(I'm 23, male) A year ago I had a strange relationship with a girl (I don't even know if she really loved me or not) she was manipulative, rude ... (I still have some traumas, and think about it everytime I come across a girl.) I realized everything only after 5 months and I broke up. In the beginning it was hard to accept the fact that: I caused myself all these troubles because of my low self esteem. I then decided to change my behavior towards people. My self esteem and confidence improved after a long healing process. I'm quite proud of it, I could talk to people in the street or in any situation and I appreciate it. But when it comes back to dating, I start second guessing myself unconsciously. My last flirting experiences seemed to be successful in the beginning. But when things start to get serious I suddenly feel the fear of rejection. And I start lying to myself like "it's not the ideal time to date, I fear of loosing it and becoming crazy another time". And that became a freaking pattern. And then I realized I'm always attracted and have stories with the same kind of girls (low self worth manipulative girls). I don't want to hate women, I came across thoughts like "they're all the same" and I hate myself for it. Because I need to be aware that's not an excuse to fail, it is up to me. But after a long meditation I realised it's my choice and that made me second guess myself. And I feel weak for only liking weak girls with lots of insecurities. And it becomes more and more symptomatic. In parties or social events I find myself as the one who talks the most, people seem to like it, but I don't. And I feel baaaad when not talking in a social event. It became frenetic, every time I find myself creating and bringing discussion topics.

And recently the last girl I met made me feel bad about myself, because every time we talk, I started talking too much about myself, and feel naked everytime I talk to her (every single time I regret), so I pulled myself from every situation where she was subtly asking for sex (and I could see in her eyes that she sees me as a pray, as a weak piece of flesh). The tension in my heart became so heavy that I started asking myself "does she really want me, or am I just a toy for social experiments, for her curiosity", and things like "why? you dumb ass, you should have told her from the beggining that you want her without losing any time in your nerd philosopher-wannabe monologues". I'm not blaming anyone only myself and I honestly don't hate myself that much. I just live with a crippling culpability, that makes me sad sometimes. And that's when I asked: "maybe all this self confidence and social abilities I've developed are fake. Just a genuine way to hide all the insecurities. But if this is not true self confidence, what is it then? I may never experience it in my life.". I know myself well, and I learned to be honest with myself, I'm not avoiding some ground truths about my psyche (and I've even analyzed the sources of my insecurities). But now I'm lost, this last girl I met just broke up everything I was trying to construct. I feel like having to start back from lower than 0.

I have managed my life to avoid dating, all the occasions that have been presented to me, I've rejected them, for the sake of self improvement (at least in the beggining). And I've succeeded to convince myself that I REALLY NEED to stand for myself in this period, where I'm still young, and vulnerable, I need to work for my way of life, to learn to live alone (not lonely). And it was going well, there were 2-4 kind of attempts in parties with girls, I discussed and flirted like a man, took phone numbers and then abandoned. Quite satisfied with myself, I think "ok, you know you can do it when you'll really need it, for now, just calm down and continue to work on yourself, you don't really need it". Until it happened with the last one: my neighbour. The problem was, we were seeing each other for a long period with a high frequency (we have a coworking space at our residence). And I started liking her, and I think she liked how I was commited to my homework and my passion. At every attempt where she was trying to talk and disturb me I was rough. Until I subtly started falling for her each time I see her. And everytime I see her I open up myself too much and start feeling bad in the end, like "I'm not commited to my values... I'm staying awake late just to talk to a casual girl I would not like to have as a GF... I'm just pretending we are friends, in fact I just want to fuck her hardly... I'm just wasting my time and energy... I'm off my internal quest path". And it becomes a cycle: I screwed this relation => come on I'm gonna bump her => no now it's too late, stay as friends (I know it doesn't exist) => I hate myself => I screwed this relation ..........

And that's where the second guessing started, the last time I saw her, I knew I started to be really addict to her, and that is no sane. I know it well. I know it's dangerous, for the two of us, for everyone around us, and espacially for ME. And just after that I saw her asking questions on Quora about me (pointing out that I have very low self esteem). And THAT, just destroyed my ego. I got my shit together, assumed it very well. Nevertheless, it made me ask myself a bunch of questions, I thought their answers were ground truth.

So I stated "In fact, I want girls, I was just hiding my own insecurities to myself behind the self-improvement argument".

Help me please. Any comment anything could be valuable. Anyone in this weird situation? (Please everything but the "Go to the gym" advise ... It's something I'm thinking about, but I don't want to rely on a special activity to erase that need for approval and validation. And I'm not totally ashamed of my shape, so this advise is intrinsic to the situation, it's not fundamental).