How dating has changed

Is it just me or has dating and having a relationship changed a lot in the last 20-30 years?

When I was very little, if I liked a girl, I would usually make a card or, once I could write, send her a "love" letter in which I told her that she seems nice and interesting and that I would like to know her better and if she could imagine being my girlfriend. 

All but one never even replied to me! And the one who did said that I seem too crazy at times. I sent her another letter, asking follow-up questions, but she didn't respond anymore.

Basically, I thought couples are made by going to the cinema together, talking a bit and then you'd just see each other a lot or do homework and other stuff together. Eventually, you'd walk home holding hands, kiss each other, cuddle and hug and at a certain age and after many months, you might have sex together. 

I also naively assumed or thought that my first girlfriend would hopefully be my last. And that women - just like me - were just looking for someone to spend a lot of time with, so we wouldn't be alone and face the challenges of getting older together.

Well, now it's 20+ years later. None of the people I knew in school seem to have married the girls or boys they dated back in school. And as for me, all my girlfriends lived overseas. Except for two, I also never got to spend more than a few days or weeks with them. 

The first girlfriend I ever had was pretty much everything I didn't want or expect in a partner. She was promiscuous, selfish, materialistic and spoiled. I thought back then that being honest, kind and sincere is the way to get and keep a partner, but it seems that in fact the opposite is true: Only men who always flirt and have many women around them seem to be interesting to women (the same way a kid ignores a toy it takes for granted until another kid has fun playing with it). My second girlfriend even confirmed this to me by saying something along the lines of:

"You never hit me, lie or cheat: You're not a real man!"

She and my first girlfriend both just "kept" me until someone "better" came along (something that's called monkey-branching" as I learned some years ago) and the second one actually tried to ask me back and sabotage a new relationship actively.

Those experiences then made me angry, disappointed and bitter. I had grown up, being taught by my grandma and mom that women are more mature and less selfish (when in fact, they weren't and aren't at all).

Their behavior taught me to be just like them: never really commit, keep "life boats" around and many back-up candidates to date. 

The problem with that was that I really didn't want that. I also felt it's unfair to punish others for what people did to me (although others don't seem to have such scruples).

But I also couldn't unlearn reality. 

For me, once I really love a person, I can't just change my feelings. It took me 8-9 years to get over the woman I had a relationship with 2012-2013. And I sometimes feel it broke something inside me. Maybe the ability to trust women.

I don't know if I am like other men in my approach to relationships, but I think relationships or marriage are not just love, that's just the start. It's rather about living together day by day, going through the daily routine and maybe getting bored together as well. But that's normal and I think we must remind ourselves constantly that although all of us could break up and find someone new, why would and should we?

Humans need other humans. And we only have a limited time on this planet. So we don't have time to waste by always breaking up over minor bullshit. If life was a board game, instead of trying to win, that's like voluntarily going back to start. Only a fool or loser would do that.

Sadly, with Western feminism, women these days usually waste their 20s and 30s sleeping around. By the time they are too old to have kids (and that's late 20s actually!), they lose one big selling point, to be able to create a family with a man.

And also, why should men want women at 35-45? Personally, I did date almost only such women in the last 10 years, thinking that they at least are more mature, appreciative and done playing around and grateful for a stable relationship. But nope, they actually seem to have the maturity of 12 year olds. Still easy to quit, afraid of responsibility and easy to succumb to any temptation.

That's why I started to think in the last couple of years if there actually is a point to dating these days:

Can't have kids, because the woman would surely leave sooner or later.

Can't be with someone older either, even if I gave up on kids, because they also still want to "browse". 

It's just something I can't understand. Why do they keep looking for new things? Or expect some butterflies or something? Those "butterflies" are actually just the start and it's normal and good if they vanish with time. Once the routine sets in, it actually means the mature part of the relationship is starting. 

So maybe the conclusion is that people are just not mature anymore? Me, I just want to have a nice girl by my side who will always appreciate me, because I know I will appreciate her and never leave. I will force myself to resist any temptation, although I am realistic enough to know that there might be many. But that's why being mature is usually harder than being selfish and childish. 

What hasn't changed since childhood is that I want a partner not for sexual or financial gain. I just want someone who can be my spiritual, emotional and philosophical equal! But it seems that that's not something anyone wants to "settle" for these days.

Depressions

Depressions are a complicated illness. The definition of what a depression even is is already quite complicated.

Some people call it a depression if they feel sad after failing a test or they had a break-up for example. 

To me, that's not a depression. A depression to me is something that has no apparent reason (because that's how it seems to have started for me) and that's what makes it so difficult to fix or fight. How do you fix something if you don't know what or how it is broken?

I probably was born with this condition. I always remember that my grandmother told me that when I was only five, I asked her why I am alive and why I can't be dead. That's obviously not a good thing for a child of just 5 years. 

It is possible that I was actually feeling depressed because my parents had divorced when I was 4,5 years old. But it's also possible that I felt this way because depression seems to run in my family (my grandfather's father and grandfather both committed suicide by hanging themselves, my grandpa often said he wants to die and kill himself too and my grandma, mom and aunt all have depressions). 

Still, aside from the occasional Sunday Blues and once in a while a few sad and depressed and joyless days, I seemed to be ok. If I did feel depressed, I could usually overcome this sadness by trying to be positive and reminding me of the good things in my life.

That all changed one day in, I think 2003. From one day to the next and without ANY change in my life, suddenly I felt complete anhedonia (anhedonia is when you basically can't feel ANY joy whatsoever, no matter what you do) and being positive or "strong" didn't matter in the least. The situation simply wouldn't improve. I woke up every day, sensing that the cloud of depression still hung above my head. I started to suffer from insomnia, because I was terrified to go to sleep before I was so exhausted that I would pass out. If I wasn't exhausted, I would keep thinking and pondering and soon come to the conclusion that life is pointless and I'd embrace pure nihilism and basically come to the conclusion that I should kill myself. Obviously, I didn't actually want to die, but I dare anyone to live 1 year without ANY joy. Eventually, no matter how strong you are, you'll give up.

This is what happened to me as well. I tried to stay hopeful and positive. But day after day, week after week, month after month, the situation didn't improve or change. I had no idea why. Up until then, I had been an avid reader for example and would read thousands of pages each month. Yet thanks to this depression, I couldn't concentrate anymore and thus couldn't really read. In the turn of a hand, I had lost 50% of what I loved to do (reading). 

Finally, and again for no apparent reason, the depression seemed to disappear, just like it had come out of nowhere. Again, nothing had really improved or changed in life. So what the heck was the reason behind it? 

A therapist suggested that it may have been my mother who "caused" it. I was living with her and my brother at that time. I still went to school and so did my brother. 

My mom worked and I was responsible for some household chores, but also my brother. If he didn't do his homework, if he broke a vase or didn't clean his room, it was me who got blamed. If I dared to speak up, my mom threatened to kick me out. So I basically learned to surpress all my anger and emotions (thus maybe creating the depression, according to the therapist). 

Rationally, this seems to make sense. I did feel unhappier every week with this situation, because if you can never vent and are always "responsible", even if you didn't do anything, that's not exactly nice or fun. But it doesn't explain why this depression would basically come out of nowhere. It should have already shown signs or harbingers and there weren't any.

Finally, after travelling on my own to Indonesia in 2006 and after working my first real job in 2005, I had decided that maybe it's best to be "kicked out" and I moved to my father. 

I didn't seem to be depressed then and the next few years were more about my job training and starting work. 

Still, the shadow of depression kept lurking and it had never fully dissipated. Again for no reason, the depression kept coming back at the oddest times. Everytime I thought I had found out what might cause it (my mom, loneliness, other things), it seemed to prove me wrong by being completely arbitrary!

One study from the 50s claims that anhedonia and depression are caused by a chemical imbalance in our brain. 

Basically, every human needs neurotransmitter such as dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline and seraltin. Noradrenaline or seraltin for example are needed for us to get out of bad or feel motivation. If you remove all of those hormones in a humans brain, this human CAN'T do anything because it's as if you ripped out a bugs legs. You basically immobilized him or her.

It's similar with the other hormones. Serotonin and Dopamine are actually similar. Without them, you are completely incapable of feeling any joy. But while serotonin can make u feel happy, it will "stop" when you felt enough joy. Dopamine is much more dangerous, because you can easily overdose.

Any drug is based on dopamine. Shopping, gambling, drinking or any addiction are all related to dopamine! The problem is that our brain has receptors for this hormone. But if you overdo it (like when you take drugs, gamble, have too much sex, etc), they grow. Now you need more and more dopamine. That's why people overdose and that's also why we feel less and less joy, although we do more and more things that should make us happy. 

Basically, you have to imagine you pour water in a glass. If the glass is small, you fill it fast. But if the glass is the size of a bucket, the same amount of water won't fill it. You need more and more for less and less results.

I explain all this because I am still confused if my depression actually has a cause and reason (in which case I could solve the reason and should heal) or if my depression is completely hormonal. If it's hormonal, I couldn't do a thing, other than taking medicine!

If you have diabetes, your period or cancer, being positive also doesn't mean jack shit! It won't change your physical status. 

And this is what scares me and drives me crazy. I simply don't know. 

Either I have a depression that is utterly out of my hand. A sucky perspective, especially because I believe we can be the masters of our own fate. If we can't, life seems pointless.

Or it's possible that I am just too weak/strong. That maybe person B or C could easily get over "my" depression, but I can't, because I am either too weak. Or because I am paradoxically too strong and overshoot. That I basically already solved it, but fool my own mind into thinking I didn't.

Even as I write this, my head hurts because I can't know the answer. Both are possible and impossible at the same time, like Schroedingers cat! 

The reason I bring it up at all is that since that time, whether I took meds or didn't, I never seemed in "control". I tried to ditch the meds a couple of times. Sometimes, I could live for months or even years without it. Then again, I needed them to have even a resemblance of a life. 

As of recent, I stopped taking them for a couple of days during my trip to Indonesia because I felt content and fine. And yet the result seemed to be that on my birthday, I had an utterly nihilistic outlook on life (basically, nihilism is when you believe in nothing and consider everything in life utterly pointless) and when I started to take them again, that outlook changed again.

This week, I ran out of my meds on Monday and by Thursday, I fell into pieces. The same comedy show I enjoyed for weeks suddenly seemed stupid and boring to me, the characters annoying and dumb. And yet after a good (?) cry, only hours later, watching the same show, I suddenly enjoyed everything and genuinely laughed.

This simply doesn't make any sense. Emotions can't change on such a whim! You can't hate something with a passion one moment and without any momentum love or like it the next, only to hate it again yet one more moment later!

What really makes this illness such a curse to me is that it basically makes our entire life an exercise in futility! What possible point can a life have in which you don't actually control how you feel? Where for example you have kids and win the lottery, but your brain tells you "nope, you don't feel happy, we don't care that logically, you should!"?

If I can't live my life without medication and control what I feel, I am basically a slave to very arbitrary twists of fate. And I think nobody can or wants to live life that way, simply because you no longer have any reason to make plans or goals.

Why should we for example dream of having a house if a disease like depression can rob us from any joy or feeling of fulfilment we could feel if we achieve that goal?

Why should we have children or marry or work and have a career if we won't get a positive feeling out of it?

I really think nobody can live this way. 

Schopenhauer is probably right when he says that life is nothing but a series of suffering. But IF life was nothing but suffering, certainly humans would just keep killing themselves? There must also be another side to it, a side where we actually CAN control some of it. 

I just can't decide or be sure how...

Emotional Trust

Everyone of us knows that trust is very important any relationship. Usually, when we talk about trust, we mean things like not stealing from each other, not backstabbing each other or not to cheat on each other. 

But what about emotional trust?

Many people don't seem to know or understand emotional trust. To me, emotional trust is basically the knowledge that you can have sincere faith in someone else's feelings, the knowledge that their feelings are real and pure and won't change on a whim! 

A good example was me and my ex-girlfriend M. 

M and I had been dating for 4-6 weeks when she told me that she really loves me. I felt happy and it seemed safe to open up my heart for her and so I did.

A few days after, I was moving to my new place of residence and on the way, M picked a huge fight with me for no reason at all. Despite her "true love", she apparently had no problem dumping me and not looking back. 

To me, this came as a shock, because if I love someone, it's a sincere feeling like hunger or thirst or freezing. You can pretend not to feel it, but it's there and real!

Eventually, we got back together the same evening, but I had a problem now. 

Because for me, it's absolutely impossible that I would leave someone I love! I couldn't! Yet M could. So although I felt like she might love me, I now couldn't be sure anymore, EVER! I had felt sure before too that she couldn't possibly leave me and yet she did. So my mind told me that it's only a matter of time until she will leave me again and that ergo her feelings are NOT sincere!

The emotional trust (the trust in the sincerity of her emotions) had now been shattered and destroyed. 

To this day, I don't know what her real reason for being with me has been. But thanks to this spontaneous glimpse at how easy it was for her to go, I now no longer had faith that she is someone I could ever marry or rely upon.

Over the years that followed, I saw similar things happen with other women. And I don't know if it's just really bad luck or if basically all women are like this (but I fear they are). 

Women just grow up differently than men. Women usually don't have to deal with a lot of rejection and usually easily get what they want. And if they don't, it's often because they set their goals too high. 

Compared to men, women get constant affirmation, compliments and have their ego stroked and flattered. I assume this is why they have such emotional immaturity. How and why could you become a person that really knows themselves and what they actually want and feel if all your life, you can be an (emotionally) spoiled brat? Your parents usually have to love you and most men have been raised by women and thus believe that being kind and nice and unselfish is the way to win a woman's pure love (while in reality, I think the better you treat her and the more unselfish you are, the more she will take you for granted).

This is ultimately my conclusion with M too. When she was sure that I love her unconditionally, she would easily walk away from me, similar to someone in a casino who gambles away millions but knows that they have rich parents who will ultimately shield them from harm or consequences.

But as soon as M saw that I was actually just voluntarily nice and kind because I actually loved her and that I could easily have other options (not that I wanted them, I didn't love them!), she fought for me or felt jealous. 

It's this illogical logic I can't understand. I can guess where it stems from (upbringing, society, a lack of consequences), but I don't understand why women don't ever seem to learn that this behavior is bad for them as well. 

At a certain age, even women can't be as reckless anymore as they are when they are younger. But instead of learning to appreciate sincerity and repaying it with sincerity (still a good deal for them, given that many women still won't support men financially or have to put in more than men), they continue their bratty ways and blame men or the world if they end up poor, lonely and unhappy or men just see them as sex objects.

M seems to still be alone as well, as far as I know. It seems she hasn't learned about emotional trust. 

And it's too easy to break this trust. All it takes is to say you love someone and then taking it back with words or actions!

New Year's Eve

I never liked New Year's Eve. I can't say why, as I recall, I still somewhat enjoyed it when I was a child, remembering having Raclette (melted cheese with potato) with my grandparents and their friends, plus I got to stay up until midnight (which usually was impossible for me at that age).

I think I started to dread the day after a very lonely and depressing New Year's Eve in 2004(?) that I spent all by myself in my mom's apartment with only our cat. It was during the height of my depression and I felt so alone and miserable that I just wanted to die and seriously contemplated to kill myself (but thank god I started reading the Bible instead). 

So since then, I never really liked this day and was happy when it was over. I did get to spend a few New Year's Eve's with someone, like 2006 with my ex-girlfriend Dinar or 2013 with Jasmin. But even then, I wasn't 100% happy (although I felt much better, so it might be the loneliness of this day). 

What is it about this day that makes us feel alone? Is it really any different than other days? I don't feel that way on Christmas or the 30th of December. 

Maybe it's because it is the end of another year. It's showing us the final tally for the year, everything we did and didn't achieve.

As for me, there isn't much I achieved in 2022. I mostly just worked and slept a lot. The few highlights (going to Indonesia, meeting my friends, being in touch with my Japanese friend again, meeting the cat Jonesy) seem few in comparison to what could have been.

But then I also wonder, what is it that I expected? What could I have done that I didn't do? What can any of us do? I couldn't marry anyone and even if I did, that would be just between me and that person.

I don't have this feeling my friends seem to have where they actually feel really happy with the person they have. Maybe that's because I haven't had anyone special in such a long time? 

But I also wonder if having someone is what I really want or expect. I think what I really miss is mostly human contact, conversation, etc. You don't necessarily need a girlfriend for that. 

And yet I also wouldn't know where to begin to make a male friend these days. People in general seem so interchangeable and generic, nobody really seems very interesting. 

So maybe it's all those things that New Year's Eve is reminding me of?