The main reason I’m so insistent on telling myself that a given girl is either interested in me or isn’t and that opinion is fixed and unchangeable (even though, as was repeatedly pointed out to me in comments to my last post on this subject, this is not necessarily true) is to keep myself from turning into this guy.
I talked to the property manager yesterday about the water issue, and she suggested I run all the taps at full blast for half an hour. I was skeptical, but I tried it and it actually seems to have worked. Problem solved!
So apparently water heaters such as the one in my apartment contain magnesium anode rods to prevent corrosion, and when the water in the heater contains a lot of sulfates, very little oxygen, and sulfate-reducing bacteria the hydrogen produced by the anode rods combines with the sulfur to create hydrogen sulfide, giving the hot water throughout the apartment the delightful odor of rotten eggs.
I signed a lease for an apartment today. It’s a really nice studio in a newish complex just a few blocks from my work. It’s especially nice because now I can walk to work and won’t need a car (which is lucky because I’m giving mine to my sister). I’m pretty happy about it.
I’ve been getting kind of frustrated lately about still living in my parents’ house and never really doing anything social, and I think moving out will help. I’ve been itching to be on my own for a while now. The area I’m moving to has a lot of young people and is a lot more fun and happening than the dull suburbanish area where my parents live. I think I’m going to like it there.
Megan posts about a ridiculously ill-fated couple; basically, she really obviously doesn’t love or care about him but for some reason accepted his marriage proposal anyway, and he’s too oblivious to realize this. This is sort of an extreme example of what I think is a pretty common pattern among guys, especially young guys, where they get fixated on a certain girl, or even (as is apparently the case here) a certain type of girl, and don’t get that she just doesn’t like them at all and there’s nothing that’s going to change that. In this mindset, everything the girl does that could possibly be interpreted as indicating romantic interest is noticed and obsessively treasured, while the much greater evidence that she isn’t interested is ignored completely. This state of mind usually lasts right up until the guy manages to muster the courage to actually ask the girl out and she rejects him, resulting for the guy in extreme embarrassment and self-loathing lasting until he finds a new girl who he’s convinced likes him despite all evidence to the contrary. (The situation Megan’s writing about is a weird example where this doesn’t happen because the girl accepts, even though she still doesn’t like the guy.)
I’ve been the guy in this situation more times than I’d care to recall. Every time it happens I think over it and realize how stupid I was to miss all the obvious signals of disinterest and decide that I’m more aware now and won’t fall into this trap again, which is never true. I think a lot of this mindset stems from the well-known phenomenon whereby men tend to greatly overestimate their own attractiveness. I mean, of course she likes me; I’m awesome, right? Well, no, you’re not, particularly, but there’s just no convincing a guy of this.
Another thing that feeds into this is the tendency a lot of women have (strongly encouraged by a lot of social factors) to be very friendly and flirtatious toward just about everyone. This is useful, obviously, but it also tends to lead a lot of guys to assume sexual interest where there is none, and it really confuses these guys when the girl they like drops the act in an unguarded moment. Understanding this part has been really difficult for me personally, since I’m constantly taking flirtatiousness at face value and assuming girls really like me (and why shouldn’t they? I’m awesome! etc.), then realizing that they act the same way around everyone, except sometimes when they’re under a lot of stress or something. It can be very disconcerting to have one’s illusions destroyed like that.
One possible response to this problem is to just ask out the girls you like without trying to guess if they like you back. This would definitely be a way to tell what’s really going on, but for me at least the extreme embarrassment of being rejected, combined with a very strong aversion to being the kind of sleazy guy who hits on every woman he sees, keeps me from asking a girl out unless I really think she likes me. The problem with that approach, of course, is that discovering that a girl you thought really liked you actually doesn’t throws your whole way of looking at the world into question, and thus is a lot more painful psychologically than a simple rejection with no preconceptions involved.
This is a large part of why I’m always hoping girls will ask me out if they like me. It’s not just my innate shyness and awkwardness (although that is a major issue as well); it’s also that I really, truly can’t tell if a girl actually likes me or if she’s just being flirtatious because that’s what she does. I keep thinking I’ve reached a point where I can tell the difference and will no longer get myself into these situations, but then it happens again and I realize that no, I still have no idea.
It seems the ADL has backpedaled on the Armenian issue. Since I only heard about this whole controversy through blogs, I’m going to assume they had something to do with pressuring the organization into this change of heart. I realize this is not necessarily the case.
I went to the doctor today to finally do something about the depression that I’ve rather obviously been suffering from for over a year now. He gave me a prescription for Wellbutrin, which has worked well for my dad, so I think things will start to get better now.
I am not particularly interested in discussing libertarianism at great length. I think the interminable debates on this subject in the blogosphere are due largely to the massive overrepresentation of libertarians there, which stems from their massive overrepresentation on the internet (which, in turn, is probably because there are a lot of libertarian engineers and programmers for some reason). I also think many of the participants in these debates, particularly on the anti-libertarian side, have very little experience with libertarians in real life and often don’t know how to handle them when they encounter them online. Coming from the Southwest, something of a hotbed of libertarianism, I’ve known a lot of libertarians in my time, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the best thing to do is ignore them. They’re generally not going to be convinced by any arguments you can offer.
Also: Spanking? Really?
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