Regrets about guys/girls you hav known

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The more I think about it - no. I've had some very attractive women into me at times but it always happened that either our personalities didn't meet, in other cases they got a crush on me and I felt no room to be my true self. In essence I can sit and think how I could have done things differently and play the 20/20 hindsight game but I realize at those times that either my social skills were still subpar or even if those weren't I still had my nervous system locking my ability to use my social skills properly to less than 50%, in that sense I really think that even if I had pulled off something miraculous it just means I would have gotten on a date, been excruciatingly uncomfortable, and it would have just blown up with me leading them on rather than just letting em have their thoughts or playing 'hard to get' all the way through to completion. Even today I'm still passing girls up left and right and its that same thing - even now that I can manifest my social skills better and even now that the interest I'm getting is getting closer to being in terms I want (ie. grounded and stablized) I still have the problem of having a very dicey sense of physical attraction and with the girls who I am physically attracted to, like everyone else around me, they're NTs - thats not a problem aside from the fact that they have a lot of steel in the social sense and it intimidates me just because I feel like I'm so far behind em in that sense that even if its not an issue it would make our social habits and things we want to do in general diverge on courses which are different enough to make a relationship not last much longer than a week anyway.

So for right now no regrets, I know who I am and that I still need a lot more out of myself to even feel safe or secure in a relationship. Downside is, even if I'm willing to just about beat myself bloody in the name of progressing my social skills, maturity, or personality in general my nervous system and brain chemistry never give me what I want right then and there, it only happens on its own about 4 or 5 years after I went all out for it and realized that any day I gained it I'd go to slee, wake up the next day, and be back at square one. Being embattled with that sense of genetic immaturity also seals the deal - it puts me in a place where even seeking a relationship or trying is so much exertion that even if I did get a girl who wanted to go steady I'd almost dread seeing her just because it would tip me on empty all the time and have my stress levels through the roof. As for finding someone who's understanding I really don't believe thats an option, even if they're out there I can still just as easily feel really uncomfortable and out of place with them if it comes to them giggling at my social akwardness and bonding with me from that sort of angle.

It could also work out that if she is very good socially she might be able to compensate for your lack of ability in that area. True, she probably will want to socialize more than you, but if she hangs out with a lot of friends that will give you the time to yourself that you presumably want.

On the other hand, if what you want most is to have a lot in common and it's important to you that the relationship to really last, that might not be the way to go.

True, but this is why it scares me. It seems like its possibly a bit of paranoia but I've also found there's enough degree of truth in this that I still am remiss to cut it out of my thinking. It seems to me that when your talking to someone your supposed to match them as well as you can - conversation skill for conversation skill, content for content, maturity for maturity, and not to be able to rise to or stay on their level and stay equal when they get really into it almost seems as if in an implied way it disrespects the whole conversation or flow of communication in general. To tell the truth my glib isn't horrible, for the most part I do well enough with most NTs in regular situations that they'd never be able to tell the difference - I can joke, hold a good conversation, even lead the conversation a bit sometimes, but for one I notice I do fine with almost anyone as long as I don't have just one person's completely undivided attention - that really gnaws on me and particularly with women. The biological maturity thing also really trips me out, when I'm with a girl who's 25 or 26 and is the full blown full developed NT version of 25 or 26 I'm listening to whats coming out of her mouth and out of her head, getting a definite picture of who she is, and in terms of social firmness or grip to that kind of things I feel dwarfed or like I'm straining like mad to actually keep my expressions, my mind, and everything on the same level. I'm not immature psychologically, like I said I demand a lot of myself, but I also realize that my emotional flow and natural resting state chemically is very imature and I know that its something that I have to wage war on because if I don't thats the very side of me that will start winning over my gestalt (facial expressions, affect displays) and when your dealing with someone else around you that's all they can see or sense fully so that might as well be the full you inside and out.

The mirroring thing, out of respect or diplomacy whatever the situation may be, that's something I demand of myself and have demanded that of myself for years. I went all out on trying to impress that trait back when I was 20 and from then up until now I still haven't given up. What I have noticed however is that instinct tends to hold very true, if you can keep yourself on level with someone its golden, if you slide its gonna go kinda bunk - even if they can overlook it because its going to change the way they relate to you and even if its not in a bad way I still tend not to like it because its almost like they resort from being intellectual equals to more tripping out about the fact that I'm cute or whatever (I think its the depersonalization - not deliberate on their part, they've just got nothing to fall back on and they probably know that its the intellectual appeal I'm about but have tried whatever ways they could to get through to me and are kinda stuck at that point).

Sorry to run on so long about one detail but I think you probably understand pretty well where I'm coming from, it'll be enjoyable but not until the day where I really feel like I can consistently put my best self forward and really own the situation I'm in as well as play the male role and be the leader - they don't seem to want anything less and being they naturally have twice the social capacity we do even without AS factored in that's a really tall stack.

People say all the time that you'll regret not asking out a girl than asking her out and being rejected. Well, that's s**t. With so many women in the world not asking one out can't possibly be worse than being rejected. If it is, then the problem is focusing to much on one person instead of spreading around the love.

The other thing is, just to be fair to yourself, you need to know the line between your own shyness vs. just sheer incompatibility. Particularly if your good looking you'll meet lots of people in your life, I mean lots, who are attracted to you and your attracted to them but you'd never be able to hold a conversation and its just because your styles of thinking are too different or quite often NT or not they have just as much in the way of communication difficulty with the opposite sex and possibly lack a lot more knowledge of self than you would constantly being tested. Wanting to sort through the crowd for time management as well as trying to manage your own level of mental and emotional wear and tear that you take in life isn't a sign of weakness, its perfectly sane and nothing to be ashamed of.

I guess I haven't really noticed this. Either that or I like when girls find me cute. I think that any girl who gets involved with me is going to have to look beyond my lack of social aptitude and realize that it doesn't mean I'm stupid or something. I don't mean to "look beyond" as in to not notice, but rather to ignore because it isn't one of the key qualities she wants in a guy. Even if I try my best not to be socially awkward, I don't think I will be as good as most guys my age.

On the other hand, I would make sure you know the things at which you ARE capable, and keep these in mind, both so that you can take advantage of them and so that you don't feel (and therefore act) like a failure. In my case, I see my ability to understand how things work, and creatively design things, as my best ability. Just as I expect that a girl can look past my social awkwardness, I am able to look past a girl not having these abilities. In fact, my ideal girl/woman's abilities would not be in technical areas, but in the areas of dealing with people. If you want an intellectual equal in the sense of someone who is at the same level as you in everything and can discuss intellectual things in all areas, then maybe my "model" for a ideal boy/girl relationship is not good for you.



You probably have a lot more experience with girls than I do, given that I'm 21 and it sounds like you're older. I wouldn't consider myself bad-looking and I haven't had "lots" of people I was attracted to and who I knew were attracted to me as well. If you're both strongly attracted to each other, even if you can't hold an extensive conversation like you would with your respective friends you should both be able to enjoy the attraction and maybe get somewhere.

Very good advice, particularly on not acting like a failure. Supposedly 80% of more of what makes a guy attractive or unattractive is confidence and how he projects himself (so yeah, its really bad if your AS scraps your self-projection). For me, even if I am a bit spooky and freak-eyed when I'm overloaded I make damn sure that I not only act as if I'm very self respecting and very on-point but I keep my social skills and NT act up very well, luckily I practiced that so hard and for so long I think its actually become rather inseparable from the real me (or I could say that there are some very NT components of my core personality which haven't been able to manifest until now). I never project myself as stuck up but I do project myself as a regular if not a bit above regular in terms of conventional wisdom and common sense as well as give people the feedback they want, when a friend smiles or tries to queue me in on something nonverbally I give the right responses back and do everything I can to really assure them that I'm someone they can relate to and vice a versa.



I had no success at 21 either, simple reason being - I looked a lot younger than I was and I still do. It may sound shallow to or judgemental to say that women had no respect for me back then because I looked and vibed up like I was 15 or 16 but its true, not hating em its just human nature that while people are like "Wow! Thats great! When you hit 40 you'll look 30!", yeah but the catch is people your age will treat you like a little kid and even having age appropriate maturity or more doesn't really help because its another one of those exterior gestalt issues that only gets helped much by the aging process itself. I would say that I've at least learned how to deal with people better since then in terms of understanding the social chess, deceit games, and just taking them as reality rather than being too terribly horrified or offended by them - other than that though I'm roughly the same person and I probably had loftier aims back then even in terms of myself, my spirituality, and my own intelligence.

As for the sexual attraction thing, ie being able to be attracted to someone and vice a versa and not being able to have much of a conversation but still wanting each other, there's a very specific name you can apply to someone like that: piece of a--, and a very specific context: one night stand. For me when I do meet some party girls or bar girls, the types who are cute and fun but you'd never date in your lifetime, you may wanna just about triple-stack the protection but still - the fact that they're also as blunt and feisty as they are can be rather cute and endearing in the moment, definitely a rather corrosive combination (and no, I haven't tapped anything like that - mainly because most of the girls I do know who are like that our friends in our group and I realize from some of their friends that the STD risk is very real).