Explaining yourself on Valentine's Day....

[Foolery]

So, uh, when did the Escapist become r/Foreveralone? Just so you know OP, no really one gives a much of a damn if you're feeling down on yourself. If you act broken, and continue to believe that narrative, people will avoid you. I think it's better to create some sort of happiness or at least low-level contentment that comes from the self, rather than relying solely on external sources.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

See, I've never had to explain being single on Valentines Day. Not because I'm never single (though I'm not now), but because I don't give a crap.

The big problem appears to be that you feel this is an issue in the first place. Being single bothers you. Unfortunately, you treat women with antipathy, and that's probably going to put most of them off you. If this is such a big deal to you, you might want to look into the actual reasons that you're single, and I think that attitude is central to them.

This seems like a pity party to me, and...I don't get it. You've complained that women aren't worth your time/are frustrating/intimidating/not attractive because they don't meet fanservice standards before. That's fine. Not everyone has to be paired off. Take a page from John Oliver and move on:

Or, if pairing off really matters to you, consider your approach. Because if you believe even a tenth of the things you say about women online, I imagine you make women in the real world uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. You don't have to be alone, but if you don't want to be alone, you need to do some serious self-reflection. Especially if you're "self assessing" yourself so low and expect a partner to be tailored to your specific tastes.

Take the advice. Seriously.

It's a worthless saying, though. Most of us will never find that one. Like finding a needle in a very big haystack.

It's a worthless saying only if you limit it to one special someone like a fairy tale. For any one of us, there are probably twos, tens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of compatible people.

I mean, it depends on what you're looking for, obviously.

Valentines day is over-rated anyway, it's just Excuse-For-Chocolate Day, really.

Which is why it's the best day of the year!

...well, not really, since I'm not big on chocolate, but it amused me to make that joke.

I may be wrong, so forgive me if that's the case, but I'm pretty sure the OP has made threads before about how the only women he finds attractive are those with the proportions of an anime character: slim waisted and large chested.

Hopefully not the eyes, too. Those look...uncomfortable.

With the compulsive nature to respond these OP's destined-to-be-repeated posts with merely humour and no useful advice, i feel it necessary to highlight and endorse? ...this advice. A lot of this OP's state of perception is seemngly due to a lack of empathy, innate or environmentally inspired , which has many paths and roots. Once you get past yourself, you will realise that everyone else is just as human. Just as confused. Embrace that, because it's a greater connectef to souls than you could imagine. Sorry for the embarrassingly spiritual wording, i am still a being of science, but there ia always wonder and hope, and learning.

 

[Paragon Fury]

Alright, I'll try to get everything in one post that I can.

1: While the image mentions Valentine's Day, its really more of an "any time of the year" kind of thing. It just gets worse around romantic holidays like VD. And it comes from a lot of people (like my parents) in both subtle and not so-subtle ways.

2: I don't know that I've even said ten things different things about women here, much less than you could get the idea I don't like them or hate them.

3: I know that self-assessment probably seems a little too common, but for me, I am not lying and its true. Its not my grooming or hygiene that makes me look bad; I just don't look very good even when I attempt to.

As much of an asshole as it makes me sound like...yeah, the smarter than others thing is demonstrably true. I consistently outperformed my peers and even adults on standardized testing of all kinds (I was so good they used to think I was cheating in school and isolated me and watched me take the tests for a while until they saw I wasn't and then they just let me go). Even as an adult I take to new things far, far more quickly than others to the point where I'm working as quickly or more so than people 5-10 years my senior there.

The only areas where I lag are more advanced math (because the methods and thought processes that allow me to be so good at other things fail when trying to apply them to math, as noted by my old psychologist) and foreign languages; unfortunately for foreign languages you could be forgiven for thinking I have a learning disability I'm so bad at them (Fun fact: I lost an almost $40,000 a year scholarship to college because I'm so bad at FL that it dragged my GPA down. I went from a basically free ride at a highly prestigious college to paying out of pocket with student loans because of it. Yes, I hate myself everyday because of it).

Of course, I spent most of my time feeling like a dumbass compared to people I went to college with, so I'm not sure what its worth now.

4: I don't really have "friends". At least, not ones who actually talk with me. I mostly do things by myself and don't talk to anyone. I tend to leave people alone to enjoy their own time and the things they're doing, and I definitely don't intrude when it looks like others are enjoying themselves.

5: Its not like I didn't TRY to have more fun and do more things in my life; but I had kind of exhausted a lot of possibilities by the time I was even out of highschool. One of the few ones that DID stick, paintball, went with me through college. But as anyone who plays knows, paintball is a ludicrously expensive sport and hobby, and not something you can really afford when you're making student loan payments, rent etc. (To compare, in a single day of paintball you can easily drop $300 in air, paint, refreshments etc., especially if you go real hard. You can easily drop $1,000 in a weekend if you go to something like Castle Crashers).

6: I'm just really bad at socializing, so it doesn't go well with me involved. Oddly enough I'm a great presenter, but I suck at regular conversation. And around women that I like its almost physical impossible for me to act "normal". Putting words into coherent sentences is a challenge - I think I might actually panic if a woman openly showed interest in me. Needless to say, socializing is not one of my strengths.

7: I know real women don't look like anime women. But if I were to make a comparison; yeah, most people don't wind up in a Ferrari or Camaro. But they probably don't imagine themselves driving a little Subaru or Jeep when thinking about the car they really want either.

 

[Glongpre]

Honestly, Valentine's day is dumb. I don't even know what day it falls on. I was more worried about how my gym session will go, and getting my glycogen stores back up lol.

I know how you feel about socializing around women. It is really hard for me as well. I can really only talk to them if I know them, or if they talk to me first. Otherwise, I am really uncomfortable, and it is hard to just be myself.

Just be open to improving yourself in social situations and it will get better, like it has for me. But you have to be willing to step out of your comfort zone once in a while. Just be impulsive. When you get that feeling to say something, just take a deep breath and say it, don't think about it! Remember to continue breathing afterward

 

[Spider RedNight]

Somehow your explanation didn't make anything better.... just made you seem like one of the many many many people online who are like "omg I'm so smart and awkward and unattractive" so at least now you sound like a teenager instead of a college kid now. Congratulations.

The thing is... you shouldn't care. By posting all this stuff, you're letting everyone know that this bothers you and if you REALLY believed all this "sigh I'm single and here's why" stuff, you wouldn't post a thread trying to "explain yourself", you'd shrug it off. Like what OTHER people who are single do.

Obviously if you don't have friends but you're catching a lot of flack for being single around "romantic holidays" (implying that there's more than one which please fill me in because I'm at the point where I barely acknowledge Valentine's Day as anything but a candy cash grab, much less any OTHER holiday that could be considered "romantic"), then you're doing something right or wrong on the social front and right now it sounds less like "people are bothering me" and more like "I'm bothered that people I have to interact with ask me if I'm single and why".

Parents, I get. Parents do that. If you're letting yourself get bothered by standard questions around Valentine's Day or whatever then that's on you, pal.

I'm still confused how you don't socialise much and you're supposedly bad at it but you've managed to get people to "make you explain yourself" often enough that you just HAD to make a thread about it.

Still sounds self-piteous but now it's "super sad teenager" mode instead of "I'm an adult with flaws" mode.

 

[Something Amyss]

I've never had to explain myself on Valentines Day either, don't know why that's a big thing

There's this cultural message that your value is determined by, among other things, how much tail you get. Some guys seem to absorb this message more than others. Perhaps it's a cultural thing, or maybe some people are actually predisposed to take social cues more to heart. I don't know, but it's one of those things that we can sort of see out in the wild. And part of the problem is, it's true that not everyone needs to have a girlfriend, but it's another thing entirely for that message to be received.

Once you get past yourself, you will realise that everyone else is just as human.

Speak for yourself, mammal!