Clueless, Anxious

I totally agree with you, actually. Which is what I've been saying all along. But the dysfunctional part of me reads into things, always always, in any situation. And I was answering divine1966's question. He is far more flirtatious than he has to be, but I believe that is just him; I think he's one of those guys who know's his level of attractiveness and plays it up.

PS Though I've said the same thing, not every guy will just ask you out if they're interested in you, just like not every woman will.

As far as letting romance just happen...it doesn't with me. Maybe that's why I am the way I am, I don't know. But it doesn't. I've come to the conclusion that I'm invisible to men. I don't get hit on (unless you count the incredibly indiscriminate men, which I don't), I have never been asked out (it's always been a guy I was already friends with and we just...decided we were dating). No one has ever even bought me a drink in a bar. If I go out with a group of women, men literally ignore me, will stand in front of me as they talk to my female friends. I'm not ugly, I'm not unfriendly. But it has always been that way. So please don't be like the people who tell me, "It'll come when you least expect it, when you're not looking," because I stopped looking years ago. And it hasn't.

I see people who treat their spouses atrociously. I see relationships which just leave a giant question mark in my head because I think, if they can make it, why am I single? I know I am not perfect, but I have a lot going for me, all told. I'm honestly not as obsessive as I probably sound here online; what people see in my daily life is very different than the thoughts that I let loose here.

I don't get it. And it hurts. A lot. I'm a pretty tough person, but this is the one thing that just stabs me in the heart.

I will probably end up asking. This whole situation is so 1999 (that reference is lost on anyone who doesn't know me, but that's okay. ). Point is that I need to leave this behavior behind. I told my friend last night that I realized I needed to stop being a weenie: do the things I have been wanting to do, say the things I need to say. I've been wanting a couple of tattoos. I have been wanting to chop my hair off for a while. I need to talk to this guy. I need to send a letter to my mother whom I haven't spoken to in 22 years so that she stops sending delusional and manipulative messages which taint every birthday and Christmas--at least to try to stick up for myself because god knows my family isn't doing anything. As usual. It's just a tattoo. It's just hair. It's just a guy, so what if he rejects me? I probably won't remember him in 10 years. It's just my mother--and I haven't thought of her as that in 22 years. Time to woman up.

And I agree, social media sucks. I deleted my Facebook for a while because it was too much drama and stupid stuff. I only reopened it because I use it to communicate with my nursing school cohort, otherwise I'm not on. The problem is that I do get some validation from social media. When I switched to IG from Facebook, it was originally because only about 30 or so of my people were on there, and I did enjoy taking photos and posting them for feedback. I didn't have any kind of rapport with B, yet. After he and I made the connection re: our moms and started talking, I followed him. Thus begins the downward spiral.

i hope you do get together with this person, if its meant to be you will somehow get to know him better and i would wait for a positive moment to ask him for coffee. maybe you don't want to but you could flirt some more and see how he reacts, if he's not interested he should tell you, if he is decent. i know when i wasn't married i loved to flirt. it was fun. maybe he is just flirting but he may like you alot too. good luck

Thank you.

You know...I feel like I'm in a rough spot relationship-wise. I want to be close to a person, but I am so untrusting, over-reactive, and sensitive when it comes to this kind that I'm afraid to get involved with someone awesome (even if they do miraculously pay attention) because I have destroyed my past relationships so completely, just really shot them down in a ball of flames. I don't want to do that to anyone else. (And since I'm trying to complete this degree and even go on to grad school, I also don't want to sabotage my future by going down with it.)

So much fear. So much. I wish I could just turn off the desire for a relationship but since I'm human, I can't. I tried. I thought I'd turned it off. I have all of these other goals I thought were more important than love and sex and the desire for closeness and even friendship. Turns out I was just burying it for a long time...then this guy came along and dug it back up. One of the main reasons I chose to go back to therapy; I'd always avoided relationship issues in therapy because they were so hard but I decided to make them (and the cognitive distortions which trip me up) my focus/purpose. I have to work on this.

i hope you can get over this, relationships take a lot of sacrifice and love. i was in accident so i never went back for my last semester.you should try to work on your degree if you can, i almost got my bachelors and was in a accident so never finished it. over 4 years of college.i do have my associates and just that gives me great pleasure knowing i did do something. a degree is so important now a days, i would suggest you work on that before getting in too deep with this person. but that is just my opinion, maybe you could be great friends first is all i'm trying to say. live in the moment every day and try your best, you sound very intelligent and i'm sure if you talked to a doc and t you might even be able to get the help you need too, good luck.

So, update:

I was 100% reading into things (duh). To be fair, the girl he was talking about is also pale with red hair, is a client, and not a singer. So I am not totally crazy. Just wrong. He posted another poem tonight about sharing her water bottle, sharing her toothpaste...yada yada. Very obvious, after posting the photo she took early Monday morning, that he spent the night on Sunday night.

Yes, I'm heartbroken.

I've actually decided to stop going to the salon. And I actually decided to email him and be honest about why, because we did have a bit of a rapport and it feels icky and crappy just to drop him, fire him, because I got my boundaries a bit confused. I didn't go into how crazy I got. I said it took me a bit to write to him, but that I'd felt for some time that I'd made a mistake in sending the initial email back in February (true) because sharing my story about my mother is something I usually do with people I have a prior relationship with. I said we aren't technically friends, but have only known each other for four hours. I said I think he's incredible, that I wish I knew him better, and should have taken the initiative to do so. I then said that sometimes boundaries get confused a but for me with people, especially men, I've allowed too know too much info too soon. I told him I read too much into our interaction, that I shouldn't have followed him on IG and that my initial motivation was simply because his posts are really beautiful...but that sometimes things get muddy. I told him I wouldn't be coming back and that I wanted to tell him why rather than just drop him because I do think highly of him, and that it's absolutely my loss; he did nothing wrong.

I'm very sad. But I feel a lot better, all told. Except for the fact that this is, yet again, another time when I've allowed myself to feel for someone and it crashed and burned in the same way it always does. I can't keep repeating this cycle. I can't keep opening myself up like this.

That's rough Miss K, IMHO from what you've written it comes across like he may have been enjoying the attention from you and leading you on a bit - that might sound harsh on him but it's how it comes across. Try not to blame yourself, you are a human being with feelings, you did nothing wrong.

Sorry I know it hurts. But it is better you found out now not 6 months from now. Good for you emailing him, very good thing to do.

I have to say I relate to developing crushes before I even get to know the person and know if they are even right for me. I go as far as fantasy how we gonna be happily ever after and I barely know the person! My t says I have to stop making decisions based on emotions but start approaching it more like business and when I know if a person is available and is the right one I can get emotional not the other way around. I am trying. But I am not very successful.

I think you are a great person with good heart and it speaks volumes that you emailed him with explanation. Very kind of you. Good luck and many hugs

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I don't think he did, not intentionally at least. I think he was doing his job and being a good salesman. And he was probably interested in me as a person, just not a love interest. As I may have said before, I think he knows his attractiveness with women, and I think he plays it up. I believe that, when you're a man and you grew up with an unstable/invalidating mother and then she ultimately abandons you by killing herself, you need affirmation from other women. So I don't think he had any ill intent. I think he's got his own emotional/mental demons he's battling. They're just not as big as mine. Which sort of pisses me off...how did he come through his childhood with a psychotic mother able to relate to people so much better than I? Oh, probably because he's an attractive guy, and women will always be around to nurture and support an attractive guy. (That, and he had a father and siblings. I was on my own.)

I blame myself a bit--I know my cycle. I saw it happening. In the beginning, I was rational about it enough to keep checking myself and putting the brakes on. And then all of the hormones and the good feeling took over and I was lost. I envy all those women I know who are like, "I knew from the moment I met him that this guy and I were going to get married." I've had a few times where I felt a connection like that. Where I just felt a sureness, like "This guy and I have a connection. There is a 'click'," without knowing them. And this guy was one of them. I didn't know about our commonalities after my second visit, but something about him clicked. And after the third visit, when we realized we had so many things in common, and especially after I checked out his music and found the thing about his mother, it really clicked. I was like, there is something about this guy. I was supposed to meet him. So I get what divine1966 is saying. But I do that as well--my mind runs away with me, and I'm fantasizing about things that I really shouldn't be because there isn't even any real connection.

I think I need to stop believing in that "fate" that people talk about or the "meant to be." Because the feeling I feel is just hormones. It's just chemistry. I mean, we had chemistry but so what? Our particular pheromones mixed well together, so what? I, personally, need to have that "click" in order to be interested in someone but I need to stop believing that it means I'm supposed to be with them. Because it never works out that way. And they obviously don't feel it the way I do.

I'm really sad, but mainly because I liked talking to him. I really did want to know more about him. That, and he did a really good job on my hair .

good for you-you deserve to be validated in a relationship, it is a good thing you stopped it before you got in deeper.

Didn't really have a choice. Well. I did. But it would have been a stupid one.

I keep thinking maybe I shouldn't have emailed him, that it was just for my own peace of mind and not to be courteous to him. Which it was, but I feel like it may have come of way crazy and obsessive. But my friend was like, "So what? If you need it to move on, then do it. You don't owe him anything anyway." And look at me, sitting here, wondering if he'll actually respond. Part of me wishes he would; it'll make me feel less crazy. Most of me hopes he doesn't.

Damn the people in my life who were supposed to give me a working blueprint of what healthy interaction is supposed to look like. I wish I could just switch off the emotional part of myself. Without it, I would function so much better. I could do anything, and not have to desire affection so much that this BS happens. Those periods of time when I am able to, for the most part, suppress the need to be close to someone, to have love, to have friendship, I'm pretty damned unstoppable. But it always rises back to the surface, no matter what.

You are a very kind and understanding person. You also have an amazing amount of self awareness - please also be kind to yourself.

Most of us have to figure it out on our own. Most people don't have people who are good at giving a blueprint or good guidance in areas like this......& we have to figure it out on our own because our own feelings & how they work are usually nothing like what others around us are like.

LOL....it hit me the summer after High School back in 1970. I had met this really nice guy on the train when I was traveling to visit my grandparents in Kansas a few years before & we had kept in touch with each other then he came out to Calif & we met while I was a senior in High School. Really liked him a lot & we "decided that we would get together after we graduated from High School".....well, that summer, I got a dear John letter from him (yes, his name was John also)...saying that he had gotten married to a girl he had met.......right then & there I decided that the only thing I EVER needed to take care of was myself....I was never going to get caught not having my degree or a career & I was never going to be trapped being someone's housewife!!!!!!!.....from then on, I was in control of my OWN emotions & what I was going to allow myself to do.....

It was a fight at times & I didn't end up doing it as well as I had hoped because I still ended up getting married to the wrong person & being miserable for 33 years before I was finally able to leave (blew it off while I had my career & just tolerated the crap)....but after my career collapsed with the economy....I couldn't tolerate it any longer & the real incompetent H came out.

You are the only one who can control your emotions & sometimes you just have to keep telling yourself this is a fantasy.....got news for you....when it's NOT.....there will be nothing you can do when both people are attracted to each other.....it will be obvious....if you aren't or they aren't there is nothing you can do to force it to happen......so just sit back & enjoy the life as it comes & STOP TRYING TO FORCE things to happen that aren't there.

I agree that most of us have to figure things out ourselves. Very few people if any have clear knowledge of his things supposed to work.

I also agree that when you both want a relationship you'll end up in it. There still no guarantee it will work in a long run as there are other components, that's why people get divorced and break up etc there are other components that interfere

But no point in forcing something that isn't there.

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You keep saying that...I don't think you actually are hearing what I'm saying. Either that, or you do not have an understanding of BPD. I'm not sure.

You know, the situation is over, I've dealt with it and him and I'm done with this thread. But still...I'm not sure how to put it to you any more clearly; I don't know that I'm forcing things. If I knew that I was, I wouldn't do it. Yelling at me (typing in all caps) to not force things is not helpful and it hurts my feelings. I am telling you all, I don't understand how relationships work. I don't know how to read people. People have been as attracted to me as I have to them, apparently (I was told way after the fact), and it has gone right over my head so no, it is not always obvious. So yell all you want, I DON'T KNOW THAT I AM FORCING ANYTHING. I DON'T GET IT. When I say I wasn't raised with the blueprints, I'm talking about those core values and beliefs we're taught as children--I was not taught very functional ones. Great if you can figure it out for yourself. I haven't been very successful in doing so. And my mother discouraged social interaction in me growing up--I wasn't allowed to have friends at some points in my childhood. So it's not surprising that interaction feels unnatural to me.

What part of my saying I don't understand this stuff do you not understand? If nearly two decades of therapy has only broken the surface, do you honestly think that yelling at me here is going to do it?

Jeez. Thanks anyway.

It didn't seem to me she was yelling but more like emphasizing the importance. I also don't think she meant we figure things out but you don't. I think she meant that we don't have a blueprint either.

You said you think others have it all figured out and you don't because of your family. But she is trying to say that most of us don't have blueprint either. Divorce wouldn't be as high as it is if we all have blueprint. We don't. Even people who appear to have it together often don't.

And many come from abuse and dysfunction. Life is tough for most of us. I thought she was supportive, as she spent over 30 years with far from perfect marriage. Funny how we read same post so differently

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Thank you. I get it.

I think I feel embarrassed when I know that I've (again) forced something, and embarrassed when I don't understand. Like, come on Miss K, you're 37 and you should get this by now. I feel ashamed.

Like, how many times does a dog have to be smacked across the nose before it learns not to eat its own you-know-what?

Through the grapevine, apparently this other girl has been around for a while--they are quite serious, possibly even engaged.

I feel so freaking stupid. I know it's my fault for reading into (or forcing things, whatever) but how could I possibly have been so completely taken in as to let my guard down after I've not allowed myself to be seriously attracted to someone in nearly 6 years? I don't get it. This is why I don't take risks or hope for things anymore.

Another stupid thing...after I deliberately stopped praying after my last hospitalization (long story why, but I just felt like, with all the pain in my life, God either wasn't listening or didn't care) I started again. I did so because I was afraid of letting my guard down and I hoped that God would at least protect me from getting too incredibly hurt if it turned out this guy wasn't interested. But no. And it couldn't have been just a "No," it had to be something that lured me in so neatly that when the kill shot was fired, it would surely hit me square in the chest. So much for praying.

I'm less grieving the rejection (is it really rejection?) and more angry at myself for hoping, for letting my guard down. And just...really, really sad in general. Really sad. This pain and sadness is always there, just under the surface, but I usually have a wall up to protect me from it. And I took the wall down for this. Never again.

The way you fell is perfectly normal and human. It is sad he turned out to be taken. But please don't feel bad that you let your guards down, that is what we people do!

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People might do it, but I just can't anymore if this is what happens. I'm not a normal person.

Oh who IS normal? I just think feeling attracted to someone is normal. And now being upset is normal too. In that sense you are normal.

You did like the guy but you only met him few times and nothing happened. You could really say you got out easy before anything even happened. I totally know it hurts like heck. I am just trying to find positive in it.

At least you didn't know him for a long time, he didn't ask you out and you did not date him for several months and then discovered he had that girlfriend all along! At least he never acted like an *****! At least he is still a nice guy and you don't have to be disappointed in his human quality. I can accept sadness if the other person did nothing bad and is still a decent guy! You can even be friends. Imagine if he turned out to be a jerk and you thought he is so awesome? He is still that same person just maybe timing and circumstances are wrong.




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Yeah, no, we'll never be friends. I never heard from him after sending my email. He never wanted a friendship. I was just a client. He was just selling me something.

Like I've said in another thread, moral of the story: I shouldn't have let the wall down. It's not about B, it's about the fact that I let my carefully laid guard down for a man I'd known for four hours. I need to get through this pain so I can build it back up again. And I will not make this mistake again. Never.

I think the moral might be not to let your guards down too soon ( I know it but don't apply it myself). Not that you shouldn't do it at all. You are only 37, not 87. Please don't give up

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I haven't had an attraction in years. I never let it down. Like I said, I won't again.

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