abigailbrady | (no subject)

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.

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Hmm. I also had bad lack-of-socialisation type issues when I was 24 or so and was convinced I'd never be with anyone ever ever. What worked for me in the end was a) meeting people on the net rather than in person, and b) dating Americans, who tend to go for cute foreign accents. The trouble with b), of course, is one tends to end up with seriously long-distance relationships.

Unfortunately, I'm not really sure I can think of any more specific advice than that :/

I've been online enough that I think if this was going to be the answer for me it would have happened already, if that makes sense.

Oh, it does, but I didn't know if you'd specifically tried, for example, dating sites online.

I signed up to OKCupid a few years ago, but I find talking about myself to strangers in text to be about the hardest thing I've ever done, so signing up is about as far as I have got. It's worse than writing a CV!

Edited 2008-03-17 19:30 (UTC)

OKCupid has been good to me. I met my current girlfriend through that.

Providing biographical details is not worse than writing a CV; it's just different, and this may be the source of your trepidation. In a CV your goal is to paint yourself, and particularly your achievements, in the best possible light so as to attract potential employers. Self-aggrandisement is pretty much expected, and discussing your faults and failures is a no-no. Your goal is to secure an economic relationship by selling yourself to the employer. A dating profile is much different. Here you are not looking to win over a potential source of income by boasting about your achievements and glossing over your faults; you are looking for a mutually compatible personal relationship, and therefore need to give an honest and open accounting of yourself, warts and all. You also need to give at least a vague description of the sort of partner you are looking for. A good dating site, such as OkCupid, will guide you through this process by posing some biographical essay questions for you. All you need to do is to answer them truthfully, without concern about how people in general may view your answers. Remember, you are not trying to impress people in general; you are trying to find someone who happens to share your interests, find your personality intriguing, and accept your faults. Unless you want to deal with rejection after people have already gone through the trouble of contacting you, the only way of doing this is to be open about your interests, personality, and faults in your profile. Better to be simply and silently passed over by people browsing profiles than explicitly rejected by someone who contacted you, or even went on a date with you, only for them to find out that you weren't what they were looking for in the first place.

The problem is I have so little self-worth that an "honest and open accounting of myself" isn't likely to be accurate or even postable, and if it's accurate then it will feel like I am self-aggrandising.

I prefer having met people in real life.

Self-worth doesn't enter into it. In a dating profile, you describe yourself, not how you feel about yourself. You talk about the things you do in your spare time, and in your work time (if you consider your work to be enjoyable and/or a big part of your life); the kind of things you find funny or interesting; your favourite food, movies, music, and activities; your important life experiences; etc. How to feel about these things should be left up to the person reading the profile, not the one writing it.

I still find it terribly difficult, whatever the rationalisation. I will however ponder the matter.

And on OKCupid, other people can suggest changes to your profile, so we can write it all for you. ;)

Ooh. Can I also get other people to chat up more other people on my behalf? That would be ideal.