The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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I've been reflecting lately on how downright unhelpful and unpleasant my experiences with dating/flirting/sex were earlier in my life, and what a weight around my neck the still are. In my previous life, there was no such thing as flirting, women were just "being friendly," and would curl their lip and give you a glare if you let slip that they'd been socializing with someone heterosexual by doing something so crass as asking for a phone number. "Ewwww, a man is speaking to me, make it go away" was what happened if you spoke before being spoken to. The attitudes of the women I knew socially bounced between "Just talk to people silly, it's not that hard, you're so nice," "chuh, why do you feel the need to not be alone, there's something wrong with you," and "Fourteen out of twelve women will be sexually assaulted by eyeball-contact at frat parties by niceguys before they even get a job that pays them 70 cents on the dollar compared to a man."
I once had a woman approach me at a new years party at a bar (small, bob cut, I can still remember the contours of her shoulderblades), something about trying to find her friend, but the friend never got mentioned again. We got another drink, she asked to dance once she got back from the bathroom. While she was in the bathroom and I was holding her drink, a fat redhead got in my face, demanding to know who I was, who I was here with, if I even knew her (bob cut's) name. I was taken aback, said her name is [name], I'm holding her drink for her, then we're going to dance, oh, there she is now, bye. BobCut came out of the bathroom, didn't acknowledge fat redhead, took her drink and my hand, and dragged me out onto the dance floor. It was 11:50pm. At 11:56pm, security appears and separates us, the fat redhead is screaming in my face demanding to know who I'm with, a security guy is asking the same questions while she screams at me. Bob cut is nowhere to be found (probably being given a foil trauma blanket while still trying to figure out what happened), no I'm not allowed to speak to bob cut, no I'm not being kicked out, no I can't speak to bob cut, who am I here with, no, bob cut doesn't count, no I'm not being kicked out, who am I here with. I'm getting increasingly frustrated, I'm not particularly sober, fat redhead is still in my face, her head jerking around on her flabby neck like some kind of righteously affronted parrot. I can sense a blowup looming, the front door is conveniently nearby, and the future of me doing the new years countdown and making out with someone has evaporated. I leave, and I ring in the new year of 2017 walking down the snow-dusted sidewalk of Milwaukee, cursing my awkwardness and cowardice.
The bar was a nerd/geek/gamer pub, of course. Nowhere else would the act of a man dancing with a woman be treated as some sort of crisis in need of calling security. I never ran into either of them again, the pub itself closed shortly thereafter. Since then, every time a woman flirts with me unprompted in a social setting, I go into a quiet panic and look over my shoulder for whatever third party will arbitrarily decide I am not worthy of happiness or love.
My point is that I keep failing to get phone numbers or contact info, or I collect contact info and do nothing with it, even when women are blatantly eye-fucking me, because I still have the lingering trauma of living in 2010s geek culture. And I still run into snippets of it every now and then, but with a current-year leftist flavor. (I've been in conversations where women will make some reddit-y crack along the lines of "straight white men, amirite?" but turn out later to have been into me, scrabbling for contact info or a kiss as I try to politely take the hint and leave.)
I just want to go for a stroll in the park with someone and bang them later, then do that again with the same person for the foreseeable future. And I hate that the world and I both conspire to make that much more difficult than it should be.
I'm now wondering what the redhead"s problem was aside from garden variety psychopathy. I've never found a workable solution to female histrionics (the Jake Gittes slap has been out of play for many decades now) and I sympathize with what sounds like a stupidly harrowing experience. A barfight would be less traumatic. Well except for that possibility of dying or being permanently maimed. No, maybe a barfight would've been worse.
In any case the only solution to this is personal resolve to keep moving forward and allowing time to do its thing. Avoid too low a profile. The current year ability to stay in ones room and get one's rocks off to a live thot (via camgirls, etc.) is toxic to real human interaction and I encourage you to eschew that route and stay out among humans as much as possible.
From the sound of it you've got something going on that is attractive to at least some females to whom you would be attractive. That's a good thing. Remember humor--that is to say finding humor in situations --is gold, if you can manage it. Humor both armors you and disarms your opponent.
I assume she was convinced I was up to no good, as an unattended male.
I was new to the city and was at the event precisely because I hadn't made friends yet.
I've been specifically trying to to be more outgoing lately, I just keep getting anxious flashbacks to shit from almost a decade ago.
Do unattended males tend toward more antisocial behavior? My experience is that men in packs are rather the ones to keep away from, or be leery of. Or avoid entirely. Especially when drunkasses. Unless you're in a trenchcoat in summer carrying a duffelbag or something really suspicious. Lone man at bar, since when is that a red flag? Odd.
apparently these days lone people are under suspicion and only groups are "safe." I Only Wanted One Thing, or something. Never mind that Bob-cut was probably after new-years nookie. My best understanding of this is it was White Knight behavior.
Was this, as you say, 10 years ago or recent? Ten years ago is 2015. My opinion on everyone's behavior is the same, but for you I want to reassure you to forget about that, it's history, it doesn't matter, it has nothing to do with you now.
I'm the sort of interfering avuncular figure who will give all sorts of advice in women and will be pointedly aggressive in telling you what to do/not do, and take it all very loosely and saltily, byt that's my first bit of advice. Forget decades-old bad interactions.
It would have been 10 minutes before 2017. It's just the most extreme version of the recurring pattern of someone liking me only for a third party to hate me so much they feel the need to intercede, and it always happens in the context of geek culture. And I'm very annoyed that something that happened so long ago is still a load I carry.
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