You’re being down voted, but I feel you. It’s why I picked one of the largest instances when I joined, despite what other Lemmings tend to tell people to do. Picking a small instance is a bad idea because they die out like that. I’ve seen several fairly significant smaller instances die out at this point. I don’t want to wake up and my account suddenly vanished one day because the host forgot about it.

I’m really out of the loop. Why is lemm.ee shutting down? I thought it was one of the more sizeable instances.

Yeah, drama can be pretty fantastic if you’re not the one involved. It’s when you’re involved by the drama that it sucks major ass.

Lmaoo omg I totally relate when you talk about kind of wishing you were just gay because it would be easier! I have thought about this myself, really! Honestly, sometimes I’m not even really sure because I do have a tendency to find the same sex attractive in my limited way. I’m probably on the bi and ace spectrums in some limited capacity, but sometimes it makes me wonder if it’s something hidden deep down inside somehow or wish to just be gay!

Thank you very much for sharing your story! I’m sorry to hear about your friend, btw. But I’m glad you got to share your life with them for so long. I’m lucky that I have a really good friend right now too at least! They have a family of their own so it’s not as if we can mutually prioritize each other to the same extent, but that’s ok.

Omg I had the same experience during puberty lol. Even into my late teens and early twenties, my mom would kind of bug me about it. When I still wasn’t taking anyone home, she used to drop hints that it would be ok if I was a lesbian and had a girlfriend lol! Thankfully at this point, people stop bringing it up haha.

Yeah I’m definitely working on trying to get rid of the FOMO at this point in time. I have a lot of great people in my life tbh and I’m trying to branch out and be a bit more social with things that scare me. But even if I do, I’ll never really have the “standard” human experience. Gotta figure out how to eventually be ok with that.

I’m not a spiritual or religious person, myself. I briefly looked into Taoism, but it seems that the westernized idealized version of it isn’t what Taoism necessarily is in reality.

Thanks for your offer to chat! Hope you don’t mind if I’m just giving a long winded response here lol.

I found out about asexuality in my teens. Even today, whenever I approach asexual communities, I find that most of them are filled with very young coming of age people who are so extremely “terminally online” to the point where it makes me a bit uncomfortable. And I’m saying this as someone who is terminally online myself. It’s difficult to explain what I mean and I hope I am not offending other asexuals out there. But it’s refreshing to hear from your perspective, as an asexual in the “real world”, with thoughts, feelings, and experiences based more in reality as opposed to in an online hypersensitive safety zone.

Hope the best for you!

I don’t think I’ve ever really spoken to an older asexual on the internet before. I know it’s a tangent from the main OP, but do you think you could expand on some things for me?

1. When did you realize that you were asexual? And how did you deal with it considering it’s a relatively new term that wouldn’t have really been spoken of when you were growing up.

2. Do you find your life fulfilling? I have a social need, but not a sexual need, so it makes it frustrating knowing that I need people, but that a relationship with 99% of the population doesn’t make sense. (Yes, you can find other asexuals out there, but we are exceedingly rare and there are not going to be many, if at all, in your same city.)

I’m younger than you, but not so young that my life as a whole is still being figured out or anything. I’m in my 30s and now secure in my career, but still struggle with social things and figuring out what I need for my life to be fulfilling. I’ve likely been a lifelong asexual. I’ve also never had a partner.

Anyway, sorry if that is too much to ask lol, but I was just curious!

Ohhh I remember Wubi! No need to boot from an install media and you can install it entirely under Windows. That method of installing a dual boot never seemed to get super popular and I guess based on the OSes listed in that article, it seems pretty dated and not updated. I’m kind of curious to know whether or not it still works tbh.

That’s odd. I have lived in apartment complexes for a large portion of my life. There has always been a single outgoing mail slot with the rows of mailboxes at the apartment complexes. It blends in so it might not look too different than the rest of the bank of mailboxes. This is in the US though so idk how other countries handle it.

I live in the southern US and I see them daily. They seem to be more common than squirrels. They run away from you though so they don’t bother anyone. At my old apartment, there was a period of time somehow lizards kept getting inside my place. I kept trying to free them but I would accidentally kill them when trying to handle them. Another one I just tried to let live in my apartment, but he quickly died…presumably from not being able to find enough food and water. They are super fragile.

Weirdly I don’t think I’ve ever had a “phase” like other people seem to have gone through. Is this common enough to not have had something like that?

I guess it was possibly as a teen when I was being LOLRANDOM on internet forums. Not sure if that counts tho because I have always been an internet dweller.

Thank you very much

That’s where I’ve always been confused. Every living being wants to propogate their species through innate biological urges and behaviors, whether they realize it or not. Obviously humans recognize these behaviors and are able to choose whether or not to actually have children or to simply act on these urges without procreating (condoms, birth control, etc.). But the innate biological inclinations are still there.

It’s odd for me because I’ve never had these urges or inclinations for sex. Sometimes it makes me feel like I’m not human or something. Because every living being seems to experience this. Even when I discovered the concept of asexuality, I found that a very significant number of these individuals either oddly still had a sex drive or they were sexually traumatized in some way which blocked it. I have never had a sex drive and was never sexually traumatized. I was not a “late bloomer”, as I’m in my 30s with the same lack of normal human feelings.

It’s tricky for me though because I’ve always had a social need. I don’t have a need for sex like the majority of other humans do, but I do have a need to be social. Lickily I fulfill most of my social needs by going to work, but it can be stressful at times.

Thanks for helping to validate my comment haha. I do appreciate it.

Is there anything specific you’ve done and would recommend to help swing in the other direction like you’ve stated?

Was curious as to what you might have found helpful. I had tried the beginnings of CBT in the past, but it just makes me feel bad and frustrated. I have always been taught that my thoughts and feelings are wrong, and that’s effectively the core of CBT. I don’t like it because it just propagates how everything I think and feel is invalid. Yet it’s the “trendy” thing to do nowadays so every therapist and their mother uses it as their modality.

Interestingly though I don’t think that this issue necessarily stems from deliberately toxic parents. My mom did the best she could and is very loving and nurturing but I was just too much for her to know how to deal with in this way.

When I was a kid, I would always get in trouble for getting upset. No one ever wanted to know why I was upset. They just wanted me to shut the fuck up and I often had a hard time doing so. I really wish things would have been handled the way you describe. My siblings didn’t have the same problems as me in this way so it has always made me feel alone in feeling what I feel. Now as an adult, I never know if what I’m feeling is real and valid… usually I think it isn’t.

Anyway sorry that was only tangentially related.

I apologize compulsively at work and this thread is making me feel some type of way. Seems like everyone must hate me for it based on this thread I guess. It’s like I’m in an unwinnable scenario of bothering people if I fuck up and bothering people if I apologize about it. So then what?

I mean things used to make more “sense” time and energy wise when you were able to have one parent work and one parent stay home. But it’s just not really financially feasible nowadays. The people I know with kids are absolutely fucking drowning right now trying to both work and take care of the home life. I feel bad for them but there’s not much I can do about it. It’s not my family.

I am amused but I also don’t really think I get it. Am I dumb

Yes, they accuse me of “overthinking” things a lot in general. But they don’t realize that I have to do this in order to try to do things more correctly. Lack of enough thought is what gets me into these kinds of situations, you know?

I’m definitely not imagining most of these. If everyone is happily smiling and chatting away, and then I make a mistake which causes a sudden change in facial expression, curt response, and the sudden end of a flowing conversation, then it’s not my imagination.

Coworker 3 is the most lenient/forgiving of them, but issues still arise with them too.

No, I don’t currently pause between each sentence. Usually conversation flows quite smoothly. But it flows until I make a grave error and then it shuts down catastrophically. My question was saying “how can I think before I speak” because pausing after each sentence would be incredibly jarring and not work with conversational flow if that makes sense.

Coworker 3 has occasionally asked that out of genuine concern when I have been having a bad time. But it’s a trick question because I’m not supposed to respond that I am having a bad time. It is the incorrect response and will make them upset, even if they tell me that I can be honest. It’s very confusing because coworker 3 will occasionally tell me that it’s ok to come to them with things, but the reality is that isn’t true. If I do that, it makes them upset. So one of the biggest things is that I have worked to not tell coworker 3 when something is bothering me and not share feelings like this with them. But it is confusing when they do things that indicate that it’s ok and welcomed for me to do so when it isn’t. They say one thing but I am supposed to act in a way that is discordant with what they indicate, which is confusing.

And sometimes coworker 3 likes to discuss serious topics. So I sometimes accidentally say something about the topic with too much emotion in my voice or something or the wrong statement in general and then I fuck up the whole thing.