If you believe you are very low status material...

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Why did she say that? Is that you in the avatar btw?

What exactly do you mean? Appearance-wise?

And some are not as important as some people make them out to be.

I definitely was a low grade material in my worst adolescent years. Appearance, self-awareness, and specially most of all awareness of others and what makes them tick, that was really bad. (not that I really tried my luck with girls too much) If somebody told me the truth, I would not see it. Which was many times, mostly from the side of my classmates who usually meant it well, in a less or more crude way.

Broadening my awareness took years, it was painful and even more painful was to deal with that newly discovered imperfection. We need to invent some relatively favorable fairy tale about ourselves, because we can't function when we see what we really are and totally hate it. Well, and let's say that to find out that this fairy tale is a big lie, this is quite a shock. I underwent some big changes of personal style and appearance... Even though before I was in many fights to preserve it.
I believe I conquered almost a half of my Asperger's syndrome, most of the half that can be conquered alone. I mean the unawareness and unawareness of the unawareness.

Now, I don't really know what kind of material I am. Better than before, I can make a small talk with girls. I don't look like something that crawled from under a rock in a park next to MIT campus. (unless it's early morning) But I struggle with the pointlessness of dealing with people with vastly different interests. I am afraid of boredom. They bore me, I bore them, do I? The only thing I'm sure we have in common are deep and serious topics.
I know I need to relocate to a bigger city and be on a university with smart girls. I'm probably not made for girls who study gastronomy (cooking) or hotel management.

She said that when we were having an unrelated discussion about someone else. I can't remember for the life of me what the discussion was about, but she felt she needed to tell me that for some reason. I'm glad she told me, even though that's slightly inappropriate for a teacher expected to remain neutral and mediate instead of naming, shaming and ridiculing. It was in 2006, I think. My memory does fail me a lot when it comes to specific times.

My avatar is a photo of me, yes. The only camera I had was a webcam on a mostly-broken laptop. It seems to have registered a lot of noise, and the surface in the background is really, in terms of colour, more similar to birch than it is to Cheddar-style orange as the photo seems to show. My skin is extremely pale, even though that photo doesn't show that. There is a lot wrong with my appearance itself, though. With a bit of acting, I could be taken for a 14-year-old boy, which has gotten me in a lot of trouble in any event where people were authorised to ask for my identity papers. I'm underweight, although I'll try to gain 10 kg over the summer and build some muscle.

I'm also a bit clumsy. My parents don't seem to blame that on autism - they use my father's surname or his German ancestry, because everyone in his family seems to suffer from undiagnosed Asperger's to the point where they're a danger to themselves if left unsupervised in any place where they might hit their heads against lamps while walking or trip over something. Once, my father managed to stand up from a dinner table in such a way that he hit his head against a low-hanging ceiling lamp, which then swung around and nearly hit me. It's called the family curse, even though a lot of stories I've heard here seem to indicate otherwise.

LOL!... The story of my life!

I suppose so but it's better to remain optimistic as opposed to having a self-defeatist attitude or one that seems bitter, women can sense when a man is bitter or jaded and it doesn't leave a good impression in any scenario. I don't think failing persistence is the key, I think if there is an error, you need to make an observation and realize what you need to change, maybe you could point that out to your friend.

Hahaha, if I did I would be preachin to the preacher. My friend is turning 31 this july, and he has always been trying to make positive changes in his life sense he was 20. And most his friends see that theres nothing wrong with him and that some would even say hes even remodel. But when it comes to life he just has alot of bad luck, job accidents are blamed on him when its not even the field he works in, the last date he went on with a women dumped him because the restaurant they went to gave everyone food poisoning. Even in just flirting he has bad luck, he once made a sort of silly ice breaking knock-knock joke torwards a new girl on campus and she had a complete emotional break down right in front of us because it reminded her of her recently dead grampa some how. And now he has the reputation around college as "the mean guy who made that girl cry", then recently a girl turned him down on a date because of that very reputation.

If anything his life has taught me that even if you strive so hard trying to fix everything about yourself, bad things just happens and people just take things the wrong way sometimes. Believe it or not but maybe its better for people to not dwell so hard on what they need to fix about themselves, still make changes of course but don't think that those changes will automaticly result in better chances at dating and such. If you dwell that much on what needs to be changed you will end up a bitter and jaded person anyway. I think people need to focus more on just learning who they are as a person, and enjoying that and stop thinking that there is someone to fault for all the bad stuff in life, that includes thinking that every dating set back is your own fault.

It all started in primary school (Elementary/Grade) when you learn most of life's lessons the hard way. Children aren't very forgiving or forgetful when it comes to unfortunate mistakes and scenarios and to be honest, I didn't have a support network. Like most aspies, I found it difficult to make friends, so when these scenarios and things happened there was no one to tell me they were wrong and I was better than the stuff they said. Parents weren't entirely supportive either, siding with the teachers most times. I don't know. I don't want to blame them, but school for me couldn't been more worse. That's primary school, not comprehensive.

So I believed them. And never learnt any different.

If anything, I thought after the crap of primary school, karma would pay me back and not give me acne. But no, suffered from acne now for going on ten years. Talk about kicking me when I'm down. I don't need anyone now to tell me what I can see and what I've learnt. I've tried my best to improve every other possible trait, except the one's irreparably broken and lost.

That's why I don't have a chance. Give me a time-machine or reset button and everything will be happy and positive again.

I think it was mostly a combination of both the above, because how much other women seem to hate me (I am a straight girl, btw).

For as long as I can remember I have had women telling I am low value in various ways, both to my face and behind my back (they clearly don't realise I can hear them 20 metres away even in a classroom).

Various things they have said:

- no guy wants a girl that messes around with bikes or cars, it's not feminine (ditto for science, computers and other primarily male oriented fields of interest)
- no guy will want you if you don't wear make up (usually I wear eyeliner & chapstick only) or don't straighten your hair
- no guy wants to hear or discuss anything about history or politics with a woman, just keep your mouth shut
- various assortments of comments about the way I dress and how much men will hate it
- regarding my interest in dance: if you like dance, they will think you are a slut etc

Yeah. I won't go into the rest. The list goes on and on.

The bullying by the other girls throughout high school was pretty horrendous. It was always the women who have bullied me.

No guy has ever been overtly mean to me, certainly never to the extent the other girls were. The guys have always been either neutral or nice to me. Even the ones who didn't like me never went out of their way to make my life hell the way many of the women did.

As to whether I am low status or not: I don't know what their motivations we for talking like that about me in the first place. When people tell you that for all your life, it's hard to not start to believe them. But my DX changes things. So I honestly don't know anymore if I am or not.
I don't think it even matters anyway, at least not to me these days.

Last edited by Kjas on 19 Jun 2012, 3:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

They could not be more wrong if they tried. It reads like a wish list if you take out the 'no', 'hate', 'keep your mouth shut' and 'slut etc' parts

I know lots wound consider me very low status materiel because I don't have things going for me most others do. But I think & really hope that my partner considers me very high. She's very different from the mainstream NT woman

Both, and I'm proud.

I have been improving my appearance (I work out alot/stay fit maybe a bit too skinny atm and keep groomed, but I don't think my clothes are flashy).

I have a decent job even though its part time.

I have independence.......I don't live at home. I have a car.

Popularity and Social skills though, those are largely uncontrollable to a big degree. You are who you are. Those two subjects are so complicated and defined by so many factors, that you can't really think naively that you need to simply improve those areas. There might be many many hidden factors including health wise why you aren't being social such as depression and anxiety + tons of other things that you don't know about. Not everybody can be diagnosed and know about whats eating them inside, and many people try hard but end up going in circles because they don't really get to the bottom of it.

It would be great if everybody could narrow down what their specific areas of improvement are so they can focus on it. If you say you need to improve social skills, it sounds like you have AS, or a loner who doesn't socialize that much. Somebody who is social but could be more social would not think like that. Just saying

I have seen documentaries on seemingly normal people with normal lives who had "dyslexia" or another clearly defined disorder/illness and how they overcame it to be successful. I think that's great of them and I don't want to take away from that, but that is so much easier when you know exactly what is wrong with you. If your not a normal person with usual circumstances, then you really earn my respect. I would trade every time to just be a NT with dyslexia.

What are "social skills" anyway? We have talked about this before. I think its a bs terminology. NT= social skills. People have different personality. When your personality isn't congruent with everyone else, then the "lack of social skills" comes into place. "Social skills" only becomes a word once people are knowingly or unknowingly taking about non-NT aspergers people or anti-social people. You are friendly or you are not by nature.

If you are not friendly, how the f**k do you become friendly? If people don't accept you, why would you want to be friendly with them?

If you want to focus on people Neil Strauss who went from zero to everything or another PUA guy or anybody really that wanted to change, they completely tore themselves down, and reinvented themselves. How do you start that process? It has to just happen.....Anybody posting online in a forum like this I doubt is undergoing that kind of inner-transformation.

Again I am just saying that I think saying "you need to improve your skills", is kind of like saying "Hitler was not a good person". Such an understatement, that it really doesn't make any sense.

I just don't think improving your "social skills" is a linear objective.

That's closed minded and condescending of them. Some women wear make up as a means to cover insecurities they have about their own complexion or skin, they may feel threatened by the fact that you wear less make up, personally I think it's more attractive for a woman to be natural.

I have never heard of dance being labelled in a derogative way either and I don't understand why anyone would call you a name for showing interest in that.

In any case, they were probably just looking for any reason to make you the victim or bully you into a situation that made you feel uncomfortable, I don't think you should take it personally. There are many guys including myself that like girls that don't mind getting their hands dirty or being able to do something practical so I can't see how that could be a negative thing. I'd rather have a wolf over a wallflower any day of the week.

Of course it's not a linear process or a simple procedure, building social skills certainly isn't something that comes natural for us. Reinventing yourself isn't something that can be done over night, it takes time to face those negative core beliefs and move on to positive attitudes. Depression and anxiety can really contribute to having a self defeatist attitude or giving someone low self esteem, those are issues that need to be worked through intensively with cognitive behavioural therapy.

Of course, people are expected to follow the norms of body language, there are different cultural norms for body language in different countries. In an Islam country, patting a child on the head is seen as offensive yet in another country it would be seen as a friendly gesture. In Japan, people are more conservative and reserved yet in Africa, they are more fond of touch. In the west, people prefer a firm handshake and in countries such as India, the handshake is more gentle. There are social and cultural norms to contact, body language and socializing, anyone that doesn't fit those customs is instantly seen as alien or a tourist. Even if you don't fit the generalized look of a culture, people will view you as a foreigner or an alien, someone that isn't accustomed to general social norms, the same applies to sub cultures.

Neil Strauss is Neil Strauss, it's not about how many women you can pull, it's about how long you can hold on to one for and finding the right one. You can read this pick up material and it can teach you to get a foot in the door and create a first impression which is great, being good at those two aspects will help in employment and romance areas but what it doesn't teach you is how to maintain a relationship, how to find out what is truly best for yourself. You need to decide what is best for yourself and not some self proclaimed guru, messiah or newspaper. People are pressured into marriages that don't work, people are pressured to start relationships with people for the wrong reasons, who says society has to dictate the direction of who you are?