So today I was going back home from the mall with my younger cousin when I had to stop for gas. As I'm filling my car up, we notice that the girl in front of us doing the same is really, really attractive. Of course, I do nothing. I wanted to do something, I was thinking of doing something, but I couldn't think of what to say on the spot so I did nothing. Fast forward to tonight and I'm feeling really down. I realize it's because I did nothing back at the gas station. It's such an uncomfortable feeling. Like, I just feel like I have to do something to make up for it and then when I don't, I feel worse. I've been thinking about just why that is and what it is exactly that bothers me, why I'm so shy.
One thing I've come up with is that I don't like to make it obvious that I'm attracted to someone. For example, with this girl, I would look at her and whenever she looked back I would look away and pretend to be disinterested. My cousin was going on about how pretty she was but I ignored him and tried to make him believe I don't care, maybe even make myself believe I don't care. After thinking about it I've come to the conclusion that I feel pressured when a girl notices I'm checking her out. I feel like she's expecting me to do something and it makes me feel anxious, so to avoid that I pretend like I'm not interested.
Another reason I hide my attraction to someone is because I'm afraid of the consequences. I started thinking about what might have happened if I had asked for her number. I immediately think about the negative consequences, the worst being that she'll coldly reject me without even looking at me and leave me feeling embarrassed and unwanted or unattractive. I then started to thinking about the alternatives. She could have politely declined and maybe even feel flattered. That's not such a bad outcome at all really. In fact, this may have been the likely "negative" scenario. Finally, another alternative could have been that she gave me her number. I'm spend so much time catastrophizing the situation that I don't think about the other possible outcomes. Then I started thinking what if the worst possible outcome had happened? Would it really have been that bad if she had coldly rejected me? I mean, what was going to happen? Was I gonna piss myself? No. Cry? No. Get angry at her? No. All I would've done is say something like "oh well I had to try, bye" and leave. Yeah I would've felt kinda bad for being rejected but I would've felt good about trying. Hell, I've been rejected plenty of times and I never felt horrible about it so why was I afraid this time?
I'm writing this out because I felt like I had to put my thoughts into words and get a clear picture of my thought patterns and why it is I do what I do (or don't). I'm also doing it because I figure there's a lot of people like me that really exaggerate in their minds what the consequences of asking a girl out would be. Because of this they neglect to think about other and maybe even more likely possibilities. I feel like one thing you gotta ask yourself in these situations is "What am I afraid is going to happen?" And from that you can start analyzing your thoughts. "I'm afraid she'll say no." Then you can ask yourself, "What'll happen if she says no? What else can she say?" Things like that. Whatever negative thought you have, there's always a more realistic and maybe even positive alternative thought.
With that in mind, I've decided to try to stop hiding my attraction for someone. If someone catches me looking at them I should smile or something. It's a small step but I feel like I need to at least be able to do this before I can start approaching girls. Maybe judging by their reaction, I can know whether to approach or not. My end goal is to be able to approach a girl without fear of rejection and just asking for her number or something. Speaking of which, would asking for a girl's number even be what I wanna do? A number doesn't really mean anything a lot of the time. I know sometimes girls just hand them out in order to avoid conflict and then just ignore the person when they text or call them. It's understandable. Therefore, should I really be asking for a number? I'm thinking it's probably better to straight up ask them out but that feels weird when it's a complete stranger.
