(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

[liv]

I've really only just met you, but I can say in general that dating is unfortunately one of those things where success breeds success. If you've never been in a relationship, though, you probably lack a lot of attitudes that would make your dating chances a lot better: the deep confidence that you are attractive to at least a subset of people, the first-hand understanding of how romantic interactions work (and how they are subtly different from just liking someone and being attracted to them).

Also, people do have a certain expectation of how much relationship experience someone "should" have had by a certain life stage. They may not consciously hold the position that someone in their late 20s or early 30s with no relationship experience must have something wrong with them, but that can be a bias. Plus of course the older you get the greater the proportion of your social circle are already permanently coupled. I have definitely observed that a lot of people who are perfectly attractive and lovely have an unfairly hard time just because they were late joining the dating bandwagon.

I am no expert, but I suspect the only way to increase your chances of finding a partner is to expand your social circle in general. You need a certain critical mass of friends who will introduce you to more new people before you find someone you click with on a romantic level. It seems likely that putting yourself out there by expressing interest in people will let you project more of an aura of being available and potentially interested in romantic approaches.

Can you convince yourself that someone not wanting a romantic relationship with you doesn't mean they find you repulsive? Indeed, it's perfectly possible to stay friends with someone after discovering unrequited attraction. I know that's far easier to say than to actually get to that point psychologically, but pretty much all situations with the potential for starting relationships are also situations with the potential for being rejected, by definition.

I hope this isn't totally unhelpful!

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

This all makes sense.

Some background: I moved to London in July 2006. I knew pretty much nobody down here (a friend of mine who moved down to London around the same time was on the other side entirely), and was rather hermit-like at first, this continued until some lj-friends persuaded me to start going to Pembury. Since then I have met lots of new people (and this process is still kind of continuing as different people cycle through). I'm actually not sure what would happen if someone approached me today. I would probably withdraw because right now I'm in the not-wanting-to-get-hurt-again stage.

Remaining friends is important, yes. Doubly so if people were your friends already. Doing this is the trick. I worry that people think I was all along only interested in them as potential romantic partner, and not friend. And I'm worried that that might be true. Nonsense, of course.