HealthyGamerGG - A Perspective on Female Loneliness

Episode Date: August 9, 2022

Dr. K dives into a perspective on female loneliness, gatekeeping suffering, reductionism, and breaking the cycle. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm an attractive woman. Therefore, everything for me is supposed to be easy. And this is what's so devastating about it is when things are supposed to be easy for you, how does that make you feel when they're hard? A perspective on female loneliness. Oh, I guess you guys can't see this corner, but that's okay. I wasn't sure if I should post my experience since it's deeply personal, but I've seen similar posts by other women here and decided to just go for it.

I'm a 29-year-old woman who is above average looking. I've been hit on a lot in life and get uncomfortable amounts of attention I never asked for. However, I've suffered from social anxiety since I've been a child because of trauma, abuse, and bullying. I was painfully shy until my mid-20s and would hardly speak to anyone. I have no contact with my family because they abused me. I never had a social circle. I've never been in a long-term relationship. I only have two, quote, friends who also suffer from mental illness.

They don't know the extent of my issues, though, and they both live very far away. I spend every day isolated from the rest of the world in my room and hardly get sleep at night because of my insomnia. Out there, I study, and nobody could ever guess I'm living this way. My social anxiety has gotten better to the point that I can fake it, but I am entirely inaccessible as a person. When people talk to me, I listen and reply, but I never talk about my own life. life. Sometimes I lie when I have to. People often say women can't be lonely, yet I've never been in love and simply can't form deep connections with others. The only relationship I had lasted about six months, and the guy had zero interest in knowing me as a person. When I ended things, he openly

admitted that he only dated me for my looks. I struggled to act normal and tried to, tried being in a relationship like everyone else for six painful months, and he had no idea who I even was. I have accepted that I can never be in love, despite my painful craving to love someone and truly be loved. My sex drive is high, but I never act on it, because I despise the idea of casual sex. Some would say, but you could have sex anytime you want to. Yes, I could, but it wouldn't mean anything. It wouldn't fix my loneliness. It would just make it worse to know. know that my looks are my only value. I already zoned out of the real world mentally. Outside of studying, I only live in my daydreams and stories I write. My room is filled with merchandise

of fictional characters. I talk to them. Act like they would be the support of friends I never had. I've been, quote-unquote, in love with a fictional character for almost 15 years. That's the closest feeling I ever felt to loving someone. He's pretty much the reason I'm not killing myself. I even lack the ability to connect with people online. I'm not part of any community or group. I don't have social media or play online games. It's almost like I don't even exist. I'm not posting this to get advice or pity. I just wanted to share my story somewhere for once. I've long accepted that this will be my life forever. What I'm trying to say is being an attractive woman doesn't magically turn life into easy mode. women are people too and you never know what they are hiding just by looking at them.

Finding casual sex or even a random relationship with no depth would be easy for me, but it's not worth shit when you want nothing more than a genuine human connection. Update, I didn't expect to receive so many comments, support, or DMs over this post, and I never thought so many people could actually relate to it. Thank you for that. I can't reply to everything now because it's a bit overwhelming, but I'm reading everything. So first thing that I want to say is this person says, I've never been part of a community. And I just want to say, and I hope that I think they've already figured this out.

So I'm late to the party here. If you've never been part of a community, you're welcome here. That's the first thing. Now, I was tempted to say, well, you're a part of this one. Well, that's your choice. it's not for me to say that you are a part of this community or you aren't a part of this community. What I can say is that you're welcome here. I don't know if that kind of makes sense, but it's arrogant for me to assume that this person feels like this is their community.

If this person doesn't feel like this is their community, like that's them. But, you know, they're entitled to that. So what I will say is that you're welcome here. And if you'd like to join, I think it's fair to say we'd love to have you. That's what we're going to start with. but I think this post is really, really important because it tackles or addresses a lot of what we sometimes lose sight up. So a lot of people out there think that being pretty means,

translates into equates having friends, having lovers, having boyfriends, girlfriends, whatever. They think that being physically attractive, is a miracle drug, is a panacea for fixing all of the problems in life. And the truth of the matter is that it isn't. And this is what's sometimes so hard for other people to understand, because if we live in a society where being pretty means that your life is easy, what do you say if you are pretty and your life isn't easy?

Right? How do you get people to understand? Because everyone kind of looks at you and says, like, you're pretty like, what are you complaining about? You could get laid anytime you want to. Of course, you could have a relationship. And there may be people out there that would say, I would love to date you, right? I want to see you as a person, you know, like I don't get it.

Everyone out there is craving something that if you're attractive or you're a woman or whatever, right, if you've got some kind of advantage. Everyone out there is craving something. and you're craving it too. The challenge is that, paradoxically, the advantage that everyone thinks will make your life easy can sometimes actually make your life difficult.

And that's something that it's very hard to explain to people who are not in a frame of mind to listen to what your challenges are because you have something that they don't have. Right? I don't know if that sentence was too complex, so I'll try to say it again. But like sometimes, so let's try to understand a little bit, right?

So I'm going to generalize here, which is the first mistake. But like what it's like to be like an attractive human being, especially a woman. This isn't just about women, by the way. So when you do enter into a relationship, sometimes what people will do if you're attractive is they'll just see the physical attractiveness. Right? That's what they're interested in. And this person has even had an experience where someone dated them for six months because of the way that they looked. And so it's kind of weird.

and we may sort of say that, okay, physical attractiveness makes it easy for you to get into relationships, and that may be true, but my point is that that's not sufficient to deal with the crushing loneliness that you feel. And in fact, sometimes it can even reinforce it. Because why is this person in a relationship? It's not because of me. It's because of the way that I look, right? I'm one accident away of having no value. Because if I get into a car accident or or if I trip and fall and I get a scar in my face or I break my nose or something like that, then I have no value at all. So the really challenging thing sometimes about people who are attractive

is that their value starts to become based on their attraction. Because society as a whole thinks, okay, this has so many advantages like this is your worth. And that's actually like their experience. And so I want y'all to think about this a little bit. because if you're an attractive woman and you get a job, what do people attribute your success to? Are you being hired to? If you get promoted, what do they attribute your success to?

Now, this is kind of tricky, right? Because most people will actually attribute it to your value as a person, to your work ethic. Let's be fair. The challenge is that some people don't. right? Some people will say like, oh, she just got the job because she's hot, or she got promoted because she's sleeping with the boss. And they kind of make these kind of comments and they make these kind of jokes. We're not saying that the majority of people are like this. So then why do we even bring it up? And the majority of people aren't like this, like, why does it matter? Right? Like if like 98 to 95% of people don't say things like this, what difference does it make? Why are we focusing on the 2%? So let me ask you all a question. How many people does it take? to ruin your day. How many people does it take to ruin your life? How many people does it take to turn an achievement into ash? This is why we talk about it. And this is what's so hard about being in a

situation like this. If you're lonely and you're attractive and we're going to get to, we're going to talk more about that. Right. And you have one relationship where the person even says, like they don't treat you like a person, right? Like they're like really interested in your looks and you kind of like, you try to make it work, right? Because you're like, okay, I'm lonely. What's the antidote? Like, I need to be in a relationship. Okay, let's like, fine. So I'm going. This person's nice. They're being really nice to me. They're getting me flowers. We're going on dates and whatnot. We're, you know, dating for six months. But like, the more you're in that relationship, you start to feel like there's not a connection here. And then you break up with them because you,

you torture yourself for months in this relationship, trying to find a connection with another human being. And then when you end up, when you end the relationship because you're not getting a connection, they're even like, yeah, by the way, I wasn't really interested in you as a person. And that hurts. That sinks in deep. It confirms everything that you fear. So the challenge here is that sometimes we have advantages. And there's data, for example, that shows that attractive people get particular advantages in life. We're not disputing that. The key thing is that somewhere along the way, we started to take the advantages that, let's say, attractive people face women, sorry, the advantages that attractive people receive, that women receive, that tall men receive,

you know, you can take whatever you want. Like, you can take whatever advantage. There are all kinds of advantages. Having hair, right, that's an advantage. People treat you differently. And somewhere along the way, we started gatekeeping, suffering if someone has an advantage. And we started to invalidate people's experiences around this. We started to say that, by the way, if you're attractive, you're not allowed to be lonely. You're not allowed to be socially anxious because everyone would want to be friends with an attractive person, right? Because there's actually data that shows that. That maybe, I mean, actually don't know that. I haven't looked at that, but I'm sure that there's papers out there that show that attractive people have more

friendships than non-attractive people. right it's not a surprising finding but here's the thing to understand is that each and every one of us is an individual human being and that no one feature of us determines who we are as a person and in fact the reason that this makes us so lonely is because sometimes if we're attractive it's like that one feature is the only thing that other people see and that's not just about attractiveness right This is something that's generalizable as well, where you may be someone whose entire life or what everyone looks at when they see you is determined by one feature. I'm the oldest son of a business mogul.

Therefore, the weight of the world's expectations are on my shoulders. I'm an attractive woman. Therefore, everything for me is supposed to be easy. And this is what's so devastating about it is when things are supposed to be easy for you, how does that make you feel when they're hard? Because everyone's telling you, hey, life is supposed to be easy. You got the golden ticket. You're playing life on easy mode.

It's devastating. Because failing at life is one thing, but failing at life on easy mode destroys who you are. Destroyes your capacity for self-love. So what do we do about this? So the first thing to understand is that sometimes people who are in this cycle, and it sounds like this person, in a sense, is not in this cycle, but I still want to kind of talk about it.

Sometimes when we have one feature, which we think should fix loneliness, okay? Or the world tells us, invalidates us if we say we're lonely. We can use that feature as a crutch to connect with other people. So if you're an attractive woman and you feel lonely, sometimes what you'll fall into is casual sexual relationships.

And you're looking for more, but sometimes that feeling of loneliness is so heavy and so crippling that you'll use anything you can to make it go away for a little while. Right? Because the truth of the matter is that that feeling of loneliness has a neurochemical component. So after having sex with someone and after laying with them, like you'll get this release of oxytocin.

And this is once again an oversimplification, but oxytocin is one of the hormones that we use to bond. So it's responsible for like maternal infant bonding. It's also responsible for like bonding in romantic relationships.

It's part of the reason why friends with benefits can sometimes be hard or specifically cuddling after engaging in sexual relations with a friend with benefits will start to create catching feelings. It's part of the reason that we catch feelings. And so if you're, if you're lonely and you're craving human connection, it turns out that sex can give you a piece of

that. It's an interesting aside. Some people have even found research, or some people have done research on why people with schizophrenia have difficulty forming emotional connections with other people. And one of the theories they've traced it back to is actually oxytocin deficiencies. And so some people were pretty pioneering, and they thought, okay, what if we artificially give people oxytocin nasal spray? Because that's the delivery thing that they did. So they'd clinical trials on oxytocin nasal spray for people with schizophrenia to see if they could help them form like relationships and emotional bonds. Turns out that the data wasn't really good and it didn't seem to be very effective. It was a really interesting kind of side note.

So sometimes we'll, when we're really lonely, we'll use anything that we can to get our. needs met, right? You want to crave some kind of, you're craving that connection so much. You'll even engage in sex. And it sounds like this person has sort of tried the casual sex route and it sort of didn't work for them, which I think is like a step in the right direction. So be a little bit careful about what you use to get your needs met. Because if you do use sex to connect with another person, because it does sort of like engage oxytocin for them, it engages oxytocin for you, there's some amount of balding, I mean, balding, bonding.

Freudian slip of the year. There's some amount of bonding, but that bonding too is somewhat artificial. That connection that you're forming with them is based on them not knowing who you are. And then something really devastating can happen. Because over time, you can start to learn that the only way for me to get this is through sex.

Because in your life, you're lonely, you're lonely, you're lonely until you have sex with someone. And then for a few moments, you're connected. And then over time, if that's the only way you can connect to people, what does that do to your sense of identity? It cripples it. Because now the only thing that I'm worth, the only worth that I bring as a person is through my body. That's the only way I can connect with people. And so, interestingly enough, what we tend to see, and this is not just about attractive women who are lonely, but this is also about people who engage in unhealthy sexual relationships

and use sex as a coping mechanism and things like that. We sort of create this vicious cycle where I'm getting my needs met through some kind of unhealthy relationship, and the unhealthy relationship actually reinforces the negative parts of myself that make it hard for me to connect. Because if I'm not worth any more than my body, then why would anyone ever want to connect with me? I can't risk showing people what I really am because what I am is ugly, but what I look like is attractive.

And so you're terrified to actually engage with people, even though you crave it. So the first thing to do is if you're in that cycle, understand that cycle. Now, the second thing that I want to comment on is I imagine that there are some people who are listening to this who may be reacting strongly to it. So here are a couple of the reactions that I'm envisioning. Okay. Some people may say, I'm lonely and unattractive. But I take sex plus loneliness over loneliness plus no sex any day of the week. Right?

Even having sex is like one step up. And there are some people out there who are craving a sexual relationship. And the thought of I can get laid any time that I want. to sounds like the Holy Grail to them. They're like, what is this person complaining about? This sounds amazing. There may be other people who are sort of reacting to this as well, which is like, you know, sort of like, once again, what is this person complaining about?

There's so many advantages to being an attractive woman in the world. I don't get it. If you're listening to this and you're reacting that way, I want you to notice what you are doing to the other person with your reaction. This person is telling you that they're suffering. They have something that granted you don't have, and there may be advantages to that, and you can want that thing. But you're just assuming that their experience is incorrect.

And you're actually depriving them of the capacity to suffer and connect with other people, because what you're doing is judging them, right? You're not actually like acknowledging who they are as a person and treating them with compassion. you're actually saying like, why are you complaining? Now, here's the key thing to understand if you're having that reaction, which is okay. When you tried to demonstrate your suffering and your humanness to other people,

how did they react to you? When you said, I'm lonely. When you said, it's impossible for me to find a date. When you said, I'm never going to get laid. What did the world say to you? lull what? Just work on yourself. Just untake the black pill. It's all in your head. You can fix it. The world did to you exactly what you're doing to this person. And when the world does that, when the world invalidates us, sometimes what we do is we lean into a community that says, yes, yes, yes, your suffering is justified. Your suffering is real. Right? And then we separate. You know, I'm not saying that there aren't some. some people who have some advantages in life. But my overwhelming experience has been that advantages are advantages make no mistake.

So I still remember, for example, being a medical student and having female colleagues and walking into a patient's room. And the patient assumes that I'm a doctor when I'm just a medical student. And they assume that year, actually, and they assume that my, later on when I'm actually a doctor and I have resident colleagues, assuming that their doctor is actually an nurse. So I got treated like a doctor when I wasn't one, because I'm a man, an Indian, and I had female colleagues who got treated as nurses when they were doctors. So we're not saying that these things don't exist. My point is that those things don't automatically translate to happiness.

And I've seen this as a psychiatrist, working with people who are struggling because they're homeless and working with people who are struggling because they're partners in investment banks. And this is something that, by the way, it's not just a psychiatrist. me, right? There's also Buddha who sort of said this. And there's some research that sort of contradicts it, which we have to acknowledge, right? So we know that, for example, a certain amount of financial security does correlate with happiness. So we're not saying that there isn't an influence. But what I want you to really focus on is how you treat this person. Because this is really important. When someone posts and we talk about it, we talk about what they should do

differently. We give them all of the responsibility. Right. Oh, I'm stuck. What should I do? How can I connect with people? And we're going to talk a little bit more about what this person can do. But this is something that's really important to understand. If someone is struggling out there, it's not necessarily entirely their fault. All of us are products of our environment. We're products of the judgments that people face, that people give us. Their lives are also determined. by the judgments we make. And so if you're listening to this post and it's making you feel resentful because I don't understand why this person is complaining, I have it so much harder.

I'm not saying you don't have it harder. What I'm saying is that comparing who has it harder doesn't actually help. I did three months of work on a trauma unit. And then also was on call and stuff for years on the same trauma unit. Got called a lot. And one of the things that we found is that people would instinctively compare their trauma. Oh, you were emotionally abused? I was physically abused.

You were physically abused? I was sexually abused. And it doesn't help, right? Why do people do that? It's because they themselves, when you shared your story of suffering, people invalidated you. They said, you don't deserve to suffer. Like, what are you complaining about? You're a male in-cell.

There's male privilege. Right? And then the in cells are saying, oh, there's like women privilege. They can get laid whatever they want to. Like my point is like it's not about the statistics. It's about how we treat each other as human beings. When someone else says they suffer, how do you respond to that? When you shared your suffering, how did someone else respond to you? And that's what I really commend about this person because this person is saying this is my experience. And what I'm really proud of is that this is a community where we have heard this person. And we've said, we hear you. It sounds tough.

And by the way, this is me. I didn't know that attractive women could feel this way, right? Which is awesome. That's where AEOE healing comes from. So I said it at the beginning, I'll say it again. You're welcome here. Now, last thing to talk about. So one thing is we talked about the cycle, right?

Next thing to talk about is what do you do if you're kind of in this situation? So generally speaking, when I encounter situations like this, we do see this cycle of being judged because of the way that you look. Your identity starts to form kind of like it almost gets split off where this is like the real me and this is the way that the world treats me. And the more that I get judged about the way that I look, the more isolated I feel and the less good of a person I kind of become in my own head. I don't know if that sort of makes sense. So for example, like, let's say I get promoted and people make comments and how many comments does it take to ruin your day, right? So, like, if you get, if you have a birthday party and 10 people bring gifts and one of them is a pile of feces, that's going to ruin your day, even if the other nine gifts were really great. If 10 people there, if nine people are like, hey, you're a really awesome person.

we really love having you in our life. And one person is like, here's a pile of feces. You're a waste of space. I hope you cease to exist. Right? It doesn't, like, that's the fundamental problem with the world, which is that it's so much easier to hurt than it is to help. And so the challenge here is that as we develop and as we start getting treated a

particular way because of our identity, we start to realize, oh, like, here's my worth as a human being. Here's all the successes and failures I have. But if I'm pretty and more people attribute it to my attractiveness, then my actual sense of self kind of like falls and goes in the other direction. Does that kind of make sense? Because the more that people start to talk about my achievements being due to my attractiveness or due to my wealth or due to my advantages, the more I start to feel bad about myself. And the more I start to feel bad about myself, the more that I compensate in different kinds of ways.

like I develop a strong ego or narcissistic defense mechanisms. And you all can even see that like in the mass media with public figures, right? There are some people out there who when they accomplish things, no one says, hey, good job. That's actually pretty impressive. What everyone says is, oh, you just got there because you were born with advantages. And then we'll also potentially even see the egotistical responses. and then it just becomes a cycle, right? Because the thought of compassion towards that person is mind-blowing.

Like, what? So what do you do if you're kind of in this situation where you've been taught or you've learned this lesson that your worth is based on your attractiveness? So I know it's going to sound kind of hard, but what you should do is find out who you are. So who you are is not determined by how you're treated. That's why we call one how. you're treated, right?

How people relate to you. It's a treatment. It's not who you are. The problem is that we tend to conflate the two. And for people who are more egotistical, whose aham kars are stronger, what we tend to find is that who they are are treated. So in psychiatry, this is like when we look at narcissism. So if people treat me with respect, I feel like I'm on top of the world.

but if people treat me with disrespect, I'm a horrible human being. And so how do I protect myself in that situation? I have to force people to treat me with respect because I can't tolerate when they don't. Because if they don't treat me with respect, then my sense of identity is determined by how I'm treated. And you'll see this, which is why people always have to be the center of attention, they can't tolerate criticism, et cetera, et cetera.

So you have to find out who you are. How do you do that? So I recognize that you're lonely. I think there are a couple of different ways to find out who you are. And we're going to kind of speed run this, right? This is like the topic of potentially a whole guide. But a couple things. The first is to spend time with yourself.

And you may say, but I'm lonely. I do that all day. There's a subtle difference. There's a difference between being at home and wanting to be with someone else and spending time with yourself. So like, you know, before, stream today, I went for a walk. And I went for a walk with myself. And I just spent time letting my thoughts happen, thinking through stuff. I recognize that I need some time with myself. We need to like work through a couple things, figure out what to do, figure out what we're going to do today,

how we're going to handle an extra stream this week, et cetera, et cetera. Sometimes I love this. I'll go eat on my own at a restaurant when I get a chance to. And people may look at you and think like, oh my God, like this person is so pathetic, they're eating alone. And it's like, they can think that if they want to. I just really want to enjoy my food my way. I don't have to, you know, sometimes like usually I go out to eat with my kids, for example, right? But like going out to eat with your kids is like, I don't really have time to enjoy my food because I have to worry about feeding them, ordering for them. They're flopping around.

They want to watch a screen. Things like, it's like, it's chaos. I'm wolfing down my food in between like, you know, trying to feed them bites and make sure they're not like the, The elbow isn't going to hit. If you guys have young kids, you'll know this. The elbow isn't going to knock their cup of water over. So spend time with yourself. Go for a hike.

I think nature is fantastic that way. So if we really look at it, like if ego ties to how other people perceive us, one way that we can get away from that whole complex is nature. Because nature doesn't care. Like if you go for a hike and you go alone versus go with someone else, like let me give you a couple scenarios. Let's say that I'm going for a four-hour hike. Two hours in, I start to feel tired.

And I'm like, maybe I should turn back. And then if you're with someone, you choose not to turn back. Why don't you turn back? Because you don't want to be perceived as weak. And so even if you accomplish your goal, do you feel pride in it? No, I hiked for the avoidance of weakness. It actually enhances the ego and makes you more insecure. If you go by yourself, you're on the first two hours of the hike.

And I recognize it's a four-hour hike. and we said turn around, so it's four hours either way, but whatever. It's a four-hour trail, eight-hour hike, back and forth. You can turn back any time you want to. No one's going to judge you, but you. If you achieved it, you achieved it. If you didn't achieve it, you didn't achieve it. No one's going to clap.

No one's going to say you're weak. No one's going to give you any reaction except for yourself. You're not going to post about it on Instagram. Maybe you will, but you shouldn't. It's really important for you to test. yourself, if you want to find out who you are, you have to test yourself. And whether you succeed or you fail, you're the only one that knows. And so if you decide to push through and you say, you know what, I'm not going to give up. I'm going to keep going, no matter what. And you get to

the top of the mountain, no one's there. You don't even feel elated. You feel like, thank God it's over. Now I have to go back down. No one's clapping for you. No one's saying, oh, you're such an amazing human being. Look, try and for the human spirit like you walked for four hours at a mild incline, like, great job. That's what you're going to be telling yourself. This is no achievement because that's the toxic part of you. That's the part of you that's created when you can't connect with another human being. And you do that enough times and you'll start to realize, you know what, that actually isn't true. I did do it. And I can be proud of this. I got to. I got to. to start somewhere. Even if I can't be proud of it. If you can't be proud of it, no big deal.

You did it. You put your mind to it and you did it. So find out who you are. And that happens first and foremost with yourself. Second thing, fourth thing, I don't know, lost track of numbering, is I think that you've, you know, reach out to someone else in an authentic way, which is kind of what this person did. Right. So no one is going to appreciate. you for who you are unless you actually show them. And this is where things get really tricky. Because if you really show them who you are, you open the door to rejection. And especially if you're like, in this case, an attractive woman who's lonely,

that's going to like, it's so devastating, right? Because if I pretend to be okay, then I'm attractive. Everyone thinks my life is great. But then if I turn to them and I say, hey, by the way, I'm actually really struggling, really lonely, and I have difficulty connected with other human beings. What's so terrifying about that is if they turn to you and say, what on earth are you talking about? You're so attractive.

You shouldn't have problems. And so in that moment, you're opening the door for them to reject you. The challenge of being connected with another human being is in order to be accepted by someone, the door must be open for them to reject you as well. And we're so afraid of that rejection that we can never risk it. And therefore, we can never give someone the chance to accept us. And so we stay stuck. I think the good news is that a lot of that is in our head.

Right. I'm not saying that mean people don't exist out there, right? So this person had an experience with a boyfriend who was basically very shallow. But people in our community exist too, where this person shared this. And there were people who were there willing to listen and be compassionate and stuff like that. And like I've said it a thousand times. I'm going to say it a thousand more times. Healthy Gamer is more than Dr. K.

who helped this person connect with other human beings? It wasn't Dr. K. The work has been done. It's y'all. This person is overwhelmed by the responses in support, and they don't have time to reply to all of the people who are responding. That's y'all. That ain't me.

So be a little bit careful about who you open up to by all means, but you've got to give people a chance to reject you if you want to be accepted. So a couple of things just to kind of recap. So someone posted about being an attractive woman who's lonely. And for a slice of humanity, a slice of the internet, that does not compute. Because being attractive is the antidote to loneliness, right? If you're attractive, especially a woman, then you should be able to make friends very easily. You can get laid any time you want to.

Oh my God. Sounds so amazing. The truth of the matter is that any advantage is never a substitute for, like, happiness and will protect you 100% from suffering. Do advantages give us advantages? Yeah. Do they help out some? Absolutely.

Or some of them pretty big? Absolutely. And yet, they're not a substitute for connection, right? Attractiveness is not a substitute for connection. And in fact, sometimes this is what people who really struggle is that sometimes attractive people are more lonely. And when I say more, I'm creating a comparison. So let's step away from that statement, actually.

are incredibly lonely. Let's use that. So why are they incredibly lonely? Because anytime someone interacts with them, they're not interacting with a person. They're interacting with the shell of a person. They're not interacting with you. They're interacting with your appearance. And the more that people interact with your appearance and all they see is the appearance instead of the person, the more lonely the person becomes. The real challenge here is that if you share that with people, they're going to be upset. Because there are people out there

who are hurt and lonely themselves and don't have that advantage. And so they're going to turn to you and say, how dare you complain? Because I'm in the same situation except I'm not even attractive. And in that moment, they invalidate your experience.

Why do they do that? Because that is what was done to them. Because when they reached out, for help when they said I'm struggling. I can't even have sex. I've never had sex and I'm going to die a virgin. And men can say this, women can say this, non-binary people can say this, maybe asexual people say this. I don't really know, right? Because sometimes they're not interested in it, which is totally fine. Anyone can say this. But when you said, when people said this, remember, once again, the majority of people may say, wow, that must be hard for you. But all it

takes a couple of people to say, wow, it's all in your head. If you were just did this, you could engage in a sexual relationship. So it can actually be really invalid. It can be hard, right? Because now you've tried to open the door and you've tried to connect with another person. What has someone else done? Slammed it in your face. So what do you do about this? The first is be a little bit careful about what the dirty tricks you'll use to satisfy your loneliness. And I don't just mean sexual. I mean generalizing it for a reason, right? So there are certain things that we'll do to get people to help us feel less lonely,

but in an inauthentic way, sneaky way. Sometimes we'll offer sex. Sometimes we'll offer money, right? Oh, I'll pay for all my friends. I'll pay so they come, right? I'm going to have a birthday party and I'm going to pay for all the food. I'm going to take everyone out to dinner. That way people will show up.

we'll use some of our advantages to make us feel less lonely. But in those moments, what we're actually doing is reinforcing our loneliness. Because it's not an authentic connection. We're buying it, paying a particular price. So you've got to be super careful about that cycle, especially because sometimes as you become lonely, there's only one thing that works, right? which is at times, you know, for women or men, like offering your physical form, offering your body,

or offering money. And then that's the only way that we know to find connection. But the more that we connect with people that way, it like reinforces the problem because they're not connecting with me. They're not showing up at my birthday party because they like me. They're showing up at my birthday party for the free food. But that's the only way that I can get them to come and I don't want to be alone on my birthday because that hurts too much.

So be aware of that cycle. And the next thing is get in touch with yourself. Find out who you are. You're saying that you have trouble connecting with other people. Sometimes the hardest reason to connect with other people is because we're not sure who we are. We don't know what there is to connect to. We don't know. Am I good on the inside or am I bad on the inside?

Am I someone who's worth being friends with one day? And if you don't have that confidence in yourself, it's so hard to connect with people because there's a lot of uncertainty. What if I'm not actually worth connecting with? So how do you find that? You spend time with yourself. You start to realize, and this is what it looks like after, you know, healthy work, that I am who I am. Not everyone is going to like it. And that's okay.

My value as a human being is not determined by getting this particular person to like me and this particular person to hang out with me. But oftentimes when we struggle with our own identity, that's what it turns into. and suddenly this person's opinion means the world to us. And if this person agrees to go on a date with me, it means I'm a good human being. And if this person doesn't agree to go on a date with me, it means I'm a bad human being. The next thing that you've got to do to connect is open the door for rejection. Because in order for someone to truly accept you, which is what connectedness feels like, right? To really connect with someone is to have someone see you and say, hey, I recognize you're flawed.

Hey, I recognize you're a complex human being. and I like you anyway. Because when you're attractive, I like you despite who you are. I appreciate the attractiveness outweighs the bad stuff. And if we really want to connect with people, that needs to change. You can't have people accepting you

because you're attractive despite the bad stuff. You need actually people to accept you kind of no matter what. Right? You want people to accept you in spite of your flaws and not for any other particular reason, for them to say, it's okay that you have your flaws,

that your flaws are over here, your advantages over here. It's not because one outweighs the other. It's because both of them are you, and I accept you whole package. It's not about a balancing or, like, hitting a certain threshold. The last thing to consider,

in terms of being seen, is you can absolutely work with a therapist, especially if you've got problems with, like, social anxiety or things like that. So I'd recommend a clinical evaluation if you haven't gotten one to see if really therapy is appropriate for you. And if it isn't appropriate for you, or I mean, it can still be appropriate even if you're not clinically ill. And you find a good therapist, that can be very, very helpful. But part of what we tend to see actually in coaching is that women who are in this situation do really, really well in coaching.

People have trouble connecting. And we have kind of data behind that. So not published or anything like that. but we do a lot of internal data to try to figure out, okay, who can we actually help? And it turns out that we have good outcomes around women who struggle with discovering who they are and facing judgment from the world. Even in career coaching, we sort of see that a fair amount. Where like women are struggling to figure out, like, okay, how do I represent myself?

Well, in the workplace. How do I deal with toxicity in the workplace? Things like that. That's a great question. Blenie is asking, when people come to us and share experience, like that on the internet or IRL, how do we know when it's just venting and when they need actual advice? It's a great question, and my answer is going to be a little bit tongue in cheek. So oftentimes, they will tell you, I'm not posting this for advice or pity.

And if they don't tell you, you can ask, right? I know it sounds like a simple answer, but like that's honestly, like, I mean, even when people come into my office, I'll just ask, like, you know, ask them. You're sharing all this stuff with me. What are you, you know, does it feel good to get it off of your chest? And is that really what you're looking for? Or, you know, do you want to like do a little bit more back and forth? Are you looking for guidance?

Are you looking for support? That's usually those are the two words that I'll use. Because venting and advice seem have certain connotations to them. So you can just ask them. Yeah, triple stand and saying, are you looking for feedback or do you just want to vent? oftentimes I find that it's a safe bet to assume it's just venting. And if they want advice, they will ask for it. So I tend to default to support as opposed to guidance.

A question, what if there are conditions or boundaries that impact the connection? For example, someone says they aren't ready for love, but they want to be treated as though they are loved. So Abby Des, that's a great question. So that's where the tricky thing there is that there's usually like, I'm assuming that there's another person in that relationship, right? So I want to be treated as though they're love but aren't ready for love. That can put the other person in a very, very awkward situation because you're asking them to like, you know, that's confusing. How do you treat someone with love who's not ready for love? Or like, what does that mean to them?

So I think the first thing to understand is that just because someone wants something, if they're not ready for it, it probably means that they need to do some work, right? Because they have, that sounds to me like that needs to be explored more or resolved in some way. And if you're trying to have a relationship with that person, I'm not even saying romantic. It can be platonic. It can be parental, whatever. That can be really confusing for you. so I would clarify what that means.

So treat it as though they are loved, like, what does that mean? And, you know, what does it mean to not be ready for love? Like, help me understand, like, what that means. And if you're the person who feels that way where you feel like, I want to be treated with love, but I'm not ready for love, you need to ask yourself, what does that mean? What makes it so that you aren't ready for love? What makes it so that you want to be treated with love?

Like, what is that, what is that, if you get treated that way, what is that satisfying? What hunger does that fill? So I think it's a great starting point, but requires further exploration.