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Struggles With Self-Esteem
Posted by
jackotheshadow
,
19 June 2012
·
145 views
I don't know how to start this off. But there's this girl I like, and I would love to become her friend and later become something more, but it hasn't been working out.
For as long as I can remember, women haven't been interested in me. Whether they just never seem to notice me, or if they show disinterest, I've learned to think of myself as definitely not being desirable. There have been exceptions, but they all seem to be dismissible for one reason or another. Maybe the girl was trying to embarrass me, maybe she was playing some sort of game or lost a bet, or maybe she was just bored and trying to have some fun and I happened to be the one she tried to have fun with.
To clarify, I have dated a few women. None of them lasted very long, and they all dumped me. The first one was at the end of my junior year of highschool; we had been friends, and I knew she wasn't smart, but she was fairly attractive. So when I started hearing from some people that I should ask her out and that she's supposedly interested in me, I figured I may as well go for it. It took me awhile, and I had to wait for a pretty obvious opening before I could say anything about it, but eventually we ended up dating. Fast forward a couple weeks and I was planning to break up with her. Turns out she was not right for me in many ways. She was rather slutty, had dated drug dealers, addicted to cigarettes, hypocritical, and rather dumb and finicky. I did feel bad, because she had told me multiple times about how nice of a guy I was. I had been hearing comments like that throughout our friendship, but once we started dating, she would comment on how wonderful it was to be with me, considering I didn't boss her around and try to make her dress a certain way and give me blowjobs all the time, which is what a lot of her previous boyfriends did. She also thought I was more stable and had a much brighter future. Stuff like that. But, that didn't stop her from dumping me three days before I was going to dump her. And then it didn't stop her from going out and finding some other random guy she just met and fooling around with him two days later.
My second relationship actually worked. Sort of. I had met a girl at a camp, and we were friends on myspace. One day, out of boredom, she started talking to a random person on her friends list, and it happened to be me. So we had a conversation going, and got along rather well. I can't say how or why it happened, but we ended up dating about a month later. She told me about how I'm such a great guy, and she can tell I genuinely care for her. She also said that while she's dated a lot of other guys, it was sort of just to have somebody to date, whereas she's dating me because she feels a real connection with me. Stuff like that. But this didn't stop her from dumping me a few months later, saying she simply has no attraction to me and wants to date other people.
About a year later, I entered a new relationship. I had been great friends with a girl for several months, and we would talk for hours a day. Over time, I realized I couldn't deny my feelings for her. Somehow, she figured it out, and then I managed to express my interest, and she was happy about it. She had only dated one other guy, and she said it was because he asked her out and she thought he was ok. But she never had any real feelings for him. It was a very casual relationship. But then there was me, a guy who was very kind and who she truly enjoyed talking to. She would confide in me, and we would share secrets. She had never known actual affection, either giving or receiving. She learned both while dating me. She really appreciated how I always supported her, and how well I could communicate. She knew I wanted her to be happy, and was looking out for her well being. But none of that stopped her from going against everythign she'd said during the last few months and dumping me, saying she's ready to start having sex and so she'll find some random guy because I happened to be far away at the time. So then she turned into a slut, and did all sorts of things she said she wouldn't, totally abusing my trust.
Currently, I've been single for about 3 years. It's not really all that long, I guess, but I could swear it's been nearly a decade. The depression doesn't help, nor does the sleep disorder. I've developed a pretty terrible memory, and have a greatly diminished sense of time. It jsut doesn't seem to progress the same way for me as it does for other people, or even the way it used to for me.
Despite some of the thigns above, I feel as if I've never received a true compliment. And in some ways, I haven't. I'm never complimented on my looks, for instance. I'm not attractive. never have been. Any time I feel like maybe I do have a good build, I remember that nobody else thinks so, or that nobody else is gonna notice or care. I disregard compliments about my personality, as it hasn't really gotten me anywhere, and certainly isn't getting me anywhere now. Despite there being apparently nothing else wrong, my personality has failed to allow me to be in a successful relationship. I've learned not to rely on it by any means.
So here I sit. I've learned to distrust myself and to lack self esteem. I'm sure I have nothing going for me, and any exception to that is worthless. When people tell me otherwise, it's either because they're trying to make me feel better, or because they're missing crucial information that contradicts their claim in one fashion or another, making it invalid. I realize I may not have explained this very well at all, nor have I properly explained my previous points, but I'm trying to make this a reasonable length, and I also lack the diction and motivation to go through and try to write down all that relates to this point so that it might make sense to any who read it.
Anyway, There's this girl. She's nice. Funny. Attractive. Bubbly. Smart. All around a pretty good catch, that I can see. And miraculously, she's single. And I see her on a semi-regular basis through work and class. So of course I'm interested in and hope for a relationship with her. Except that I don't hope, because in all of my experience, to hope is to deceive. Far too many times have I gotten my hopes up only to have them crashing down. I make an effort to avoid hoping for such things, as I've witnessed myself do so before, only to have my hopes dashed upon the rocks and shattered like glass. That hurts worse than the hope feels good. And it always works like that. In all my memory, nothing good has come from hoping. Not to mention that, on top of that, I'm so accustomed to being alone with things not working out that I actually have a hard time hoping for a relationship, whether I deny it or not. When I hope, I feel as if the thing for which I hope is so absurd and unlikely that it kills the mood, so to speak, It's hard to experience hope when you know it's not going to happen, when the thing you hope for is wildly unrealistic and not at all a part of your life or experience.
Anyway. I seem to be having a hard time avoiding tangents. It is taking longer than expected for me to make the point I originally intended to make. That point is as follows: How am I to have a chance of being happy and fighting off depression when things that should make me happy only result in bitter sadness? I refer to the situation with this girl I've mentioned before. I like her, I want her in my life, and she does bring me some measure of joy, but seeing her and being near her, spending any amount of time with her, even thinking of her, inevitably results in me being in a funk for a good portion of the day. I can't help but to become painfully aware of how desperate and lonely I am, and how little progress I've made with her. I can't help but be reminded of how she's my only option of having so many things I so desperately want, yet have so little chance of actually getting.
I've managed to get her phone number. We've texted some. I've tried making plans with her. They seem to work most of the time, but have always fallen through at the last minute, by some fault of hers. Yet she still seems friendly towards me. I've been told by a couple people that I need to back away and 'play the game', waiting for her to approach me, before things can progress. Soon after I started doing that, she did come to me. She asked me if I was free that weekend. I had to get back to her, as I already had plans (which ended up getting canceled, by no fault of mine), so I texted her to say I was free. But she never replied. As time has gone by, I've seen her a couple more times at work (she's a customer of mine, and buys lab equipment and such), but nothing has been said, save small talk and business. I'm frustrated. I don't want to wait, but apparently it's the thing to do. But as I already explained, I have difficulty hoping that anything will come of it. When I ask my friend, she says I just need to keep waiting for as long as it takes, which to me sounds like bulls***. To me, that sounds like a pathetic attempt at kindness by telling me it'll never happen but trying to sound like I'm being told that patience is golden or something silly and ultimately useless. It makes me want to give up even more.
What do.
And how can I stop hating life every time I experience something good? I'm not the kind of person who can be swayed by pretty words. I'm not going to be satisfied until something good actually happens. Or, in other words, I can't believe I'll actually have a successful relationship until I have a successful relationship. There's just no reason for me to believe it. I long ago gave up on feeling good about being able to eat cake when there's not actually any cake available to me. So until I'm actually eating the cake, I'm not going to count on it or expect it. And for clarity, I guess eating a cake is the analogy for having a girlfriend. Which doesn't happen. But I'm getting increasingly fed up and depressed. Not just with this, but with many things. And I need people to tell me something other than jsut to wait.
I should also add that I have crippling social anxiety. Talking to people is tricky for me. So telling her how I feel about her or something isn't effective advice either.
*abrupt ending*
For as long as I can remember, women haven't been interested in me. Whether they just never seem to notice me, or if they show disinterest, I've learned to think of myself as definitely not being desirable. There have been exceptions, but they all seem to be dismissible for one reason or another. Maybe the girl was trying to embarrass me, maybe she was playing some sort of game or lost a bet, or maybe she was just bored and trying to have some fun and I happened to be the one she tried to have fun with.
To clarify, I have dated a few women. None of them lasted very long, and they all dumped me. The first one was at the end of my junior year of highschool; we had been friends, and I knew she wasn't smart, but she was fairly attractive. So when I started hearing from some people that I should ask her out and that she's supposedly interested in me, I figured I may as well go for it. It took me awhile, and I had to wait for a pretty obvious opening before I could say anything about it, but eventually we ended up dating. Fast forward a couple weeks and I was planning to break up with her. Turns out she was not right for me in many ways. She was rather slutty, had dated drug dealers, addicted to cigarettes, hypocritical, and rather dumb and finicky. I did feel bad, because she had told me multiple times about how nice of a guy I was. I had been hearing comments like that throughout our friendship, but once we started dating, she would comment on how wonderful it was to be with me, considering I didn't boss her around and try to make her dress a certain way and give me blowjobs all the time, which is what a lot of her previous boyfriends did. She also thought I was more stable and had a much brighter future. Stuff like that. But, that didn't stop her from dumping me three days before I was going to dump her. And then it didn't stop her from going out and finding some other random guy she just met and fooling around with him two days later.
My second relationship actually worked. Sort of. I had met a girl at a camp, and we were friends on myspace. One day, out of boredom, she started talking to a random person on her friends list, and it happened to be me. So we had a conversation going, and got along rather well. I can't say how or why it happened, but we ended up dating about a month later. She told me about how I'm such a great guy, and she can tell I genuinely care for her. She also said that while she's dated a lot of other guys, it was sort of just to have somebody to date, whereas she's dating me because she feels a real connection with me. Stuff like that. But this didn't stop her from dumping me a few months later, saying she simply has no attraction to me and wants to date other people.
About a year later, I entered a new relationship. I had been great friends with a girl for several months, and we would talk for hours a day. Over time, I realized I couldn't deny my feelings for her. Somehow, she figured it out, and then I managed to express my interest, and she was happy about it. She had only dated one other guy, and she said it was because he asked her out and she thought he was ok. But she never had any real feelings for him. It was a very casual relationship. But then there was me, a guy who was very kind and who she truly enjoyed talking to. She would confide in me, and we would share secrets. She had never known actual affection, either giving or receiving. She learned both while dating me. She really appreciated how I always supported her, and how well I could communicate. She knew I wanted her to be happy, and was looking out for her well being. But none of that stopped her from going against everythign she'd said during the last few months and dumping me, saying she's ready to start having sex and so she'll find some random guy because I happened to be far away at the time. So then she turned into a slut, and did all sorts of things she said she wouldn't, totally abusing my trust.
Currently, I've been single for about 3 years. It's not really all that long, I guess, but I could swear it's been nearly a decade. The depression doesn't help, nor does the sleep disorder. I've developed a pretty terrible memory, and have a greatly diminished sense of time. It jsut doesn't seem to progress the same way for me as it does for other people, or even the way it used to for me.
Despite some of the thigns above, I feel as if I've never received a true compliment. And in some ways, I haven't. I'm never complimented on my looks, for instance. I'm not attractive. never have been. Any time I feel like maybe I do have a good build, I remember that nobody else thinks so, or that nobody else is gonna notice or care. I disregard compliments about my personality, as it hasn't really gotten me anywhere, and certainly isn't getting me anywhere now. Despite there being apparently nothing else wrong, my personality has failed to allow me to be in a successful relationship. I've learned not to rely on it by any means.
So here I sit. I've learned to distrust myself and to lack self esteem. I'm sure I have nothing going for me, and any exception to that is worthless. When people tell me otherwise, it's either because they're trying to make me feel better, or because they're missing crucial information that contradicts their claim in one fashion or another, making it invalid. I realize I may not have explained this very well at all, nor have I properly explained my previous points, but I'm trying to make this a reasonable length, and I also lack the diction and motivation to go through and try to write down all that relates to this point so that it might make sense to any who read it.
Anyway, There's this girl. She's nice. Funny. Attractive. Bubbly. Smart. All around a pretty good catch, that I can see. And miraculously, she's single. And I see her on a semi-regular basis through work and class. So of course I'm interested in and hope for a relationship with her. Except that I don't hope, because in all of my experience, to hope is to deceive. Far too many times have I gotten my hopes up only to have them crashing down. I make an effort to avoid hoping for such things, as I've witnessed myself do so before, only to have my hopes dashed upon the rocks and shattered like glass. That hurts worse than the hope feels good. And it always works like that. In all my memory, nothing good has come from hoping. Not to mention that, on top of that, I'm so accustomed to being alone with things not working out that I actually have a hard time hoping for a relationship, whether I deny it or not. When I hope, I feel as if the thing for which I hope is so absurd and unlikely that it kills the mood, so to speak, It's hard to experience hope when you know it's not going to happen, when the thing you hope for is wildly unrealistic and not at all a part of your life or experience.
Anyway. I seem to be having a hard time avoiding tangents. It is taking longer than expected for me to make the point I originally intended to make. That point is as follows: How am I to have a chance of being happy and fighting off depression when things that should make me happy only result in bitter sadness? I refer to the situation with this girl I've mentioned before. I like her, I want her in my life, and she does bring me some measure of joy, but seeing her and being near her, spending any amount of time with her, even thinking of her, inevitably results in me being in a funk for a good portion of the day. I can't help but to become painfully aware of how desperate and lonely I am, and how little progress I've made with her. I can't help but be reminded of how she's my only option of having so many things I so desperately want, yet have so little chance of actually getting.
I've managed to get her phone number. We've texted some. I've tried making plans with her. They seem to work most of the time, but have always fallen through at the last minute, by some fault of hers. Yet she still seems friendly towards me. I've been told by a couple people that I need to back away and 'play the game', waiting for her to approach me, before things can progress. Soon after I started doing that, she did come to me. She asked me if I was free that weekend. I had to get back to her, as I already had plans (which ended up getting canceled, by no fault of mine), so I texted her to say I was free. But she never replied. As time has gone by, I've seen her a couple more times at work (she's a customer of mine, and buys lab equipment and such), but nothing has been said, save small talk and business. I'm frustrated. I don't want to wait, but apparently it's the thing to do. But as I already explained, I have difficulty hoping that anything will come of it. When I ask my friend, she says I just need to keep waiting for as long as it takes, which to me sounds like bulls***. To me, that sounds like a pathetic attempt at kindness by telling me it'll never happen but trying to sound like I'm being told that patience is golden or something silly and ultimately useless. It makes me want to give up even more.
What do.
And how can I stop hating life every time I experience something good? I'm not the kind of person who can be swayed by pretty words. I'm not going to be satisfied until something good actually happens. Or, in other words, I can't believe I'll actually have a successful relationship until I have a successful relationship. There's just no reason for me to believe it. I long ago gave up on feeling good about being able to eat cake when there's not actually any cake available to me. So until I'm actually eating the cake, I'm not going to count on it or expect it. And for clarity, I guess eating a cake is the analogy for having a girlfriend. Which doesn't happen. But I'm getting increasingly fed up and depressed. Not just with this, but with many things. And I need people to tell me something other than jsut to wait.
I should also add that I have crippling social anxiety. Talking to people is tricky for me. So telling her how I feel about her or something isn't effective advice either.
*abrupt ending*
