I’m an ex incel myself, but I’ve been seeing a few users here exhibiting the tell tale signs. “I’m not attractive enough”, “I don’t socialize correctly”, “I’ll never find a woman” - all extremely unhealthy attitudes.

Personally I burned through many friendships and ruined a lot of chances with women because I was in the incel community. The community warped my view of women so much that I made it even harder to meet women, I became my own worst enemy. I lost friends because all I could think of was how horrible it was that they had girlfriends.

I have a friend who helped me out of it. She was the one who started calling out my bad behavior for what it was, and I started on the long uphill path out of it. I’m now married and stable for well over a decade, but I still think back to those days, and it depresses me seeing other people causing this themselves and not being aware of it.

So, Lemmy, for those who have clawed out of it, what’s your story?

  • psycotica0@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    Can’t tell if trolling, quipping, or honestly asking…

    I feel like some people who don’t want friends are often people with low self esteem who have decided their hypothetical future friends will abandon them, or not like them, or whatever, and so they convince themselves that they “don’t want that anyway” as a way of protecting themselves from future pain or embarrassment. In those cases, dating aside, the person should work on their self esteem.

    If it’s not that, one could try casual hookup apps. These rely on a certain amount of work, and there’s no guarantee, especially if one lives in a less populated area, but it’s possible.

    And the third option for someone who doesn’t want anything social and just wants sex, is sex work. This is exactly what it can be for! The only trouble is that in most places it’s illegal, which pushes it underground, making it both difficult to find and potentially dangerous… but this is the niche it’s meant to occupy.

    But honestly… at least consider that it may be the first case, and see if you can search your feelings to figure out “why”.