A growing personality...

[Dougie_D]

I am having a hard time changing my personality. Or maybe, I just don't know who I am yet. But the more I talk to older friends and/or about my relationship status, it's becoming more clearer.

I have a GROWING personality. Basically, especially for girls, it takes awhile for you to like me. Guys, for some reason, they think of it as some hilarious weird dude that becomes a great guy in the end.

Girls think that way too, but they use terms like scary, strange, a little odd, funny, weird, annoying... at first...but then they use words like caring, nice, super sweet, and cool guy. By this time, I'm already in Best Friend Zone.

I don't really want to change how I act, do, whatever...because this is me...but I am really bummed out about how girls never give me a first chance or at least, look pass my flaws.

How BIG are first impressions? I don't get it...how do "friends" hook up with each other...it seems like I always miss it. And you don't know how often I seem to miss it either. I've counted 5 times where I am the first person they encounter or somehow I make this girl feel good...and we talk. By the next week/month she is hanging out/or dating some guy I had introduce her to, and I am just kind of there.

That's another reason why I am SO popular! I don't like it!!!!! I need to stop introducing people. This happens all the time but I don't know how to completely stop it....this is why I feel like I need to runnaway and never look back.

[with.the.band]

I know a guy just like you. When reading your post, I couldn't help but feel that you painted an almost painfully accurate picture of him. He's considered the funny guy of the group, not mainstream funny but just a bit off-skew, and I remember thinking he was a bit weird too when I first met him. It was all the facial expressions he pulled, I think, that both cracked me up and made me think 'weirdddddo'. But despite getting to know him and finding out how genuine and caring he is, I can't shake the notion of him as 'the funny guy' of the group. And sadly, because I don't want to say this about a friend, I view him as an entertainer more so than boyfriend prospect.

 

If you dig a little deeper it might not be entirely a 'first impressions stick' problem, but more so the fact that when they do get to know you, you're much too nice and familiar to be boyfriend material. I think most people would be willing to bypass first impressions should the discovery of the person beneath be attractive to them.

 

But I'd never consider that friend of mine in a sexual or relationship sense not because of my first impressions of him entirely, but because the person I discovered beneath was a friend in all sense of the word. Too caring and considerate, too funny and sweet, just too much of a wacky-overprotective-older-brother figure to consider as more than that.

 

I don't think there's a way to reverse this (I think it's pretty clear cut in my mind that I wouldn't date this friend), but to avoid it in the future, perhaps stop introducing these girls to other guys to begin with. Then make an attempt to get to know her less as a friend and more of a potential something. There's a tonne of advice on this out there.