HealthyGamerGG - Why You Feel Desperate and Lonely

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

Today Doctor K talks about men, loneliness, relationships, and fulfilling yours and your partner's needs! 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

You're starving so bad that you don't have space to share. Right? So you're starving and then you get a sandwich. And you're so starving that all you can think about is eating that sandwich. And it feels so good to finally get some food. That in that process of you getting your own needs met, you don't have space for another person in that relationship. Dr. Kay should address the men desperately looking for partners. Hello and welcome to my controversial post. I feel I poorly express my post point. Here's my updated post. I've seen so many posts from my fellow men expressing how they feel about being alone. I fully admit I myself have done it and even tired of seeing the same basic premise. I for one can't imagine how the female members feel, but I imagine they feel objected and annoyed. I'm aware this is a contentious topic, is a dude who is single and lonely in a new job, new city, in new,

everything I get it. However, most say posts the same stuff. Most posts say the same stuff. I'm horny and alone. No woman will ever be able, will love me because I'm ugly. I don't talk to women and none like me. I don't go out and talk to women and I'm angry about that. I just want a girlfriend for sex or for intimacy, which isn't really healthy. The reasons are inherently bad and really won't get you to your goal. Many of my fellow men wallow in loneliness and feel sex and romantic intimacy will get them what they want, and it may for a time. However, if you don't love you, if you aren't okay with you, if you're not the person you want to love, then you'll likely have issues with the relationship. I'm no expert, but I'm a guy and I can tell you that while being hornying alone sucks,

being in a toxic relationship is worse than hell. Work on yourself, bros, focus on you, but most importantly, put yourself out there and remember that rejection is rejection. to the guys who are emotionally abused, valid, and don't know how to talk to women. I was cheated on, valid, and I don't feel comfortable with women. These guys need help in time. Don't jump into dating. Take time to focus on you, and that's the core of it. You need to focus on you no matter who you are.

If you come off as desperate, depressed, angry, and women are just reproductive organs, then you'll likely keep incurring the same problem. While I sympathize with you guys, we need to focus on us and not make sex in a relationship. the goal. Here's my original post. I as a man am tired of seeing my fellow lonely men cry about being alone. I fully admit I myself have done it and even tired of it. I, for one, can't imagine how the female members feel. Why am I tired of it? Because they say the same stuff. I'm horny alone. No women will be able to love me because I'm ugly. I talk to women and none like me. I was emotionally abused, valid, and don't know how to talk to women. I was cheated on valid and I don't feel comfortable

with women. The first half where the guy is, in essence, horny alone is so overdone. I'm sorry, but holy moly, if you want to meet women, you need a social life. And if that's all your goal is, then your desperation will precede you. No one likes desperate. So many of my fellow men wallow in loneliness and feel sex and romantic intimacy will get them what they want, and it may be for a time. However, if you don't love you, if you aren't okay with you, if you're not the person you want to love, then you'll likely have issues with the relationship. I'm no expert, but I am a guy, and I can tell you that while being horny and alone, sucks, being in a toxic relationship is worse than hell.

Work on yourself. Bros. focus on you, but most importantly, put yourself out there and remember that rejection is rejection. Mods updated for clarity of opinions. Mods, feel free to delete this if it's too toxic. Okay. So, this is a fantastic post. First of all, because I think we're learning as a community, right? So I think this post comes across is more invalidating harsher.

This post, I think, is a little bit more nuanced in depth, which is wonderful. And so I do want to talk to you all today a little bit about this issue. And what I'm sort of talking about is that there are a lot of posts out there. There are a lot of people out there who feel lonely and desperate. They want love, you know, or they want sex, or they want all of the above. they want intimacy. And they feel incredibly, sometimes they feel incredibly frustrated. They feel like the world is an unfair place.

They feel like, you know, they've been dealt a crappy hand of cards, which essentially dooms them to loneliness. They feel desperate. And sometimes when we feel desperate and we don't get something that we want, we really want to blame the whole world for our situation, which isn't necessarily wrong, right? So like, let's just acknowledge for a moment that a lot of things about our life are not determined by us. Like, the fact that I am not the son of a billionaire or that, you know, I had abusive parents or like all these things are our karma. They're not determined by us.

So the truth of the matter is that sometimes things like not everything that we do is our fault. Not all of our circumstances are our fault. In fact, most of our circumstances aren't our fault. There's also where there are all kinds of other like carmic things which can make relationships easy for you. So, for example, did you grow up with an intact household? Did you learn from your parents how to navigate conflict? Did you learn from your parents how to express feelings? Did you learn from your parents how to respect boundaries?

Did you learn from your parents how to lay boundaries? So some of us who grew up with good households, loving households, learn a lot of this stuff intrinsically and it kind of gets baked in at a very young age. There's also a lot of stuff about self-worth here. because if you don't feel good about yourself and you're desperate and hungry and horny and alone and you want intimacy, people sort of believe that the desperation carries through

and since I'm ugly and I'm desperate, I'm screwed. No one will ever love me. And those feelings are like completely valid. Even some of the points that they make are completely valid. Now a lot of times what will happen is at some point like in this discussion, people will start talking about society. Right? They'll say like society is this, society is that.

I've made that mistake before. So let me just start by sort of saying, the way we're going to address this today is not by talking about society. It's not about like what society does for us or doesn't do for us. These are all valid and important discussions. I'm not saying they aren't. So, for example, you know, the role of masculinity is rapidly changing. Men face particular problems.

Women face particular problems. Non-binary people face particular problems. I'm not trying to invalidate any of those perspectives. At the same time, when I see these kinds of, of issues. What I hear is you're desperate, you're lonely, sure you had a rough life, and the desperation will precede you. And you have to focus on yourself. You have to learn to love yourself. You have to be happy with yourself to enter into a healthy relationship. We hear all these truisms. Does anyone tell us how? Does anyone say, here is how you love yourself?

Here are the steps. So here's what I find is the biggest problem. that men in the situation run into is that I find that it's very difficult for them to think about someone else's needs. Okay? So there are a lot of lonely and desperate men in this situation. And you can sort of say, like,

work on yourself first, and then you can sort of enter into a relationship. But the truth of the matter is that, like, this is not easy to do. So we have this concept, right? of bringing yourself up by your bootstraps. And we kind of think about this in the financial sense, that you can be a self-made millionaire.

But the truth of the matter is that, like, it's way easier to have good financial circumstances at the get-go when you launch on your financial journey. That leads to a lot more success than pulling yourself up by the nature of your own, you know, strength and guts and all that kind of stuff. And the interesting thing is that this is true from an emotional and relationship standpoint as well.

like self-worth is oftentimes given to you, which is weird because it's sort of self-worth, right? But if we think about kids who grow up confident and loved, like they have a huge advantage. So if you're someone who's lonely and desperate, people say work on yourself first, but like working on yourself, I know it's kind of weird, but is rarely a solo pursuit. So this is the first thing is we can say work on yourself and we will teach you how to work on yourself. so don't worry about that. But let's just acknowledge how hard it is to work on yourself. And this doesn't apply to men only, by the way. So this is like, sure, there are a lot of men who face this situation, but it's like,

if you're someone who is desperate for connection, feeling lonely, feeling horny, craving intimacy, and that desperation precedes you, you come across as clingy, you come across as pathetic, you come across as desperate, you tend to drive people away. that's a really hard thing to overcome because like let's just think a little bit about how does that that person overcome that sure you can do this mythical internal work you can go to india and stay in and ashram for tons and tons of months and years and study to become a monk but the truth is even in my own life like i had a woman who accepted me and you know far before i accepted myself so the truth of the matter is that human beings are community creatures we're a community

organisms. We're not like most human growth just historically does not happen in a cabin in the woods, right? Human growth and human connection and like becoming who you are happens with mentorship, happens with like, you know, hopefully parental love, you know, your bros who are there for you, siblings who are there for you, your girls who are there for you. It comes from other people. even studies of borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder clearly demonstrate the value of social connection. And we know that social capital, there have been tons of study about the positive impacts of social capital on mental health.

So being a part of community that cares about you is huge for your own sense of identity. And so how do we navigate this? Because the truth is that, like, unfortunately, it's very hard to just learn how to love yourself. just all on your own. So you can, it can be done. But I think if we really look at the way that the majority of people learn how to respect themselves,

it actually comes with some interaction from other people. So how do we tackle this problem? The first thing that we have to be super careful about is misdiagnosis. So I don't mean this in a clinical sense, but I mean that oftentimes when human beings come up with, when they face a problem,

their mind generates an answer. but the mind isn't really like critical about it, right? So if you think about why am I alone, your mind will say, oh, because I'm ugly or because I'm desperate. And I just wreak desperation from my pores. But if we really think about, you know, let's say you've had a set of relationships, you've gone on dates and things like that, the reason that you're alone isn't just what you think in your head.

Actually, the best sources of information are going to be the people that you date, right? The tricky thing is that oftentimes we don't really respect boundaries. We don't have good ways of collecting feedback. We don't know how to interact with those people. So we don't really know why they choose not to date us again. And then we formulate our own conclusions, but what are those conclusions based on? They're based on our own biases. It must be because I'm ugly.

It must be because I'm desperate. Whereas in my experience, the biggest thing that lonely men tend to miss, and once again, not just men, is that they feel desperate. And so they think that that desperation comes through. But oftentimes it becomes about your own needs. So it's not the fact that you're desperate. It's that you have such, you're starving so bad that you don't have. Right now, Amazon is offering some amazing extra perks that come with a job offer.

If you start a warehouse job, you can get a $1,000 sign-on bonus. That means you start earning a paycheck right away, plus you get extra cash to use before the holidays. Applying is so easy, you don't even need an interview. It's never been so rewarding to start an hourly job that's close to home. So what are you waiting for? To join the team today, visit amazon.com slash sign-on bonus. Amazon is an equal opportunity employer. Space to share, right?

So you're starving, and then you get a sandwich. And you're so starving that all you can think about is eating that sandwich. and it feels so good to finally get some food. That in that process of you getting your own needs met, you don't have space for another person in that relationship. So when you're starving and you get a sandwich, it's so hard to tear that sandwich in half or give half of the sandwich to your partner.

There's the first thing that I tend to notice in these kinds of people is that there is a focus on the self, which is not sort of, it's not their fault. don't blame them for having this. Because this is what tends to happen is like, you know, the starving person thinks about eating themselves, like, why are they in that situation? It's because they're starving. So it's like a natural consequence of being alone, of being starved for affection, for being

starved from intimacy. And so then what happens is like when you enter into a relationship, there just isn't space for the other person. So it's not that they're avoiding you because you're desperate and ugly. It's because like there isn't a relationship for them to participate. then. There is just needs to be met. And this is how sometimes women feel objectified. Because in a sense, they are, right? Because like, you're busy getting your needs met. And once again, it's not, we're sort of adopting a male to female kind of perspective. But it can be the other way around too. Where like,

when you enter into a relationship with someone who's, who's starving, there's going to be a period of time where, like, they don't have the bandwidth to take care of you. And the tricky thing is that sometimes even desperate, lonely men will be on the other side of the table in an equally toxic way, where they enter into relationships where they are the giver, the giver, the giver, the giver, the giver, the giver. Because they know, they can empathically, they know what it's like to be alone and starve for affection. The problem is that that's not sustainable. So you're the giver, the giver, the giver, the giver, the giver, the giver. And then as you give and you give and you give and you give and you give,

if your partner potentially starts to feel healthier, and then something falls apart because this is not a healthy, even relationship. So either they become dependent on you or they become independent of you, in which case, the only thing that you have to give is what you give. And so the premise of the relationship is lopsided

and it can't grow into an equal relationship. So it's really tricky. It's scary. One of the most terrifying things I've ever seen for people who are insecure, who take care of other people in relationships, the most terrifying thing is that the person that I am taking care of

will no longer need my help. Because what I bring to them is taking care of them. And if they no longer need me, if they no longer need the care I provide, then they no longer need me. And in the worst situations, this actually turns into sabotage. Where, like, I'm afraid you're going to leave me

if you get better. And that's where the relationship has to grow, right? it has to turn into something else, otherwise it can't survive. So the first thing that you've got to be careful about is misdiagnosis. Be careful about what your mind generates and what's the quality of information. Have you had a series of long and honest conversations between people who are like comfortable with sharing this information about what challenges they had with you in the relationship? Because unless you're getting that information from your partner, chances are you really have no idea.

And this is where like even after a breakup, you may have like a single conversation or people may be emotional. So I hate you because you did this and you did that. That's not like a real conversation. That's just people venting emotionally. So first thing is be careful about misdiagnosis. The second thing is that if you're in this situation, okay, how can you work on yourself? How can you work on other people? How can you make space for other people? So today what I'm going to talk to you all about is actually really interesting. It's about metta meditation. So I think met the meditation or loving kindness meditation is a particular branch of meditation that's designed to develop gratitude and compassion towards yourself and other people. And the really fascinating thing about met the meditation, we're going to look at a little bit of science,

and we're going to look at the substance of metham meditation. What we'll actually see is that all of the problems that these people suffer from are sort of fixed in a nuanced way through metham meditation. So the first thing is that when I'm lonely and desperate, the only person I'm thinking about is myself. That's not really, I don't really consider it selfishness. So I'm not saying that these people are selfish. But it's more just that I'm so preoccupied with myself. Even in the relationship, I'm so preoccupied with myself. Oh my God, am I coming across is desperate?

Oh my God, I'm so ugly. This isn't selfishness. It is focus on the self. You can't stop thinking about yourself in these relationships. It's not necessarily a good way. You're not like, oh my God, I'm so beautiful. But literally there is not space in your cognition for another human being. I'm so busy thinking about how ugly I am.

I'm not paying attention to the fact that the person that I'm dating is blushing when I give them a compliment and clearly feels that I'm out of their league. Right? Because they may be feeling that. But when I feel like I'm an ugly person, like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And if I think I'm ugly, then that's what I think. I'm going to be. I'm going to completely ignore the other person's perspective. So the first thing that Met the Meditation does is helps us move outside of

ourselves and to think about other people. The second thing that Met the Meditation does, which we'll talk about in a second, is helps us accept that we are not in complete control of things. So the other damaging thing about sort of lonely, desperate men is that, that there's a determinism to it, right? I'm desperate, I'm ugly, therefore this is fixed and I'm screwed. And then in the worst cases, what happens is people start to like hate the opposite sex, right? So it's not necessarily just men, because we're sort of seeing this with women too, where we can start to like assume all kinds of things about the opposite sex. So what we need to do is step away from that determinism. We need to step away from the fact that like everything is

laid out. We need to encourage some sense of like a question mark when it comes to the future. Because when I'm lonely and desperate in the future is hopeless, a question mark is a movement in the right direction. So we'll see how met the meditation does that. The next thing is that there are all kinds of different aspects from a, from a scientific perspective. So we'll take a quick look at a paper that talk a little bit about these. Let me find this right, I think. So, there are all kinds of things that met the meditation has been shown to do and these are the things that I truly believe need to be focused on by this population. So if we look at men who have difficulty being empathic, difficulty loving themselves, difficulty loving other people, this is where the attitude of like, you know, the partners that they end up with feel used, right? And why is that? And it's because, like, they have, sometimes we have difficulty, like, acknowledging that another person is a person.

So let's just take a quick look at a paper. So this is a study from, let me just pages this for, okay. So this is, can compassion meditation contribute to the development of psychotherapist's empathy? So this is looking at meditation like met the meditation. It's a really great review. Highly recommend it. But I'm going to highlight this, actually. So, since very few studies of loving kindness and self-compassion

focus exclusively on health care professionals, let us consider the impact of these meditation practices in the general population. So interestingly enough, what I'm sharing with y'all is not about psychotherapists or caregivers, but is about the general population. So self-compassion has been linked to less anxiety and depression. Do you think this will help the lonely desperate male? I think so. Greater wisdom and emotional intelligence, what are you feeling?

what drives you emotionally, what are your emotional needs that get met? Do you think this is important for the lonely, desperate male? I think so, as well as feelings of social connectedness and life satisfaction. Do you think this is important for the lonely desperate male? Self-compassion also fosters the intrinsic motivation to learn and grow. It promotes health-related behaviors, and it is beneficial for interpersonal relationships. Does this sound important to the lonely desperate male? So in their study examining the link between self-compassion and concern for the well-being of others,

Neffin-Pomier observed a modest correlation between self-compassion and empathic concern, but a more robust negative link between personal distress and self-compassion. Okay. So if we think about the dimensions that, for lack of a better term, the lonely, desperate male, needs to improve on. Depression and anxiety? Hell yeah. Social connectedness? Absolutely. You know, emotional awareness and wisdom? Motivation to, like, grow as a human being? Absolutely. Right? Improve like health promoting behaviors? Like absolutely. And most importantly, removing that negative distress correlation with self-compassion. So the way that you feel about yourself. So we're going to flash back to this post for a second. So the way that you feel about

yourself, right? So let's go to the unfiltered one. I'm horny and alone. No women will ever love me because I'm ugly. I don't talk to women, none like me. I was emotionally abused. I don't feel comfortable. This is all that negative distress, which people sort of assume is the desperation that women can sniff. They can smell desperation from a while away. I don't, I, it's a lot of, it. It's In my experience, I think that's kind of like a, it's an unfair characterization of women, because in my experience, actually, desperation doesn't necessarily cause people to run away. It just means that you can't form a healthy relationship with them, not because you're desperate, but because a healthy relationship requires two people caring about each other.

I know tons of people, not just women, who are compassionate and are willing to help desperate people. In fact, my experience has largely been that when someone is desperate, that brings out the best of people in terms of how much we try to help people and support people. And I've talked to lots of women who have tried to date men like this. And what I usually find is that they try really hard. Right? They'll try to be supportive.

They'll try to be kind. They'll date them for a while. But there's just such a thick shell of self-loathing that, like, you just can't fix that. Right? I'm not saying there aren't bad women out there. I'm not saying there aren't bad men out there. I'm not saying that desperation brings out the Dalai Lama out of every human being on the planet. But I think that we have to be a little bit careful about the conclusions

that we form. And I know that there are a lot of people, especially in our community, who are fixers, right, who actually have their best foot forward when it comes to helping another human being. They find their Dharma. They try to help someone, you know, improve their situation. I feel confident about that in terms of our community. But what do we see here? We see this negative distress. And when we have this negative distress, what we tend to find is that it reduces our sense of compassion. It reduces our empathy towards other people. And once self-compassion is gone, toxicity comes out. Once there's a lack of empathy for the person on the other side of the table, that relationship is kind of severely handicapped.