Anyway, hope you find a solution. One solution is to go out and try new things.  There is no point in continuing to do the things that have not worked in the past.

 My main problem has been forming friendships. There isn't much advice on how you go about making friends especially with girls. What frustrates me is that I can never sustain a friendship with another girl. Maybe for a year but no more than that. I'm not saying I don't value my friendship with the guys. Infact my best friends are actually guys. None of them is a girl. I know girls but it's all very superficial......... Just from my own observations, I've noticed that long-time friendships between woman tend to happen as a result of a lot of self-disclosure and include emotional support.  I've seen some women in this group say that they have more guy friends than female friends.  This makes sense if you are fairly reserved, and not prone to talk about your feelings or self-disclose since most guys I know tend not to self-disclose alot about many of the emotions they might feel target them as being kind of wimpy.

Well, someone has to take it past the superficial level. I have tried it on a number of occasions, when I was alone with different women.  I have been pleasantly surprised, several *were* willing to get past the superficial, willing to share inner thoughts and feelings.  I'm not sure why they didn't attempt to do so with me (i.e. initiate), but I suspect that I might have sent messages (unknowingly) that I wasn't all that interested in them as individuals. how exactly did you take it past the superficial level?  that's something I have no idea how to do Beckie

: That's really sad. Well if he is drifting away from you then I guess there : isn't much you can do about that. Unless you start to get into the things : that he's into but I don't know how much of a problem would that solve. And : plus it won't be the real you. So time for you to move on too, I guess, : Dave. As they say plenty more left that could be worth you considering as : their friends . Yeah it's nice to think that the choice is yours Speaking of him, earier this week I saw him in the library.  He was sitting in the section I usually do my work in.  Usually I'd stop and we'd have some short, awkward, boring-shy-guy exchange.  This time it was like, 'why bother'. We saw each other, raised our eyebrows in aknowledgement, and I just walked past his table to go about my business... without even one of those guy hand- shakes and a what's up .  I don't know if I did the right thing, but I guess it felt good to show that he's not the only one letting go. It's too bad though... because I really don't have much choice of my friends. I mean we always have a choice of who you will and won't pursue a friendship with, but we don't always have many (or any) choices to choose from. Most of the time it seems like everybody else has so many choices of their own, and there's very little hope anyone will ever choose me. : I'm glad you're positive.  I knew when I wrote that, that it wasn't really : a positive thing.  I'm sorry if it upset you to read. : No I was upset and happy or neither...I don't know. You know what I look : like and it's nice that you thought I was a head turner and someone : very close to me once said to me that a guy can lust after me hard enough : to believe that it's love Now that baffled me cos I'm not that great! And : it  did upset me a lot!! Am I ever going to find someone who is going to : love me? Or is a guy who claims to be in love with me is in love with my : body and my face but not me? I guess you just have to believe you'll find what you're looking for, because it's so hard to say whether or not things like that will actually come.  I think in a general sense you could say that more good-looking people tend to find 'love' than do less good-looking people.  It's hard not to be skeptical as to how much of that 'love' would continue to exist if all the beautiful people in the world got zapped with an ugly ray!  Some of it would, I'm sure... but who knows how much?  We're still animals I guess, and our physical being is part of who we all are.  Most of us wish we could be better, but appearances do matter to us.  Maybe what you need is a nice blind man Unlike most people, I really think it takes a lot of time for real love to develop, and I don't believe in love at first sight.  It takes time for people to develop a certain attachment to each other as PEOPLE that they develop a truly deep caring for each other despite well-experienced imperfections in each other's personalities, and easily lasting beyond physical beauty.  That's what (I imagine) keeps couples who grow old together, together.  The person's eyes are always there though.... that's a physical characteristic that never really fades much, as you say.  And I imagine again, that that's somewhat important (for lack of a better word). : At school, my friend's sister read my palms and : said that I was going to die when 35 years old. I didn't really mind at the : time and I even thought well that's cool to die young. Then she said a woman : would murder me out of jealousy....now that was fu***** horrible. And I hope : to God that it doesn't happen. I still have so many things to do and I want : to have kids and grandkids and see the new technologies and what the science : does ....so I am looking forward to being old but when I remember the above : statements I think maybe it's not such a bad idea to die young cos then at : least people will still love me....I mean what happens when you get old? It was fun to read this for some reason.  I think it would be sad for you to die young.  Especially if you did have kids.  Even though it doesn't always happen, if you fulfill the role well, they will be the ones you can count on to still love you into your old age.... assuming you were a widow? :  I always find eyes beutiful and it's all in the eyes for me. Eyes never get : old. Eyes remain beautiful forever and you can see so many things in the : eyes..........innocence of a child ....wisdom in the old age.......and I : even find wrinkles pretty. I'm probably going to sound strange here but you : know sometimes I see an oldie and it's like you can tell so much by the : wrinkles if they've had a happy life or they've had to work harder or : whatever. I don't know what I'm trying to say. I know what I want to say but : it's not coming out right so I'll stop. I'm not sure what you were trying to say either But I agree the eyes have a special significance. To me I think, there's a lasting connection you get from having looked into somebody's eyes again and again over a period of time.  But I think it's also very connected to the familiar _expression_s on the rest of the person's face. I wonder how much you can really tell by a person's eyes.  Sometimes people aren't at all what their face tells you they are, sometimes they are.   I've been told I have sad looking eyes.  I wonder if I was a happier person, would my eyes alone still look sad? Funny thing about eyes is that it's not usually the eyes themselves, which is really just a gross white veiny ball (sorry  ), but the skin around the eyes. My third grade teacher used to always point to the the crease between her eye brows and tell us kids that that was there because of all the naughty kids she's had to deal with in her life   : generally speaking, I'd : have to mention that I really don't have much of a positive opinion of : members : of my sex.  I don't have much faith in their motivations and intentions.. : and : that's just me, and how I see (many of) them. : You probably have a good reason for it. I guess most of their intentions are : to do with being humans I try not to judge them for it. But you obviously : know more since you are a guy. I still would like to believe that there are : guys out there with decency in them. Maybe I'm just naive. Heh, almost every guy out there has decency in them.  It's really a matter of what percentage of each individual guy is decent, and what percentage is something else.  I just happen to think that a large number of the guys out there have rather undesireable decency %.  Everybody has different ideas of what's 'decent' though   : Do you take your journal wherever you go.....so that you always have : soemthing interesting to read ? I believe Oscar Wilde did that! Nah, my journal(s) aren't usually very interesting reading.  Not even to myself!  Most of it is also on the computer, so I certainly don't have it wherever I go.  It probably suffers a bit from that too.   Sometimes I'm thinking something clearly during the day but I have to go home and write about it, where sometimes the feeling is gone from my thoughts by then.  Maybe I should keep something handy to write in.  I don't know.. anyway, I just keep it in hopes that far in the future I'll be able to look back at who or what I was a long time ago.  Hopefully it'll be useful or entertaining then. (I mean hopefully I'll be something different in the future.) : Be happy. : Love : Anu Thanks, you're too kind. http://mentuhotep.livejournal.com