Ex

[pchang]

Insane men get plenty of dates too. Just look at Charles Manson.

[ZEE]

Charles Manson is a different type of insane than Lori. Manson is along the lines of AAHZ-Insane™

Lori is moar like the Rain Man.

[Lorizael]

Stupidly, I'm reading over old conversations from 2008/2009, when I finally cut EBF out of my life and made a concerted effort to go out, try new things, meet new people, get over my fears, etc. I accomplished so much back then. And yet somehow social stuff is still such a huge problem for me, as if what I did back then never happened. My friends were amazed with all my progress, proud of me for finally breaking out of my shell, all that jazz. So why am I still here? It took losing my best friend and resolving to finally, once and for all, tackle my social issues. But whatever I did back then didn't stick, and I haven't been able to exert myself since then in such a dramatic way. What hope do I have now?

[Ming]

If you fall, you simply get right back up.
If you stay on the ground, you have already lost.

[Lorizael]

It's comfortable here on the ground, and I'm tired.

[Ming]

[Lorizael]

I predict, in the somewhat near future, a revolutionary explosion changing course in Lori's path that will make him reasonably happy and somewhat adjacent to his life goals and he will say then, there was this drunk goofball greek guy that was telling me this and I didn't believe him.

What's your time frame for near future?

Because after that I was severely, frequently-unable-to-get-out-of-bed, ready-to-hospitalize-myself-or-try-radical-new-treatments depressed until... about a month or two ago. There was a good four month period where, if I did manage to put on clothes and go to work, I basically just stared at my computer with worky looking windows open for 8 hours before going home and staring at the wall until I lost consciousness.

Luckily his OCD with keeping threads won't be gone so he can recourse to this thread.

[Elok]

Shelok pointed out, when I mentioned your difficulties to her some time ago, that in short order you will be a man in his mid-thirties or so, unattached, with reasonable career prospects and nothing horrifying in his past or present. This is something akin, I gather, to blood in the water for unattached women of comparable age. The bad news is that they'll probably want kids as well. There are a looooooot of lonely women out there.

[Lorizael]

That seems really implausible. I don't know what magic I employed to get women to fall in love with me when I was young and not a decade behind my peers, but it seems increasingly less likely to work the balder and plumper I get.

[Elok]

Asked her to clarify in case I muddled the wording. She said to tell you that there are two pools, the "pleasure pool" and the "marriage pool," (with the kind of long-term relationship you're looking for basically indistinguishable from marriage) both with very skewed gender ratios. After you hit thirty, it's six-to-one men-to-women in the former, and the reverse in the latter. You do not have kids from a previous relationship or anything scuzzy going on. You are not Kidicious. You are, by default, a potentially hot prospect.

It helps a lot if you want kids, of course, and I think it would do you good, if only because children would take an axe to your perverse solipsistic tendencies. You simply can't scroll through ten-year-old chat logs stewing in your own bitterness when there's a small organism throwing its emotional and physical needs at you very loudly. And you're prevented by law from destroying the organism or getting rid of it in any way. You're forced to make your life about something other than yourself. It's a terrible experience, and very good for you in the long run if you can take it. IMO. Also, once they get old enough, they're ravenously hungry for information about the world. I'll likely be visiting MD in a few weeks; if you want, I can arrange a meeting with Laz so he can illustrate by peppering you with science questions. He can keep that up for over an hour if you catch him in the right mood.

[pchang]

You could try fasting 2 days a week. You will stop getting plumper and it may save you money on your food budget.

[ZEE]

When I started cooking and stopped eating frozen dinners I went from 200 lbs to 160 with no other change in my routine. And I still drink beer like a fish in water.

[Lorizael]

I thought for sure you were going to suggest ECT.

[pchang]

Now that you are motivated enough to move about on your own, you don’t need ECT anymore.

[Lorizael]

It helps a lot if you want kids...

Hey I don't really want to talk about kids. I only necro'd the thread because of paiktis predicting I would come across his post predicting I would come across his post.