"Girls go to the library to look for boyfriends!"

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To attract interest, one must first be interesting. Failure to attract intest indicates a lack of interesting qualities.PEOPLE have the tendency to fear that someone else will obsess over them. Even an obsessive spouse can engender fear and/or contempt in the object of their obsession.

For example, one spouse repeatedly asking "Do you love me?" may seem cute at first, but will quickly engender contempt in the spouse being pestered for affirmation.

Another example is when one spouse is constantly checking up on the other spouse, demanding to know where he or she is, whom he or she is with, what they are talking about, and how long they've known each other -- this is downright creepy (at the very least), and definitely stalker-ish. The victim of all of this unwanted attention will natural seek to put some distance between themselves and the obsessed partner (e.g., divorce, restraining order, et cetera).

You know, one time a few years back, I was at a public library. I was using one of the public computers, and I noticed in my peripheral vision that the girl sitting at the computer next to mine kept looking over at my screen. I wasn't looking at anything controversial or too personal (no bank accounts or anything). I think I was checking my e-mail, or browsing the library catalog.

The girl was about my age, and she was somewhat pretty. But I didn't understand why she kept looking at my screen. Finally, I turned to her and said, "Hello," in a sort of can-I-help-you? sense. She smiled and said, "Hi." I just left it at that.

Looking back on it, maybe she was trying to get my attention. Maybe she was interested in me. Or maybe she was just a weirdo. I don't know. After-the-fact, I pondered it. At the time, I didn't know why she kept turning her eyes to my computer screen.

Seriously, only beautiful people can get away with this.

But how can I go through the day without my singlehood bothering me? Partly why I don't exercise at gyms even though I need to exercise is because I'll see pretty girls at them but I am deemed too "messed up" to talk to them even in a casual manner while it's ok for the jerks to approach them.

Dang those obsessive thoughts! What does your therapist think? I believe there are meds (antidepressants, anti-anxiety meds, and perhaps others) that decrease obsessive thinking, and in your case, perhaps it's time to try them.

The other suggestion I have is that you pick a special interest and immerse yourself in it so that you think about that more than any other thing. You've mentioned music and art but those are both performance skills. Can you pursue an interest that can be researched to death? Who are your favorite artists or musicians? Use the Internet to delve into their personal life and history. Participate in discussion boards about them. For me, this is the very best way to take your mind off something - replace it with something else.

You absolutely should not give up on finding love, but sometimes the only thing that makes sense is to put something like that on the back burner for a little while.

You should go to the gym, and work out on your own.

If you look like you stick to a routine for at least a month, you can probably start having conversations with others who work out. Some of those people might be women.

I'm not exactly a macho-man type. But people noticed that I stuck to a routine----so they started talking to me. This was back when I was in my 30s.

Odd thing is that on LOTS of shows the women are often complaining about their guy spending too much time doing his own thing & not spending enough time with her.

Yes, that happens. Probably why the marriages of famous actors tend to fall apart once one of the partners becomes more highly in demand than the other. 16-hour days on the set do not make for a stable marriage with the person left at home.

Similar or compatible interests are important. If one plays piano, and the other cello, then they can practice and perform together. If one is a caterer and the other an accountant, then their relationship (and their business) may thrive. The trick is to have an interest that is both popular and adaptable to other people's interests.

Women tend to like the guy to be around----most of the time.

They hate it when the guy wants them (women) to be at their beck and call always.

They hate it when a man obsesses like that.

Yeah, see, the problem is you're dividing the human race into the desirable and the undesirable and approaching them differently.
From your first post, you were OK with being friendly with another guy (once you knew he wasn't gay). You played games together, you chatted.
So try looking past the fact that these girls at the gym are young and pretty and desirable, and try treating them like everyone else. Talk to them as if they were guys or ugly or messed up or, you know, fellow humans.

You are taking what I said way out of context.

I didn't think the guy was gay nor asked him if he was gay. He made an assumption about what I was thinking and I told him I wasn't thinking that at all. I wouldn't have turned him down to play video games if he was gay either. Please do not jump to conclusions.

It's other people who tell me I am "messed up" and tell me not to talk to them after I've told them I've tried but it didn't work out.

Talk to them as if they were guys? Are you kidding? Did you ever even listen to how guys talk when they think there are no women around? ...

"Hey, butthead! You gonna hog that treadmill all day?"
"Shut the f*** up! I gotta do another two miles!"
"It's gonna take you twenty miles to get rid of all that fat!"
"Too bad there's nothing you can do about all that fat between your ears!"

Really? You want him to talk to women the way guys talk to each other? He has enough problems as it is!

Agreed. I could not believe the things guys say to guys at a workplace. Really crude, insulting stuff. It amazes me because no women talk to others (of either gender) that way. It may differ in the military or on construction sites, but I've never worked there so I wouldn't know.

There's a long, long history of "ranking each other out," the existence of constant mock-insults, constant "give-and-take," on construction sites, and probably in the military, too.

In Basic Training, you are exposed to a barrage of really denigrating insults from the drill sergeant. It is meant, it is said, to "take you apart, and put you back together

As a woman i've always wanted to meet someone in the library lol ! It could never work though, the guys my age who go there usually sits there to study and doesn't pay any attention to anything else.

I've always had that sort of yearning, too.

I came close to actually "meeting" somebody once.

I was up in a small town called Houlton, Maine. I walked into a library. I had some sort of inquiry. I spoke to this lady for quite a while. I was too shy to ask for her number, though (or she gave it to me, and I lost it). This was in 1993, before the widespread proliferation of the Internet.