So what am I?

This is an attempt at trying to fully describe me with some mostly unhelpful labels. If you’ve read up to this point then you’ll of heard me say social anxiety more than a few times, it’s a broad term that means a lot of different thing’s to different people. We are by our very natures though programmed to divide the world into us and them. Which is at the heart of all bullying, discrimination and hate crime. The flip side is the great comfort we get from saying that person is like me.

I will start this by saying that most of this is undiagnosed, so feel free to write me off as some kind of neurological hypochondriac, I worry myself sometimes that it’s all my own delusion to make myself feel interesting.

Dyslexic, yes it may be the worst idea I’ve every had to write a blog with this label in place, this however has been confirmed twice so I know it to be true, and is a good place to start. I’m not sure if it’s particularly obvious from these posts, but the part you don’t see is the first draft, which looks like a drunken child sat down to write about their school holidays. Then sneezed some punctuation onto it, finally using “there”,”their” and “they’re” abusively throughout. The rules that are second nature to good writers, are applied by me afterwards, I know what each of the types of “there” means and where to use them, but when I read back something I’ve written, they’re all in the wrong places. My writing may be upsetting to the grammar Nazis of this world, but it upsets me more it’s like having all of your thoughts translated through the idiot intern, that’s only there because his dads the boss.

I am Dysparxic, this I was diagnosed a long time ago before the phrase really existed. My parents were told instead that I had ‘minor neurological issues’ to put it mildly I was uncoordinated and clumsy, I still am I guess. It has a few other parts to it, parts that anyone on the autistic spectrum might sympathise with, sensory over sensitivity mainly. It also means my short term memory is nearly non-existent. If you tell me to do three things, I will very likely forget one of them, there isn’t enough room in my short term memory to keep them all. This leads to things like walking around looking for something that I’ve been holding the whole time. There are also more memorable instants like lighting a bonfire with a petrol can, then forgetting that I was still holding it as I lit the bonfire, yes it did catch fire, both times I did it… All this means as an adult is that Joe average would beat me at any game that requires coordination, I injure myself quite a lot and you need to turn off the TV if you want me to understand the words your saying to me.

Social anxiety is undiagnosed, I’ve developed coping mechanisms as we all do so I’m a perfectly functional human being, I learned how to hide how I’m truly feeling.  but to give you a glimpse through the curtains, I didn’t have any friends for the first 7 years of school because I couldn’t talk to anyone, I believe this now to be selective mutism. Not that the label does me any good, if you like the big bang theory then you’ve seen it in the character ‘Raj’. The question I keep coming back to is how did my parents not notice that I had no friends for so long, ever have a question you wanted to ask but didn’t want someone to feel bad about? So I really don’t like talking on the phone, or talking to someone new, or being in large groups and if you try and hug me I will probably flinch. Finally one of the reasons for the name of this blog is that if I’m socially uncomfortable I will start to grin, the next stage if it gets too much is uncontrollable laughter, which has made some situations in my life a whole lot worse…

I could potentially throw other words on the fire of crap that’s wrong with me. It has been suggested to me more than a few times that I’m on the autistic spectrum. Above a certain threshold mental problems start to bleed into each other and I think it would take a professional to referee them properly…

 

 

 

 

More dating sites…

I think I have a problem, I up to 5 now it’s definitely a love-hate relationship, it’s so compelling seeing other people’s lives out there in the ether. It has a name the way I feel “sonder” follow the link for a definition it’s a lovely word. One of the reasons I don’t like crowds is this feeling, it makes me feel small and invisible sometimes. The notion that you can reach out and change one of these people’s lives forever is strangely wonderful to me, yet at the same time it’s like walking through an aquarium, with 100’s of fish you have no hope of bringing home.

So the first one is Bumble, which is tinder in a dress I’m afraid, you can if you pay, see the people who matched you before you match them, which is nicer than tinder I suppose. But it’s still the same facile swipe left or right mentality. I have got a match though it. I do have a small problem with the messaging part of the communication, I massively overthink every single pause or message, I’m very glad the person on the other end can’t see me looking at my phone every few seconds, rereading the message I’ve just sent and trying to think if it can be misinterpreted, or if i went too far with a joke or something. I must look insane…

I’m now messaging using whatapp with my bumble match, to get her number I had to promise not to send her dick pictures. Apparently this is a thing even on Tinder, it takes an extra kind of stupid to think that’s a good idea to do to someone. The logic is simple I guess, it even has a name. The false consensus effect, we all do it to a greater or lesser extent I think, a lot of very good intuitive leaps come from the premise that most people think like we do. Some people though forget the “most” part of that sentence. As a guy I can wholeheartedly say that if your a women and want to generate a lot of interest very quickly then a naked picture of yourself is a very good place to start. It is however the dating equivalent of covering yourself in chum and jumping in a shark tank…

The second is what’s keeping me from feeling sad at the moment “mumsdatedads” more marketed for single parents it’s the more typical online dating experience, profiles and photos. So why do I not feel sad? I had been online exactly 5 minutes before I experienced a new kind of player in the dating pool, a person who sent me an introduction, an introduction to an entirely blank profile. Interest I feel gives us worth and validates us, I’m sure that all the messages I sent that got no reply went a small ways at least to validate the people I was messaging, even if they weren’t all that interested. In my head at least interest in a blank profile meant the possibility of a lot more interest in a full profile. so while I’d be happier with more interest, I’d be a lot unhappier if that too turned into no interest… So I’m stuck in the middle staring at a blank profile.

The numbers game…

Dating is definitely a numbers game, that’s part of what frustrates me about it, the numbers are inherently unknowable but I can’t help asking myself the same questions over and over. how many people find me attractive? what fraction of those people are still interested when they know I have kids? how many of them are interesting? and so on, if I were looking at a cake and slicing away at every guessed number, I’d be looking at very slim piece, for a mouse, that was on a diet…

Its also very hard in isolation to form any solid conclusions as to why I’m not getting any matches, but here is my guess on the tinder side of things, to me it is a good illustration of what happens when people on mass ignore game theory. So lets look at our players:

The attractive female will be, lets face it swiped right by everyone, because a swipe left has no negative consequences. This means that when an attractive female swipes right she is nearly always guaranteed a match. I read an article about a women who swiped right 50 times to see what would happen with very predictable results and a conclusion that its a terrible idea to do so. The thing I took from this is that out of 50 swipes 41 matched, taking into account the inactive accounts, or the people that don’t check tender daily etc that is an amazing result and I’m sure a lovely ego boost too. Left with the illusion of choice, she has to narrow down her matches using the only 2 things available to her, a very short bio and a picture… judging by the countless futile bio notes stating ‘no hookups’ I’m going to take a stab and say a good 90% of them are looking for a relationship

The really attractive male, is being swiped right by a lot of attractive females who have to narrow their search very hard (this is a guess on my part I’ll admit, how I might act in the same circumstance isn’t always a great idea when crossing the gender barrier, because we do think differently, but if the male bios are anything like the females, then they are all going to pretty much say I like travelling, drinking and hanging out with my friends so except in a rare circumstance your not going to be able to narrow down a match with it) I tend to think of attractiveness as a form of power, in that it very easily corrupts people. I read a Reddit thread about what its like to be good looking, the gist is that everyone is a lot nicer to you, my point is the difference between “what you wearing?” being flirty or creepy is whether your attracted to that person, your more likely to laugh at someones jokes if your attracted to them. In the face of attraction all of our very sensible barriers for dating someone become lower. So what are these guys looking for? they’re looking for a relationship too, the difference is that they want to have sex, then work out if they’re interested in you, only you’d have to be pretty amazing to interest him, because really attractive women are interested in him too, but they are fewer and harder to get, so what to do in the mean time…

You can now repeat this pattern for the average looking women and the attractive men and so on, this means that women now have a pile of matches who aren’t that interested in them, you can see the evidence of this in the scores of women who write don’t swipe if your not going to reply. So the problem is this the more selective women become the less selective men to become, the problem is cyclical which has led to the problem of men swiping right to everyone, which leads to no message replies. I will admit to the temptation in the face of the complete lack of interest from anyone but the last thing I want to do is have a hand in hurting someones feelings.

In order for it to work correctly, women would have to accept more and be less picky, men accept a lot less and be more picky. But human nature is human nature and tinder would have to drastically change how it worked to combat that, so how about this question, is it in Tinders best interest to do so? My thought is not, because if your not single your not using tinder…

I could of course be wrong, these are just my own deduction after all, I’m feeling pretty good today. So I will say that I’m solidly in the average camp for looks, and looks being a fluid affair some must find me at the gates of the good looking camp even. But in the face of no interest what’s someone with no self confidence to think? On my low days my deductions leave me thinking about occam’s razor, because the far simpler reason for no interest is that I’m just not attractive…

So why did i laugh…

I should address the elephant in the blog, the reason I’m here. The thing that made me laugh. A short time ago my wife was quite obviously upset, we had both reached that point in a relationship where either of us could not be the slightest bit out of sorts without  the other immediately noticing. It’s a massive pain because sometimes you know your being a twat and that you’ll be fine in a bit but the other person won’t let it go. This time that someone was me. After a good 2 hours of me desperately trying to get it out of her, giving up, ordering a pizza, then coming back to have another crack at it I had my answer.

My wife of 3 years, who I’ve known for 7 told me she was gay, at which point I laughed. I don’t know if I’m particularly unique in this but if I can understand something then I can accept it and suddenly everything made a lot of sense.  The signs are subtle, especially for someone as generally clueless about the opposite sex as me. But everything suddenly snapped into place like someone showing the final cards, it was Mrs Peacock in the drawing room, but instead of a candlestick she had been there all along with Miss Scarlet…

I was happy for her, and strangely enough happy for me. I had been looking at a life sentence in a relationship with a women who had been steadily finding me less and less desirable over the years, I love her to bits but fuck did that hurt. If you have or know someone who has social anxiety, then you may be aware that feeling unwanted, unloved or undesired are things we struggle with more than most. We have to step outside our comfort zone constantly to not feel them, with no guarantee of success.

We were now best friends that happened to have children together. All the background tension fell away because it wasn’t me or something I’d done, it just was and I could accept that. So I spent a month lurking on dating sites wondering near constantly just how eligible a bachelor I was now, 7 years of being told I was wonderful did worlds for my confidence and I now felt ready to find someone new and great, but knew in my heart it might take a while…