Hi, I'm [20M] a long time lurker on this subreddit, and it has helped me a lot. While I haven't had a lot of actual success, I personally have grown and can feel the progress. However, something that really bothers is me is how I always end up self sabotaging.

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For example, I matched on Tinder with this really cute girl, and we hit off immediately. We had a great conversation, I got her number, set up the date, everything was perfect. I even managed to be flirty on text (joking about marriage and picking her up). I go to the date, everything goes well, we hold hands for a while, but when I tried leaning in for the kiss at the end, she turned away. Which is fine, I guess it was too fast for her, but the rest of the date was fun and we hugged before saying bye. However, my brain just went into panic mode and I texted her something along the lines of - hey we should just be friends.

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Like what? Why did I send that. This is so infuriating, and happens in other situations in life too - so it's not only related to dating. Like recently at a job interview, I did well in the previous rounds but when I was at the final round I just kept thinking of how I wasn't good enough and did so poorly, even though I knew the answers to what they were asking. It's almost as if I wanted to fail (but of course I don't want to fail!)

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I'm guessing this is a deep rooted self esteem issue, but I'm unable to break it. This year has been especially hard for me (both dating wise and job wise), where I faced rejections like every single day of the past 2-3 months. I want to come out of it, but something in me just wants to stay here. Someone please help.

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I've picked up lifting and exercising again recently, been regular since the past 3-4 weeks. I also hangout with my friends fairly often, so I'm not truly alone. It is just these two areas of life where I'm completely, entirely failing.

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PS I realize I might be on the wrong subreddit, maybe I should talk to a therapist, but I think I could achieve a domino effect by having one thing go right for me, which is why I'm asking for help here