sprigatito_bread

Every time I encounter another problem with my body that a healthy person wouldn't have, I'm always tempted to think to myself that nobody would want a partner like me because they could just pick someone healthier and more capable. I'm in my early 20s and my health is already getting a little worse each year without any real way to stop it.

I could tell myself that my unique story is compelling, and that enduring all of this hardship has cultivated a more powerful mindset than mainstream materialism and hyperindividualism, and that anyone who shares my values would appreciate me for who I am, even if it means potentially foregoing wealth and luxury. But I just wish I had something more to go off of, something a little more than just blind hope.

I know that lacking confidence and having an external locus of control aren't helping at all, but I find that I can only feel confidence and control if I have a solid, well-reasoned belief that I can succeed and my actions are meaningful.

So, I'd really appreciate any success stories, those who found love despite having challenging medical issues, or any good arguments you might have. I don't think there will be any one thing that does it for me; every little bit will help. Thank you.

As far as I know, the current culture around dating/relationships includes meeting your SO's family and letting them meet yours. And probably sometime on the first few dates, at least asking about family. Problem is, my family is batshit insane.

• My parents are in an abusive relationship and constantly scream at each other

• My father is a violent abuser who avoids talking to people because he can't even pretend to be sane

• I had to raise myself because most of their advice was hateful trash; they tried to raise me into a bigoted loner asshole who only cares about himself and ties his self-worth to pretending he's better than everyone else

• My brother is an emotionally volatile gun owner in a relationship with an insane psycho who abused her cat to death

• They all believe that people who are different should be suppressed or purged from society because God or something

I think at this point, my family may be too dangerous to maintain ties to at all. I really wish I could burn it all down and start over, but I might not be so lucky due to my fledgling financial situation.

Ridding myself of my family's influence has been a decade-long project that I've been working hard on, and I gotta say, "Your parents raised you well" has got to be my least favorite compliment.

Jokes aside, I'm interested in hearing about experiences from others in similar situations. How did you talk about it?

I feel like this is an unavoidable red flag either way for a lot of people (After all, how would anyone know that I'm as sane as I claim to be?), but I'd still like to find the least horrible way to talk about it without lying.

Thanks!

It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that I experience heterosexuality very differently than my peers. I'll describe in broad terms to keep things SFW.

Bodies are not "hot" to me. I'm drawn to feminine features because I find them pretty, but bodies do not physically excite me in the way that they excite others.

My sexuality is focused on receiving loving and romantic physical affection, and to a lesser extent, giving it. To my brain, affectionate physical contact is sex ITSELF, not a prelude. In practice, this means that I'm very attracted to kisses and don't care about real sex unless I had a partner who wanted it.

If I approach a woman, it's because she seems nice and I want to get to know her, not because I find her physically attractive. I never pursue romance from the get-go; I develop friendships for their own sake and romantic feelings may develop later.

I have some concerns about this.

I've long suspected that there are certain signals that I don't give off. Female friends have called me things like "innocent," "adorable," or "Christian" (lol). While that may be due to my gentle demeanor, I wonder if my unique attraction profile eliminates behaviors that signal sexual availability, such as flirting. Perhaps the absence of these signals creates an impression of purity and sexual abstinence.

If that's the case, I feel like that might prevent most people from finding me attractive, simply because I lack the hardware to speak their language. My actions might just come across as friendly, and I don't want to lie about feeling attraction that I don't have.

Another concern of mine is submissiveness: my physical attraction is centered around receiving. Although I want a relationship that's reciprocal—giving and receiving in equal measure—I absolutely need moments of receiving affection to be sexually fulfilled. From what I've seen, submissiveness is stereotypically a turn-off, and I don't know how widespread that is.

But I'm not BDSM-submissive; I don't want a dominatrix. I just want someone gentle, kind, and willing to kiss me a bunch lol. I want to create a space of warmth and safety where we meet each other's needs and I love the idea of being an affectionate and caring partner. The receptiveness I describe is episodic, not all-consuming.

These worries may sound silly, but being different is a catalyst for insecurity. It's very easy to speculate because I can't measure how much heterosexuality varies. I would expect that I'm a rule-breaking outlier and most heterosexuals have similar attraction models.

But I lack perspective, especially because I've never been in a relationship.

What do you think?

I've been thinking of potential measures that corporate-controlled authoritarian governments could use against any kind of left-wing information or organizing, and it seems like an obvious one is a sudden, widespread crackdown on left-wing content. In practice, social media companies would collude with the government to:

• Wipe out all left-wing social media profiles and ban left-wing rhetoric under the justification that it is "terrorism-related content".
• Block access to thousands of left-wing sites at once and de-list them from search engines
• Update content moderation algorithms to prevent more of this content from being published or recommended
• Do all of these on the same day to cause the most disorientation and fear
• Continually go after the hosts of the niche left-wing news and communication channels that still remain, such as small websites, fediverse instances, and encrypted communication channels. Throw their operators in prison and make examples out of them

In effect, due to the centralized nature of social media and news, the online left could instantly be scattered through the collusion of just a few large corporations.

It would:

• Galvanize the populist right-wing base
• Stoke feelings of fear, isolation, and hopelessness among the opposition, deterring action
• Weaken the left's ability to organize
• Make it harder for people to learn about real left-wing ideas and stances

Why wouldn't they take that opportunity?

The bulk of online left-wing activity could instantly be wiped out in a single day. Why am I not hearing more people talking about that? Why do so many left-leaning people think sites like BlueSky will save them? Do they really think they are resisting by using centralized social media platforms? The corporatocracy has complete control over all of the infrastructure...

In my opinion, every influencer on the left should be screaming from the rooftops every single day that the most productive thing you can be doing is talking to people, building connections, and organizing in the real world, because our platform on the Internet could vanish instantaneously.

Anyway, I hope I'm wrong, but it feels like something that could easily happen. What are your thoughts?