You should do neither of those until you've built a solid, lasting, stable, intimate and trusting relationship with someone.

Most of the people I know with this problem have trouble even meeting people, which tends to be a prerequisite for making friends and forming relationships - let alone successful long-term ones that could become marriages.

As is my case. it's hard enough just greeting someone let alone forming a lasting bond that eventuates into some situation allowing for intimacy.

I recommend a fitness related hobby that will bring you into regular contact with people. Then yes, you have to do the hard work of talking to the humans. Start small - you aren't looking for your soul mate you just want to make small talk for 3 minutes.

I'm in the same boat. I'm also have attracted a lot of, how to put this, people who use other people, since I'm not good at standing up for myself, so that, therefore, makes wary of people.

My belief is being social is a skill and I have to learn to get better at that skill in order to attract more normal people. I've been trying the following recently, although I haven't had enough time with any of it to know how well it will work, but just to give you some ideas:

lang-8.com - this site allows you to correct English of people trying to learn it. You can post a journal as well in another language you're trying to learn. My hope is that speaking another language might change the way I interact with people in my native language. But also, people there are very friendly, since you're helping them.

mmo games - trying to get into eve online. Maybe learn to establish relationships that way.

teamspeak - this has an online chat I've been using to practice smalltalk.

I tried a psychologist as well, but his philosophy of life and the way he related to me seemed so goofy that I quit. Also, it was quite expensive for what I got out of it.

Being social in the real world is a different skill than being social online. You might want to practice both (although, from experience, I'm going to say being social in real life is more important.)

Try a different psychologist, maybe you got the wrong one. But be a little more open to different philosophies of life and goofiness.

I've found EVE to be a double-edged sword in that regard. The game is exponentially more fun when played socially. On the other hand it's easy to hide in it and avoid socializing at all.

EVE takes effort to play "the right way". Make sure you get in a nice corp.

Dude, I'm assuming you're desi, in which case you may avail yourself of the aunti-network that always seems to be a matchmaking service on overdrive. I know quite a few geeks who, while having spent more time staring at a computer than bars, have had quite a bit of success with.

Based on heuristic evidence, I've seen some happy families emerge for guys who may not otherwise have done so well if left to their own communication/social skills. I think there's actual statistical evidence which points to longer lasting marriage thru the somewhat more traditional method of desi matchmaking.

Well yes I am 'desi' but I had to actually look that up. I don't know any language other than English and I've found that doesn't help much.

> Dude, I'm assuming you're desi...

Now I'm curious as to how you arrived at that assumption.

[EDIT] on second thought, probably not a great idea to go into details about how I looked him but, but it wasn't terribly difficult.