Firstly, thank you so much for reading and replying to this. It really does mean a lot to me.

I'll try to keep it to the point.

I'm a 20 year old male living in the United States. I was raised as a Christian with those values and morals and have stuck with those. I have been single my entire life despite having opportunities to be in relationships. My problem with the women who are interested in me is that I am either unattracted to them or they do not hold the same general beliefs that I do. The women that I like never end up liking me although I have only ever truly liked three.

Now I came here to hopefully get some help and advice. Of course it's somewhat hard to fully describe what your problem is when you don't really know what it is yourself so I will try to outline some inconsistencies that I see between myself and the men around me.

Primarily I am far more serious about a relationship than other guys my age and I have been that way since I was very young. I do not 'check out' women. For some reason I do not seem to formulate any sort of opinion about them whatsoever beyond their personality. It's almost as though I have some internal taboo about labeling people as unattractive or reversely labeling them as very attractive. Another inconsistency is that I seem to over think relationships a lot. I over-analyze them to death (or at least so I have been told). I've never held a woman's hand or kissed a woman. I've never really felt compelled to 'make a move' on a woman. I'm a very relaxed, easy going, kind hearted man.

Ultimately my lack of relationships have lead me to become depressed. I feel like a failure. I feel like I will always be lonely and I feel as though I can't trust women anymore as they always end up hurting me.

There is a woman that I was hanging out with at the park and she opened up to me about a lot of stuff that had happened in her past (people seem to trust me with that sort of stuff). We were just laying looking up at the stars and she kept on pointing to stars that were conveniently on my side of the sky and bumping shoulders. Then she laid her head on my chest for a little while. That's the closest I have ever been to a woman.

Immediately I started to over-analyze the situation. Was she interested in me? Etc etc... I am tired of making this mistake. So I tried to stop thinking about it. However also almost just as immediately I started coming up with reasons why I wasn't interested in her as a sort of defense mechanism. Ultimately this logic will also destroy me in my search for a healthy relationship.

I am truly very tired of being alone. I am tired of making mistakes. I don't want to mess this up and I don't want to mess any future potential relationships up. The problem is I don't know how to do things 'correctly'. I know there is no cut and dried way to do relationships correctly but I mean seriously clearly I'm doing something wrong. What does a healthy relationship look like at it's birth? What would be a general outline of things I should do? Things I shouldn't do?

I am also studying to be a psychologist and find the subject absolutely fascinating. I would be more than happy to do some research of my own if someone would point me in the right direction. Perhaps how to read social cues from women. How to alter my own behaviors and thoughts in an effective manner. How to find happiness myself rather than needing someone special to find it with. How to alter my behaviors and thoughts. Perhaps some neat tricks like, "Walk into a room, what's the first thing that you see?" or, "Carry around a backpack full of rocks and add symbolic meaning to them (loneliness, ugly, etc...) and at the end of the week smash them and throw them into a nearby lake." That sort of thing.

Thank you again so much. I really do appreciate your help.