smudge wrote:
Why aren't you interested in those women? I can't remember remotely what you look like, except I saw a photo of you years ago and remember thinking at the time you were very handsome.
I should somewhat careful and say that it's not like it's often where someone is real obvious about it, even when they do show it there really isn't a way to do anything with that attention aside from accept it as a sign of approval (of sorts).
The problem I found I was in, from my early 20's onward really, was one of having a personality that's compatible with just about no one. A lot of what really interests most people, or makes other people interesting to them, makes me miserably depressed - whether it's watching TV for entertainment, watching sports often enough to really know what's happening, or a lot of other things along those lines. I also get the impression that the same goes the other way around for a lot of things that really inspire me or make me feel great about being alive when I'm able to partake in them. The other crusher - meeting some people occasionally who are into similar things but who I can't get physically attracted to for the life of me (usually someone who I'd already have a lot of respect for and the last thing I'd want to do is hurt them for reasons that shallow), and then when I do meet someone who both has those interests and is attracted - they're either taken or every other guy remotely like me is all over it and outmaneuvering me on the lack of PDD-NOS part.
As I get older I'm really thinking this won't hold permanently - ie. I'm getting more mellow, the range of people I could see myself with is broadening, even if in tiny increments, and the women I see around me in their 30's are noticeably less dogmatic about social conformity for it's own sake than they were in their 20's. Still, running into much of anyone who both I'd want something to do with and who'd want something to do with me seems a bit like long odds. True, those odds are a lot better now I think than they were at at age 20 or 25 but I'd still consider that process really in the hands of chance and even there - if I were try to assign a probability of having anything happen in the next couple years I'd only put it at maybe 20%.
People can talk about 'hustling' but - you have to actually want that, and the times I did try dating sites - even when I got plenty of one-off dates, I didn't like it. I found that more often than note (my late 20's) that it was no one I was attracted enough to, or they really didn't read my profile and so had nothing to spin up a common buzz with, and I was almost always the one to decide not to keep it going.
Sorry if that was a lot of text. It's complicated, and I suppose I walked away from it for most of the last 10 years because it felt like a herculean task of the sort where the effort itself was killing my desire for the end result.
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The loneliest part of life: it's not just that no one is on your cloud, few can even see your cloud.