Friday, May 26, 2006

Don't talk to strangers

This is what my mother told me when I was a child.

I remember once being at the supermarket with my mother, and while her back was turned some man was talking to me. When my mother saw that I was conversing with a "stranger," she yelled at me and told me never to talk to strangers.

Yes, she spent a lot of time telling me never to talk to strangers, never to get into a car with stranger, don't believe anything a stranger tells me.

I really took the instructions to heart. When my mother then introduced me to her friends, I would clam up and not say anything. After all, if I never saw them before then they were strangers to me, I was just following orders. I was completely mystified how one adult could be a bad "stranger," and another adult a good "stranger" whom I was allowed to converse with.

I believe this was really bad child raising on the part of my mother. I suppose there's no harm in telling this stuff to a child who's naturally extroverted, but for a child who is already shy, like I was, I think this is devastating. I managed to reach the age of eighteen without being kidnapped by a pervert, but I was a shy and socially inept eighteen year old, not so good at interacting with people and dreadfully afraid of girls.

Of course there are other factors at work, but I really do think the message "don't talk to strangers" contributed to my problems. People are born naturally extroverted or introverted, but I believe that social phobias like shyness or fear of sex are also the result of our environment when we are young.

A good parent would try to encourage a naturally timid child to be more open and not make the situation worse by instilling fear.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Tying up loose ends

For those people who have read all my posts about the girls I dated and want to know what happened.

MIRIAM

I did see Miriam a second time, and we had a nice day visiting the New York Historical Society, one of my favorite art museums. She even paid for dinner. Which was quite tasty too.

The problem with Miriam is that I just can't stomach going out with a girl whose hair is going gray. I know I'm committing the sin of being a choosy beggar, but it is such a huge turnoff.

OBJECTIVIST GIRL

I met the objectivist girl, and although she wasn't quite as pretty as suggested by the photo, she was still kind of cute. Unfortunately I really felt like there was no chemistry at all, The conversation was very forced and uncomfortable. I'm surprised, I thought we'd have a jolly good time talking about The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, but I guess not.

YOKO

She sent me an email which I ignored.

CARR

This loose end makes me sad.

I think that this post was the last time I mentioned her. I met her for lunch, which was probably the last time we met. When we parted, I didn't know how exactly I should end things, so I kind of gave her an uncomfortable hug and peck on the cheek.

When I first me her, her appearance kind of freaked me out. She was skinny in an unpleasant anorexic looking way, and this was accentuated by the sleeveless top she wore. And her hair was a mess and her outfit was pretty unconventional. If she is in any way cute, it's only her personality which makes her cute and not the way she looks.

Yet I grew to like her and I saw her several times after our first meeting. Three additional times I think. I like her enough that I'm sad about not seeing her again, yet seeing someone on four occasions and not knowing what our relationship is supposed to be, I found this really confusing and pyschologically uncomfortable.

And I feel bad that the stock she bought on my recommendation went down. I emailed her apologizing, and she said don't worry and hinted that she'd like to see me again.

No girl as fun as Carr has ever seemed to be interested in me before. So yes, I am very sad about not writing back to her after that. Genuine tears came to me eyes while I was writing this post.

Dating optimists like to say that eventually you will meet your soulmate. I always wonder what happens if you meet your soulmate but you blow it because you are too shy/afraid to forge a romantic relationship. What if Carr was my soulmate? For a long time I thought that Jenny was my true soulmate, but I got over that eventually.

I'm returning to blogging

I've decided to return to blogging.

It occurred to me that the stories from this blog would make a great book. "Great" in the sense that I think someone would publish it and people would buy it.

So not only will I blog about my current dating situation, there will be more emotionally painful posts explaining my past, shedding more light on how I came to be the way I am.

The comments are still riddled with the usual "I think this blog is fake," and revealing that I'd like to make this into a book will only convince those that all along there was an ulterior motive. This is not true, at the beginning I had no idea that anyone would want to read this and I was just hoping to use the blogosphere as a free psychoanalyst.

One of the primary reasons why my commitment to this blog flagged is because of the many mean-spirited comments which made me feel worse than I already felt. If this blog was merely a fake persona then the comments wouldn't have gotten to me because they would have just been people insulting a fictional character.

The existence of so many disbelievers reveals how little most people understand the other people around them. Women, for example, who primarily associate with sexually agressive men (because the shy men are too shy to have female friends) judge all men based on a non-representative sample of the total universe of men.

On the other hand, I also get comments from men who are virgins or who lost their virginity late in life, and women who were in romantic relationships with older virgins (but few women have had such an experience), and there has never been a comment of the nature "hey, I'm a virgin and I know what it's like and I know your blog is fake." No, the comments from people who understand older male virgins have so far been appreciative.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Miriam calls me

Who is Miriam? I met her for coffee a weekend and a half ago, and we "hung out" for quite some time and we had an early dinner and I even paid for the dinner. It only cost $21. She's a doctor--a specialist in fact--so she probably has enough of her own money to go Dutch in the future.

Miriam can best be described as "frumpy." She wears glasses. The scariest thing about Miriam is that she has all these gray hairs. A woman in her mid thirties shouldn't have gray hairs. Hasn't she ever heard of Miss Clairol? She really needs to pay a visit to my hair stylist. She also needs to lose a few pounds.

I was kind of shocked to hear from her. This is surely the first time in my life a woman called me on the phone after a first date after which I never called her. And it was a double shock after reading all those comments about how I'm so despicable that no woman could ever like me.

And I discovered that Miriam has been reading my blog. No not this blog!!!! My other blog that no one reads. When you write about important stuff, like the war in Iraq and the next presidential election, no one wants to read it. But then I start a blog where I write about my sexual problems and I get hundreds of visits a day. It's sad that the other blog will never be as popular as this one.

Tuesday, May 9, 2006

Objectivist dating

This girl contacts me via the online dating service, and she's several years younger than me, so what's the catch?

I had a 45 minute phone coverstation with her, and 30 minutes of the conversation was about Ayn Rand. She's a big Ayn Rand fan. She read every single one of her books. Wow, I'm so impressed.

She's probably homelier than her photo suggests. I can't imagine a really hot girl being interested in Ayn Rand.

Of course I should be delighted that an intelligent objectivist girl is interested in me instead of being concerned about her appearance. Except I worry about not being attracted enough to get it up.