Hi, Elsa
I have goals, interests, friends, I’m young, attractive… I’d say it’s a life I feel is very blessed.
With exception to one aspect. Guys. I can’t seem to get really interested in any of them. It’s rare. I get cold feet even before it starts – even when I think I *may* have an interest… usually as soon as the interest is confirmed mutual, my own evaporates… leading to nothing.
When I DO develop a lasting liking on someone it’s more of an abnormal fixation with someone I don’t really know. I get so fixated I develop a bad shyness problem and run away from the person instead of approaching the situation calmly and rationally. It’s like running away from an electric shock.
I have one of those fixations now. It’s serious to the point where I’m really not even looking for different possibilities. I want this or I want nothing.
I don’t run into this person and we’re not yet acquainted (though we swim in the same circles) and this has been going on for 6 months now. Me just waiting, thinking something will happen here because it’s sort of… meant to. My friends are completely frustrated by my reluctance to do something active about it. But I just say that this is ‘my way’.
I promise I’m usually more reasonable than this. What’s going on here?
Help!!
Frustrated by Fixations
Dear Frustrated,
You are a beautiful dreamer and I’ll tell you exactly what is going on. The divine love you can conceive of in your imagination just doesn’t exist on this plane. Because this is Earth, which falls way short of “heaven”.
I have similar tendency in relationships, though nowhere near your prowess, and I’ll tell you a story to illustrate. Back when I was young, nineteen, I stopped into a bar one night and saw, “Rueben”. Rueben was this Mexican guy playing guitar and I don’t know. He just made me slobber all over the place. I called him, “Rue-ooh-ooh-ben!”. I started showing up at this bar, couple nights a week to pine over him.
Now the man was available. Little chickies would dance in front of him, and he’d hook up pretty readily with one or the other. He saw me in the bar, and he’d have surely been available to me but rich as my fantasy was, there was no way in hell I was even going to talk to him. Why? Because I knew he’d ruin everything!
I had him dreamed into this exquisite being and the last thing I wanted was for him to come talk to me – say something stupid – and then what? No more fun for Elsa! And I knew it! I knew he could only let me down and I’m suggesting you’re doing something similar with your current boy. You’re enjoying the fantasy on some level and I don’t blame you, because this stuff is delectable. “Will today be the day? Will tonight be the night? Was he looking at my shoulder? Did I just feel his breath?” So tasty next to a mediocre roll in the hay, yes?
You may decide fantasy is preferable to dealing with a flesh and blood man, and if you think it can’t happen, just check the women who fall in love with lifers in prison. They dream them into deities and toss around in their beds at night, about it. I guess their friends don’t like it, but what does that matter in the scheme of things? This is your life. Your gift. Your curse.
So there you go. This is your nature. In my case, my ethereal qualities only go so far. I want to have sex! This drove me to address these sorts of tendencies and find a way to function in a real relationship. You can do same… or not.
~~
*Please note, this post was written in 2011. The original is on wayback machine, if you want to read the comments.
Read more about Rueben (and Venus Neptune) here: Pining For Rueben, Continued.
“FbF” when women are interested in men, I was told their eyes get large, so maybe you can blink your eyes all big at him see if that turns into anything I usually bite my lip
Reminding me to keep it shut. Remember you are allowed and unexpressed thought But your eyes now they can go all over the place, right?
Yeah, I can feel this energy sometimes. Or I have in the past. It’s like a “calling the bluff” type of thing. Like, the girl does the flirting thing and I generally feel bad I didn’t follow up but also, kind of slightly irritated. Like, annoyed at the circular and neverending motion of it. Next time I go in the shop or whatever it is, the pattern will be repeated.
So I just call it and ask the girl out in some manner. Fully intending to get a rejection when I ask. It’s like “I want my rejection”.
I think I would handle it differently now. I have had guys advise me this and that about women but I can’t get myself to be interested, I also have an excuse now to not be interested. So I am kind of stuck on the fence between caring and not caring. Not caring in the deeper sense but being able to be provoked.
The best formula for me, the ideal I believe at this moment, is to be so committed to my own “self interest”, that certain behaviours that other guys obsess about don’t even shake me. We can’t really know another for like, decades, anyway.