Be careful with that. If you just want to be friends with her that’s perfectly fine. If you still have feelings for her though (and it sure sounds like you do), trying to be her friend while she’s dating somebody else is just needlessly torturing yourself. Don’t fall into that trap. It’s no fun at all.
Anyway, the lesson to be taken from this (which you seem to be figuring out) is that all that time you spent thinking and worrying, one of your co-workers used to actually ask her out and date her. Remember that the next time you meet a girl. Thinking and analyzing isn’t a bad thing at all and can help you in many ways, but it’s all useless if you don’t take action. Preferably in person and the sooner the better.
I also agree with you, you’ve definitely put her on a pedestal, and since you barely know her, this isn’t a good idea. First, it makes you feel intimidated by her, so it’s much harder to get to know her in the first place. And second, it’ll just make it feel that much worse if you find out she’s not all that great.
And you’ve said it perfectly here. Once you get to actually meet more girls, you may figure out we’re not that scary, nor are we (well, most of us, anyway) unattainable goddesses. And you’re like to find that a lot more nice, pretty girls are smiling at you.
If I ever had a clue of just how scary and frightening and overwhelming I was as a single chick and the power I weld( welded) over mere men, I would have flaunted it right in their pathetic faces!
However, I was too busy being a neurotic pile of insecurity and omg…he…made…eye…contact…with…me…he…likes…me…BUT WHY!? …what’s…wrong…with…him? Can’t …he…see…that…I’m …a…disaster…with…my …hair…and Ihave a ZIT THE SIZE OF AN EASTER ISLAND STATUE!!!111!..OMG…what if he asks me about MATH or Star Trek!!!..why…did…I…wear…this…shirt?!..AIGIIGIGIGIH! He’s coming over to talk to me!!! BRAIN OVERLOAD!!!DIVE DIVE DIVE! RUN AWAY! *flees towards a crowd of girls that I hate because they are attractive, don’t have zits, are ditzy and can style their hair perfectly every day. Eventually slips unnoticed out the door and goes home via the bookstore hoping to be crushed bya garbage truck on my home to save me from another day of being so woefully inadequate and pathetic and not worthy to be a part of the human race. *
Oh, and the ***Attractive Girl Network ***is not an Urban Legend. Maastrict is now on Permanent Double Secret Probation for talking about it in public.
At this point, I figure it’s my only hope. I have basically no experience with the opposite sex romantically, so I tend to get nervous around girls when I think they’re available and like me, especially if they’re beautiful. But now that we’re officially just friends, I feel much better about my ability to just be myself around her. If I can manage to just calmly and openly converse with her at some point in the near future though, even as just friends, it’d be a huge confidence boost for me, just because of how nervous I always used to be around her. Of course, I do want to better get to know this girl, and perhaps get to date her at some point, but I am also finding myself better able to look beyond her, to the other girls I might be able to succeed with because of what I learned in all my experiences with this girl.
And yes, a major lesson I’ve taken from this is that I must take the opportunity to get to know any girl who interests me, rather than waiting around for her to come to me. I have been practicing conversing with the young women coworkers of mine much more lately, so I can better seize the opportunity if a girl is hired who I’m interested in. I guess more than anything though, I’m kind of eager to just get the milestone of my first date out of the way, so I’ll have the experience from that in moving forward.
Honey, you could be married 20 years and still have no experience with the opposite sex.
Wimmen. We don’t come with instruction manuals.
Why are men even remotely attracted to wimmen, other than sex? We drive you nuts. Nag you to death. Want you to change what you don’t want to change and nothing you ever do is right!!11!!! And this is cromulent, how?
A friend of mine from another messageboard is a brilliant, witty guy who’s also an astonishingly creative chef. He was completely nervous around women. Every date he went on was a nightmare and made him feel like total shit.
He also was a fan of behavior therapy (although he practiced cognitive behavior therapy; I don’t know how it differs from rational emotive behavior therapy or whatever). So here’s what he did. He forced himself to go out on 3 dates a month. He recognized that they might suck. He realized that the women he went out with might have a terrible time. Too fuckin’ bad for them, he basically decided: these dates were his therapy. If they didn’t like it, they could leave early, and he’d get out of one of his three miserable monthly dates early, so bonus!
Eventually he got numb to the awfulness of these horrible dates; he just couldn’t maintain the emotional energy to be totally freaked out by them. And he figured since he was there, he may as well have some fun with it. So he started cracking wise. He even started a little bit of flirting, because what the hell? The date sucked anyway, this woman hated him anyway, what the fuck did he care if his flirting horrified her?
You can guess the next part: things started working.
Not right away. He ended up going on multiple dates with total psycho chicks, providing us all with hilarious tales of misfortune. But at least his misery was no longer because of discomfort around women: it was because he met some loonies.
And then he met a psycho chick who was totally awesome. He figures he’s pretty loco himself, so they work great together.
I kinda wish someone had introduced me to CBT in college, when I was all weird and nervous around women.
They smell nice and have boobies. Oh, and some men need a mother-figure to help them through middle age, although that typically works out less well than expected.
Noel said: <Snip>
“The anxiety you have is a bad feeling. The only way to make the misery go away is to give it a shot. In your head, failure feels like a huge catastrophe, but try and keep a bit of perspective - it’s only that way in your head. You know that.”
*Noel, I think you’ve given the right answer here.
For example: I’m a heavy set guy and have always been anxious approaching women. One day I just said F it. Hit on beautiful women and not-so-beautiful women. Guess what? It didn’t hurt a bit. As you said, the girls are just as anxious as the men!
After I adopted this attitude I felt a lot more comfortable with myself and therefore comfortable around the girls. And they, in turn, felt more at ease around me.
This doesn’t always get the women, but it sure makes you feel better about yourself.
Why indeed…
Not for nothing, but how exactly does one end up a 25 year old clueless virgin anyhow? I mean what were you doing since junior high when the other boys are running around chasing after girls?
I was going to make a sarcastic comment, or at least something humorously self-deprecating, but I’ve been thinking about the question for a while and I honestly don’t know.
Maybe the OP is better at self-analysis than I am…
It’s a good question. To be completely honest with you, I spent way too much time dealing with porn over the past decade rather than actual girls. I’m only beginning to make up for that, and I know I’ve got a long way to go, but I definitely do feel that I’m making progress.
You know, you make a comment like this in almost every thread I’ve read on here where men are talking about being virgins. I doubt that one can honestly give a real answer to this question without telling you about their entire life, so I have to question your fascination with asking the question itself. Is it to make them feel worse about an already troubling situation? I ask because I can’t imagine that it is helpful to them in the least, so it must do something for you to do the asking.
It’s probably helpful to make people confront the circumstances in their life that led up to their current predicament. It may not be easy to do, but ultimately it’s for the better, I think.
I mean, sure, there are going to be some guys out there who are virgins at 25 because they’re 650 pounds and can’t leave the house without a forklift… but I suspect 90% of the ones 'round here just get all nervous and shit.
You mean why do I ask the most freakin obvious question someone might ask when a full grown adult tells you he has never been in an intimate relationship? I think it’s a pretty reasonable question, don’t you?
I’m not asking to make them “feel worse”. It’s really more of a question they should be asking themselves. Everyone gets nervous and awkward around girls. But most people manage to work their way through it. My sense is that it is a larger problem that is unlikely to be solved on an anonymous message board or by going out to the clubs with your buddies.
Option A, Ask her out
Outcomes 1. Yes ,you go on a date.
2, She says no.
B. You do not ask her
Outcome… You spend the rest of your life wondering what would have happened if you asked her out.
In my opinion, the bottom line is that the only way to learn how to deal with girls is to practice dealing with girls. Try talking to them, try asking them out. The first few times – could be the first thirty times – you’ll be rejected, but you’ll eventually figure out what works.
The virgin thing isn’t a big deal at all, but the ‘spent too much time looking at porn’ rings a bell. You might be interested in this Adbusters article (not to derail this thread).
I think it’s a great question because intimate emotional relationships are a pretty fundamental need and it’s worth investigating root causes for their absence.
There was another very similar thread this month about a guy in a similar situation. Everyone jumped in telling him not to be nervous and to practice, but he really said little if anything about being anxious or nervous with women. He was a guy who didn’t feel emotionally close or connected to people.
Figuring out why that is and solving it will be tremendously more useful than just putting himself out there and meeting new women.
