Looking for Advice about Girlfriends

[renny]

This is going to be unusual. 99 percent of the time, when people ask for advice about sex and romance, they've been there. Their problems are backed by experience.

This is not the case with me. I am a 23 year old guy, and I have never had a girlfriend. I mean what I say: never. Forget never getting to have a tickling experience, I have never had any intimate contact with a woman. No kissing, nothing.

A multitude of things could be said about this. Maybe it's because I was raised by my mother and didn't have good male sexual role models. Maybe it's because I have combined self-esteem problems and avoidant-personality problems. An avoidant persoanlity is one that is extremely reluctant to take risks. That is a problem I have with a lot of things, but it is strongest when it comes to women that I find attractive.

The base feeling of it is that in many ways I still feel emotionally like a young teenager. The concept of a woman being attracted to me is inconceivable. I've asked a couple of girls out, and they both rejected me. Mind you, that's twice in nine years. I'm not sitting on the pity-pot, I'm just telling it like it is.

What I want to ask you TMF members, is how can I break out of this? Sex and relationship experts usually have a base of experience to start from, but with me, they would have to start from the ground up. What do you all think can be done. I'll think about what anyone writes, I'm sure everyone has a valid point. Thanks.

-Renny

 

[Knox The Hatter]

You first have to learn how to love yourself. The road to self love is one that you are going to have to travel upon, no one else can travel it for you.

Once you learn to love yourself, you will then be attractive to people you never even knew existed...you will probably meet someone who will finally break that shell of yours, and make you whole. Hey, it happened to my brother-in-law, a guy who was just like you.

Whatever you do, don't get discouraged. NEVER give up. When you give up, then you exist in a living death. You know it, you've seen these people. You don't wanna be them. So, don't give up.

Look at it this way: if you ask a hundred girls to go out with you, what percentage would answer you in the positive? Now, there's no way in hell that all one hundred would turn you down, you know? Of course, the first thing is that you're shy, we know that, but after getting over that hurdle, you might wanna go with the percentages here. They're in your favor.

Good luck...

 

[CaptainQuantum]

God, you sound so much like me! I suffer from depression and am very socially withdrawn. I could be a real "life of the party" type, and have been at times. But with my depression I tend to be a loner. With me, I lack motivation to get out there and meet women, because its a lot easier to just pay exotic dancers to let me tickle them. And once in a great while when I can afford it, I can pay an escort for sex (I've done that once, even though I wound up tickling her more than anything).

For me, the desire for a girlfriend is more about feeling unattractive or feeling like a loser because I've never had one. It's about feeling like "normal" guys have girlfriends and I don't. But that's not enough motivation to get out of my loner ways. And I know that having a girlfriend would have parts that I wouldn't like: we'd probably have fights eventually, she'd want me to do stuff with her some of which I probably wouldn't feel like doing. And as long as I'm single I can pretty much do what I want when I want. Plus, when I develop feelings for a woman I do so very quickly, and when the woman doesn't develop feelings for me as quickly I get frustrated and give up. I guess that's called being "needy".

Anyway, are you seeking help for your avoidant disorder? Also, you might want to consider the possibility that you have depression but let a psychiatrist decide that. This summer, I was hospitalized for depression for the 5th time in my life, and they finally put me on a medication that seemed to do the trick. My low self-esteem, gone. My lack of self-confidence, gone. But that lasted maybe a couple weeks. Long story short, I just tonight finally saw my regular psychiatrist and he started to slowly increase the medication.

There was this guy I used to work with who would complain about a something like 16 year drought of "getting laid". When he was "scoring", he was hanging out at a nudist camp, hanging out with friends, etc. More recently he sits at home every night alone watching tv and drinking beer. Even as socially inept as I am, I could see the problem. When he was scoring, he was regularly around people who shared his interests, and stuff just happens. Like I said, I'm not sure if I even want a girlfriend besides the fact of not feeling "normal" if I don't have one. But I thought that advice might help you more than it helps me 😀

If you want to talk, feel free to leave me a Message anytime.

 

[Butterfly wings]

Hang in there renny. I feel your pain. I have only had one girlfriend in my whole entire life and she ended up breaking up with me after 3 short few weeks. Infact she didn't even break up with me HERSELF she has her best friend at the time break up with me for her over the phone. And i too have had my shy and closed in moments in life (I still do actually) and i also don't really feet that i love myself at times and have low self esteem issues. But i have learned even through all the burns and heart breaks that no one can help you through all of this hurdles in your life but you. YOU are the only one that can help yourself and help yourself step by step over come it. You can have great friends and family and relatives to be there for you and put thier arms around you and give you comfort sure. But your the only one in life that knows you the best and knows what type of relationship you want with a girl and what type of close contact and tickling relationship you want with the girl of your dreams. Don't give up you can do it man just hang in thier no matter how rough and hard and bad it seems to be or get and keep holding up your head and chin up and get out there and try putting yourself and your feet forward one tiny step at a time in life with girls and whatever you WANT to pursue and go after in life. Do not wave the white flag just yet. There is still alot in life that you have to offer someone in life one of theses days.

May God continue to bless you.

Good Luck. You will be in my prayers.

 

[barefoot_m_uk]

Sorry for long post (I'm a babbler, what can I say?)

I don't think you're *that* unusual for this. Sure, you're probably in a minority - but everybody is. There's nothing *wrong* with you.

Finding a girlfriend - a partner - is a matter of finding someone who's on your level. No matter what that level is, there are lots and lots of people out there on the same one. I guarantee you that somewhere not far from you is a girl around your age sitting and pondering the same problems. Seriously.

I felt a lot like you for a long time - I had so little confidence, I was actually asked out in high school by a girl who was really interested in me and I ran a mile because I thought she was making fun of my uselessness with women. She got really hurt by the way I acted, and I didn't even find out until a couple of years later.

You're already doing something that I think is really positive. You're talking about it. This is a really good environment I think to look at things like this. You're not exposing yourself to the kind of instant rejection you've talked about (and that I and every other person out there has experienced as well - even the earthly angels we see walking about were dumped some time by some inconceivable moron). I'm willing to bet all the responses you get are supportive.

I don't know what kind of responses you expected from your post. I think if it had been me back when I felt the same way I'd have expected scorn or derision or worst of all pity. I wouldn't have expected people to know from their own experience what I was going through. I wouldn't have expected somebody who is in a very happy relationship - just passed my fifth anniversary - to say he had been where I was only a few years earlier. This will pass, honestly.

There's nothing wrong, I think, with being cautious. The hard thing is not to invest too much in the contact you make with people - try to get into a habit of enjoying the good things about *right now* - enjoy a conversation because it's a conversation, enjoy someone spending time in your company because they're spending time. The next hardest thing is to cut yourself some slack - if somebody is talking to you, they are interested in you. If someone smiles when you say something, they liked it. If someone chooses out of all the million things they could do, to be with you, even if it's just for a few minutes, that means that to them you're worth being with.

My advice (finally!)? Don't miss the wood for the trees. Don't go looking for 'a girlfriend'. Go looking for 'friends'. Go looking for 'fun'. Go looking for moments of happiness. You'll find over time that more and more of those moments are with the same person, and she's making more and more of those moments happen.

We're with you, buddy. Good luck with it.

 

[renny]

Thanks, you guys. I didn't expect anyone to make fun of me for my problems, you all are good people, and I'm glad I'm not alone.