Making the First Move - an update on my situation

[Carnatic]

Hi... I posted here a while ago about problems/confusion I was having, not with meeting girls, getting on well with them, being chatty or even flirty, but with actually going that extra step and making my interest clear with a girl or even asking her out. You can read it here

 

 

Thankyou everyone who posted. As you can see, my attitudes did start to change towards the end of that post (as we eventually got there) as I started to realise that if girls were approaching me on a fairly regular basis and if I could make them laugh and smile and have a good time then I was at least doing something right and could at least pay a compliment to them, where previously I hadn't even considered that they might be approaching me because they were interested...

 

Just thought I'd update on my situation since then.

 

All that was during the christmas holidays, when I was at home for most of the time and not really in a position to meet girls, most of the girls who I have met have been in bars or at societies when I am at university. So I was a little worried, due to the unpredictable and irrational nature of my moods, that by the time I was back there, and a girl came up to me somewhere and started talking to me out of the blue, that I would have slipped back into old ways.

 

Things have seemed so mixed since then; it is as easily to boost by confidence as it is to knock it, so when girls smile at me just in passing or in a bar or somewhere, even though I never then approach her (too shy) it lifts my spirits. This will maybe happen once every time I go out, and more if I'm on a night out, so I learned to take this as a good thing when it happened, and not just tell myself that she was smiling at someone behind me or anything like that. So far so good.

 

Then, a bit of a knock. There was one girl who I did like, and who, even before that thread I posted, I thought might like me. It was her I was referring to when I said that I might sometimes even initiate some light physical contact when I am getting on well with a girl (who I still at the time didn't want to assume was interested in me). I was in a bar one day with some mates, it was a bar she frequents, and she was there... with her boyfriend.

 

So I was a bit down after that; but again, on other nights out, maybe a couple of times I think, I have been chatted to by girls. The one I can definitely remember, I was in a rock club requesting a song from the DJ (The Coral: Dreaming of You, incase you're interested) and so was she, so she started chatting while we waiting, and being a little flirtatious, we had a little conversation about music (she thought it was a great choice), I noticed she seemed to have moved quite close to me, and then the DJ came over, we made our requests, said goodbye to each other and went. I thought what I would do would be wait and see if I could find her when Dreaming of You came on, it would be a good way to start the conversation, I'm still shy about approaching girls. Unfortunately, when it came on I couldn't find her. Still I felt happy, I had no reason to be my usual self telling myself over and over again that 'there is no chance she would actually be interested in me'. I felt that I had made some progress at least in not taking a negative view of things.

 

Another night out though, and this is just stupid (I am not usually this shallow), but like I say, my confidence can be just as easily destroyed, and it came at a bad time when I was under pressure with work and not getting much sleep, and was drunk at the time (like everyone else). Cutting to the chase, I was out with three of my mates and we were approached by a group of three girls. 3 girls, 4 guys, one of us was bound to be ignored. Of course it was me, each of the girls got chatting to each of my mates, and I was left (as the seventh wheel?) on my own. It is stupid because it's not like there was a lot of interest shown by any of the girls, or by any of my mates; and while I like being approached by girls, it's not like I go out looking to pull. I just got carried away with feeling sorry for myself, and feeling like I hated being the ugly one that always got overlooked. I was miserable for part of the way home and my mates were supportive.

 

Unfortunately, like I said, it came at a bad time, everything piles up on you, and now my confidence is shot. Also, I suffer from really bad insomnia every now and again. Right now I'm only getting 2 hours sleep a night, I'm stressed over work, I'm feeling lonely, and basically the last couple of days I've become very depressed. All this came out to my best mate today (I don't often let it all spill out, I usually only dwell on it when I am trying to get to sleep) Not much he could do to help, I had gone a bit crazy, refused to listen to reason, insisted on being irrational as I am in essense an irrational person, and was determined that girls would always find me ugly and boring and I would die alone and just had to accept it. Then I felt guilty as he recently got a girlfriend, he used to be similar to me (without the neurotic/paranoid/delusional tendencies) and now he's really happy... didn't want to bring him down with me, so I left and decided to post here instead.

 

Thanks for listening

 

Carnatic

[Miss M]

Hey Carnatic, it seems you really minimize the good clues and maximize the negative clues. I know, I do the same thing. I do get attention from guys, but if there's a time I really want the attention, but then don't get it, that's the one I use against myself to tell myself I'm not worthy. From your other thread you wrote that you had the girl's attention while all the other guys were just looking on, but you didn't even realize you were way ahead of the pack. So this time you got left out, and felt like the 7th wheel, and this is what you use to torture yourself. But you really have no reason to feel left out because you already know that girls like you. They indicate it in so many ways. So don't use a little setback as a reason to tell yourself you aren't worthy. You've got a good and generous heart, and you're too wonderful to torture yourself that way. Being a 7th wheel now and then is really not a reason to fall headlong into self-doubt.