Why is it
so fucking hard to meet people? I'm single and I can't meet anybody
decent. Believe me, I've tried. I've gone on lots of dates. Everyone
sucks. People are shallow and superficial or they don't want commitment
or they're assholes or they're lame or whatever. It's just really
fucking hard to meet good people. I'm about ready to give up. I'm
starting to think maybe I'll never find someone to spend my life with
- or maybe there's something wrong with me! A night at home alone
almost seems better than wasting another evening with one of these
jerks. What gives? Say something. Give me a special bonus tip or something.
Thanks.
Okay - excellent
rant. And incredibly frequent as well. But kind of a stupid question.
The question is not why is it so hard to meet people - because, as
you pointed out, it's not. The problem is, as you so nicely and concisely
explained, that you don't like meeting people. People are terrible,
awful creatures as you have repeatedly discovered and what you really
need is an aggressive plan for not meeting them. Fortunately,
that we can help you out with here at prettyfedup.com.
And to answer
your final question, what gives is that not liking to meet people
is eminently normal, sensible, sane and common; it doesn't indicate
that there's something wrong with you - it indicates that you have
the simple common sense to realize that the more people you meet the
more time you are going to be spending with people you don't like.
All right -so
let's hammer down and deal with the incredibly common and yet equally
horrible issue of meeting people. We are going to solve all
your problems in this area for your entire life within one
year - guaranteed. (Wait a minute, cancel that. Who am I kidding?
I'm not going to guarantee anything. Why would I do that? That would
be silly and wouldn't benefit me at all. Okay, never mind, forget
that irrelevant guarantee thing and let's move on.)
Principle #1:
Admit that you do not, under any circumstances, want to meet people.
You hate them. You have met more than enough in your lifetime and
you haven't enjoyed it.
What you actually
want is to already know a sufficient quantity of people
that you kind of like, spend all your time with them and avoid
everyone else. This is every smart person's goal. The goal is not to
meet people. The goal is to not have to meet people because you are
already surrounded with the dozen or so really cool people that fill
most of your basic needs without you ever having to actually meet them
because magically, you already know them.
When you ask your
question about finding someone you could spend your life with - obviously
your goal here is not to arrange things so you can spend the rest of
your life meeting people you could potentially spend your life with.
That would be stupid, not to mention anxiety-provoking for the individual
you actually marry. No, obviously your goal is to find someone you like
and then quit looking! That's because there's no inherent value
to you in meeting people, you don't even like it. The only reason you
are considering meeting people at all is because you are under the impression
that if you do meet people, then you won't have to. It's a means
to an end. And when something is a means to a fucking end - we don't
want to get hung up on the goddamn means - we want to get to the fucking
end! This is an incredibly simple life principle - and yet we all
do our best to forget it as often as possible, usually exactly when
it's in our best interests to remember it.
Let's illuminate
this by contrasting your natural and admirable feelings of loathing
for humanity with those of a small segment of society who apparently
don't share them. These people are serial meeters. You have undoubtedly
met these people, because that's what they do. They fucking meet people.
All the goddamn time. They illustrate how incredibly easy it is, in
fact, to meet people. These handshake and greeting incurably outgoing
and friendly people desire nothing more than to spend every fucking
waking moment of their lives interacting with people they don't know
very well. They meet people at the dry cleaners, at the pizza place,
at the networking convention, on the tennis court, at the liquor store,
on the bus, in the airport, at the committee meeting, on the PTA board,
through the museum they belong to, at their church, when they do public
speaking, through their volunteer work, at the YMCA, during their night
classes, on the elevator, at their jobs, on a spiritual retreat, by
selling their handicrafts, through organizing the Memorial Day parade
and on and on and on and on. If someone who has absolutely no
fucking reason whatsoever to give a shit about them isn't reacting warmly
to them at all moments of the night and day, these people think they're
going to die. And this underlying intimation of impending death gives
them a powerful motivation to overcome what every other human being
on the planet is driven by - which is a strong desire to avoid other
people unless they are already known and trusted quantities. Serial
meeters are the ones who violate the no talking at the bus stop rule
and other niceties of urban life.
And they teach you
how incredibly easy it would be for you to meet fucking thousands of
people a year. All you would have to do is the same thing they do -
go up to people you don't know, stick out your hand and say something
friendly like 'I'm ________ (pick a name, possibly even yours). Pleased
to meet you.' Do this relentlessly and you will meet so many goddamn
people, you won't be able to count them. And the people you would meet
this way, through sheer friendliness and desire to meet people, would
be just as good as people you'd meet any other way, such as being set
up by your existing friends. There is no reason whatsoever to whine
about the difficulty of meeting people. Meeting people is incredibly
fucking easy. But there is no fucking way in hell you are going to run
around being relentlessly fucking friendly to strangers 24 fucking seven
unless nature has already cursed you with that kind of personality.
And the reason you are not going to do this is - you don't fucking
want to. It may be easy, but you'd probably rather die a miserable
lonely death than do it. And the reason you instinctively fucking avoid
violating the unspoken 'don't run around fucking meeting people all
the time' social rule - is that you sense you'd end up vaguely knowing
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people you wouldn't really like.
You'd suffocate under the terrible crushing burden of obligation to
interact with vast multitudes of people who suck - and who, even if
they don't, you don't really trust.
For most people,
it's hard enough finding 15 people you trust - the prospect of spending
your entire life surrounded by hundreds of people you don't trust, in
an exhausting and never-ending round of pretense and artificial friendliness,
is simply too much to bear. Trust is hard for the normal human -
because the normal human understands that people are dangerous. And
so they naturally and sensibly want to limit the bulk of their important
interactions to a group of no more than about 30 whom they know well
enough and who know them well enough to make the necessary interactions
trustworthy enough.
Serial meeters act
oddly and as though they actually enjoy meeting people because they
do - they don't trust anyone who might really know them and they feel
much more secure and at ease around people who don't. They feel safer
with a lot of loose ties based on a small amount of superficial knowledge
and interaction - whereas most people feel safer with a small number
of deep ties based on complicated threads of love, obligation, resentment,
mutual dependence, necessity, confusion, gratitude, affection, sheer
expedience, and a whole range of complicated bonding emotions that periodically
show up in their most important relationships for no apparent reason
other than to make things even more complicated and bonded than they
already were. You, as a normal person, are seeking this Valhalla of
complication and enduring ties.
This partly explains
your perception that everyone you do meet sucks. You don't trust
the people you meet because you don't already know them and you haven't
developed complicated ties with them in which you can assess their trustworthiness.
Hanging around with people you don't really trust gives you the impression
that they suck. They may or may not suck - but your experience of being
with them does - because it's an experience of not really being able
to let down your guard and not being able to trust. And that does
suck! It's tiring and you hate it and you're sick of it and you'd
really rather just fucking be at home with your goddamn cat than go
through the stress of it anymore. Your natural untrusting wariness,
intelligent and sensible as it is, also creates a lens of perception
in which all the things the other person does lend themselves to an
unflattering interpretation. Which leads to a fairly predictable emotion
regarding these other people on your part - you hate them!
Perfectly natural.
And yet not entirely in your interests. Because the thing is - if you
already had a sufficient quantity of trustworthy people in your life
- you wouldn't have indulged in the above rant. You don't. Whether
it's a lack of friendships now that you have graduated college, a lack
of mate, a lack of social circle now that you have switched towns, the
devastating social aftermath of That Bitter Divorce or what fucking
have you - at the moment, you do not have a sufficient quantity of people
you already know hanging around and taking care of your every fucking
need, sexual or otherwise.
Your goal therefore
is to skip as much of the meeting people part as possible and to spend
as much time as possible already knowing the people you want
to hang out with. You don't want to meet a lot of people - ever. You
want to already know a very few people that you do trust and that don't
suck.
Principle #2:
Therefore, on your behalf, we need to implement an aggressive plan
of not meeting people.
Your goal is
to not meet as many people as possible within a given time frame,
let's say 3 to 6 months or perhaps even a year or so if you'd like to
set yourself up for a lifetime of blissful not meeting people. You
can do this! And, as you steadily reach your goals for not meeting
people, your confidence and self-esteem will rise like magic, making
you irresistible to all those people you do not have to meet! Sound
like a good deal? Let's get started.
Step 1: Make
a very firm commitment to not meet people.
Intention is always
important and so is the kind of forthright, stand-up commitment that
makes you such an impressive American go-getter when you are not otherwise
hanging around the house being all depressed because you're single and
lonely and you don't have any friends and so on.
It's important also,
that your brain understand that you do not have to meet people. This
is going to take a big load off its shoulders and is going to allow
it to heave a hearty sigh of relief and relax a little and potentially
even like people a little better when it realizes it is not going to
be forced to spend time with them. Your brain has been taking a lot
of shit from people like your mother who helpfully tell you things
like 'You're never going to meet anyone sitting at home reading a novel,
you know.' Your friends tell you shit like this 'you should get out
of the house and go do something!'; books tell you this; the TV tells
you this, everyone tells you you're a loser to do exactly what is most
natural for everyone, namely spend their time in the company of someone
pleasant such as themselves while avoiding the company of the unpleasant,
such as other people. So you need to take a strong stand and tell your
brain very firmly that you are not going to listen to that meeting people
is good shit anymore and you are not going to be dishing it out either.
Your brain will
not believe you and for good reason. Because even as you have been busy
whining and grumping and ranting about the awfulness of meeting people,
your conscience has been prodding you to do just that. It's been telling
you that you ought to. Which is a major reason why you have been finding
it so difficult and hating it so much. It's become a fucking obligation
like paying your taxes or brushing your teeth.
Since you have endured
so much propaganda on behalf of the false doctrine of 'meeting people'
and it's been so thoroughly incubated and indoctrinated into your soul,
you're going to have to take a bold and dramatic stand against it in
order to gain any credibility with your brain and body. Therefore, you
need to take an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper with many lines on it and
you are need to write on it over and over again in big bold dramatic
cursive writing - 'Fuck meeting people! Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it!
I fucking hate meeting people. I'm not going to do it anymore. I refuse!'
Fill up the whole fucking sheet of paper this way. This is going to
stress you out and give you a claustrophobic panicky feeling that if
you don't meet people - then you will never meet anyone! Breathe through
this moment of logical and rational deduction. It will subside eventually.
Remind yourself that every single person you don't meet is a person
you don't have to associate with. That'll make you feel a lot better.
Remember that your
goal is not to not have anybody to hang out with - your goal
is to somehow manage to already know them without going through the
torture of actually having to meet them. The point of taking a stand
against meeting people is partly to reassure your already tense and
wary body and brain that you are no longer under the obligation to spend
your time with people you don't like nearly as well as you like yourself.
If you don't reassure yourself on this point, you are going to find
yourself confused and at least partially under the impression that you
are indeed obligated to spend your time with people you don't like because
it qualifies as meeting people and you know what's going to happen then?
You guessed it! You are going to spend your time dating one idiot
after another while sending pathetic rants to prettyfedup.com! Your
judgement of people is going to go down the tubes as you struggle to
convince yourself that there is some good fucking reason why you need
to expose yourself to worst kind of ignorant fool because it proves
you are 'getting out of the house.' This is miserable! In order to restore
your natural excellent judgment of human nature, you are going to
have to stop giving yourself points for meeting the ordinary run of
common idiots and start giving yourself points for not meeting them!
Meanwhile, people
who are not idiots, who do not suck, and whom instinctively you trust,
do not require being met at all. They already feel familiar when they
accidentally enter your circle and you like them - so it actually feels
like you never really had to meet them at all! This is ideal. Therefore,
to summarize - if you meet someone, demerits for you! If you don't meet
someone you don't like - points for you! If you don't meet someone
you do like but instead just get to know them because they are cool
people - points for you! Remember, the more people you don't meet,
the higher your score! Collect enough valuable not meeting people points
and you can redeem them for cash and prizes! There's never been a better
time to start not meeting people than right now!
prettyfedup.com