Two Facts

We've tried to wash our hands of all of this,
We never talk of our lacking relationships,
And how we're guilt stricken sobbing with our heads on the floor,
We fell through the ice when we tried not to slip, we'd say

Can't be held responsible,

I so love that The Verve Pipe song, The Freshmen. It's totally brilliant. Totally, completely, utterly brilliant. Masterful.

Every now and then, I look through old posts, read old comments etc. I think I can say quite safely that Riding The Mellow's lost quite a bit of it's old intensity.

Which could mean that I've lost a lot of intensity. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

A lot of that intensity was derived from my troubles with women (or rather, lack of). I used to talk about that a lot to anyone who would listen.

I don't really do that anymore. At least, I don't really talk about it all that much and when I do, only with one or two persons. Lately, it's only been with one person.

I guess it's probably partly because of fear. I worry that I might bore people. I worry even more that I might get scolded for it. I know that sometimes the telling off might be justified. I can be quite the fool when talking about women and love and relationships etc. Still, it's quite unpleasant.

Fear. And talking about fear...

..the other night I was talking with a friend at my house about boys and girls and relationships and about what could attract people to each other when I came upon two facts.

One, everyone has a "thing", a charm that they have more than other people, something that might make them stand out. Some people have a very overt, immediately noticeable "thing" like physical beauty, presence, eloquence etc. For many others, that "thing" is more subtle, like a natural sense of humour, empathy or kindness.

Perhaps the trick to being successful in getting noticed and starting a relationship is to know what your "thing" is and how to put it in the shop window.

It sounds like the most obvious thing right? If so, why is it most of the relationship advice floating around revolves around general things like "confidence" and the like? Not that having confidence wouldn't help, but for most regular people who otherwise need blind luck to succeed, more specific advice would help more.

No sense in competing head to head against someone else who is more beauiful/richer/eloquent/glamourous/all of the above than yourself, that's what I say. Even if you're "nicer" and a "better" person than your competitor. That's just like committing social suicide, just like begging to be brushed off.

It sounds negative, but everyone will give more chances to more overtly charming people. That's more true than when people say they like so-and-so because he/she is "nice". Nice is good, but nobody falls in love with nice only.

If that was true, how come magazines don't say so? How come so many people can't admit that they fell in love with their partner because of some overt characteristic like beauty or sense of humour or wit?

That's the thing with life I guess. We grow up listening to all these idealistic platitudes and we try to emulate them, only to find out later in adulthood that 98% of it is bollocks.

And we wonder why so many people are jaded and cynical.

The other fact concerns me.

The reason why I can't seem to get any kind of meaningful relationship going is not because I'm "choosy". In my entire life, I've only ever rejected one person. That hardly qualifies as being "choosy".

I can't get anything going because of fear.

I know I've already written about this before, but it goes deeper than that. It isn't just fear of failure and rejection and the resulting humiliation.

For me, it's a fear of what that failure and rejection might do.

I've been rejected and passed over lots of times and it made me feel worthless. Try as I might, I just couldn't handle it. I got really, really depressed.

Since then and since I started blogging, I managed to claw my way out of that and things don't seem so hopeless these days.

And now, everytime I entertain the idea of meeting new women, I worry that if I fail again, that failure might cause me to slide right back to being permanently depressed again, thus affecting my work, my friendships, my life, everything.

I'm not willing to risk undoing everything that I've done to get this far. The thought of going back to where I was is just terrifying.

I guess that's my latest issue and if I don't get over it, I'll never be able to get involved with anyone again.

As usual, I don't quite know what to do.