Intimacy issues and . I have trouble trusting people and getting close to them until they’ve been around me for a while. Most people don’t spend enough time in my life for me to start to see them as a real person.
High standards. I may be sad and lonely, but at least I’m not desperate. I want to date someone who’s kind, attractive, andbrilliant. Anything less than this would disappoint me.
Self-esteem issues. I want to be the perfect boyfriend. I want to be stable and reliable. I want to be a good provider, a pillar of strength, who gives things out instead of taking them. I’m none of these things, and it bothers me. I don’t likely doing anything halfway. I can get jealous when people are successful. I constantly feel like I’m unattractive and I’m not living up to my potential.
Social incompetence. I’m not the most socially intuitive person. I focus on details instead of seeing the big picture. That is, I try to beright sometimes when I should just be there. Moreover, I want to be loyal, but I’m constantly moving through a world of mixed signals, or at least signals that are below my threshold of sensitivity. I’m not certain what it means when people want to hang out with me. As a result, I’m not sure what my obligations are at any particular moment. When I give mixed signals, it’s because I’m sensing mixed signals, and rather than shut down altogether, or risk humiliating myself by asking, I just try to split the difference and put off actually figuring it all out until later.
Obliviousness and distractability. Want someone to focus just on you and cater to you like you’re the center of the universe? That’s not me. No matter how good things gets, I’m always thinking about something else. The ceiling could fall in right next to me, and I wouldn’t notice because I’d be too busy staring off into space, thinking about something else (verb conjugation or noun categories of a language spoken deep in a jungle somewhere, probably). Unlike most people, it takes me a lot of effort not to concentrate on something, but what I’m concentrating on is rarely what I’m actually supposed to be focused on.
Awkward romance. What’s worse than not being romantic? Trying to be romantic and being bad at it. Approaching every date like that episode of Community where Abed tries to recreate My Dinner with Andre. Think back to the last romcom you watched and just think how badly things could have gone if someone had completely misread the situation. Imagine wanting very badly to fall in love and feel passionately about something and being utterly incompetent at it. How do those people in the movies do it? How do they seem to read each other’s minds? I don’t know. I’ve discovered it’s pointless to try to apply the narrative structure of a romantic comedy to real life.
Poverty and lack of ambition. I’m the furthest thing from a yuppie. I don’t make a lot of money. I’ve never in my life made enough money to file for taxes. I sort of bum around. Most of what I’ve done have been non-jobs, just sort of dipping my toe into the economy on the gig-side. Although I’m nearly thirty, right now I’m teaching English overseas for the second time, a stereotypical gap year career move if ever there was one. If you have a plan for your life, I probably don’t fit on it. If you want long term earning potential, something to pay the mortgage on your cottage in the countryside and food and clothes for your two and a half children, or support you in the lifestyle to which you’re accustomed, tipping baristas $25 a pop, or even just paying the cover charge at that trendy club located down an alley in some famous city where the fog and the sky scrapers conspire to hide the sun from you, don’t be fooled. It’s not me.
Effeteness. In general I’m not very manly. I don’t watch sports or drink beer or pick up women in bars. I brag, sometimes. Not very convincingly and not often, but sometimes. Although I can reach things on the top shelf and open pickle jars, I’m bad at lifting heavy objects and anything relating to cars. I don’t play as female characters online or anything, but I do regularly watch, read, and otherwise consume media with female protagonists.
Melancholy. A lot of what’s wrong with me could be forgiven if I were vivacious and uplifting. But I’m not. I’m not the sort of person you want around you to cheer you up. I can be charming. I can be funny, when I need to. But it’s draining. It’s not that I’m an introvert who’s drained by being around people in general. I’m drained by trying to do anything. As they said in Office Space, It’s not that I’m lazy. It’s that I just don’t care. Most of the time it’s pretty dark in the mind, and the stuff that other people find so inspiring or meaningful, especially the New Age-y stuff like the Secret or Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot, just bore me.
Incorrigibility. I don’t take criticism well, and I don’t easily learn from my mistakes. I have to make a mistake at least twice before I learn from it, and trying to steer me from my course can be like talking to a brick wall. It’s not that I’m that stubborn or that convinced of my own righteousness. I’m just that cut off. I hear people, but I don’t understand, or I analyze what they say on a shallow level without taking any lessons from it.