Need advice (I guess?)

Hello everyone!

I'm a long time lurker in this forum, sometimes I post something or reply to a thread, but not very often.

I wanted to ask for advice, since I'm a bit unhappy with how my life is going. And I don't really know where else to ask for it.

I'm 23 years old, finished my Masters degree in philosophy and am currently working at a company. I'm very happy working there, it's great, the people are great and I can stay there until end of september. Then I'll see what happens.

The "main" problem of my life has become clear to me now, I think. It's that I can't really make a romantic connection with women. I have had 2 relationships, and some more or less "sexual" relationships too. So I'm not a lost case I think But again and again I experience the following: I meet a woman, I'm interested and for them it's clear very soon that there's no romantic interest whatsoever. A few years ago this has bothered me quite a lot, I cried sometimes and have also sought therapy. It's always hard to describe my problem, because when I explain it to my family and my friends, who are all great people, they don't really understand that the experience I have with women is fundamentally different from the experience other men have with women. They always say I'm overreacting, which maybe is true, but because this problem makes me feel bad and suffer a lot, it's much a greater problem - I think - than with many other men in my age. It's that I experience a general feel of detachment of most people - it's as if I'm living in a world completely different than theirs. Since a few weeks I told myself that I want to change my life, and that I will not react so sensitively anymore to romantic rejection and also that I first must get very comfortable with myself before I can even think of a woman liking me. Because why would a woman like me, if I can't even be alone at home for one evening without the need to reach out? Since then I'm trying to change the way I feel when I'm alone and i try to be more content when being alone too. I try not to make my happiness dependent on whether or not I have a love interest. But it's quite hard changing a pattern in me, that is so deeply embedded in my personality and has been with me for almost a decade now.

So what would you do in my position? Is there something I should change? I'm curious about your opinions!

What you are, ultimately, is how you react to other people. And how you react is not set in stone. It changes with age and experience, but you will still be you. For instance, the way you talk to your grandmother is not the way you would talk to a prospective love interest, but both modes of conversation are 'you'.

So get out there, start conversations, learn to talk pleasantly about nothing until it's time to interact more purposefully (learning to judge that moment/window is a lifetime's worth of hard work, and remember that Art conceals Brushstrokes) , fail, get hurt, heal, repeat as/when necessary and sometimes during all of this you will be successful. Not often, but sometimes, that being the lot of humankind in general and young men in particular.

That is the knowledge that has to drive you onward.

Good luck- we all need it.

So, if I read this correctly, you feel all of the relationships you've been in have been with partners that you feel are romantically interested in you correct? Have you tried meeting these people for coffee or just chatting on the couch and striking up a conversation? I've found that the more you talk with your significant other and get along, the deeper the connection grows and the more romance blossoms. I hope that helps.

@Libertine

Thanks, that's a great answer and a motivation to keep trying to socialize, to keep trying to have fun times, even while failing!

@Iluv

Are you talking about the relationships I have had? Yes the women involved were romantically interested in me. But it's not an option to meet any of them anymore, because of different reasons. The problem is rather when meeting "new" women, mostly after our first meeting (having coffee or whatever) they seem to not be interested in me romantically, even if they were while writing. It's a bit of a pattern always repeating itself, and it's always hard to figure out why exactly.

The problem is rather when meeting "new" women, mostly after our first meeting (having coffee or whatever) they seem to not be interested in me romantically, even if they were while writing. It's a bit of a pattern always repeating itself, and it's always hard to figure out why exactly.

Click to expand...

Ah, well, I'll just say keep trying to meet new women to find that special someone as there's always plenty of fish in the sea.

ILuvDebonairDamsels said:

Ah, well, I'll just say keep trying to meet new women to find that special someone as there's always plenty of fish in the sea.

Click to expand...

That's very true of course and thank you