This weekend was fantastic. As it relates to my personal
journey, it was interesting. My friends tried to set me up with someone at an
event we attended. The two of us were aware of this manipulation, and yet we
decided to converse anyway. We did actually hit it off. I noted some
interesting interest similarities, and I got a vibe from him that he was
responsible and mature. Granted, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, based
on such a TINY sample of interactions. But, he lives almost 2 time zones away,
so not even a chance for any continued interaction, really.
I want to pick apart this experience and the self-talk in
my head to see what I can learn from it.
I noticed some interesting things in myself from this
interaction. First of all, I want to point out how proud of myself I am.
Despite the obvious set-up, I had no problem chatting with him, and didn’t feel
nervous at all. I even danced with him without feeling weird. I think that is a
huge step for me. That shows that I am at least confident enough to chat with
someone under that kind of pressure without being “in my head”. I was actually
interested in getting to know him, and wasn’t filling my head with “He doesn’t
want to talk to you. Why are you putting him through this??” Granted when I
felt myself rambling I did hear that in my head, but for the most part it
wasn’t there.
The sad/interesting part was the end. The night moved to
several locations, and I continued to talk to him or at least be around him. My
energy was quickly dissolving, so I wasn’t talkative or energetic by the end.
But he was definitely genuine when he said it was very nice talking with me.
This is where my head may have gotten in the way. I said it was nice to meet
him, and went off to my hotel room. No mention of ever talking to him again
(exchanging numbers may have been too much, but looking back, I could have at
least asked if I could Facebook him). In my mind, I had all these excuses: “He
lives far away, and even if he didn’t, I’m sure he wouldn’t want to talk to me.
I don’t even know him really, anyway.” Hm. What’s funny is that I am really
confident about how awesome I am, and yet in circumstances like this (and the
situation where my good friend from work left the company and now I’ll have to
contact him outside work), I always feel like no one has any interest in ever
hearing from me again. I don’t want to be clingy. I don’t want to be needy. I’m
neither of those things, but I’m paranoid about coming off that way. If they
want to talk to me, they can, but I won’t push it (and generally they have to
be really straight forward to get me to accept that they want to hear from me
again). That’s how I view things. That’s how my fear presents itself. But you
know what? That attitude has gotten me into SO much trouble. For me, I’m not
contacting people because I lack confidence. I don’t think I’m important to
them, so I don’t want to bother them and take up their time. For the people I’m
not contacting – they think I don’t care about them! That couldn’t be further
from the truth! Friends have gotten MAD at me for never initiating
conversations, and I can definitely understand that. But what do I do? How do I
find a comfortable balance? Growing up, I was called annoying and obsessive. I
don’t want to be that way, and I’m terrified of being like that, so I just shut
up and shut everyone out until they contact me. I let them come to me. I never
learned how to balance it out. But this isn’t healthy. This isn’t balance. I
have to know that there is something in between. (I’m limiting myself to who
comes to me, when I have the power to go find other people…)
I’ve known this about myself since college, but this was
an interesting situation for it. I’ll have to keep that in mind moving forward.
I need to figure out a non-invasive way of allowing for future contact with
people. That’s my next mission, be it a guy or just friends. I have NO idea how
to do that. I feel so awkward about it, due to my lack of confidence in that
particular scenario. But why? Why don’t I think people would want to hang out
with me? Well, I don’t find myself fun. I don’t really ever do anything, and
anything I do is a solitary activity. I read, I write, I go to very specific
dance classes and related events. You know how you fix that? Get back into the
MeetUp groups, and start doing some activities! That way a) I can meet people,
and b) I have activities I can INVITE people to when I meet them randomly. It won’t
just be like, “Hey, let’s… chat… sometime... if you want…” It’ll be, “Hey! I’m
going hiking next weekend, want to join? Give me your number and I’ll give you
more details and you can decide.” MUCH better. Everyone wins. It opens contact
without being pushy, and instead of some awkward ambiguous ability to contact
them, there is a purpose behind it. An ice-breaker, if you will. And they can
decline if they want. I like it. It also doesn’t flat out tell a guy you are
interested in him when you don’t even know anything about him to know whether
or not you are. It just gives you more opportunities to figure that out. Same
with potential friends. It gives you opportunities to get to know people
better.
I guess my next problem will be determining how to cut
people off if they aren’t a good match with you… AH! No. Let’s not get ahead of
ourselves here. One thing at a time.
Can you see how your fears are influencing your interactions
with others? Do you have the same problem I have?
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