Drought

Can I just say.  I'm incredibly annoyed with shows that make it seem like a single person going month's without sex is an incredibly terrible thing, and that to go a few years without it is just unheard of and so shocking.  I can't imaging what they'd say about someone who's in their 30's an hasn't done it yet.

I know I'm not the only person out there who is this way.  I know there are others.  I've found posts from them on various forums, but in reality no one knows anyone in this situation because no one in this situation talks about it.  I know I'm not spouting it to my friends... well I spouted it to one friend, but I've basically already told you about that.

So I had my appointment with my therapist today.  I don't think it went well.  I just couldn't bring myself to talk about a few things.  I don't really know why.  Maybe it was because it was just so personal and I'm not comfortable exposing myself that much.  Maybe it's because I didn't want to cry.  I know I felt it under the surface a couple times.

She asked me a question about me thinking I was gay.  It was weird.  There was a part of me that for some reason didn't like hearing her say that.  I don't know why.

She gave me a new task to try to do, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it.  I'm supposed to try to make small talk with people I come across.  The cashier in the checkout line for instance.

To me it just seems weird.  Plus part of me doesn't see what good it's going to do.  I mean I'm forced to interact with this person anyway.  I'm going to try to make it happen though.

She said something else that struck me as funny when you take a look at the name of the blog.  She said that I had a kind of teenager mentality when it came to interacting with other people.

Here's the basic thing that goes on in my head (and yes I realize it's a bit crazy).  I'm not that great of a person.  That person who I would like to talk with is a much better person then me.  If they are willing to lower themselves to my level they'll come to talk with me.  I don't want to become a burden to them, so I won't talk with them.

It's weird I know, but that is honestly were my head is a lot of the time.  I don't think I'm worth knowing unless you go out of your way to get to know me.

I just don't know how this whole thing is going to work out.

This is Not Me Backsliding

The title says what it says because I think the post is going to convey the opposite.

I'm just frustrated, I think.  Like I was telling my friend this weekend (and I'm sure I've mentioned it here) I'm  upset with myself that it's taken me so much time to tiptoe out into the world of dating (gay or straight).  It's making me impatient.

Nothing is moving fast enough for me.  Not my therapy.  Not my own understanding of what I really want and desire.  Not my feeble attempts on online dating sites.

I exchanged exactly 2 messages with the guy I spoke about earlier.  His last message was, short, cryptic, and didn't really continue or start any type of a conversation (and the message before that was the one where he said my initial message pissed him off).  You can tell from my posts I'm not really a quiet person when I've got a computer keyboard between me and the other person, so having conversations a sentence at a time was annoying.  So I just wrote it off as him not being interested, because from that short exchange I knew that I sure wasn't.

So tonight I messaged someone else.  I thought it was kind of cute.  He lived in the same town my friend does too (which I thought was kind of cool).  I kept it pretty simple, but at the same time tried to make it longer then just a sentence.  I kind of wrote it as "if you respond great, if not OK" kind of thing.  Of course that's the way I'd want it to be, but in reality I was sitting on pins and needles waiting for a response.

I saw that he checked my profile, but he didn't respond back.  I couldn't blame him because I'm not sure I'd respond back to me.

I just don't like having to figure all this out.  I don't like the lost feeling I have when I try to write a message.  And I know I'm going to have the same feelings (or worse) should anything move to an actual face to face meeting.  I don't have the experience of other people my age who've been dating for 10 or 15 years.

I just have this feeling that I lost before I even started trying.  I missed my opportunity to find someone.

Maybe it's just that the online thing isn't for me, but then I have no idea how to do the old fashioned way at my age.  I'm thinking about asking my friend to take me to a gay bar/hangout over labor day weekend, but he's in a college town so there will probably be a lot of younger guys there just looking to hookup (and some of them may even get drunk enough to consider me).  I'm not really looking to just hook up.  One thing I do know is that doesn't really appeal to me (I'm not completely ruling out the possibility it could happen, but it's not high up on my list of things I want to do).

I also don't know of anyone I can really ask to fix me up.  I have a limited pool of friends to draw from, and I'm not wanting to discuss what's going on in my head with them right now.  Plus many of them are looking on their own, so I don't see that working out well.

There's a part of me that just wants to cry over it all.  I told myself a while ago not to get my hopes up, and never to expect to fall in love, and here I am almost 8 years later doing just that.  Back then I didn't think it would ever be possible, but now I think it may be, and I kick myself for writing it off.  It would have been easier to enter the dating world at 26 (although I would have been about 100+ lbs. heavier) then it is to try to  do it at 33.

OK.  So I let it out.  Yeah it's a broken record of some of the stuff I've written before (insecurities don't just vanish overnight).  I do feel better just getting things off my mind sometimes though, and that's one of the reasons I started doing this.

Allow Me To Vent for a Moment

I just got back from my normal Thursday night of league pool with friends.  It's really the only night I go out each week.  We were talking and somehow the topic turned to how old we all were (one of my friends guessed my age and was only a year under to which he replied, "and I was lowballing it").  At 33 (almost 34) I'm the youngest of the group.

At the very end of the night the jukebox started playing songs from their high school/middle school days, and I was relating how I was only 5 in the early 80's when some of these songs came out.

I say I want to vent because since there was talk about high school there was also talk about young love relationships and going to prom.  Not much mind you, only a small little bit.  But that small bit just kinda got to me.

One of the guys on my team is married.  The girl has been married and is currently dating.  The other guy I don't really know that well (we don't talk much... it's that weird he's their friend and I'm their friend, but we're not really friends kind of thing), but I assume he has dated/is dating.

My point is that if the discussion had gotten going more with other people contributing I would have had nothing. I didn't have a high school romance.  I didn't have a college romance.  I haven't had an adult romance (of course I basically said all this in my first post).  I will never have those sorts nostalgic memories to add to the conversation.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying that I'm never going to have a romance.  I still have hope that something will happen someday, but I can never go back and change the past.  I'm never going to have the memory of being a teenager in love.  I'm never going to know what it was like kick my roommate out of my dorm room (but I do know what it's like to be the one kicked out).

It just makes me... sad.  I know you'll probably say that I can make lovely memories from this point forward.  That may be true (although right now I still have times where I find it difficult to believe anyone could fall for me), but it's not going to be the same.

Of course just thinking about the possibility of having a relationship leads me down the path of anxiety and asking, "what if."  What if I do find someone who's crazy enough to go out on a date with me?  What will it be like?  How should I act?  What if I withdraw so much because of my introversion and shyness and have nothing to say or come across as cold and uninterested?  Should I tell them that it's my first date?  How can I tell what their body language is telling me, because I know I'm completely clueless there.

Then what happens if we try to kiss?  Can I be a good kisser having never done it before?  How can I tell if I should initiate the kiss?  What happens if things get serious?

And it's thinking like that (and a much poorer self image) that put me in this situation to begin with.  Ugh.  I can't believe that such a simple, off the cuff comment could cause me so much turmoil.  I was having a good night too, but for some reason this just started eating at me.

I know, I know, I'm most likely making a much larger deal out of this then it should be.  I really think that at my next appointment I need to get the courage to bring some of this up.  We touched on it during my initial appointment.  To which the therapist said, "you're still young."  But over the last two weeks it's just been weighing on me more and more.

There are some days where it would have been easier if I had just stayed my 400 lbs. self.  I knew how to be that person.  I was miserable, but I knew better who I was when I was him.  I'm not saying I want to go back.  It's just... right now I'm lost.

Came Across Something in the Book

Ok.  So I've been mentioning my therapist suggested I read Quiet at my first session.  I have been reading it and loving it.

I'm nearing the end of the book now and it's starting to shift focus to how an introvert should adapt to a world of extroverts.  I came across a passage that just freaked me out a little.

It talked about being an introvert, craving a relationship, but hating the bar scene and such.  It mentioned that you may have to make a pact with yourself to put yourself in those types of social situations.

It's not that I hadn't considered that, but reading it somehow make it click for me.  At some point I will need to try to get out there.  My only problem is figuring out how to do it.

I mean I don't really have the group of friends to go out with.  Most are either married or as introverted as I am and therefore no real help.  My most extroverted friend is a girl and it would mean that either I'm the third wheel to her and her boyfriend or we'd be going out together which doesn't make it look like I'm available (unless of course I'm thinking of going the guy route).

I'm also not confident that even if I do get myself to go somewhere that I won't just sit at the bar and isolate myself like a typical wallflower.

Plus there's the question of where to go.  If I go down town I'd expect to be dealing with a lot more college aged people.  I don't think I could really relate.  The outer edge of town where I live tend to be more country bars and such and that's not as much my style.  And I have absolutely no idea how to break into the gay scene (although I do have a friend who may be able to help with that, but I'm not ready to confide in him yet).  Plus my searches so far have come up with one main bar and some of the pictures from it kinda turn me off.

I know a lot of this is probably just excuses for the real problem which is I have absolutely no idea how to act in this sort of a situation.  I'm not a hunter.  I'm the one who wants someone to come up to them, but I just don't think I'm attractive enough to get someone to come up to me.

I know if I was a little more confident in the way I looked then maybe that would put out a aura that would make me seem more approachable (really there are physical cues that can do that).  But I'm not certain I can do that.

I just know that I can't just sit around here like this too much longer.  I need my time alone, but no man is an island and there are times when I crave the social life that seems to come so easily to so many people.

Would It Be Fair?

So I'm wondering something.  Not that anyone's going to have an opinion on this because no one is really reading. :)  As I mentioned in my very first post I set up a couple profiles on a few dating sites.  I set them up searching for other guys because I was pretty sure (and still lean toward) that I would be more into guys then girls.

Now though I've been thinking of changing one of both of the profiles to be toward girls.  I tried to keep the profile as generic as I could with the specific idea that I could switch it if I wanted to, but I don't know if it's the right thing to do.

I do question if I could be with a girl.  Part of me wants to try it and find out.  I'm pretty sure at one point I mentioned the night out with a good friend of mine.  That helped fuel my confusion even more.  I was purposefully avoiding looking at her as anything other than a friend, so I was actively trying to avoid feeling anything more than that for her.  But I did enjoy myself.

I know that's hardly an emphatic declaration of my love of the V over the P, but it did inform my questioning.

I guess what I'm afraid of is that if I do decide to try dating a girl first I run the risk of really hurting someone. It seems like less of a risk with a guy (but I know it's still a risk there).  Plus as I've said before I think I can picture being with a guy better then being with a girl.

It's just confusing because I don't know what thoughts are informed by what I truly desire and raw emotion and what thoughts are just the product of this crazy, crazy brain of mine trying to over think things.

I just don't feel like my body is telling me anything and that is where the problem lies.  I honestly believe I could fall in love with either, but I just can't tell for certain which will fulfill me physically if I even really need that.

Is it right for me to even consider trying to date a girl when there's a part of me that seems to feel I'll end up with a guy?  Is it right to use a girl like training wheels?  Some of this would be simpler for me if I'd just been on one lousy date.

I'm worried that this idea of me switching to girls is just because I want to be in a relationship so badly that I'm doing it out of desperation.  I mean it wold be very hard to find a guy.  First you have to find a guy that's into guys.  Then you have to find a guy that's into you and one that you think you can be into too.  Then you have to hope they understand that you're not ready to publicly declare yourself, and you have worry that the're looking for something more physical then emotional (which is what I'm looking for).  It's all just such a mess that yes... girls seem easier.

In other news the book idea has stalled out.  I want to get back to doing it, but I've realized that I think I need to approach it from a different angle.  I need to get more into the internal stuff.  I was writing it with flashbacks and such and that was getting gimmicky and hard to get really work out.  I think I need to treat it more like an exploration of self.  Maybe a story starting in high school rather than out?  Maybe still keeping it as looking back, but focus more on the internal questioning and bring the flashbacks in when they inform the inner dialog.  It's all just a jumble right now.

A Post That's A Little All Over The Place

I'll admit that I've been kind of on an emotional roller-coaster the last week.  I just can't explain exactly why.  There is a part of me that feels broken and another part that feels lost.

I've been trying (on my own mind you) to define what I want.  I know I don't want to be alone.  I know I want someone to spent my life with.  Someone who's more than just a friend, a companion that will be there for me and I for them.

I just still cannot see who would fill that role.  Is it a guy, is it a girl?  I think both would be fine, but I question if I could truly "be with" one or the other.  It seems easier to picture myself in that situation with a guy, and I don't know why.  There's just a part of me that wonders if I could ever make that part of the relationship work with a girl.  But there's the other side that still wonders if I even really need that part of the relationship (of course it wouldn't be fair to the other party if they need it).

The thoughts and emotions are all just really too hard to put into words and even though I've make a few posts over at asexuality.org I still don't know if I really feel like I've found anyone who understands and that I can talk it out with.

I've honestly been really depressed lately.  My therapist was trying to get me to go to the gym at our last appointment.  She was only thinking like 20 minutes every couple days, but I did an hour at least 4 times a week.  I don't feel like I'm getting burnt out on it, in fact I'm beginning to like it because I feel like I can escape there.

The reason I mention this is because they say that when you work out your body is supposed to release all these endorphins that give you a better mood.  I don't know if I've ever felt that.  I don't feel like I've been getting the emotional high I should for working out.  Or maybe the emotional high is just returning me to what once was my normal emotional state.

I guess loneliness is probably the biggest emotion I've been feeling as of late.  It's weird because as an introvert I really do value my time alone.  I enjoy reading and writing.  I could sit here and do it for quite a while and be quite content, but even introverts need some interaction.  I don't want to be a hermit.  So yeah.  The loneliness is part of it.

I also feel a sense of loss.  Here I am at 33 (almost 34) and I'm still the never dated, never been kissed, lonely looser I was in high school.  I feel like I've lost out on the last 10-15 years.  I feel like I've failed... at life.  You're really only given one thing ever that is all your own.  One thing that you have to nurture.  One thing that you can't ever take back.  You're life is what God handed you and said, "You only get one, so don't screw this up," and I have.  I've missed out on so much and I have no idea if I can ever make up for it. I have no idea how to make up for it.

I don't know how to begin to try to get out there.  Dating sites don't appear to be working.  I've had a couple people indicate interest, but not anyone I feel like I want to connect with.  I've tried to take the initiative, but don't hear anything back.  I'm I being too picky?  I'm a little desperate, but I'm not to the any port in a storm stage yet.  Am I coming across as too needy in my messages?  Is my profile not good enough?  Are my pictures too plain?

I just feel like I'm on the verge of crying all the time.  I feel like I don't know who I am or what I want.  I feel like I'm going to be this way for the rest of my life.  I don't think I can handle that.  There was a time when I could, but I can't do it anymore.  I can't go through life this way.  But I have no idea if it can be changed or how to do it.

All I know is that I just hurt so much.

It's Not That I Don't Want to Have Sex...

I just don't see it as being a driving factor in a relationship.  Maybe I don't really have that much of a sex drive.  I know, I know I said in my very first post that I have a sex drive, and there are times when I feel like I'd like to experience it, but I don't have the need to go grab someone, throw them in a bed, and do bad things to them.

In all honesty the thought of sex before a relationship just doesn't seem to do anything for me.  Maybe years of watching internet porn has desensitized me to meaningless sex.  I just cannot imagine meeting someone, barely getting to know them, then taking them somewhere and going at each other.

I said before I had a sex drive based on the frequency of... well I'm sure you can guess.  But just thinking about bringing another person who's physically there into the mix brings up some feelings of fear and anxiety. There may be some excitement mixed in there too, but honestly I can't tell.

Part of me is scared because it's something I've never done before.  I'm afraid that I'm going to do something wrong, that they won't enjoy it, that I won't enjoy it.  I'm concerned that I won't want to do it as early in the relationship as they want to.  I'm also afraid of them expecting me to make the first move as I have no idea what that would be, and I don't know how to tell if they're making the move.

The whole process is just so foreign to me.  You see those cheesy family shows that give advice like, "when the time is right you'll know."  I just can't believe it's like that though.  If I can't tell who I'm attracted to then what are the chances of me being able to tell when the time is right?  Maybe the label I'm looking for really is asexual after all (not that I need a label to define me).

I keep thinking that maybe my first kiss will give me some insight into all this, but even such a simple thing as that carries some of the same concerns I have about sex.

Kissing, sex, and other physical interaction are all parts of a relationship and everything just seem so foreign to me right now.  It makes me sad, and nervous, and panicked, and angry.  How can I sit here at my age and be so concerned about this stuff?

God this is so freaking me out.  It's not something I can really talk to my friends about.  I mean who wants to admit to their friends they're this much of a looser.  It's not only that, but I don't feel like I really have the types of friendships anymore where I could discuss stuff like this.  There is one friend from my past that I have started to reconnect with a little, but I don't even know if I want to burden him with this.

I don't know if I can tell my therapist either.  It's just so personal, and embarrassing, and pathetic at the same time that it's much easier to just let it all out here anonymously.  Even if I did feel like I had someone to talk to I know they can't really relate.  I don't know anyone who's like me.  After all if they were like me they wouldn't be advertising it either.

How many 30 year old never been kissed, never dated, virgins are there in the world and what are the chances a large number of them are right here with me.  East coast... I'm sure there's a few, West coast... possibly, Alaska... definitely, but here smack in the middle... I just don't see a large concentration.

I just feel so... alone.