In recent weeks, I find myself very interested in a woman that I am somewhat friends with. She is beautiful, funny, and very much the most intelligent person I have ever met. And more important than anything, I have a great time sitting and talking to her. She’s not perfect but, she’s the first real interest I’ve had in a few years.
I am in a situation where I find myself contemplating how to cross the gap and ask her out. I actually think there is a possibility she is somewhat interested in me, but am extremely scared of the rejection, I’m scared of losing another friend, and I don’t know… just scared. This is really a culmination of a few really bad experiences over the last 7 or 8 years which have left me frightened, depressed, and with an extremely low self esteem.
But it occurred to me tonight… I used to be able to attract women who were, in my opinion, much better looking than me. Just much better than me in many ways. I can name in particular 5 women 10+ years ago, 2 of which went beyond just friends (the other 2 I wasn’t really interested in, 1 the timing just never was right). These girls were gorgeous, varying levels of intelligence and really good people.
But then the last 2 serious interests happened and really those 2 were doomed from the start. They were both married, 1 of them didn’t even live in this country. Yes, I was a bad person for being interested in married women, no I didn’t have a choice in the matter, I didn’t want to like them. On top of these doomed relationships I had bad video game dynamics with both of them in the fact that I met them both playing video games which had very toxic environments where back stabbing friends was promoted and desired.. and well I kind of entered a perfect storm of bad where my interest in women was being coupled with a paranoia perpetuated by games.
But then… I return to the thought… what was I before this period of my life where I could attract women fairly well and I had the confidence in myself to go after them and how do i get back there?
To figure this out, I kind of wanted to go back and look at the words of how I talked even if it was casual, but alas, trying to find 10+ year old emails… that shit ain’t easy. I used yahoo (I believe) at the time, and they only seem to store 1 year’s worth of emails unless you purposely save them, and It looks like my gmail account only went back to 2007 (I also recognize, that even with the first of the two women, I didn’t use gmail, I used a secondary email account for privacy). Sooo I think back on my personality as my flawed memory can go…
Sarcasm… I’ve always been a sarcastic fellow with a quick wit. I do think this has been one of my primary assets in life as I have always had a capability to make people laugh. And I still can. I do think that due to my job with 12 other men in a call center that my humor has gotten more juvenile as I have gotten older (weirdly enough), and consists of a lot more sexual jokes and that’s what she said jokes. Easy to make people sort of smile, but they are cheap laughs. Maybe I should lower those more as I don’t think they are a great look for me (also they aren’t good for flirting, I used to be able to better direct the sexual vibe into real flirting in a way I’m not good at anymore…
Flirting… I think it’s worth moving onto flirting… I never was spectacular at flirting, not going to pretend otherwise, but I did enjoy the flirt, and it’s something I don’t do almost at all anymore, especially with girls I am interested with… it’s really bad. The girl I am into now for instance has on multiple occasions has gone into a sexual place and I have basically stopped it in its tracks not really knowing at all what to say, but previously if a girl I was into said something even remotely sexual, I would very quickly apply my wit in a quick and powerful way and with a slight grin on my face and it would start play… In particular I remember one girl where we would flirt with each other in regards to sticking your tongue out meaning that you were interested in kissing.
Self Esteem – Ok Look… I have always been very self deprecating and there have always been a lot of things about me that I have been self conscious about (weight in particular). If I am going to be honest, I was pretty self confident before despite that. I didn’t think I was perfect by a long stretch, but I was smart, funny, hard working, and I even at times felt like I was pretty good looking (looking back at pics from that time… I disagree I ever was lol). Self Esteem took a DEEP dive in the last 10 years… I don’t think I’m anything other than funny (I don’t even think I’m particularly smart anymore). And I don’t really know how to get back there. All I can really do is work on improving myself and hope that it helps with my self esteem. And… fake it…
Intelligence… Yeah I still think I am smart…. I don’t think I’m as smart as I used to be. I don’t remember things the way I used to. This may actually have led to my biggest self esteem drop as this was the thing I liked the best about me and so to see myself as less smart has definitely hurt. I have absolutely no idea on how to improve brain functions but this is something i need to look into badly. I think I’m going to start by actively reading books, something I haven’t really done since college. I think this will at least help get my vocabulary back into shape…
Anger… Finally anger has been an increasing problem in my life. I was a very nice guy, and really in my heart I know I still am extremely nice. I tend to think well of everyone even if I understand they will likely disappoint me. But between terrible jobs, terrible friend experiences, and growing pain…. I am quick to anger. This was actually something first noticed by me due to the customer support job back in oh 2009. But I think with the other bad things that have started happening in my life this has gotten worse. I need to fix this first and foremost and I have started going to therapy. I think if there is one thing that I fixed that could potentially help me get women and friends again, it’s fixing this. I think I can be the kind soul again who will do anything for his friends, and give freely to anyone who asks again.