36 and Forever Single
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I have no intention of doing anything that I’m uncomfortable with. I’m speaking to someone regarding my self-esteem issues but at the same time, I’m so tired of being different. I want to be like my friends. You know what I mean?
I’m going to blunt. The reason I, @Juliecatharine and others are strongly saying do counseling for at least a year/ six months(and then don’t stop then either) before dating is that at your current level of esteem it means you will attract someone who will take the time to be abusive ( emotionally, physically and /or both). We don’t want that for you at all. It won’t be your fault, but abusive people can smell out those who are weaker. Abusive people can even attempt this kind of thing with those who are emotionally stronger, but it’s so much easier to wear down someone with no confidence in themselves. Look after yourself as there isn’t anyone who will do this for you.
I agree with Juliecatherine. Eesh. It’s hard to say this nicely, but excessive eagerness to please and a strong whiff of desperation is a turnoff to guys that are worth having. Being desperate instead of confident can actively drive people away. And it’s not just about having a second date, or a third date: you both need to be naturally likeable to *each other*, just by being your own regular self. Treat a first meetup as though he were a long time friend: you are comfortable with your long time friends and don’t pretzel yourself just to try to make yourself liked. You need to believe that you are worthwhile as you are, and FFS, you can easily do worse than not having a fella; you could be in a shitty destructive controlling relationship that drains your soul and your bank account. So, if a person doesn’t work out for YOU, that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. It just means that specific person does not work with YOU, and it’s well to learn that.
I’m just thinking that if your desperation and over eagerness comes through so strongly here, it must be very obvious to your dates, which is why I second the comments recommending counseling and work on your self esteem.
LeslieJoan said what I was tiptoeing around. Each response you give is more desperate than the last. I absolutely get where you are in terms of being lonely and just wanting something totally normal that seems to come easily to others. The thing is self esteem issues that are lifelong like yours (and mine!) are take a lot of focused work to overcome. It doesn’t happen quickly. Do the work, it’s worth it, you’re worth it. Then start dating.
Yeah… I don’t recommend trying to do online dating if your self-esteem is in the toilet and you haven’t thoroughly read up on how it works, best practices, what to watch out for, red flags, etc. It’s hard enough for someone like me who had decent self-esteem AND had read a bunch of books and blogs about it AND this was before apps. You’re just not set up to succeed without okay self-esteem + knowledge. And then you’ll get discouraged and feel worse.
That said, if this is what you wanna do right now, definitely feel free to use the dating thread in the chat forum to get feedback on your experience, and advice.
We understand the frustration and the isolation of being different. But there is no shortcut around learning to value yourself and not being desperately overeager to please. There are some guys that, trust me, you don’t WANT to like you. I don’t want to scare you, but you can always be worse off than you are, depending on the guy in question. Heck, when I was a young widow with little kids, I was chilled to realize that a guy with whom I’d made friendly conversation at a family friendly event in my area years later was arrested and convicted as a serial killer. His MO was to pick single mothers. Sure was glad I never dated the guy, know what I’m saying? The good guys are turned off by desperation. The ones that will tolerate it will exploit it. This is an important issue that no amount of awesome profile re-writing will not fix. The only way to fix it is to work on your self esteem.
I know you are impatient. But omitting this step is huge
Your impatience does not improve the dynamics of any dates you get. Quite the opposite. It’s like hunting for an elusive mountain lion: you won’t improve the likelihood of photographing your quarry if you run crashing through the woods hollering out, “yooohoo! Oh MOUNTAIN LION!!! Come HEEERE; I wanna SEEEE Youuuuu!.” If you want results it’s going to take time, and not scaring healthy guys the heck away is a key starting point.
