Why Do People Date Down?

This is a response to the insecurities you confided in me yesterday. I want to tell you about mine, too.

I mostly feel insecure about my capacities. Of course, these things can be fixed. But you know that about yourself too, don’t you? Technically, everything can be fixed. And that’s beautiful. But it doesn’t diminish the extent of these ugly feelings.

I feel insecure about how my brain works. I haven’t even recognised myself for half a month, twelve times a year. It is as if the woman in The Yellow Wallpaper was allowed to leave the room for two weeks each month, but every time she was to reenter the room, she would be made to forget that she ever left it and forgotten what it was like to live in the outside world. I feel insecure about the very fact that I am insecure about this. I thought that this should not be something one is insecure about. One is not supposed to be insecure; one must only overcome it.

I feel insecure about how messy, disorganised, and inefficient my day is. I constantly feel overwhelmed, so I try to reduce as many stimuli as possible. I don’t respond to people. I ignore my family. I no longer read the news, even on issues I care about. It is just too overwhelming and freezes me even before my day starts.

My day starts late because I’m always overwhelmed and frozen in the morning. I had massive crying spells for half the month. I’m crying in a cafe and have gotten so used to it that I no longer feel embarrassed. The other option is to stay home and be even more useless.

I feel useless. I am often too overwhelmed with feelings and emotions to do anything useful. On the few occasions, I have the energy to reply, I spend too much time pining and waiting for busy people to respond. I feel pathetic, useless, and incompetent.

These issues compound into anxieties bordering existential. I am anxious about not being able to be an adult. I am nervous that it will never come when I can stop feeling uneasy about the most mundane and silly things about adulting, such as paying bills on time, despite money not being an issue. “Because that is just how your brain works.” I have trouble adopting a growth mindset; despite how hard I try to change my vocabulary, I can hardly get close to truly convincing myself, “Your brain will not stay like this forever.” I try to delude myself by stopping taking meds and saying this time it will be different, but I always end up relying on it to do the most essential things like shower and get ready.

In the morning, I procrastinated by spending too much time reading comics, watching YouTube, and browsing useless celebrity dramas online. I think I avoided doing my work despite having everything “ready” and easy to do. Why did I do that? I’m not sure; maybe I was feeling a bit burnt out. But that is very unusual, considering I’m not working too much, anyway, so I am not sure what is causing the burnout.

I think it is my overthinking and low serotonin levels that lower the threshold for depression. I also have difficulty caring for myself, like getting food when it’s cold. Low motivation causes unmotivated behaviour, and unmotivated behaviour causes me to feel shame about myself, which worsens my feelings.

I just want to sleep, and sleep, and sleep right now. I don’t want to deal with anything strenuous — and I hate myself for being like this. I’ve always wanted free time, but when I do get it, I suddenly wish I was forced to do something else because otherwise, I know I struggle with the discipline to spend the time wisely. I find it curious how the consumption of “entertainment” leaves us feeling even more empty in the end — why does that happen? Is it just me? Is it normal to be plagued by guilt?

Entertainment guilt happens when the entertainment is consumed mindlessly instead of mindfully. I rarely regret having spent 2 hours at the cinema unless the movie is egregiously horrid — but even so, I’ll usually take it as “it’s so bad, it becomes good.”

You don’t know how much of a fraud I feel. You are too bright for me, and it makes me uncomfortable. Because it somehow reminds me that I am not enough, despite us threading in different paths. I’m not only insecure about my current state but even my rate of progress. I saw how quickly you improved at writing and recognised your talent and general aptitude for learning. Inside, I thought, if you could beat me a few years ago, who has been practising for years, in just a month, what else could you surpass me with little effort? It’s admittedly a silly thought, I know. But it doesn’t make it feel any less accurate.

The trouble is, I don’t know how to fix being insecure about “how my brain works.” Maybe I chose a debate that was impossible to win. The motion is too skewed in the other side’s favour, and it was too late for me to redefine it. I am insecure about the very fact that I experience my brain the way I do. How do you “growth mindset” your way from that?

Another crucial thing is you say that part of why you love me is that I motivate you to become a better person. You want to learn writing, fashion, and so on now. I wish I could say the same about being with you. In truth, my instinct is to hide as far away as possible.

You told me about a well-known anecdote from your home country: A depressed man visits a monk and asks how he can stop being depressed. The monk tells the man to get a cow. The man adopts a cow from the market and is forced to wake up early daily and tire himself out to care for the cow. Slowly, he finds depression leaving him.

Sure, the man is happy. But what about the cow?

I’ve resonated more with the cow than the man in the story. Currently, the cow is running around in circles, trying to figure out why it can’t stand on two legs. The cow feels embarrassed about how much time it spends trying to figure out why it can’t stand on two legs rather than accepting it and focusing on walking towards its destination with four legs. The cow silently envies the human for being able to stand on two legs. The cow resents the human for making it realise the unnaturalness of its four-legged state.

My instinct is to run away from you and adopt a baby cow. Then, the momma cow would be motivated to improve to see the baby cow happy. Say, “Momma cow has four legs too. It doesn’t mean we can’t walk faster!” Four-leggedness only becomes meaningful when the experience is shared with other four-legged creatures. The very state of overcoming four-leggedness becomes a virtue instead of a meaningless impediment to progress.

You said, “Sisyphean tasks are always desirable; we just need to understand why.” I realise this understanding stems not from over-intellectualisation or walking in circles ruminating but from emotional acceptance. Momma cow gets this from the baby cow, not the human.

Why do people date down? To feel better about themselves.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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