Dear Isolated Guy: Last summer, I posted a list of reasons why I am a complete a failure. A well liked and respected member (Dexter) refuted each one of those reasons.

He took a lot of time to do that, and I was deeply touched. It seems to me that many people here are taking a lot of time to try to reach you. Bear in mind, we all come here for love and support; we all ache at least sometimes in some ways.

Please be assured that this post comes from love, from caring, from concern for you and your well-being. Comes from those times when I live in a cave and isolate – and even isolate now, to no small extent. Comes from knowing the deep pain of loneliness.

<font color="green">September Morn: Hopefully this [the posts] will encourage you to take stock of your strengths and attributes so that you don't need to depend on anyone else for them. Someone else will always let you down because no one is perfect. You can't depend on someone else as well as you can depend on yourself. After all, you're the best judge of what you need and don't need.</font>

<font color="blue">Isolated Guy: SeptemberMorn, it's so simple to say just love and accept your self but that's not all it takes. You say "don't depend on anyone else". . . . I've noticed those who preach "all you need is yourself" are seldom the ones who experience true isolation and actually have be forced to try to practice it.</font>

My $0.02: September Morn did not say, “Don’t depend on anyone else.” She said – don’t depend on anyone else for your ultimate sense of self-acceptance and self-worth <font color="blue"> as much as</font> you depend on yourself for that. This is quite different from not depending on anyone.

People who have a core of self-acceptance and self-worth rarely need suffer isolation, because most of us enjoy being around such people. Thus there are two paradoxes:
[ol]
[li]It is through self-acceptance of our positive traits as well as our negative qualities/actions/attributes that we gain positive self-image.

[li]When we have an inner core of self-acceptance and positive self-image, we are more attractive to others.

<font color="blue">Isolated Guy: But as long as they are "pretty boys', women will throw themselves at them.</font>

<font color="green">SpazKatt: I happen to be a woman, and I do not throw myself at "pretty boys" I tend to find them repulsive because they KNOW how attractive they are.</font>

My $0.02: I’ll bet just about every woman who reads the list wonders who these women are who “throw themselves at pretty boys.” Who these women are who, in fact, are going about “throwing themselves” at any men.

Yes, there is a dance of courtship and rising passion. But women who “throw themselves” at men? Are you listening to yourself? Do you hear the subtle insult of that?

<font color="blue">Isolated Guy: Where are ALL these women who want a man for his personal characteristics and don't care about his looks?</font>

My $0.02: They used to hang out in the tiny bedroom of my severely disabled friend Alan, with the shrunken body who couldn’t lift a glass to mouth. Don’t know where they’ve disbursed to now since he died.

Realistically, they are all around you, IG. But you call any female who makes this statement a liar. Doesn’t seem like an approach to dating that is likely to be effective, but if it works for you, who am I to argue?

<font color="blue">Isolated Guy: All I'll say though is two weeks in the personals with roughly 3000 women looking and not one reply says it all</font>

My $0.02: Nope, it doesn’t say it all. (1) I haven’t read what you wrote as your ad, but I’ve read a bunch that are real turn-offs, whether or not the guy has his photo posted. Guys who sound needy. Guys who make it all too clear that this is about sex. Guys who reveal their inward fear of and dislike of women by saying that they don’t want a woman who “plays games” or who is looking for a “sugar daddy” or anyone of a half-dozen such telltale phrases.

Given your penchant for letting women know that we’re liars who don’t live up to your expectations, I’d have to read what you wrote before I formed an opinion.

(2) If you have waited for one of the 3,000 women to find you, perhaps they are all sitting at their computers waiting for one of 3,000 men to contact them. That man could have been you. Women’s lib notwithstanding, it remains traditional for the male to reach out first.

(3) A lot of people don’t buy the Yahoo membership, just troll the dating ads for free. That means all you can send is an icebreaker. And if the other person also is not a paying member, there is no way for them to reply.

<font color="blue">Isolated Guy: I've never heard of a woman wanting to pinch a man's mind.</font>

My $0.02: And Patty Smith said that no man wants to run his hand up the leg of an Ms. Yet, despite it all, people manage to get married and have children. People who are blind. People who are disabled. People who have hairlips and hairy legs. People who are fat and people who are bone-thin. People of every size, shape, color and description; with and without terrible illnesses; of greater and lesser intelligence, kindness and wealth. And some who are a good deal less attractive looking than you.

<font color="blue">Isolated Guy: As far as The Beauty is in the "I". My opinion is that it sounds nice on paper but doesn't always apply in true life. It's still my firm opinion (which I think many don't want to think could be true) . . . that you can't truly love/accept yourself unless you've also received some of that from others as well. </font>

My $0.02: Haven’t you been offered love and acceptance here?

<font color="blue">Isolated Guy: I get the feeling many would be more than happy if they never see me here again.</font>

My $0.02: No one has said or implied any such thing. They way I see things, people on the Forums have virtually thrown themselves at you with an outpouring of love and support. In We have tried to reach you every way we know how. We are concerned for you, Gary. We are not interested in creating a situation where you leave.

<font color="blue">Isolated Guy: I'm not saying it's not "me' that's the problem but a good part of it could be that my different perspective just make some people start to think of something they're afraid of because it goes against what you've believed for so long.</font>

My $0.02: Yes, you are saying that it’s not you that’s the problem. You’re saying it’s the world. "I'm not saying that" is camougalge for one of those remarks that let us know how we’ve failed to live up to your expectations by accusing people of a negative character trait. Many people have suggested that you are living in a world of distorted perceptions. Your remark suggests that the only way we can be your friends and earn your approval is to agree with you. And if we don’t agree with you, it’s not because you are wrong, it’s because we are afraid.”

I think, in the language of addiction therapy, what’s going on here is an online “intervention.” When a user is in denial and refuses to do anything to help herself, family and friends will get the person in a room and make her listen to the ways her alcohol or drug addiction affects them and her. How she isn’t a good friend anymore, a responsible parent or wife, a sloppy employee, doesn’t take care of her appearance and health. I hope you will intepret this, not as a message to leave, but to use the Forums as a place for support, healing and growth.

Here is the research about appearance, so far as I am familiar with it:

1. An employer will hire a more attractive candidate over a less attractive candidate of equal credentials. Thin people are preferred over heavier ones; non-smokers over smokers; and employers aren’t too keen on hiring people with dangerous hobbies such as sky-diving and rock-climbing.

2. People tend to marry people of about equal attractiveness. This is mitigated if the male has money and power. Not looks, IG, money and power. The “trophy wife” syndrome.

3. I know of no research that supports the hypothesis that females “throw themselves” at men who are “pretty boys.”

Isolated Guy, as others have said on this thread, developing a positive self-image is, ultimately and fundamentally, an inside job. You can wait for the women of Yahoo to beat a path to your door; you can wait for the world to agree that everything in it exists according to the laws of Isolated Guy, but it seems likely that you will wind up waiting alone. You don’t seem to like that option very much, and insisting that the world behave as you think we should doesn’t seem to be an effective strategy so far, now does it?

I hope you’ll keep posting and thinking things through with us.

I've not been this blunt with another human being whom I don't know in my life, and I pray that I've done the right thing.