(no subject)

[abigailbrady]

so. i am 29 this year. compared to where i was 10 years ago, i have changed a lot. i am a fully functioning adult human being with a job and a flat and friends and everything. this is good.

i have not ever been in a relationship/dated anyone. as an abstract concept this doesn't particularly upset me. i am, as noted above, a self-sufficient independent person. i can appreciate the argument that having had no relationships is better than having had bad ones. and y'know, if that was the end of the matter i don't think i'd be unhappy. but it's not.

because every so often someone makes the mistake of being nice to me. and i get painfully infatuated. and i then get rejected. and then i feel like shit for a few months, and then it happens again with someone else. i would like this to stop happening. if it could stop happening by someone actually liking me for a change this would be nice. it doesn't seem very likely though, does it?

people tell me they have no idea why people aren't interested in me, but that they are sure it is just coincidence. i don't believe that. there are clearly influencing factors. i am very worried that i'm missing huge chunks of appropriate human behaviour in my socialisation (i ought to have learned all this in my late teens/early 20s, when i was otherwise occupied), and this is just an area of life which will remain forever closed to me. this idea upsets me, because what little of it i have experienced i liked. i would like to have hope, but hope has caused pain.

i am left confused and upset.

so

• what is wrong with me?
  
• are people not interested in me because they assume i am happily single?
  
• are people not interested in me because they assume there must be something wrong with me?
  
• are in fact people interested in me and i am not noticing it? (note: if so please tell me)
  
• should i make effort to meet more new people?
  
• wouldn't it be better just to go and hide?
  
• am i just hanging out in the wrong social circle to meet people who might be interested in me?
  
• given how bad i am at dealing with rejection anyway, wouldn't it be a really terrible idea for me to put myself in a situation with even more potential for that?
  

in conclusion: argh. answers, suggestions and proposals welcome.

Comments

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

hah. mapping is a really really bad place to meet women. i was about the only female at the openstreetmap conference. not entirely sure why there is this skew. in fact, i had a conversation about this with someone who had seen my entry about this, and had said "well, that must be pretty good for picking up geek guys then". and i was "well, i suppose it would be. unfortunately i have teh ghey." it's not a very social activity anyway.

*nod*. i may do a poll about whether people's gaydars are good generally and whether they worked for me. i'm not about to suddenly start being more dyker or indeed more femme anything (if you prod there you might find an interesting bag of neuroses all of its own).

i don't know, i really don't.

[battlekitty.livejournal.com]

Situation Hypothetical: (Insert Mission: Impossible theme tune here...)
Ah - I see now! POssibly a better answer, then:
Trying to get into a different social circle can be tricky: you are opening yourself up to rejection in theory, but there are things to bear in mind:
- if you are trying to fit in with only One Thing (tm) on your agenda, yeah, it's most likely to fail in the long run if not the short. More friends is the aim you want there. (Not that I think you'd make that mistake - I'm stating the obvious!)
- If you are looking for socialising and possible friends, rejection shouldn't be an issue - you'll either get along or not, but if you find a closing of ranks and that sort of teenage elitism going on, do you really want to know them? If that sort of thing seems to be happening, it's a reflection on them, not you. (Not sure if that makes sense outside of my head...)


If I could explain in writing how to get over it, I'd do so (and write a book and try to make £million or something... hell, I might even manage to get over it myself!), but yes: more important is that it's not an impossible situation. I guess my point underlying a lot of that is that a) you are not a hopeless lost cause - you're a long way from it! b) Sometimes the human brain comes up with some pretty far-fetched excuses for situations - assuming that you're the one who's "wrong" and "everything" is your problem doesn't help get through it.

(Again, excuse my bluntness - I don't do tact very well! And am supposed to be working....)

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

Oh, I am not worried by people not being my friends. That sort of thing I can cope with well enough. It's just, if I meet more people, and I meet more people I am interested in, I also meet more people who spurn me when I tell them that. And anyway, if by some strange sequence of events I did have a relationship with someone - can you imagine what I would be like were I to be dumped? Maybe it is best just to stay out.

[battlekitty.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear! (And: Their loss!)

Think of it the other way: The more people you meet, the more likely you'll find ones that don't spurn your advances, or better yet jump you as soon as they get the chance! :) Nothing is certain.

You will never know how you will deal with a relationship ending until it happens: worrying about how you will deal if you get dumped is like trying to learn to ride a bike and spending all your time thinking about how much it will hurt when you hit the ground instead of learning how to pedal (and that's to say nothing of actually enjoying it!)

And anyway, every break up is different and it doesn't get any easier. (Hell, I've just gone through my worst ever and I've had more than a few relationships.) Of course, you can't assume that they'd break up with you, either!

(Have you seen 16 Candles, by the way? You reminded me of a really sweet quote in there by Sam's father: "That's why they call them crushes. If they were easy, they'd call them something else.")

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

But that tends towards thinking I haven't met the right person yet. Whereas I've probably met possible right persons several times but have been incapable of dealing with it. Meeting more people and failing in the same way because of my behaviour isn't going to help.

I have not seen that, no.

[blue-mai.livejournal.com]

hmm. urm. what about those ceilidhs then? comic/magazine meets? i don't know, i don't go. the thought of all that joyful dancing scares me.
p'raps stating the obvious - it would be good if you could get used to the idea that people who like you don't necessarily like you.
also, my sister is almost 31. she first started going out with someone a few months ago.
lost and lots of comments. overwhelming but they are a good indication that We Care and from that you can deduce that you are well liked and we want you to be happy. i be quiet now.

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

[more excuses]

it is good to see people commenting. a curious mix of them.

[kake]

Yes, hard to tell re timing... but it is at least possible that this is the problem? I would say also that I'm not sure infatuation is the best state to begin a relationship in, so that's another reason for waiting for it to wear off before you approach someone.

Before anyone misinterprets, and jumps on me for being anti-romance: I see infatuation as being different from NRE — New Relationship Energy — the former is more of an internal thing, if you see what I mean, while the latter comes from interaction. This is part of why I don't think infatuation and relationships go together very well; infatuation doesn't tend to be about what the person is really like, but rather about an idealised version of them. (Of course, we may be using the same word to mean different things, in which case I'm being useless.)

(Yes, we should fix it. Would you like to be on my London stuff filters? Not that I've been using them much recently — I will try to do something about that.)

[kake]

The thing is that there are some people who are very put off by the "calculated" approach — not so much the fact that the person is looking for sociableness, but the way that they end up coming across while in pursuit of their goal. You (Abi) may well be happier in the social circles that aren't possible to reach with hairyears' approach.

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm not quite meaning that. It's not coming from a vacuum, it comes from interaction and positive feedback about deepening friendship which I have just misread. Obviously I am speaking in generalities here. But that is basic pattern.

(Uh, sure)

[pplfichi.livejournal.com]

This will end up restating things that others have said, but more personal views the better?

There is nothing wrong with you, and I don't see people looking at you as though there is something wrong with you. Being attracted to people that are interested in you and this leading to infatuation is quite natural. Dating does seem to mostly come down to experience, and getting to know more people. Getting the experience is hard (especially as more people settle into long term relationships as we get older), meeting more people increases the chance that you will meet someone who wants a relationship with you. Hiding really doesn't help here. Hiding means not interacting with people, which is a sure way staying single.

People could be interested in you. You might not be noticing the signs through lack of relationship experience - in effect being blind to people flirting with you?

I really doubt that you're hanging in the wrong group of friends. As long as you are meeting new people and maintaining friendships with people then you will end up meeting people that find you attractive, and some of those will be interested in a relationship, some of whom will try harder then others. Really expanding your circle of friends is the only way I know of to increase your chance of finding a relationship.

As for the rejection question, rejection is always a risk. I feel that in investing on your emotional resources on someone for some time and that person rejecting you is going to be a particularly nasty form of it though. The other thing that springs to mind is that if you are obviously after someone in particular, people around you start to pick that up and are less likely to see you as someone open to the idea of a relationship. At the same time, you are less likely to notice anyone that isn't the person you are infatuated with at that moment.

[battlekitty.livejournal.com]

Both are speculation, regardless. Maybe you met a right person at the wrong time for one of you, maybe they were incapable of dealing with it, too. *shrug* Past can't be changed, best look at the future :)

Behaviour: If that's the actual cause, yes, but even then it can't be the entire cause. (If it was, you would notice a distinct lack of friends!)

It's a very silly movie, but does have that quote halfway through it :) And it has a nice fairy tale ending.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

what is wrong with me?

As previously noted, nothing. But perhaps some of your behaviour is unhelpful, and it is right to try to address this.

are people not interested in me because they assume i am happily single?

You make it fairly clear that you do not wish to be single, so I do not think that this is the case.

are people not interested in me because they assume there must be something wrong with me?

Not to my knowledge.

are in fact people interested in me and i am not noticing it? (note: if so please tell me)

Again, not to my knowledge.

These are difficult questions because I'm not sure what it is that makes me feel attracted to some people and not others. I know that intelligence and kindness have a huge amount to do with it, for me, but I don't know why I feel attracted to pfy and hairyears and not, say, timeplease or ali_anarres. I don't know why I have an intellectual crush on one person that does have a side-helping of strong physical attraction, but an intellectual crush on another person with absolutely no physical elements at all. Not knowing this about myself I can't extrapolate for other people and so I cannot generalise.

I also don't really do the flirting thing very well, I don't think.

The only thing that I can think of that might be specifically off-putting is that you can come across as a bit desperate, but I have no idea how much of that is stuff that I pick up as a person you talk to about these things sometimes. And it's a typical catch-22 situation as you won't stop coming across as desperate until you feel less desperate, and you won't feel less desperate until your outlook on your situation changes (which may be brought about by the actual situation changing).

moar

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

should i make effort to meet more new people?

Yes. But perhaps 'change direction of effort' is better than 'make more effort'. I'm not sure.

Also, building social networks takes time. I've been gradually getting to know people in the current one I'm in since, oh, well, ages ago, and even then it only really came together because it was jump-started by the Borders meetup (which I started attending in early 2005).

I don't know how long it normally takes because I've never actually had a circle of friends like this before now.

wouldn't it be better just to go and hide?

I think you'd miss the non-romantic aspects of social contact after a while.

am i just hanging out in the wrong social circle to meet people who might be interested in me?

Depends what you think of as your social circle. Certainly hanging around with poly/bi people is going to be a slight advantage.

given how bad i am at dealing with rejection anyway, wouldn't it be a really terrible idea for me to put myself in a situation with even more potential for that?

It might be a good idea to learn how to deal with smaller forms of rejection before going for something that might result in a bigger one. I'm not sure it's useful to worry about it too much though, because that kind of rejection is going to be difficult no matter what.

I've had very few painful infatuations in my life, of the sort where I feel that I need the attentions or affections of a specific person. The big one I can think of led to a relationship that lasted 9 years. My other infatuations or crushes are more of a "This person exists and that in and of itself brings me delight and joy" nature. I can quite happily say that of the people I am currently vaguely interested in, only one of them knows about it (AFAIK), that person is unavailable and I really don't mind that she's unavailable, because seeing her happy makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside whether I have anything to do with it or not. I can enjoy spending time with her but feel no particular ache if I don't get a chance to for a while, save what I might in any social situation. I spend a lot of time thinking of her but this doesn't bother me as it is rather pleasurable. I have no idea whether this is normal or healthy, or whether other people tend to feel this way, and I'm not saying anyone should or shouldn't, just trying to explain how it works with me.

When I have had painful, needful feelings toward people (most notably shevek) it has usually been because I have been very lonely and unhappy generally, and some trick of my brain convinced some part of me that if only he loved me, everything would be better. I would be safe, I wouldn't be alone, and all would be well. This is, sadly, a complete fantasy. That didn't stop me trying to apply it anyway, and re-arranging my entire life around one relationship, but that really didn't work and ultimately went a long way toward destroying the relationship. For context, before I fell for shevek I wanted to be an old maid with 27 cats because I didn't want any of the obligation or risk that comes with meaningful relationships with other people.

and moar...

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

Another thing that occurs to me is we live in a very non-touch-oriented society. I know that when I am tired, stressed or lonely, I need quite a bit of physical contact (though not necessarily sexual contact, which can be distressing if I'm really upset) and sometimes only physical contact will do. I know that when I was dating shevek I basically expected him to provide that whenever I needed it, and that was difficult because a) we lived in different cities (after we'd finished living in different countries) and b) he is easily drained by that sort of contact in some contexts. I am learning to manage this quite differently now. It does help to have a strong circle of friends who will actually hug me (and even snuggle a bit) if I ask, and it helps to have two boyfriends, but there are still times when I feel isolated due to lack of touch. I'm learning that there are things I can do that will help me feel better for a while; a hot bath, or a hot water bottle, or a walk outside all help. Staying in touch with people online helps (though can be counter-productive if I'm not careful). Listening to really good music helps, and I so often forget to do it. Anyway, I'm wondering if some of your painful infatuation might be due to plain old ordinary touch-deprivation, and if completely non-sexual physical contact on a regular basis might help you feel better. But maybe I'm just projecting my own needs onto you.

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

This is all very easy for you to say. But how am I supposed to fix this? It's not like I am consciously doing any of it. this bit of angst - which I may have mentioned the details of to you before - was ultimately only resolved by me just not hanging around with that person any more. Every time I think I notice signs and act on it, it doesn't work out [bad original wording. ed.]. I don't want to be doing that for the rest of my life.

Re: and moar...

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

(you know more about the specifics than nearly anyone who has commented, by the way, so i hope that perception of me is not typical. it is interesting to contrast that with comments of other people).

Certainly hanging around with poly/bi people is going to be a slight advantage.

I'm not sure that this doesn't make it worse, actually. Lots of people having lots of relationships about me.

Anyway, I'm wondering if some of your painful infatuation might be due to plain old ordinary touch-deprivation, and if completely non-sexual physical contact on a regular basis might help you feel better.

I do like non-sexual physical contact and I do not get anywhere near enough of it. Maybe I'd be happy in a non-sexual romantic relationship, even. I won't really know what I'm looking for until I've found it.

[pplfichi.livejournal.com]

This is all very easy for you to say.

No more easier or harder then anyone else.

But how am I supposed to fix this?

If I had a good answer to this question...

The not very useful answer is "do something different". Perhaps it is concentrating too on one person who seems nice and interested in you, perhaps it's something specific you need? (that maybe you haven't figured out yet? Have you an idea of what you're looking for in a relationship?). I don't know.

The linked to angst is 403 Forbidden. [edit: Not any more]

Do you mean every time you think you notice signs of <infatuation|someone being attracted to you>, you act to <try to stop it|ask the person out>?

[blue-mai.livejournal.com]

i'm exhausted just reading about it (hairyears' social life). sorry, just being nosey.

[annomalley.livejournal.com]

I've only skim-read the comments but if you find any good advice in there, TAKE IT, take it and run with it, like the wind. I'm rubbish at romance, for some of the same and some different reasons as/than you, and ageing/not being in the best of health means what little interest there was in me is getting even less.

[annomalley.livejournal.com]

Oh and the less interest I get, the more speechless and clumsy I get when people do try to flirt with me.

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

I am considering all the advice. Some of it directly contradicts other bits of advice. Hmm.

I can imagine that happening to me. In situations where I am in control I am now reasonably quick-witted, but if someone unexpected flirted with me, eek.

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what I'm looking for really. I have observed in humans the way they figure out what they are looking for is to try various things and then see which they liked. That seems a pretty good way of going about it.

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I should be looking to future. Maybe after this period of introspection I will. Having friends is still something I am vaguely surprised by, after horrible childhood experiences. Actually that's not true. I am just about used to it now.

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

Yeah.. I actually met a lot of people at the Dungeon and am having problems adapting to the London nightclub scene! That said, when I went to Sedition the other night, I did bump into a bunch of people I knew, although they were mainly from the Dungeon. :)

But to echo what someone else said, even if nightclubs aren't always a good place to meet people, getting dressed up to go to one can help make you feel more like a sexual being.