Illness and dating
Sorry if this is long. 30 year old hetero male, virgin, no relationship experiance at all. I guess if it's relevant, I don't have time for a social life, I work two jobs, seven days a week, for about 20K. I was hospitalized for a lot of high school and college, so I have never made friends there.
I've been struggling with a lot of mental and physical problems since I was very young (OCD, social anxiety, Crohn's, arthritis, bipolar, panic attacks, chronic migraines) and am on a mountain of powerful medications that have nasty side effects (decreased intellect, memory loss, weight gain, violent mood swings, lack of energy, and decreased libido). Also, I was born sterile, so that works against me, too.
I've been rationalizing not getting involved with anyone for a long time now, hoping my situation would improve but even the doctors don't want to adjust my meds any further.
I feel ill trying to talk to women I'm attracted to; I know they're going to find out how sick I am and then either run away or feel sorry for me and sort of hang around out of pity. I have no idea how to broach these sorts of topics. I'm getting older and I'm extremely lonely.
TL;DR I'm very sick and abnormal in a lot of ways and I don't know how to broach the subject or be attractive.
Posted Feb 19, 2012, 11:59 PM UTC
The best advice I can give you is to work on your confidence. This sentence:
No, you don't "know that".
You're right. I'm so used to the worst happening health-wise that I tend to assume the most terrible things will happen in other situations as well.