A Love Life or Lack Thereof
My love life has always been tenuous at best. I don’t really go out of my way to try to find a date. Finding friends is hard enough as it is these days and dating apps are such a dead zone for hetero men. I have a hard enough time finding friends let alone girl friends. And I’m sure part of that has something to do with my past relationships.
I was never a social person. I have generalized anxiety and it prevents me from communicating well with others. I’ve gotten better over time, but not really enough to say that I’m an expert in the matter. The only reason I met people was because I was forced to interact with them in public school. Looking back on it, I’ve always been a bit bitter when it came to people. At least since middle school. When I was a kid I had a pretty optimistic view on just about everything. But when I was exposed to high school drama, everything went downhill. I’d even go as far to say that that was the time my depression began to develop.
I was more of the typical shy, nerdy guy. I was never really in shape, I didn’t like sports, and I was easily annoyed by most people. I enjoyed playing music and video games as well as playing around with the computer. Once I started “liking” girls, it was a disaster waiting to happen. The hard part was the fact that I was never really assertive in anything. Middle school was the time where I started developing doubts about my self and my self esteem started withering. I was told that women like a confident guy and I was definitely not that. My first few crushes were just that and didn’t really go anywhere. It was when I started telling people about them that things got dicey.
It wasn’t long until I was betrayed by my peers. Middle school kids always like to try to extract info about who is crushing on who. “C’mon tell me! I won’t tell anyone.” Yeah, ok. Biggest lie ever told in school. Back then, AIM was really popular and people would get on there after school to chat about stuff like this. This is where my trust in people started fading away. People started finding out about who I liked. There wasn’t really much I could do though. At some point I actually gained the courage to talk to my crush and strangely enough she would chat with me like a normal human being. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but at some point I was going to ask her out. I believe she already knew that I liked her. I can’t remember exactly what happened, either I asked her out and was rejected or I indirectly found out that she wasn’t interested. Either way it was one of the first times I experienced this kind of rejection.
Being rejected by your crush isn’t really the same as having your parents tell you no. When you’re someone like me, getting rejected, after putting yourself out there, getting past your fears, and taking a chance, hurts. It almost feels like someone you loved has died. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but when you’re an emotionally unstable teenager, that’s pretty much the best description. I know that you need to experience rejection in life in order to move on, but something about it back then still resonates with me even today. Just writing about it now even brings back that feeling. It makes you feel ill. Anxiety so strong that you want to vomit. This was when I was beginning to learn how to hide my emotions.
This was also when I realized that I could not trust anyone with info about who I “liked”. I could only trust maybe two people. And even then I really didn’t want to risk it. After a couple more rejections like the first one, I was getting better at hiding my negative feelings. The problem was, they were still just bubbling up inside. I had no idea how to express myself. I still have a problem with crying. I simply do everything in my power to stop myself from doing it. It’s very rare to see tears come out of my eyes. All of this together caused me to see a darker side of the world. I was blinded by dark thoughts at this point. I became pessimistic and cynical. But there was still a glimmer light as I attempted one last time to like someone again.
I fell pretty hard for yet another girl in high school. I knew deep down that it wouldn’t go anywhere and that I should simply return to my shell. But one thing led to another and somehow I convinced myself to try it again. I would meet her by her locker and talk to her in the morning. Just simple friendly chatter. After doing this for some time, I knew her birthday/Christmas was coming up, so I decided to get her a gift. I ended up getting a nice little teddy bear. I even put a bow on it. I also added a note to it telling her that I wanted to talk to her at the end of the day at school. Well I think you know how this story ends. I was scared out of my mind, but in the end I asked her out. “Oh I’m sorry, I already have a boyfriend.” “Oh alright, nevermind then,” I said calmly. But I was not calm. I think this was the day I finally broke. There’s only so much rejection a guy can take. I even asked her friend if she really was dating someone else. She confirmed that she wasn’t. This hurt even more. She went out of her way to lie to me in order to not have to deal with me anymore. But get this, I decided to try to just talk with her as friends after this incident. When I did, she barely spoke to me and went out of her way to avoid me. This was it. The final nail in the coffin. I wanted nothing to do with people anymore.
It took a long time to heal from this. I don’t know if I even have fully healed to this day. But it really only got worse. I finally started dating someone. She was more social than me and had actually got a hold of me a few years after that last incident. This was one of the first times a girl actually came to me to tell me that she was interested. I was so confused that I could hardly understand it. But eventually we started dating. I was so happy and excited to actually have a girlfriend of my own. And then, two months later, she cheated on me. But being the low self esteem guy that I was, I decided to forgive her. This came as a surprise to her and I had hoped that it would end up bringing us closer together as we could overcome this obstacle. She then cheated on me a few more times. We dated for about a year with times when we would break up and get back together again. It was terrible, but I couldn’t detach myself. Eventually after one year of this we finally agreed that it would not work out. That was the last time I dated someone. It has been about 6 years now, and I’ve been single since then.
It was after that hellish relationship that I started to focus on myself. I moved away from my hometown and lived by myself. This gave me time to reflect and realize that I am much better than I think I am and deserve so much more. To this day I continue alone. I’ve reached a point where I think I can try again. I am easing myself back into the real world. But I have so many trust issues now and I worry that I may never be able to fully integrate myself. But only time will tell.
In today’s society, I just wish more women were strong enough to put in the same level of effort. Why is it the guy’s job to initiate a conversation and make a move. Why can’t women come to me and ask me out? It feels like such a double standard. My other option is to make a move and then be labelled as a “creeper”. Then there are times where I have to be the one to figure out whether or not a woman likes me. It’d be so much easier if there was a universal sign that just said “hey I’m interested in you”. It just feels like a constant mind game and I honestly am tired of playing and losing. My male friends tell me that it’s a numbers game, but the problem is I’m not much of a gambling man. There could be so many other things I could be doing with my life than just “playing the game”. It feels like finding someone is a full time job and I’m just not willing to put in that much effort for something that really doesn’t seem to have that much of a reward.
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