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r-subs

Discussion in 'Loneliness' started by nfprogress, Nov 8, 2015.

  1. nfprogress

    nfprogress Fapstronaut

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    I know I am risk of running myself directly into a nominal fallacy, but I'd like to propose something that is a new idea for me. That is the idea of relationship-substitutes and it is specific to nofap and I believe appropriate for this section.

    Think about all of the activities that you engage in that keep you in a state of loneliness and out of meaningful relationships. Call these activities and behaviors r-subs. If you give a name to it, you can focus on it and find out what you need to change about your life if you are lonely but don't want to be.

    PMO is the most obvious example of an r-sub here, but there are countless others that I believe should fall in the general purview. Sometimes being more aware of ourselves and how our actions directly lead to or prohibit our success is a good first step towards progress. To provide a couple of examples I know I have used my career progress and my introversion directly as an r-sub on numerous occasions. What sort of r-subs have you dealt with?
     
    Lazarus Shuttlesworth and Yesodi like this.
  2. RE:covery

    RE:covery Fapstronaut

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    Talking to my self and watching too many comedy shows, do they count?
     
    Yesodi likes this.
  3. nfprogress

    nfprogress Fapstronaut

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    I'd say so. I didn't even think about all the times I have given inanimate objects a life of their own. I am definitely guilty of talking with myself at great length.
     
  4. RE:covery

    RE:covery Fapstronaut

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    I think i'm quite interesting, although the iron ironically thinks I often let off too much steam
     
    TakingTheSteps likes this.
  5. Yesodi

    Yesodi Distinguished Fapstronaut

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    Very interesting concept! Worth exploring and developing further.
     
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  7. volt2187

    volt2187 Guest

    Excellent thread, I have many, which I never thought of as substitutes for relationships because I thought they made me happy. I'll just make a list, which funnily I don't really do any of these anymore (really just grew out of them due to not being satisfied by them anymore):

    - pmo, duh lol
    - Table-top miniatures
    - Painting and selling said miniatures on eBay, instead of having a real job
    - Video Games, mostly mmorpgs
    - Compulsively downloading thousands of music albums
    - Browsing countless Internet forums (that weren't self help)
    -Working jobs with little to no interaction with people
    - Edging like crazy, was addicted to chive for a long time
    - Spending a lot of my free time with my mother (did it a lot for her, but should have stopped because it prevented me from being around others my age)

    There's probably others but that's the gist of what I did that made me feel lonely. It's nice to look back and see how I used to do stuff like this which purposely prevented me from socializing with others so I can now use it to grow from.
     
  8. For me the biggest one is writing. I'm kind of in this iteresting stage of learning how to be a writer and love it to death while still keeping my head in reality. Writing is one of my favorite things to do and I've recently been blessed with finishing my first novel (yay), but I've found that it kind of takes over my whole life and mind sometimes. I spend countless hours thinking/daydreaming about my characters and talking myself through plots, and it's like... Crazy fun for me. And I feel like I could probably be alone with my thoughts for days or weeks and be perfectly content, but that's so unhealthy.

    So yes, definitely an r-sub. I think I'm starting to get the hang of the balance, though. Just gotta remind myself sometimes to actually live in the real world, not just the one in my head. :)
     
  9. ShotDunyun

    ShotDunyun Fapstronaut

    I'm an introvert, so I really enjoy doing things alone. Sometimes I feel lonely, but people take my energy away and I need to lock myself up to recover. But PMO is the worst thing you can do if you like being alone, that's for sure
     
  10. L Coroneos

    L Coroneos Fapstronaut

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    My "r-sub" is foreign language study. I'm currently doing Hebrew to keep me occupied, although I have previously studied Sanskrit, Biblical and ancient Greek, Latin and Polish to some extent as well. Most of these being literary and written languages rather than spoken ones, they have prevented me from socialising as much as I might do otherwise. I did some joint study of Biblical Greek with some people from church including a priest... but never in a group that included hot women looking for a relationship...
     

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