I'm so tired and frustrated of my sexual nature — I want out completely

Hi there,

This is, as you can see, a rather long post. I don't expect any kind of answer from any of you fine people, really, but any feedback would certainly be appreciated!

I just recently registered to this site after having read the book "Your Brain on Porn: Internet Pornography and the Emerging Science of Addiction" by Gary Wilson, as well as having had a rather frustrating experience at a wedding I attended yesterday.

I was pondering on whether or not I should post this thread under the subforum "Loneliness", but I figured that what I'm after isn't so much discussing lonliness per se, but rather how to completley embrace and accept full abstinence from all things sexual in our soceity in a way more in line with self improvement. I want to become a better person, pure and simple, and I have a clear idea of what certain components to this betterment entails, including embracing loneliness in regards to relationships with the opposite sex. This betterment through relinquishing includes abstaining from all sexualisation of any kind in entertainment media such as movies (and books, but to a much lesser extent), but more importantly in everyday life. So far, I've been managing forgoing Internet porn for a couple of weeks, and I think I'm going to be able to keep it up for at least the foreseeable future (knock on wood).

Though this may at first glance seem as misogynism to some, it's anything but: what I want to learn is to ultimately not have even the slightest interest in getting together with a girl, not because I have any ill will towards them, but simply because I'm absolutely fed up with all the hassle of engaging with them in anything but a cordial and professional manner (like at work, for example). I want to find complete peace and comfort in not even being interested in pursuing a woman. I want to happily embrace the fact that I'm never going to have a relationship with a woman, and that no woman will ever want to have a relationship with me. I want to find comfort and peace with the fact.

Now to my introduction as a person:
I'm a 33 year old man, with only sparse experience of dating women in my early to middle twenties. I've been having immense troubles with social anxiety ever since middle-school (at around 12-13 years old) and high-school. I went from being a rather popular child with lots of friends to being viciously bullied and ostracized, particularly from the stronger boys but most certainly from all girls, even those who had been my friends since the very start of school. Since being about 18 years old, I've tried cognitive behavioral therapies of different sorts, the last being group therapy for social anxiety with a therapeutical basis consisting of CBT in 2017, but nothing has ever really stuck. It turns out that the cognitive part of CBT is ridiculously difficult.

I hear all the time from people how very social and kind I am, not to mention that I've had the good fortune of being born with rather good looks: on most days I would say I'm a 7/10 in the looks department, and on an especially good day, when I happen to wear the right clothes and the sun shines just right, I'd even venture to say that I could look like an 8/10. I hope you don't find me mentioning this arrogant, but I want to put it forward for you to know a little bit of what I'm working with. I've been working out regularly since being 16 years old, at the beginning through jogging, but also through weight training since being around 18 years old. Due to my Irritable Bowel Syndrome, I had to stop jogging, and I'm currently bicycling on a stationary bike at home or at the gym (I also take my bike to and from school/work) 2-3 times a week, and due to the same IBS as well as injuries, I've had to cut down and manage my weight training quite a lot (I've had surgeries on both shoulders — biceps tenodesis — and I have a bulging disc in my lower back and two bulging discs in my neck). I'm 176 cm long and weight around 75-80 kg.

The social bit is both completely genuine and somewhat fake: I spent many years from 16-28 years old coming home with severe headaches and sore facial muscles, because I always stiffen them up when I'm engaging socially with anyone who's not my parents, my brother, his wife and children, or my uncle. I've become slightly better at not stiffing these muscles up during the last 3 or 4 years, but it's simply a habit I can't seem to shake off. It seems as if my body engages in some sort of fight-or-flight response with the forcing of the "smiling muscles". It's unfortunate, because I do enjoy socializing for 2 to 3 hours every day or every other day, if the person I'm conversing with is kind and reasonable, but I am an introvert, and I need to charge my batteries by being alone. I've been far too much of a people pleaser since at least the start of the bullying in school, but I've managed to become a little better, if only slightly, in standing my ground. I absolutely love animals, dogs and cats in particular, and I love my nephews more than anything else in this world.

I've had it told to me from one psychologist that it's unlikely that my negative thoughts regarding my social performance and looks (despite what I wrote above regarding my appearance, whenever I'm in a social situation with someone I don't know very well, I become acutely self-aware of my "deficiencies" in the looks department) will ever pass, but that I can learn to live with them and "control them" when they pop up. Fair enough, but if so, then the very idea of ever having a relationship with a woman is simply off the table.

As such, I don't want to deal with any of it anymore. Also, though I don't want to get into it too much, I thought I might as well mention that I've read a book about incels and the current trend of intergender relationships in large parts of the more developed world (the book is written by a swedish psychiatrist named Stefan Krakowski), as well as a couple of books I've read from what is typically called "the manopshere". With the realisation of the current, and likely future, trend of intergender relationships described in these books (which I do believe in), I think I know what the future has in store for me, and rather than fighting against it, I've come to realize that I'd much rather like to embrace it and find peace with it.

To do that, I want to be able to foster a mindset much akin to what I'm imagining a genuinely asexual person would have: that is, complete and utter disinterest — but most importantly a genuine disinterest — in pursing a sexual relationship with anyone, be it from the opposite sex or the same sex (I'm heterosexual).

To relinquish porn is, in comparison, a rather easy task. I want to extend the process of relinquishing porn to all things sexual in life. I want to go the route of the monk, so to speak. I want to learn how to not only avoid all sexual content in popculture (and "unnecessary" sexual content in literature), but how to become completely solitary.

What prompted this realization, and me writing this post, is the wedding I mentioned at the start of this post that I attended yesterday. It was my cousin's wedding, and while it was a very pleasant experience, I was also frustrated by the incredible amount of people with partners attending. I became jealous, as much as I'm loath to admit it. During the festivities I chatted with many people, but for some reason, one woman in particular caught my attention, and we chatted nicely and joked with each other through the whole day. I knew almost from the start that she already had two daughters with another man she was now divorced from, and that she had found a new man that she didn't yet live with, but was working towards moving in together with in a larger apartment in order to accommodate her, her children and the man. She was very warm, and quite sweet. Despite knowing of her circumstances, I couldn't help but having these thoughts in the back of my head of how much I would like to date her. The fact that she had children didn't matter, even though I know that most people in "the manosphere" would regard that as a huge red flag. I figured life happens, and considering how much I enjoyed her company, then who cares? Her children might even be as lovely as my nephews. Of course, nothing happened between us, but I was frustrated at how frustrated I was for this obvious outcome. It's like my lizard brain had told me things that simple logic and reason could immediately dispel, yet I still tentatively clung to the foolish thoughts.

Hence, my desire to learn how to not repeat engaging with this embarrassing and foolish mindset.

Getting rid of Internet porn is one thing, as I stated above, but what other routes would you recommend I take in order to learn how to become completely uninterested in women, and accept my loneliness? Focusing more on work and school would be one thing, and finding a hobby which takes up my time would be another, but I was thinking more of asking for tips in how I should go about in fostering the necessary mindset in order to accept this new route in life? Do you have any books on the subject which you can recommend, or meditation exercises which could help?

Kind regards / AlexanderCatHat

 

Thanks for your feedback, Jonny!

Yeah, I think you're right. I was just so immensely frustrated at not having a relationship when I saw the height of happiness amongst all the couples at the wedding, combined with my idiotic attempt at cozying up with the kind woman whom I mention in my OP. After having read the book about incels by Stefan Krakowski, I realize that the great surplus of men in the world at large, combined with the changing dynamic of male-female relationships, drastically lessen my chances of finding a woman who would settle for me.

I'm not alone in this, at least. I'll have to read some more on the topic, and see if I can find a way to channel my frustrations into something more constructive, and hopefully shed my desire to get into a relationship at some point.

Cheers!