My relationship problems

This is a quick post. I am moving later this week, and need to pack my stuff. This is Sunday evening, and I have only started packing. However, I always feel the need to write when I can least afford to do so. Also, maybe I can concisely write about the problems facing me when I am in a hurry to blurt out everything.

So, I am 28 now, and still single. This is not viewed kindly in the society that I come from. I have been branded as a loser by many in my social circle, one reason that I have withdrawn myself from my immediate social circle. I have tried to mix with others to broaden my social circle, but that hasn't helped a lot. Now, I know a lot of people, but I have few good friends. Well, actually none, but I am ashamed to admit this.

So the question is, why still am I single. Well, the answer in itself is a long and windy rant. First of all, as I have expressed before on this forum, I have a "femdom" fetish, which means that rather than having a normal relationship with a woman, I find it more arousing, or get more turned on by being a submissive to a dominant woman. I have never been turned on by sexual intercourse, and I am very ashamed to admit this. But, this, my friend, is true. This is the only place where I can admit this fearlessly.

I find a more dominant woman more attractive. Foot fetish is what turns me on more. Now, as I have alluded to in the blog description, you are free to think I am a pervert, I am sick etc. etc. but I don't really care. This is how I am, and in the end an opinion is just that, merely an opinion. However, in certain circles in the US, this is quite acceptable. In the last one year, I have been a part of the BDSM circle in my local city. This has, at the very least, been very reassuring. I now know that a lot of other people, who are actually quite normal people that you see in the street everyday, are turned on by these things, and actually practice it in their real lives. I have also been involved with a woman as a "play partner" where we have played mistress-slave games for the evening. We do not have any kind of relationship beyond that. She is a happily married woman, who participates with her husband's consent. It was my first experience of being a submissive. We have now done it for a few months, and to tell you the truth, I have not enjoyed it as much as my fantasies. She is a very sweet woman, its just that I don't find her sexually atractive in the way I want her to be. I kinda want to get out of this thing with her, but it is hard for me to tell her that.

So that's one story. I will probably write about it more later. Other than that, the doors for a vanilla (i.e. normal) relationship with somebody from my own country and mother tongue are closed for me. I would like to marry somebody from my own region (i.e. same mother tongue), but being in the US, the sample space gets too small. Also, as you might have have guessed, I am kinda selective about the people I want to marry. I just cannot marry anybody ordinary, especially if she does not have a taste for the more finer intellectual things. So, all this now makes my probability of getting married much much less. So I am stuck here.

Over and above all this, I do not want to do arranged marriage. Even if I do agree to it on principle, what it means is that I get to know the bride after my parents have fixed everything. That is not at all acceptable to me, especially for the reasons that I have outlined above.

After all this complication, there is also my physical need. I am 28 and still a virgin. I don't even know whether I can participate in a normal sexual intercourse. I have also been subject to chauvinistic teasing by my friends for this. This is killing me and ruining my life. What if I can never be a sexually normal ever, atleast to carry out these basic sexual functions. That means more drama after I get engaged/married even if I manage to get there. What is the point then of all this fight I have put throughout the years to become extraordinary, to study in one of India's most elite institutes, to study in an Ivy league American grad school. All this does not make any sense to me now.

In the end, I need to get into a relationship soon. I feel very alone, I feel very left out in society. I don't know what to do or where to go. I always fear that I don't go into depression. I am always fighting depression at the back of my mind. I have sunk into depression previously, and I know what a living hell it is. I am confused and without a direction as ever. In the midst of all this is my daily struggle in an adverse economy. I am lucky to have a job in this economy. And i don't even know what the future holds for me. I don't want to get stuck in a postdoc for long. But unless my publications come through, I can also not get a job. Then there are visa issues and all. So that's that. Let me go back to doing some packing. I have relieved myself a little of the burden I constantly carry.

After a long time

I had almost stopped writing here.

I come back after a long time. Things have changed somewhat, but the more things change, the more they remain the same. That is the feeling with which I come back to writing this blog again.

I finally managed to complete my PhD in the end of July, or should I say managed to scrape through!

The last few months of my PhD were pure hell, and even that is an understatement. My routine used to be getting up in the morning, going to lab, coming back at night, masturbating to internet porn and going to sleep. This, in the whole depressed state of mind I was in. My advisor stopped supporting me after the fall semester. I had to self support myself from my savings for the summer semester. It was both humiliating (and an indicator that I was unwanted in the lab) and also a traumatic experience, knowing that I was stretching my bank balance, and would be nowhere without a job in the next few months.

I am glad that the nightmare is over. Well, not quite, but I will come to that later. I managed to find a mediocre post doc position. I was and am still not happy with the univ, since it is ranked much lower than my PhD uni, which was in the top ten. I always get the feeling how I have slid down the career ladder, and I can clearly see how people judge that. Anyhow, I am not unhappy with my current job. Its much less stressful, and also it seems I have more independence, though only time will tell how much.

However, trouble still persists on other fronts. my PhD advisor refuses to submit my papers to the journal. they were all in final draft forms when I submitted my thesis. One of them was submitted to a journal, and just needs the legend on a figure changed to publish it. however, she refuses to send it back to the journal. She being the corresponding author, my hands are tied. I do not know if I should submit the other papers myself, and what happens if she does not agree to authorship. Thats a rather uncharted territory, but the non-publication of these papers indicate the end of my academic career. I have made tremendous sacrifices for an academic career, and it is one thing that is very dear to me and also a part of my identity. It is hard for me to see myself anywhere other than the academia. Hence, I do not know what to do now.

Other that that, my personal life is as bad as it can be, straddled with problems. It is a long story by itself. I will write it in a separate post.