It’s also difficult to build or maintain a relationship when depression is your co-pilot, dripping poison in your ear about yourself, about how others supposedly feel or even just whether this is worth the effort

And your list of supposed drawbacks – you’re autistic, you’re approaching being a literal 40-year old virgin, you live at home and have mental health issues – makes it sound like your question is very much like the latter.

Well, let’s take a few of these on, in order of importance and relevance. But first, I want to give you a phrase to keep in mind that will be relevant for pretty much everything we cover: “perfection isn’t necessary or even desirable”. Perfection is the hobgoblin of a scared mind, the idea that only the best of the best will ever do when in reality, nobody wants that nor would even know what to do with it if they had it. Perfection is necessary when you’re tuning a piano. Are you a piano? If not, then “good enough” is, in fact, good enough.

This is one of those times where that question is going to be important. If your depression or anxiety aren’t under control or managed – and please note carefully that I say “managed” and not “fixed” – then you’re going to have a much harder time, on multiple axes. Weiterlesen