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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

blue-mai.livejournal.com

i've only met you a few times in the pub, and you seem alright to me.
but since you're looking for clues... if anything, you're quite intimidating at first, you seem like you might be quite stern and not appreciate people flirting with you. also, you don't have an obvious 'status' that says "i am single and looking" (that's alright though - that is often received ambiguously with lechery), nor "this commonly-defined sexuality is part of my public persona feel free to interact with it" what i mean by this is you're fairly inscrutable on first impressions. you aren't obviously straight or gay or whatever, nor transmit sexuality vibes generally, which is no bad thing at all, but probably has an influence on how comfortable people feel flirting with you. sometimes people completely ignore lack-of-sexuality-signal (even if you're trying very hard) but i think you don't put yourself in those situations.
i don't know if what you're after is exclusively a proper romantic relationship, or whether you want to act on feeling horny on a friday night. i think people probably are interested in you (i don't know specific people but you are attractive), but in terms of proper romantic relationships, luck really is a major factor. like me you tend to go for people you already know, so the pool is small (and remains so unless you want to go and meet new people and socialise like crazy - but then how do you spend the time getting to know them and then fancy them...) and then they might not be available, or not really looking etc. if you want to get some casual practice in, that's much easier to solve but you're probably hanging out in the wrong places (not enough clubbing with horny/drunk people) .
are you meeting enough new people for opportunities to arise? or even, are you doing enough new things with the people you already know?
the obviously-sexual-being thing is tricky if it doesn't come naturally. perhaps you need to become master of the ambiguous suggestion (that might be innocuous but is enough to raise the possibility of you being sexually/romantically available), y'know the way of asking someone if you can buy them a drink, or telling them that they look good, without being a blatant chat-up line, but you might mean something by it. or if that's too difficult - well even telling someone you fancy someone else (like off the telly) tells them that you are interested. it's hard to explain, you need (some) people to see you in a certain sexual light. or you could start a witty and fabulous comic, gain legions of adoring fans, and become powerfully desirable...

if it's bothering you it really wouldn't be better to just go and hide.
rejection is hard but much less so if you start to test the waters before you are totally committed to the idea yourself. this may land you sticky situations with people you later decide you don't really fancy, however.
(i am probably not telling you anything you don't already know here so i'll stop)

From:

abigailb.livejournal.com

Thank-you, this is useful feedback.

For reference: I am quite gay. I have been recently vaguely wondering whether identifying as bi would be helpful. Probably not, given the ratios of people I find attractive.

It is kind of hard to see myself in that impression of me. I am somewhat reserved, yes. It is hard shell of hardness which will protect me from the world. Vibes. Hmm. How do people transmit sexual vibes usually? It is not something I am aware of at all. The thing is, most of the time I am either (a) recovering from being rejected, and (b) recovered from being rejected and trying to avoid people in general who I might be attracted to. I've certainly not been looking the last couple of times I got interested in people.

I feel a bit like I've not met enough new people recently. I have not been out night-clubbing for ages, due in part to headaches (but also the last few times I didn't particularly enjoy it) - I need to fix that. But the idea of pulling someone in a nightclub is just an alien concept to me.

You do, however, speak sense, and I do need to fix my behaviour in that way. I just don't know if that's even possible.

From:

shermarama

I can see that the nightclub timescale would be wrong for you - it's wrong for most people, unless it's a club you go to regularly where you've seen the person round before and are in a kind of familiar social space.

I was having a think and reading all these replies and I see the point about the defensive shell and taking a while to get to talk to people, but then something else struck me - once you are talking to people, you do actually properly talk to them, as in you're interested in what they're saying, obviously listening and taking it in and giving insight back and suchlike. I can think of some long-term-single people I know who don't really do that, who I suppose are used enough to their own company or something that although it's possible to have something that sounds like a normal conversation with them, you're kind of aware that it's more like discussing a section of their internal topic list than a real conversation. Which is also a useful social thing to be able to resort to and all but it's not as good as the real deal, is it? So, actually being interested in people is an important first advantage that you have, and bear that in mind, I reckon, because that sort of genuine interaction is a good rung on the ladder that can lead to other sorts of interesting interaction. Ahem.

Also, I second the idea of marshalling some handily offhand ways of introducing the concept of you as sexual being, be they ever so low-key and third-party - referring to someone's attractiveness, even if you say that you find so-an-so unattractive - this leaves an opportunity for anyone minded that way to be thinking 'so what sort of person does she find attractive, and is it me, and how do I find out?' Fun fun fun.

From:

abigailb.livejournal.com

I think you are the first person to have noted that behaviour in me, but yes, I do do that. And it comes naturally which is good.

I do try to make my sexuality apparent at people, but probably not early enough.

From:

abigailb.livejournal.com

And yes, meeting people in nightclubs is weird. I mean, I've met several people who became good friends of mine in a nightclub, but that was a matter of going to this extremely small nightclub month after month and getting to know people. Leicester's small enough that can happen. I don't think London is.

From:

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.

From:

abigailb.livejournal.com

I really need to get out clubbing some time. I don't think I've been in a club at midnight since B-movie in September where I dressed up as Nocturne.

And yeah.

From:

blue-mai.livejournal.com

please don't think you need to fix anything. i guess it's more that i/we are trying to be helpful and give you information - with the idea that you can make decisions about what you want, what you could do to maximise the chances of what you want happening, and whether you feel comfortable doing them. it's a balance. but things are worth trying out, in my opinion, before you say "i won't be any good at that".
being able to converse properly is very very good. so is doing things where you meet people (mapping?).
i had worked out by now that you are gay - but that was much easier once i started reading your LJ. my gaydar is rather broken anyway, but i'm not sure that it matters particularly if you 'identify' as one persuasion or another, unless you feel the need to personally. women are much less bothered about being approached by the wrong gender for them and vice-versa people are less worried about approaching women who may or may not interested in their gender. it used to frustrate me that people tended to assume i was straight at a gay events, but i'm sure writing I AM A DYKE across my chest wouldn't have made me any happier. the i-am-a-sexual-being thing is i think the most important. which is different from trying to look sexually attractive (i'm guessing that you aren't inclined to do that).
i can't deal personally, with contriving these things, and i also don't deal well with contriving a social life. i do deal well with doing what i want when i want regardless of whether i have company to do it. that does ocassionally mean going clubbing on the spur of the moment by myself. it means ocassionally over-dressing for no good reason. i don't know if it makes me anymore attractive to do these things, but i know i feel more attractive to be doing something just because i enjoy it. perhaps it's an element of sensuality (perhaps if you display sensitivity to sensuality it's akin to displaying sexual-beingness). anyway, it's commonly held that if you feel attractive, you are. so...

From:

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.

From:

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.