I’m 18, and I’ve come to realize that the entire structure of life society, the economy, even the most basic human motivations is built around relationships. Not just any relationships, but specifically romantic and sexual ones.
I see it everywhere. Mortgages are designed for two incomes, rent is structured for couples, even the way people justify waking up and going to work is often tied to a partner or the pursuit of one. The entire foundation of what gives people “purpose” is rooted in relationships. Without that, most people would be lost.
But here’s where I don’t fit in: I have no interest in relationships like that. I understand beauty, I have natural instincts, but they don’t drive me. The thought of sex, even kissing, feels disgusting to me. My brain is stronger than my instincts. And because of that, I see relationships differently from how most people do.
I watch people around me settle into these fake, surface level connections, where they trade real intimacy for convenience. They claim to care about each other, but it’s all built on physical attraction and societal expectation, not deep emotional connection. They think they’re being “mature” by sacrificing what they actually want for the sake of a relationship, but to me, that’s the opposite of maturity.
Intimacy was never about sex. It was about truly understanding someone, about lying in bed at night, talking for hours, feeling connected in a way that isn’t just physical. And yet, society has twisted it into something else. Now, if you don’t participate in the game if you don’t chase after relationships for the same reasons everyone else does you’re the weird one.
And that’s the problem. Everything is built for them. Nothing is built for me. If I don’t participate, I lose access to the structures that keep life moving forward. I don’t get the “normal” motivations that help people go through life without questioning everything. I don’t get the social validation that comes from being in a relationship. I don’t get the financial stability that’s assumed to come from having a partner.
Most people never even think about this, because it just works for them. They naturally want these things, so they never have to question why everything is structured this way. But if you’re like me, if your brain doesn’t work like that, then what?
What’s left?
I wake up every morning questioning everything. I see patterns where others see normality, and I can’t just accept things because “that’s how they are.” But it seems like most people need to take things for granted because if they didn’t, life would become unbearable for them. They need the illusion of meaning, of structure, of purpose built on relationships. Otherwise, they’d have to face the emptiness behind it all.
And maybe that’s the real difference between me and them. They can accept the illusion and live within it. I can’t.
But rejecting it doesn’t give me anything in return. It doesn’t hand me a new purpose, an alternative system to live by. It just leaves me here, staring at a world that wasn’t designed for people like me, wondering if there’s anything left for me to build instead of just watching from the outside.
Maybe that’s the price of seeing things too clearly. Or maybe it’s just the beginning of something else. But I don’t know what that “something else” is. And I’m starting to wonder if anyone does.
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If you can find a companion with whom you share your life with, in a non romantic sense, would that work? Nothing to stop two people from having a joint mortgage without being married. Or even being married without sexual intimacy as long as both are happy that way. I know two couples like this.
If you’re male, you’re meant to go die in war. If you’re female, you help take care of the kids.
I’m literally not kidding. That’s how it functioned for thousands of years.
I have these thoughts too and especially relate to being unable to accept things because "that’s just how it is". I don’t know what to do with it after coming to those conclusions, though.
Side note, I definitely wasn’t thinking as critically or as deeply about the state of society as you are at 18. I had to suffer through years of abusive and toxic relationships to start questioning the surface constructs.
I have a 23 year old son, and when he comes to me with a complaint about the future or the walls and barriers he’s not happy with, I tell him to change it. Do something. Act. If you don’t like the way the system is running, do something to make the change. Do something to make it fair. Be the one. I think we all are so stuck in the mindset that we don’t actually make a difference that nobody even tries to make things better anymore. So we remain in this hateful, miserable state and as long as each individual keeps thinking they can’t make a difference, no difference will be made. Good luck to you, I think you are a remarkable human and will find what your soul needs to feel complete.
First of all you are eighteen. I’m a lot older than you.
Life is going to kick you somewhere you least expect it a few times just in the next few years. And you seem to be trying to make conclusions. My first instinct is to tell you to shut up and go do the dishes, or mow the lawn, whatever.
"Seeing things clearly". What a joke.
You really have no idea whatsoever. I didn’t. Nobody ever has or ever will. Go move your body, learn a new skill…run as fast as you can directly into a wall…something…anything.
The only conclusion you can reasonably come to right now is that you know nothing.
Get back to me in about fifty years.
Humans are evolved on a biological level to be together in groups of up to about 150 people.
So if you say you don’t want to participate in that, then I guess you’ll likely end up depressed and without purpose as you have no one to serve but yourself. On that point you are correct – humans are social animals.
We’re not meant to be alone, there’s a ton of hormones and processes in your body that happens because we’re together with loved ones. The money is a by-product of this, and while we have a system in place now where we need it to survive, chasing it for the sake of chasing it is not ideal.
If you’re a man, realize your burden of performance and get to it. It will bring clarity as you grow in skill and competence.
You’re making some unkind assumptions about other people’s relationships. You can’t see into their minds and should not be presuming whether these connections are shallow or fake.
That said, I have friends who are asexual and/or aromantic, who have happy, fulfilling lives. It seems as though you feel isolated by not wanting what you think society pushes you to want, and forming connections within a community of people who understand that feeling may help.
Have you seen the movie “The Lobster”, I just watched it a couple of days ago and it discussed the same theme around what if a relationship is compulsory to live in society and a “loner” is outcasted. It is a very interesting movie taking that society is based on relationships to the extreme. Fortunately in our current society you can perfectly live a fulfilling life being single.
Mortgages weren’t really designed to be two person, that’s more recent.
You’re 18. I get that relationships are a big status thing at the moment. And being ace and aro is probably very isolating. However, your wording is incredibly dickish and will make people not want to interact with you. And you’ll think it’s because they think you’re weird, but it’s really because you’re rude. My husband is my best friend, he makes my life better, and vice versa. We’re both on antidepressants, it’s a low libido household. I’m still thrilled every day that I married him. And it’s totally fine you don’t want that!! But you aren’t inherently wiser or smarter for not wanting that the same way people in relationships are not inherently better than those not.
“And maybe that’s the real difference between me and them. They can accept the illusion and live within it. I can’t.”
you’re not seeing as clearly as you think, you’re under the illusion relationships are about love, caring, and sex. they’re about transactions and meeting each other’s needs so you can both work towards a better life. you can have this in your life too, it’s probably just not gonna like like the societal norm of what it normally looks like. i don’t know where you fit in the world, i don’t even know where i fit in the world, but just continuing to look for it is all you can do really, but there’s 8 billion people out there, there’s gotta be one you can have some kind of relationship with, even if it’s not a romantic or physically intimate one, but no person can survive without others. i know there’s communities of people who do not want physical intimacy or sex out there, i think you might get along with them pretty well, and find relationships that feel like they’re for you too, even if it’s just friendships.
You’ve built yourself a bad image of relationships. Of course you wouldn’t want one if that’s what you think they are.
You’re only 18. It’s entirely too early to close your mind to any opportunities in life.
You are also not as different as you may think you are, and if you could form a few deeper relationships you would know that. Everyone struggles with the meaning of life and societal pressures. It’s the meat and potatoes of the human experience.
However, even if you somehow manage to never meet another person you like and who likes you back, which would honestly be a terrible shame, that in no way prevents you from doing anything else you want in life, including buying a house, especially since you’ll only need a small one bedroom and you won’t care about the quality of your school district.
Make enough money to not need them? No one is forcing you to find a partner. The system values money so pursue that.
This seems like an edgy teenage take tbh. Even if you don’t want romantic relationships, friendships can be incredibly valuable.
What if I told you some people had the same thoughts as you, but concluded that because it’s all made up, they do what makes them happy. And their happiness is based on genuine relationships?
NGL I didn’t read everything you wrote.
But I did read this part:
>Everything is built for them. Nothing is built for me. If I don’t participate, I lose access to the structures that keep life moving forward. I don’t get the "normal" motivations that help people go through life without questioning everything. I don’t get the social validation that comes from being in a relationship. I don’t get the financial stability that’s assumed to come from having a partner.
I’m a lot older than you (mid-30s NB female) and I haven’t been in a relationship in 8 years. However, none of those relationships I had in the past were ever long enough to access those "structures" you ask about. I didn’t participate in those perks you think couples have. I don’t even know what those perks are. Even in my relationships, I never needed a partner to function in society. I never "needed" one, I can get along perfectly fine alone.
I’m happy being single. I have felt no loss in the quality of my life. I have access to resources. I live in a nice apartment in the city that I can afford on my own. I never want children either and I have not felt any loss in my life over it. If I find myself in a situation where I really need help, I have friends and I have siblings and parents.
If you’re not interested in relationships, that’s fine. But don’t think the world is built for couples, because it’s not.
You’re only 18, you don’t know how the world works yet.
It’s naive to think that everything that is waiting in adulthood is only catered towards couples. It’s not. It’s catered towards those who strive for it regardless of relationship status.
Don’t live your life bitter.
Live your life the way you want to, but don’t live it bitter over how other people mind their own lives.
Edit: this child does not accept that people can live fulfilling lives without hurdles for simply being single. Just because I mentioned I have friends and family, OP claims it reinforces their belief that the world was not built for single people. OP refuses to actually understand all of the points of view being offered and insists that they are the only one who can see reality.
Society is doing the twisting to focus on sexual connections?
From an evolutionary perspective, the only thing your genes care about is sex as the stepping stone to kids.
From a similar perspective, the only societies that survive are the ones that self-perpetuate by renewing their constantly dying membership, most often by said members procreating and raising kids in the society.
In any case, you just have a different set of instincts, you are not living an instinct-free life. Rational thought alone does not create a feeling of disgust; that’s the underlying emotions and desires. Intelligence affects what strategies you take towards your goals, but doesn’t create your underlying preferences.
There are people who’s purpose in life is not their partner/family, but some other goal. You need to find such a goal that fits within your emotional desires.
When I was 18 I thought exactly like you. I thought I was a way deeper thinker than everyone else, that I could see truths that other people were too dumb to see, that I had it all figured out. I also thought I was too good for society and relationships, above sex and base primal desires unlike the unwashed masses. A lot of people go through this phase, you will grow out of it. I remember a distinct maturity change at 25 and changes in my thinking patterns.
I think your assumptions are flawed. All of these things can be done by a single person. If you do wish to engage with others, even mortgages and families can involve multiple partners in non-romantic relationships.
The world isn’t structured around romantic and sexual relationships, it’s structured around social exchanges. Seeing that you don’t seem to be interested in any social relationship, much less an exchange, you won’t stop feeling isolated until you come to terms that you live in a society and either you learn the customs and live by them, or you remain an outcast.
Just a question: have you ever been medically diagnosed as a high functioning autistic? I’m not referring to the self-diagnosed autistic chasing a trendy diagnosis in the niches of the Internet. I’m talking diagnosed by an M.D,/Temple Grandin autism. (Temple Grandin is a famous, scientist, author, professor. I believe from reading one of her books and watching a terrific documentary on her life and work that she and you might have some similar experiences and outlook.
You speak as if you have a collection of fedoras that you think will make you look classy and will steal the cheerleader from Chad because your brain works so much more differently than others.
You’re too much inside your own head and project ideas and notions onto other people you can never possibly prove or justify. Societies are historically and traditionally structured around natalism as that’s how they grow and thus society has an incentive to promote and support a healthy natalism. If you’re living in the liberal democracies of the West you are living in an unprecedented time where individualism is allowed to be emphasized, often to an especially unhealthy degree. You are young. It is good to question the world and the purpose of everything but do not forget you barely know anything. The ancients only admired youth for its beauty and they put wisdom even higher than that, and wisdom is only acquired with age and experience. You must test your beliefs and notions in reality to see if they are actually true and hold up before you can speak definitively on something. As my great-grandmother said to me when I once said I know something, "you believe that, you’re not old enough to know."
Honestly, on some level, it almost seems like an attempt to salvage something that has been in trouble for the better part of at least 35 years of my 47 years of life…. The institution of marriage. It’s understandable to an extent.
However, unlike many who have replied, I understand exactly where you are coming from.
Ah the plight of the sensitive soul. You shouldn’t discount the intuitions of every one else, every experiences some level of conscientiousness about the things you’ve described to various degrees — it’s just that your perspective isn’t unilateral or necessarily even valid in a strict true or false sense. Relationships, especially romantic or familial are a more or less universal cornerstone of every society that’s ever existed and likely every society that will exist. Why? Well in part because in some basal level humans are social cooperative beings that reproduce sexually and modes of being not conducive to reproduction die out because that’s just how existence works. On a more philosophical level our own awareness that our lives are fleeting and filled with pain creates a bit of a dilemma between a nihilistic drive to cease existence and cross the threshold to eternity or otherwise find meaning in an incomprehensible world filled with many seemingly insurmountable issues. Relationships do this for the vast bulk of people, in part because of the intimacy they entail as you described — even with your precocious predispositions about the nature of humanity and social existence you seem to value intimacy enough to cast sex away as a scourge on it. That said, for most people sex is an extension of intimacy and not something which necessarily diminishes it, although it’s a complicated topic and I’ve already written a lot. Also, you probably just have autism or something and that’s what fuels your perspective which isn’t necessarily a shared one. Anyways, your life will end with or without your actions contributing to it and while it may not seem like it even those of us who live the longest have relatively little time here. It’s important to give thoughts to the things you’ve described here and I’d encourage you to continue to do so, and to write and to read about it. But don’t make the mistake of allowing it to diminish your ability to find enjoyment or meaning in this often cruel existence you’ve been afforded by sheer chance. Not that it’d make a difference for anyone else if you did!
Naw, that’s just some horse cockey youvr been fed. And now that’s all you see. You need to get out more.
I’m single and own my own home. I’m happily in a casual relationship with someone I would burn the earth for.
Don’t take this wrong, but you’re only 18. You have sooo much to experience and learn in life. So much pain and so much joy coming your way.
Romantic relationships are not the foundation of society, as in they’re the be all and end all of things. Relationships are the foundation of society, as in we all need to work together to make things move forward.
If you don’t want to get in a romantic relationship, then don’t. Find other things that interest you. Find a career that doesn’t kill your soul, but isn’t your whole life. Best news is, with you being single and child free you can save easier than those of us in commited relationships. And you can really focus on doing what you want in life. Go outside and enjoy nature. Adopt an old dog .
There’s different types of intimacy. Secual intimacy is valid and important to many, but you also need non secual intimacy.
If you do but you don’t want sex, be very clear and upfront about it to begin with, and don’t expect everyone to be okay with it. But even better there’s the internet. There’s PLENTY of dating sites that’ll help you match with someone no interested in sec either.
I’m 43. I’ve learned the hard way, that what you want is more important than what you THINK society wants for you. Fyck societal expectations. Be kind to others, be helpful when you can. Be open minded. Find what makes you happy. If one day you find someone you mesh with, be open to changing your mind. It SOMETIMES happens when we meet someone special.
Why are you feeling disgust for a basic human need? I find when you are not very aware of your emotional landscape, anything that feels unfamiliar is "disgusting" whether it is a positive or a negative emotion.
You sound like someone I’d like to be friends with. Just 18 and already quite wise.
Take your time my fellow honest person. Continue to be honest with yourself. There’s a big, big world out there and while you have a pretty clear view of perhaps the common path – there’s a lot of different places, and a lot of different people.
You’re so young. Don’t be in a hurry to calculate your destination. Enjoy your awareness, you have a great perspective. But your path is one of wisdom hard earned and self honestly keeping you on it.
Read about Taosim, you’ll enjoy it. Listen to different kinds of music. Think about the kinds of people who would enjoy those kinds of musics. The kind of communities. You can find a place, you can carve one out for yourself.
Avoid following the negative thought process too far down the road. Following a logical argument, step by step is valid and reasonable – but when there’s loneliness and a feeling of isolation coloring your perspective, you might find that path inaccurate and leading to darker places than you are now.
Believe me when I say, seeing things clearly is a gift not a curse. But.. it is a life that unfolds slowly and uniquely. Take a breath. Look around. You see things others cannot, do not. But that doesn’t mean you’ll be alone forever.
What if you found a genuine connection? I agree, some people do let money and convenience draw them into a half dead life. But that isn’t every married person’s fate. And some married people, also, see things quite clearly.
Mortgages weren’t designed for two incomes. Corporations purchasing single family homes is why you need two incomes. Greed is why you need two incomes.
Congratulations, you’ve finally noticed the world is designed around complete bullshit. Everybody with a brain already knew that, but you’re still in the early stages where you’re mad at all the right things but haven’t figured out any of the right reasons.
What happens? You choose your own lifestyle and don’t worry about social norms. I think you are projecting an awful lot onto other people’s life experience. Don’t worry about their experience, focus on yours and what will make YOU content.
>Maybe that’s the price of seeing things too clearly.
Unfortunately no, this is simply the price of being 18 and overconfident in your own conclusions about the world. I’ve been contentedly single for years now and there’s plenty of this world that is built for us. You just need to get out there and find it instead of brooding about other people’s relationships.
Life has no meaning or point. When you figure that out you get to make up your own meaning, find somebody else’s version of meaning you like or give up. You got options kid.
Honestly the way you phrased this you definitely come off as a romantic. Well dont worry… You’ll find a romantic partner. They’re out there. Romance seems dead in this era but it doesn’t have to be. It just takes a while to find the right one. And you may find the right one, then they will become the wrong one…then find the right one again, over and over in your life.
I remember when I was 18. The world is just beginning for you.
Worrying about other people and busy being a victim of society instead of taking responsibility for the part to be played in shaping society and choosing to set personal definitions for which relationships truly matter and how they matter.
The world is like a fabric woven of many colored threads. If you focus on, say, red threads, you might observe "I’ve come to realize that the entire structure of this fabric is built around red threads." They are everywhere! Without the red threads, other parts could unravel!
And yeah, you are correct that a lot of how society works assumes you’ll have a partner. But just because it’s the most paved path doesn’t mean it’s the only one. If you’re single for the rest of your life, you won’t be the first person to ever do that. Nor would you be the first person to be single and thrive.
There are other colors of thread. You can actually pull the red ones out and the fabric will look different, but it’ll hold together.
A very close platonic friendship is just as powerful as any romantic relationship, if not more so. Society may have been designed around romantic relationships but that doesn’t mean friendships can’t fit into that mold.
Human beings are social creatures, as such, our society is setup that way. It’s ok to be different but yeah, no one is going out of their way to make sure you still feel special or give you a singles discount or anything. You just have to be happy being you.
If you wrote a book I would read it. this is so on-point at least with how I think also.
Don’t get me wrong I wouldn’t mine getting married or getting a girlfriend. But I don’t want to feel like Im doing it just to make my parents happy or please others.
I agree with you to a certain point. It seems like many relationships are superficial and there is not much emotional intimacy that goes on. But you still need some physical intimacy as well in relationships, it’s ok to enjoy the physical intimacy as well.