/u/Nerddess on I feel asexual in many ways so why am I still so shy/scared of men?

I feel this way sometimes because I was raised with the notion that 1) liking someone is paramount and cause for abundant cheering and joy for encouragement from friends when you're generally shy, which was a shower of (friend-driven) attention that I ended up hating every time I received it; 2) any show of politeness, kindness, or even fucking shyness toward a guy might be a sign to them that you're into them, thus encouraging them to hit on you back, which was a shower of attention that I desperately wished to avoid; 3) displaying even a hint of capability of finding someone pleasant to behold or be around could be misconstrued as attraction, thus warranting the shower of attention and blistering teasing from friends to whom I spent my life declaring I'm not interested and whom found every reason to prove me "worthy" and "initiated" one day; and 4) I thus grew to absolutely fucking loathe the fact that I could actually find enjoyment in other people's company because other people couldn't just let it stay that way, so I learned to ruin what good things I might have had before they even exist so I don't have to worry about the detestable attention mentioned in parts 1-3.

Ultimately, I concluded that my physiological reaction in these scenarios was a learned behavior driven not by internal mechanisms but external ones--more appropriately, my frustration at the external mechanisms which react to something as simple as an innate and harmless internal reaction that my brain has to seeing, hearing, smelling, or being in the presence of someone or something I find pleasant.

More simply, I was not flustered because of the attractive human. I was flustered because of what the rest of society always made of the fact that--gasp--I could find someone attractive. They always made it so goddamn hard--"omg, say this, wear that, act like such and such"--that the mere act of acknowledging someone's likeability became unlikable in itself.

I hate being alive sometimes.

August 18, 2021 at 11:11PM