Thank you all who have provided encouragement.
And, I know I have a good head on my shoulders. I don’t need others telling me to get a therapist for dating issues. I was hoping this would be more spiritually minded and about God. I have realized why I don’t open up about this much… Maybe its hard for you to believe someone can be in love like I was, but that doesn’t call for your criticisms. I know you are trying to be helpful but that’s not helping.
No, you do not have a good head on your shoulders, because that is one stubborn head. A good head is a humble head, and is willing to admit she has things to learn and might be wrong. Pride is a
spiritual vice. Humility is not defensive.
It is not uncommon that the advice you don’t want to hear is exactly the advice you need, whereas the support you want is no more than enabling of a course of action that is not helping you. It is human nature to seek out the latter and disdain the former, but what we like and what we need are not by any means the same thing. We are not blaming you for not knowing how the romantic world works, but it is unfair to us when you make a complaint that demonstrates you do not know what you are doing and then shoot the messenger who dares to tell you that you are working under mistaken assumptions. Would you think we would be more charitable if we simply complied with your wishes by feeling sorry for you, letting you keep on unwittingly making the same fatal error over and over again? Why would that be a charity?
Practical social advice is spiritual advice. You have been making disparaging comments about an entire half of your age group. We are experienced enough to know that there is a substantial limit to how much a young man can “lead on” a young woman when he has never asked her on a date.
You were not on a leash! A lot of the “leading” came from within
yourself, from
your spirit and from
self-leading-on, and not from them, then. That, dear friend, is a* spiritual* problem! Flirting is NOT lying! You have been projecting expectations onto these young men that defy the common understanding of what flirting means! It is you, not they, who are being unfair in that! The lying is when a fellow gets your phone number and keeps promising to call you and arrange a date and never does, or when he makes a date, breaks it with the promise that he’ll make it up to you, and never does. Those guys are out there, and the rule is “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” First you get evidence of his seriousness, and THEN you BEGIN to give him your heart. That is the way it works. If all they are doing is flirting and you’re tired of waiting for things to progress beyond that, YOU SAY SO. Setting up a bunch of invisible flaming hoops and then getting down on them because they never jumped through them was also unfair, far more unfair in our culture than flirting with a friend you don’t intend to ever ask on a date. IOW, if flirting is lying, then you were lying, too. You had expectations, and you never laid them down. You expected them to read your mind? Well before you gave them your heart, you needed to say, “Either ask me out and let’s see where this is going to go or else quit flirting with me. Don’t waste my time.” Otherwise, they had every reason to believe that flirting was also all that YOU were interested in!
There is an old saying, “Pray to God, but row away from the rocks.” It means that prayer cannot take place of common sense. It is common sense to conclude that a fellow is not that interested in you when all he ever does is trade verbal interchanges with you in which he tries to give you flatteries to enjoy, when he is very willing to socialize with you in groups or in passing but never makes an effort to make you his own. That, dear one, is the Friend Zone. It is what people do when they like you and wish you well in the dating game, but don’t have a personal interest in pursuing you. It is meant to give you confidence that you are attractive, but not meant to imply that the fellow is trying to win you for himself. If he wants to do that, he will ask you on a date or the available equivalent!
What do your girlfriends say, when you complain that no one ever asks you out? You need advice from someone who is familiar with your body language. One problem, for instance, is when a very intelligent woman flirts with fellows who are not self-confident in their academic ability.They are totally intimidated by her, wouldn’t dream of dating a woman who is that much smarter than they are, but are charmed that she will give them the time of the day. They are friends who fully expect the very intelligent girl to be swooped up by some very intelligent guy. The very intelligent girl, meanwhile, may not happen to like any of the fellows on the dean’s list. Maybe they dress like slobs and do not have the social aptitude of the guys that she flirts with. The dynamic of the “very intelligent young woman” can happen for the “very athletic young woman” and the “very religious young woman,” too. Guys do gauge whether the relationship has any chance before they go beyond friendly flirting. They do not ask out young women whose attributes or imagined expectations take the young women beyond what the young men believe they can hope to satisfy. It is the girl’s girlfriends who can sometimes see through this dynamic. So…what do your girlfriends say? What do your male friends who don’t flirt with you say? Have you dared to ask them?
