burnerforyou [he/him]

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Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: March 31st, 2024

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  • if you feel you need validation from having a partner then it could perhaps mean you would benefit from improving your capacity to find validation from within yourself.

    one more time:

    also before anyone chimes in with “it’s cool/ok/fine to be single” or any variant thereof….I’ve already spent major chunks of my adult life, years at a time, on my own. I’ve reaped all the benefits there are from singlehood

    moreover for me at least it’s not a problem of “validation,” I’m more than used to supplying my own (I’ve taken enough unsuccessful stabs at both therapy and depression meds to get tagged as “treatment resistant” so you best believe I keep busy as hell!), it’s a simple matter of loneliness (itself a downstream symptom of broader trends in social and economic alienation as many others itt have pointed out)





  • mainly two reasons:

    1 at this point my close friends, who I can count on one hand, are ppl I’ve known for 10-15+ years and it just feels weird to rock certain boats in certain directions iykwim

    2 my friends are all “well-adjusted” lib professionals whose friends are also that and none of them would stoop to dating a broke manual laborer who doesn’t want to buy a house or whatever. I’m a total outlier in my social circle even a degree or two removed. again, whoops!


  • obv everyone is different but I don’t love the idea of having a 10+ yr age gap between me and my partner, unfortunately (for me) societally this is not only accepted but desirable for a lot of women who date men (there’s literally an article about this on the front page of this website rn last I checked). I personally don’t like it cause there’s just too much difference (I still remember before the internet!) if/when I hit my mid-40s I think it will feel less weird to say, try dating someone in their early thirties, but idk, maturity levels and rates of emotional and social development vary so much and it’s such a crapshoot when it comes to ppl in their early 20s that as a rule I generally steer clear. I don’t automatically condemn all relationships with that sort of age gap but they do seem to generate fucked up dynamics a lot.

    as for how I “know” that, I guess I don’t really… I’m just guessing based on anecdotal observation and such. I will say the last time I quasi hooked up with someone (a significant period of time ago) it was essentially an accident of proximity/via friends and they fell slightly below my preferred age gap threshold and…I immediately regretted it. it was powerfully wrong. (not going into details on here lol)