seriousjay

OK so some backstory: I've started seeing the woman from Match that I thought ghosted me. Turns out she almost immediately responded to me and I just didn't get an e-mail about it. My bad. Our second date is tomorrow. Today I got pretty bad anxiety about this whole thing. Everything seems to be going very well so far, yet I still get these really stupid thoughts. "She's going to dump me because I'm too much of a headache with my anxiety." "Why didn't she respond to my text about feeling a connection with her more enthusiastically?" "She's going to cancel our date because she's just not that into me." Etc. I know in my mind that all of these thoughts are lies. There is no basis in fact or reality to take them seriously. Yet they constantly pummel me. I can fend them off at first but eventually it just cripples me. I spend so much mental energy trying to fight them off. Today I tried a new technique of just listening to my music with earphones on. The idea being to drown out all the mental noise with actual noise that inspires me. I found this really, really helped. Within 10 minutes I was calm. It feels kind of weird to lay in bed staring at the ceiling with headphones on but if this continues to work then I'm willing to live with that. I may even bring earbuds to work to do the same thing, since all this shit usually starts during the day. I have no idea how I'm going to tell her about this stuff. On top of being clueless about how to be a boyfriend, I'm dealing with all of this. At the very least I need to let her know it's going on so if I say or do something that seems kind of silly because of it, she'll at least know why. On most days I can keep it controlled but there will probably be especially bad days where it's going to come out, or she'll pick up on something being very wrong because I'm terrible at hiding my emotions. I am legitimately excited to see how things go with her but at the same time I'm worried that she'll just think I'm too much of a burden to date. I guess there's nothing I can do about the latter, and if she doesn't want to deal with it then I guess she isn't the right person for me anyways. I keep telling myself that I'm an amazing person that deserves love and respect, and I do believe that to be true. I guess we'll just see where things go from here.

@BooksandTrees Have you considered looking for a therapist? If you feel like you have nobody to talk to about your shit, a therapist might do the trick for you. Also, have you ever tried creating a competition with yourself? Track your progress on things and keep trying to beat your PBs. If that's not enough, you could look into lifting competitions or endurance races. Those are obvious sources of competition and really do stretch you to the limit. It seems like those would be a great way to fulfill that need of yours while also being something keeping you occupied and burning your negative energy off, since you'd need to be training at the gym on a regular basis.

To your first point above, I don't even want to be that type of guy. That's what I mean about being so atypical. I think the tension between what I want and what I've been told I should be has caused me a great deal of stress and anxiety. I recognize that most women won't approach men and not doing cold approaches will limit my options. I'm at peace with that. To your second point, I also believe a lot of people, not just women in the 30-40+ range have gotten past the whole "fairytale romance" stage, where they won't settle for less than prince charming with the perfect personality and Brad Pitt looks sweeping them off their feet within 10 seconds of approaching them. Most reasonable people in that age range should at that point recognize that everyone is flawed and you're going to have to accept someone who is flawed. That doesn't mean dropping your standards, but to expect it to go perfect from the get-go is completely unrealistic. I have to wonder how much of how you see yourself is being projected onto women. You realize you're not much of a catch and you develop the idea that most women around your age aren't either. It's a defense mechanism you adopt, perhaps subconsciously, to ease the pain of not being in a committed relationship yet. I'm not saying that's you, but it might be worth it to do some self-reflection and figure out if that might be what's going on. There are plenty of high quality women available in the 30-40 range, and they are available for various reasons. Last, if the offers you get aren't appealing, then the answer is to make yourself better in order to attract higher quality people into your life.

I'm really going to have to get disciplined about this lol.

Honestly I didn't find it that hard. I wasn't really too attached to it to begin with. I think I watched sports more as a social thing. My cousins and I would get together to watch it. Unless it was baseball I rarely watched it on my own. My inner editor is cringing at the amount of times I typed a variation of the word watch in this paragraph LOL!

Long ago I told myself I'm not going to invest myself emotionally into sports anymore, and it seems you're taking that same path. You've realized the truth. They don't care about you. They don't win for you. Whether they win or not, it doesn't affect me in any way at all materially. I'll watch the occasional game from time to time but only to enjoy the game itself. I don't care anymore who wins or loses. It's a waste of my emotional energy. Then there's also the 3 hours per game, minimum to watch them all. That's a lot of time spent!

I think it's important to take what other people say they do for their morning routine with a grain of salt. Not everything is going to work for everybody. I do think it's important to discover what DOES work for you, but don't feel pressure to do it any certain way. YOUR morning routine is unique to YOU, whatever that ends up being, and you shouldn't feel bad because you don't do it that guy's way.

Thanks for this. It doesn't really help either of our situations but it's comforting to know I'm not struggling alone. I refuse to subscribe to the belief however that single women my age aren't prizes. I mean, I know I'm a really awesome person and I'm single, so there's bound to be women who have gone through a similar path in life. Or they've moved on from a bad relationship themselves. Etc. Yeah, you're right that we can't just choose to be something we're not. At least I can't. I wouldn't be able to last very long putting on that kind of face. It would be very clear to the other party that I'm just faking trying to be something I'm not. However, I'm not going to try to hide or reject who I am anymore. I think that might be causing me more grief than anything else at this point. I don't fit into society's box of what I should be and that's going to be just fine with me. Thanks again!

So yesterday I googled "how to date a virgin". I don't know why I did it. I found this: https://www.wikihow.com/Date-a-Virgin Reading that was really challenging for me. For the last year or so I've been constantly told that I need to be the confident, aggressive man that pushes things along. I need to touch her confidently. I need to just go for it. None of it ever sounded or felt right to me. It just wasn't me. That isn't to say I'm not confident, but I never identified with the typical role of a male in a courtship. I've mostly just been telling myself that I guess I just need to suck it up and do the uncomfortable until it becomes comfortable. I think I'm done with that. I don't want to apologize or feel ashamed for how I think anymore. Yeah, I'm not the typical male, and I don't believe there should be anything wrong with that. Maybe it really limits my potential matches, but I don't want to settle for an unsatisfactory relationship where I'm always having to put on a face just to please society's idea of what I'm supposed to do. That doesn't make any sense and I'm not going to try to fit into that box anymore.

This is a great intention that you've made here. I can relate to the idea of forcing myself to do something I don't really want to be doing simply out of habit. Right now for me it's fast food. The most important part is to not get down on yourself in moments of weakness. Try to take a compassionate approach with yourself. People fail and they get up. It's how you bounce back that matters.

Totally agree. The problem with even thinking about giving in to them is that it gives them justification to continue doing what they're doing. If they're there because they recognize that they have a problem but the person helping them has the same problem, it makes it hard to take the help seriously.

Those are some great goals. Do you have any idea what kind of work you'd like to do that might align with those goals? What kind of things do you like to do that you might be able to make a living off of?

Erik what is the nature of your counselling work? Is it specifically addicts helping addicts or something? It seems to me there's a lack of respect for what you do from your clients. They don't seem to understand why they're there. Are they there voluntarily? I'd love to hear more about this.

I agree in principle but it's a lot easier said than done unfortunately! Take it from me! 😄 If you have the discipline for it, when the cravings come, try to distract yourself from it. Do something else entirely. Go for a walk. Read something.

Yes. Thank you for understanding. I'm going to use my time with my online counsellor to talk about this. I don't really think a dating coach is the answer because I actually think I do fine in dates. Maybe I'm not the sexiest dude in the world and I don't sweep women off their feet but that's just not the type of person I am. Like I mentioned in other parts of the forum, I prefer to just be the real me during dates. If they're gonna fall for me, let them fall for who I actually am so there's no resentment later. Anyways, I wrote another journal entry about this, here it is. I feel like doing it this way makes it easier to sort out my thoughts: @Amphibian220 I'm going to be honest I didn't respond to your idea sooner because my initial reaction was about how weird it seems. I am legit shocked that you found a girl that accepted receiving a proposal that way. I have a hard time believing such a woman might exist in North America. However, I am not religious in any sense of the word so maybe this is more a religious thing. Regardless, are you still married to this person you proposed to? I actually think it's VERY cool that such alternate forms of "dating" exist. This world needs more options for people who don't conform to the usual ways of doing things. Also, I get what you're saying about religion but I still associate it with Christianity, Buddhism, etc. I am none of those things. The closest thing to religious I can say about myself is that I believe in the law of attraction, of a living, breathing universe that responds to your energy. That's about it.

To be honest I'm not afraid of rejection. Not consciously anyways. I've long since accepted that rejection is a natural part of this learning process. I don't LIKE rejection, but I don't fear it. I don't know what it is. Like I said, I think it runs much deeper than just dating. Sometimes getting a text makes me jump and my mind races about who it is, etc. Sometimes I'll check my e-mail or journal or whatever I'm focused on at the time several times to see if I got a reply. It's really annoying.

Thanks for the reply. I am not religious though so I can't relate too much about that. What I can say is that dating itself doesn't scare me. In fact, I'm pretty much never nervous going on a date anymore. None of that is the issue. The sole concern right now for me is this damn anxiety. I think it cuts a whole lot deeper than just being single.

I'm going to be completely honest I don't really think what I'm experiencing is normal at all. I just spent half the day today in the abyss. I wrote a journal entry on BetterHelp that encapsulates my thoughts on the matter so I'll just post it here: I need to stress that none of the negative things I feel are voluntary. They just come out of nowhere and sometimes when they do they don't stop. Unless you experience this yourself you'll probably have no idea how debilitating this is.

Just to be clear about something, it doesn't actually matter all that much to me if she responds to my message or not. At least not in my conscious mind. When it comes to online dating specifically, I've already accepted it for what it is, both good and bad. I am specifically focusing on the anxiety it's triggering and what, if anything I can do about it. I actually ended up playing Heroes of the Storm for a bit. It was a game I was going to use as an alternative for when I got food cravings but I never ended up doing it. I specifically chose that game because matches within the game only take about 30 minutes max and historically I never really liked that style of game much so there isn't much risk of me getting addicted to it. It actually helped significantly to calm my anxiety down and I feel OK now. Maybe I'll continue with this, we'll see.

I appreciate the feedback but it wasn't really my point. I truly mean no offense by that. I want to get past this anxiety. Whatever it is. Dating anxiety? I don't know. I don't like the fact that I feel this way at all and I want to do something about it. It really has nothing to do with dating specifically. If looking at an apple triggered this I would still feel the same way. I want to figure out what the root cause is and try to eliminate it if I can.

So on Sunday I got an e-mail about dating Sunday from Match so I went and checked out what was there. Turns out an interesting girl viewed me so I sent her a message and got a response. I messaged her again and I haven't received a response yet and my previous anxieties about all this are starting to creep up again. Why isn't she messaging me back? Etc. Is this normal? I feel like there's no way it can be normal. Even if it is, I don't like it. I feel like if I don't get this under control, when I do get into a relationship it's going to manifest as jealousy, etc. For all my self-awareness it does me little good with these thoughts and feelings that I can't seem to get control of.

Yes, many people repeat the same patterns over and over again and never realize that something about THEM is causing that. In order to change your circumstances, you must change yourself first. This is such a great thing you've realized! MANY people suffer from worrying about things they have no control over. It is the ultimate energy sapper because... you have no control over anything except your worrying! Consistently feeding that worrying only exacerbates the problem. Well done!

I'll be honest I'm not a big fan of the whole pickup artist thing. It falls into that category of cheap tricks to use to attract a woman. If you're an awesome person, are confident, etc., then that really should be enough. Unless your goal is to have sex with as many women as possible with no strings attached. Then by all means use all the tricks you can think of.

Well some people say it's impossible to truly love another if you don't love yourself first. I believe that. I really think if you're happy with who you are and what you're doing in life, there is very little anyone else can do to disrupt that.

Hmm, what can I say. I don't actively date and I'm not too sure if I ever will again. At this point I'm much more focused on improving my life and I believe the right people will come along as a result of that, including my future life partner. I'm really not too worried about it either way. As for my experiences? I'm not really sure I have anything worth mentioning. Only that I think it's so important that each person does what makes them happy and follows their passions. Your mind intuitively knows what you want, and it's then up to your conscious self to follow through on that. Ultimately each person is responsible for themselves and shouldn't look to someone else to fulfill them.