Yes, indeedy, you could be wrong. Just about every woman I know has had a guy approach them in a crazy and/or creepy manner. Some of the guys come across not just as creepy or crazy, but threatening. In one instance, I was nearly ready to run a guy over with my car, if that was what it took to get away from him safely. I did wind up driving around in circles before going home, because I lived across the street and was afraid he’d see me pulling into my parking space and going up to my apartment. Then I let my neighbors and coworkers know that if a guy other than Dr.Jcame in looking for or asking about me, they should tell him nothing and possibly call the police. (Hey, when a man you’ve just turned down for a date keeps arguing with you about why and asking where you live and work, a healthy dose of paranoia isn’t such a bad thing.)
As others have said, being approached by a normal or semi-normal guy is nothing like being approached by the sort of guy in that thread, and the reactions aren’t even in the same universe.
LMAO. I dont really agree with that, aside from this aspect of my life when do i whine on SD? I can’t think of any. But yeah, i whine like a 4 year old about this part of my life. I’m open to being proven wrong however, but i don’t think i whine ‘that’ much about other stuff. I am overly analytical though. I’m not going to change it to make 3% more women find me attractive though. Ill just lie about it until the woman knows me enough to be emotionally addicted to me, then she’ll find a way to put up with it. All part of my master plan.
Also, i don’t act like this in person, this is an internet message board. You’re supposed to let down your hair and be honest, not put on a mask or a farce. I’m looking for advice and understanding and not trying to worry about social stigma or appearing attractive/confident. Most people who know me in person wouldn’t know i have these feelings about me. I don’t tell total strangers in person this part of my life, a few people who have known me for years don’t know i feel this way.
I think what bothers me is that i dont think this subject should occupy this much of my time. There are several interpersonal relationship ‘milestones’ i’ve never done and they don’t bother me at all. I don’t think i’ve ever played catch with my dad, never had a heartfelt conversation with a parent, never had a best friend (ive had good friend but either I didn’t consider them a best friend or they didn’t consider me their best friend, just good friends). And those things don’t bother me at all. I don’t want this part of my life to be any more important than any of them and i’m trying to figure out how to do that. This definately isn’t my ‘life’ but i would guess its one of the top 5 things i think about daily.
And, for the record, what i want more than anything is a better mindset towards this area of my life. A handful of dates with women whose personalities could be a toss-up is not as desirable as being comfortable with my situation. I think i have the same problem i have seen others in this situation have, they fear that relationships with women is a linear process and each step gives you the foundation to take the next step. You go from talking, to casual dating, to serious dating, to a relationship, to a serious relationship, to a marriage, to a happy marriage. And the more options you have in the lower steps the less ‘crap’ you’re willing to put up with and the better the mate you’ll end up with. I guess i have the same fear they do, that you need a foundation and multiple experiences in the lower areas (dates, casual relationships) to handle the higher relationships. Logically thats not really true and i can’t explain why i feel that way but i do. I guess there is some secret fear that each year is another nail in the coffin and if you don’t fix it now you’ll be stuck. Rexdart put it pretty well in his thread (where he was jumped on unfairly IMO for being misunderstood)
There is just a fear that without the foundation and experience you are fucked. What RexDart meant was that w/o any foundation or experience he was destined to fall desperately in love with the first woman he wasn’t physically (fatass) or mentally (loser) attracted to who would take advantage of him. I don’t really feel that way but there is that fear that w/o experience i won’t be able to find options, making me desperate. Logically it doesn’t make sense but ah well.
Wes, I feel your pain. I’m a generally shy person who makes his living (more or less) as a musician, so I’m in bars a lot as a necessity. I’m told I have no game, as I have never had any success picking up women at any of the bars I work at. Most of the reason isn’t rejection, even though it makes me uncomfortable to try to strike up a conversation with random strangers. Most of the reason is that the qualities that I look for in a girl aren’t qualities I can see in a random conversation in a bar.
You say you wish you spent less time thinking about this whole thing (I do too, but the upshot for me is it helps me write songs) and that you don’t like the “toss-up” nature of dating. Both of these problems can be solved at the same time by getting out of the house and finding a church or a club and some activities where you can meet friends and then, by extension, their friends. All of the meaningful relationships I’ve had started by meeting someone through someone I was friends with. There’s a lot less guesswork involved when you know the person as a friend or at least know that you’re involved in the same kind of scene in some respect.
Sorry if this all sounds redundant after everyone else’s posts, but I wanted to let you know that there’s at least one person who’s sort of in the same boat but kind of sees a way out of it (I admit that I do need to get out of the house more, though).
Wesley, I am an old woman. I may come across sounding like an unsympathetic snot, but that’s not what I’m feeling at all. I just think that I need to be as blunt as possible with my opinions.
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Please consider that it is none of your business what other people think of you. That is beyond your control. You have to choose your battles more carefully. You can control what you think of you and you can control what you think of someone else.
You are also not in control of how comfortable or uncomfortable they are or if they are alienated. They are human beings responsible for their own feelings. You are responsible for your feelings.
At the moment, you appear to feel afraid. Much of what you are afraid of is what might happen. As you said:
Please allow me to illustrate the consequences of such negative thinking. This story is not original with me, but it is told in my own words.
A farmer had a wheelbarrow that had rusted out and he needed to borrow his neighbor’s. The neighbor lived three miles away, but the farmer had no transportation and desperately needed that wheelbarrow. So he set out walking to his neighbor’s house.
He had walked almost a mile when he began to think to himself, What if my neighbor isn’t home? This troubled him a bit, for it was a long walk and he really needed that wheelbarrow. But he continued to walk.
After a while he got to thinking, What if my neighbor is home, but his wheelbarrow is broken? He stopped a minute to consider this because he had no guarantee that his neighbor’s wheelbarrow was in good condition. But he really needed a wheelbarrow. So he continued to walk.
When he had gone two miles, he thought, What if my neighbor is home and his wheelbarrow is in good shape, but he is using it himself? This really bothered the farmer. He might have walked all this way for nothing. But damn. He needed that wheelbarrow and would have to chance it.
He walked on until he could see the house around the bend and then he stopped. What if my neighbor is home and his wheelbarrow is in good shape, and he isn’t using it himself, but he just refuses to lend it to me?
With this in mind, the farmer began to run to the house. His jaws were clenched and his face was red. He pounded on the door with all of his strength. When his bewildered neighbor opened the door, the farmer waved his fist in the neighbor’s face and said, “Keep your goddam wheelbarrow!”
You know what your goal is – to have a life outside of this subject and to stop spending too much mental energy thinking about women. You know what you want to hear – that you can make it into your 40’s and not really date and still be a respectable, normal person.
If you were a truly confident person, you would not need reinforcement from us. You would be able to trust your own feelings in the matter.
Put down the burden of other people’s thinking and get to know yourself. If you have much self-knowledge, you aren’t showing it here. Find out who you are. Get some counseling – not because you aren’t “normal” or to help you feel comfortable around girls. Do it to explore your own personality – to start feeling comfortable in your own skin.
“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” – R. W. Emerson
Wesley, I’ll say it again, because you show no signs of having heard it the first time:
Women are just people. They’re not in existence to either torment or give ecstasy to men - they’re not Star Trek (TOG)'s ‘givers of pain or delight.’ Find friends among them the same way you would find any friends.
and
The point of dating is not a first step on a ladder. A date should be enjoyable in and of itself. So get to know a woman well enough to have good reason to think you’ll enjoy her company before you ask her out, and then on a date do something you would enjoy doing anyway. Then dating will be worth the trouble. I’m not saying you’ll never have a lousy time, but that’s true of everything you do - there are going to be occasions when things just go badly. But it maximizes your odds of enjoying it.
You write well and sound very interesting and likeable to me. Of course, I’m a 47 year old married straight male, so we’re 0 for 4. But on the admittedly very limited basis of having read numerous of your posts over time, I like you. It’s good you should know you are likeable and enjoyable.
I hate like hell being attracted to so many women. It’s like dieting and walking by a bakery and smelling the bread. It’s like being poor and watching them count money in a bank. AND IT’S FOR GODDAM NOTHING!! Why taunt me this way? I’m never going to have sex with all these poor young ladies!
In the end, the meaning of life is just more life, and any hint to the contrary is a red herring. Our drive to reproduce is just awful, just cruel and crazymaking. Maybe I don’t have actionable advice, but I can sure commiserate. I guess if you find halfway measures and frustration and mixed blessings at best, you’re still not missing some obvious answer or doing it wrong.
And none of that changes any of the other, good things about life!
Wrong answer, sweetie. Or at least, unhealthy answer and a lot of the reason we tend to say you lack confidence. A better answer is that this is a harmless part of your personality that there is no reason for you to change, and you’re not willing to lie about who and what you are for anybody. (I realize you were probably half (or more) joking about that, but it’s a joke with unhealthy undertones.) True confidence is being able to say, without outside validation, “There is nothing wrong with being the person I am” and truly believe it. It’s being able and willing to say, “Okay, here I am, warts and weaknesses and wierdness and all. If you love me, that’s fine. If you don’t, that’s fine, too.”
Again, not really a healthy answer. Life is where you’re supposed to be honest, not put on a mask or a farce. Nobody ever formed a meaningful relationship (friends, romantic, or other) with a mask. Real emotional connections require people, not facades.
Then you need to find other things to think about, or find enough other meaningful things to do that you don’t have so much time to think about this. Like everyone else has said, get involved in something, anything that will engage you. Build houses for Habitat, hand out condoms at Student Health, escort patients at women’s health centers, organize to save the round-eared wombat, learn to dance or do improv comedy, learn to crochet and make blankets for Christmas presents, whatever. Just stop sitting there staring at your navel and brooding about this. If nothing else, you’ll have less available time for brooding, although odds are excellent that you’ll feel better about the whole thing, too.
Lord, honey, you say that like anybody’s personality is ever not a tossup. There are never guarantees that you’ll hit off with someone, and once you do hit it off, there are never any guarantees that you’ll continue to hit it off. What will Dr.J’s personality be like 50 years from now? I have no frickin’ clue. It’s a complete toss-up, as is my future personality. People don’t come with guarantees. You want a guarantee, you go buy a major appliance.
You also have to remember that for the women in question, you are the pig in the poke, the unknown factor, the toss-up. You’re not taking any more risks going on a date than you’re asking them to take.
My advice to you would be to do some serious thinking about why you feel that way, why you have those fears. I’d second Zoe’s suggestion of counseling, not because I think there’s anything wrong with you, but because I think that it would help you articulate and understand how you feel and why you feel that. You can’t deal with feelings until you have some understanding of them.