smiley wrote:Hi Spoonyspoon,
Reading this really struck a chord with me due to my own confidence issues and I'm really sorry you feel this way and these things seem like they always happen to you. I want to say to you that confidence is a very attractive quality, that even the least confident of us can achieve. Someone once told me to 'fake it until you make it', and I have found that to be surpringly useful in dealing with my own issues. I hope that you find some use for it too.
In terms of practical advice, have you tried online dating or dating apps? It sounds to me like you want a relationship and personally I have found people on those to be more serious that those you meet in pubs/bars and end up having one night stands with.
If these thoughts get too much, then please give Samaritans a call or see your GP. I'm a firm believer that there is someone out there for everyone, I hope you find them soon x
spoonyspoon wrote:smiley wrote:Hi Spoonyspoon,
Reading this really struck a chord with me due to my own confidence issues and I'm really sorry you feel this way and these things seem like they always happen to you. I want to say to you that confidence is a very attractive quality, that even the least confident of us can achieve. Someone once told me to 'fake it until you make it', and I have found that to be surpringly useful in dealing with my own issues. I hope that you find some use for it too.
In terms of practical advice, have you tried online dating or dating apps? It sounds to me like you want a relationship and personally I have found people on those to be more serious that those you meet in pubs/bars and end up having one night stands with.
If these thoughts get too much, then please give Samaritans a call or see your GP. I'm a firm believer that there is someone out there for everyone, I hope you find them soon x
Hi, thanks for your reply, I was beginning to think this post wasn't getting me anywhere!
Whilst I appreciate your input, I honestly do not believe that it's a confidence thing. I really have no problem talking to women, and do so regularly to brand new people at either the dance lessons or social meetups I outlined.
In the past year I've been speed-dating a few times. 12 men, 12 women, 5 minute "dates", you get the idea. On each occasion I've looked around the room at the other men, many of which seemed scruffy or socially inept and felt relatively okay, that whilst I'm not Brad Pitt, I've got a decent chance here. So I'm going in feeling fairly confident. During the evenings, it's all smiles and hugs and "lovely to meet you!"s, and I go away feeling pretty good about it. The way it works is that you tick or cross each person, and you find out each day who matched with you. And each time, 0 people matched with me. Literally, every time. So whilst it's a nice thing we can tell to children that "if you just believe you're amazing, everyone will believe it too!", it's not the fix-all-tool.
I do a lot of online dating. Well, I'm on a lot of sites. Carefully selected some good photos, decent bio. Literally nothing. I can swipe until I'm out of swipes, and get nothing. Have not had a match on Tinder/Bumble/PoF/OKCupid in over a year. In apps that you can, I'll send out the first message and get nothing back, most apps use the Tinder model of requiring a match first. So once again, this puts to bed the notion that it's all about confidence, if when presented with a photo and description of me, women in large numbers say "hell no!". But it's okay, I just need to believe harder, right?
I have called the Samaritans a couple times, and whilst their approach is friendly, they really seem to offer little to no advice on what to do next. They just get to a point where they say they can't really help me, which isn't all you want from your local suicide hotline.
People have suggested my GP, but I'm honestly not sure what they expect to come of it. That I should walk into a Doctor's office and say "Doctor Doctor, I'm sad because girls don't like me!" and expect a medical professional to solve the problem.
smiley wrote:I don't think it's about a professional solving the problem, but it might be useful for you to look at counselling or CBT and unhelpful thinking patterns if this is making you feel this way.
tofler wrote:Best case scenario, as smiley has already said, it can help you to identify unhelpful thinking patterns and to see things from different perspectives. At the moment you have tunnel vision about this issue, also known as "black and white thinking" which means that you dismiss anything that doesn't match your version of "reality".
tofler wrote:You're completely missing the point with all this.
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