How does one erase the illusion of love delivered by the media?

June 30, 2009 10:55 PM

How does one erase the illusion of "love" delivered by the media?

Ok. So i don't know completely how to explain this and truthfully might just be caught up in the moment and thinking way to much into the whole situation. I am only 21 and young but confused, and just keep finding myself in the same situation over and over.

To start i would say that "love" has ruined so many things in my life the past 6 years. I have never been in love and have no idea what the meaning of the word really means. But i have been depressed and constantly thinking about what i believe to be "love". That someday i shall meet a girl and be soul mates that true love may exist, that love at first site is a possibility. After taking a psychology class opening many of my views and thinking about all the situations i have been in, i hate the fact that "love" has been implemented into my mind to be something of this nature. Where as in other places, people don't necessarily believe in love, believing in things like marriage to be support and bringing together of two families.

Where i am getting at this is that ever since 6 years ago. I first liked a girl i couldn't have. She had a boyfriend and i waited day by day till they finally broke up which i figured/hoped would happen. Ended up wasting a good year and a half for nothing as i messed up in a way and was never given a chance. About 2-3 years later i feel in the same situation with a girl i worked with, wasted a lot of time limiting myself to wanting to be with her. I still think of her to this day, but realize that the reason i never got a chance was primarily because we both weren't ready to be in a relationship. I still think of her and see that she is in a way immature and insecure and i slowly have stopped to care. Now along comes another girl, haven't none her for long and probably getting carried away. But again i have become obsessed with the current situation and don't want to waste more time limiting myself to the same situation.

Part of me thinks that maybe it is the interaction with the opposite sex that causes me to obsess in a way (not that i don't interact with other girls, it's just i never seem to interact with other women that i particularly find attractive and have interest in) . But as i read past entries of a journal i created and never really kept up with, i realize that the thought of "love" and hope that i hear in every song, in every movie, all over the internet, and on TV. is truly what keeps making me depressed in this horrible state of mind. It gets to the point that i feel that i have an alternate reality in my head of the person and life that i wish to be/have, and with every encounter and mistake i make in reality between women i find that i may never become the person i wish i could be and want to be be in my head

I just wonder how to get to stop caring, worrying, and hoping of this illusion of love. and just move on with life instead of obsessing and becoming desperate over different situations.

posted by loser8008 to human relations (34 comments total)

Wow, plate of beans. Sometimes love is love and it happens, it's different every time - just like a casserole. Elements are often the same, sometimes they are different - but the result is always unique.

I just wonder how to get to stop caring, worrying, and hoping of this illusion of love. and just move on with life instead of obsessing and becoming desperate over different situations.

You just stop. Stop. Do whatever it takes, distract yourself by singing, go for a run and sing if you have to, bake a cake, collect stamps. Stop watching TV so , and listening to these sugarized pop songs, remember all these things were made to sell you something - the brightest mind in media went to work to figure out how to get you to pay attention - to that song, to that TV show, that magazine - there are armies of people vying for you attention - for me it's not even worth it to fight that battle.

Your writing here reminds me of alot of folks I know that just /felt/ too much. There is nothing wrong with feelings, feel them, but you can choose the way you react to them - hell you can choose how you let people make you feel. You have more control over this that you think.

Worry more about other people, less about you - sure take care of your business and try to make good decisions - but to dwell on these disheartening and not healthy IMO. Stop living so much inside your head, come out, talk to us more. We are nice.
posted by bigmusic at 11:14 PM on June 30 [4 favorites]

Where i am getting at this is that ever since 6 years ago.

Dude, you were 16 six years ago. Sixteeeeeeen! If that doesn't already seem like ages ago, you need to step back and realize that it was ages ago.

Volumes can be written on the topic you're asking about, but here's what I can tell you in the short time that it takes to type this:

Step 1: Develop a healthy and potent sense of skepticism and cynicism toward pretty much everything that society or anyone else tells you about pretty much everything, including Love. That doesn't mean that you refuse to believe everything, but it does mean that you take everything with a grain of salt and insist on finding out for yourself anything that can be found out without seriously hurting yourself.

Step 2: Don't develop relationships with people in the effort to search for or find what you imagine Love must be (regardless of whether that conception comes from the media or even from your own imagination independent of society's expectations). Instead, develop relationships with people purely out of the desire to have genuine positive relationships with other human beings. If they don't work out, don't sulk about it. Move on, and be the guy who makes the world a better place for everyone around him.

Step 3: When you find love (and you will), it will not meet any expectation or preconceived notion. But you will know it when you see it.

Bonus step: Watch Purple Rain five times, a week apart each time. See how Prince acts in that movie? See how Morris Day acts? Don't be like either of those guys. Poets might need unrequited love and unrealistic expectations of what Love is in order to create their art, but you don't need any of that, so don't be that guy.
posted by The World Famous at 11:18 PM on June 30 [3 favorites]

I think you should focus less on abstract concepts and placing blame on cultural attitudes, and more on your own behaviors; how they prevent your from achieving what you want.

You seem to have something of a pattern of becoming focused on impossible relationships with people who aren't available, this is a really, really common problem. You can change that if you work on it.

Love is real, don't reject it because it's romanticized, idealized and exploited for nefarious purposes. Most people realize this at some point, and relationships get a bit easier when you and the person you're interested in aren't looking for The One.
posted by bluejayk at 11:18 PM on June 30 [1 favorite]

Eh, what illusion? Is the problem here not that you want to be in a relationship, but are having trouble finding one? It seems like you would be quite content and unbothered by the "illusion" of love if you were actually involved with one of any of these girls.
posted by flavor at 11:21 PM on June 30 [2 favorites]

I just wonder how to get to stop caring, worrying, and hoping of this illusion of love. and just move on with life

The moving on comes first, and then the illusion disappears. Don't worry about "love"; just ask some girl(s) out. You're not required to only go out with girls that you think are 100% perfect for you. It's okay to ask a girl out if you only think she's 80% perfect for you; she probably thinks the same of you, anyway. So you both give it a shot. Maybe you fall in "love", maybe you don't. No harm done either way, and you have some fun, regardless.

The point is: the movie illusion is that you fall in love at first sight, and then you get together. The reality is that you get together, and then you fall in love. I think you already know this, and you're just too shy to ask girls out; you want it to be magical love-at-first-sight so you don't have to risk rejection. But you have to take that risk. It's not as hard as you think.
posted by equalpants at 11:34 PM on June 30 [4 favorites]

How is your Weight Loss going? If you get into shape, girls will be far, far more likely to want to date you, at which point you can fall in love with less risk of heartbreak.

Looks do matter to women, less so then for men, but if you get into shape women will be more interested in you and it will improve your confidence. Most women don't like guys who are clingy and desperate, and losing weight will help you lose those attributes (um, assuming you have them)
posted by delmoi at 11:47 PM on June 30 [1 favorite]

It gets to the point that i feel that i have an alternate reality in my head of the person and life that i wish to be/have, and with every encounter and mistake i make in reality between women i find that i may never become the person i wish i could be and want to be be in my head. I just wonder how to get to stop caring, worrying, and hoping of this illusion of love. and just move on with life instead of obsessing and becoming desperate over different situations.

dude, the username you picked for yourself, when you could've picked anything else under the sun, has the word LOSER in it. you're not just uncomfortable with yourself, you don't know how to love yourself—until you figure that out, nothing else in your life that you're unhappy about is magically going to fix itself.

also: hello, you're only 22! you're still a kid! lots of people have been in this position before you, and will be after you emerge from it; you are not a unique snowflake. you have DECADES to figure this shit out and meet good people, the same way most of the rest of us have. stop feeling sorry for yourself, overthinking situations, and blaming the media, and get on with your life.
posted by lia at 11:49 PM on June 30 [2 favorites]

I'm not sure that you have to discard the idealised fantasy, I think you just need to realise that it's an occasional bonus rather than a day to day reality - kind of like day to day sex isn't like porn, even though sexual marathons might be an occasional part of a couple's sex life.

You're twenty-one. That means you're individuating yourself from the scripts of others and starting to discover who you are and what you want. It may be none of the things which you've been conditioned to believe you "should" want. And self-awareness is a life-long process. What you want in your forties will likely be substantially different to what you want and need in your life in your twenties.

We don't so much write our life scripts as discover them. Enjoy the process, because the ultimate destination is exactly the same for all of us, no matter what path we take to get there.
posted by Lolie at 11:50 PM on June 30 [1 favorite]

I kept a journal when I was about your age. And the one thing I found with my journal keeping was interests turned into obsessions and the continual writing down everything I felt perpetuated situations that I should have stopped and walked away from. Now I'm not anti-journal. I took up writing a daily journal again in my late twenties, but by then I decided to focus on it being a ritual that helped me keep track of what I did - rather than an excuse to dwell on the same things over and over. So keep a journal, but find positive things to write about as well. Focus on things you have achieved and can achieve.

As others have said, it's too early to worry about finding love - just find people you want to be around and see what happens. The harder you try to do this kind of thing, the more difficult it is to achieve sometimes. It's not something that requires more effort, but more common sense. You will find love, but not out of desperation or some belief that you need it. You will find it when it is right for you and for her.

But take a risk. Ask girls out. Go to parties. Meet people. Be social. Be open. And see what happens. You'll be surprised how much that helps.
posted by crossoverman at 11:57 PM on June 30 [3 favorites]

One doesn't erase the illusion of love delivered by the media. Love exists for those who find a good partner. Love is a frustrating pile of crap for those who don't. The media will always sell tales of love because, as you can see by observing yourself, love is what matters to most people.

But you can make it matter a lot less to you right now if you work on yourself and let the depression ease itself naturally. Cut some of the junk out of your diet, start exercising a few minutes every day, lose a little weight where you don't want it, put on a little muscle where you do want it, get some clothes you look good in, study a little harder at school (to make life easier, not necessarily to raise your grades), join a social activity or two, learn a new skill, make a couple of new friends, and drop a couple of places or activities or people that reinforce bad feelings and bring you down and burn up your time without benefiting you.

Do all that and you might also have an easier time landing a girl, but your goal should be to make yourself happy about yourself.
posted by pracowity at 12:14 AM on July 1 [3 favorites]

There's a lot of fish in the sea, sonny.

As to the question posed in your title, try reading up on different cultures' takes on love. It's a big word with lots of connotations.
posted by carsonb at 12:15 AM on July 1

Also, pracowity and others (though more bluntly) generally seem to be suggesting that before you can expect anyone to love you, you must love yourself. No, that doesn't mean masturbate a lot. Well—I suppose that could work, but it's different for everybody. Do whatever you need to do to gain confidence in your own likability. (Part of the whole media blitz is that it will forcibly TELL you what you need to love yourself, and thus what others want from you for their love.) It is much, much easier for others to appreciate you when they receive guidance from...you.
posted by carsonb at 12:27 AM on July 1

How about refusing to use labels, and use verbs to describe the concept to yourself? Develop your own definitions and test eg:
Heinlien once said something along the lines that love is when someone else's welfare is integral to your own. It's an interesting definition. Try it on for a bit. Instead of thinking, am I in love with X, try is X's welfare that important to me? Or just their company?

The other answer is wait. Time sorts a lot of these things out or makes them unnecessary to define. You say to yourself either, this is what I decide this means for me, or you go, I don't need to define what this means - it's good enough that it feels good. And when you're in a relationship, and s/he says I love you, come back to askme, okay just kidding.

Yeah, work on your own definition. Start with some famous quotes. I don't agree with most of them. What do you think of them? Does it also apply to your relationship with your sibling(s), parent(s), guinea pig(s)?

the reason i never got a chance was primarily because we both weren't ready to be in a relationship.beans, meet plate.

Dude, seriously, life isn't like a book. 9 times out of 10 there's no reason for anything. It just happens, randomly and chaotically. So yeah, there was the cool guy at school and OMG he asked me out, and I was so flustered and speechless that he got embarrassed thinking I was hating on him, and told me to fuck off, and we spent the next 18 months staring mournfully at each other, BUT would you believe it, while I was working for a government health agency, his doctor rang me and it turns out he lives less than two hours from here and is taking some pretty major painkillers... No meaning in that at all, just random teenage stuff followed by random old people stuff.

Just be friends with people, and if you have regular monogamous/exclusive sex with them, woo-hoo, call it a relationship and see what happens in 3 years.

(tl;dr - reframe your beliefs and question them constantly).
posted by b33j at 12:32 AM on July 1

1. love is real. I doubted it for more than 30 years ... and then wham!!! when I least suspected it, there it was, beautiful and confusing. Reading Henry Miller's Roxy Crucifixion trilogy (Sexus, Plexus + Nexus) definitely helped me sort things out.

2. when in serious doubt, try to figure out how you can give more. Volunteer, tip well, just be emotionally generous ... and with no particular expectation of reward. It's actually very good for you.

3. Be creative. Write songs, form a band, make a movie, paint pictures, write stories ... and get your stuff out there. Don't worry if all you can come up with is confusion. Jack Kerouac once wrote (while still a young man) that confusion was all he had to offer. That didn't stop him from writing and thank God (or whoever) that it didn't.
posted by philip-random at 12:52 AM on July 1 [2 favorites]

love is real, and you should feel absolutely no shame or resentment in wanting it. really, that is normal, healthy human stuff. but you can't force it to happen.

you want "real love" now, you're tired of waiting? tough shit. get over that. 21 is WAY young, you have a lot of living ahead of you. it will happen when it happens, and you have no control over that, so get over it. instead, think more about having a nice "right now". try to make "right now" be nice, comfortable, and fun. focus on having nice, good times, now. and don't confuse your desire for sex with your desire for love. it's completely ok to want sex without loving. again, pretty normal human stuff there.
posted by molecicco at 2:26 AM on July 1

Ron Sexsmith has a song about this called These Days - Youtube Video (tiny possibly nsfw warning)

Lyrics:
I know how it feels
You took it to heart
What they said on the screen
Oh, but love is not just playing a part
In some very scripted scene

Your question relates to trying to reconcile what you think and what you feel. Music can be a great way of sorting things out, but not the OTT sentiments in love songs!

As for 'What love is?', thankfully you and your love will get to answer that question.
posted by therubettes at 2:55 AM on July 1

Whatever the opposite of what Delmoi said is. Some girls care only about looks but many care a lot more that you're confident, intelligent, supporting, caring and a good person. Sure, exercise is important and will make you feel better, but if you put a weight limit on when you will be loved it will hurt even more. Take this energy you're obsessing over romance and pour it into your creative endeavors - writing, music, drawing, acting, whatever. Focus on becoming an adult and learning how to take care of yourself - and I don't mean just keeping a job and paying the bills but really treating yourself with kindness and respect. You're seeking external validation but really you need to consider yourself lovable before anyone can love you.

If you can't shake the obsession, consider seeking therapy or counseling. Many sex addiction groups have a focus on those who are romantically fixated as well. I hope you find what you're looking for.
posted by SassHat at 3:31 AM on July 1

Love is not an illusion. Infatuation; obsession; unrealistic desires appearing real? They are the illusions.

That guy I was infatuated with when I was 16? Oh man, could he make me quiverrr everrry time I saw him walking through my town. That guy, the artist, when I was 20. Yeah that one I thought of all the time. Yes, that was me hanging around outside his house somenights. Both of them were so, so, infatuatible. This guy with me now, this guy I'm so grateful to know and love, the one who makes me swoon everyday, the one I'm with and want to be with forever? He could have made every move in the book when I was younger and I probably would have not looked twice his way. Why? Shit, I don't know. Maybe he would have seemed like less drama, less romantic-traumatic.

Yes modern media builds on all the tragic-romantic-dramatic love-stories of the past, all the way back to Shakespeare and beyond. And it works hard to make us believe in this romantic fiction. But it is all just 2D. Love, when it comes along and embraces you, is much more 3D, 4D even.

It's really hard to be young in your 20s and to be wanting love - the passion and the validation of love. But sometimes it doesn't happen then when you think you want it most, sometimes it takes longer. Sometimes it takes exactly the same amount of time for you to meet someone to love who loves you back, as it does for you to learn to love yourself. What a coincidence. Funny that.

I'm more than twice your age and I have a bit of experience under my belt of wanting love.
posted by Kerasia at 5:14 AM on July 1 [3 favorites]

damn! posted instead of previewing... anyway, as I was saying

You are only at the beginning of your love life. Perhaps you have a cultural heritage of thinking that love - the magic of falling in love - should come early. It comes when you are ready for it. Learn to love, honour and respect yourself. Once you have mastered that, it will be easy for loving, honouring and respectful others to love you too.

You are lovable, loser8008. Once you realise that and love yourself for it, it will be easy for you to find the love of others.
posted by Kerasia at 5:19 AM on July 1 [1 favorite]

Re the media: Popular media panders primarily to the emotions, and so devotes a disproportionate amount of air time to what the Greeks called eros. Love in this sense is a feeling (albeit a good one) similar to a disease which seemingly comes and goes on its own. There are many other types of love.
posted by davcoo at 5:36 AM on July 1

(Long-term relationships rarely survive on eros alone.)
posted by davcoo at 6:18 AM on July 1 [1 favorite]

Oh, darlin', you're doing fine.

The way you get over the illusion of love the media puts out is through real-world experience, both in love and out of it. You just need to have a lot of time walking around on the planet and learning the ropes about...everything. You need to be in relationships where you get to see the fleeting moments of "just like in the movies" as well as the far-more-common moments of two-people-trying-to-negotiate-crap, and you need to realize, "well, shit, they don't talk about this in the movies," and you need that all to realize that that's the rule rather than the exception.

And I know you're bitterly shaking your head right now and thinking, "well, that's very well and good if I could find a relationship but I can't, so what, am I screwed right now?" and no, you're not -- because you need that kind of experience too, the kind where you can't get a damn date and you have stretches of time where you are moping and depressed and bummed, because that's what teaches you to finally just shake yourself off and say, "screw this, sitting around moping isn't doing me any good, so fine, I'll just have fun on my own then," and then you get so caught up in making your own life your own way that you either don't care whether you're not matching the media illusion -- or you catch someone's eye when you don't expect it.

And the thing is, you are only twenty-one. You have so much time ahead of you to build up that experience and rewrite your own book of How Things Work -- you've only just barely begun. Honestly. The reason that you are still influenced by the fairy tales and such is because you haven't had anywhere NEAR the amount of experience you need to erase them yet -- experience of ALL kinds.

It sounds sucky hearing this, I know, but -- it's the only way to do it. You'll have days when you just feel bitter and jaded about romance and the fairy tales, and that's fine -- you need those experiences too. The only danger is letting that bitterness COMPLETLY consume you -- feeling bitter now and then is okay, though, as long as you shake it off after a day or two and then say "well, fine then, I'll just focus on work instead".

You're fine, and you will be fine, I promise. Those illusions will fade after you've had some real world experience of all kinds - not just romantic experience, either.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:38 AM on July 1 [5 favorites]

You've decided that love is bullshit and you can't be loved and you're only thinking about women from the past because society has brainwashed you through the media.

This is a very odd set of beliefs. I would hope that if you found a good therapist, he/she would point out how off the mark these beliefs are.

It hasn't worked for you yet, and you take your missed opportunities hard. You also really dislike yourself. Perhaps you are a dislikable person! If that's true, you can change: Become more interested, kinder, more involved. Build a better life, which would include going a little more easy on yourself and your fellow humans.

By the way, go find me the culture indifferent to love, and then I'll believe that there's a media conspiracy to keep us enslaved to it.
posted by argybarg at 7:03 AM on July 1

[I] ended up wasting a good year and a half for nothing as i messed up in a way and was never given a chance

This jumped out at me. It seems to me that in subscribing to cultural notions of "love," you're also buying into this TV and Hollywood equation:

Boy likes girl + girl is available = Boy gets girl

The problem is, the "girl likes boy" is entirely missing from the equation and that is why this only works in TV and Hollywood.

You never mention having any sort of mutual connection with the girls you are pursuing; rather you just wait to make your move one she pops back up on the market. But women aren't real estate: they have a say too.

The commenters above who have suggested you need to work on loving yourself first are right. You need to offer something to people. More than moping and self-loathing, too, no one likes that. Get to know yourself, figure out why you rock, and sooner or later you will either just kind of stumble into love or you will be enjoying life enough to stop obsessing over it. Ideally both.
posted by AV at 7:38 AM on July 1 [6 favorites]

Work on yourself, work on building your own happiness, rather than waiting for somebody to come along and "fix" your life for you. For one thing, it's way too much pressure to pin all your hopes of happiness on another person. They can't possibly live up to those expectations. For another thing, that sort of desperation is generally very unattractive to women -- and it's something they can sniff out a mile away.

So be your own man, and get your own life where you want it to be -- I dunno, maybe you want to be a painter, a businessman, a race car driver, singer, maybe you want to lose weight, gain weight (that was me), run triathlons, write a novel, do missionary work in Africa... WHATEVER . You'll not only secure your own happiness, which is huge in itself, but you'll be much more attractive to women in general. And you'll be waaaaay more attractive to a woman who just LOVES painters, businessmen, race car drivers... or whatever it is you choose to be.
posted by LordSludge at 8:14 AM on July 1 [2 favorites]

Read Nausea, by Sartre.
posted by paultopia at 9:47 AM on July 1

Love is real.

That said, the "love" portrayed in the movies is not real. You understand that, which is the first step.

Take a look at How to Be an Adult in Relationships, by David Risho, and Keeping the Love You Find, by Harville Hendrix, for more nuanced takes on love and relationships.

The book Love and Limerence, by Dorothy Tennov, talks about the difference between love and the category she calls "limerence", which includes crushes, infatuations, and so on.

I've heard good things about Always Talk to Strangers: Three Steps for Finding the Love of Your Life by David Wygant, but I've never read it. Apparently it's a "power of positive thinking" self-help book with very concrete suggestions about ways to do better at interacting with folks you find attractive.
posted by Sidhedevil at 10:33 AM on July 1 [2 favorites]

hi, you sound like the boy version of me. it's totally normal not to have had a relationship by 21. it's totally normal to feel frustrated and lonely and depressed.

so here's what you do:

1. get busy. find stuff you like to do or learn, and do or learn it.

2. try new things to do or learn. it fills the headspace and gives you something engaging to think about when you find yourself obsessing about love. also, it will really impress the lady who will eventually come your way if you do and know a lot of interesting stuff.

3. date. not with the intention of finding someone to marry, just someone to spend a great night with. so if there's a girl you enjoy hanging out with but aren't obsessed with, ask her out and go do something anyway. it doesn't have to end in sex if you're nervous about that. real-life experience will pretty much disabuse you of any illusions that television has given you.

4. exercise. it's good for depression, it's good for clearing the head, it'll get you fit and attractive for the lady who will come your way, and it will give you confidence in the meantime.

good luck, and hang in there. you'll figure it out.
posted by thinkingwoman at 4:37 PM on July 1 [1 favorite]

Thanks. It seems like it is always a spur of the moment thing when i post on here, but it always really helps. There are a lot of other different factors (family problems, working to much to have any fun, totaling my car) that factor into my whole situation and time and time again i find myself just overwhelmed over everything. I probably worded the question wrong a bit.

The girl situation is what caused the whole break out i guess...where yes i was thinking way to much and like you guys have stated feeling to much. It's something i don't get and am not good at. I've tried many times to be the nice and caring guy and it always works out but i always end up in the just friends situation. I just find it tough, i mean i am always open to meeting new people and everything but i don't get out enough. I am an independent college student who pays for just about everything and works all the time and goes to school full time. That's something i am always working on. but when i do get a chance to meet a girl i try to become friends and everything but still am afraid to mess up and feel like i wouldn't have a chance with them anyways. I just end up feeling to much, really happy when i get to flirt around and make her smile, really sad when i feel like i might of said or did something wrong or just don't get a chance to say anything to her when i see her.

I kind of never realized that one could actually kind of control how and what they feel. Seeing her again, i still feel like i have no chance with her and it sucks, but like you guys have suggested in a way i don't feel sad about the whole situation.
posted by loser8008 at 8:53 PM on July 3

People also have told me to be myself, and there are many times where i just couldn't answer what myself really was. i know who i am and my interest and the type of things i would like to do in life. the problem i have is i sometimes feel like i can never pursue some of them. i know they are excuses but i work a lot, go to school a lot, don't have a car at the moment, don't have many reliable friends at the moment, don't have money. I love to work with cars, build things, work with computers, play sports. i would like to be more healthy but as of right now not having a car for me i barely can drink enough water since tap water sucks, even with a filter. I haven't been able to dress the way i want, my clothes are getting faded and are shrinking. haven't got a haircut since my barbershop is far and been afraid of not having the money.

I know most of these are all material things and that many have less, but it seems as much as i act like myself it gets no where. as sweet and nice as i am and have someone who has interest in me it just hurts when i can't drive or be able to meet them somewhere to be able to ask a girl out to lunch, dinner. where i live is not accessible to walk unless i walk 3 miles, which i don't mind and would enjoy just don't have the time. I also don't have much to say as to what i do in my free time, aside from exercising a bit, studying a lot, working a lot, classes, the small occasional moments with friends. It's tough and gets me to the point where i feel that i shouldn't try that maybe i should wait till things get better. Over the past 3 years i have waiting for things to get better till i get a car, work less, and have some time to have some fun, and actually have some hobbies. Things got better got a car, took out a loan so i could be a little more stress free, and ended up having things to do and getting out a bit more. now my car is totaled waiting for a new one, waiting for a loan which hasn't got through(family issues pertaining to that) and now i am just waiting for things to get better. Just tired of waiting...tired of waiting for tomorrow!
posted by loser8008 at 9:02 PM on July 3

I noticed something. You say that people have told you to just "be yourself," but you don't really know what that means. But then elsewhere you say this:

I've tried many times to be the nice and caring guy and it always works out but i always end up in the just friends situation.

I think what people are talking about when they say "be yourself" are more like this -- DON'T "try to be the nice and caring guy." I don't mean to be an out-and-out boor -- don't start deliberately acting selfish or rude. What I mean, though, is don't "try" to be anything.

I get the impression that you are going out of your way to do all these things because "I need to be the nice guy". Sometimes people can subconsciously pick up on it if you're trying to be something. So don't try to be anything in particular -- just do what comes naturally to you. Of course you want to live with the basic laws of courtesy -- there's just a difference between "I'm going to loan her this book because I know she likes it" or "I'm going to loan her this book because I like loaning people books", and "I'm going to loan her this book because that is the sort of thing a nice guy would do".

So don't "try" to be anything. Women will not automatically fall at your feet instantly then, either, but you'll be more comfortable while you wait, you won't be second-guessing "what would a 'nice guy' do in this situation", and the woman who does eventually come along will come along because she sees you.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:48 AM on July 4 [1 favorite]

If you're being the nice caring guy because you think it will help you 'get' the girl, you're doing it wrong, and it's not very nice, and I'm pleased to hear that they can see through it. It's like treating your date well and the waitress badly, or only flirting with the pretty girls and complaining that no one can appreciate what a beautiful soul you have.

Also, no, you can't make someone like you just because you like her. Believe me, we all have wished at one point or another that it worked like that.
posted by Salamandrous at 10:50 AM on July 4

Wow, reading your last comment - things are hard in this country right now, for a lot of people. It's extra difficult when you're starting with no car and no money. Pointing out that you're in a situation where it's hard to even go out, save money, meet new people - that is fact, that's not making excuses. A lot of people wouldn't be able to do school, work, and all the things you do, and make plans - give yourself some credit for all you're doing especially when the bigger circumstances are just hard and not fair.

You're a very smart person and a good writer. It sounds like you've had a lot more life experience about many things for your age, than a lot of people, maybe others have more with relationships but man.. going to school and working to support yourself at the same time, you probably know more about life and are stronger and more mature and resilient than most of your peers.

And I mean, if you're in college at some point you will have a degree, and free time since you won't be in class all day, and hopefully that will open up better jobs that pay more money and then you can get a car and/or move somewhere closer to people your age and do all sorts of stuff.
posted by citron at 2:31 PM on July 4

Basically what I am saying is, if you are in an environment that is tough, and don't have a lot of support, it can drag you down and make you feel lonely and start to doubt yourself. Because you're a human being and that is a normal reaction to this kind of a situation.

Also what seems normal is, if you meet a girl you really like, and everything else in your life is pretty tough and not making you happy.. it's like physics? You focus on her way more than you would, if everything else wasn't so hard. Things are out of balance. I'm not saying you wouldn't have strong feelings for her anyway. But sometimes, what happens is you start to think about one person all the time as a way to tune out of your real-life situation, because you're not in a very good place.

If that's what's happening, I'd say.. once you finish that degree, you can change other things too, when your life gets back in balance you can still care about this girl but you won't obsess about her in a way that makes you unhappy. So keep working hard at school and keep looking forward and things will get better.
posted by citron at 2:44 PM on July 4