I Don't Know What to Do When Someone Likes Me

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I've actually had quite a few interested women. I complain a lot of about a lack of female attention, but the truth is, I've had a lot of interested women. I've even gotten several direct offers for casual sex. But the problem is, I completely shut down in all of these situations. If a woman openly likes me, I find her to be a total turn-off. If she shows interest in me, I become preoccupied with some small flaw in her to the point where I decide a relationship with her just wouldn't work. If she flirts with me, I totally miss it, then realize it hours later. If she makes a sexual comment, I brush it off. If she's sitting in front of me naked and asking for sex, I sit there like a wet noodle and do absolutely nothing (this actually happened.)

But, if she's unavailable, mean, cruel, distant, and unaffectionate, I'll fall head-over-heels in love with her. I'll daydream about her. I strategize about all the ways that I can make her mine. I'll take 20 minutes to compose a text message to her, just to make sure every word is exactly right. And when she rejects me, I'm devastated.

So what can I do? I really have no idea how to respond to a woman who likes me and shows interest in me. I completely shut down in those cases. I have no idea how to build on that interest and make it into something more. I usually end up running away from women who like me, partially out of some fears of intimacy (probably) and partially because I really don't know how to have a normal relationship. I would probably be best served by taking the opportunities that do show up with interested women. What can I do to learn to capitalize on this?

To me, it sounds like you have a natural attraction towards women that are either taken or otherwise hard to get. I'd give you advice if I could, but alas, that's not the case.

It might be a good idea to avoid women that decide to just get naked in front of you and ask for sex, like it sounds good, but people like that most likely have some serious issues. You might be highly intuitive and subconsciously you are shutting down because you know you should be staying away from certain people. You said "But, if she's unavailable, mean, cruel, distant, and unaffectionate, I'll fall head-over-heels in love with her", this sounds like a psychological thing. Was your mom this way or did your dad date women that were this way? I ask that question because I can answer yes to both and I use to have the worst taste in women. Look at what you wrote and figure out how this releates to family members growing up and you might have your answer as this is quite common with both males and females and who they later on in life decide they want to be with. I know that both of these ideas I spoke of conflict with one another but we can be quite stubborn when it comes to who we find to be attractive. You might also be avoiding certain women because they actually are good for you but you aren't use to it so you don't know how to react? All I can do is make some guesses cause I don't know you, but most things like this may have some sort of psychological answer, especially with the way you described it.

This particular woman did turn out to have Borderline Personality Disorder. You could make the case that I have a super sensitive radar for people with psychological problems and I intuitively stay away from them. But then we've shot ourselves in the foot with what you've written below, because if my radar is so sensitive, why am I attracted to women who are so obviously bad partners?



Maybe I should have phrased the question differently, because I have a pretty good answer for this, as per Harville Hendrix's Imago model, which says that we received attachment wounds from our parents when we were children, and we are unconsciously attracted to partners who remind us of our parents (particularly their negative qualities) so we can get our partner to serve as a symbolic stand-in for our parents, and we are hoping to heal our attachment wounds by getting our partner to love us in the ways that our parents never did. So yeah, my dad is high-functioning autistic and he was cold and distant and unaffectionate, so I'm attracted to cold distant unaffectionate autistic women in hopes of getting them to warm up and change and love me in the way my dad never did. I know that the chances of this happening are slim.

So I guess a better question would be, how do I practice good romantic relationship skills if I'm not in a relationship? I might need to start a new thread for that.