Tried to give up but I just can’t

[Steelbookcollector217]

What you're talking about here is counterfactual grief, grief about experiences that could plausibly have occurred in the past but no longer can, even if related experiences remain possible in the future. Most people start dating at the average time, so they have no experiential reference point for counterfactual grief over missing out on young love. They just see the "happy ending" of someone who was a virgin until several years later than is socially acceptable ending up getting married. They don't see where there may have been grief caused by ongoing absence over many years, or counterfactual grief about missing out on romance during youth.

yeah people who make comments or statements like that, are way out of line, completely dismissive

 

[Steelbookcollector217]

I don't think the pursued/pursuer gender role is any less arbitrary than any other gender roles we've had historically, and yet there generally seems to be no desire by progressives to challenge it or dismantle it in the same way that gender roles are challenged and dismantled literally everywhere else. Probably because where this role confers disadvantage, it is predominantly experienced by men, and the left tend to be allergic to the idea that a "dominant" group like men can experience disadvantage as a direct result of their "dominant" identity or gender role.

I think the reason the male dating role developed as it did is because historically, the male gender role was dominant in society, so men as the pursuers naturally made sense. Today, we live in a much more egalitarian society. The idea that a man should pay on the first date made sense when the male gender role was to be a provider and the female gender role was to be a homemaker. Now that women are in the workforce and are no less capable of achieving economic liberation than men, the idea that the man should feel obligated to pay for a first date just because he's a man would seem to me to be a relic from past gender roles that nobody really cares to challenge.

In the past, marriage was often arranged by the parents to preserve class and social status. Arranged marriages still exist in some countries today. Arranged marriage is not what we should aspire to, but it proves that men having the skills to occupy the male courtship role, pursue women and escalate the relationship is not a biologically essential dynamic. If we believe in dismantling gender roles and creating an egalitarian society, why would we stop at gendered courtship roles? Especially when they disproportionately disadvantage men with a particular disability.

Left-leaning school of thought often recognises that disability is not a deficiency of the individual, but a mismatch between that individual and their environment, and it is ethical to accommodate that individual's disability so they have as equal an opportunity with the general population as possible to flourish. Though it appears when the disadvantage is related to the intersection between autism and the male courtship role, everybody of all political stripes tend to want to revert to bootstrapping, personal responsibility narratives and the perception that the individual is unworthy rather than acknowledging the impacts of disability and structural disadvantage, and trying to figure out how to effectively counteract those disadvantages.

yeah everywhere on social media forums or comments over the years, it just truly seems like men on the spectrum have a high rate of reaching 30 plus and still being a virgin without ever having been in a relationship before, it just comes with natures territory.

 

[Matthias]

What you're talking about here is counterfactual grief, grief about experiences that could plausibly have occurred in the past but no longer can, even if related experiences remain possible in the future. Most people start dating at the average time, so they have no experiential reference point for counterfactual grief over missing out on young love. They just see the "happy ending" of someone who was a virgin until several years later than is socially acceptable ending up getting married. They don't see where there may have been grief caused by ongoing absence over many years, or counterfactual grief about missing out on romance during youth.

Fornication (sex before marriage) was illegal in many English speaking countries until a few decades ago and is still illegal in many countries today. Should all these people be filled with "counterfactual grief" over missing out on young "love"? Do you think people who dwell on what they missed out on in the past are happier than people who focus on the good things happening in the present?

 

[Wizardry]

Fornication (sex before marriage) was illegal in many English speaking countries until a few decades ago and is still illegal in many countries today. Should all these people be filled with "counterfactual grief" over missing out on young "love"?

Grief generally tracks violated or unmet expectations. In countries where the social norm is for people to start dating later, no counterfactual grief tends to be accumulated over missing love in the teen or young adult years, because there is no reasonable expectation that dating is going to start happening at that time. Moreover, part of counterfactual grief comes from missing the chance to have first romantic experiences at a similar life stage to one’s peers, when those experiences are developmentally expected to be shared, mutual, and low-stakes. First experiences aren’t just about the experience itself. They’re about having them in sync with others, when everyone is learning, awkward, uncertain, and forgiving at the same time.

In western countries, people are culturally conditioned from as early as childhood to expect romantic relationships to be both uniquely fulfilling, and a practically universal trajectory from adolescence to early adulthood. We are implicitly given the expectation that romance happens for everyone who wants it, so if it doesn't happen for you, not only are you missing out on a near-universal pleasure domain that the vast majority of people would never willingly accept completely missing out on for themselves, that absence is branded as a personal defect.

As I said in a previous post, for some people, permanent romantic absence is experienced as a grief state that is comparable to the acute stage of a bad breakup, but in this case, it doesn't get any better with time (it often gets worse instead), it isn't socially validated, and there is no feasible resolution pathway outside of romantic success. This isn't counterfactual grief, it's romantically uncalibrated grief. In the context of uncalibrated grief, reminders of romance in general can be as injurious as reminders of one's ex moving on while one is in the acute grief stage of a breakup. Reminders of romance in general are obviously a lot harder to dodge.

Do you think people who dwell on what they missed out on in the past are happier than people who focus on the good things happening in the present?

That presupposes that there are good things to focus on in the present that can meaningfully compete with the impact of uncalibrated grief, and the existential burden of living a life that can't be meaningfully fulfilling without the neutralisation of uncalibrated grief. Sometimes that isn't the case. Muting ongoing hardship isn't always as simple as being deliberate about where you direct your focus. If you have just broken your leg, it doesn't matter what you decide to focus your thoughts on, the pain from that injury doesn't magically go away.

In the case of the 37 year-old who finally got his first girlfriend, he would be better-served by focusing on the good things in the present because it would seem has the means to build a fulfilling future, but that also doesn't undo the impact of the past.

 

[Hypnalis]

Fornication (sex before marriage) was illegal in many English speaking countries until a few decades ago

I doubt this is true.
IMO it comes under the extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the burden of proof is on you.

How many decades is "a few"?

And what do you mean by "English speaking countries"?
Here's a list.
List of countries and territories where English is an official language - Wikipedia

FYI it's not illegal in India, the UK, The Philippines, Canada, or Australia Together I think they're about 50% of the population of that list.

I didn't check any African countries (looks like less than 1 billion, but not by much) or Pakistan (250 million).
I'd be surprised if pre-marital sex is illegal in all of them, but I'm not going to check for you..

In terms of number of countries - there are a lot of low-population countries on the list. If you want to use them instead, you need to check them all yourself.

 

[arithmetic]

@Wizardry makes good sense.
I have had to put up with horrible social response all my life too, and I've been in the process of detaching from toxic people (family) for years although I only discovered (and was diagnosed) that I am autistic a few weeks ago.
For me - I'm thankful that I understand at last what it is that is different about me. I've seen autistic people - seen how different we are - without knowing that I was the same.
I thought it was only because my parents were so unspeakably horrible that I have social problems and I didn't know that I am really a different kind of thing to the people I wanted to spend time with. I told the shrinks I felt like I was on the wrong planet - what was the matter with them? Jeez.

So what have I got?
I'm past working age and have a pension, thankfully. The pressure has dropped a lot.
(I'm smart and good at inventing things but putting me in a team will never work out. I'm clever - I make tools - I can accomplish vast amounts of work all by myself, and outperform teams of others. But thankfully that's over.)

My values are not standard values.
The mainstream of humanity is obsessed with economic status, which they take to be an indicator of happiness.
For me, while I do see happiness as a condition of the human spirit, I also see a person who might be called Happiness. The same person might be called Beauty, because when the word beautiful is used, it means "like Beauty Herself". The best thing in my life for me is my relationship with this marvelous One... it's what I value; it is the basis of my values.
Because my values are different, I have still less in common with others.

Well, I'll have to find a new form of entertainment.
So far I've been an abused child; a far-out hippy; a technician in an electronic Hell; a patient in a terminal nursing home; a mystic on a mountain; a professional musician; a carer; an electronic designer and manufacturer; a cook.

I hope to find someone to love, too. I'm outgoing enough but the bicultural society I'm in just doesn't seem to get beyond transactional relationships on the one side, while the other side is a nasty bunch of Facebook gossips.
I haven't succeeded here even after these 12 years - partly because I'm weird and partly because I don't have transport to get me to the places people meet, or home again after any event. Partly because it only takes 1 nasty attack, and I've had several such in the last few years to hurt my social confidence.

Chin up! It's only a few more years. Maybe there's someone I can care for, again. (The one I cared for, nursed, passed away.) There's still life to live, the birds sing sweetly and my body can be a pleasant abode. Perhaps there will some day be reward.
Yes I'm already to be 69 tomorrow morning and the huge bulk of the pain has surely been done with - it's not time yet but a day will come and I hope to discover then that someone I can touch cares.

 

[Matthias]

Grief generally tracks violated or unmet expectations. In countries where the social norm is for people to start dating later, no counterfactual grief tends to be accumulated over missing love in the teen or young adult years, because there is no reasonable expectation that dating is going to start happening at that time. Moreover, part of counterfactual grief comes from missing the chance to have first romantic experiences at a similar life stage to one’s peers, when those experiences are developmentally expected to be shared, mutual, and low-stakes. First experiences aren’t just about the experience itself. They’re about having them in sync with others, when everyone is learning, awkward, uncertain, and forgiving at the same time.

In western countries, people are culturally conditioned from as early as childhood to expect romantic relationships to be both uniquely fulfilling, and a practically universal trajectory from adolescence to early adulthood. We are implicitly given the expectation that romance happens for everyone who wants it, so if it doesn't happen for you, not only are you missing out on a near-universal pleasure domain that the vast majority of people would never willingly accept completely missing out on for themselves, that absence is branded as a personal defect.

As I said in a previous post, for some people, permanent romantic absence is experienced as a grief state that is comparable to the acute stage of a bad breakup, but in this case, it doesn't get any better with time (it often gets worse instead), it isn't socially validated, and there is no feasible resolution pathway outside of romantic success. This isn't counterfactual grief, it's romantically uncalibrated grief. In the context of uncalibrated grief, reminders of romance in general can be as injurious as reminders of one's ex moving on while one is in the acute grief stage of a breakup. Reminders of romance in general are obviously a lot harder to dodge.


That presupposes that there are good things to focus on in the present that can meaningfully compete with the impact of uncalibrated grief, and the existential burden of living a life that can't be meaningfully fulfilling without the neutralisation of uncalibrated grief. Sometimes that isn't the case. Muting ongoing hardship isn't always as simple as being deliberate about where you direct your focus. If you have just broken your leg, it doesn't matter what you decide to focus your thoughts on, the pain from that injury doesn't magically go away.

In the case of the 37 year-old who finally got his first girlfriend, he would be better-served by focusing on the good things in the present because it would seem has the means to build a fulfilling future, but that also doesn't undo the impact of the past.

It sounds like you like to compare yourself to others, which I think is a road that leads to unhappiness. There are many things in life that are enjoyable. I couldn't care less if my peers get some of them before I do as that has no effect on me whatsoever. I know people buy new cars to keep up with their neighbors because they can't stand the thought of someone having more than them but this never made any sense to me. I'd rather live in a middle class home in a neighborhood where everyone is much wealthier than somewhere where everyone is equal but poor.

 

[Matthias]

I doubt this is true.
IMO it comes under the extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the burden of proof is on you.

How many decades is "a few"?

And what do you mean by "English speaking countries"?
Here's a list.
List of countries and territories where English is an official language - Wikipedia

FYI it's not illegal in India, the UK, The Philippines, Canada, or Australia Together I think they're about 50% of the population of that list.

I didn't check any African countries (looks like less than 1 billion, but not by much) or Pakistan (250 million).
I'd be surprised if pre-marital sex is illegal in all of them, but I'm not going to check for you..

In terms of number of countries - there are a lot of low-population countries on the list. If you want to use them instead, you need to check them all yourself.

I wrote what I recalled from memory about something I read about several years ago. I checked again and, according to Wikipedia, fornication is still illegal in 4 US states while adultery is still illegal in 17 states. The article mentions a woman being arrested for fornication in Mississippi in 2010 (article on "Fornication"), less than 2 decades ago. As far as other countries, I think I got fornication laws mixed up with adultery laws. Here's what Wikipedia says (article on "Adultery law"): "Among the last European countries to decriminalise adultery were Italy (1969), West Germany (1969), Malta (1973), Luxembourg (1974), France (1975), Spain (1978), Portugal (1982), Greece (1983), Belgium (1987), Switzerland (1989), and Austria (1997)" That's 3-6 decades ago so it looks like Europe regressed earlier than the US.

Wikipedia also says fornication is still illegal in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Kuwait, Brunei, Maldives, Malaysia, Morocco, Oman, Mauritania, Qatar, Sudan, and Yemen, where any form of sexual activity outside marriage is illegal. It also mentions adultery still being illegal in many African countries. That's a sizeable chunk of the world.

 

[arithmetic]

...anyway, @Matthias is right - don't you know it? Comparing yourself to others won't help.
Nobody here is mainstream - this forum is a chance to see that peoples' lives find their own paths to fulfillment.
Us oddballs can still find a place. Please don't worry.

 

[Hypnalis]

I wrote what I recalled from memory about something I read about several years ago. I checked again and, according to Wikipedia, fornication is still illegal in 4 US states while adultery is still illegal in 17 states. The article mentions a woman being arrested for fornication in Mississippi in 2010 (article on "Fornication"), less than 2 decades ago. As far as other countries, I think I got fornication laws mixed up with adultery laws. Here's what Wikipedia says (article on "Adultery law"): "Among the last European countries to decriminalise adultery were Italy (1969), West Germany (1969), Malta (1973), Luxembourg (1974), France (1975), Spain (1978), Portugal (1982), Greece (1983), Belgium (1987), Switzerland (1989), and Austria (1997)" That's 3-6 decades ago so it looks like Europe regressed earlier than the US.

Wikipedia also says fornication is still illegal in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Kuwait, Brunei, Maldives, Malaysia, Morocco, Oman, Mauritania, Qatar, Sudan, and Yemen, where any form of sexual activity outside marriage is illegal. It also mentions adultery still being illegal in many African countries. That's a sizeable chunk of the world.

You are very probably making a serious analytical error: a combination of "fact-blindness" and "cherry-picking".
That would explain why none of your fact-dependent claims check out.
You should deal with it.
Your analysis isn't bad overall, but an analysis that contradicts the facts is "negative information".

On point:
I knew about the old laws in US states, but removed them from my post.
I did learn while checking that they're sometimes used in plea bargaining, because they prosecution gets a conviction, but there are no penalties and nobody cares about extra/marital sex. /lol.
They're coming off the books slowly but steadily, but nobody really cares because they're not enforced.

For the rest, you shifted the goalposts. Adultery isn't pre-marital sex
I understand the trick of course ("pre-marital sex" is part of "fornication"; adultery is also part of fornication; therefore premarital sex is adultery - that's so common it has a name but I've forgotten it).

AFAIK among the bolded countries only Malta has English as an official language. It's very common in the others as a second language.
In every case they're old laws, and no more meaningful than the remaining US states.

Adultery is taken much more seriously in general, especially in formerly religious countries, because:
1. It is a civil contract - e.g. as used by the Habsburgs to take control of half of Europe
2. It used to be considered a commitment to a "higher power".

The last part of your post is:
(1) Muslim countries - no surprises there, but they lack the population and the country numbers to make your original claim true. OTOH I don't have a problem assuming without factual data that they have laws against pre-marital sex

(2) "Many African Countries". Big population, but a lot of variation. If you exclude Muslim countries (mostly in North Africa) there are a lot of Christians in Africa, and a lot of ex-colonies with legal systems based on European laws.

You can't make a general claim about those
Doing so is as bad as what you did in the post I originally responded to.

If you can't provide solid data, you can't make that claim.


So: If you got this far without slipping into content-blindness ...
... I think I know why you're so careless with facts, and if I'm right, you can fix it easily.

All you need to do is start checking the article introductions in Wikipedia. Not because it's 100% reliable (though it's better than an AI /lol), but because it's fast.

And maybe watch out for "cherry picking" and vague recollections from some echo-chamber.

 

[Matthias]

You are very probably making a serious analytical error: a combination of "fact-blindness" and "cherry-picking".
That would explain why none of your fact-dependent claims check out.
You should deal with it.
Your analysis isn't bad overall, but an analysis that contradicts the facts is "negative information".

On point:
I knew about the old laws in US states, but removed them from my post.
I did learn while checking that they're sometimes used in plea bargaining, because they prosecution gets a conviction, but there are no penalties and nobody cares about extra/marital sex. /lol.
They're coming off the books slowly but steadily, but nobody really cares because they're not enforced.

For the rest, you shifted the goalposts. Adultery isn't pre-marital sex
I understand the trick of course ("pre-marital sex" is part of "fornication"; adultery is also part of fornication; therefore premarital sex is adultery - that's so common it has a name but I've forgotten it).

AFAIK among the bolded countries only Malta has English as an official language. It's very common in the others as a second language.
In every case they're old laws, and no more meaningful than the remaining US states.

Adultery is taken much more seriously in general, especially in formerly religious countries, because:
1. It is a civil contract - e.g. as used by the Habsburgs to take control of half of Europe
2. It used to be considered a commitment to a "higher power".

The last part of your post is:
(1) Muslim countries - no surprises there, but they lack the population and the country numbers to make your original claim true. OTOH I don't have a problem assuming without factual data that they have laws against pre-marital sex

(2) "Many African Countries". Big population, but a lot of variation. If you exclude Muslim countries (mostly in North Africa) there are a lot of Christians in Africa, and a lot of ex-colonies with legal systems based on European laws.

You can't make a general claim about those
Doing so is as bad as what you did in the post I originally responded to.

If you can't provide solid data, you can't make that claim.


So: If you got this far without slipping into content-blindness ...
... I think I know why you're so careless with facts, and if I'm right, you can fix it easily.

All you need to do is start checking the article introductions in Wikipedia. Not because it's 100% reliable (though it's better than an AI /lol), but because it's fast.

And maybe watch out for "cherry picking" and vague recollections from some echo-chamber.

I wasn't being careless with any facts. I simply misremembered something relatively unimportant that I read about years ago. I doubt you fact-check everything you say when you communicate with others. I know others don't as I hear inaccurate information all the time. Regardless of the details, the overall fact I conveyed is still true and the point remains unchanged - People didn't always have a right to sleep with whoever they wanted. Do you think those people should lament their situation, experiencing grief over missing out on this pleasure?

 

[Hypnalis]

I doubt you fact-check everything you say when you communicate with others.

You're projecting /lol.

If I'm not sure, I check. If I can't check I don't make a claim, or I state the risk of error. IRL as well as online.
It saves quite a lot of time on the long run.

People didn't always have a right to sleep with whoever they wanted.

We're not negotiating until you find wording that's vague enough to be technically correct /lol.
This one is useless because it's been true for almost anyone through almost all of recorded history, and probably earlier. The vagueness makes it "not wrong" but also useless.

As for the discussion about grief, I'm going with Wizardry's position until you come up with some evidence for yours.

Do you think those people should lament their situation, experiencing grief over missing out on this pleasure?

This is another (almost) entirely meaningless phrase. Loaded questions don't deserve an answer.

List of fallacies - Wikipedia
Loaded question - Wikipedia

 

[Steelbookcollector217]

Grief generally tracks violated or unmet expectations. In countries where the social norm is for people to start dating later, no counterfactual grief tends to be accumulated over missing love in the teen or young adult years, because there is no reasonable expectation that dating is going to start happening at that time. Moreover, part of counterfactual grief comes from missing the chance to have first romantic experiences at a similar life stage to one’s peers, when those experiences are developmentally expected to be shared, mutual, and low-stakes. First experiences aren’t just about the experience itself. They’re about having them in sync with others, when everyone is learning, awkward, uncertain, and forgiving at the same time.

In western countries, people are culturally conditioned from as early as childhood to expect romantic relationships to be both uniquely fulfilling, and a practically universal trajectory from adolescence to early adulthood. We are implicitly given the expectation that romance happens for everyone who wants it, so if it doesn't happen for you, not only are you missing out on a near-universal pleasure domain that the vast majority of people would never willingly accept completely missing out on for themselves, that absence is branded as a personal defect.

As I said in a previous post, for some people, permanent romantic absence is experienced as a grief state that is comparable to the acute stage of a bad breakup, but in this case, it doesn't get any better with time (it often gets worse instead), it isn't socially validated, and there is no feasible resolution pathway outside of romantic success. This isn't counterfactual grief, it's romantically uncalibrated grief. In the context of uncalibrated grief, reminders of romance in general can be as injurious as reminders of one's ex moving on while one is in the acute grief stage of a breakup. Reminders of romance in general are obviously a lot harder to dodge.


That presupposes that there are good things to focus on in the present that can meaningfully compete with the impact of uncalibrated grief, and the existential burden of living a life that can't be meaningfully fulfilling without the neutralisation of uncalibrated grief. Sometimes that isn't the case. Muting ongoing hardship isn't always as simple as being deliberate about where you direct your focus. If you have just broken your leg, it doesn't matter what you decide to focus your thoughts on, the pain from that injury doesn't magically go away.

In the case of the 37 year-old who finally got his first girlfriend, he would be better-served by focusing on the good things in the present because it would seem has the means to build a fulfilling future, but that also doesn't undo the impact of the past.

yeah whenever i hear of guys, men, who did not get into their first relationship until later than the societal norm, i think to myself "good chance they would not have been single that long if they were born a woman".

Because by default, its like, being born a woman, it means by default, you will always have men going after you or hitting on you, having suitors, Men by Default don't have that with women.

To sum it up, by nature, men are naturally in scarcity with women because we never have women hitting on us or throwing themselves at us.

 

[arithmetic]

hormones are so strong
they'd be banned by any sufficiently powerful government

I cross-dress these days; I've been doing it about 10 years.
It's useful to me because I'm weird anyway. I don't do well in boys' clothes but for as long as I'm cross-dressing at least I can have some girls to talk to.
I get hit on by both sexes, but it's very shallow with the boys.

I really would like it to find a real friend but I just go on day to day getting lied to and led up garden paths and generally finding people to be pretty insincere. I just saw a woman at the supermarket who owes me - who came to my house pretending she wanted to be my friend.
She knows I'm faceblind and she managed to avoid me like that.
I wasn't able to positively identify her until she was on her little scooter and bolting off down the road.
I'm not feeling much encouraged to respond positively to people who say they've been seeing me around for years and want to be my friend, but I can't just say FO either because there's a 1:1000000000 chance they might be for real.

It makes me cry, too.

 

[Matthias]

You're projecting /lol.

Nope. Try again.

If I'm not sure, I check. If I can't check I don't make a claim, or I state the risk of error. IRL as well as online.
It saves quite a lot of time on the long run.

Good for you. I have better things to do with my time.

We're not negotiating until you find wording that's vague enough to be technically correct /lol.
This one is useless because it's been true for almost anyone through almost all of recorded history, and probably earlier. The vagueness makes it "not wrong" but also useless.

As for the discussion about grief, I'm going with Wizardry's position until you come up with some evidence for yours.


This is another (almost) entirely meaningless phrase. Loaded questions don't deserve an answer.

List of fallacies - Wikipedia
Loaded question - Wikipedia

Your lack of response to the topic at hand is noted.