I pressured someone into a relationship, though it never got fully physical, and when I finally realized how repulsive or how much of a hindrance I was to the person, we broke it off. It was a result of my relative lack of experience and my skewed expectations -- my previous GF (the only one I had had at the time) had been very aggressive and also very high libido, so it sort of ruined my perspective of what a normal relationship is to other people.
The girl expressed initially her reluctance to have a relationship, but demurred -- I think that given her looks (she was relatively homely) and mine (I'm relatively handsome), she probably thought she would look weird or be suspected as a lesbian (not a bad thing, but back then there were still a lot of people who were closeted in their teens and were just discovering themselves in college) -- so she went along, and it was a disaster. About 1 1/2 months later, we broke up, and it turned relatively nasty within a month of that. Still to this day, the person won't talk to me.
I do want to point out that this wasn't one-sided -- she apparently may have also had social issues, and was sending cues that for most straight women would indicate interest -- in her case, she was just attention hungry, eccentric, and kind of a nut. So touching me, massaging my hands, being very forward -- I took that as interest, and her reluctance as the usual "not wanting to show one's cards".
So I had a lot of guilt and anger about the whole thing -- guilt for pushing someone where they didn't want to go, and for wasting someone's first month or so as a Freshman, socially (however, she did join a sport near the end of our thing, and had instant friends, while I pretty much languished alone after these events for about 6 months, getting used intermittently by women during that period, never to my benefit) -- Anger because I felt like I had wasted time, energy, and really put myself out there (I did stuff never would do again, like dance, do social things I wasn't comfortable with, etc.), and been led on. I also was pretty much off-limits for most of the women around me after this, at least the ones I liked -- no one wanted to go where the other girl had been.
It was probably an honest mistake for both of us, but one that led to a lot of personal rancor and acrimony down the road. Seems like both of us are still angry about the whole thing.
So when I chime on here with advice telling people to watch out for lack of interest or to not read in too much or have a bias that might cloud your judgment of someone's desire for you, this is why. I got burned, and don't like to see others make the same mistake. Since then I have had great relationships and gotten a lot better about detecting interest (and been long married).
03 Dec 2010, 7:42 am
