I really need to please speak about this honestly. In the nearly two decades that this has been happening to me absolutely no one has ever allowed me to talk about it without getting angry or acting like I'm making it up. As a result I have been entirely alone with this painful experience. I almost started hanging out at RPW because I thought they were the only ones who would accept what I have to say, but I felt like I couldn't hack it with a lot of their practices.

It seems that I am attractive enough to use for sex, but too ugly to have a relationship with the men that I feel are on my level.

This brings up the question of whether I am wrong about my value and who is my equal match. I'm genuinely not trying to punch above my weight, I truly want an equal. But there aren't a lot of men who feel like they are on my level -- it's mostly boring, barely-employed, unattractive guys and maybe a few good-looking successful ones whom I almost never approach -- but when I find someone who I think is compatible with me he wants nothing to do with me.

So I must be wrong about myself, which considering that I am pursuing men will primarily mean that I am wrong about my appearance. I've lived a very confusing life about where I stand in this regard. The first experiences I had with men consisted of being used for sex and then having them make fun of my body/weight behind my back and refuse to acknowledge me when they saw me in person. The confusing thing was that they would say both good and bad things about my appearance. It was once reported to me by a guy that another guy had said about me "she's hot" and then in the same conversation made fun of me by placing his hands over his face and pushing on his cheeks to make them look fat, and then pantomiming giving a blow job. (I wasn't even that fat I just wasn't stick thin like a lot of teenage girls.) Anyone who hears me talk about this will say "I'm so sorry that happened to you" but I'm not sorry and I'm actually glad for it. It's the only honesty I got in a situation that was clearly happening to me but no one would have admitted it if I had said something out loud, and if I had tried to discuss it with other people in my life I would have been treated like I was crazy and that it was my fault for being "underconfident."

This has happened to me in many different environments and in different cities. A few years after the above incident, I moved to the city and thought I would finally have a normal pool of people in which to find my match. I met a man on OkCupid (I was 21 and he was 30, if it matters) and he strung me along a lot and felt very manipulative even though I can't exactly name for you what he did wrong. Anyway, there was one time, months later, when he came to the bar I was working at and I spoke to him for a few minutes even though we were not involved at that time. A girl I worked with said to me, "Is that your boyfriend?" and I said no, and she said, "Oh, because he looks like your boyfriend." How much above my own value could I be aiming if other people can see it too? And yet, he didn't want me.

To be clear, I don't work at a bar now, and didn't work at one for very long, and even when I did I was also doing an unpaid internship. I have a bachelor's degree and currently do office work (I don't want to give too many details here but I make more money than the majority of men I have managed to get dates with in the past couple of years). I go to the gym 3-4 times per week and when I do I wear nicer, form-fitting workout clothes. I'm currently 5'3" 130 lbs. A few years ago I was 118-120 lbs and I don't know that my experience was any better. Maybe I have to be 110 lbs or less in order to be dateable?

I receive such confusing feedback. Men my age think I'm too fat to date but I constantly receive comments from female coworkers about how skinny they think I am. Even gay men tell me how cute they think I am and I even had one gay guy get absolutely furious that I did not want to hang out and "be seen" with him. If I try to talk to anyone about this -- therapists, my mother, acquaintances, strangers on advice forums -- they act like I'm making it up, get angry, or cry like I hurt THEIR feelings about it. That reaction weighs on me far more than one man's lack of interest.

I moved to a different city, which I am living in currently, and it's no different. I don't like to do the pursuing for reasons that I know this forum understands, but in spite of that I recently have tried to softly initiate with a few men. There was a man I introduced myself to about a year ago because we used to work at the same organization. A month or two ago I was at a bar in my neighborhood and saw him working there. Initially, he approached me by asking whether I worked at that organization and showing that he remembered me. We talked about how his band was playing at that same bar the next day so I attended the show. When I was walking in I walked by him and did not even see him there, but he greeted me, by name. The next day I followed his bands Instagram and sent a quick message to say I liked the show. He wrote back. I then asked if he was going to another show the next day. He said no. I haven't heard from him again.

I know we could talk about whether I came on too strong. But I also get criticism for not being open enough and for seeming like I don't want to talk to anyone. My own father criticizes me for "sitting there with a frown on [my] face" and is convinced that the only reason I don't have a partner is because I have a bad attitude. I made myself available to this guy, he knows where to contact me, and yet, he does not. (I'm tired of the criticism of technology because it really could not be easier for him to contact me. Do people really expect me to believe that it would be considered LESS demanding if he had to pick up the phone and make a call? Texting is the least demanding thing.)

If he was interested, it wouldn't matter if I came on too strong or too weak or if I didn't do something perfectly. When we want men to leave us alone, they won't even if we beg them! If he didn't talk to me it's because he didn't want to, plain and simple.

The only approaches I ever get are from men who are wildly inappropriate for me. Men who are 20 years older than me. Men who are 10 years younger than me. Men who can't dress themselves, who don't brush their teeth or wash their hands. Men whom I have nothing in common with and erase everything I care about when they fill space by talking to me about nothing. It makes me feel dirtied, like after all my hard work and depth and feeling I should give it up to any idiot that asks. It feels polluting even when I'm not reproducing their genes. If I also received a decent approach some of the time I might not feel that way but at this point I feel like a well-kept garbage receptacle. Like if you raised and slaughtered an animal in order to eat it and instead of eating it you just gave it to the rodents. This is what my family wishes for me, too. Sometimes I think that this is what nature wishes for me, and why doesn't mother earth love me very much? Because we are whole, just like nature, and they are not. But here I am at the exact point of "sex object," no more and no less either.

I usually don't do this, but I once swiped right on a man who was out of my league after seeing him on dating websites for like a year. He asked me out, and on the date we talked all night. After we finished our drinks I very well expected him to go right home and not be interested in meeting again. But he asked me to continue on to a second bar. He specifically said that he wanted to keep talking because he thought I was interesting. That seems like a euphemism but he also chose to share with me that he liked my facial features and we had a conversation about how people have a facial "type." After the date he told me that he was not interested in hanging out again. Actually, there was a second guy after him who did the same thing, asking me to a second bar and not wanting to go out again. Sure, maybe I end up doing something wrong at the second bar, but there have been plenty of people who bailed on me before they even got to the bar at all. When I told my therapist about it she said "maybe he just likes to go on dates with interesting women." Yeah right. Why does she have to treat me like a fool? The "with you" is silent and I can't have a productive conversation with someone who won't acknowledge that.

I see couples around and they "look like a couple." And I think, where is my match? And then I remember all the times in my life I have attempted to talk about this with people who were supposed to be on my side or who were supposed to be neutral, and they shut me down every time. That's really the worst part. Sometimes I just want to talk about my feelings, and sometimes I want to work through it and try to see if there are any solutions that I am missing. But I am disallowed. I'm not sure if that's because they know deep down that I am undesirable and don't want to admit it, or if they think I'm crazy, or what it is. But it has been extremely isolating and fraught. So, thank you for listening.