[McCall]

Blimey, this one got complicated in a hurry.

From an Englishman's point of view (I say this because traditionally we don't really have much time for all that mind-bending business), the Colonel here sounds completely normal. A guy in his twenties in no hurry to settle down? Nothing weird or mental about that at all. I've got another buddy just turned 40 who still loves chasing (and catching) young tail. It's just how he is.

Yep, when I was your age (not that long ago at all!) I was still busy chasing after various small foreign women. Now one of them's had me by the nuts for two and a half years...

So no, there's nowt wrong with you Dekker. Folks settle down later these days anyway. Beats getting another divorce! 

Bit more concerned about Liberator though. Surely things ain't that bad?

[Colonol Dekker]

Here's one i genuinely coined a while back much to the amusement of my brothers girlfriend.

"Women are like tins of salmon, as long as you can put in the effort to wear down the outer layer, or have a good opener you're guaranteed to get at the pink fishy goodness."

Make of it what you will.

[McCall]

Pink fishy goodness... fishy goodness... fishy...

Well, I won't be in the mood for any shagging tonight now.

[Mongoose]

Bit more concerned about Liberator though. Surely things ain't that bad?

Oh, they can be.  I'm hovering at 23, and I've never so much as kissed a girl, let alone had a sniff of a relationship.  You kind of get used to it eventually, though.

[IceFire]

Dekker I think you're normal.  I hope thats not an insult

I'm the same age as you and I'm all over the place right now.  I've not formed an actual relationship in a while...well until very recently.  But until that I was all over the place, doing my own thing, being myself, wanting to be with someone but not really finding myself interested in any one person.  I wouldn't even get as far as you... not more than a single date sometimes.  I'd torture myself over it all too.

Now...peoples perspectives on this differ...some say 27 is still young.  Some say 27 is getting there and you'd better figure it out soon.  I think you may be fighting yourself as I think I am.  There are so many different impulses all colliding together around this age and it freaks you out so not long into a relationship you want to run the other way and quickly.  I know thats sort of how I'm at although right now I'm doing everything I can to stop myself from running.

Its a bit rough in places right now. I hope that sometime into my 30s I figure it out and settle down.  For now I guess there's a bit of a thrill in being totally in the unknown.

[IceFire]

Bit more concerned about Liberator though. Surely things ain't that bad?

Oh, they can be.  I'm hovering at 23, and I've never so much as kissed a girl, let alone had a sniff of a relationship.  You kind of get used to it eventually, though.

You get used to it...you can even convince yourself that its fine and ok and you're just doing your own thing.  Which is cool.  But at some point you're going to realize that you'd like to do something with someone else and they just don't exist.  Right now all of my friends are getting married. I don't even care about the marriage thing yet...but I'd sure as hell loved to have taken someone special with me to all of these weddings.  Picking up at wedding is a myth as far as I can tell...everyone is already taken at these events.

So... while it sounds a bit like the blind leading the blind.  I've discovered that if you want to be in a relationship you need to do the following things:

1) Focus on yourself and yourself only for a while. Everyone has character flaws.  Focus on one of yours and do something about it.  If that means involving yourself in an activity that you find immensely uncomfortable but you've always secretly wanted to do it...then go for it.  Join a team, a club, something.  Not for picking up or even for meeting people.  This is about you.

2) Doing step one helps build your own self confidence.  This takes time...be in it for the long haul.  This isn't something you're doing as a necessary evil.  Eventually you've got to like what you're doing an embrace it.  So step 2 is really just accepting what you've done in step 1.  This also makes you interesting because you do things and you have interests, opinions, and so on and so forth.

3) IF you meet someone and you like them then don't do what I've done so many times before.  Do something about it.  Wait a week if you want...but after you realize it stop pinning away in the background.  Just confront the situation and tell the girl you like her.  It can go two ways both of which are good for you: 1) She likes you back and loves how you've come out and said it.  2) She doesn't/is involved/whatever and you can move on.  Be prepared to move on no matter what.  If it works out then great!

Step 3 is so damn easy to say and so bloody hard to do. Trust me I know ... one thing you cannot do to yourself is keep setting milestones about kissing girls and that sort of thing.  It hurts you more than anything.  Society is setup to measure these as signs of success but psychologically they do more harm than good for a great many people.

I hope this advice was not too unsolicited but right now I'm in the middle of being all messed up myself about virtually my entire life and giving out some advice makes me feel better so if anything I'm doing step 1 right now (and 2 ... and 3) and focusing on me and if it helps someone else out then good!

[ShadowWolf_IH]

Here's the thing that people have touched on, but no one has actually said.  

A woman's base instinct is to find a strong male to protect her children.  A man's base instinct is to plant his seed.

Women feel the biological clock ticking, and men feel pressure from the knowledge of it.  When we start to think about committing to a woman, it all looks grand on the surface, June Cleaver baking and vacuming in a dress , and all of that.  Then we see ourselves going to work, and coming home to a dull life.  We've all been through this before and know that those little quirks that were once so cute can grow into HUGE annoyances.  We get a bit scred of that emotionally, because we don't want things to change for the worst.  If they are becoming annoying, so are we, and there is always at least a small insecurity, saying anything else would be a lie.  

So instead of dealing with the no longer cute now annoying bound to fight and ruin it all, we have a fall back.  PLant seeds.  Hell I'm just following my base instinct.  I'm a guy, it's what guys do.  

I guess the thing is, if we stop growing together, we grow apart.  That's where the fights start, that's what we are really afraid of, waking up one morning and saying, who the hell is this and where is the girl I married?  The worst part is knowing the answer, she grew in a different direction.

For me the answer was simple and yet hard to swallow, grow together.  Always grow together.  It's one of the reasons that I left the FS communities nearly 4 years ago.  So that I could grow with her.  Now i'm back, and things are  better for me both here, and at home.

[General Battuta]

A woman's base instinct is to find a strong male to protect her children.  A man's base instinct is to plant his seed.

This is a hoary cliche of dubious worth. Not no worth, mind. But dubious worth.

In actuality men and women pursue sex (this is for sex, mind, not relationships) for exactly the same reasons, at least according to confidential self-reported poll data, n = large.

[Liberator]

IceFire, the advice is appreciated and it would probably work for most people.

Except for that one in a million, like myself, who's defining flaw is that I fail.  No matter what I do, I fail.  About the only thing I haven't failed at in life is sleeping and even that is in question.

So, I chose the safe choice, I give up.

[General Battuta]

There's gotta be someone, somewhere out there.

[Liberator]

I dunno, I used to think so, but not any more.  Not that I'm a desirable catch anyway, I have no job, no money, and second class education and no prospects.

[Mars]

Liberator: probably your only real flaw is the fact you have little confidence. Start doing things for yourself, selfish things. Not too many mind, but it helps.

[Liberator]

What would you suggest exactly, I'm not particularly good at anything.  The things I think I'm good at I get shown how abject a failure I am at them.

My greatest triumph was placing 3rd place in a statewide competition when I was a junior in high school.  The latest in a long line of failures was when circumstances forced me to extend my commute to and from the job I had at the time from 35 min to 110.  This continued for over a year until my performance dropped to a level where my boss called me in to fire me and I admitted I'd been on the verge of quitting so we called it a wash.  This is the same job that I never got a raise or even a "good job" at, after working there for 3 yrs.  So what does that say about me when I can't even muster a "good work" from an employer at a job I loved.

[IceFire]

IceFire, the advice is appreciated and it would probably work for most people.

Except for that one in a million, like myself, who's defining flaw is that I fail.  No matter what I do, I fail.  About the only thing I haven't failed at in life is sleeping and even that is in question.

So, I chose the safe choice, I give up.

Safe is never satisfying....and this is coming from me who I personally self identify as being risk adverse.

I don't know you very well and I don't know your situation in life or anything like that but I do go by a fairly simple rule that you can make your life what you more or less want it to be if you're willing to fight for it.  I'm not personally the kind of person who had an easy ride of it...some things yes and I'm thankful for those...other things not.  So I have trained myself to fight for whatever it is that I want.  And often I screw it up royally...and dammit does it hurt... but failure isn't really an option.

So... like I said in my post above.  You need to focus on you for a while and develop something of yourself.  Set some realistic goals, write them down on a piece of paper, stick it up on your wall wherever you work/study/game/etc and make that something you start thinking about a lot.  Eventually the thinking will turn to doing and you'll be on your way.

Don't be afraid to seek out some help either.  Could be temp agency or career counselling... family member, friend, whatever...  Sometimes its just networking and getting yourself out there.

[IceFire]

What would you suggest exactly, I'm not particularly good at anything.  The things I think I'm good at I get shown how abject a failure I am at them.

My greatest triumph was placing 3rd place in a statewide competition when I was a junior in high school.  The latest in a long line of failures was when circumstances forced me to extend my commute to and from the job I had at the time from 35 min to 110.  This continued for over a year until my performance dropped to a level where my boss called me in to fire me and I admitted I'd been on the verge of quitting so we called it a wash.  This is the same job that I never got a raise or even a "good job" at, after working there for 3 yrs.  So what does that say about me when I can't even muster a "good work" from an employer at a job I loved.

I'll reply to this one too

Thats a speedbump... but keep going.  The next time you have a scenario like the one you talked about above...ask your boss, find out what you were doing wrong, make some notes.  Maybe even before you get to the point of quitting/being fired.  I've been in trouble before too...I didn't ask and I kept going and things were getting worse and worse.  I was lucky enough to have a co-worker who pulled me aside and gave me a proper ass kicking in the metaphorical sense and thats what I needed.

[Liberator]

You realize it's like asking the sun to stop being hot or a black hole to stop sucking everything in around it.  I can't even make myself happy.

All the career counseling in the world can't help when you don't know what you want to do yourself.  It took me 7 years to gain an AS in Computer Science Technology with a 2.somethingorother GPA.  SEVEN YEARS!  How in God's name am I supposed to finish a BS in anything when it took me that long to achieve something that simple in such a mediocre way.  As has been seen on this forum over and over again, I am a dullard of the first order.

[General Battuta]

You're not that bad, man.

You do sound really depressed, though. Have you checked out medical help? It's nothing to be ashamed of, and if you're depressed, it's a very real, very treatable disease.

[Liberator]

Geez, Bat, you make me sound like a some kinda cry baby or something...

*looks at previous posts*

...oh wait...

Seriously, another of my faults is I don't get emotionally invested in anything very easily.  High school?  Not even a blip.  College even less so.  I have the emotional range of one-eyed badger.

[General Battuta]

Being depressed isn't being a crybaby. It's a problem that can be fixed, like many chronic diseases. And the instinct to play down your unhappiness is what prevents people from getting help.

This is an age of technology. People don't have to suffer this kind of crap. Get advice on how to meet people (very important!) and medication if you need it - just don't let yourself get pills pushed on you willy-nilly.

[Colonol Dekker]

As weird as this will sound, bear with me I tend to use this method in time organisation sometimes when i'm hungover. .imagine you're a SIM and decide which of your stats (tidy, social, hunger etc) needs a little attention. Try and get a balance, no point being completely satisfied / a consumate expert in one area, while neglecting others.