The Sex Recession - AKA Millenials should be having more sex
297 replies, posted
Why is this a bad thing again?
Literally in the prime of my life to date, I've got a great job, a car, a degree, I'm apparently handsome, but I'm too fucking exhausted to date. I've dated a few times but nothing ever came of it, and it's too much work to date when being social just drains me.
I'm a true introvert, even hanging out with friends exhausts me, and trying to date or pick up women seems just too much work. I do want to find someone, but unless it falls into my lap I'm focused on trying to be comfortable.
It took me forever to not feel empty because I didn't have girlfriend, and now it's like I 180'd and I'm trying to convince myself I need one when right now that would just complicate my simple, steady life. Basically the only part of me that wants love is the thing between my legs because every other part of me is just trying to relax and regenerate.
I'm definitely an outlier but I think there's probably plenty of people out there like me that are willing to date but just don't because they don't have the energy.
that doesnt sound right, even for introverted people. Sounds like some other issues going on here.
Wouldnt hurt seeing a therapist to help with some self reflection
A lot of people here are negative and jaded due to their experiences, yes.
But that doesn't equal "incels". Honestly, look up incel communities and how they are like, they are completely ridiculous. You seem to have no context of what they are like.
As for everyone else, honestly the 3 big things you can do to helps yourself is to
1. Clean up your appearances. You don't need to look "attractive", hell, none of my male friends in relationships with women look attractive, but they try to look clean.
2. Maximize the number of women you meet. You can do this through dating apps but I seriously suggest finding in person ways to do it instead.
3. Be confident. Be kind but forward. If you are a social wreck, judging from experiences of myself and others, its takes about a year of practice to get to that point if you practice finding friends and stuff first.
But of course, remain positive. Some people have higher or lower odds, perhaps, but it onlu becomes 0% when you give up
Have been seeing a therapist + psychiatrist for over 9 years now, on good meds that prevent anxiety/depression (and my psychiatrist has stated exhaustion is not a side effect, and I've been like this all my life anyways), have had my blood tested for thyroid, sugar, iron, etc., seen various doctors, there's nothing medically wrong with me unfortunately. Either I'm just lazy or socializing seriously drains me, and despite my family's insistence I don't think it's the former.
My perfect day is staying inside, alone, doing whatever. My worst day would be having to be around crowds all day. It's not anxiety since I'm not nervous or scared, I just feel tired and overstimulated. I need to socialize now and then like most people, but I prefer to be alone because being social is taxing for some reason. Being in proximity of people makes me feel tired, even if I'm not interacting with anyone (like going grocery shopping).
Introversion and extroversion is a spectrum, and I'm way off the bell curve. I feel energized when I'm absolutely alone and tired around large groups. It's just who I am and I've learned to deal with it.
Must be difficult being that way. I found out the best way to combat loneliness is to participate in anything social to forge connections, even when I'd prefer to be alone.
I'm not even particularly introverted but for people who are there really seems to be little to no good way to find meaningful relationships
wow yeah remember that part where everyone blamed women for all their problems and we all rated agree haha good times
That is literally just one of the further extremes of introversion. Social interactions in general are taxing both mentally and sometimes physically to introverts. The more introverted you are the more exhausting it gets. No amount of exposure will get around that if you're just a naturally quite introverted person.
Like I enjoy hanging around with my mates or going out on nights out to shitty clubs despite being introverted, but even a few hours of hanging around just starts to wear on me. I'm usually up for doing whatever we had planned, but the second I'm not hanging out with them I veg the fuck out for a few hours to recharge a bit. Introverts just get drained by interactions, where extroverts thrive doing so. Exhaustion is quite common.
Tbh that whole aspect really doesn't help with my lack of dating, ever. Hanging out with friends is eventually draining, going somewhere alone to try and meet new people is fucking killer in comparison. That and I don't really get how the fuck you meet new people without coming across as a maximum weirdo, like hanging out at bars or whatever. But when I'm with mates I have no drive to try and meet new people.
I sort of agree. There are literally zero support systems for socially retarded or socially unconventional people. Society has this weird definition of neurotypical and neuroatypical and for whatever reason being neuroatypical is always perceived as bad instead of just having more flexible social boundaries and greater social tolerance for those who are not exemplars of traditional social life.
One of the things mentioned in this thread is that there is a catastrophic deficit of socially proactive people out there who go out of their way to help shy idiots break out of their insidious cycle and be patient with them until their social psychology gradually unfucks itself.
No one these days goes "look at this quirky ass kid sitting in that corner who is quite obviously very lonely and socially rejected everywhere, let me figure out what is fucked up with him and try my best to make him less fucked up because I don't he may continue descending down that spiral and never end up being socially healthy his entire life because I am a social genius and know what he is missing out on"
The current social configuration has no understanding of platonic intimacy or the notion of lending an unconditional helping hand for no reason other than to just be fucking nice.
Lots of depressed people mention how quite frequently they went fucking YEARS without getting a single nice thing from anyone even once, while never doing anything to deserve such horrific totality in their isolation.
A huge number of autistic people could have been saved from having their fucking lives ruined with their condition if a bunch of people of their age did exactly the same shit instead of being judgmental assholes towards his/her weirdness or just silently rejecting them because of his/her awkwardness.
Basically my point is that we do not have enough social mechanics and as a result our social fabric is completely fucked up and basically nonexistent at the moment. We need more ultra socially active friendly people, and by ultra socially active I don't even necessarily mean just in a sexual way, I just mean genuine seasoned social butterflies who live and breathe social health.
There are far too many accounts of outrageously brutal social rejection out there which frequently seems to happen for literally no reason or due to an easily fixable reason that no one ever helped them fix somehow.
Commitment is a two-way street. If they expect all this shit from you, and don't return the favor, then yeah, you're dating the wrong people. Especially if they're first and foremost concerned about how the relationship appears on social media - instead of, you know, actually making the relationship good for the two of you. Because if you love each other, than who gives a shit about how much other people approve?
It's fucking jaw dropping how hard it fucked everything up.
What does an outgoing social person have in common with an outcast? Not much. Fact is most people find it more rewarding to be with people on their own level who share similar interests and situations.
I disagree. The real culprit is industrialization and end of explosive economic growth. To survive you must be productive, and to be productive means for most people to be unsocial.
Social media might make it easier to procrastinate, but I know it makes socializing easier too. I can't speculate how many of my good friends I wouldn't have met or would've lost contact with if it wasn't for socializing on the internet.
Well it certainly seemed to have set a new equilibrium already, however no self correction is to be seen thus far. Enormous portions of social structure has gotten completely annihilated by it and no one gave any shits about rebuilding things and ultimately realizing that social media was a massive addiction based scam.
I know exactly how you feel. After a 5 day work week I simply cannot be assed to interact with people on my time off. Sometimes I'll get invited somewhere on the weekend, but I never go.
Maybe I just haven't found people I actually like enough to hang out with for a long time, I dunno.
Also I hate driving, if I have to drive more than 30 min just to get to where I want to go, I don't even bother.
that's quite generous too, and combined with lacking charisma you're sol
it's also quite hard to keep being confident when you're feeling like the entire world works against you
I had no confidence years ago, at the time I was seriously depressed and suicidal. that was rock bottom, and I knew it couldnt get worse than that other than "dead", so I started reforging myself, and I had to do it alone because I had nobody. In the past year I made the most progress I ever have: school ended, I didn't have to meet the people that I grew to hate, I had a fresh start with university, I started working out, which improved my self esteem, I started attending Meetup events to meet people and break out of my shell
This is all that I do to improve, however every external signal I receive shoots me down: new people arent interested in me. my "friends" (school and university) talk over me, never wait for me to finish my sentences, dont wait for me, dont care if I am not in the selfie they just took, dont ask for what I think, dont even chat me up for anything. If I dont say goodbye they sure wont, and they wont remember the next time. I'm always walking in front or behind them, anytime I try to stay in the middle they just move back in pushing me to the edges of the group. all the girls I was interested in either ghosted me or repeatedly turned me down in their subtle "turning down your offer, not saying sorry, not rescheduling, turning away now" way
It's fucking hard to be confident when the outside world keeps uppercutting you
Yeah, some people are just seriously exhausted by social situations. Like I enjoy hanging out with my friends irl, for example, but afterwards I feel pretty drained for the next day or two at least. And sometimes I just kinda fall off the face of existence for a few weeks or months because I don't have the energy to deal with social things. (To the point where my friends frequently jokingly refer to me as the hermit of the group, lol.)
There's really nothing that can be done about it. Socializing more does nothing other than leave me constantly exhausted and negatively impacts all my social encounters so it's easier to just deal with those things when I feel like I have the energy to do so. And that seems to be the case for a lot of introverts. It's not really a matter of anxiety or anything like that, it's simply finding social situations to take a lot of energy.
So uh anybody want some fuck
L O N D O N
O
N
D
O
N
this is why the sex rates are down
Congratulations, you've just taken the heartfelt concerns of several people and boiled it down to a dismissive, sarcastic joke. You've bare-knuckle-fingered your own narcissistic asshole.
This thread has been a particularly hard one for me to lurk in, but I just really don't want to express my feelings despite feeling like if I don't say it somewhere I'll explode.
My thoughts aren't particularly on topic, so much as in line with how the conversation went. I'm closing in on 21 and have never so much as kissed a girl, in fact no girl has ever shown any kind of romantic interest at all ever and I'm beginning to think nobody ever will. I'm sure to most of you 20 sounds very young, but I feel like so much as already passed me by. I'm not sure what made it like this, see my self esteem recently completely died but it wasn't always like that. And when I tell a friend or a therapist that I think I'm a piece of shit undeserving of love they kind of just get offended on my behalf. It's as if they're denying the validity of me feeling shit about this "no, you're just wrong". It's almost just taken for granted that's there's someone for everyone, but what if there's not?
See, I don't hate women, or think they owe me anything. But it's hard to watch everyone around you start relationships, often for those relationships to end and then for them to move on to new ones. People get sad about breakups, I can't even comprehend that. That's worlds away from me. And I'm trying to accept that it's just never going to happen, but I kind of can't. Romantic relationships seem like a core part of the human experience, and a part that I just feel totally denied. I look at guys in relationships, or just guys that get laid, and wonder what it is about them that makes them worthy but not me. My younger family members are starting to bring their SOs to family events, and people are genuinely beginning to wonder what's going on with me. I've been asked if I'm gay multiple times, even told that if I'm asexual "that's OK". But I'm not asexual, in fact I'm very much not asexual, yet I'm still totally outside of the realm of sex to the point where having a girlfriend seems as plausible as suddenly gaining superpowers.
I mean I'm quite short and a bit podgy, but then you see someone shorter and fatter taking a girl home. Plus I've lost over 12kg in the past few months from obsessive excercise and diet. Yet it hasn't made my life better at all. I'm a bit of a dork, but then you see the fucking dorkiest couples of all time walking to your local GAME to buy anime figurines. I can't grow any facial hair, but then there's tons of guys out there with fulfilling love lives without a single hair on their face, and that would've had no effect on me pre 17 when basically nobody had facial hair anyway. I hate that I'm beginning to resent all these people, but I can feel it happening. I get indescribely sad whenever I talk to a cute girl now too, it's almost as if I'm winded. And as you can imagine, that happens a lot when you work 5 days a week.
I suppose I'm not asking for sympathy. I'm asking for an answer. Why didn't I have a highschool girlfriend like most other guys? Why don't I get any matches on Tinder? Why does every date I go on end in getting ghosted? And what did I do to become completely invisible? And more to the point, do I deserve to feel like this? And if there really is nothing wrong with me, then why am I like this?
It probably sems kind of petty to anyone who just takes this shit for granted, but in terms of your those you find attractive, I can't imagine anything worse than total radio silence. And that feels pretty shitty too, like the entire world is rejecting me, and then telling me I shouldn't feel rejected.
The worst part of not dating much is that if you complain/bring up points about it you can get labelled as an incel.
These broads getting free dinner. Legitimately the ways a dude can get a free meal is if you win it on the radio or you're a fucking veteran.
When your only taste of relationships is maliciousness and abuse it's really difficult to keep trying
I always scored very high on “introvert” tests as a kid. As an adult I score as a extrovert, it’s something you can change, with effort and exposure I believe.
uh wtf free dinner is easy. just go on date and leave for the toilet after main course and dont come back. walk outside to ur next date and own that shit son
It's really something that needs to be handled on a case by case basis. The exact reasons why any given individual is an extrovert or introvert can be really complex. What worked for you may not work for others.
For example my post above. I've purposefully put myself into situations where I'd have to be a lot more social and it didn't actually help at all, largely because my issue isn't really social skills. I simply find social situations to require a lot of energy and that can't really be countered. When I'm actually being social I'd definitely be classed as an extrovert much of the time (not always though, depends largely on who exactly I'm dealing with and random strangers would be introvert while family members, friends, or even acquaintances would differ) but because I'm just not big on social situations in general in the first place that puts me fairly heavily into introvert territory.
That's most likely from your upbringing and additionally the brain hasn't fully formed all its pathways as a kid so you can change but as an adult it becomes harder.
Same thing with being a night owl or a morning lark; as your brain continues to develop you can shift from one extreme to the other (if your brain happens to develop that way; no evidence you can force a change), but after that you're set in stone unless you get head trauma.
Speaking of which, I've always been a night owl so that also has an effect on my energy. I'm always fighting social jet lag to make work on time because my body wants to sleep at 2am and wake up at noon but the working world doesn't accomodate that. I've tried "staying up and not napping so your clock adjusts itself" but that just gives me more sleep debt and I end up feeling more tired. I've done sleep studies, measured my sleep using apps like Sleep as Android, and it's pretty clear my body is just not naturally compatible with how the world schedules itself.
So yeah, I'm a highly introverted night owl, that's probably why I have no energy, and thus little desire to fuck. So like I said, probably an outlier.
The number of people who are biologically so different from the "norm" is so small that it's astronomical. It's highly possible you do have a different sleep schedule, that you are wired in a fundamentally different way from the rest of us, but I'm not sure I believe that is the case.
I don't know what the answer is, but throwing up your hands and giving up doesn't really seem, for lack of a better word, productive, to me.
I was an intensely introverted 10 year old. By the time I was 16, that had not changed. I was intensely introverted. I balked at the idea of being around people. I literally had a nervous breakdown, and locked myself in a bathroom stall because I was overwhelmed by a crowd of people at a Black Friday event. That same year, I forced myself to be the lead singer in a metal band, a dream I felt I had to fulfill to be "happy". I did that, and ended up singing(Read, screaming) my heart out in front of well over 1000 people. That was my "Turning" point. I didn't become an "extrovert" from that point. It took me ten years of work to get there, it took accepting that I'm not the most social person, because like you, I can happily spend a day alone, but it also took accepting that what I was putting myself through, social experiences that I felt I didn't want to participate in, for the betterment of myself in the long run. It helped get me to the point I'm at now where I am comfortable talking to people. Do I still enjoy my alone time? Fuck yes, but I don't avoid seeing people to foster that, because avoidance therapy isn't really a thing that helps you. Exposure therapy can be.
maybe i'm wrong, and maybe it really is better to just accept that everything is broken. Or maybe it's better to try and work at it even if it sucks because the alternative literally is "don't".
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.