Crowdsourcing Cupid, and Stupid Dating Problems, Part 2.
April 16, 2017 12:40 PM Subscribe
A follow-up to my previous question: How do I fix these problems that I am pretty much sure are making dating - and finding a man with whom I have a mutual attraction - difficult for me?
Hi. After having gone on a couple of more dates, met more people, and given this some more thought, I feel I've gotten some extra insight into the problem that plagued me last time. Again, am in therapy, so if you recommend therapy that's just going to make me think 'I'm already doing that, and I appreciate the thought, but this doesn't really add anything new'.
Conversation and Compatibility
I am considerably surer than I was at the time of my last post about this: Odds are pretty good that I and someone not in my situation are not going to hit it off well. I have actually made a point of expanding my search and including people who are NOT other graduate students, and I have had the same not-hitting-it-off experience with all of the ones who are not other graduate students or have not been graduate students, and not for lack of trying either. I have had a difficult time probing for conversational material during dates, and just in conversations with people in general, with people who are not in or have not been in a graduate program of some kind. This is when I am not explicitly talking about graduate program-related things, and I mention those mostly in the context of being asked what I am up to or what I like to do, because I am not that socially dumb, even though I am socially dumb.
Rather, I think this in part represents differing levels of desire and ability to talk about things that are more abstract and differing values, which are very fulfilling things for me, and since I cannot date all the men in the world, I have to rely on *some* heuristics. A little. I think the values this represents include, but are not limited to:
- intellect
- beyond just intellect, an appreciation of, comfort with, and (particularly awesome) a passion for reveling in scholarship and discovery and curiosity
- valuing education in and of itself. Obviously, simple credentialism is a problem and there are issues with the academy and higher education that revolve around things like class and accessibility and who it's set up to favor, but I have a very long list of reasons why I think the system we have, although in need of much reform, is better than alternatives others have explored. This is not the place to get into them.
- conscientiousness. If you can get into a graduate program, you have at least an adequate amount of this. If you graduated from one, same thing. Graduate degrees take organization.
- resilience. Same.
- again, being able to relate to and understand me and my experiences, as well as making it easier for me to relate to and understand them, and come up with things to talk about. I really, really like talking to my friends about their research and about the things they do, because I revel in trying to be well-rounded about the things I know. I want to learn about things not just in my specialty (biology) but also my friends' specialties, like materials and chemical and electrical engineering and linguistics and Chicano studies and economics and German literature. One of my friends is actually having difficulties with this; she's a German literature PhD student dating an HR guy (and probably not going to date him for much longer) and he just does not get her graduate school life and it upsets her. It would upset me.
Social anxiety, being very much of an INTJ (I don't actually believe in the MBTI but the description resonates with me unusually well), and a general shortage of social astuteness and an abundance of social awkwardness do not help. This is mostly because of the anxiety - I've been told I give reasonably good social advice when I am distant from a situation, but when I am in the situation I stink at figuring out what the right thing to do is because I am so worried I might come off like an insensitive, awkward, unlikable fool, and it's worst with the people I like the most. I hate it because it seems like the more I like someone the more I will piss them off eventually, because under my shiny, heavily armored exterior is a pretty heavily scarred (but at least thick-skinned, mostly) and bleeding pink belly with one of the rawest wounds on the thinnest skin full of exposed nerve endings being on the patch of skin that has to do with making connections with people. At my worst I fear I'm 'Amy' in this question; reading that AskMe post hit me so, so hard and I felt so badly for 'Amy', and made me anxious that people have been doing just that to me all along, which some of them may indeed have been. Combine this with being, by nature and despite my intentions and attempted actions to the contrary, hard to get to know and understand, easy to get the wrong first impressions of, and slow to make friends, and you have a clusterfuck.
It's also possible I'm approaching the wrong damn people or may even like the wrong damn people or am reading situations too negatively. I find I've been gravitating toward people who are probably also on the introverted side (I am on the introverted side, but am easily described as an ambivert), probably because I am gravitating toward people who I perceive to be like me, and conversation is not as good with them as it is with extroverts. This leaves me in a position much of the time of thinking '... oh god, are they tired of me or are they just not talkative or are they shy or are they trying to come up with something to say? OH GOD THEY'D RATHER BE SOMEWHERE ELSE AND NOT TALK TO ME AHHH I CANNOT SOCIAL.' I probably do this to people too without realizing it, which probably makes people not want to talk to me because it's too hard to read me, which is probably part of why I feel I have social difficulties.
And this comes back to dating because I want someone *compatible*, who I'm INTO and who actually is INTO me and WANTS to spend time with me doesn't make me flip-flop on a regular basis between thinking that they like me and that they might just be humoring and putting up with me for a few minutes and wanting to be elsewhere, just from their actions. Because this stuff is really ambiguous, to me.
Dodgy Ideas About Relationships
I realized in the shower this morning that for some reason my mind has a hard time wrapping itself around seeing the couples around me being mutually attracted to each other. I'm not sure why. This is almost certainly connected to my parents' miserable relationship. I have an intellectual model of healthy relationships; mutual sexual attraction, not abusive, personally compatible, and supportive. I seem to have fixed much of the internal model I grew up with because I don't have a hard time on a more visceral level with the latter three parts of this model (my two loveless serious relationships were both non-abusive although there is a slightly greater than average chance that one cheated on me, they and I did have things to talk about although the compatibility in retrospect was somewhat poor, and they were I think generally supportive), but the first one I think on some level I'm having a hard time internalizing. I know the obvious answer to this is 'therapy', but in the meantime, if you can give me some concrete suggestions about this (anything other than simply observing the couples I know?), it would be great.
Attractiveness, and Being Attracted
I think I'm doing a little better at understanding that I am actually at least physically attractive enough to attract the kind of men I'm into, and am doing better at telling (I think - I have no hard, definite evidence, only suspicions, and given that I have previously been wrong it is hard to trust this) when men think I'm cute. I have also learned that it seems almost foreign to my self-identity to envision myself in a relationship, and the kind of relationship I want, and that this is because I have had such a lack of success at it that it seems like it is Part Of Who Actionpotential Is instead of something that is not necessarily so. I am also finding I have A Type, and I am trying to be open-minded about soliciting guys for dates who are not of that type, but so far, the ones I have found attractive have all fit this type despite my best intentions, and there are not many of them in my 25,000-person university in my 150,000-person town. And I do not think I could date in the Major City which is a bit more than an hour away, because I have figured out I can't do LDRs, certainly not unless the relationship has been established as a non-LDR for a long time.
And The Ineffable Spark happens less often, maddeningly so, than I wish it could. Amazingly, I am actually pretty good at fixing up my friends. Not so much myself. The Gooch told me "I think you are going to be happiest if you just start dating some guys you are immediately physically attracted to", but I am not even getting to that, because I don't find many men immediately physically attractive, and the ones I do... well, one of them doesn't return it (the guy I've been hung up on), one of them's an undergrad and an exchange student and too young (and I'm a cradle robber so this is saying something) and isn't going to be around long enough (he was brought up after the last question by a friend and heavily resembles the guy I've been hung up on), and I don't really know that there are others.
It has been said, by folks like Dr. Nerdlove and other dating agony aunts and uncles around the internet, that may problems like mine are the result of having a scarcity mentality and not an abundance mentality, but I do not know that an abundance mentality lines up with reality for me.
I think part of the reason that I have a long history of winding up in dating situations with men I'm not actually attracted to is also that my sex drive, which is high (and my sexual preferences probably considerably more open and varied than most of my scholastic and even age peers), has outpaced my ability to find someone I want to satiate it with who wants to satiate theirs with me when I want to not fly solo between the sheets. And so, in combination with the previous self-esteem problems I had, I've done stupid things like sleeping with men I don't actually find attractive.
Thank you for getting through this wall of text if you've read it; I hope this has been enough of a different post from the preceding one, but I think I've gotten some extra insight into this and if you can help me untangle this Gordian knot I'd be deeply grateful because it's a hell of a difficult thing to deal with.
Hi. After having gone on a couple of more dates, met more people, and given this some more thought, I feel I've gotten some extra insight into the problem that plagued me last time. Again, am in therapy, so if you recommend therapy that's just going to make me think 'I'm already doing that, and I appreciate the thought, but this doesn't really add anything new'.
Conversation and Compatibility
I am considerably surer than I was at the time of my last post about this: Odds are pretty good that I and someone not in my situation are not going to hit it off well. I have actually made a point of expanding my search and including people who are NOT other graduate students, and I have had the same not-hitting-it-off experience with all of the ones who are not other graduate students or have not been graduate students, and not for lack of trying either. I have had a difficult time probing for conversational material during dates, and just in conversations with people in general, with people who are not in or have not been in a graduate program of some kind. This is when I am not explicitly talking about graduate program-related things, and I mention those mostly in the context of being asked what I am up to or what I like to do, because I am not that socially dumb, even though I am socially dumb.
Rather, I think this in part represents differing levels of desire and ability to talk about things that are more abstract and differing values, which are very fulfilling things for me, and since I cannot date all the men in the world, I have to rely on *some* heuristics. A little. I think the values this represents include, but are not limited to:
- intellect
- beyond just intellect, an appreciation of, comfort with, and (particularly awesome) a passion for reveling in scholarship and discovery and curiosity
- valuing education in and of itself. Obviously, simple credentialism is a problem and there are issues with the academy and higher education that revolve around things like class and accessibility and who it's set up to favor, but I have a very long list of reasons why I think the system we have, although in need of much reform, is better than alternatives others have explored. This is not the place to get into them.
- conscientiousness. If you can get into a graduate program, you have at least an adequate amount of this. If you graduated from one, same thing. Graduate degrees take organization.
- resilience. Same.
- again, being able to relate to and understand me and my experiences, as well as making it easier for me to relate to and understand them, and come up with things to talk about. I really, really like talking to my friends about their research and about the things they do, because I revel in trying to be well-rounded about the things I know. I want to learn about things not just in my specialty (biology) but also my friends' specialties, like materials and chemical and electrical engineering and linguistics and Chicano studies and economics and German literature. One of my friends is actually having difficulties with this; she's a German literature PhD student dating an HR guy (and probably not going to date him for much longer) and he just does not get her graduate school life and it upsets her. It would upset me.
Social anxiety, being very much of an INTJ (I don't actually believe in the MBTI but the description resonates with me unusually well), and a general shortage of social astuteness and an abundance of social awkwardness do not help. This is mostly because of the anxiety - I've been told I give reasonably good social advice when I am distant from a situation, but when I am in the situation I stink at figuring out what the right thing to do is because I am so worried I might come off like an insensitive, awkward, unlikable fool, and it's worst with the people I like the most. I hate it because it seems like the more I like someone the more I will piss them off eventually, because under my shiny, heavily armored exterior is a pretty heavily scarred (but at least thick-skinned, mostly) and bleeding pink belly with one of the rawest wounds on the thinnest skin full of exposed nerve endings being on the patch of skin that has to do with making connections with people. At my worst I fear I'm 'Amy' in this question; reading that AskMe post hit me so, so hard and I felt so badly for 'Amy', and made me anxious that people have been doing just that to me all along, which some of them may indeed have been. Combine this with being, by nature and despite my intentions and attempted actions to the contrary, hard to get to know and understand, easy to get the wrong first impressions of, and slow to make friends, and you have a clusterfuck.
It's also possible I'm approaching the wrong damn people or may even like the wrong damn people or am reading situations too negatively. I find I've been gravitating toward people who are probably also on the introverted side (I am on the introverted side, but am easily described as an ambivert), probably because I am gravitating toward people who I perceive to be like me, and conversation is not as good with them as it is with extroverts. This leaves me in a position much of the time of thinking '... oh god, are they tired of me or are they just not talkative or are they shy or are they trying to come up with something to say? OH GOD THEY'D RATHER BE SOMEWHERE ELSE AND NOT TALK TO ME AHHH I CANNOT SOCIAL.' I probably do this to people too without realizing it, which probably makes people not want to talk to me because it's too hard to read me, which is probably part of why I feel I have social difficulties.
And this comes back to dating because I want someone *compatible*, who I'm INTO and who actually is INTO me and WANTS to spend time with me doesn't make me flip-flop on a regular basis between thinking that they like me and that they might just be humoring and putting up with me for a few minutes and wanting to be elsewhere, just from their actions. Because this stuff is really ambiguous, to me.
Dodgy Ideas About Relationships
I realized in the shower this morning that for some reason my mind has a hard time wrapping itself around seeing the couples around me being mutually attracted to each other. I'm not sure why. This is almost certainly connected to my parents' miserable relationship. I have an intellectual model of healthy relationships; mutual sexual attraction, not abusive, personally compatible, and supportive. I seem to have fixed much of the internal model I grew up with because I don't have a hard time on a more visceral level with the latter three parts of this model (my two loveless serious relationships were both non-abusive although there is a slightly greater than average chance that one cheated on me, they and I did have things to talk about although the compatibility in retrospect was somewhat poor, and they were I think generally supportive), but the first one I think on some level I'm having a hard time internalizing. I know the obvious answer to this is 'therapy', but in the meantime, if you can give me some concrete suggestions about this (anything other than simply observing the couples I know?), it would be great.
Attractiveness, and Being Attracted
I think I'm doing a little better at understanding that I am actually at least physically attractive enough to attract the kind of men I'm into, and am doing better at telling (I think - I have no hard, definite evidence, only suspicions, and given that I have previously been wrong it is hard to trust this) when men think I'm cute. I have also learned that it seems almost foreign to my self-identity to envision myself in a relationship, and the kind of relationship I want, and that this is because I have had such a lack of success at it that it seems like it is Part Of Who Actionpotential Is instead of something that is not necessarily so. I am also finding I have A Type, and I am trying to be open-minded about soliciting guys for dates who are not of that type, but so far, the ones I have found attractive have all fit this type despite my best intentions, and there are not many of them in my 25,000-person university in my 150,000-person town. And I do not think I could date in the Major City which is a bit more than an hour away, because I have figured out I can't do LDRs, certainly not unless the relationship has been established as a non-LDR for a long time.
And The Ineffable Spark happens less often, maddeningly so, than I wish it could. Amazingly, I am actually pretty good at fixing up my friends. Not so much myself. The Gooch told me "I think you are going to be happiest if you just start dating some guys you are immediately physically attracted to", but I am not even getting to that, because I don't find many men immediately physically attractive, and the ones I do... well, one of them doesn't return it (the guy I've been hung up on), one of them's an undergrad and an exchange student and too young (and I'm a cradle robber so this is saying something) and isn't going to be around long enough (he was brought up after the last question by a friend and heavily resembles the guy I've been hung up on), and I don't really know that there are others.
It has been said, by folks like Dr. Nerdlove and other dating agony aunts and uncles around the internet, that may problems like mine are the result of having a scarcity mentality and not an abundance mentality, but I do not know that an abundance mentality lines up with reality for me.
I think part of the reason that I have a long history of winding up in dating situations with men I'm not actually attracted to is also that my sex drive, which is high (and my sexual preferences probably considerably more open and varied than most of my scholastic and even age peers), has outpaced my ability to find someone I want to satiate it with who wants to satiate theirs with me when I want to not fly solo between the sheets. And so, in combination with the previous self-esteem problems I had, I've done stupid things like sleeping with men I don't actually find attractive.
Thank you for getting through this wall of text if you've read it; I hope this has been enough of a different post from the preceding one, but I think I've gotten some extra insight into this and if you can help me untangle this Gordian knot I'd be deeply grateful because it's a hell of a difficult thing to deal with.
This post was deleted for the following reason: Heya, this is very long and substantially rehashing your question from last week; if you have a specific and much more focused followup question, give that a shot next week maybe. -- cortex
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Yes, sometimes, it does and it is. I'm sorry. I can't give a better answer because that basic question is simply not something we can figure out.
Re: your update: I think you're on a good path; keep at it.
You're not unique in feeling this way.
posted by ramenopres at 12:52 PM on April 16, 2017