Scared to initiate?

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I'm sure this has been asked before but, I'll start a fresh thread. Anyone else have a fear of rejection, so great, that you cannot initiate or participate in, conversation that could lead to a relationship? The desire is there, but the confidence is not. It makes you think that you will be alone forever, unless someone pushes themself onto you(rare).

Not particularly, just that sometimes the ways some people want to show affection and want me to reciprocate just feel very cramped, narrow, and generally unnatural.

I used to have that problem, but I am the one who initiates now.

I don't have a fear of rejection so much as a fatalistic acceptance of it.

I'll second that.

I'm afraid I may have to third that

... although I still do fear the rejection if it's someone I'm REALLY attracted to.

Oh well

Rejection has no meaning really. When someone shuns you, it isn't necessarily personal, or for any reason that's important. I look at it as, if they don't want to talk to me, then they are missing out on my personality. It's their loss, and that's fine.

- D

I admire your perspective, Lord Dracula. It's certainly a healthy perspective.

Well, I'm scared to initiate. That's simply because I don't understand how to initiate. I don't see any logic that would lie there behind initiatives.

I don't see the logic either.

I have tried in the past a few times, with 0 success. I don't fear it as much as I find it to be a rat race. It's generally annoying to be rejected by people I'm not even sure I should be wasting my time talking to.

. . .and before trying there's the chasm between me and someone who's lead a completely different life; sombody who has always had friends, birthday parties, relationships since high school, a supportive family and someone who most likely has bullied people for being different rather than being the scapegoat herself.
My ex girlfriend had a friend and a nice family but could understand this well for other reasons and was free from a lot of the usual NT mentality.

Once at a club, one of the 10-20 times I ever been to a club in my life, an unknown chick appears and playfully takes off my glasses as they looked trendy. I could've most likely picked her up. . . and scored. . . and told others about it. . . and then come to this forum and tell people that - since I score - they should try to be like me and do what I say because otherwise, if the disobey me, they will be losers forever. Anyway. . . I took my glasses back and moved on.
The fact that she might have circumstantially thought I look cool doesn't change anything.

The one thing I enjoy about these episodes is the power-feeling of having one night stand fodder available if I feel like it; that I can, after all, have power even on the kind of people that would normally scoff at me, harass me, say "I need to be less weird" because I mention Nietzsche earlier or later in my conversations, or because "I dress in black", etc. . .

Last edited by Whisperer on 29 Mar 2008, 4:48 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Yeah I've had that before.. but then I tell myself I'm a p**** if I don't and do it anyways.

Initiating a conversation freaks me out, but if someone wants to talk to me, I'll let them.

I can initiate conversations, maintain them, and even hit on women...

The only thing I can't do is ask them out...

Its funny, I'll initiate conversations all the time. Trouble is even if they're liking me, the whole thing just feels so dry, dull, contrived, that I'm getting less out of it than they are. They could well be very cool but its like the awkward nature of it just kills my high.

I don't know that I have a fear of rejection, but I think that I 'd need to invest more emotional energy than I do right now in order to go through the whole "initiation" and dating ritual thing and inevitable rejection in some cases.

I definitely want to try at some point, but too many other things are emotionally draining right now and I don't want to add on another.

I definitely have this problem. It's very hard to initiate a chat with anyone for anything. I hesitate about either being invasive or getting rejected. Now I'm good at things like questions or topics but that's about it. It's also hard to express an emotion I'm feeling to that person. I don't ever know if it's the "right" emotion to even bother expressing. I think looking back on my threads I use a little humor as a defense mechanism. That way I won't care if I'm rejected or not. Hmmm, yeah I suck at initiating espeacially when it comes to dating .