I need you guys to point out where I can improve myself

I wouldn’t say because she’s asked someone else on a bike ride it means she doesn’t like you. She might be interested in socialising generally with different people.

I like unaluna’s suggestion of a coffee. If she accepts then don’t worry about impressing her, you are enough as you are, it’s more about seeing how you gel together at this stage anyhow.

Wisecrack in me says she prides herself in having stopped drinking coffee five months ago but I get the point.

Given the recent breakup, that idea had come to mind but constantly having to rationalize these ideas is draining my energy. As my therapist points out, there are many positive things but it is these unpredictabilities that wear me out and make me panic and relive previous events.

I am convinced that if we get together we would be a better match than most.

I get the whole wanting to rationalise, to anticipate outcomes, to have some sort of order or predictability in a world that is anything but predictable. But you’re right it can be exhausting and doesn’t usually change anything.

I hope you’ll get a non coffee with this woman, take it as it comes, there’ll likely be surprises along the way - maybe you’ll click or maybe not, maybe you’ll click with someone else. You are young, you’ve got options and possibilities ahead of you.

It is damaging to self esteem to have been passed over. Connecting romantically can be so intimidating if you don’t know what works, aren’t comfortable with it, too in your head. Does your therapist have a way to address this for you?

Have you ever seen the film Saturday Night Fever? The main character (John Travolta) falls in love with his dance partner. This thread makes me think of that great scene from that movie where they click romantically while dancing.

What kind of therapy are you doing with your T?
It sounds like, as you recognise yourself, you need to work on you self esteem. Notice the negative automatic thoughts and unhelpful thinking styles and start to challenge them with your T.
I had terrible self esteem prior to my most recent therapist, but we spent a long time going through that process- we worked on identifying negative core beliefs and challenging them. On repeat. Every week. It was hard, but totally worth it.
That doesn’t mean you can’t connect with people in the mean time. But be yourself, not who you “think you should be”. It’s not all about status and what you do in terms of job etc. it’s who you are.
Being vulnerable is how we truly connect. Asking questions, being interested in someone.

Also, try not to judge, even if someone has had a lot of one night stands. We all have our reasons for doing things and for coping with things, even if they aren’t the healthiest of ways. I guarantee there is more to that reason than just “she liked sex” or whatever. It’s important to be mindful of that.

Anyway, all the best with things

Just a few things to add to everyone's good commentary:


"the tricks of ways to please a woman" can be learned online, if you mean sexually. But any woman will tell you what she likes during sex. Just ask her. Believe me - most women are very happy to be asked.

You mention not having a job - this is a huge thing for women, unless you are independently wealthy.


You might check out the YouTube channel: Dan O'Connor communications. He has great videos about meeting strangers and making them like you, including seeming interesting and handling awkward times and insulting comments. I enjoy his videos. I am in no way affiliated with him.

I have know for a long time self esteem is a huge problem for me. That is why I combine all these things. But no matter how many degrees I obtain, I dont think this will ever be solved.

That is what I do now: be honest, I stopped hiding my insecure side, pointing out that some interactions are awkard just because I am insecure..

The one night stands, that was my ex wife. I did my utmost best not to judge her. I know her better than anyone - I even dare say better than her parents - and I have an idea about what happened. The problem was that her stories and my insecurity combined were my kryptonite. And she did not respect my suffering from having to hear about all her extreme experiments. That was the beginning of our relationship and it has taken me a few years before I was able to experience intimacy again.

She does. Last week she even pointed out - against all she normally does - that there is an evolution. But apart from that, I still do have trust issues when it comes to therapists.

And you ususally end up with the one scenario you didn't think through.

I am currently studying a masters in AI. I generally get good response. It gives me a rather good perspective regardless of all that has happend during the latest years.

Keep up the hard work with your self esteem @pliepla
Just keep working with your therapist. The first step is recognising there is a problem, so well done!
You’ve got this!

You might want to look into Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT, pronounced like the word "act"). ACT focuses on directed action towards goals, rather than focusing on managing thoughts and feelings.

Here are some resources related to ACT:

A brief intro to ACT video:

Brief article on ACT: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy | Psychology Today

A more detailed, slightly technical, podcast on ACT: 77. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy with Jill Stoddard – Psychologists Off the Clock

This website has a ton of resources on learning ACT: ACT for the Public | Association for Contextual Behavioral Science

I have been following ACT sessions for a year. I thought it was a valuable set of ideas. However, the personal mentor I was assigned to was constantly pressuring me into things that made me drift away from my own values (with everybody, he behaved as if he had the key to a happy life: his own superficial ideas and lifestyl and he was trying to force that upon all those he was responsible for). For me it was a struggle ...

I am seeing a new psychiatrist withing two weeks. It is one of the things - if time permits - that I want to bring up.

OMG!!! I asked her out. I didn't call it a date but I did ask her to accompany me to an advanced tango class.

She didn't say no, but has a prior appointment in the afternoon and needs to check if she can leave at an appropriate time. If she can free herself, it's a yes. I guess.

For the moment, I am so proud of having asked. #smallvictory

That’s great news!

Well done! That’s a great step, regardless of the outcome, you’ve challenged those negative thoughts about yourself!

The whole point of ACT is to discover and strive for one's own values. The therapist was wrong, and completely anti-ACT, to try to impose values on you.

You can pursue ACT on your own, via self-study and practice. The main idea being to take steps to achieve your goals, regardless of what thoughts and feelings are going through your mind. So: good job asking her to accompany you!!

We're not going - it is An expensive event - but she came up with an alternative. For me that is as good as a yes.

Two updates (and a question) ...

We normally ride home - by bike - together (either one of us makes a small detour). Last Friday, the person with whom she takes tango classes attended an event too and he picker her up and drove her home. Yesterday, something similar happened: a small event with only a few people. One of her friends (who has a girlfriend, so he is no "threat") whom she knows from before she started dancing and lives very close too her was there too. She chose to ride with him. Both occasions left me very disappointed as these are the moments when I can talk to her easily.

On Sunday evening, I suggested to go running together. I have been playing with the idea for a while and have lost some weight recently so to start running will be less of a burden on my joints. She seemed enthousiastic, then said that where she works out, it is impossible to run together as it is too narrow and eventuall said she would look for a location. I suggested a place and a tour - not too long as it will be my first run since my heart problems surfaced three years ago) and she agreed.
She does have a last minute photo shoot (its her job) on the day we were supposed to meet and suggested a moment next week ...

All this starts to feel like a pattern and I wonder whether she would even notice if I were to disappear from her life. All this brings me to my question. Last week, an advertisement for a learn-to-date course showed up in my facebook. Their catch phrase was "A mixed signal is no signal." Beneath that, they elaborated that, if a woman is interested, it will be clear and she will do anything to spend time with you. All this aligns with my insecurity but on the other hand, the postponing of things suggest a pattern.
I know that an advertisement is made to sell things and that advertisers will go at lengths to achieve this and that they are probably exploiting my insecurity (and that of many others of course) but this quote is playing in my head.

And also another question ... she has been single for two months, after a short relationship of five months and a breakup from which she suffered badly (just so you don't have to read the entire history of this thread). I know it is early to expect things but, if somebody doesn't really feel the butterflies, can this change over time? Or is this really a things that happens when you first meet?

Something else: in the same context (tango dancing), I do meet another woman who is 7 or 8 years older than me. We do get along fine but she just came out of a relationship with a very dominant and manipulative partner - an experience I escaped from four years ago - and I have the impression that she would still take that partner back any minute.

On the other hand, I am starting to have the impression that she has taken an interest in me. ('Oops, I made a mistake (while dancing) - 'Oh no, yóu can't make mistakes'; she invited me to the dance event my first choice of a dancing partner did not join me for; 'We were talking about men, but don't mind to ask me because I am always ready to dance with the right man'). At the same time I am terrified to end up in a situation with somebody who is still hoping for such kind of ex partner to return. I don't have the impression that her age is an issue although my last two relationships were with women 12 and 10 years younger than me*.

It does feel nice to have this kind of interaction but at the same time I do feel guilty towards her - even when I am not sure she does take a liking in me as she might just be toying around - but I am mostly scared this interaction will have an impact on my chances with the one I really fancy.

*I have often wondered why this could happen as I tend to think this would take a lot of confidence and all other women I have been in love with were roughly my age (say + or - 2 years) but almost always my feelings remained unrequited. I do notice that, in such situations, I don't think about the possibility of persuing something and I believe that makes me act more naturally, more relaxed. And also - but maybe that is a coincidence - it could be that younger women are more willing to take things in their hands themselves because in the end, the final step from getting on fine, seeing each other very often etc. towards a relationship was never on my initiative.

Also, I believe I should let go or at least try to find a balance between letting go and at the same time not giving up. But how? It is an idea that terrifies as it implies sitting out my loneliness until a next chance meeting which might not occur for another twenty years.

I agree with your last post, I think finding that balance will be key.

I’m seeing some examples of “all or nothing” thinking in your other posts. I don’t think you should read too much into this woman not spending one on one time with you at this stage.

In my own experience, if it helps you, I was friends with my husband quite some time before we developed a relationship. I wouldn’t say I sought out his company initially but I did like him and it took time to develop that.

Be careful with reading dating advice, there’s a lot of generalised stuff written, but we are individuals with different perspectives and thoughts, we don’t all fit into the pattern these websites write about.

Yes, great advice!

Be careful feeling like you have to earn someone, because the trap in that thinking is reasoning there is an "earned" outcome which can generate allot of misplaced feelings on the matter. I've been married almost 30 years, but I would never say I earned my wife, anymore than she earned me. Relationships are complex and evolve over time. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses which means at various points one could be doing more of the lifting than the other. And that comes in all forms - (emotionally, financially, physically). So if you feel inclined to carry a scorecard through this maze of events, you are guaranteed to be disappointed every time because nothing in this world reconciles like that.

Being who you are is not a resume you sell to the other person for a position. Throughout my life I've known people that were good for friends and nothing they could have done would have changed that. Others were good partners, but those had an expiration date on them because the long haul was not what one of us or both of us wanted. The future is not set by how you or another person feels will happen. The process is always just what's happening today and over time you can look back and see where you've gone. I nor my wife could have guessed we would be here this far down the road. But then again we weren't thinking that far ahead. We were just working on the present. Believe in you and accept those who are interesting into your life and just see where it goes. Everything happens for a reason, and you have to trust the process of living your life and understand when things do not work out, then that was the natural course of what it was supposed to do.

I might be misreading this, but in my current mindset seeing where things go means accepting I will be alone and lonely for the rest of my life.

I must agree that it is nice to have friends but in my experience becoming friends with somebody you have or had feelings for always ends in her choosing for a partner. And me - it is always me - being left behind broken hearted and even more anxious the next time I dare to hope for something more.

Maybe I should not be wondering what is wrong with me then but rather how to cope with a life that is rendered completely meaningless for lack of social relations.

I use to think EXACTLY like you. Now that I'm parking it close to 60, it feels like a lifetime ago. But the irony of that is when I met my wife -to-be, I had abandoned any hope of ever maintaining any meaningful relationship , least of all getting married. So what changed?

In retrospect, I was exhausted with experience, so I was not in the mood to work that hard to invest in any expectation so much as just keep everything real in the moment. This meant I was 100% honest with everything I saw and said. I was not a better or ideal version of me, I was just REGULAR me and that made all the difference. How she would react would not be the measure.

Now was it all just me creating this result? Of course not. The reason why it worked out was because she was in the same place in her life and came into this essentially the same way. For once, we were both looking at one another but feeling the grass was greener on our OWN side. That made us make honest choices, say things in an honest expression, and look at everything with a grounded perspective, rather than wishful thinking.

So the short answer is I quit feeling like I had to do all the work in dating which in turn meant I was not going to carry the blame anymore. I valued who I was and if they didn't like it, that was finally okay. I always blamed myself for relationships that went sour because I was wired to think I said or did something wrong. Turns out what was wrong was the way I thought about it and myself in those encounters.

I can look at each one of those now and shake my head. I didn't know what I was doing. There were some people I had absolutely no business hooking up with because they were just not good for me. Others were in a different place in dating than me, so I was not a good fit for them. And then there were some where the person I chased was not serious like I was, so I either burned them out or ran them off by putting too much weight on everything we did.

But I never could see it like that at the time because I had ZERO objectivity. Even though they were all different people, I saw them all as equal "missed opportunities " simply because I believed I needed to be with someone that would make me feel complete and accomplished as a person. Of course listening to music and dreaming about what the future could be with each of them blew it all up into pure fantasies that guaranteed a bad result. Completely wrong headed way to see it.

So when I quit placing all the merits in these individuals , which I helped create through unrealistic expectations, and started liking my own life without them, then (and only then) did my vision become clear because I thought about myself FIRST.

Instead of what I could do for them, it became were these people a good fit FOR me. My expectations became measured. How I saw them now was based on whether they were good in my world where my happiness existed. The decision about how they would be in my world became mine to make, not theirs to cast aside or dictate terms.

So instead of you seeing your life as that of someone "alone", you need to see it as a valued world that belongs to YOU. Yes, another person can bring valued experiences into that world, but they also bring everything else that is less inviting. And if you do not know where you stand for yourself, what do you do when they need your help when they fall down? You have to be able stand alone before you stand beside another person. That means happiness needs to start with you first.

That is how I eventually starte my last serious relationship. I had other things to do, absolutely not time etc.

But basically, it means accepting my loneliness, hoping that I can build up some kind of a life within a reasonable timespan and then maybe ... to me, now, it does not seem worth the effort. This involves so many uncertainties that going on, only to try and probably having to continue with empty hands does not make sense anymore.

I often notice that I feel better when I can stand next to somebody who needs support. For me, that is part of what makes life meaningful. I can't imagine any sense of purpose when I have to continue living in isolation (yes, I do see a lot of people these days but the moment I go home, meeting people only makes it more obvious how much I suffer from being alone.
I have no talent for happiness.

A few - probably last - words about this one person ...

Last Friday there was an event with live music. She seemed more than happy to dance with me through the first part of the first live set. We even discussed attending the tango weekend organised by our dancing school. We danced more than we normally do. And then, I was hoping for our ride home but it didn't happen., maybe due to miscommunication althoug she know where my bike was parked.

Then yesterday, we met again. We dance, we had a chat but there was no bike ride. The man with whom she's been taking classes for two years had picked her up and drove her home, which seems logical to me as they are used to doing that. What bothers me more is that we had agreed to go for a run the coming week and that she has - as she said - no energy and also the swimming season starts so she will probably prefer swimming. She did say that she really liked the idea and that she would look for another moment. But that was before the but (which makes me think of a popular Jon Snow quote).

That leaves me with the promise that we will attend a tango waltz class in June and a concert later that month, but I am not sure these are really going to happen.

For me, it feels like the whole situation gave me the clarity I need: this will not happen (and I can think of a hundred reasons why we would be a great match) and I am off to the desert for another 2, 4, God knows how many years.

I did not sleep well, for most of the night I have been pondering my original question ... What am I doing wrong? How can I fix this? How can I improve myself?

Also, this "a mixed signal is no signal" quote, to me seems to go beyond merely marketing.