I'm not sure I understand your analogy; what does the "lid" represent? If you're asking what I'm doing to meet women, eh... I dunno. I mean, I'm in college (finishing up, actually), and I work part time in retail, so it's not as though I'm a total recluse that never encounters people at all. I just don't hit it off with anyone that way. The few times I have "hit it off" with a girl, she wasn't interested in dating me. I've also tried some online dating sites several times over the last few years, and I wrote to any girl that seemed the least bit interesting, but never got any responses. Other than that, I just kind of go about my business, but I never meet anyone "serendipitously". I dunno... All the happy couples I know met at work, or at school, or through friends, or whatever, and I just wish something like that could happen for me. It just never does.
The thing about me is, this "online" me is not the same as "offline" me. "Offline" me is quite "normal"; I act upbeat and laid back, I'm nice and friendly to people, I try to get people to laugh, etc. In other words, offline, I'm not some fatalistic black hole of sadness, like I maybe come across as on forums like these. What you see here is the result of me bottling up all my unhappy, unpleasant thoughts, then pouring them out onto the Internet. See, one major problem is, it's hard to be "positive" and "confident" when, in my whole life, I've never really been able to "catch a break". I understand that "life is hard", and all that jazz, but I've literally never "caught a break". It's hard to be positive when life has dealt you so many crappy "hands". If I could just "catch a break" once, get one nice little "win" in one aspect of my life, I think that would really turn things around for me. But it hasn't happened yet, and it doesn't look like I will be any time soon. Worst case scenario, though, I'm doing the whole "fake it til you make it" thing, right?
What I'm saying, though, is that going through therapy isn't going to make me any more capable of finding someone. There's no real relation, there, between the problems. I'm sure plenty of "depressed" people manage to date. Even if I go through therapy and work out my problems, that doesn't mean women are going to be any more inclined to find me appealing as a date.