Ikar

@LucasR There can be temperamental differences too. My ex was fairly orderly (or disgust sensitive), whereas I am fairly unmoved when it comes to mess. On the extreme, this allowed me to work on a pig farm unscathed, since animal death occurred on a daily basis. I think I got better at that cleaning up my room after I quit gaming though. I think females in general are more drawn towards psychological aspects, rather than physical ones. I think my ideal girlfriend right now would at least have the hint of being responsible or time sacrifice (trading insufficient present for better future), because I seem to oscillate around these values as well, though I enjoy my leisure time as well. After all, if she want to start a family with me, she'd better make sure I am not gonna run the first time I hear she's pregnant! @ConstantlyLost I felt like gaming/Twitch and the relationship were the only two things I had before which was a pretty stupid idea, but I was basically working all the time on making it happen. I hope I learned my lesson, since I am willing to date again! Time will tell. One scary thing I want to mention is that the relationship between me and my ex was very similar to our own respective parents' relationships. Even if they are married, I wouldn't like to have my parents' marriage in the future. The old adage goes that "daughters marry their fathers and sons marry their mothers" and it seems to be the case that your parents' own relationship sets the baseline for your own romantic relationships. When seeking out romantic partners, we seem to choose partners based on familiarity, rather than some "objective virtues". The good news is, once you are aware, you can use this to your advantage, since like attracts like! Thanks for posting to both of you!

Hi Lucas!

Day 179: I was teaching English, I visited my grandma, played Scrabble with mom and wrote a lot on GQ forums today. That's it!

I could behind the idea she was over me faster than I was over her, as that makes sense if she happened to dump me. I just don't think she cared to look into the mirror - me - to avoid making a similar mistake of dating someone like I was (a double digit hours computer addict). I have a feeling she needs to have a similar "existential crisis", comparable to the one I had. "Normal healthy" people would just stay away from me back then and I think for a good reason. It was a letter with 2 A4s. In fact, I actually deviated from it being a letter to her (to get her back or whatever) and it's more about my new stance towards life in general, something along the lines people might call "personal mission statement" or "personal constitution". I opted for a few personal comparisons to demonstrate some of the philosophical points, though I wouldn't mind sharing it here and it'd probably be here already, if I wanted to translate it into English. The response I got from her was a weird amalgam of insufficiency/unwillingness to even attempt to truly reply to the letter. I think to try and get back together (or to start dating in the first place), you need to draw similar conclusions about how to live and then actually act it out. To put it shortly, if I believe being responsible is a good long-term strategy for life as a whole and she's essentially a nihilist and moral relativist, it'd be a suicide to try to bridge such a great gap. I think we started out both as nihilists. You can read a bit more about my relationship here:

I guess daycare jobs of any sort are carried out by women rather than men from a purely statistic viewpoint, but it's always a good idea to keep your eyes open! I also attend university classes once a week, so I meet my classmates there as well. Other than that, I am generally able to go out at least one more time per week, either with some of my other friends or family. I generally exercise alone, but I've been thinking about some collective sport recently. I also want to get back to drumming, but only on a local amateur scale with a bunch of beginners.

I think I can relate with my own past relationship, it's been half a year since the breakup. I'm 22 and male. Everything below is my own experience. I was in denial for the first two weeks. After I got told that she really means the breakup, I started my search for answers. Two weeks after that, I decided I would ditch gaming, partly because I was thinking we could still get together and partly out of the plain realization that this double digit hours on games/Twitch daily is just not sustainable. I was writing with her a bit after quitting gaming, but I was fairly set on the idea of a "breakup talk". She wouldn't have any of that and I think she had a bunch of reasons for that too. From what I understood, she seemed to rebound into another relationship. I could've been also jealous to an extent, but regardless of that, I still suggested her to take a break from dating. I started seeing her less and less as a dating target and more and more as a person with psychological scars that need to be treated. I also realized I was looking into a mirror. I managed to turn a person from being quite nice to me to a person with a full-blown hatred for me. At that point, I realized we both had to mess up somewhere along the way (or that our families also messed us up to a great degree as well). A few moths after that, I tried to look at the relationship pragmatically from the perspective of what we actually did, not what we said. Aside from having sex, going out for a meal or a walk, we couldn't really agree on anything. We'd just shut down each others' idea and bored ourselves to tears. We would also lie a lot, neither of us really started exercising on a regular basis despite stating that multiple times. After gradually discovering all this, I was fairly exhilarated and I wanted to share my ideas (both on my ex and my present and future) with virtually anyone, just like I shared it with you now in a short version. I think it was an important experience to incorporate into myself, as now I can screen for dates better and find out who to bloody stay away from. I hope this helps! Take your time untangling your own past.

Hello to both of you, welcome to my journal! The short version is that I feel like we're just too different at this point. I imagine she felt hatred towards me at the end of the relationship, but still mixed with a bit of compassion, since we were very similar in that, so I imagine it wasn't easy for her either. I tried contacting her in July (3-4 months after the breakup) with a thoughtful letter, but her response was basically zero. I was aiming towards having the "breakup talk" with her, but sadly she's not up for doing that. I don't plan to expend any more energy towards contacting her, unless she decides to contact me first. Did you manage to have a "breakup talk" with your exes, or are you avoiding it in your talks? Thanks! I will try to continue in an even better way in the future.

I'm not sure how your workplace looks like, but assuming you had the ability to choose your job, you also chose what people you see and how often. I wouldn't consider the classic 9-5 office job to be naturally hostile towards building relationships - high schools have schedule similar to them and even unis are not total anarchy schedule-wise (if you don't want them to be!). Myself, I teach English a few times a week. But since I am not a classic school teacher and instead I teach in a company, I don't have any colleagues and I see my students once a week. It took some adjustment for me to learn to live with that, but everything has its pros and cons.

Day 178: I nailed most of the errands I had to do yesterday, plus the chores for today. I'm still feeling pretty smashed though. It's hard to stay on the right track with the ATB nuking a lot of the bacteria in my body. I'm working on the half a year report as well.

I wouldn't think game addicts are always introverted, just because they spent double digit hours on PC. I've been streaming on a daily basis on Twitch and I basically used it as my extroverted social outlet. Half a year later, I'm still figuring out how extroverted am I IRL, so I can relate to @BooksandTrees. It was just that life outside of computer sucked, but the expression "digital world" is dead on, because it is indeed a whole second world. Don't worry about the demographic, it's just a statistic! As for online dating, it's just one possibility, but it's not mandatory. In on itself, I'm not even sure how valuable/useless it is as a whole. I think dating/romantic opportunities organically happen IRL, unless you just consciously decide to not date or something is out of order. In my case, it was double digit hours on computer + the social unawareness that stemmed from it, even though I still managed to have a relationship for a while. Welcome to the forum! Also, thanks for the reminder about LinkedIn, I got it updated. One never knows!

I watched two lectures by Peterson recently, they were probably one of the most practical ones that I've seen from him. I have some of my own thoughts combined with his ideas below then. He mentioned that by age of roughly 30 (from what I gather, you seem to be in your 30s), kids should be able to see their parents as peers, with their unique flaws and strengths. Added to that, with their unique opinions as well, but that you shouldn't consider their opinions to be worth more than anyone else's. After all, they had a lot of time to install their opinions into you anyway, for better and for worse. I tend to imagine love/hate as opposing sides of the same spectrum, in the case of my mom. In the case of my dad, it's rather respect/disrespect. I feel largely neutral towards them. I don't wish death and disease upon them, but I'd probably prefer some distance from them and see them once a week and I'll likely take any first good opportunity to move out and live on my own (or with a future girlfriend). It seems to me they are sort of alibistic and treat me as either an adult or a child, depending on what's more convenient, especially my dad. Good luck finding the girl ?

I guess it might have to do something with me being on the antibiotics and experiencing some minor, but annoying side effects like chills, intestinal upset, headache and general drowsiness. That aside, I made 6, 4 and 4 days without real masturbation, I just didn't put the counter in on my entries. I generally write them as the last thing of the day, which might be a mistake, because by then I am half asleep already at that point. I have it the other way around. Masturbation makes me energized or indifferent. Sex made me dead tired and exhausted, but in a good way, like some really long exercise does.

Day 177: I did about half the tasks I had planned for today, which is still good. I went out with a friend in the evening. NF - 0 days I keep messing around in bed again in the morning, so I confess to hold myself accountable again.

Hey! Don't worry, soon you'll fill the time gaps with other activities, hopefully ones that work out better than gaming. I use Excel spreadsheets to write sort of a list/schedule for my days!

Day 176: I finished watching "Personality and Its Transformations 2017" by Peterson today. I have to admit that the last two lectures of the series were very practical. I also made a first draft of my half a year recap, just a few thoughts to get me started. I also finally got around to reading a few pages as well. It's been a fine day.

Hey! You are right that "like attracts like". It might take you some time to really parse the relationship down to basic elements, but in the process you get to know something about yourself and you can be aware of some patterns in the future. I've had a similar (though not as extreme!) relationship myself. You are also right that some can "weaponize her depression". A few people get expert at that and they wield their uselessness as a weapon, pretty much sucking compassion and other resources from other people. Good luck on detoxing!

I've read the last few entries of yours. Good luck with your artistic endeavors and your (sometimes neurotic!) girlfriend!

Good job on toning down the porn. I'd think there's no need for porn or even masturbation, if you really set up your relationship with your future girlfriend in this domain properly and you'll be able to see each other at least for weekends. Sucks to hear about the rat at work though. I can't quote exactly, but I know a guy on the forums somewhere posted a graph of all the good and bad decisions linking together and making the "path" of having a great or horrible day.

Day 175: I got a few small things done today, a bit of cleaning and some paperwork. I went to a sort of a standup show in the evening with my family and it was pretty good. I also just finished watching Taxi Driver with young De Niro, it struck me as pretty bizarre towards the end, mainly because it ended in a "good" way by a chance. I also saw Goodfellas a few days ago.

Day 174: I was in school, one of the lectures was fairly interesting, so that was good. I didn't do too much else besides that. I plan to follow up on and clean up my errands during the weekend.

The doc told me he didn't see such a reaction before either. I have proper meds to combat it now though and it seems to be going away already.

Good luck! You've got your work cut out for yourself; it won't be easy, but it's the best shot you have!

What was the first book? The same thing has been on my mind recently as well. I read this up on the MMM blog somewhere: "Do what is good for you, not what you enjoy." What I did was to try and triangulate the least useful activity that I do and try to find something more useful, perhaps something I was putting off. It's annoying, but it's the same as with triangulating gaming and deciding something else is worth it more.

I got an infection there from foot mildew I did not know existed up until the infection made me unable to walk normally. I guess all I can advice is to dry the spaces between your fingers properly, so you don't end up like me!

Day 173: I legitimately got a lot done today, but it was not really satisfactory, I think mainly because I spent the whole day inside. My foot got a lot better, as now I'm on antibiotics. NF - 0 days