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[–][deleted] 2 points3 points4 points (3 children) | Copy Link
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[+]Quetzalkoalas1 points [recovered] (6 children) | Copy Link
This story goes into a lot of detail about the "nice guy" protagonist's love life. While I don't know if I would classify as a "nice guy" (I'd like to think I don't), I do identify with the sense of sexual shame and frustration, and I'm not really sure where this comes from. Take the following ramblings more as a case study or a data point and not so much as a "woe is me" diatribe.
I was raised by fairly sex-positive parents, in the sense that they communicated pretty effectively that sexuality was a normal and healthy part of life and that I shouldn't hesitate to talk to them about it should I need to.
They also raised me in a fairly gender-neutral way for the time (At age 4, I played both with Barbie dolls and Batman action figures - real talk: they're both just dolls. I did enjoy undressing Barbie more than putting clothes on her for some reason). I never got any "real men don't cry" toxic masculinity bullshit or homophobia from my parents: my mom told me that if I ever turned out to be gay, I would be accepted and loved just the way I was.
I was a fairly sensitive, book-smart and imaginative kid. Finished my assignments before everyone else, stared out of a window until the teacher either gave me paper to draw on or some more busywork. My brain might have worked fast, in the physical realm I was clumsy and slow. Girls would (s)mother me by helping me clear out my desk and pack my bag, which I found annoying. However, I preferred playing with girls at recess, because their imaginative style of play was more appealing to me than the rough-and-tumble play and sports of the boys. Behavioral report cards would say something like: "wouldn't hurt a fly".
Had my first crush at age 6 or 7, let's call her A. I quickly discovered that A. was another boy's girlfriend. I was less disappointed by her not liking me than confused why on earth she liked this lad, because her boyfriend was basically the class bully: the meanest and most violent kid in class. Maybe this primed me for a toxic "girls only like assholes" mentality, although this was never a belief of mine, and more of a fear that occasionally resurfaced whenever I felt defeated.
On another note, at the same age I fell victim to severe bullying from two older kids, who pretended to befriend me at first, and then started threatening to kill me in gruesome ways. This probably didn't help building trust with people.
I had my fair share of unrequited crushes and "oneitis". I would interact with a girl a few times, feel infatuation for her, become increasingly nervous around her, and ultimately spend more time idealizing her and fantasizing about her than talking to her. As a kid I thought it worked this way: you got a crush, at some point you mustered the courage to confess your feelings, or you just got talking and maybe she would eventually confess your feelings to you.
This happened at age 8 with a girl named B. One day I mustered the courage to start a proper conversation with this girl, who I had already married a few times in my mind. To my surprise, it worked, and we hung around every day for the next few days, strolling along the playground talking, talking, talking. No holding hands or kissing as of yet, but I couldn't be happier as I just liked being around her. At some point, she seemingly got mad at me out of nowhere and told me to "hang out with the other boys". Had I misinterpreted her cues? Had I followed her around like a puppy dog with her merely tolerating my presence, instead of engaging with her in a mutual friendship? Or did she actually like me until a friend got jealous and made a comment about me which put her off me? No way of knowing. In any case, I followed her "advice" and started playing soccer with the lads, finally becoming accepted as one of them.
Another thing that often happened to me was when I was friends with a girl and I developed feelings for her; sometimes because the girl seemed to be interested in me, and sometimes because I just simply started finding her more and more attractive, while not being sure if she was into me or not.
At age 11 this happened with my friend C. At a school dance, she asked me to slow-dance with her to a cheesy love song and taught me the moves: first, she laid my hands on her waist, and then she wrapped her arms around my shoulders. It felt a bit awkward and also really, really good. But we were just friends, and it never occured to me that anything more was going on. Years later, I found out that a mix CD she had given me contained a not-so-hidden message. She had insisted multiple times that her dad (who burnt the CD for her) put the track "My Boyfriend" by Bubbles as number one. Her dad told this to my mom at a parental meeting, and my mom failed to disclose this crucial info to me at the time... because the hint was so obvious that I wouldn't need any help figuring it out. Of course, in reality I barely listened to the mix CD because despite C.'s general awesomeness, her taste in music wasn't really my jam.
By age 13/14, I had internalized the notion that just talking to a girl wasn't enough unless you wanted to be "just friends". You had to signal your interest in some way by "flirting".
At that time of my life I also went through a lot of changes. Obviously, the hormones were raging, and I felt like the horniest mofo this planet had ever seen. I had pretty bad acné, greasy skin, sweated easily which either lead to B.O. or copious Axe Body Spray(TM). I started listening to rock music, and let my hair grow longer. I wore darker clothes, because I liked the look and the comfort, but also because they didn't stand out. I discovered there was a name for my personality type: "introvert". I had two best friends (both male) who were also into nerdy shit like video games and heavy music.
I had internalized the notion that getting girls was hard unless you were a certain type of guy, the so-called "playa". That 'lifestyle' didn't appeal to me at all (being the life of the party, drinking (underage drinking is more accepted in Europe), wearing flashy clothes, dancing to reggaeton or whatever was trendy at the time etc.) and social events drained me. Sure, I wanted to be with girls, but I didn't want to try to be someone I was not.
We had one friend who seemed to be the missing link between the "nerds" and the "popular" kids. He was a computer nerd, but he also had started his own company designing websites. He wore button-down shirts instead of graphic tees, put gel in his hair, and went to every party. We teased him a bit for being a "try-hard" - in retrospect, it was an unfortunate case of crabs in a bucket.
I had yet another unrequited crush on this girl called C. At one point I talked myself into going up to her at a school party to ask her if I could buy her a drink... right next to a pair of blairing speakers. Needless to say, all I got from that was nightmares from the self-cringe.
I befriended this kind, artsy girl called D. Less conventionally pretty than C., but very fun to talk to. We commiserated over having unrequited crushes on the hottest girls and guys in class. I was completely comfortable around D., but I had no idea how to express that I liked her both as a friend and as potentially more than a friend. Nothing happened.
Aside from the unrequited crushes and the unresolved feelings for friends, I ran into a third type of situation: being on the receiving end of mock flirting.
It had first happened at the age of 12. I had a crush on E., a confident girl who was... let's say... more developed. I had confided in my mom about this. This is when I discovered that moms don't necessarily make for the best dating coaches. Her advise boiled down to two strategies: 1) give her a lovely gift: a box of chocolates will do. 2) treat her nicely and respectfully. I actually went to class the next day with a box of chocolates in my bag, but decided against the plan. Buying someone's affection seemed lame and I had never seen it work - I couldn't imagine the boys who had girlfriends doing such a thing.
However, somehow word got out that I liked E. One day, while the teacher was absent from class, she sat on my desk and began to mock-flirt with me, performatively carressing my inner thigh in front of her friends and mine. It felt humiliating, like she was ridiculing the very idea of me being with her. She continued on the bus, cartoonishly fluttering her eyes at me, preening and saying "hiiiiiiiii" in a breathy voice, to the laughter of her friends. I gathered my balls at that point and asked her "are you for real or are you just joking". She said it was a joke and stopped doing it.
A similar thing happened to me at age 16, when I had just changed schools. I wanted to make a good start, so I tried acting more social and doing things out of my comfort zone; one of these things was wearing a headband to school. Soon, a gaggle of girls from another class would scream "hey handsome!" at me every time I walked past them in the corridor. It seemed less like genuine flirting and more like a type of harrassment, as the screams were over-the-top and obnoxious. One day one of them handed me a piece of paper signed by 5-6 girls saying I was by far the hottest guy in school, that I looked like Rafael Nadal with my hairband, and that my shiny pale skin was the stuff of dreams. Had I underestimated myself that much, or were those girls really just taking the mickey? In any case, I couldn't keep up the charade any longer, and I resumed being my shy, nerdy old self.
[+]Quetzalkoalas1 points [recovered] (2 children) | Copy Link
I felt I only needed a small number of close friends to keep me sane, so my lifestyle didn't bother me that much. And whenever I got sexually frustrated, my imagination and porn did the trick. (I never got into the extreme stuff - only really watched more vanilla POV stuff so that I could at least imagine an approximation of what sex looked and felt like, having no real-life experience to refer to. The novelty of having a different beautiful woman at the click of a button each time was also more than exciting enough for me. It also helped me to redirect my sexual energies from a girl I was obsessed with to multiple fantasy women.)
In residency, I was pretty much forced to socialize on the job, and thus forced out of the worst parts of my social anxiety (hard to have a phobia for talking on the phone if you have to call up radiologists to convince them to do a CT scan at 4 in the morning). I still noticed attractive women but didn't focus on them at all. In one rotation I befriended 4 fellow residents, all of them female, who resided in the same dorm as me, on hospital grounds. We were a tight-knit group and talking to these girls kept me sane throughout those six months.
One of them (G.) ended up in a similar situation to B. and D. (unresolved feelings for friends) - this time around, it was only when she started to show signs of liking me that I started to really feel attracted to her. She had a bubbly and friendly personality, but at some point she really seemed to invent increasingly lame excuses to hang out with me, going out of her way to accompany me on the most mindnumbingly boring activities like going to the grocery store. Two colleagues (male and female) overheard us talking on the elevator one day. Afterwards, they told me the chemistry was palpable (they didn't believe me at first when I said G. wasn't my girlfriend) and that I had to make a move. I started noticing her attractiveness more and more. I tried to tease her a bit and bring things to a flirtier level - but she was so sweet and genuine and innocent, I didn't want to risk confusing her or disturbing her (sarcastic banter wasn't really her thing, she just liked to rattle on passionately about whatever struck her fancy). Asking her out was also difficult as our schedules were chock-full and neither of us had access to a vehicle to go out to a nicer part of town. And finally, what if she actually was just being nice? What if my feelings would make things awkward, not just between us, but for the entire friend group? Once again, even though I felt comfortable talking to her, I was stumped on what to do to express my interest. We eventually parted ways after our internship was finished, going to opposite sides of the country.
[+]Quetzalkoalas1 points [recovered] (1 child) | Copy Link
That's my story with women up until the age of 29. At that point, the nightmare vision of dying alone, unloved, untouched and undesired by a woman got the better of me, and I started reorganizing my life to become a more attractive and social version of myself in a way that fits me... unlike like my 16 year old self's desperate attempt at "fitting in" and playing someone else. I had had a few good years in university and residency of not chasing and pining after women and just being content with my life, but I realized continuing like this was unlikely to get me where I wanted to be. I'm not going into my current (mis)adventures in online dating etc.
Now I've got the recap out of the way I want to get into a more theoretical discussion about how the way I thought about my sexual interest for women changed.
Pre-puberty, I already knew that masturbation felt good from a certain age, however my feelings for girls were more obviously romantic than sexual. I would dream of kissing and marrying my crushes.
Post-puberty, the sexual feelings came to the forefront, although mixed in with romantic notions. My fantasies became dirtier. But I never thought of this as a potentially bad thing. Potentially embarrassing? Sure, due to the private nature of these things (like masturbation, engaging in it is perfectly fine, but as long as it's private). Having a crush on someone felt intoxicating in the best of ways. I felt good (although with a fair bit of anxiety and unresolved tension woven throughout the thing), but I also fantasized about making her feel good. I couldn't see sexual interest as anything other than a compliment of the highest order. The reason why I was so upset at the mock flirting I was sometimes subjected to was not being harrassed in itself (although in retrospect, it's certainly not ok to carress a boy's inner thigh without his consent, especially when he's a flustered mess); rather, what hurt most was feeling like the idea that I could be attractive to someone was what was being mocked, no less by the girl I was into. Could my interpretation of these events be wrong? Did I just project my inner insecurities unto these girls' actions? It's not impossible. But at the time, it felt pretty clearcut that that was what was happening.
In any case, I felt nothing but admiration and good feelings for the girls I was into - sadness and slight frustration when these feelings were not reciprocated notwithstanding.
It only occured to me later that there could be a darker side to this attraction - I realised this only around age 16 or 17 (I was a pretty naïve kid). I overheard a fratbro type of guy talking about "pumping and dumping" and "using her and throwing her away like a tissue". The guy was considered a douche by most of my friends, but I found the whole thing unsettling. I also noticed a similar thing browsing some online forums. There would be threads about "world cup babes" and I would happily look at these, because what hetero teenage boy doesn't like looking at beautiful women from all over the world having a good time while wearing revealing outfits? I also liked when my friends talked about what actresses we liked (Hollywood, not Brazzers...). But in some of these threads you would get similar comments to the fratbro, denigrating these women with "back to the kitchen" jokes or worse. I didn't get it - how could you look down on someone while finding them attractive?
I probably made the opposite mistake of pedestalizing girls I was into, but it was the denigration and dehumanization that bothered me, not the sexualization per se. It was a foreign way of thinking to mine. I had grown up with my mom commenting on some women's (and men's) beauty, and these comments always had a warm glow of benevolence to them.
I then stumbled upon PUA stuff like the Mystery method. At first it was mostly a ridiculous thing to laugh at - the HB8 terminology, AFCs, negging, kino, sargeing or whatever nonsense it was. But there was something disturbing about it too. I could understand how playful teasing was more attractive than a boring platonic conversation. But negging with the deliberate purpose of lowering a girl's self esteem? It sounded psychopathic. Yet I thought back to the fratbro douche who had made the "pump and dump" comment. Obviously it's hard to know how much of his bluster was simply exaggeration and making things up. But the guy, for all his faults, was socially uninhibited in an "IDGAF what people think of me" way, and it did seem like he got laid. The specter of "girls fall for assholes" reared its ugly head again.
Moreover, I was getting frustrated at the dating advice I could find. It was either this douchey (or unabashedly psychopathic, like ReturnOfKings) RedPill type stuff, or this incredibly toothless "just be nice and respectful" stuff that reminded me of my mom's advice. Whatever color the pill, it all seemed like utter crap to me. "Talk to her like she's a human being" never helped me with my female friends who I developed an attraction for.
Reading feminist discourse about objectification made me feel guilty, but simultaneously defiant. Because I felt that there was something wrong there, that sometimes two seperate things were being conflated. That sexual attraction was being conflated with only seeing someone as a sex object, like those fratbro douche-y guys who talked about women like handkerchiefs.
I felt like male sexuality was demonized in society, but not entirely without reason - there were clearly some bad men out there. Back when I believed sexuality (including male sexuality) was healthy and normal I already felt intimidated by the prospect of letting my interest be known, simply because of the embarrassment of rejection and potential awkwardness. Add to that the possibility of triggering some reminder of an asshole or a creep in the girl's memory by expressing your interest, and it becomes even more of a clusterfuck.
It boils down to the fact that I've never known how to express my romantic or sexual interest to a woman in a way that I am confident is respectful or "safe" - so I don't do it. It's not so much about the fear of being rejected - although I do have a conflict-adverse personality. It's more the fear of making a woman uncomfortable and creeped out. I see being seen as a creep as being branded a social leper.
The few people I tell this to tell me that I'm overthinking it - and of course, they are right (this long-ass post is clear evidence). But I can't see this as anything other than a minefield. The only reasonable conclusion I can reach without going into full self-denial mode is that one has to accept the slight possibility that you might inadvertently creep someone out, while acting from a place of benevolence and trust that you can convey your interests in a honest and respectful way. But I can think of quite a few very online feminists who would fight this stance with tooth and nail. Note - don't take this as a "feminism ruined dating for men" diatribe. Contemporary feminist discourse is only a tiny piece of this puzzle that has existed for much longer than Twitter. This is about the way our society has looked at sexuality for decades or even longer.
[–]auto-xkcd37 0 points1 point2 points (0 children) | Copy Link
[–]Melthengylf[S] 0 points1 point2 points (2 children) | Copy Link
[+]Quetzalkoalas1 points [recovered] (1 child) | Copy Link
It continues, had to split the story up in three parts(!)
The sheer length of it is in itself a nice illustration of how overthinking can lead to devastating outcomes.
[–]Melthengylf[S] 0 points1 point2 points (0 children) | Copy Link
[+]Zwabbernoot1 points [recovered] (2 children) | Copy Link
This story goes into a lot of detail about the "nice guy" protagonist's love life. While I don't know if I would classify as a "nice guy" (I'd like to think I don't), I do identify with the sense of sexual shame and frustration, and I'm not really sure where this comes from. Take the following ramblings more as a case study or a data point and not so much as a "woe is me" diatribe.
I was raised by fairly sex-positive parents, in the sense that they communicated pretty effectively that sexuality was a normal and healthy part of life and that I shouldn't hesitate to talk to them about it should I need to.
They also raised me in a fairly gender-neutral way for the time (At age 4, I played both with Barbie dolls and Batman action figures - real talk: they're both just dolls. I did enjoy undressing Barbie more than putting clothes on her for some reason). I never got any "real men don't cry" toxic masculinity bullshit or homophobia from my parents: my mom told me that if I ever turned out to be gay, I would be accepted and loved just the way I was.
I was a fairly sensitive, book-smart and imaginative kid. Finished my assignments before everyone else, stared out of a window until the teacher either gave me paper to draw on or some more busywork. My brain might have worked fast, in the physical realm I was clumsy and slow. Girls would (s)mother me by helping me clear out my desk and pack my bag, which I found annoying. However, I preferred playing with girls at recess, because their imaginative style of play was more appealing to me than the rough-and-tumble play and sports of the boys. Behavioral report cards would say something like: "wouldn't hurt a fly".
Had my first crush at age 6 or 7, let's call her A. I quickly discovered that A. was another boy's girlfriend. I was less disappointed by her not liking me than confused why on earth she liked this lad, because her boyfriend was basically the class bully: the meanest and most violent kid in class. Maybe this primed me for a toxic "girls only like assholes" mentality, although this was never a belief of mine, and more of a fear that occasionally resurfaced whenever I felt defeated.
On another note, at the same age I fell victim to severe bullying from two older kids, who pretended to befriend me at first, and then started threatening to kill me in gruesome ways. This probably didn't help building trust with people.
I had my fair share of unrequited crushes and "oneitis". I would interact with a girl a few times, feel infatuation for her, become increasingly nervous around her, and ultimately spend more time idealizing her and fantasizing about her than talking to her. As a kid I thought it worked this way: you got a crush, at some point you mustered the courage to confess your feelings, or you just got talking and maybe she would eventually confess your feelings to you.
This happened at age 8 with a girl named B. One day I mustered the courage to start a proper conversation with this girl, who I had already married a few times in my mind. To my surprise, it worked, and we hung around every day for the next few days, strolling along the playground talking, talking, talking. No holding hands or kissing as of yet, but I couldn't be happier as I just liked being around her. At some point, she seemingly got mad at me out of nowhere and told me to "hang out with the other boys". Had I misinterpreted her cues? Had I followed her around like a puppy dog with her merely tolerating my presence, instead of engaging with her in a mutual friendship? Or did she actually like me until a friend got jealous and made a comment about me which put her off me? No way of knowing. In any case, I followed her "advice" and started playing soccer with the lads, finally becoming accepted as one of them.
Another thing that often happened to me was when I was friends with a girl and I developed feelings for her; sometimes because the girl seemed to be interested in me, and sometimes because I just simply started finding her more and more attractive, while not being sure if she was into me or not.
At age 11 this happened with my friend C. At a school dance, she asked me to slow-dance with her to a cheesy love song and taught me the moves: first, she laid my hands on her waist, and then she wrapped her arms around my shoulders. It felt a bit awkward and also really, really good. But we were just friends, and it never occured to me that anything more was going on. Years later, I found out that a mix CD she had given me contained a not-so-hidden message. She had insisted multiple times that her dad (who burnt the CD for her) put the track "My Boyfriend" by Bubbles as number one. Her dad told this to my mom at a parental meeting, and my mom failed to disclose this crucial info to me at the time... because the hint was so obvious that I wouldn't need any help figuring it out. Of course, in reality I barely listened to the mix CD because despite C.'s general awesomeness, her taste in music wasn't really my jam.
By age 13/14, I had internalized the notion that just talking to a girl wasn't enough unless you wanted to be "just friends". You had to signal your interest in some way by "flirting".
At that time of my life I also went through a lot of changes. Obviously, the hormones were raging, and I felt like the horniest mofo this planet had ever seen. I had pretty bad acné, greasy skin, sweated easily which either lead to B.O. or copious Axe Body Spray(TM). I started listening to rock music, and let my hair grow longer. I wore darker clothes, because I liked the look and the comfort, but also because they didn't stand out. I discovered there was a name for my personality type: "introvert". I had two best friends (both male) who were also into nerdy shit like video games and heavy music.
I had internalized the notion that getting girls was hard unless you were a certain type of guy, the so-called "playa". That 'lifestyle' didn't appeal to me at all (being the life of the party, drinking (underage drinking is more accepted in Europe), wearing flashy clothes, dancing to reggaeton or whatever was trendy at the time etc.) and social events drained me. Sure, I wanted to be with girls, but I didn't want to try to be someone I was not.
We had one friend who seemed to be the missing link between the "nerds" and the "popular" kids. He was a computer nerd, but he also had started his own company designing websites. He wore button-down shirts instead of graphic tees, put gel in his hair, and went to every party. We teased him a bit for being a "try-hard" - in retrospect, it was an unfortunate case of crabs in a bucket.
I had yet another unrequited crush on this girl called C. At one point I talked myself into going up to her at a school party to ask her if I could buy her a drink... right next to a pair of blairing speakers. Needless to say, all I got from that was nightmares from the self-cringe.
I befriended this kind, artsy girl called D. Less conventionally pretty than C., but very fun to talk to. We commiserated over having unrequited crushes on the hottest girls and guys in class. I was completely comfortable around D., but I had no idea how to express that I liked her both as a friend and as potentially more than a friend. Nothing happened.
Aside from the unrequited crushes and the unresolved feelings for friends, I ran into a third type of situation: being on the receiving end of mock flirting.
It had first happened at the age of 12. I had a crush on E., a confident girl who was... let's say... more developed. I had confided in my mom about this. This is when I discovered that moms don't necessarily make for the best dating coaches. Her advise boiled down to two strategies: 1) give her a lovely gift: a box of chocolates will do. 2) treat her nicely and respectfully. I actually went to class the next day with a box of chocolates in my bag, but decided against the plan. Buying someone's affection seemed lame and I had never seen it work - I couldn't imagine the boys who had girlfriends doing such a thing.
However, somehow word got out that I liked E. One day, while the teacher was absent from class, she sat on my desk and began to mock-flirt with me, performatively carressing my inner thigh in front of her friends and mine. It felt humiliating, like she was ridiculing the very idea of me being with her. She continued on the bus, cartoonishly fluttering her eyes at me, preening and saying "hiiiiiiiii" in a breathy voice, to the laughter of her friends. I gathered my balls at that point and asked her "are you for real or are you just joking". She said it was a joke and stopped doing it.
A similar thing happened to me at age 16, when I had just changed schools. I wanted to make a good start, so I tried acting more social and doing things out of my comfort zone; one of these things was wearing a headband to school. Soon, a gaggle of girls from another class would scream "hey handsome!" at me every time I walked past them in the corridor. It seemed less like genuine flirting and more like a type of harrassment, as the screams were over-the-top and obnoxious. One day one of them handed me a piece of paper signed by 5-6 girls saying I was by far the hottest guy in school, that I looked like Rafael Nadal with my hairband, and that my shiny pale skin was the stuff of dreams. Had I underestimated myself that much, or were those girls really just taking the mickey? In any case, I couldn't keep up the charade any longer, and I resumed being my shy, nerdy old self.
[+]Zwabbernoot1 points [recovered] (1 child) | Copy Link
I felt I only needed a small number of close friends to keep me sane, so my lifestyle didn't bother me that much. And whenever I got sexually frustrated, my imagination and porn did the trick. (I never got into the extreme stuff - only really watched more vanilla POV stuff so that I could at least imagine an approximation of what sex looked and felt like, having no real-life experience to refer to. The novelty of having a different beautiful woman at the click of a button each time was also more than exciting enough for me. It also helped me to redirect my sexual energies from a girl I was obsessed with to multiple fantasy women.)
In residency, I was pretty much forced to socialize on the job, and thus forced out of the worst parts of my social anxiety (hard to have a phobia for talking on the phone if you have to call up radiologists to convince them to do a CT scan at 4 in the morning). I still noticed attractive women but didn't focus on them at all. In one rotation I befriended 4 fellow residents, all of them female, who resided in the same dorm as me, on hospital grounds. We were a tight-knit group and talking to these girls kept me sane throughout those six months.
One of them (G.) ended up in a similar situation to B. and D. (unresolved feelings for friends) - this time around, it was only when she started to show signs of liking me that I started to really feel attracted to her. She had a bubbly and friendly personality, but at some point she really seemed to invent increasingly lame excuses to hang out with me, going out of her way to accompany me on the most mindnumbingly boring activities like going to the grocery store. Two colleagues (male and female) overheard us talking on the elevator one day. Afterwards, they told me the chemistry was palpable (they didn't believe me at first when I said G. wasn't my girlfriend) and that I had to make a move. I started noticing her attractiveness more and more. I tried to tease her a bit and bring things to a flirtier level - but she was so sweet and genuine and innocent, I didn't want to risk confusing her or disturbing her (sarcastic banter wasn't really her thing, she just liked to rattle on passionately about whatever struck her fancy). Asking her out was also difficult as our schedules were chock-full and neither of us had access to a vehicle to go out to a nicer part of town. And finally, what if she actually was just being nice? What if my feelings would make things awkward, not just between us, but for the entire friend group? Once again, even though I felt comfortable talking to her, I was stumped on what to do to express my interest. We eventually parted ways after our internship was finished, going to opposite sides of the country.
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[–]Melthengylf[S] 0 points1 point2 points (0 children) | Copy Link
[–]Melthengylf[S] 0 points1 point2 points (2 children) | Copy Link
[–]Blauwpetjevalued LWMA contributor 1 point2 points3 points (1 child) | Copy Link
[–]Melthengylf1 point [recovered] | Copy Link