Dating/Friendships

Hello everybody! My name is Patrick Michael Kelly, I am 34 years old I live just outside of Marysville in California, I am a virgin, never had sex before though I do masturbate, I am a Christian, I believe in Jesus Christ, I have a little girl who is not mine, but I have sort of stepped into the role of daddy to her, I live with my parents…

Look, I’ve been desperately waiting for God to send me the one, the woman who would be my wife for years now & quite frankly, I am losing heart. I fell for the “high school romance” scenario, believing that I would meet my soulmate in high school, go to college, become a video game designer, all the fun at the fair! Instead, I creepily stalked my crush, driving her away, I failed the same college math course twice, I tried & failed at 3 different jobs & still ended up alone. I recently ended up in the hospital after having a seizure & well, I’m just thinking about the future & what God’s plan might have for me.

Being here, it’s probably obvious that my preferences in women are the fatter the better & I especially have an attraction to a woman with a gigantic butt! I don’t want someone older than me & I don’t want someone who is transgender (no offense). I definitely need someone who is a Christian, someone who doesn’t smoke & shares some of my interests. I know that I’m a high maintenance person & I understand that not everyone will be up to the challenge, but I hope that God will guide the right person to me & guide us both down the path he wants us to take together.

Thank you all for your time & may God bless your lives.

How about not referring to adult women as "chicks" to start. Or as property that you "call your own." Good grief.

What you're looking for isn't love. It's an object.

Having non-negotiable standards is important, but these are not standards, these are just mostly physical descriptors and behaviors. They say nothing about who a person is inside.

Also full stop if religiosity is that important to you, you should probably start there instead.

I don’t know what to say… I want to thank you for the advice, but I don’t want to sound patronizing. I know that I’m selfish, crude & horribly immature. I wish I wasn’t & I try so desperately to be a good person, but I know that I haven’t matured since high school. I’ve lost my way & I don’t know if I’ll ever find it again. Most days I just want to give up, lay down & die! But I’m afraid of death… I’m trapped in a cycle of wanting to give up & trying desperately to hold on to some form of hope that I won’t always be alone! If this isn’t Hell, then I have no idea what is!

I’m sorry… I know that nobody else needs to be worrying about me. Everyone has their own worries, fears, troubles, etc. & the last thing anyone needs is to be worrying about some depressed lunatic who’s not likely to hurt himself because he is afraid of pain!

I just had a long drawn out reply that didn't go through and I'm not typing it out again.

In short, SEEK HELP! You need therapy, not a woman. If you walk through life miserable you're just going to drag others down with you. I've been there and it's not pleasant.

Everyone has negative qualities about themselves. Nobody is perfect and it's okay and a good thing that you recognize these things. But finding someone to fill that void will never resolve those issues. It's about learning what your own individual baggages, taking inventory of what you have, repacking it, and not being ashamed of it. Because in that process you will then learn what your positive qualities are and what you offer and what you need in someone as a person.

Self flagellation doesn't help matters. I know it's coming from a place of loneliness and hurt and you're not the only person who feels that way. And it's not even your fault you feel that way. But this isn't the way to repair it either.

Don't think of therapy as you being broken or a "lunatic" or anything like that. It's a place that is emotionally safe to help you learn how to explore yourself and to give you better tools to cope within your world and the people around you. Everybody on the planet needs therapy. Everyone!

I’m sorry to everyone for the way I have been acting today…
I know that self degradation is not a good way to get attention & I wish I wouldn’t do it. I guess I feel like if I don’t get down on myself, everyone will just ignore me. I suppose that makes me a narcissist of some sort, something I didn’t think I could be, but it makes sense as you don’t have to love yourself to be self-absorbed. I wish I was more mature, less selfish & not so narcissistic. It is comforting to know that others do care & I’m sorry for acting so selfish & stupid. May God bless you all!

I think you might be better off shifting your approach and mindset along with your current focus.

You feel lonely and want to find someone that could be your wife to escape that loneliness, but you've also acknowledged that you're selfish, immmature and in the past have been a creep and stalker toward your crush. The be very blunt, those negative aspects of you aren't going to suddenly evaporate because you start dating someone, which means you have to work on them first.

Some have already mentioned going to therapy, and I also suggest this is a course of action that everyone should look at taking when they are going through a hard time. It will help you find why you think and behave the way you do and hopefully help you find ways to work through that and slowly become a better person.

It's also been suggested that you find hobbies that bring you joy, and I also highly recommend this too. In addition to that though I think it might be good for you to consider finding ways you can positively impact the lives of others that isn't about trying to date them.

You said you're Christian and very much dedicated to your faith, so you might find it worthwhile to get more involved in your local church and volunteer your time to help those in need. I think spending a bit of your time helping others might help change your mindset to a more positive one, and help you feel a bit better about yourself too.

The only other thing I can tell you is that keeping your current attitude and continuing to operate the way you are is going to keep things the same and likely getting worse for you. Good people are always looking for ways to grow and change themselves for the better, and you need to want to do that hard work.

You're listing off all of these negative personality traits, and maybe there's some truth there, but I don't think they're as bad as you say. Depression has killed all of your self-esteem, and so you're being really harsh on yourself. It's like a form of verbal self-harm. Try to imagine that you're talking to someone else who's in your position. Would you be so critical of them? If not, then you probably shouldn't do that to yourself. (At least that's what my therapist keeps telling me, haha) You might feel like you're worthless right now, but you have no idea what your potential is, or the things you could accomplish if depression weren't an obstacle. Try not to compare yourself to others. Everyone's path through life is different. Instead, you can compare yourself to how you were yesterday, and focus on what you can do today to make things better by a small amount. Eventually that will add up to real change.

Here is my honest advice for anyone with depression: There IS treatment available, and it does work for many people. You can find so many people's stories about how they recovered and what they did. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying.

1. Try to find a therapist. If they're not helping you, then look for a different one. Having setbacks in your recovery doesn't mean that treatment won't ever work for you.
2. You should be open to antidepressants as a treatment option. It may not be what's best for everyone, but they have helped a lot of people. Keep in mind that if you do find the medication that's right for you, it won't cure you or lift your mood, it will just create a baseline and stop your lows from getting too low.
3. Start exercising daily. Not to lose weight, but because it will give you endorphins.
4. Go for a walk outside every day with no agenda but to look at trees. Being close to nature has a very soothing effect.
5. Keep up with your hygiene and try to clean the mess in your house bit by bit. Feeling disgusted with yourself and your environment is going to make your depression worse.
6. Keep a good sleep schedule. Get your 8 hours and wake up in the mornings, not the afternoon. You need rest to heal, including your mind.
7. Make plans to regularly hang out with a friend in person, even if you think you'll hate it. Humans are social creatures and we don't do well when we're isolated.

There are studies supporting all of these, but you have to stick to it even if you can't tell if it's helping. And yeah, it's going to be exhausting, but the potential rewards if it does work would be worth it, right? Try to imagine a fantasy world where you feel good and everything in your life is in a good place. It's absolutely possible for anyone to get there, including you. But you have to fight for it, or it won't ever happen. It's a long and hard road, but it's absolutely guaranteed to happen for you if you can find the right steps to take.

Now, regarding dating, you should probably put that aside for now until you're in a better place. Navigating and maintaining a relationship (and her respect for you) can be difficult at the best of times; so if you're full of self-loathing and doubt, it's going to be a non-starter. I understand that the loneliness might be a major cause of your depression though, so if you really need intimacy in order to recover, I do have some advice. Try to look for casual relationships/friends with benefits only. When there are no expectations other than to enjoy each other's company, there is SO much less pressure, and less anxiety as a result. It doesn't have to be meaningful, emotions don't have to get involved, you can just get some of that good oxytocin and be on your way. You can always pursue something more serious later when you have more self-confidence. I know you asked for tips on how to succeed with dating. I can say the first thing to keep in mind is that fun is absolutely the order of the day, so it's best not to bring the mood down or unload all of your problems. Serious emotional support is something you could have with a long-term relationship, but probably not when you're just dating. There is more advice I could give, but this is really not the best place for it.

I see you have autism. That's going to make things extremely difficult because studies show a majority of autistic men never have a relationship or intercourse. Autism is basically a mental illness that makes you as unattractive as possible to women but I managed even though they diagnosed me with it. (I honestly think I was misdiagnosed but I obviously still had some signs so the disadvantages were the same). Here are some tips from my experience since we may have a more similar background than the others posting:

1. Never tell a girl you're a virgin, lie if you have to. This is basically telling a woman that no other woman has found you attractive. Women cannot really understand an unwilling virgin because men are pretty much constantly begging them for sex and in your 30s it is going to be a massive red flag. Perhaps it would be different with a deeply religious girl but those are very hard to find these days.
2. Don't blab about your mental issues to them. You are admitting to having a defective brain when you do this and that's going to scare away a lot.
3. Never whine or self depreciate like you did ITT.
4. Looks matter a ton. You probably aren't witty or popular enough to talk your way around being unkempt or ugly so you're going to need to do a lot of research in improving your appearance and working with what you've got.
5. The more friends you have the better. This will not only widen your social circle to include more people that know women but also make you appear more attractive. Even goofy autistic friends are better than no friends in public.
6. Learn to mask your autism around people. Observe how normal people speak/behave and emulate them. Perhaps even record yourself to pick out certain things you didn't notice before and fix them.
7. Manage good hygiene.
8. Your pool of potential girls on forums like this is laughably small to the point of it almost being a waste of time. Even something like tinder would be a vast improvement. Lucky for you society sees overweight women as being less attractive so that increases your chances, there is no shortage of bigger girls in western countries. Keep the fact that you find fat sexually arousing to yourself until you are very comfortable in your relationship though.

You need to tackle these as soon as possible and it is not going to be easy. Going to therapy and not making drastic lifestyle changes is not going to bear fruit for a 30+ year old autistic man. A lot of therapy is about learning to cope with things rather than improve them and in my experience they are going to try their hardest to steer you away from even trying with girls.

OP, feel free to ignore the *entirety* of @Wat's post. It's ableist, maladaptive, and rife with clear insecure projections that have nothing to do with you as a person.