![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
It has been said you cannot "try" to get a girlfriend.
Oh yes, you can try. I know I did; post-21 (after it had gone well when I was younger) there were stretches of years where I felt so godawful lonely and really tried, tried to demonstrate interest (which was genuinely there) towards any vaguely compatible-seeming, possibly interesting, and remotely attractive female, tried to make them interested in me, offered and gave help in small things and in bigger, cultivated friendships that I hoped to be able to turn into romantic-erotic relationships eventually, yada, yada, yada, all that.
To no avail. I am sure I am not, and was not, that much of a loser to be totally ineligible (hey, I really did that personal hygiene thing!), but probably I just didn't do the right things because I didn't know what the right things were or was too shy to do them (like, me, chatting up an unacquainted woman? you're kidding), or perhaps did the right things all wrong, and then, after a while of frustration and continued loneliness, there was, very likely, that stench of despair.
In the end, despite all the trying on my side, and despite all hopeful desperate fruitless desires crushes infatuations, all those vaguely compatible-seeming, possibly interesting, and remotely attractive — or even really compatible-seeming, totally interesting, and immensely attractive — women more or less ignored me or fell for someone else or gave me no encouragement at all to step out of the friend zone or even showed very clearly how decidedly they were not interested, further increasing the stench of despair on my side.
Anyway, this trying didn't help, not once. Not once did it lead to anything. I just felt lonely and broken and hurt, and did I mention lonely? In any of these stretches I gave up after a while, felt numb, passive, no longer hopeful enough to even try or even to be interested to try, too numb to even be desperate. Healed a bit.
And then, suddenly, that relationship thing came up from behind and bit me in the ass. Met someone new, or someone I already knew suddenly and explicitly showed interest, or I suddenly developed interest in someone I knew and it was reciprocated just so, *WHAM!*, mutual attraction, falling in love, bliss. Unexpected, out of the blue, effortless.
TL;DR: you can try. But in my experience, trying does not help. Trying leads to frustration and despair. Only not trying helps. At which point I am nearly at "there is no trying"...
[Just to be clear, what I describe here is a thing of the past. I have been happily married for a while now.]
Oh yes, you can try. I know I did; post-21 (after it had gone well when I was younger) there were stretches of years where I felt so godawful lonely and really tried, tried to demonstrate interest (which was genuinely there) towards any vaguely compatible-seeming, possibly interesting, and remotely attractive female, tried to make them interested in me, offered and gave help in small things and in bigger, cultivated friendships that I hoped to be able to turn into romantic-erotic relationships eventually, yada, yada, yada, all that.
To no avail. I am sure I am not, and was not, that much of a loser to be totally ineligible (hey, I really did that personal hygiene thing!), but probably I just didn't do the right things because I didn't know what the right things were or was too shy to do them (like, me, chatting up an unacquainted woman? you're kidding), or perhaps did the right things all wrong, and then, after a while of frustration and continued loneliness, there was, very likely, that stench of despair.
In the end, despite all the trying on my side, and despite all hopeful desperate fruitless desires crushes infatuations, all those vaguely compatible-seeming, possibly interesting, and remotely attractive — or even really compatible-seeming, totally interesting, and immensely attractive — women more or less ignored me or fell for someone else or gave me no encouragement at all to step out of the friend zone or even showed very clearly how decidedly they were not interested, further increasing the stench of despair on my side.
Anyway, this trying didn't help, not once. Not once did it lead to anything. I just felt lonely and broken and hurt, and did I mention lonely? In any of these stretches I gave up after a while, felt numb, passive, no longer hopeful enough to even try or even to be interested to try, too numb to even be desperate. Healed a bit.
And then, suddenly, that relationship thing came up from behind and bit me in the ass. Met someone new, or someone I already knew suddenly and explicitly showed interest, or I suddenly developed interest in someone I knew and it was reciprocated just so, *WHAM!*, mutual attraction, falling in love, bliss. Unexpected, out of the blue, effortless.
TL;DR: you can try. But in my experience, trying does not help. Trying leads to frustration and despair. Only not trying helps. At which point I am nearly at "there is no trying"...
[Just to be clear, what I describe here is a thing of the past. I have been happily married for a while now.]