Before I move on to the main thrust of this post, I'd like to add a bit to my last about being intro- and extroverted.
I realize that the way I laid things out it may have seemed as if I thought that the two modes of being were a question of confidence. That is not what I was trying to say.
Betty_Cocker said it best in her comment to the post, really, and I have nothing more to add to that as I am in complete agreement.
Now on to today's post.
After having written this post I realize that a lot of it sounds like "Oh, woe is me!" but while I'm sure part of it is just me complaining, it's also a bit of a thought exercise. Like thinking out loud to try to catch a new train of thought.
I am quite used to being alone.
Over the years I've handled it many different ways: imagination, various creative endeavours, reading, films, videogames, etc. It doesn't really bother me. In fact, I often enjoy the solitude.
But sometimes I get lonely. As do we all, of course. My loneliness isn't unique or special.
Being with friends and family dispells the gloom of loneliness. Sometimes, though, I want something more.
As I laid out in my post about my current situation, I've never been in a romantic relationship.
Sometimes I feel a need to vent about this. Usually this happens when I've been reminded of the lovely relationships my friends are in. It strikes close to home, so to speak. Plus, it's mildly annoying to know that they're getting sex on a regular basis while I last had sex about three years ago. But then I feel a lot better when I read or see something about a really shitty relationship.
A lot of nice people, some from here on LPSG, have asked me the same question, albeit in different forms. Whatever the dress the question happens to be wearing on the occasion, though, the heart of it is always the same: "Why are you not in a relationship?" or perhaps "Why have you never been in a relationship?".
My answer tends to be the same each time, albeit in different forms: "I don't know".
I've thought about it a lot, of course. I'm an engineer; I fix problems. But to fix a problem you need to know what's wrong. So I've done troubleshooting. A lot.
People have told me I'm a nice guy or a good person. Well, that hardly qualifies me. Being a good person is the barebones minimum for constructing a healthy relationship. It's a question of what else you can bring to the table.
So what can I bring to the table?
I've been told I'm a good looking guy. A few women have told me I have "nice eyes". I work at keeping in shape, even though I'm no adonis physically. I'd say I'm a pretty clever guy, and I can be quite witty on a good day, at least as long as I get a running start. I enjoy good conversations, and I can feign interest in a topic of conversation fairly well. But then I tend to be bluntly honest as well.
I'm a fucking excellent cook, and my hands are quite dextrous, if not really that strong.
Then comes my Achilles heel, as it were. The attribute that is often touted as very important in these situations: confidence. There are plenty of guys more confident than I. My confidence isn't all it should be, but I have a pretty good poker face and the gregarious part of me is pretty good at a "large ham" kind of confidence. That is to say, I'm good at the "large, boisterous, friendly guy" role, and the confidence that that brings.
Over the years I have grown more confident, however. More willing to put my balls on the block and roll the dice.
But then, why have I never been able to engage in a romantic relationship?
In the end, the answer to that question proved to be so very simple.
Actually, there are two parts to it.
First, no woman has ever shown any interest in me.
Second, I almost never meet new women. It's even more seldom that I meet available women.
I can almost hear eyebrows being raised, but bear with me.
As I extolled in my last post, I'm not a bar and nightclub kind of guy. I prefer houseparties.
Thing is, during my five years at university, pretty much every single woman I met was in a relationship. The few that weren't soon ended up in one. If a woman became single, that status would last for a few weeks at most, and then she would meet somebody. I catiously asked my few female friends if they had friends that were single, but they never were.
In swedish, there is a saying that goes "Surt sa räven" which translates to "Sour said the fox" or possibly "The fox said sour" and means that if you can't get what you want, you act as if you never actually wanted it to begin with. I say this because of all the women I knew and met, none of them felt like somebody that I really wanted to be in a relationship with. However, I am a young man with the needs of any man, and every day I was assailed by the sight of beautiful young women that I yearned to touch.
So close, yet so far, as the saying goes. Surrounded by these incredible creatures, I suffered from loneliness. Because I knew, as I still know, that I could never be with any of them. Wanting something does not make it so.
I recognize the words of my flimsy confidence in that. "Why could I never be with them?". Well, like I said, being a nice guy is the barebones minimum, and being a fairly good looking guy is far from rare. "What about all the things you said you could bring to this table of yours?". Well, they don't know about those things, do they? I need to approach them and initiate conversation.
And I'm too scared to do so.
I'll lay it out plain: women intimidate me.
To me, women have often been a bit of a mythological creature, like a unicorn or dragon. Something heard of, sometimes glimpsed but never truly comprehended or grasped. Always out of reach.
I realize that my separation and alienation from half the human population has led me to put women on a pedestal and that that is a very unhelpful thing to do.
Thankfully, towards the end of my five years at university, there happened a few things that started to change my views. Some courses contained projects that required working together. Usually we chose our own groups, but on a few occasions I found myself working with a few different women. In a few of these cases I grew to strongly dislike them. After a while I realized why. It wasn't because they were women, it was because they were idiots and couldn't organize themselves out of a wet paper bag, regardless of their genital plumbing. I learned that women are human too.
To clarify, I've never had any problems working with women in any way. It's when it gets personal that I haven't really had either the guts or the opportunity.
This post has been all over the place, but this is a hard topic for me. I'll try to sum it up and tie it off.
In short, summary or TL;DR.
I would one day like to get to know a woman intimately. However, I rarely meet new women, and even more rarely meet any that are available. As a group women intimidate me, but I have learned that there is nothing to fear.
We're all just people, and should be approached as such. Pick-up lines and crap like "The Game" are all just bullshit and are just made to play with people's head to get sex.
I lack experience and thus confidence, though, and that holds me back. I also fear that as I get older more will be expected of me, and that I won't be able to live up to expectations of the level of experience a person should have at a certain age.
In the end, the whole issue is rendered moot by the fact that I am living with my parents.
I realize that the way I laid things out it may have seemed as if I thought that the two modes of being were a question of confidence. That is not what I was trying to say.
Betty_Cocker said it best in her comment to the post, really, and I have nothing more to add to that as I am in complete agreement.
Now on to today's post.
After having written this post I realize that a lot of it sounds like "Oh, woe is me!" but while I'm sure part of it is just me complaining, it's also a bit of a thought exercise. Like thinking out loud to try to catch a new train of thought.
I am quite used to being alone.
Over the years I've handled it many different ways: imagination, various creative endeavours, reading, films, videogames, etc. It doesn't really bother me. In fact, I often enjoy the solitude.
But sometimes I get lonely. As do we all, of course. My loneliness isn't unique or special.
Being with friends and family dispells the gloom of loneliness. Sometimes, though, I want something more.
As I laid out in my post about my current situation, I've never been in a romantic relationship.
Sometimes I feel a need to vent about this. Usually this happens when I've been reminded of the lovely relationships my friends are in. It strikes close to home, so to speak. Plus, it's mildly annoying to know that they're getting sex on a regular basis while I last had sex about three years ago. But then I feel a lot better when I read or see something about a really shitty relationship.
A lot of nice people, some from here on LPSG, have asked me the same question, albeit in different forms. Whatever the dress the question happens to be wearing on the occasion, though, the heart of it is always the same: "Why are you not in a relationship?" or perhaps "Why have you never been in a relationship?".
My answer tends to be the same each time, albeit in different forms: "I don't know".
I've thought about it a lot, of course. I'm an engineer; I fix problems. But to fix a problem you need to know what's wrong. So I've done troubleshooting. A lot.
People have told me I'm a nice guy or a good person. Well, that hardly qualifies me. Being a good person is the barebones minimum for constructing a healthy relationship. It's a question of what else you can bring to the table.
So what can I bring to the table?
I've been told I'm a good looking guy. A few women have told me I have "nice eyes". I work at keeping in shape, even though I'm no adonis physically. I'd say I'm a pretty clever guy, and I can be quite witty on a good day, at least as long as I get a running start. I enjoy good conversations, and I can feign interest in a topic of conversation fairly well. But then I tend to be bluntly honest as well.
I'm a fucking excellent cook, and my hands are quite dextrous, if not really that strong.
Then comes my Achilles heel, as it were. The attribute that is often touted as very important in these situations: confidence. There are plenty of guys more confident than I. My confidence isn't all it should be, but I have a pretty good poker face and the gregarious part of me is pretty good at a "large ham" kind of confidence. That is to say, I'm good at the "large, boisterous, friendly guy" role, and the confidence that that brings.
Over the years I have grown more confident, however. More willing to put my balls on the block and roll the dice.
But then, why have I never been able to engage in a romantic relationship?
In the end, the answer to that question proved to be so very simple.
Actually, there are two parts to it.
First, no woman has ever shown any interest in me.
Second, I almost never meet new women. It's even more seldom that I meet available women.
I can almost hear eyebrows being raised, but bear with me.
As I extolled in my last post, I'm not a bar and nightclub kind of guy. I prefer houseparties.
Thing is, during my five years at university, pretty much every single woman I met was in a relationship. The few that weren't soon ended up in one. If a woman became single, that status would last for a few weeks at most, and then she would meet somebody. I catiously asked my few female friends if they had friends that were single, but they never were.
In swedish, there is a saying that goes "Surt sa räven" which translates to "Sour said the fox" or possibly "The fox said sour" and means that if you can't get what you want, you act as if you never actually wanted it to begin with. I say this because of all the women I knew and met, none of them felt like somebody that I really wanted to be in a relationship with. However, I am a young man with the needs of any man, and every day I was assailed by the sight of beautiful young women that I yearned to touch.
So close, yet so far, as the saying goes. Surrounded by these incredible creatures, I suffered from loneliness. Because I knew, as I still know, that I could never be with any of them. Wanting something does not make it so.
I recognize the words of my flimsy confidence in that. "Why could I never be with them?". Well, like I said, being a nice guy is the barebones minimum, and being a fairly good looking guy is far from rare. "What about all the things you said you could bring to this table of yours?". Well, they don't know about those things, do they? I need to approach them and initiate conversation.
And I'm too scared to do so.
I'll lay it out plain: women intimidate me.
To me, women have often been a bit of a mythological creature, like a unicorn or dragon. Something heard of, sometimes glimpsed but never truly comprehended or grasped. Always out of reach.
I realize that my separation and alienation from half the human population has led me to put women on a pedestal and that that is a very unhelpful thing to do.
Thankfully, towards the end of my five years at university, there happened a few things that started to change my views. Some courses contained projects that required working together. Usually we chose our own groups, but on a few occasions I found myself working with a few different women. In a few of these cases I grew to strongly dislike them. After a while I realized why. It wasn't because they were women, it was because they were idiots and couldn't organize themselves out of a wet paper bag, regardless of their genital plumbing. I learned that women are human too.
To clarify, I've never had any problems working with women in any way. It's when it gets personal that I haven't really had either the guts or the opportunity.
This post has been all over the place, but this is a hard topic for me. I'll try to sum it up and tie it off.
In short, summary or TL;DR.
I would one day like to get to know a woman intimately. However, I rarely meet new women, and even more rarely meet any that are available. As a group women intimidate me, but I have learned that there is nothing to fear.
We're all just people, and should be approached as such. Pick-up lines and crap like "The Game" are all just bullshit and are just made to play with people's head to get sex.
I lack experience and thus confidence, though, and that holds me back. I also fear that as I get older more will be expected of me, and that I won't be able to live up to expectations of the level of experience a person should have at a certain age.
In the end, the whole issue is rendered moot by the fact that I am living with my parents.