I really like this argument because the only response I can come up with is "I'm uniquely kinky/unlucky compared to everyone else" based on no real evidence

Maybe... maybe I'm not the main character...

Unfortunately, I'm disabled, jobless, and have nobody to go to. I would have left long ago if it were so easy for me to leave.

I agree with the principle, but in practice, the violence of American capitalism is what keeps me trapped here more than anything. If I end up on the street as a result of these interventions, I will freeze to death because the system doesn't protect from homelessness. This kind of intervention would work great in a socialist society with guaranteed basic housing and sustenance, but that isn't the reality right now. The reality is a system that brutalizes the most vulnerable and leaves them to die.

Honestly, judging by the responses here, it really seems like my social anxiety selectively absorbed negative information and created a self-defeating worldview based on inflammatory social media posts. I really need to take a hard look at what I’m consuming and ask myself if it’s really worth it.

It’s embarrassing to be this wrong, but I’m grateful that I have this community to help me understand that this is a self-imposed social dysfunction rather than a legitimate worldview. It’s just fear.

Okay, okay, you're not gonna believe this...

I don't have any.

I never tried to date anyone precisely because I saw the kind of intimacy I wanted as impossible. I always just assumed that anyone I dated would flop over like a dead fish in bed, and that's just not sexy to me. Up until this point, I believed that my own sexual drives were incompatible with everyone else's and could only be satisfied through fantasy. Only now am I questioning if this is actually the case.

Actually, I don't. I am far more afraid of talking to men. All of the male family members I grew up around were violent. I was punched or choked as a kid if I did anything to offend them. And so, I learned to never do anything that could possibly provoke them for fear of what would happen to me. My mother also sometimes used corporal punishment on me, so I also learned to expect violence from women if they become angry.

So it seems like I have a general fear of offending people because, besides hurting others emotionally, I always expect violence to follow. The easiest way to avoid offending strangers is to never engage with them, and so that is the position I take by default. I don't want to bother anyone.

And this is why I asked this question. I am now self-aware of the fact that I have a completely distorted hyper-paranoid mental model of social dynamics where negative reactions have nuclear consequences and must be avoided at all costs. At the same time, I know that most of my parents' takes are pretty bad, but there is an occasional kernel of truth in what they say. I thought that this was likely to be one of those situations, so I wanted to see if others could help point out the nuance.

So far, I have lived my entire life under the fear of violence. It prevented countless friendships and social interactions from ever happening. I avoided everything bad at the cost of everything good, and it left me with nothing. That prevented me from learning a lot of common sense social norms, like when small talk is even appropriate. I just assume that it never is, and people would rather stare at their phones than ever talk to a stranger. I guess I'm wrong about that.

I was considered gifted. I was raised by parents who never showed me any affection, so I excelled in school because being praised by teachers was the only way for me to receive positive attention from a caregiver figure. I ended up crashing after high school and had to do the long, arduous work of treating my deep-seated psychological trauma. I ended up developing an autoimmune disease when I turned 18, likely from the chronic stress, but it's infinitely better than constantly ruminating about how nobody will ever love me unless I get an A++ in every class. I am suffering decidedly less these days.

What has therapy been like for you? I've never done therapy before, and I'm kind of worried they'll try to criticize and gaslight me into playing nice with people who I'm 90% sure are narcissists or try to get me to ignore the limitations that my health problems give me. (But then again, I can't help but notice that I was socially conditioned to expect shame, punishment, and destructive guidance if I ask for help.)

Yeah, I specifically mentioned to my parents seeing an attractive employee stocking shelves in the grocery store, and they said that I should have approached her. She was clearly busy when I passed by her. I just kept my distance and casually thought, "Wow, there are plenty of fish in the sea. I'll definitely find one eventually, in a more appropriate social setting."

Not once did it cross my mind to strike up a conversation with a busy employee, but they insisted that I should have. In my mind, the fact that it's easy to find women that I find attractive is proof that I don't need to go out of my way for one. Attraction is not a quick time event; to me, it's a reminder of abundance, of just how many chances I have to find someone. I don't need to do silly stunts or disrupt busy people. I just need to keep creating social opportunities for it to happen organically, and eventually it will. I think my parents saying that I have to chat up every woman that I find attractive no matter where is silly and neurotic. I believe being patient and not stressing over every "missed opportunity" is the best way to go.

Besides, this thread is proof that I'm not ready for a girlfriend in the first place. It would be great for me to practice talking to strangers casually and making some friends first. That way, I can get comfortable talking to people in general and build my confidence.

So, any advice on how to get these guys to actually listen? Not sure if this is just an American thing, but I've had some bad luck with ERs:

I've been kicked of the ER after suddenly losing all feeling in my arm (which thankfully came back a day later).

Another time, I had sudden weakness that was bad enough that I lost the ability to stand while in the waiting room. They checked my basic vitals, saw normal numbers, and rolled me out of the place at 3 AM in a wheelchair after accusing me of making up my symptoms.

When I went to the urgent care for this circulation issue (because the tip of my toe was literally turning black) the doctor told me that it wasn't urgent and set me up with this vascular specialist. He said casually that it might be some kind of heart problem, but I'd probably be fine because I'm young. That was 3 months ago. The circulation in my hands has diminished during that medium-term time frame, which is the worst time scale for degenerative changes to occur, because it's not urgent enough for most doctors to consider it an emergency, but not long-term enough for regular appointments to catch it in time.

I appreciate the suggestion to seek emergency care, I really do, but I've been burned so many times while losing thousands of dollars in the process that it's not so clear cut to risk going for a medium-term issue. I don't have much in savings left, and my parents have made it clear that they won't be of any help. They accuse me of overreacting and saying that I'm completely healthy despite being physically disabled, and that I will be financially punished for seeking care. (Unrelated, but they are also full-throated fascists who believe that the Holocaust was justified, just to make it crystal clear what kind of people I'm dealing with here.)

It seems that my conditions are downplayed because of my youth, and to make matters worse, I had already been diagnosed with small-fiber peripheral neuropathy for completely DIFFERENT chronic pain years ago that couldn't be explained, so they could write it off as that despite my hands demonstrably being ice cold when they weren't before.

So if I'm going to do something like this, I need to do it right. I'm open to suggestions if anyone has any.

I did! It was nice to read about other people with similar experiences to me, but I also realized that I don't entirely fit the label. I don't need a strong emotional connection to feel physical attraction; I just need to be shown affection, which can happen way sooner than it takes to develop a relationship. Though, I bet my attraction would increase as the relationship develops.

So you could consider me demi-adjacent, but I'm careful not to box myself into that label. My attraction to affection may give me many things in common with demisexual people, but it's also not the full story. They're cool though, and if there was a place where I could meet lots of single demi people, I would definitely consider looking there!

I haven't. I'm worried that doing that would be taken as an act of aggression and would lead to retaliation.

Also, my brother hasn't physically attacked me yet, not since we were teenagers. He's just being threatening and intimidating right now. But I also know that he suffers from fits of uncontrollable rage and has the capacity to kill. In one episode where he killed his girlfriend's cat, he said that he lost control of himself and started wailing on the poor animal. I haven't heard of him doing any premeditated violence; it always seems to happen in the moment. But he doesn't seem to feel remorse for his victims after the fact. There is also no criminal record of the things he has done.

There is something deeply wrong with him and I think that he is a ticking time bomb.

Fortunately (or unfortunately?) I'm an adult, so at least I have more options.

I'm still deprogramming from all of this stuff. I have my first therapy appointment next week and I'm starting to realize that my situation might be particularly spicy. I kind of thought on some level that this totalitarian control is just the average conservative household and I just had to deal with it for a little longer. But now that my brother is getting angrier and making death threats against my own parents, I'm starting to think that my only option is to get the FUCK out of here.

My original plan was a CS degree and try for a remote job, but with the direction the tech sector has been going, I'm not sure that I like my odds. I'm looking at possible majors I can pivot towards, but I haven't decided yet. I've just started classes, so I don't have that much of a sunk cost yet.

The big issue is that I have a condition called POTS that gives me brain fog and can cause fainting if I sit or stand up for more than a couple minutes. That makes it difficult to do most in-person jobs. So I have to find something that works with that and will still exist in the U.S. economy once I graduate.

I fucking love this thank you so much

I’d guess they are very sexually repressed.

My dad DOES have a tendency to make an unusual amount of phallic jokes, to the point where one day I responded with "You know, it's okay to be bi, you can just say it" and boy he did NOT like that

That's what I was thinking, too. Spending so much time on the Internet and observing the consequences ultimately radicalized me against it in a way that more casual usage probably wouldn't have.

The chances of someone as weird as me coming along and convincing me to quit doomscrolling was probably pretty low, lol. So maybe this was exactly what I needed to do!

I don't talk to anyone in public because I have historically considered it to be a violation of their right to be left alone. I believed that people stick together in groups of their friends or family, and those groups don't want to interact with each other. Solo people are a group of one. If everyone follows those rules, there will be no unplanned or unwanted interactions with strangers. Given the current state of the world, the constant phone usage, and general social unrest, it made perfect sense to me that nobody would want to interact with anyone that they didn't already trust. Based on the responses to that post, it seems like that mental model is flawed.

But this is why I assumed that the discourse around sexual harassment extended to approaching women at all. It was because I already believed that talking to strangers in general was an act of violating their space. So, I assumed that the discourse around guys being creeps was also talking about that. After all, I'd probably get nervous if someone randomly started talking to me, so of course it would make sense for other people to feel super uncomfortable from it, especially if you don't know if the person talking to you is a predator.

This is an example of how wanting to do the right thing, combined with my limited social understanding, leads to weird and extreme takes.