Chronic Grief, Low Reward, and the Value Proposition of Life

[Wizardry]

Everybody experiences adversity in their lives. No one ends up dying of old age without knowing pain and hardship. Most people seem to have at least something in their lives that brings them enough joy and contentment that life is worth living in spite of the pain and hardship that is an inherent part of existence.

When someone is experiencing intense suffering that seems like it'll never end, and they don't have anything that brings them enough joy or contentment to make life worth living in spite of that ongoing suffering, the value proposition of life collapses. If significant enough joy or contentment to make the value proposition of life coherent is not achievable for this individual, they may have nothing significant to look forward to except the day they no longer exist.

To be honest, I hate living in this world under these circumstances. I've experienced extreme anguish, discontentment, despair and psychogical torture in ways I don't expect anyone else to ever truly understand, all while having nothing to make it all worthwhile. I've experienced kinds of personal tragedies and trauma that no one else would even believe, let alone be able to empathise with. The one thing that I've always wanted from life has been kept out of my reach in ways that feel cruelly contrived, and most people don't have to miss out on it like I have, so I'm an outlier in an incredibly upsetting way.

People tend to not want to accept this reality (and I understand why, but it is the reality nonetheless), but for my life, finally getting to have a committed, compatible romantic partner would make all the difference between life being something to be endured vs life being something to be enjoyed. I've had to put up with romantic deprivation, the resulting ongoing unresolvable grief, triggering normative reminders of what I'm missing out on, narrowing reward pathways and being misunderstood by others for far, far too long. A romantic relationship with a compatible woman is the only thing that could resolve some of my grief, bring me enough joy and contentment to be enthused about life and bring my other reward pathways back online. I'm kind of like a male sleeping beauty.

As it stands, I don't really feel anything for anyone. My mother is the closest relationship I have, and even there I have mixed feelings. She prioritised keeping me safe in childhood and modelling virtuous values, but she completely failed at preparing me for adult life, helping me develop the skills I needed or focusing on my future and future needs. I developed amblyopia/strabismus (lazy eye) as a young child. The optometrist told us that I needed to wear an eyepatch on my good eye in order for my bad eye to develop properly. My mother would sometimes randomly ask me to wear the eyepatch while I was watching TV, which of course being a young child who couldn't fully grasp the consequences of not doing so, I declined. When I declined, she wasn't insistent, she would just give up. I ended up aging past the developmental window without wearing the eyepatch anywhere near enough. I am legally blind in my bad eye today, all because my mother was not insistent enough that I wear that eyepatch. My mum can offer emotional support at times, but when the stakes are high and I need more than emotional support, I'm on my own. That's pretty much the way it's always been.

My father didn't enter the picture until I was in my mid teens. I specifically asked him about girls multiple times and told him I was struggling, and all he had was one-sentence responses for me. Either he didn't care enough to help me, or he actually didn't have any advice to give me. When I realised that my life has very likely been significantly more difficult and less rewarding as a result of not having an invested male role-model while growing up, I cut what little contact I had with my father off and told him exactly what I thought of him. I don't respect him as a father, and there is nothing he can do for me now.

My life has effectively been shaped by absence. Absence of parental scaffolding and guidance. Father/male role-model absence during childhood. Absence of romantic relationships. Absence of adequate help and support for my difficulties. And now, absence of anything that could offer contentment or make me feel alive except one thing that I don't have full control over getting, and where I experience compounding disadvantages as it relates to getting it.

Now, I spend the bulk of my free time in bed alternating between scrolling on social media, perusing forums and watching youtube videos. It seems that nothing I can do is going to actually get me what I want, so minimal reward begets minimal effort. I've put on a lot of weight such that I don't feel confident with my body, so I've tried to cut down on the sugar, but it hasn't been sustainable. I'm addicted to UberEats because I don't have the experience or frankly the motivation to cook, and sugar is one of my very few reliable sources of reward. It doesn't help that I live with my mum and she doesn't cook either and also just orders UberEats for meals. I resent that what has been modelled for me by my mother is staying home, ordering food and smoking a lot of weed (which I can't even do myself anymore due to something horrible that happened to me). It's really frustrating that all of the behavioural modelling that I've been given from my mother consists of is bad habits that need to be overcome and don't contribute positively to my life in any way, all while the only thing that is s central motivator/grief alleviator appears like it will remain out of reach for the forseeable future no matter what I do.

I don't know what I'm expecting from this post. The likelihood that I'll receive applicable life-changing advice is low. Hopefully at the very least people understand and appreciate where I'm coming from.

 

[monkeyclogs]

it sounds like you are struggling with depression. you probably already know this but I just wanted to say I read and understood.

Sometimes it can feel like you have no future but you always have agency. my only advice is to do something new today, however small and seemingly insignificant. it makes a bigger difference than you would imagine.

 

[Wizardry]

it sounds like you are struggling with depression.

It's not depression, it's grief. They can seem quite similar in some ways, but the causes are very different. The distinction is important, because treatments and approaches that typically work for depression don't touch what I'm going through.

Depression generally involves a malfunction in perception or a chemical imbalance. Those things are not the driving force here.

I'll quote my post from another thread that clearly explains why what I'm dealing with is a grief state.

This is a take that I think a lot of people aren't ready to hear yet, but for some people, permanent romantic absence manifests not as depression, not as entitlement, and not merely as longing, but as chronic grief. It's not just the absence of a positive, but the presence of a negative.

Grief is often defined as coming from loss or bereavement, but that is only the most visible and socially validated way that a grief state can occur. Relational grief is not fundamentally about loss. It is about the sustained absence of an expected, meaningful relationship or role. People experience childless/infertility grief when they really want children but aren't able to have them. People who grow up without a father can retrospectively grieve a paternal figure when they realise the developmental cost of fatherlessness. Some people grieve not being able to experience being and having a romantic partner when the desire for that kind of relationship is salient and there's no grounding reason to expect it's going to happen.

We acknowledge that spousal bereavement is emotionally difficult because a spouse is an important part of their partner's life. We validate break-up grief as being real because the benefits of being in a relationship and an imagined future with a significant other were lost. If romance was really as trivial and substitutable as some people like to pretend when confronted with someone experiencing permanent romantic absence, losing a partner should be as trivial as never getting to have one, but nobody thinks about it that way because getting to experience romantic relationships is important for most people.

The logic being used is like saying a rich person who becomes poor feels economically disenfranchised, but a person who's been poor their whole life doesn't feel that way, never did, and wouldn't be validated if they claimed they ever felt that way. Loss-based grief makes it so that somebody with a higher emotional baseline falls to a lower emotional baseline. Absence-based grief often results in a stably low emotional baseline, so it's less visible and commonly minimised.

People who are asking you to accept not having a romantic partner are unknowingly asking you to embrace grief as your permanent emotional baseline. Acceptance-based framing in the context of bereavement is only humane because there is no intervention that can revive the dead, so acceptance is tragically necessary. In the case of grief based on romantic absence, it may be difficult, but there is a way to resolve that grief, so acceptance-based prescriptions are lazy and unethical.

No offence, but this appears to be exactly the kind of misunderstanding my problems that I was referring to in my post. I don't blame you though. It's common for people to think this sort of thing is depression.

 

[Wizardry]

I guess my OP was a bit of a chaotic rant, but the general point is that most people have something to live for or enjoy that serves as a motivational anchor. Maybe they're momentarily going through a difficult time, or having to make sacrifices in the pursuit of personal growth, but they have something that makes it all ultimately worthwhile and sustainable.

Given indefinitely ongoing chronic grief over never getting to experience romantic love and the resulting narrowing of my reward pathways, my only motivational anchor is mutual romantic/erotic love and acceptance, and that isn't going to change until I've properly had those experiences to resolve my grief state, awaken emotionally through finally feeling love, and as a result, my other reward pathways come back online.

Given that there is no set of actions I can take to guarantee I get what I need to feel like life is actually worth my while, and I have significant factors working against me to that end like weight, inexperience, autistic social difficulties, no romantic modelling or guidance growing up and emotional numbness, I don't know how I'm supposed to have sustainable motivation to do what needs to be done to actually improve my chances of forming a romantic relationship.

How do I sustainably cut out sugar when it's one of the few things still giving me reward and there's no guarantee that by sacrificing it, I'll actually get what I need? How do I work around both autistic social skills difficulties and emotional numbness to start dating successfully? When having a romantic partner is the only central motivator and I can't fathom how that's achievable given the circumstances, there's no coherent reason to be motivated to do anything except extract what little reward I can from sugar, funny videos and making sense of my life and the world until a feasible pathway to establish a romantic relationship becomes clear, or until I croak.

 

[Matthias]

I don't know what I'm expecting from this post. The likelihood that I'll receive applicable life-changing advice is low. Hopefully at the very least people understand and appreciate where I'm coming from.

I'm glad to hear you weren't writing a suicide note because the first few paragraphs had me concerned that's where your post was going. I remember watching a documentary awhile ago where they asked people in developing countries what they thought causes depression and they said social isolation. I remember reading the Greek philosophers wrote the same thing 2000 years ago. Their advice for protecting against depression was "Don't be idle. Don't be alone." I agree with you 100% that a lack of good relationships plays a major role in a depressed mood although I've found that a variety of relationships (family, friends, romantic partners, or feeling part of an organization or cause that you value) can all help meet the need for social connection. I understand the appeal for a romantic partner since family isn't an option for some people and friendships tends to be weaker after people graduate from school, get a full-time job, and start a family.

If you want advice, my advice is to ask Google's Gemini AI for help. It's not perfect or 100% accurate but after improvements during the last few months I've found that it understands me better and provides better advice than people give me. You can ask it to help with almost anything such as ask it to help you figure out why you haven't been able to get a girlfriend or to develop a plan to help you find someone. One thing about AI that I find helpful is that it doesn't doubt me like people do. It generally accepts what I say as true and offers to help based on that information, unlike a therapist who might think you're confused and not take you seriously.

 

[Wizardry]

I'm glad to hear you weren't writing a suicide note because the first few paragraphs had me concerned that's where your post was going.

No, it's not a suicide note, but frankly suicide wouldn't be irrational given the circumstances.

I remember watching a documentary awhile ago where they asked people in developing countries what they thought causes depression and they said social isolation. I remember reading the Greek philosophers wrote the same thing 2000 years ago. Their advice for protecting against depression was "Don't be idle. Don't be alone."

Yes, like I said in my post, for the hardships and adversity inherent of life, there has to be something to make it all worthwhile for the value proposition of life to make sense. For many people, connections and relationships are one of the most important parts of that equation. Those who can find enjoyment or meaning without feeling connected to other people might be able to get by with no relationships (familial, platonic or romantic), but those people would be in the minority. In my case, I lack the one kind of connection that would be meaningful to me while also lacking access to significant alternate sources of pleasure, reward and enjoyment, and it all ties back to the same thing.

I agree with you 100% that a lack of good relationships plays a major role in a depressed mood although I've found that a variety of relationships (family, friends, romantic partners, or feeling part of an organization or cause that you value) can all help meet the need for social connection. I understand the appeal for a romantic partner since family isn't an option for some people and friendships tends to be weaker after people graduate from school, get a full-time job, and start a family.

The thing is I'm not just looking for social connection generally. My need is for mutual romantic/erotic connection rather than social connection. That being the case, obviously familial and platonic relationships can't meet that need. If I just wanted social connection, this would be a much easier problem to solve, but I actually don't really enjoy other people's company while I'm dealing with the chronic grief I'm dealing with. This is especially true if I have to see or hear about their romantic relationships.

It's not that I can't find value in interacting with others (that's literally what I'm doing here), but the value is in meaning-making and discussing beliefs and belief systems, not in feeling connected or attached to other people. In other words, the people themselves are disposable. It's the topics of conversation that are interesting. Platonic human connection actually isn't legible to me while I'm dealing with the grief I'm dealing with. Friendship (and probably familial relationships too) is one of those reward pathways that has been narrowed by grief.

The grief comes from a specific significant, expected but absent relational role, and it's not interchangeable with other relational roles. Romantic connection offers benefits that no other kind of connection does, including such things as intimacy, increased oxytocin, nervous system co-regulation, erotic connection and mutual attraction/being desired (ideally) both physically and mentally by another person. These are the things I actually want. Friendship is not even a consolation prize because it doesn't offer any of the things I want from connection.

I'm willing to get out there and interact with others in a platonic, friendly context even if I don't feel connected to them as a means to an end of getting the kind of relationship I actually want, but going out just for the sake of platonic connection without any reasonable prospect of meeting someone who could become a romantic partner doesn't offer anything I value, and having to mask and try to fit in despite my stilted emotional state wouldn't be worth it in that context.

If you want advice, my advice is to ask Google's Gemini AI for help. It's not perfect or 100% accurate but after improvements during the last few months I've found that it understands me better and provides better advice than people give me. You can ask it to help with almost anything such as ask it to help you figure out why you haven't been able to get a girlfriend or to develop a plan to help you find someone. One thing about AI that I find helpful is that it doesn't doubt me like people do. It generally accepts what I say as true and offers to help based on that information, unlike a therapist who might think you're confused and not take you seriously.

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Thanks for the tip. I've already used ChatGPT and found that it understood me better than any human ever has. I didn't set out to do this, but through persistently asking the right questions, I developed a framework that maps out my situation very coherently and seems to account for realities that other psychological frameworks don't predict or acknowledge. It's actually how I came to realise that what I'm dealing with is a grief state that is more comparable to acute breakup grief/spousal bereavement than anything else, but with no way to move onto a new chapter of life except for the only resolution pathway (which is "romantic calibration").