Three Strikes and You're Out?

[amwao1]

So as you can probably tell, if you've read any of my other posts, I'm pretty inexperienced when it comes to matters of the heart. Let's tell the situation up front. There's a guy I really like and he's gay (so that's a relief at least). The only problem is that I think I'm making it pretty clear I like him but his response just seems friendly, not anything flirty or more. So I can only put his luke-warm responses down to three options:
a) He doesn't like me back.
b) He doesn't know I like him.
c) I'm just unlovable

And so I don't know whether to just go full on and be totally honest with him about how I feel or even if there is another way to go about things.

You see the problem is that I've been honest in the past. Three times and usually you get three strikes then you're out of the game. And I've also been told that the way I tell people sometimes comes across as creepy, which is always what you want to hear and never gives you a complex.

I'm going to put below the three examples, just so you can see why I'm so averse to confessing my feelings.


**BACKSTORY TIME**

The first time I ever did anything romantic was when I was sixteen/seventeen. I was young and naïve, still under the assumption that I liked girls. So there was this girl. I thought she was amazing. She wasn’t your typical girly girl but she wasn’t butch and manly either, she was sort of approachable and real and I really liked that. So, being young and naïve, I asked my friend what I should do. She suggested I come clean about my feelings (which I would have suggested to anybody who asked me). Well, I wrote a letter in the most confessional and romantic way that I knew how. Let’s be real here, I understand nobody is ever going to swoon at the way I look, so I like to translate that by being rather eloquent and romantic with my language when need be. The plan was to have my friend give the letter to her whilst I was on holiday, that way she would have time to think about things and not feel pressured into anything. When I got back the only person who didn’t talk about the letter was this girl. Apparently everybody else had seen it too, which was devastating in itself, but then she just pretended it didn’t exist.

I should mention that I understand now that no romantic prospect would have been beneficial from this relationship (given that I’m not that way inclined to females) but the whole “pretending somebody hasn’t just confessed their feelings for you” actually hurts.

The second time was when I turned twenty-one. This one’s a little bit more difficult to go into because it’s still really sore to talk about because of how momentous it was. But anyway, I was chatting to this guy online for a while and he was really interested in me. He seemed to like me and I liked him too, he was the first guy around my age that had ever shown an interest in me, everybody else was over my age limit and it just wasn’t gonna happen. But yeah, so I’d been talking to him for a long time and he seemed to want something serious. He knew all the words to lead you on to get what he wanted and then, when he got what he wanted, he just stopped talking to me. It would have been random if it hadn’t been the day after we met that he went radio silent. It was, to say the least, painful.

Some honourable mentions before I get to the final third strike.

- The girl I liked when I was, like, ten. Bought loads of sweets for, she accepted my gift and used and abused my generosity to get free things.

- The guy I liked at University who found out I liked him and just proceeded to not socialise with me as much. Just distanced himself from me.

- The other guy I liked at University who told me I’d see him at the future society events and then never showed up. Added me on Facebook and then deleted me shortly after.

Strike number three is currently quite painful. It’s still very raw and open because it literally happened this month. So there’s this guy I quite like, or at least I don’t know him very well and would love to get to know him better. We’ve chatted a bit online but nothing serious. Well, anyway, he puts out a tweet along the lines of “if you could be anything you wish, what would it be?” And my response was “What I wish I could be is the name of a Jessica Simpson single released on October 13, 2003 and written by Billy Mann, Andy Marvel and Jessica Simpson”. I thought that was rather romantic. It’s cryptic and requires a little bit of an investigation but the end result is quite nice. Let me translate for you (and save you the time and effort of researching it). The single by Jessica Simpson is called “With You” and so my cryptic message translates as “What I wish I could be is With You”. Romantic, right? Well it’s going the way of all my other romantic gestures in that he never acknowledged the comment.

 

[mcbrion]

The fact that you wrote "I'm unlovable" should tell you the truth you believe about yourself. You have no faith in yourself, and you don't love yourself. That's the biggest hurdle to finding someone. You seriously need to address that.
And what's it causing you to do is NOT learn how to look someone in the eye and say what you mean. You use bribes to attract people, and that's not attractive to many people. And your lack of self-esteem is then causing toxic thinking - and behavior.
People sense you have an ulterior motive. You really need to learn to just like yourself and LET others like you IF THEY WANT TO. You go for cryptic and "hints." That's not working, so therapy sounds like a good move. You're likely fine as you are, but that voice in the back of your head? It's sabotaging your chances at happiness.

 

[amwao1]

Well I'm already in therapy for depression and anxiety but I've not found therapy to be particularly useful. There's a lot of talking and not really a lot of actual help that I've seen so far. I'll get real and say it's very difficult to like yourself when you've never been complimented on your appearance unless you have a breakdown and people feel bad about it, and how nobody has actively shown an interest in me as anything more than friend. (let's not mention how many times I've had negatives thrown at me by gay men and thus I don't really feel like part of the community). I've got a whole blog to do with mental health issues and it's one of the reasons I asked the question on here, because I know sometimes what I think would be the right thing is apparently not and I really don't wanna weird anybody out, I just wanna stop the horrible feeling I get when I think I'm potentially going to be alone forever.

My favourite saying is that predictions are made based on experience and so given my experience it's safe to predict that I'll be alone for the next 29 years too. Yeah, I'm only 29. I know that's not old, but from my experience with gay guys it's the wrong side of 25 to be found attractive. And yes, I've been called old before.

 

[SeaCore]

Um. Are these romantic gestures something you'd find meaningful?
Take for instance cryptic song message. I'm under the impression you'd find that anxiety-inducing because there's room being left for ambiguity and you don't know if they mean what you want it to mean or something else.

And it's unclear to me what exactly you've been asking people for when you've told them your feelings. Are you asking them on a date or are you asking them to be in a relationship with you?

Can you talk a bit about your hobbies?

 

[mcbrion]

I read a few other posts by you. There seems to be a "Catch 22" style to your actions.
Vide, this:
"Love being humiliated. Used to have a guy I regularly met up with who would open the door and then want me to get me hard before he let me into the house. Once inside he made me strip, worship his feet, sit on my face, make me piss myself and end by cumming over my face (sometimes even having some of it still in my hair as I drove home). Also love dirty talk and being degraded/treated like a slut. This was a few years ago and sadly I had to move away from that area and I haven't found anybody into anything similar since."

Aren't you writing the script for a "split behavior" here? You want a relationship with someone, but without the self-esteem to back up being able to move back and forth between humiliation and self-respect, it seems that you wouldn't like someone who liked you back. It almost seems you wouldn't even TRUST someone who actually liked you.
I'm guessing at this, but I've quite a lot of experience in guys who say one thing, but when it comes to them liking you, you back away. People have told you, TOLD YOU, that the way you say things sounds creepy sometimes. It seems you're scaring people away by your approach: never direct, and perhaps seen by others as manipulative.
No doubt, you're in a tough spot. If the therapy isn't working, there are usually a few reasons: 1), the therapist isn't the right one for you, 2), the therapist isn't competent (which is different) or 3), you repeat the same behaviors, which endeavor the same results (i.e., rejection). On top of which, you look for the approval to come from the outside world. This won't be pleasant to hear, but that's never going to help you. Approval comes from the inside, not the outside. It's like you cooked a meal - which you burned - and then you expect people to eat it and tell you it's great. Not at all realistic.
I'm sorry for the mental problems you are struggling with, but until you untwist that tape playing inside your head - and it's playing backwards, sidewards and every way except forwards - therapy, which isn't simply about talking, it's about you DOING things differently than you've done in the past (i.e., behavior modification) isn't going to "particularly helpful." Therapy helps you to change yourself. It's not supposed to do it for you (in which case, people would all be out of therapy in a year).
Just going to it, walking out of it, and evidencing the same behaviors is self-defeating.
I hope you find a way of coping that's different than what you're doing, because the humiliation scenarios are great for someone who can get up, and walk away from them when they're over and feel good about themselves afterwards. I'm guessing your humiliation scenarios just reinforce to you that you're unlovable. That you don't see that (or maybe those posts are old and you've managed to see them for what they are: ways of keeping you trapped in pain) is going to drag out things. Hopefully not for 29 years. But you sound as though you've already decided that it will be this way. Not an encouraging sign that you intend to pull your soul out of Hell, man. It sounds like you're repeating what I imagine to have been a bad childhood. Don't you want more for yourself than that?

 

[amwao1]

Um. Are these romantic gestures something you'd find meaningful?
Take for instance cryptic song message. I'm under the impression you'd find that anxiety-inducing because there's room being left for ambiguity and you don't know if they mean what you want it to mean or something else.

And it's unclear to me what exactly you've been asking people for when you've told them your feelings. Are you asking them on a date or are you asking them to be in a relationship with you?

Can you talk a bit about your hobbies?

That's what I judge on, whether I'd find it nice or not. The only reason I wouldn't find them nice would be if they were given by somebody who I wasn't interested in, and that's why I'm asking because I don't always get the social cues of others very well.

I'm asking them to give me a shot. I don't really know how relationships are formed (it's a foreign concept to me) but so I don't know the difference between asking them on a date and asking them to be in a relationship.

 

[amwao1]

I read a few other posts by you. There seems to be a "Catch 22" style to your actions.
Vide, this:
"Love being humiliated. Used to have a guy I regularly met up with who would open the door and then want me to get me hard before he let me into the house. Once inside he made me strip, worship his feet, sit on my face, make me piss myself and end by cumming over my face (sometimes even having some of it still in my hair as I drove home). Also love dirty talk and being degraded/treated like a slut. This was a few years ago and sadly I had to move away from that area and I haven't found anybody into anything similar since."

Aren't you writing the script for a "split behavior" here? You want a relationship with someone, but without the self-esteem to back up being able to move back and forth between humiliation and self-respect, it seems that you wouldn't like someone who liked you back. It almost seems you wouldn't even TRUST someone who actually liked you.
I'm guessing at this, but I've quite a lot of experience in guys who say one thing, but when it comes to them liking you, you back away. People have told you, TOLD YOU, that the way you say things sounds creepy sometimes. It seems you're scaring people away by your approach: never direct, and perhaps seen by others as manipulative.
No doubt, you're in a tough spot. If the therapy isn't working, there are usually a few reasons: 1), the therapist isn't the right one for you, 2), the therapist isn't competent (which is different) or 3), you repeat the same behaviors, which endeavor the same results (i.e., rejection). On top of which, you look for the approval to come from the outside world. This won't be pleasant to hear, but that's never going to help you. Approval comes from the inside, not the outside. It's like you cooked a meal - which you burned - and then you expect people to eat it and tell you it's great. Not at all realistic.
I'm sorry for the mental problems you are struggling with, but until you untwist that tape playing inside your head - and it's playing backwards, sidewards and every way except forwards - therapy, which isn't simply about talking, it's about you DOING things differently than you've done in the past (i.e., behavior modification) isn't going to "particularly helpful." Therapy helps you to change yourself. It's not supposed to do it for you (in which case, people would all be out of therapy in a year).
Just going to it, walking out of it, and evidencing the same behaviors is self-defeating.
I hope you find a way of coping that's different than what you're doing, because the humiliation scenarios are great for someone who can get up, and walk away from them when they're over and feel good about themselves afterwards. I'm guessing your humiliation scenarios just reinforce to you that you're unlovable. That you don't see that (or maybe those posts are old and you've managed to see them for what they are: ways of keeping you trapped in pain) is going to drag out things. Hopefully not for 29 years. But you sound as though you've already decided that it will be this way. Not an encouraging sign that you intend to pull your soul out of Hell, man. It sounds like you're repeating what I imagine to have been a bad childhood. Don't you want more for yourself than that?

Trust issues are...well...an issue, yeah. But, I do think in a relationship I'd have them under control or be comfortable enough to seek help when they started affecting the relationship.

I've never considered any of these things to be manipulative, I never try and twist things to make people do what I want. I simply want to let them know how I feel and give them the choice of either give me a chance or not. I don't know whether I'm just being full on sometimes and scaring people off or whether people just genuinely don't like me. And this is why I sought help on here, because I don't really have friends to ask (and in all honesty I got tired of people just saying "you need counselling" but that's beside the point) and I don't know if just telling somebody the truth about how you feel about them is weird. Personally I'd find it flattering and if I wasn't interested I'd apologise and say so, but in my experience people just pretend I didn't say anything and I never get the closure I need to move on.

I definitely look for approval from the outside rather than the inside, I don't know how to get it from the inside and whenever I don't get it from the outside I get depressed.

The issue I have with therapy is they're sort of a one-stop-shop in that they will only ever try Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which admittedly I do struggle with grasping. I've always said I need more than therapy (which is one of the reasons I post on here more often now, because I've been told I have to interact with people more) but I literally cannot get that help anywhere. I'm talking physical help to do these things because it's almost impossible for me to break this habit without any tangible help.

Yeah the humiliation scenarios don't come from a very comfortable place if I'm being entirely honest, but that's also why I haven't been with a guy for 6 years, because I want a proper relationship and something more meaningful and at times I think I deserve that. There are times where I think I don't deserve it (and they are becoming more and more common) but I do want a relationship rather than anything else.

I didn't have "bad" childhood, just an unhappy one (lots of issues there). The problem is that I haven't decided it'll be that way for the inevitable future, I just can't see how it can change.

I have the problem of being crazy about "classic" romantic language (Shakespeare) and everything people find cheesy and stupid in Romantic Comedies. As I've said, I'm always better with words (writing, typing etc) than I am with anything else but it just seems a lot of guys, especially in the gay community, don't appreciate anything other than looks and so if you don't look the part it doesn't matter what you say or do.

 

[KaraBulut]

So as you can probably tell, if you've read any of my other posts, I'm pretty inexperienced when it comes to matters of the heart. Let's tell the situation up front. There's a guy I really like and he's gay (so that's a relief at least). The only problem is that I think I'm making it pretty clear I like him but his response just seems friendly, not anything flirty or more. So I can only put his luke-warm responses down to three options:
a) He doesn't like me back.
b) He doesn't know I like him.
c) I'm just unlovable

The cruel truth is that liking someone isn't enough. Sometimes loving someone isn't even enough.

Let's pause for a moment and put yourself in the other person's shoes: some guy has decided that he likes you and he expects you to like him back. That's a big wall to climb.

If you really wanting to find a partner, you start not with your interest in that person but instead you start with spending time with them, getting to know them and figuring out if you're compatible and whether that compatibility is enough for a friendship or maybe something more.

There's probably plenty of people in the this forum who can tell stories about being on either side of this "I like him, does he like me?" scenario. It's not a good scenario for either person. You're much better off going into these situations with intention of getting to know someone and letting them get to know you. Don't go into these things solely based upon what you feel and what you want- that's not fair to the other person and it's a great way to end up disappointed.

 

[mcbrion]

"I didn't have "bad" childhood, just an unhappy one (lots of issues there)." Emphasis is mine.

You see those two words as different? I am afraid I don't . An "unhappy" childhood IS a bad one, just as a happy childhood is a good one.