Scientist93

Hoo boy, @SophiaG, y0ou've really given me something new to work with! 😅 I'mma address your points for clarity. Here goes: Because otherwise I might never be, or at least I might not be on time, and that doesn't fit in with my self-fulfillment roadmap? 😆 That's the way I used to think up until very recently, at least. Turned out to be too much bother and very little, if anything, else. A secondhand emotional experience doesn't even come near living up to a firsthand one - in fact, it's likely to be misleading! And that's not just due to lack of information about a given relationship others have (by which I mean that you judge it only by the (seemingly) functioning parts of it which are observable from the outside), but also due to the fact that you are not those people and are thus different from them in any number of significant ways in which the relationship they happen to have just wouldn't work for you. Beyond the basic needs, so much can differ from one person to another, including how their minds operate, how their moods and emotions change/persist and are overall regulated, what their more complex needs and desires are etc. Not to mention that envy is about comparison, and comparison is a major robber of the inner peace. I don't see how envy could be a healthy source of motivation for seeking companionship, as it's a sort of a competitive emotion, so it's got no place in matters that are about inner alignment rather than one-upping. Bottom line, there's no amount of romanticising other people's relationships alone that would fool me into seeking a relationship of my own (even though consumerism does weave a web of passive societal pressures along those lines more often than not ). Considering how much my psyche's been ingrained in fear and distrust on the subject, juxtaposing a positive relationship model from the outside rather than on the inside would do me more harm than good... and just like that's my lived experience, I likewise need a lived experience of an overall significantly positive and beneficial relationship in order to desire it and chase it actively. Imagining how good others might have it simply doesn't cut it in that respect. As I've already written earlier in this topic, the innocence of the early-adolescent sexual impulsiveness is not something I can access through hormonal means alone. It's buried by so many bad experiences I have had since that relatively brief (and absolutely unsuccessful xD) period, so to dig it up would require my fears to give way to trust... and trust is one of the rare things which absolutely CANNOT be built all by one's lonesome, which means I need to find a partner first and liberate myself with their help afterwards. You can see how that's a big practical problem. 😆 I clearly wrote "anything more" [than what I've already done, which is gauge her interest through both hanging out with her and texting her], which leads me into... I completely agree with you, except that I've already made my first move a while ago, and as far as I can tell, she just never reciprocated in a way that would so much as hint at an active interest on her behalf. That story ended with me asking her to accompany me on a bike ride (well, she'd rollerskate along) during the upcoming weekend back in July (or at least early August, I don't remember), to which she replied that she has too many birthdays and other celebrations to attend all the way until the end of September, so she's way too booked to make it... and if there's one universal marker of interest, it's that people who like you - make time for you. At that point, if it had ever been ambiguous in any way, it was clear to me that she didn't like me nearly enough. Either way, the next time I saw her, I didn't even like her! I guess the veil of my self-hype had finally been lifted. xD And with these words, I hope to finally put this topic to its well-deserved rest. Thanks for chiming in either way. 🙂

Hey everyone, I haven't written here in a while so I'd just like to say - thank you once again for joining me for some constructive discussion! I think that this topic has served its purpose, at least for me. I would like to share with you my main takeaway from our conversation, as surprising as it might be: 1) Simply putting conscious effort into knowing others better, without having any expectations of what your relationships with those people should be, is a good, safe and desirable thing to do, and there are no real downsides to it in the bigger picture. 2) Chemistry cannot be forced. Self-hyping can barely get a person less than halfway far, and hardly in a good way. The so-called unconscious markers either do or don't get hit, but trying to consciously engineer them in any way is a shallow task. Even if one can trick the other person (which is what pickup artistry is about), one can only fool oneself so much. Again, I don't consider these conclusions to be absolute or inerrant in any way, but they ring true to me based on my own experiences, some of which are (admittedly) very very recent. And as for the "overwhelmingly bad experiences", I'm ready to accept that they make us what we are, for better or for worse. It's up to ourselves to carry them however we must... and if we're hurt or (worse yet) broken, I just hope we're there for each other in the healing process. Lord knows we need it.

I would like to be there for my kid(s) and provide them with the emotional support I lacked from my parents as a child. It wasn't a big lack in my case, mind you, but due to various factors, I never quite internalised their love in a way in which my inner voice of self-love would grow powerful enough to triumph over my inner voices of harsh self-critique and self-loathing and self-disdain. That, however, does not mean that I'm incapable of loving and supporting others the way I'd love to be loved and supported myself. It merely means that I just so happen to struggle with being both the subject and the object of my love and having to do it anyway, against all odds and in the face of all the self-sabotage. Right now, I feel like I could use some outside help in order to learn to love myself better, but the issue is that I'm coming from a place of childlike weakness and neediness that is societally seen as unbecoming and undesirable for an adult (albeit for a good and perfectly logical reason), so if I show it, I'm not likely to attract any potential partners other than those that are 1) abundant with (self-)love and 2) ready to play a bit of a saviour but only to an extent (as it would be inadequate to keep that role past the point of me integrating their self-love). Because of that, I don't really wanna show it, but the price of that is having to play up other desirable parts of my personality, as long as they're authentic... which is fine, but it doesn't mean that the self-sabotaging part doesn't strive to manifest itself from the shadows.

Also, not that I wanna forcibly revive this thread outta nowhere, but to everyone who's written here since I last wrote - thank you so much for all your kind words and considerations! It really means a lot to me. I was gonna reply sooner, but I'm still on summer vacation and whatnot, so I'm taking it one step at a time.

I seem to keep stoking misunderstandings with the idioms I use on this forum. 😅 When I said "man up", I meant "not run away from the potential pain of rejection, but accept the possibility of it in advance and then meet it head-on and tough it out if it happens". Nothing necessarily inherently manly or womanly there, although I do feel like powering through the wounds and growing a "thick skin" in order to overcome adversity is a societal expectation that still applies to men overwhelmingly more than it does to women... hence my perhaps slightly unfortunate choice of words. As for picking a mission and sticking to it, the one that I feel like I'm close to choosing might be autodestructive... and while it might be what I need after all, I fear there's a lack of wisdom in abandoning everything else for it, at least in the absence of a plan B that I'd be able and willing to go with in the case of failure. Of course, not having firmly stepped on that path yet, it's way too early for me to think that I'd be burning bridges, but it does look to me like it'd be a long road of living in a compensatory manner and setting goals that are way too lofty, simply because my "fear of dating" is so great that I feel like I need to have some sort of a failsafe in case I never "find love". TL;DR I still treat willingly confronting rejection as a form of masochism with a side of gambling, and I'm unsure about the mission I'm on the cusp of picking because the ambition powering it exists (mostly) due to my overt mental discomfort with my own unwanted singlehood. I really like the addiction parallel you used! I sometimes wonder if my own "dating-avoidant" behaviour is an addiction of sorts (as there certainly is a habit component to it), but more than that, I lament the lack of a dedicated group that would seriously and dilligently treat it as such, maybe even in a twelve-step form. Love Cowards Anonymous? 😆 I'd unironically like to have something like that in my life, although best I can do right now is group psychotherapy every other week, so I'll see where that'll take me. I don't think there's anything wrong with a reappraisal of my singlehood, by the way. It's just that my ideas for what would constitute a well-lived single life for me are so grandiose that I can't help but think that such self-demand is unhealthy in its overbloatedness. At the same time, I want to accept my limitations, but since I don't know their extents and I'm scared of testing them, I end up subconsciously trying to cut all of my options off... which is, again, me shying away from responsibility. If I could live according to a "my life is gonna suck no matter what I do" mindset, I think my life would suck less, because I wouldn't be feeling the pressure to "get my life right". I still don't have that mentality of believing that I can deal with whatever happens, as much as I would find that relieving. I completely agree that FOMO shouldn't be the main reason to want progeny. I wouldn't say that it's that per se in my case, though, but it is a part of my concern that I might not be able to give as much as I want to humanity through my work alone. This need for an immortalisation of sorts, be it a typically petty human tendency or even something outright pathological, is what follows me, for better or for worse. I have a dream of what I want to leave to the world, and if I can't manage to make it a reality, I'd like to be able to focus on leaving my experiences to future generations (of my own kin) as learning tools. Of course, that's not all I'm going off of, as I'm also struggling to satisfy my basic mental and physical needs, which on some level include fatherhood (and also the romantic and sexual companionship that ties in with it so neatly and purposefully, no doubt). I'd like to have a purer reason for wanting to have kids, devoid of any considerations brought on by the fear of death... but ultimately, I really don't know if any of us are built, or can change, in a way that can just fully ignore the question of survival, whether literal or metaphorical.

I meant to say that I find it hard not to project stuff on top of a date while I'm going on it. xD It ain't always that bad, though. A month or two ago, I thought one of my bandmates' colleagues was cute, so after some texting, I asked her if she wanted to rollerskate alongside my bicycle (and that's not a euphemism, mind you 😆) during the upcoming weekend. She told me she was gonna be busy with birthdays and stuff probably until October, so I told her to notify me then, but I stopped trying. Later I realised that I didn't even like her that much, and I guess it's what made it all easier. Not really. I'd rather skip from point A to point B without traversing the distance between them, I just know better than to think that I'm gonna be the one to invent the teleport. 😆 Already on all of these, but thank you regardless! 🙂 I'm going to address the lengthier replies later, y'all. I'm glad people have taken interest in this topic.

Therein kinda lies the difficulty. If I could just up and do that, I wouldn't be here talking about hard it is for me to do that. 😆 But I get it.

There's really no harm in anything you mentioned; instead, it's all in everything implied for me around it. The harm is in feeling dependent on the outcome of a date for your mental health. The harm is in being desperate because you feel like you absolutely need a relationship in your life and the clock is ticking and you cannot ignore it anymore. The harm is in having a FOMO on having your own biological children and fearing health problems and your own old age as a parent if you end up searching for way too long. The harm is in encountering unadulterated life as an adult and feeling unable to decide what to stick to and what to let go. The harm is in choosing wrong and not being able to let go of your regrets and forgive yourself and march on. The harm can also be in caring, all that much more because it's paradoxically impossible not to care when you're really into someone. And the more I think about all of that, the worse I feel. I would like to actually go and live my life according to a mission, but not any mission - a mission the success of which does not depend on having a relationship at all. That's hard, and it's not something most people choose... and perhaps I wouldn't choose it, either, but as things have been standing for much longer now than I'd ever find desirable, the ideas about getting into a relationship and starting a family in something like the next 10 years are already ruining my present. I keep walking in two worlds while inhabiting neither, and if I can't or just don't want to "man up" in order to start dating (at the very least), then I should just embrace giving up on it until a version of me further down the line can possibly change its mind from a more favourable life situation. The only thing is, I don't know if I even can stop fretting about dating at this point. There are other things I possibly can (and hopefully will) sort out easier, but my difficulties related to those efforts are sufficient that I need to spend more energy just so I don't get sucked into a depressive vortex. Unemployment sucks, hating yourself because of a low-paying job sucks, and slowly growing apart from your friends (even just from a purely economic standpoint, for starters) also sucks. And aging sucks for everyone, more or less. Sometimes, I wish there would be a person that could just f-ing be there and hug me and tell me "we'll get through this together, this is our journey" and not leave, because there wouldn't be anything more important for them then what we're building and striving towards. I would reciprocate that so hard. Wouldn't even have to be a spouse, but I don't see anyone but a spouse taking on something like that, so...

My bad, I used "confession" as a placeholder for anything that unambivalently conveys romantic interest. Of course, flirting is about having some plausible deniability thrown in the mix there as well, and that's perfectly alright. I can certainly flirt to an extent, and I have done so many times. However, here's the thing: 1) I need to get introduced to a person in a social setting before deciding to flirt with them, meaning that I never really flirt in any first-time approach kind of setting (unless I get approached myself and gauge sufficient interest that way)... and that's not absolutely immutable on my part, but whether out of cowardice or out of spite - I still choose not to do it; 2) going along the lines of my previous post in this forum, even upon deciding a person might be interesting to talk to and explore and "poke and prod" for reactions based on my own shallow impression that I like them, I rarely experience sufficient attraction to proceed any further with my suggestions within the flirting - that is, without the other party doing at least something in turn to pique my interest in a way that I can read as being indicative of potential reciprocation. I've had my fair share of one-sided texting situations that went both well AND nowhere at the same time (in the sense that I never, and I mean never, got messaged first afterwards), so that's obviously a turn-off... but I've also been told that I might miss out on a nice person just because they're too shy to respond with anything more. Whether I'd want and/or need to be with such a shy person is another fair question, and I guess the answer is that I'd at least like to be able to read people better, in order to be more confident in my estimations. Without that, it's just wishful thinking and hopeful guesswork, and I really don't wanna do any o' that anymore.

I'm 31, and I have massive regrets over my sheer dating cowardice. I keep thinking that I could've entered (and possibly even maintained) at least a couple of relationships in the past 10-ish years, had I had the courage to confess my feelings to the other parties and inquire about whether my likings are reciprocated or not. I feel severely paralysed by a small infinity of various what-could-have-beens, and I don't feel able to forgive myself about those perceived missed opportunities, which makes me feel equally unable to carry the burden of (apparent?) choice, the likewise small infinity of what could be. I'm sure it takes just one right person for me to forgive myself, but whether said person is my future self or someone else, I don't feel like I can quite count on that to happen. The reality of the matter is that I don't actually want to risk rejection, and I'm scared of the consequences of continuing to live that way, but not scared enough to change trajectory. Right now, it's like I'm coursing through life on a faithless hope alone. I'm struggling with how to view and make sense of the path I've taken, including the question of whether it was something I've done willingly or not. I feel like I'm still going down the same road of waiting for someone to show up and make me realise they're the person I've been waiting for all along, the person that would accompany me on my journey through life. It's like a part of me is on a massive sunk cost fallacy type of downward spiral and just wants to ride it out to the end of the game of life and "unlock another ending" for concept's sake, unless the "script" (i.e. destiny or whatever) has other ideas... but another part of me is suffering through the entire playthrough of it. I want to reconcile these halves that wage the mental war within me. If I've decided not to confess my feelings to potential partners, I want to be able to stand behind such a decision and fully accept its consequences. I want to be at peace with my resolution to live a full life without dating and just let a relationship happen if it's gonna, instead of my ruminations about my miserable love life weighing me down; however, I'm terrified of the prospect of failing to achieve such a life and realising all too late that I should've put more effort into actually not being a pusillanimous little ball of avoidance and focused on finding a relatively stable and healthy relationship first. Any thoughts on this subject? Thank you all in advance, I really appreciate it!!!

I'm certainly gonna do the former. Dunno about the latter, though. 😆

There is a case to be made for chasing red flags, though. Some 5-6 years ago, at a friend's birthday, I met, and immediately took a liking to, a girl that had many of the qualities I find attractive: bubbly, smiley excitable, almost manically extroverted, one helluva singer, really approachable and touchy-feely-huggy and whatnot... but as I tried to get closer to her, I found out from her directly that she's got a very lengthy history of being severely domestically abused, which is why "shallow" attraction comes to her extremely easily but intimacy doesn't at all. I never even reached the first base with her, but I did enjoy the vitriolic friendship that we had all the same, at least between the overly long trauma dump calls and the situations in which she'd snog around in front of me and/or tell me about the other guys she likes (upon which I'd have to remind her that just because I'm a good friend doesn't mean I'm a gay friend xD). Suffice to say that she wasn't exactly good for my mental health, and me being aware of it was what kept me restrained from trying to pursue a relationship with her, even though the attraction I felt was undeniable (unlike with the woman I've previously talked about in this thread). Still, at one point, I did consider trying to seriously romantically pursue her, and as my insecurities about the consequences of her mental states held me back, one person actually gave me the advice to try it anyway, because even though I knew what was good for me, I didn't feel attraction towards such women, so the only way for me to progress past that (according to that person) was to go for those women which are bad for me anyway and let the direct experience of that teach me. Ultimately, I ended up never taking that person's advice, but hadn't it actually been for the fact that the girl I was interested in only hung out with me and another dude who she friendzoned as well (because anyone being sexual towards her works on the surface but grinds to a complete halt underneath, as I've already said), I'd've probably made a serious reconsideration. I think that her being intimacy-impotent in itself was a greater obstacle for me than the friends vs. lovers compartmentalisation and other red flags. TL;DR Maybe I did dodge a bullet once, but it's unclear as to whether or not such a tradeoff would be good if I at least had a real chance at having sexual intimacy with that person. Either way, I haven't met any similar women after that, so any points about me doing something different the next time might be moot.

Excuse me, what? 🤨 Self-esteem? Self-confidence? From bad experiences? Maybe only if you do it right. I certainly don't know how. While I have drawn important lessons from my bad experiences in the past, I'm not sure that my self-esteem and self-confidence, which were damaged by those bad experiences, got repaired in the process of learning those lessons; in fact, I'd argue on the contrary. 1) I agree, I was just making that point based on the fact that most men I know are more taken in by appearances than I am... but it's by no means absolute. It could be down to a difference in the ways we handle excesses of such impulses, but I'm not sure. 2) As someone who's been in therapy for a long time now, I must admit that I do tend to err on the side of caution when it comes to following what I'm into, as what I need can, among other things, be determined by the projections of parental figures (which I've mentioned in my original post here). However, I've been told many a time that I should follow love through my own pathology nevertheless, and now that I agree about that - I hardly have the inspiration to follow anyone. xD I'm not dealing in whens, only ifs. 3) I mean, I've had many times when I wanted to say stuff so much but ended up swallowing it due to a horrible fear of rejection. In the case of the most recent woman I've been into, I think the situations in which I got jealous (because she kept paying significantly more attention, with some hints of physical affection, toward one of my friends who she knows is very much taken) definitely made me wanna say stuff, but saying them would blow my cover of non-jealousy and apparent moderation of interest in an instant, leaving me in a messy, irrational position from which I'd have to claw my way back to a normal, neutral friendship with her. I think I'm not ready for the social consequences of my feelings, so I leave them unexpressed and then have series of several days in which I have troubling dreams, like my teeth falling out and stuff. 4) Thank you for your faith and your kind words! I'm searching for something better than faith right now, if I can find it. That's an interesting choice of activities during which to say nice things to yourself! I'll have it in mind!

I just wanna say that I'm also aware of the negative effects of self-namecalling, so I'm careful not to do that, either. The negative self-talk example I gave is something that's happened to me before, so whenever I have to deal with my own bad decisions, I have to be wary of that and strive to be kind and understanding toward myself. I don't even find it to be an especially tough battle to fight, but it must be fought nevertheless.

Tagging this part for clarity regarding who I'm responding to. Most of the behavioural stuff you've mentioned, I've already got sorted out. It's just that I'd rather not destabilise my extended circle of close friends by having to deal with the discomfort of meeting the woman who rejected me there. All I need is a hint of being liked back to get me going forward, because even in the case it was misleading and I get rejected, at least I can call the woman out on the cues she provided, instead of muttering "just like the simulations" to myself because "I *knew* she didn't like me enough and I tried anyway, I didn't trust my own judgement because I'm a desperate idiot". Well, I mean, my standard for making the first move is to feel sufficient attraction, but that virtually never comes to me based on the 'visuals' alone, even though it is a big part of what makes a man attracted. (There's a whole 'nother can o' worms we could open there, called "desensitisation due to the Internet", but I'd advise against it, because I'm already aware of it and working to mitigate the damage that might be caused.) I usually need some sort of an emotional connection (through the troubles we both experience, through the things we like, through the music we listen to) with a dash of extroverted physicality and vibrantly excited personality, perhaps already on the verge of flirtiness. I've already had the pleasure of meeting such women, but they're really few and far between (the single ones even more so). For example, the woman whose interest in me I'm currently trying to gauge just lacks that bit of extra attention and touchy-feeliness in order to win me over; and even though she, for example, overall dislikes most cats, I don't consider that to be a dealbreaker. 😃 So there. And as for remembering love, I don't think I've had actual romantic love in my past relationships. Sure, I wanted to make it work; sure, I got some companionship and a taste of all three bases; but love requires persistence and commitment (which I was giving), and I didn't get it at all in return.