As anyone who frequently stops by and reads my barely coherent rantings on this site about my self-pitying solitude and constant failures with things in life, I am a chronically single white 44-year-old adult (who may have an autism-like genetic condition called Asperger's Syndrome) male with no prospects of ever marrying anyone apart from some desperate female in a similar unenviable position to my own - not a pleasant future prosepct to even any sane individual. The most baffling thing about my limited experiences in this area is how whenever I actually try to make some sort of romantic connection, I always screw it up by saying the wrong thing, sometimes too little and on occasion too much. I'm just not that smooth with flirting - three experiences at attempting it ending in failure. And now I travel down memory lane and its potentially imperfect recollections on a wasted adult life that has left me only with wondering about what might have been with various women (whom I will only identify by first name if I happen to remember what those were).
Having been a somewhat bashful child in social situations, I was one who never tried being a ladies' man from even a young age (when such behavior is seen as cute rather than creepy). In fact, I sensed an antagonism from the female sex in or around my own age from about the first grade in elementary school - you know, that old whose better at doing things physical or mental - boys or girls. Growing up during the rising heyday of female empowerment with the androgynous fashions and militant strident women out to prove they could do ANYTHING men could do only better (as one song from the 1950s claimed), I had an innate sense of the so-called gender war component to the larger cultural war in which the liberal progressive forces were attacking more traditional viewpoints and stereotypes, and frankly I didn't like it one bit (being among the sex that was clearly intended to be on the losing end and getting the shaft or short end of the stick after having served as the dominant half of humanity for millennia past). I was a natural anti-feminist and knew it - later on proudly embracing any nasty label the bra-burners might hang around my neck - "male chauvanist pig," "sexist" etc. I didn't care if man-hating women had no use for me or my kind. Screw them, I decided (although never literally in terms of sexual intercourse). As one consequence of this mindset (I'm not apologizing for being myself in this regard, ladies - don't mistake my words for one), I had an inherent distaste for what I term bossy women - domineering females who always believe they know best in any situation especially where their opinion trumps a man's. My own mother was not the cause for this, before any of you reading this get such an idea. She was a good woman, but essentially a doormat in some ways when it came to standing up to my father. I think that weakness was due to her being raised by relatives other than her birth parents and also the natural socialistic tendency of most women in acting as peacemakers in social relationships - the "can't we all just get along" types in this world who allow themselves to be stomped into the dust by the more aggressive bullies.
My first (of two total) date was taking a friend's kid sister to their church's social function when I was only 11. It was just a favor done and there was obviously no chemistry between us (she was 9 at the time). After an unexpected nervous breakdown suffered when I was 12 in seventh grade, during the spring of 1981 way back when important political figures were being successfully (Sadat) and unsuccessfully (Reagan) assassinated before my eyes, I did not recover for several months. In eighth grade, a female classmate tried to coax me out of my shell by inviting me to her church's Saturday social function for youths. I resisted the invitation repeatedly, only having experienced my first crush a year earlier with a different female classmate whose family moved away before I could ever ask her out (a normal tweenage boy would've had the courage to do it), but this girl was stubborn and refused my answer, even telling me at one point "you're going." There was no romantic attraction, or at least none I sensed, and in the end I cowardly had my mother telephone her mother to claim I was too ill to attend when the Saturday finally arrived. Sometimes I wonder if we could've bulit some sort of connection through becoming close friends first. But my gut tells me even now that her somewhat bossy personality would have gotten in the way.
In high school, I drifted from one lusting from afar non-relationship to another with three different girls - two classmates and one a year younger (that one actually accusing me of cyber-stalking when I attempted some sort of semi-nostalgic harmless flirtations via e-mail last year). Then in my senior year, I quietly fell in love with the girl who broke my heart slightly more than a year later by rejecting my request for a date. During that confusing year, I had my second date (senior prom) with another girl I felt no attraction toward (partially due to her abbrasive personality, not her heavyset appearance). Admittedly I was an overweight child and teenager (and during much of my adult life) who was not a natural chick magnet. I had no exuberant personality to compensate for this shortcoming and was probably no fun to be around in the eyes of those boys and girls whose approval I craved for friendship. I have made few friends and even fewer closer ones - all of the latter now living hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Once in college, and after backing away from a young blonde co-ed named Mitzie I tried flirting with at freshman orientation only to realize I wasn't interested, I buried myself in the pain of that 1986 September rejection and concentrated on studies, missing out on new social connections even my freshman year. The most obvious one in hindsight was a sexy redhead named Terri who actually played Dungeons and Dragons (so few women do) and invited me to join her group. I also missed out on other connections with women in college, being too cowardly to ask any girl I was attracted to at a distance for a date (still crushed by the refusal of the young lady who should've been my high school sweetheart even though she was what is known as "out of my league" or I was out of hers), being put off by any girl who studied in my major subject (history) as seeming too feministic, or being blocked by lack of interest in me that way (including one lady my junior year named Karen who already had a serious boyfriend). Regarding the second point in that last sentence, I was often dismayed how much college attracted strong progressive women into the social science disciplines, women out to prove that "Her-story" was the main reason they studied history (trying to remove the his from that label). These types of empowered "womyn" always rubbed me the wrong way and literally threatened my sense of masculinity by their existence.
The last two chances of finding someone in graduate school ended with equal disappointment. First, there was Livia, a college bookstore employee and seemingly perpetual student who took a decade (due to often changing majors) for finishing her bachelor's degree and had dreams of becoming a college professor (as I also once had then). She was eight years my senior, but that didn't matter to me, We had a natural sort of understanding that Liberal Orthodoxy on campus was the Enemy. From this a closer relationship should've developed, but alas, I seemed to put my foot in my mouth every time I tried flirting or hinting at any interest in her beyond the platonic friendship she seemed to prefer. To this day, I don't know why she wasn't interested in me romantically. She was rather average in appearance with small stature and round eyeglasses, with the smallest hands I've ever seen on any woman. But I think I was falling in love with her. I just couldn't come out and say it. Maybe I wasn't her type. Maybe she had been hurt by a man before or had escaped a bad marriage. Maybe she was a sapphite (lesbian for those of you unfamiliar with that old-fashioned term - I suspected this because of how close she sounded to her female roommate - a Persian lady named Sherazade). If I could reconnect with Livia, I think I could ask her to marry me, age difference be damned (she would be in her 50s by now). My second chance I'm not even sure of her name aside from possibly being Elizabeth or Mary Elizabeth. We met in one political science class for graduate and undergraduate students and barely talked a few times. A year-and-a-half later, I think we ran into each other in a hallway, but when she tried talking to me I basically fled with some excuse that I had somewhere else I needed to be as a graduate assistant. I was just intimidated by her interest in me and decided she was a little too heavy for my tastes (despite weighing around 300 pounds myself by that point at age 23).
After college, my only contacts with women I might've shown interest toward or who showed interest toward me has always been online - either via chat rooms or through dating sites. A good friend of mine met his wife through a chat room for the TV show Doctor Who and they're still married living in Minnesota. I was not so fortunate to ever make such a connection. In 2000, new to the Internet, I met a veternary student (cannot remember if I ever got her real name) in her early 20s from upstate New York on a Sci-Fi Channel chat room for Mystery Science Theater 3000 (if I ever meet an available woman who loves this cult hit TV show, I'll propose to her on the spur of the moment). We exchanged superficial pleasantries at best and I was intimidated by the fact I was 32 years old almost flirting with someone a decade my junior (feeling like a self-conscious dirty old man inside) and did not pursue the connection as any other sane man would have. After that brush with romance, I immersed myself into fiction writing for the succeedive decade, honing my craft and using my imagination to create stories with the occasional woman of my dreams featured in those. Then in 2011, I tried online dating without success, never getting any positive feedback from different black-haired ladies I contacted. They either ignored my overtures or indicated a lack of interest. Admittedly I was a janitor aspiring to become a best selling fiction author (the only difference now is I'm unemployed) and not the best catch as a desperate bachelor. The one lady that did show interest in me from Plenty of Fish from a town 18 miles west, seemed too unattractive and particular about her plans for life to pursue, so I begged off before my subscription expired. That was back in July. After my dubious experiences at dating sites, I would relabel the three I used with unflattering nicknames - Bottom of the Barrel (Plenty of Fish), Divorced Christian Mingle (since it seemed an overwhelming majority of the women there were divorced - these so-called Christians never reading what Jesus said in the Gospels about divorce and remarriage - essentially don't do the former and that if you do the latter it's adultery in God's sight unless widowed) and Scam.com (Match.com - I attracted more scammers there - usually young men posing as women in African nations - than at any other site). Over the spring and summer I corresponded often with a young Russian lady named Elena, allegedly from central Siberia, but her English was attrocious and her sad story of having lost her job right after we started writing each other and wanting to come live with me all sounded like a scam. I did a background check on her and learned I was being deceived to gain $500 I could not have spared then to arrange her travel to the US (even those details she got wrong in descriptions of what would be needed). The less said about the other scams I came close to falling for during those recent months the better.
Of course even Facebook has been a disappointment in terms of meeting the available members of the opposite sex, not that I was trying to there. Two different ladies have friended me there - one dropping her account and e-mailing me in late summer/early autumn instead - apparently with the intention of making a romantic connection. The first was named Berty (strange name for a woman, but I've heard stranger - especially the ones that are interchangable with boy names) from Los Angeles, apparently a beautician she claimed. But by October I realized we had nothing in common, and so did she apparently when we stopped writing each other. I just couldn't connect with this woman. More recently in this frigid month I was friended by a lady from Rockville, Illinois (originally born in the UK) named Ellen. After a single meeting at FB chat, she has not contacted me again and I don't know what I said or did wrong on that one occasion. Was she put off by the fact I'm unemployed? I'm looking for work - contacting a person on Craigslist for a freelance ghostwriting job on an adventure novel whose themes sound like something I could do. I just can't find even a mundane job in this crappy economy. I really want that freelance job It allegedly pays $10 per page for each of 10 completed chapters (300 - 350 pages length required).
But getting back to this Ellen (and if you're reading this, honey, I'm intrigued by you, just don't know if there's any chemistry between us from one contact yet), I really want to see if this Facebook contact leads to anything long-distance. But I fear if I pester her too much (even though she contacted me first), I'll drive her away and be considered mistakenly a cyber-stalker again (which I'm definitely not by the way, Jennifer, you stupid Vintage Sugarcube airhead living in San Diego). She said she was a 30-year-old nursing student (odd since her FB profile says she was born in 1983 - which would make her 29 at the last birthday) and I would like to date (and possibly wed) a nurse (especially one with dark hair). She is rather cute from her photograph which is a plus. The problem/dilemma I now face is what to do next. Do I try to make contact with her again? Society expects men to take initiative in dating and romantic matters. (Author's note later in the evening on 12/21/2012: Ellen chatted again just to literally say "hello" and then went silent again - I just don't understand this lady.) However, I'm basically a romantic coward of many years (largely due to getting too picky for exactly what I want in a wife to appear in my life and that's never going to happen) who was scarred by his past failures listed above and in other posts here.
I'm not a charismatic asshole, former college leisure studies major and frat boy brat, player or smooth talker who cheats on his girlfriend while dating her (like the guy who dated the girl that broke my 18-year-old heart for five years after she rejected me). I just don't have those qualities and resent my lack of ability to charm any woman I want to date or marry in life. I fear that if something doesn't change in this regard, I'll be alone the rest of my life, not even dumped by a fickle female through divorce when she decides I'm a bad marital choice. Considering I've not been on one date as an adult (my last date to the senior prom was just before my 18th birthday), maybe I never will. I certainly don't know how to act on one and have always been envious going out with friends and their spouses/girlfriends serving as the gathering's excess wheel.
Ellen, if you're reading this post, I hope you'll message me on Facebook chat one more time and maybe I can be a bit less stiff in the back and forth conversation. Who knows, I might even manage to keep both size 12EE feet from getting stuck inside my mouth yet again. If you've suddenly decided from our brief discussion I'm not what you're looking for, I wish you'd have the decency to tell me and we could just remain basic Facebook Friends.
To quote author Justin Halpern (of Shit my Dad Says fame) from a new story collection about his colorful father, I can sum up my experience with its title alone - "I Suck at Girls."
Having been a somewhat bashful child in social situations, I was one who never tried being a ladies' man from even a young age (when such behavior is seen as cute rather than creepy). In fact, I sensed an antagonism from the female sex in or around my own age from about the first grade in elementary school - you know, that old whose better at doing things physical or mental - boys or girls. Growing up during the rising heyday of female empowerment with the androgynous fashions and militant strident women out to prove they could do ANYTHING men could do only better (as one song from the 1950s claimed), I had an innate sense of the so-called gender war component to the larger cultural war in which the liberal progressive forces were attacking more traditional viewpoints and stereotypes, and frankly I didn't like it one bit (being among the sex that was clearly intended to be on the losing end and getting the shaft or short end of the stick after having served as the dominant half of humanity for millennia past). I was a natural anti-feminist and knew it - later on proudly embracing any nasty label the bra-burners might hang around my neck - "male chauvanist pig," "sexist" etc. I didn't care if man-hating women had no use for me or my kind. Screw them, I decided (although never literally in terms of sexual intercourse). As one consequence of this mindset (I'm not apologizing for being myself in this regard, ladies - don't mistake my words for one), I had an inherent distaste for what I term bossy women - domineering females who always believe they know best in any situation especially where their opinion trumps a man's. My own mother was not the cause for this, before any of you reading this get such an idea. She was a good woman, but essentially a doormat in some ways when it came to standing up to my father. I think that weakness was due to her being raised by relatives other than her birth parents and also the natural socialistic tendency of most women in acting as peacemakers in social relationships - the "can't we all just get along" types in this world who allow themselves to be stomped into the dust by the more aggressive bullies.
My first (of two total) date was taking a friend's kid sister to their church's social function when I was only 11. It was just a favor done and there was obviously no chemistry between us (she was 9 at the time). After an unexpected nervous breakdown suffered when I was 12 in seventh grade, during the spring of 1981 way back when important political figures were being successfully (Sadat) and unsuccessfully (Reagan) assassinated before my eyes, I did not recover for several months. In eighth grade, a female classmate tried to coax me out of my shell by inviting me to her church's Saturday social function for youths. I resisted the invitation repeatedly, only having experienced my first crush a year earlier with a different female classmate whose family moved away before I could ever ask her out (a normal tweenage boy would've had the courage to do it), but this girl was stubborn and refused my answer, even telling me at one point "you're going." There was no romantic attraction, or at least none I sensed, and in the end I cowardly had my mother telephone her mother to claim I was too ill to attend when the Saturday finally arrived. Sometimes I wonder if we could've bulit some sort of connection through becoming close friends first. But my gut tells me even now that her somewhat bossy personality would have gotten in the way.
In high school, I drifted from one lusting from afar non-relationship to another with three different girls - two classmates and one a year younger (that one actually accusing me of cyber-stalking when I attempted some sort of semi-nostalgic harmless flirtations via e-mail last year). Then in my senior year, I quietly fell in love with the girl who broke my heart slightly more than a year later by rejecting my request for a date. During that confusing year, I had my second date (senior prom) with another girl I felt no attraction toward (partially due to her abbrasive personality, not her heavyset appearance). Admittedly I was an overweight child and teenager (and during much of my adult life) who was not a natural chick magnet. I had no exuberant personality to compensate for this shortcoming and was probably no fun to be around in the eyes of those boys and girls whose approval I craved for friendship. I have made few friends and even fewer closer ones - all of the latter now living hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Once in college, and after backing away from a young blonde co-ed named Mitzie I tried flirting with at freshman orientation only to realize I wasn't interested, I buried myself in the pain of that 1986 September rejection and concentrated on studies, missing out on new social connections even my freshman year. The most obvious one in hindsight was a sexy redhead named Terri who actually played Dungeons and Dragons (so few women do) and invited me to join her group. I also missed out on other connections with women in college, being too cowardly to ask any girl I was attracted to at a distance for a date (still crushed by the refusal of the young lady who should've been my high school sweetheart even though she was what is known as "out of my league" or I was out of hers), being put off by any girl who studied in my major subject (history) as seeming too feministic, or being blocked by lack of interest in me that way (including one lady my junior year named Karen who already had a serious boyfriend). Regarding the second point in that last sentence, I was often dismayed how much college attracted strong progressive women into the social science disciplines, women out to prove that "Her-story" was the main reason they studied history (trying to remove the his from that label). These types of empowered "womyn" always rubbed me the wrong way and literally threatened my sense of masculinity by their existence.
The last two chances of finding someone in graduate school ended with equal disappointment. First, there was Livia, a college bookstore employee and seemingly perpetual student who took a decade (due to often changing majors) for finishing her bachelor's degree and had dreams of becoming a college professor (as I also once had then). She was eight years my senior, but that didn't matter to me, We had a natural sort of understanding that Liberal Orthodoxy on campus was the Enemy. From this a closer relationship should've developed, but alas, I seemed to put my foot in my mouth every time I tried flirting or hinting at any interest in her beyond the platonic friendship she seemed to prefer. To this day, I don't know why she wasn't interested in me romantically. She was rather average in appearance with small stature and round eyeglasses, with the smallest hands I've ever seen on any woman. But I think I was falling in love with her. I just couldn't come out and say it. Maybe I wasn't her type. Maybe she had been hurt by a man before or had escaped a bad marriage. Maybe she was a sapphite (lesbian for those of you unfamiliar with that old-fashioned term - I suspected this because of how close she sounded to her female roommate - a Persian lady named Sherazade). If I could reconnect with Livia, I think I could ask her to marry me, age difference be damned (she would be in her 50s by now). My second chance I'm not even sure of her name aside from possibly being Elizabeth or Mary Elizabeth. We met in one political science class for graduate and undergraduate students and barely talked a few times. A year-and-a-half later, I think we ran into each other in a hallway, but when she tried talking to me I basically fled with some excuse that I had somewhere else I needed to be as a graduate assistant. I was just intimidated by her interest in me and decided she was a little too heavy for my tastes (despite weighing around 300 pounds myself by that point at age 23).
After college, my only contacts with women I might've shown interest toward or who showed interest toward me has always been online - either via chat rooms or through dating sites. A good friend of mine met his wife through a chat room for the TV show Doctor Who and they're still married living in Minnesota. I was not so fortunate to ever make such a connection. In 2000, new to the Internet, I met a veternary student (cannot remember if I ever got her real name) in her early 20s from upstate New York on a Sci-Fi Channel chat room for Mystery Science Theater 3000 (if I ever meet an available woman who loves this cult hit TV show, I'll propose to her on the spur of the moment). We exchanged superficial pleasantries at best and I was intimidated by the fact I was 32 years old almost flirting with someone a decade my junior (feeling like a self-conscious dirty old man inside) and did not pursue the connection as any other sane man would have. After that brush with romance, I immersed myself into fiction writing for the succeedive decade, honing my craft and using my imagination to create stories with the occasional woman of my dreams featured in those. Then in 2011, I tried online dating without success, never getting any positive feedback from different black-haired ladies I contacted. They either ignored my overtures or indicated a lack of interest. Admittedly I was a janitor aspiring to become a best selling fiction author (the only difference now is I'm unemployed) and not the best catch as a desperate bachelor. The one lady that did show interest in me from Plenty of Fish from a town 18 miles west, seemed too unattractive and particular about her plans for life to pursue, so I begged off before my subscription expired. That was back in July. After my dubious experiences at dating sites, I would relabel the three I used with unflattering nicknames - Bottom of the Barrel (Plenty of Fish), Divorced Christian Mingle (since it seemed an overwhelming majority of the women there were divorced - these so-called Christians never reading what Jesus said in the Gospels about divorce and remarriage - essentially don't do the former and that if you do the latter it's adultery in God's sight unless widowed) and Scam.com (Match.com - I attracted more scammers there - usually young men posing as women in African nations - than at any other site). Over the spring and summer I corresponded often with a young Russian lady named Elena, allegedly from central Siberia, but her English was attrocious and her sad story of having lost her job right after we started writing each other and wanting to come live with me all sounded like a scam. I did a background check on her and learned I was being deceived to gain $500 I could not have spared then to arrange her travel to the US (even those details she got wrong in descriptions of what would be needed). The less said about the other scams I came close to falling for during those recent months the better.
Of course even Facebook has been a disappointment in terms of meeting the available members of the opposite sex, not that I was trying to there. Two different ladies have friended me there - one dropping her account and e-mailing me in late summer/early autumn instead - apparently with the intention of making a romantic connection. The first was named Berty (strange name for a woman, but I've heard stranger - especially the ones that are interchangable with boy names) from Los Angeles, apparently a beautician she claimed. But by October I realized we had nothing in common, and so did she apparently when we stopped writing each other. I just couldn't connect with this woman. More recently in this frigid month I was friended by a lady from Rockville, Illinois (originally born in the UK) named Ellen. After a single meeting at FB chat, she has not contacted me again and I don't know what I said or did wrong on that one occasion. Was she put off by the fact I'm unemployed? I'm looking for work - contacting a person on Craigslist for a freelance ghostwriting job on an adventure novel whose themes sound like something I could do. I just can't find even a mundane job in this crappy economy. I really want that freelance job It allegedly pays $10 per page for each of 10 completed chapters (300 - 350 pages length required).
But getting back to this Ellen (and if you're reading this, honey, I'm intrigued by you, just don't know if there's any chemistry between us from one contact yet), I really want to see if this Facebook contact leads to anything long-distance. But I fear if I pester her too much (even though she contacted me first), I'll drive her away and be considered mistakenly a cyber-stalker again (which I'm definitely not by the way, Jennifer, you stupid Vintage Sugarcube airhead living in San Diego). She said she was a 30-year-old nursing student (odd since her FB profile says she was born in 1983 - which would make her 29 at the last birthday) and I would like to date (and possibly wed) a nurse (especially one with dark hair). She is rather cute from her photograph which is a plus. The problem/dilemma I now face is what to do next. Do I try to make contact with her again? Society expects men to take initiative in dating and romantic matters. (Author's note later in the evening on 12/21/2012: Ellen chatted again just to literally say "hello" and then went silent again - I just don't understand this lady.) However, I'm basically a romantic coward of many years (largely due to getting too picky for exactly what I want in a wife to appear in my life and that's never going to happen) who was scarred by his past failures listed above and in other posts here.
I'm not a charismatic asshole, former college leisure studies major and frat boy brat, player or smooth talker who cheats on his girlfriend while dating her (like the guy who dated the girl that broke my 18-year-old heart for five years after she rejected me). I just don't have those qualities and resent my lack of ability to charm any woman I want to date or marry in life. I fear that if something doesn't change in this regard, I'll be alone the rest of my life, not even dumped by a fickle female through divorce when she decides I'm a bad marital choice. Considering I've not been on one date as an adult (my last date to the senior prom was just before my 18th birthday), maybe I never will. I certainly don't know how to act on one and have always been envious going out with friends and their spouses/girlfriends serving as the gathering's excess wheel.
Ellen, if you're reading this post, I hope you'll message me on Facebook chat one more time and maybe I can be a bit less stiff in the back and forth conversation. Who knows, I might even manage to keep both size 12EE feet from getting stuck inside my mouth yet again. If you've suddenly decided from our brief discussion I'm not what you're looking for, I wish you'd have the decency to tell me and we could just remain basic Facebook Friends.
To quote author Justin Halpern (of Shit my Dad Says fame) from a new story collection about his colorful father, I can sum up my experience with its title alone - "I Suck at Girls."