Hey Luke, I don't know what would you like to happen?
All that would lead me to connect to someone on completely different level comparing to my friends. I need someone to spend rest of my life. Someone to hold me tight, someone whom I can give all myself, someone who will love me unconditionally, someone that I'll live for.
It is beyond words for me.
Expressing such feelings to girl that is attracted to me is very difficult and I'm struggling with very ordinary things. No matter how social I could be, having many friends, chatting with many girl friends etc. When I'm in love I'm like small child who doesn't know how to act, and smallest step seems like huge obstacle. So I need practice and practice. People have feelings, it is natural to express them and to try to connect to someone on some different level. Those are just my two cents.
Pero

Hi pero.

I can never personally myself say "I want someone to love me unconditionally" or "I want someone to spend the rest of my life with" that is just far further and far more than I could ever say.

Even the people I've been extremely in love with I could not say as much, that would be like moving to a new house and saying "now! I'm going to spend the rest of my life here, have a family here and die in this front room" It's just way more than I could possibly say about the future.

All I'm looking for is an experience. I can't really say what this experience is without going into huge amounts of syneasthesic metaphores or poetry, and even then I'm not sure that people would understand what I mean.

it's more than just physical experience, though it has a physical element, it's more than the sort of eotional attachment I have to friends, though there is a lot of similar emotion involved, albeit on a different level.

This is not something I've picked up from the media, romance fiction or anywhere else, it's a real, obvious thing which my emotional sense has literally seen betwene people who are together. Not all the time of course, perhaps not even some of the time. But it's something I've seen betwene couples who get on with each other. my parents have shown it on occasion, as has every "successfull" relationship I've seen betwene people, even if that relationship doesn't remain successfull over a long period.

This is why i feel so agreeved that I've never experienced this myself, sinse it just doesn't seem I'm asking for much at all, just something that virtually everyone "normal" has felt at some point.

Bradly, try to kiss someone? I can't think of anything more likely to make me feel like an abuser! it was trying to hold someone's hand that virtually destroyed me at the start of my recovery in 2007. I can't think of anything more horrible than forcing my physical presence on someone, even in a miner way. heck, I even find a hug from my mum difficult.

This is really the problem, unless a girl flat out told! me she was interested in being closer, I'm pretty sunk. I can be a friend to someone, but that's it, which is again why I just assume I'm broken in this area.

"flirt?" what does that even mean? As far as I've seen from the media it seems to mean people making stupid remarks with s/xual inuendo, which is a complete nono for me, not that I'd particularly want to engage in something like that anyway, sinse my genophobia makes that an impossibility, and usually I rarely if ever notice those sorts of remarks anyway.

Hey Luke just take it easy; many of us survivors have more or less similar problems with sharing intimacy and getting close to partner and other people.
I'm also broken in this area, don't feel alone in all this. From one side I'm too demanding expecting from other person (that I like) to understand me completely and instantaneously and I offer similar stuff in return and believe me that is sometimes too much.
Maybe I wasn't clear enough I wanted to say that I'm never interested just and only on some physical level of attraction. If and when I'm in love I wanna die for that person (pure poetry) and at same time I'm not able to break wall of isolation that I built around me. One more thing, that love thing happens suddenly and unexpectedly and it is not possible to make some plans.
Anyway hang on and look how to proceed further with things that you like with pace that suites you the best.
Pero

Well I've been in love several times, and doubtless will again. unfortunately though it's one sided. At the moment though having spent a day mastering a percell aria, finishing a draught of my thesis and walking my dog, I can probably be a little more objective than I was last night and regain my resolution.

I really should learn that ramming my head against that brick wall is only going to get me a sore head.

I have to say I have been in a few abusive relationships I have no idea how or why I think I am better off alone sometime but I do't want that. Its hard I can form bonds with women but I am always in the friend zone. Any ways to be more agressive or asertive with women and not use my physical atributes for it.

I know what you mean about the friend thing, sometimes I feel like everyone's big brother, and not in the orwellian sense.

To be honest though my advice is still as above, though right now I'm finding it far easier to take. Find something else in your life and forget relationships sinse if your male and you can't initiate them your stuck.

For me, this is music and I have to say it's working out hugely well! I'm now doing half an hour of running and weights each morning and an hour's singing practice, and plan very much to carry this as far as I can, (including application to a conservatoire), and feeling like this, with the sun and devoted to what! I love, I can say that it no longer matters to me if I don't get the experience i want.

It's an experience, nothing more, big deal! and if it was a choice betwene that experience I've seen other couple have and my experience of performing on stage I'm still not certain I'd take the relationship.

Well I want the relationship eventually and I am in college know online I work out three days a week and all but I just long for a woman's affection eventually I'll let things come sure but I can't keep going it alone like htis and I'll need help with this

Well good luck. i freely admit giving that desire up is not in the least easy. I just concluded after too many occasions falling in love and it going no where and too many years of never knowing or believing anyone could be interested in me that I have to stop hoping and rid myself of that desire.

I have no idea why, indeed the amount of times I've been told "you'd make a good husband/boyfriend" by various female friends, --- -but never mind! I've concluded there are better things that I can! do.

in fairness I am 29, have been though recovery for the past five years but still suffer from genophobia and trouble with physical affection, so this might just be me.

Bare in mind though that there are other things in life than relationships, and that sometimes the desire for something unattainable can! be destructive.

After a 15 year train wreck of marriage, that I shouldn't have been in the first place...

err, I mean I had to learn what a relationship with someone else looked like...(healthy, that is).

I really lost all touch of reality, with all the drinking and dysfunction of old relationships..

So, I guess, my first mission was to figure out, what my new "norm" was to look like...

I started with reading, "The Easy Does it Dating Guide", followed by "The Easy Does it Relationship Guide"...


The World I Know (Collective Soul)

island

But there are men here who also suffered like me with wives and girlfriends living happy lives now, maybe its best for you but I'm not so sure if thats the best for me.