What's on the Inside Does Count??
June 27, 2010 8:06 AM   Subscribe

How am I still single? Am I that unattractive of a personality?

I'm a college student who has never had a boyfriend or been in a relationship. To be honest, I've been dealing with on and off again depression which had me pretty withdrawn. However, I think that has more or less passed.

At the same time, I've never been able to connect to people well. I grew up in a household where showing any sort of emotion other than happy was rather discouraged. I sometimes act like how I think a "normal" person should react but I really in my head, I'm clueless as to how I'm supposed to feel. My range of emotions tend to be happy, sad, mad, and stressed. Nothing really in between. I tend to keep friends at arms length because in the back of my mind, I'm afraid that they'll hurt me, whether it's intentional or not. For strangers, I can come off naturally as aloof and sometimes a cold bitch. What can I do to not come off this distant? I'm somewhat introverted.

I also have no idea how to flirt. I'm not disposed to being touchy feely at all. I actually feel like a complete idiot when I attempt to flirt. Oddly enough however, two of me closest friends are guys. I have a lot of boy friends but no boyfriend. I "go out with the guys" frequently but they and everyone else around consider me a "guy" since I do enjoy my contact sports (play a few) and beers. How do I go from a friend to a girlfriend?

When I go out, I do make an effort--some light makeup, wear something fun, but I don't attract men at all!! I've had a few lesbians hit on me, sorry but I don't swing that way and quite a few drunk ones. In an effort to meet more people, I've joined more extracurricular activities on campus, but I've just managed to increase the number of guy friends that I have. I know that physically, I'm not too unattractive, so it must be something wrong with me on the inside, right? I am really at a loss at what to do!

Please help someone desperate enough to ask for relationship advice on AskMeFi! Throwaway email at whysounattached@gmail.com
posted by anonymous to Human Relations (28 answers total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
Make enough guy friends as time goes on and trust me, a couple of them are gonna have a crush on you. Don't get me wrong, I think the "rule" in "When Harry Met Sally" is bullshit (male-female friendships never work because sex gets in the way) but I wouldn't be surprised if any of your current male friends actually did secretly like you in that way but are discouraged because they think they're "friend-zoned," as Chris Rock would say.
posted by windbox at 8:18 AM on June 27, 2010 [1 favorite]


I've had a similar experience. The way I interact with people, unless I know them very well, keeps them at arm's length emotionally and I have a similar difficulty flirting. I think those two things are the basic problem but I don't have any advice on how to fix them though perhaps others will. I never had any serious relationships until well after college and even then mostly with people I'd already know for years.
posted by XMLicious at 8:21 AM on June 27, 2010


Have you tried online dating? You state that you can come off as cold and aloof, so maybe the guys that you meet when you're out and about assume you aren't interested in dating. If you're meeting people online, you don't have to worry so much about giving off a flirtatious vibe because you're obviously there for dating.

I'm fairly introverted and "off" myself, and online dating has always worked great for me. There's someone out there for everyone, and unless you have a truly repellent personality (which I'm sure you don't!), you'll eventually hit it off with someone.
posted by tetralix at 8:24 AM on June 27, 2010


Why don't you ask guys out? "Hey, do you want to go out on a date sometime?" Works better after you've both had a drink or two.
posted by anonymuk at 8:26 AM on June 27, 2010


The problem is that normal men (i.e., the ones you want to date) are conditioned to ignore a woman who is cold and aloof because men have learned (rightly or wrongly) that these women are not interested in them.

More simply put: acting cold and aloof to a guy indicates to that guy that you are not interested in him and that he had better move along.
posted by dfriedman at 8:26 AM on June 27, 2010 [14 favorites]


I second the advice to talk to your guy friends about it. I know that I personally can appear very cold and uninterested when around strangers-- I avert my eyes, pretend I don't notice them, etc. It's a self-protection thing. Just putting the word out there that you actually do want to be close to people may be enough to get some coming your way. Also I'd highly suggest that you go see a counsellor. Most colleges have some that you can see for free or really cheap.

Good job on joining social activities, by the way.

Oh, and... make sure you really love yourself. If you don't, try to. You can't be someone else's love if you have no self love. Everyone has different time tables for relationships and love and sex, don't chalk loneliness up to "something wrong with me on the inside". What if you just haven't met the right guy yet?
posted by wild like kudzu at 8:29 AM on June 27, 2010 [1 favorite]


As a guy, I'd like a solution too...
posted by randomizer at 8:31 AM on June 27, 2010


It's the hugest AskMe cliche in the world (right up there with DTMFA and "throw that chicken salad away") but therapy works. You are having issues with depression and social interaction that you could use help with, more help than just well-meaning anonymous people on the internet can provide in this one moment.

And, how many dudes have you asked out? It's 2010, women are allowed to ask people out. It's hard, but going up and saying "hi!" gets you places that sitting in the corner and looking cute never will.
posted by Forktine at 8:34 AM on June 27, 2010 [2 favorites]


Unless you're angling to date a specific one of your current guy friends (and perhaps even if you are), I suggest chosing one who's currently not available to ask advice of. Less pressure, less chance for awkwardness.
posted by deludingmyself at 8:35 AM on June 27, 2010


I've been dealing with on and off again depression which had me pretty withdrawn.

I've never been able to connect to people well.

I grew up in a household where showing any sort of emotion other than happy was rather discouraged.

I sometimes act like how I think a "normal" person should react but I really in my head, I'm clueless as to how I'm supposed to feel.

My range of emotions tend to be ... nothing really in between.

I tend to keep friends at arms length because in the back of my mind, I'm afraid that they'll hurt me...

For strangers, I can come off naturally as aloof and sometimes ... cold... "
You don't need a boyfriend right now. You need to be happy. You need to be able to be close friends, male or female.

Having a boyfriend can be nice, but it can also make you feel worse -- and you could mess him up, too, if you don't know yourself well.

It's fine not to have a boyfriend. Don't compare yourself to some media- or art- generated ideal; romantic relationships are the norm in movies, TV, books because they lead to drama and obstacles to be overcome. Your current obstacles to contentment are harder to portray in a fun, accessible way on TV, so you don't see them reflected there, but they're real and not that uncommon.
posted by amtho at 8:42 AM on June 27, 2010 [13 favorites]


Ooh, yes, after reading amtho's post I have to also caution against rushing into a relationship to boost your own self esteem. That roughly translates into codependency, and that is no fun. Many people (myself included at times) rely too heavily on the things their partner likes about them. For example, someone who has a poor self image might start dating someone and prefer the partner's opinion of their self to their own opinion. This is a slippery slope-- the times when the person I dated liked me more than I liked myself I would find myself trapped, desperate to see myself reflected in them. The problem with this is, obviously, the partner in the situation doesn't know you as well as you do. They are only seeing certain parts of who you are, and even those they might be misinterpreting. Sure it feels great, but it makes you need the other person in an unhealthy way.
posted by wild like kudzu at 8:52 AM on June 27, 2010 [2 favorites]


I could write a novel on this, but I don't want to, so here are some points:

-Don't expect to turn your current guyfriends into boyfriends. Even if any of them are attracted to you, they know you and the way you generally interact with people. That sort of austerity makes it difficult to see someone as girlfriend material. I'm not suggesting that all, or even most guys want a bubbly partner, but it's difficult to get together with someone who has known intimacy issues. Also, it's one thing to have cracked someone's shell while you're friends, but entering a relationship with them - especially if it's their first relationship - brings a whole set of new problems to deal with.

-If you don't flirt and you're particularly reserved, it's going to be difficult for people to regard you as a sexually interested/available person. There's a chance that you're sending out a sexually uptight vibe, which is going to be a dealbreaker even for people who aren't immediately looking for sex.

-Your depression is probably far more obvious than you think it is. In fact, go all the way and strike the "probably" bit.

-You asking guys out isn't necessarily going to fix anything. Let's say you do ask one out - what happens next? Sure, taking that leap is nice, but if you don't have the emotional tools in place to build a reasonable connection with someone, you're not going to get what you're looking for. Women taking more initiative in relationships is the answer to certain types of dating issues, I doubt it will solve yours.

-I'm not suggesting that you pretend to be an extrovert, but the key to fixing most of this is learning how to be socially and emotionally freer. That probably means therapy, which as a student you will probably be able to get for free/almost free through your school. You're at a point where your focused would be best placed on working on yourself rather than trying to get into a relationship.

I know that that's an irritating thing to hear because you're looking around and seeing your peers not deferring love and sex for personal development, but keep in mind that not everyone gets to the same place at the same time. But don't worry, you'll get there.
posted by thisjax at 8:53 AM on June 27, 2010 [3 favorites]


Okcupid.com
posted by Jaltcoh at 8:56 AM on June 27, 2010 [4 favorites]


Anonymous, kudos for what you're doing -- overcoming your depression, questioning the idea of "normalcy" enforced by your parents, and taking bold steps to step out of your circle and meet more people.

I don't have the answer to How to Attract Men, per se - but I think that question itself is problematic and I feel that it may be the problem here, as opposed to what you think it is -- your lack of attractiveness. So I'm going to do some digging here to try to uncover your assumptions, bear with me.

How am I still single? Am I that unattractive of a personality?
You are still single because you are not and have not been in a relationship. A guy who meets you doesn’t know that you’re “still” single, or even “single”, necessarily.I was in college once (not too long ago) and the only cases in which relationships had much to do with anyone’s actual “personality” was when the people in question had already been friends for a long time. Those didn’t end well, for the most part, but I’m sure I’ve surveyed a skewed (as in mostly drunk) sample. As for the others, well the beginnings of them were mostly based on a combination of looks and what each assumed about the other’s personality. The accuracy of those assumptions was usually proportional to the length of time the two people had known each other, and often inversely proportional to their level of physical attraction for the other person. So even if you think men aren't attracted to you, it doesn't say anything on who you really are. Not a thing!

At the same time, I've never been able to connect to people well.
You have friends, you are making new ones – I would be interested in knowing why you feel that you haven’t been able to connect to people well. Do you mean that you’re an introvert? That doesn’t rule out connecting with specific individuals; it may mean that the number of people you’ve connected with is smaller as compared to someone more outgoing, but it can also allow for deeper connections.

Or, if you mean that you don’t feel fulfilled by connecting to people – well, that’s a very very hard thing to do and most of us, even the ones in healthy relationships, are still searching for that. If fulfillment is what you mean, well that’s a momentary feeling and a timeless ideal.

I grew up in a household where showing any sort of emotion other than happy was rather discouraged. I sometimes act like how I think a "normal" person should react but I really in my head, I'm clueless as to how I'm supposed to feel. My range of emotions tend to be happy, sad, mad, and stressed. Nothing really in between.
That’s uncool about your family, but realizing such things is of course not enough to overcome it – which may be why you think that there are clues (which you don’t have) about how you’re supposed to feel. You aren’t supposed to feel any way, really – just to be aware of how you feel. I think you are already on that path. Where it leads, I think, is not: a range of emotions that you should feel in between happy, sad, mad and stressed, but rather: being okay with however you do feel.

I tend to keep friends at arms length because in the back of my mind, I'm afraid that they'll hurt me, whether it's intentional or not. For strangers, I can come off naturally as aloof and sometimes a cold bitch. What can I do to not come off this distant? I'm somewhat introverted.
This is problematic. If you keep even your friends at arms’ length, what are you hoping for in a relationship? Someone who will draw your out? Validate your feelings, personality and looks? Your question itself is rife with the assumption that a state of singlehood is by definition worse than being in a relationship, no matter who with – but I am sure many here will agree when I say that that is not always the case. Some will say it’s not even often the case. So maybe start looking at men as individuals rather than just men… I’m not saying that you necessarily do this, but the way your question is posed does make me wonder if you do.

What I mean is, and I could be wrong, that you seem unhappy with who you are. You can either just work on making yourself happy with who you are, or put all your hopes in a relationship. The former is in your control, the latter is not. If you measure yourself solely or even mostly by whether you’re attractive to others and worthy of being their girlfriend, then it’s a kind of self-defeating prophecy, isn’t it? You think that you’ll be happier when someone else is happy with you, and you use the fact that you’re not with someone to be even unhappier with yourself.

I also have no idea how to flirt. I'm not disposed to being touchy feely at all. I actually feel like a complete idiot when I attempt to flirt.
The point of flirting isn’t attraction, so much – that’s already happening. It’s letting someone know you’re available and available. I don’t think there’s any right way to flirt. To flirt is just to make your intentions known. Flirting badly is not your problem, it’s that you think there’s a right way and stop yourself from making what you think will be a fool of yourself. But relationships are a risk and a gamble from the get go. If the guy is already interested, he will become more interested when you flirt. If he’s not – don’t take it personally or as any kind of judgment on your “flirting skills”. And don’t take your cues for relationships or flirting from movies; they’ll only lead you to feel unnecessarily bad about yourself.

Oddly enough however, two of me closest friends are guys. I have a lot of boy friends but no boyfriend. I "go out with the guys" frequently but they and everyone else around consider me a "guy" since I do enjoy my contact sports (play a few) and beers. How do I go from a friend to a girlfriend?
I have no idea how to answer your question (I’m mostly too focused on how to Not Impulsively Sleep With My Guy Friends in a moment of feeling strongly towards them), but I don’t think it’s the way to go. Let me clarify: I’m not saying you shouldn’t become romantically involved with one of your friends; I’m saying that thinking of any friendship as a path or investment towards being a girlfriend is not the right way to be a friend or to become a girlfriend. They’re different kinds of relationships, and taking the step from friend to girlfriend is not only a significant one, but also has to be totally mutual.

When I go out, I do make an effort--some light makeup, wear something fun, but I don't attract men at all!! I've had a few lesbians hit on me, sorry but I don't swing that way and quite a few drunk ones. In an effort to meet more people, I've joined more extracurricular activities on campus, but I've just managed to increase the number of guy friends that I have. I know that physically, I'm not too unattractive, so it must be something wrong with me on the inside, right? I am really at a loss at what to do!
I’m not a guy so I could be wrong about this, but only the most superficial of men will be attracted to light make-up and fun clothes. And those men will be attracted to anything. Also, just because men don’t make advances towards you does not mean that they are not attracted to you… as you said yourself, you feel you come across as aloof and cold (although I don’t think any worthwhile men even think in those terms… so maybe a less harsh and more realistic way to judge yourself, if you must, would be “self-possessed”?) and in my experience most college men now are as unsure and afraid of rejection as women. There’s a reason why so many hook-ups happen when the parties involved are drunk; it makes rejection less likely to happen and easier to swallow.

Please help someone desperate enough to ask for relationship advice on AskMeFi! Oh,there you go judging yourself again, and judging many other people you don’t know (who’ve posted questions here in the past) in the process. I promise you, none of the people who are answering questions here think “oh, this guy / girl sounds desperate enough” to warrant a response or that desperation is a good barometer for what makes a worthwhile question.

I mean I just posted a 1000+ word response to your question... what does that say about me?! Maybe it's a good thing you can't answer back...
posted by mondaygreens at 9:11 AM on June 27, 2010 [2 favorites]


available and interested, I meant to say, re: flirting.
posted by mondaygreens at 9:12 AM on June 27, 2010


Therapy couldn't hurt.
posted by Obscure Reference at 9:29 AM on June 27, 2010


In my experience, which is only one obviously, if you're shy in the way you sound, you know, repressed because of family history (waves in recognition) the guys you wind up friends with tend to be too. Are they? 'Cause if so I kind of have to agree with others above--that combined with the ages involved (presuming you're in your early 20s or younger) tends to make me guess your guy friends might already have crushes on you and are way too shy to ever change things. That was how it was for me--I had tons of guy friends in college, never got hit on except by incredibly sleazy strange older men, and years later after we'd all grown up some and I was across the country I'd find out this boy and this one and this and this all had had a thing for me at some point but there was no way in hell they'd have ever made a move. Frustrating I know. Some of the answers in this thread remind me of all that too.
posted by ifjuly at 9:34 AM on June 27, 2010 [1 favorite]


And if you'd be up for dating any of your guy friends or can at least imagine it going ok, you might want to talk to them like "g'ah, I really want to date and be close to a dude but conventional dating seems alien to me. What do you think I should do?" and gauge his response. At the least he might be able to give you pointers if he isn't interested.

I forgot to mention that you may just not be into conventional dating by the way. Only you know that obviously and if you really long to do that dance and just need help getting started that's cool--but if it all just seems weird and unfathomable and you're like "how to I get from point A (interested) to point B (in a loving relationship)" and you think standard dating is the only way then consider just being friends with people first and then when it's right moving further. Some people--I've noticed mainly people that are shy and slow to unfurl for reasons like you mention--just never date but still wind up married (raises hand, and I know there's others on AskMe too).
posted by ifjuly at 9:38 AM on June 27, 2010


I had the exact same experience when I was your age. I'm in my late 20s now, and 3 out of 4 of the boyfriends I've ever had have been guys I met online. The one guy I met offline was in college, and that only happened because we had to be partners in a class for a semester and spent a lot of time working alone together, and we ended up talking about all sorts of weird shit that I never would've talked about with anyone else, guys or girls. But most guys never get to know me that way and therefore know nothing about me or what I think about anything. I feel like I was always just sort of a quiet, innocuous presence that never attracted anyone's attention.

Communication and body language are really the problem here, not your level of physical attractiveness. You probably look uncomfortable even when you are making an effort to appear more attractive. If you're depressed and distant and don't allow yourself to get close to anybody, guys generally won't be attracted to you. Whether that's because they think you aren't interested or they think you aren't interesting probably depends on the guy.

Personally, for the sort of distant, introverted types like us, I think dating becomes easier after college. I ended up becoming more comfortable with what I actually wanted my lifestyle to be like as opposed to what the college experience is like for most people. I definitely did not fit into the college mold of partying, taking random guys home, drinking and smoking pot, etc.
posted by wondermouse at 9:39 AM on June 27, 2010 [1 favorite]


I'm not suggesting that you pretend to be an extrovert, but the key to fixing most of this is learning how to be socially and emotionally freer. That probably means therapy, which as a student you will probably be able to get for free/almost free through your school. You're at a point where your focused would be best placed on working on yourself rather than trying to get into a relationship.

I agree with this 1000%. I was a lot like you in my college days, and to some degree still am (although I managed to get married somehow). I wish to God I'd learned how to be more social at a younger age, because it would have been invaluable in all areas of my life. You don't have to turn into the life of the party, but it is very worthwhile to be able to approach people and not be the "cold, aloof" wallflower. This is not about a relationship, this is about you connecting with people in general. From there, a relationship will naturally flow when you are ready.
posted by desjardins at 9:42 AM on June 27, 2010 [1 favorite]


Would highly recommend that you contact the counseling dept of your college, they can help at the deeper issues. Once you have discovered and addressed some of these, you wll be more at ease with yourself, more free, and ready to truly be yourself which will draw the right (interested) people to you.

Please do consider counseling, and perhaps ask (and research) the possibility of aspergers syndrome ... specifically as it presents in females (much different than males). You "may" find some answers there.

IANYT
posted by batikrose at 9:44 AM on June 27, 2010


Also, I'm getting kind of tired of seeing online dating being trotted out as a solution for this sort of situation. It's a strategy that works if the only problem is that someone's uncomfortable with typical "meat market"-style courtship. I'm not sure how it's supposed to fix anything for people with deep-seated intimacy issues, though.
posted by thisjax at 9:56 AM on June 27, 2010 [4 favorites]


Hi.

If you look at my posting history, you'll see my first question was a really, really angsty one about why I wasn't dating anyone. I'm a recent college grad myself so I feel I've BTDT and can answer your question honestly.

I *BADLY* wanted to date someone in college. I posted My Question on AskMeFi a few years later, wondering how the eff I could start dating someone. I was smart, I was decent-looking, I was available, right?!

Over the course of last spring and summer, I realized that, as a bookish, introverted person, I had been making the mistake of being way too angsty about my life.

I realized that the people I wanted to be around were the ones who were fun, the ones in whose company I never once felt judged or unloved, the ones who were game for anything and always had a smile on their face and wise words to share. And I realized I was not this person, but I wanted to be.

The process of going from angsty to non-angsty wasn't an easy road, and probably took me about 5 months to really master. I kept a detailed, upbeat journal (a marked change from OMG I AM SUCH A SPECIAL SOUL WHO HAS TO BE ALL ALONE THIS WORLD BECAUSE I AM SO SPECIAL AND I UNDERSTAND SO MUCH OF THE UNIVERSE ZOMG!). I started going out and doing things on the weekends--the art museum, the zoo, whatever. Most of the time, I'd go by myself, and I started really enjoying being with myself. Which brings me to my first point:

1. Enjoy yourself. How can you expect someone else to enjoy your company if you don't enjoy being with yourself?

Seriously. If you don't think you're fun to be with at home on a Saturday night, don't you think it's a little unfair to expect someone else to think they should spend their Saturday night with you? I realized this. And, for me, it was very very important to keep the balance of activity/downtime. I went out, I tried to meet people (just *people*.... not *men), and then I would chill by myself. When I was by myself, I made damn sure I didn't descend into self-pity.

It was hard at first, but I started to see it like this: I could see the Self-Pity/Angsty/Wallowing Road ahead, and I would have to say, "Self, you can't go down that road. You just can't," at the first angsty thought. Then, I would reframe the situation to myself in positive terms. It wasn't always easy, and sometimes I felt like a dumb smiley chick who wasn't believing a thing in her head. But I couldn't afford to have the angsty thoughts, and I only kept the positive ones. I eventually became a lot more upbeat.

This also included trading out my whiny emotional music for Britney Spears. Try being sad when you're listening to Britney Spears or Mamma Mia. I dare you.

2. Appearance matters, but personality goes a long way.

Men are superficial. Period. But a girl's personality can really shine through and make a 6 girl seem like an 8, because she just lights up the room. People see that, and that goes through. I personally watched some men fall head over heels for a girl who wasn't considered super-attractive by female standards, just because she was kind, fun to be around, always had a smile and was a little jokey and made everyone feel accepted. Her stock skyrocketed, and you would have thought she was a supermodel.

3. Be a functional introvert.

I'm an introvert (I suspect most people on AskMeFi are). Retail sales experience, however, forced me to learn how to interact with people, which is an invaluable skill. It takes a ton of practice if it doesn't come naturally to you. Practice on "low-stakes" encounters: people behind you in line at the grocery store, little old ladies, 6 year old children, cashiers, salespeople (who are paid to interact with you)--those sorts. Practice starting up a conversation with the goal of trying to make them smile a bit, or add levity to the air. The great thing about "low-stakes" is that you will probably never run into them again, and you might just brighten their day a bit if you compliment their dress or ask where they bought that piece of jewelry.

This helps immensely in life and in meeting new people.

Those are all my suggestions for now, except for this one:

4. CHILL OUT.

I'm smart, you know? Not Mensa, but I'm intelligent. So I was trying to analyze relationships 7 ways to Sunday. I read a lot of dating books (there's only one I'd kinda-sorta recommend). I thought about dating/relationships a lot. I envied my friends who had a boyfriend to go to the movies with.

But you can't interact with people that way. People are dynamic and a lot harder to pin down. I'm not good at navigating the murky waters of people, not a natural, anyway, and the best road to success is to chill out about it. It can't be analyzed.

So the remainder of my story (should it help you--and I hope it does) is that I started online dating last summer, and then stopped it (didn't really go anywhere, but I went into it with an open mind and it did wonders for my confidence). One night, went out with friends, met some of my friend's friends and met a new guy. Fling for a couple months, we knew it was going to be short-term (we were wrong for each other in every single possible way and went into it with the open attitude of "we're dating each other for fun". He was not a keeper by any stretch of the imagination, but he was fun.) We broke up in the winter, and I was genuinely sad, not because of him, but because I missed the entire structure of the relationship with him--the going to the movies, the conversation, the texts. I had a couple of nights where I had to seriously revisit my thoughts: "you have to be positive. you have to move forward from this, you knew it wasn't going to last, and he wasn't right for you anyway, which you knew from the beginning."

I had to do stop the Angsty Voice saying, "YOU ARE GOING TO BE ALOOONNNNNEEE."

It wasn't 2 months before I was dating someone else, who came out of nowhere. Like I said, you can't predict it, you can't engineer it. One of my favorite lines: "It happened like anything else happened." It just happens.

But I tried my damnest not to be sad about being single. I enjoyed the hell out of those 2 months. I had a Breakup Party, I met new girlfriends, went ice skating, picked up several new hobbies, started thinking about life after graduation, had a girlfriend date every Friday and Saturday night (and regretted not meeting those girls earlier!), eating Italian food, getting ice cream, trying new restaurants. It was *great*. The day after my breakup, I hit the gym for 1 1/2 hours, determined not to let "it"--singleness--defeat me. I sometimes got sad when walking to class, thinking, so I made a playlist called "AWESOME" that had music that I liked, nothing to do with romance/love/whatever, that was all about self-empowerment, and I jammed out to that while walking to class, so I'd start the day on the right foot.

and my last suggestion is something you can't control.

5. College dating kinda sucks.

It just does, a little. I know some post-college grads who didn't meet their SO until their last year of college, when people seem to wise up a little bit. It's such a fluid, transient time. People are running off to study abroad, go do internships, freaking out about their life, their job, meaning in life, health insurance.

But enjoy the hell out of it anyway. That's all you can do. Happiness is really a choice.
posted by Dukat at 11:26 AM on June 27, 2010 [50 favorites]


Dukat, that is so inspiring. (Also, what is on your "AWESOME" playlist?)

All I can do is nth what Dukat said.
posted by metametababe at 11:38 AM on June 27, 2010


I also have no idea how to flirt. I'm not disposed to being touchy feely at all. I actually feel like a complete idiot when I attempt to flirt. Oddly enough however, two of me closest friends are guys. I have a lot of boy friends but no boyfriend. I "go out with the guys" frequently but they and everyone else around consider me a "guy" since I do enjoy my contact sports (play a few) and beers. How do I go from a friend to a girlfriend?

I'm going to suggest that the way to learn to flirt and engage in intimate one-on-one relationships is not to convert your current (male) friends to boyfriends, but to get yourself some more female friends.

Here's why:

(Some gross gender generalizations follow; the normal caveats about these being only generalizations and only applicaple to our own culture, if any, apply. This is also based on my own, possibly spurious observations. But it's what I've noticed.)

As you know, from hanging out with "the guys," many outings between men will center around groups. Going out with only one other person is sometimes fairly rare; additionally, activities tend to be activity-based. In contrast, female friends will often gather in smaller groups, or even one-on-one. Socialization will often be more conversation-based, and will often more directly feature the involved parties doing emotional care-taking for one another. If there's an activity involved (say, getting coffee), it will often be tangential to the primary goal of establishing and reinforcing emotional intimacy.

The result is that close female friendships more often resemble romantic relationships than friendships between men. There's more emotional dependency and more apparent exchange of emotional intimacies.

If you missed out on these close, BFF friendships as a girl, or haven't had one in awhile, it may be contributing to your difficulty in engaging with men in an intimate way, rather than an activity-sharing way. That's not to say that this is the only way to learn how to be intimate--after all, many men who have never had close, one-on-one friendships do. But if members of your family tend towards being emotionally distant, and you're not used to being touchy-feely in a literal or metaphorical sense, friendships with other women are often good ways of practicing these things.

They might also offer you another benefit: the chance of watching how other women approach starting relationships with men, the chance to see how flirting works for other women (there's a wide range of totally kosher flirting styles), and, if you choose to be friends with girly-girl types, the chance to get more direct feedback on issues of appearance and make-up and what not.

(And, if you become friends with some girly-girl single women,my instinct is that that "going out with the girls" is far more likely to net you some solid flirting time than "going out with the guys." Just a hunch.)

Of course, you don't have to be friends with girly-girl girls if you don't want to. But friendships with other women, no matter how girly, are great for learning the ins-and-outs of emotional intimacy, and these close friendships are a good way to increase your confidence and feelings of self worth--good for your mental and physical health, generally, and good for preparing yourself for future relationships.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 12:00 PM on June 27, 2010 [4 favorites]


I'm being naughty and replying without reading previous responses but:
I get the feeling you may be subconsciously projecting a force field of disinterest as a way of protecting yourself from male attention because, let's face it, it's all a bit scary really. I'm probably totally wrong, but if it is that then simply being aware of it might be sufficient to break the spell.
(Also: eye contact.)
posted by dickasso at 12:53 PM on June 27, 2010 [1 favorite]


You're in college and most colleges tend to have very high female:male ratios (some as high as 2:1) so there aren't enough boys for all the girls. You might try hanging out in some post-college environments and dating slightly older men instead?
posted by Jacqueline at 4:51 PM on June 27, 2010


I think it's pretty obvious that there's nothing bad or undesirable about you, but rather that you're not giving positive signals to the boys. If you act cold and aloof and don't flirt because you don't know how, most people will assume that you are not interested in them. Even if they are interested, they will not show it for fear of being rejected.

Trust me on this one - I was late to the world of dating and relationships for this very reason. I wouldn't worry about your appearance, personality, or hobbies, and I wouldn't jump to internet dating. Work on being friendly and conveying your interest. For me, I asked my friends for advice about flirting, and practiced on strangers in bars after a couple drinks. You have plenty of male friends, so you should have someone to ask for advice. YMMV, but after some tipsy flirting practice I got half-decent at sober flirting and it wasn't too long before I had an actual boyfriend. Start small - smile at cute strangers, then work on saying hello, then learn how to express interest in a conversation, etc.

Also, if you're still suffering from depression, or if you really, really have problem with social situations, or if you feel like you have a problem with your self-esteem I'd highly, highly recommend seeing a counselor. If you're a college student you can probably see one for free at the student clinic?
posted by vanitas at 5:54 PM on June 27, 2010


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