Title by the Pet Shop Boys.

I’ve been left to my own devices a lot lately. And I can’t say my devices are all that good. They never have been. I know how to survive on my own, but I don’t know how to actually enjoy life.

A lot of my basic emotional functions are just plain broken.

But that’s because I have a lot of unmet needs. I need more meaning in my life – things to make me feel like my life has some kind of purposes and that I am not just treading water till I die.

And I need romance. I need a man.

I need someone in my life I can connect with and cherish and adore. I have so much love to give the right man. The husband to my wife-ish nature. The masculine principle to my more feminine maleness.

I could be such a good wife to the right man. I would actually be more womanly than a lot of women, in the old fashioned traditional sense. I would be warm, affectionate, gentle, supportive, soft, soothing, and perfectly willing to be there when he comes home from work with his slippers, his pipe, and his martini.

I would, in fact, really enjoy that.

And my secret hope is that there is some gay man out there who longs for someone soft and gentle and supportive and nurturing but doesn’t feel like he can get someone like that because he’s not into women.

I would enjoy proving him wrong.

I would not, of course, be signing up to be his servant or his slave. Proper respect would have to be maintained. There would be a strong possibility that he would start to look down on me for my lack of male virtue and my willingness to play the “female” role.

And then I would have to reminds him, as women have done since the dawn of humanity, that he needs me and that I am his partner, not his bitch.

Well, most of the time, anyhow.

The problem, of course, is how to meet men when you have social anxiety. I have tried dating sites and have never had any success. On paper, they seem like the ideal method for the receptive male. Set up a profile and then just wait for suitors to contact you.

But they don’t. Probably because I don’t play the game. I don’t put up a generic-ish profile and then let people know how weird I am in bits and pieces, over time.

Even when I keep it short, I fill it with my own unique personality. For me, this is the most natural thing to do. I am a wizard of words and use said words to express who I am. So my profiles tend to be express my vibrant, wacky, intellectual ways.

That’s probably a mistake.

In the past I have told myself that this approach was about being genuine to myself and that if someone couldn’t handle the way I come across in my profile, they probably couldn’t handle me in the real world either. So I was just filtering the wrong people out… right?

But now I am not so sure. Maybe what I am really doing is sabotaging myself. I wouldn’t put it past my social anxiety to work behind the scenes to make sure I never actually have to face someone being into me.

Just thinking about having to get together with someone for a date scares the bejesus out of me.

So maybe I have been shooting myself in the foot and telling myself it was just being true to my foot-shooting nature. I don’t know. Am I really so sure that if they can’t instantly handle me at maximum intensity that there’s no chance for the relationship? It has to be zero to sixty in 0.1 seconds?

There’s nothing wrong with letting people get used to you. People don’t usual get me at first. There has to be an adjustment period where I dial in their frequency and they attune to mine. I kind of have to educate my audience, so to speak.

I guess that’s true of a lot of people. But I pump out a lot of wattage. I suppose there is nothing wrong with starting at relatively normal and then turning the dial up slowly.

Getting over my doubts about myself would be a big help too. I spent a lot of time thinking I was a horrible hideous disgusting lump of unfuckable unlovable pig-fat, human poison that causes pain to all just by existing, and that is not an easy thing to get over.

I am getting there, though. There are times (like earlier in this blog entry) that I can see myself as a fabulous person with a lot to offer the right guy. Sure, I am fat, but that’s hardly an insurmountable obstacle. Somewhere out there, there is a guy who would love to have a big fat round man-wife to come home to every night. Someone funny and cuddly and highly intelligent.

Hmmm. That’s another potential barrier, my shiny shiny big IQ. I suppose it could intimidate people. But I am constitutionally unable to act like I am dumber than I am. That is one of the things that a potential mate would just have to get used to about me. I am crazy freaking smart. I don’t deliberately try to make others feel stupid, but it happens anyway.

Because I do like to show off how bright I am.

And it’s part of my exuberant nature. My highest level of self expression has me shining as hard as I can, and that can intimidate others, or make them feel like I am massively full of myself (maybe) and think that everyone else is stupid (no) and worthless (NO!).

That strikes me as the sort of thing that would influence how I deal with people across the scale.

But I will not hide my light under a bushel. Fuck that.

The world’s just going to have to learn to deal with me.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.