(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

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Socialisation and the confidence that comes with it are a matter of practice, and that comes with a lot of mistakes. There are a great many people who detest me - many of whom are truly wonderful and often physically and spiritually beautiful people - and there is nothing I can do to go back and rework the first and second and third impressions I made on them.

Ultimately it is a numbers game: get out more - and never miss a weekend - see more people, network more, systematically seek out places and occasions and social circles that contain the people who interest you. A lot of it is simply being 'on the radar' for about 12-18 months, at which point people will sort-of-recognise you and feel at ease starting a conversation and begin deliberately including you in group activities.

And that's about it. I've used Aikido as a first-track socialisation course - a shared activity with an externally-imposed bond of common experience - and have gradually overcome a lack of social skills that wasn't just a zero score, it was an actively negative one. But, however off-putting or offensive I was, we always stepped back onto the mat and - most times - went for a pint afterward. I have very little meaningful social life from it - and, indeed, I have acquired the barrier of a large number of people who do not quite detest me but tolerate my company for the Aikido rather than the dubious pleasure of my company... Or what their out-of-date (but firmly fixed) impression of what my company is like.

Other pursuits have been a disappointment: but it only needed one to work. The lesson: seek similar communities with a strong common bond that isn't primarily social, and use them as a training-ground.

LJ provided the second- and third-track socialisation course, and it's working. Mostly. I note that the majority - all! - of my friends are somewhat out-of-mainstream but I suspect that is what I both want and need, rather than a warning that there is something 'wrong' with me.

But note this: I cultivate circles of friends - the Tuesday Borders set that now assembles in the Pembury, the London Goths, the Cambridge CUSFS axis, the Cambridge LGBT society, the Cambridge Ardgour Shakespeare set, the BSFA, the rump of Usenet uk.misc... Some are strongly-identified groups that tolerate me as an outsider and will never progress through an 'on-the-radar' period to genuine acceptance; some will, and have largely done so; and some groups are so weakly identified that everyone is to some extent an outsider and you have to work on one-to-one friendship development without the following wind of a favourable community.

There have been failures: I fear that I will never be truly welcome in Bermondsey (or parts of it) and a quick head-round-the-door at BU made it clear that they are a members-only group and strangers need not apply. There are others, and no, I'm not discussing them. There will be more failures - but, with time and practice, they will diminish in intensity.

I hope.

I bet that sounds calculating: it is. But I've built a social life from zero and a very low base of skills and confidence indeed, and it is only in the latter stages of success that I have made headway in the 'dating' stage. And had that failed, I would be seeking out and cultivating new groups far more intensively than I am today: as in scaling back the Aikido and putting four or five evenings a week into social development, and maybe working out in a gym and looking at cosmetic surgery. Had I continued seeing the oh-so-pointed rejection signals in female body language - or worse, the not-even-on-the-radar-as-male neutrality - I would've become even more systematic: behavioural therapy, a personal shopper, speed-dating classes and whoever or whatever teaches 'flirting', pick-ups, gait and positive body language.

Thankfully that has proven unnecessary. Most of it, anyway. But there's some serious calculation in that, and a sense of direction rather than baffled frustration, and I think that this is lacking in you. There's no point in being jealous of others who - apparently - have it easy and enjoyed a wonderful upbringing that handed them the things you want and lack. If it doesn't come easy, get it by hard work.

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

I am just about exhausted from all the social activies I'm doing at the moment, and throwing money at problem isn't an option. I'm fucked, really.

[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.

[blue-mai.livejournal.com]

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