of friends when I do have them and I would rather keep it that way. I am picky about that for a reason.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with having a small circle of close friends. I’m not recommending, like, trying to get 100k followers on IG and calling them all friends or some shit. But the “when I do have them” part is concerning. If you only have 3 people you consider friends, but none of them are that close and you periodically lose them, then you have a very shaky social support system. What you should aim for is having a small circle of really close, really supportive friends who you are fairly certain will not ditch you. But no one just shows up in your life and immediately becomes a close confidant - you meet acquaintances, then those acquaintances become loose friends, then regular friends, then close friends. At each stage, most people in each level will not make it to the next level for whatever reason. Meanwhile, your small circle of close friends will often shrink for one reason or another - hopefully for good reasons, like a friend getting their dream job on the other side of the country. But that means in order to maintain your strong social support system, you need to always be feeding your friendship pipeline. If this sounds Machiavellian, I can assure you that in practice, it isn’t. It just looks like doing things like what you are already doing, like going to meetups, meeting new people, spending more time with people you like, not spending time with those you don’t, and becoming comfortable opening up emotionally to the people you like the most.
I want to convey that, no I will not be using her as an emotional dumping ground. That’s just not style. It never was.
I will say that if you have never used a girlfriend as an emotional dumpster, then you probably will soon. It’s kind of just an inevitable part of the process of becoming a more dateable man. You have a bunch of pent up shit, and then you end up finally feeling close enough to someone to open up, and then it ALL comes out. Therapy can be helpful, but isn’t really the same as dumping all your shit on someone you know. I’ll also say that if you aren’t talking to people in your life about your worst shit, you aren’t really making the progress towards emotional openness that you need to form good relationships long term. Your eventual goal should be to have a solid group of friends you can talk about your deep shit with, plus a therapist, plus a girlfriend. That’s called redundancy.
Well I do have friends, and yes they are pretty solid. Not many, but I guess maybe I already have that handled? I guess I misworded my statement there.
However they aren’t the type of friends you meet girls through. Like I said, I am autistic and all my friends are neurodivergent in some way. One of them was married, had kids, divorced, got engaged, broke up, and is currently single, the other hasn’t had a girlfriend for a long time, but he does have his own fairly active social life and is very active in the autism community… and I am actually kinda surprised he doesn’t have a girlfriend since he does associate with a lot of people with cool artistic lifestyles (and he himself is fairly artistic). I know a few other people, even if I don’t see them regularly, I am in contact with them.
So finding a girl will have to be a solitary activity like everything else I do. Not that that is a bad thing, and I am sure there are plenty of introverted girls who would be fine with everything. I am not looking for some party gal, I am not compatible with them. Also I am not looking for one-night stands. As much as I said in the past that I wonder what it would be like to bone new girls regularly, I seriously doubt it would be satisfying in both the short-term and long-term.
I should mention that… yes, I did go to gang-bangs and orgies. Most of my sex partners were through there, and I did get compliments from the girls many times (legit ones). However that is when I realized that impersonal sex is not something I want to do. Not to say I wouldn’t go to one of those again, but the groups that organized them appear to be defunct now.
BTW, those groups are the way I learned I had a big dick. When I was with my first ‘girlfriend’ (and she is one reason why I still have many sexual hang ups. The story of my first sexual experience ever is… not pleasant. Like even many PUAs who had sex with a parade of partners said they would have given up women and sex if they had an experience like that) the condom seemed to break a lot. I didn’t ejaculate, not even precum, so no pregnancy risk… but I didn’t understand it.
Turns out? Well, I needed magnum condoms. Magnum XL condoms are more comfortable. I know this is a TMI situation, but I am not doing it as a brag or anything, but this was a practical concern. I would not have sex without a condom, and I have never wanted children, so the condoms stay on for obvious reasons…
But my experience with that girl will mean that going forward, even if I might be getting sexual with a girl, I need to make sure that we are compatible to be with one another for a while first, otherwise I am not proceeding.
I will say that if you have never used a girlfriend as an emotional dumpster, then you probably will soon. It’s kind of just an inevitable part of the process of becoming a more dateable man.
Maybe I misworded that statement of mine, too. If you mean not opening up about stuff previously, then… well no, we all gotta know about one another’s pasts. My last girl frequently talked to me about her past (but me being 33 and her being 19 at the time kinda meant she was talking about her very recent childhood, which felt weird at first, but I realize that that is all she knew at that time), and I did mention my stuff. Her insight into it really did help me rethink a lot of stuff, which is why having a girlfriend is an important part of getting better, and not just ‘get better and get the girl’ it is ‘get better and gets girls while you are doing it, because they are part of the process’.
I mean, I think the problem you are talking about is actually a solution. You ditched a bunch of people who were your “friends”, but who didn’t actually care about you. Good! That’s what you should do! Building a good social circle isn’t about being friends with literally everyone, and it isn’t about staying friends with people who don’t value you - it is about finding the people who value you for who you are, and who actually give a shit about you.
Your abusive upbringing, your experience having bad friends - I don’t wanna say that shit doesn’t suck. But my advice here is to look for the lesson that you can learn. I’m not religious, and “everything happens for a reason” doesn’t resonate for me - but I do believe that in every painful human experience, there is an opportunity for growth and learning if you look for it. So with your shitty friends, you learned something about how you don’t like to be treated. You learned about some personal standards you will hold future friends to. Same with every other time you got taken advantage of - you learned what shitty people do, how they manipulate you, what warning signs to look out for. Every time you have a shit experience, you learn more and more about how to identify the assholes so you can filter them out of your life quickly and efficiently.
The fact that you are comfortable doing things solo is great. Being able to feel good and get shit done on your own is a foundation of living well. But at the same time, I wouldn’t use it as an excuse to retreat from social life. However far you can go solo, whatever you can accomplish, however good you can feel, I guarantee that you’ll be able to go farther and get there faster, with less effort, with friends - good friends.
This is an awesome goal, and I 100% support you. However, I recommend you reframe this to “I want to rebuild my life, and part of it is becoming the type of man who is confident in his ability to get a girlfriend.” Because when your goal is just “get a girlfriend”, you can end up with someone who isn’t a good match for you just because that was your goal. And if you don’t feel confident that you can get another girlfriend, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking “well, she’s good enough, it’s not like I could do any better” or “I don’t like it when she does that, but I better not say anything or she’ll leave.”
I don’t think there is anything wrong with having a small circle of close friends. I’m not recommending, like, trying to get 100k followers on IG and calling them all friends or some shit. But the “when I do have them” part is concerning. If you only have 3 people you consider friends, but none of them are that close and you periodically lose them, then you have a very shaky social support system. What you should aim for is having a small circle of really close, really supportive friends who you are fairly certain will not ditch you. But no one just shows up in your life and immediately becomes a close confidant - you meet acquaintances, then those acquaintances become loose friends, then regular friends, then close friends. At each stage, most people in each level will not make it to the next level for whatever reason. Meanwhile, your small circle of close friends will often shrink for one reason or another - hopefully for good reasons, like a friend getting their dream job on the other side of the country. But that means in order to maintain your strong social support system, you need to always be feeding your friendship pipeline. If this sounds Machiavellian, I can assure you that in practice, it isn’t. It just looks like doing things like what you are already doing, like going to meetups, meeting new people, spending more time with people you like, not spending time with those you don’t, and becoming comfortable opening up emotionally to the people you like the most.
I will say that if you have never used a girlfriend as an emotional dumpster, then you probably will soon. It’s kind of just an inevitable part of the process of becoming a more dateable man. You have a bunch of pent up shit, and then you end up finally feeling close enough to someone to open up, and then it ALL comes out. Therapy can be helpful, but isn’t really the same as dumping all your shit on someone you know. I’ll also say that if you aren’t talking to people in your life about your worst shit, you aren’t really making the progress towards emotional openness that you need to form good relationships long term. Your eventual goal should be to have a solid group of friends you can talk about your deep shit with, plus a therapist, plus a girlfriend. That’s called redundancy.
Well I do have friends, and yes they are pretty solid. Not many, but I guess maybe I already have that handled? I guess I misworded my statement there.
However they aren’t the type of friends you meet girls through. Like I said, I am autistic and all my friends are neurodivergent in some way. One of them was married, had kids, divorced, got engaged, broke up, and is currently single, the other hasn’t had a girlfriend for a long time, but he does have his own fairly active social life and is very active in the autism community… and I am actually kinda surprised he doesn’t have a girlfriend since he does associate with a lot of people with cool artistic lifestyles (and he himself is fairly artistic). I know a few other people, even if I don’t see them regularly, I am in contact with them.
So finding a girl will have to be a solitary activity like everything else I do. Not that that is a bad thing, and I am sure there are plenty of introverted girls who would be fine with everything. I am not looking for some party gal, I am not compatible with them. Also I am not looking for one-night stands. As much as I said in the past that I wonder what it would be like to bone new girls regularly, I seriously doubt it would be satisfying in both the short-term and long-term.
I should mention that… yes, I did go to gang-bangs and orgies. Most of my sex partners were through there, and I did get compliments from the girls many times (legit ones). However that is when I realized that impersonal sex is not something I want to do. Not to say I wouldn’t go to one of those again, but the groups that organized them appear to be defunct now.
BTW, those groups are the way I learned I had a big dick. When I was with my first ‘girlfriend’ (and she is one reason why I still have many sexual hang ups. The story of my first sexual experience ever is… not pleasant. Like even many PUAs who had sex with a parade of partners said they would have given up women and sex if they had an experience like that) the condom seemed to break a lot. I didn’t ejaculate, not even precum, so no pregnancy risk… but I didn’t understand it.
Turns out? Well, I needed magnum condoms. Magnum XL condoms are more comfortable. I know this is a TMI situation, but I am not doing it as a brag or anything, but this was a practical concern. I would not have sex without a condom, and I have never wanted children, so the condoms stay on for obvious reasons…
But my experience with that girl will mean that going forward, even if I might be getting sexual with a girl, I need to make sure that we are compatible to be with one another for a while first, otherwise I am not proceeding.
Maybe I misworded that statement of mine, too. If you mean not opening up about stuff previously, then… well no, we all gotta know about one another’s pasts. My last girl frequently talked to me about her past (but me being 33 and her being 19 at the time kinda meant she was talking about her very recent childhood, which felt weird at first, but I realize that that is all she knew at that time), and I did mention my stuff. Her insight into it really did help me rethink a lot of stuff, which is why having a girlfriend is an important part of getting better, and not just ‘get better and get the girl’ it is ‘get better and gets girls while you are doing it, because they are part of the process’.