Since many approach “dating” in terms of “finding love”, I find it interesting that I rarely ever encounter people in the US discuss what they mean by love itself. Some cultures give various kinds of love distinct labels to avoid the confusion which would otherwise result from jumbling them all together. It can help to give some consideration to what kind of love you are looking for, and what kind others may be looking for.
For example, eros runs quite strong in me, but I thoroughly disregard it. Since my physical expression is unguarded, it is painfully obvious to most people if I fall for them. But intellectually, it does not matter to me that I feel some inexplicable attraction because I think that passion is rather naive and fickle. So even as I may visibly swoon in somebody’s presence, I am likely to calmly verbally dismiss it with something like “Please excuse me, I have a condition.” or some such dry remark. I seem to be quite romantic, but I conduct myself by choice in a resolutely aromantic fashion because of an intellectual distrust of vague matters of personal chemistry, which upon conscious reflection seems unaccountable and selfish.
So what I strive for is instead altruism. Doing things simply because they are helpful to people. There is no need to seek personal reciprocity, because if I am making a better society, this benefits me as much as anyone by virtue of being a member of that society. This has led me to appreciation of areas of love and sexuality which appear to be obscure in US culture, such as ritual/religious sex, group sex, communist sexual ethics (such as in Wilhelm Reich’s early Sex-Pol), and sex work - not as market commodity, but as a service to the community. I know that love can be selfless and dispassionate, but that this need not involve the repression of sexuality.
Obviously, such analysis of self and society informs what one means by and seeks in “dating”. It helps to know what one’s motivations are, and to keep in mind that love and relationships are not the same for all people.
I was just talking to a probation officer about the concept of, “doing the right thing when noone is looking”. I enjoy intimacy and attraction, but as you allude to if you can cleanly seperate that from your own sense of self worth, one tends to be happier.
TL;Dr, I agree. (I am still gonna hang with awesome people, cause it is fun :D)
My happiness doe not rely on the validation of others. But it is boosted a bit. On the other hand, my well being is quite affected by invalidation from those I care about, and those with power.
Validation and invalidation are not two sides of the same spectrum. Validating or not. Invalidating or not. It’s not an either or, it’s all shades of gray in there.
Of course it feels good when people really approve of you and look at you with appreciation. That’s one of the joys of life and relationships. And, as you point out, their withdrawing of that attention or approval can be momentarily painful when you forget that they are people too, with their own moods and inner struggles, and who are not responsible for regulating your feelings in addition to their own. The more comfortable I get with this, the less painful it is.
If you are wanting and relying on outside validation to make you feel better, there really only is receiving or not receiving. If you can validate yourself, everything else is grey icing on the cake.
Of course, the practice and execution of self-love is a lifelong practice and I am not a master. But, I am worlds apart from my former validation seeking self.
So I have some actual constructive dating advice, that isn’t “be yourself” or “like yourself” or other things that could be considered platitudes. This is a thing that worked for me. After years of dating terrible assholes I had to come to the conclusion that it was not entirely the assholes faults, as I was the one picking assholes every damn time. (Thanks absent-Daddy issues!) So I specifically went out to find a guy that was NOT like the guys I’d been dating.
Obviously there has to be some sort of physical attraction or else this won’t work, but I set out, methodically, to find men that were wholly outside my social circle. Its not as easy as it sounds. But if you want things to change you have to change things. (sorry couldn’t do this without at least one platitude)
You’re still assuming that there are a multitude of potential partners out there and it just boils down to choosing the correct one.
I think in this case it’s more an issue of trying to find anyone if your standards are “not addicted to crystal meth” or “doesn’t move their lips when they read”. I have lived in some nothing towns, and it was literally impossible to find like-minded people in these places. If they were doing anything interesting, it was way the hell away from those towns, but usually they were holed up in their apartments feeling depressed and under-stimulated, much like myself. Not even joking.
I cannot remember what we did before the Internet in these cases. I don’t even know if I’d survive now if I lived like this and didn’t have the internet.
I appreciate what he was trying to do, and a lot of people liked it, but I didn’t. I thought it was a gimmick, and whatever praise he got was fawning praise that no other author would have gotten if they had done the exact same thing.
Neurotypical people do anyway. I dated someone with autism for many years. When she answered the phone you couldn’t tell if she was talking to a friend or her mom. It’s amazing how different people are from one another.
So I follow everything else you say about people being aggregates (we’re made of trillions of cells!) and personal identity being a kind of fiction we impose on ourselves. I don’t quite see how it connects to avoiding dating and interpersonal relationships. I mean, unless you are just saying people find you difficult to be around so you gave up. (That’s not a dig, I think you are 100% right that people who reject or even just push back against the idea of personal identity are hard for others to deal with)
I don’t think this is good advice for everyone and I can’t articulate why. I guess, as a start, I’d say that you will often be happy if your happiness is dependent on validation from others, it’s just that you won’t have a great deal of control over when you are happy. I’m not sure that’s going to be a worse way to live for everyone.
Before the internet we had personal ads in papers and pen pals.
Granted my advice only works in large-ish cities with internet, but it did work for me, broke me of my asshole habit, and that was a shockingly hard habit to break.
That’s some pretty solid advice. I met someone outside of my usual patterns by responding to an ad in the personals section of the local alt-weekly paper, and that worked pretty well. Online dating services also probably benefit in terms of matching you with people who aren’t necessarily the people you would usually date
Is it? My understanding was that authoritarian followers are happier than the general population.
I think desperation is pretty obviously negatively correlated with happiness, whether that’s desperation for control or for validation. But it seems like there are tons of people out there who choose a source of validation that works for them and that they can consistently generate validation from (like a religious organization) and then live happily, getting external validation but never really having to worry about it.
When I was about eight years old I went from being completely nonverbal to speaking like a textbook. Very formal, no contractions, proper grammar at all times, words most adults wouldn’t even know. It took me another eight years or so before I figured out code switching.
What really threw me is that code switching is not limited to language. It extends to clothing, body language (which I didn’t even understand was a thing until I was in my twenties), and all forms of nonverbal communication and tribal signaling as well. This is not natural to me at all, which is unfortunate because most communication is nonverbal, and because tribal signaling is important in determining at first glance if someone is the type of person you want to hang out with.
I have a theory that although autistic people are easily capable of perceiving tribal signaling, maybe even better than most, we aren’t great at decoding these signals, and even worse at responding in kind.
I think most people with autism who function well in society have done a lot of objective observation of and reasoning about other people’s behaviour, and that can lead to some very accurate conclusions about people. If other people were as thoughtful about social interactions as people with autism are forced to be, I think people with autism would get along quite well with them.
(sorry couldn’t do this without at least one platitude)
