Trouble relating to girls in any way at all

[chris58]

Hi,

 

I'm an only-very-occasional poster here but a very regular reader. :-)

 

I think I have a bit of a problem relating to girls in general, either as "just friends" or as "something more"; I don't think I even get what the difference is. I've never had much to do with girls at all, absolutely no dating/relationships, probably not even close. I went to an all-boys school, and basically did not speak to a female (other than family) from the age of about 8 to 18. Then since I started university (I'm now 23) I've met plenty of girls, and many are what I'd call friends now, but I've realised just recently that still the overwhelming majority of my good friends are males. I'd say out of my closest dozen or so friends, only one is a girl, and I don't even seem to be as close to her as I was a year or two ago. I virtually never spend any time alone with a girl at all (I mean that in the most literal, face-value way), and all the girls who I mentioned I'd call friends are just the sort of friends who are around if we go and have dinner/see a movie/go to a bar/whatever as part of a largeish group (eg. 8-12 people). It's not that I deliberately steer clear of these girls, nor that I particularly feel like I want to get closer to them, I've just noticed that this seems to be the way I am.

 

Anyway, the reason I started thinking about this was that there have been two girls I've been seriously attracted to, and when I started trying to figure out what went wrong I noticed that pretty much exactly the same thing happened both times. Both times (just for coincidental sort of reasons, eg. same classes, not a conscience choice on either of our parts) I started seeing a girl I knew more often than just in the "big group of friends" kind of way, often just the two of us talking or doing something (unusual for me!), then before I knew it, I couldn't stop thinking about her. Both times I ended up completely infatuated, then essentially getting rejected, and ending up with a "friend" who can't really be much of a friend at all anymore, because we're not really sure what to say to each other. Both girls do like me as a friend, clearly, but I spoilt it by getting a bit carried away. :-( (This also makes me feel bad and a bit guilty, because I feel I am depriving them of a proper friend, ie. me.) This happened twice (different girl each time), once was nearly four years ago, once was about six months ago, and that's basically the extent of my "experience" with girls. The more I think about it, the more the "pattern" seems obvious; the two stories are just so similar there has to be something meaningful in there!

 

So you see, I don't really have any close relationships with girls without becoming attracted to them. I don't know whether this means that

(a) I become attracted to any girl who I start to get even vaguely close to, or

(b) I only allow myself to get closer to a girl when I'm becoming attracted to her

 

Because of all the trouble it has caused, now I find myself trying to avoid getting too close to any girls at all, it just seems too scary; it's not the initial contact itself I find scary, it's just the fear that I might be about to put myself through the same thing again. I'm not rude or anti-social about this, I don't ignore or keep away from anyone, I just try to avoid becoming close friends with girls. I've been doing this ever since the first girl really, nearly four years ago. The second one sort of got forced on me; as I said, we were thrown together just by chance, I didn't "pursue" her or anything.

 

Please let me know what you think, any comments much appreciated. Overall I am happy, and lucky to have a great life, plenty of hobbies and interests I enjoy (and share pretty much exclusively with males), but this mess is slowly but surely really starting to get me down. I started reading this site regularly nearly a year ago I think (time flies!), at that stage I felt quite comfortable about it because I was curious more than anything, thinking "what's going on, I don't get it" rather than "I want a girlfriend"; but over the last couple of months (I find this really embarrassing to admit) I've started to feel some of the latter creeping in. :-(

[uriel]

What's probably happening is you are investing too much time in a girl and then majorly crushing on her before finding out if she's interested in you. You probably don't flirt much, and so don't get to see if she flirts back. That's one way of potentially finding out. Another is just asking her out for an obviously not just friend type of experience. If you get a rejection at that point, you haven't established a lasting friendship or a major crush -- so a light continuing friendship won't be too weird and the rejection won't hurt so much.

 

Bottom line: You need to ask for dates earlier and more often. Then, if, in getting to know her, the initial attraction doesn't go anywhere, no real harm or foul.

 

-- uriel

[chris58]

Thanks, uriel. What you say is all true, I guess I don't flirt much and I get too stuck on a girl before I really know whether she likes me.

 

But the annoying thing is (this sounds really pathetic, but here goes), every time, I was genuinely convinced that she did like me, and then it turned out she was just trying to be friends with me. When I finally admitted it to them, both girls were totally surprised that I felt that way; they had no idea, and I'd been completely "over-interpreting" their recent friendliness. So it seems like I should have been able to realise easily that they weren't interested (ie. without asking for "dates" or anything), and avoided all the hassle.

 

How can I avoid "over-interpreting" friendliness like this? It's hard because I don't have many "normal" female friends, so I don't have much to compare to. Of course the obvious answer seems to be "well, next time a girl starts acting that way around you, now you know not to get too interested", but I did tell myself that after the first girl, and then when the second girl came around I was totally convinced it was different ... but now looking back I was making exactly the same mistake.