Veruca,
Okay, here's my perspective on this ...
You say that you always feel the need to become someone the other person would like. Okay, so, let's do a quick thought experiment ...
Imagine a very bizarre person who is wrong about everything, and by 'everything' I mean everything in the world. Think of the most misinformed person you know and then multiply that by infinity. The Earth is flat to this person and the Moon is made of green cheese. They quite literally can't open their mouth without being wrong (the sad truth is, we all know at least one person who comes pretty close to this).
At the same time, this is also the most supportive, most benevolent human being you have ever met, the quintessence of kindness and goodness, the embodiment of all of your hopes and dreams and beyond.
Try to imagine developing a relationship (any form of relationship) with a person like this. How exactly would you go about this affair? I think it's pretty clear that letting a person like this into your life would mean surrendering yourself to a lifetime of uninterrupted misery.
Think of how this relationship would work. How would you interact with this person exactly? Would you actually go to the length of correcting them or even debating them every time they said something that is clearly wrong? Or would you instead completely subsume to their ignorance and resignedly agree with everything that came out of their mouth, no matter how outrageous or intellectually offensive? Even if you felt nothing but unadulterated, unconditional love for this person, you would quickly find that even the most benign forms of interaction with them require phenomenal levels of patience on your part.
Imagine the following scenario.
You come home from a stressful day at work where you were mercilessly mobbed by one of your superiors. This person (let's say she is your roommate) greets you with a smile as warm as the sun.
"Hey, what's up? Omg, what's wrong?"
You collapse on the sofa, dissolve into tears and proceed to tell her the harrowing story. When you are done, she serenely concludes "Oh, kiddo, all bosses are like that. They are monsters who can change shape and want to take over the world, this is their tactic. They want to crush us. We need to be strong."
Tears quickly recede in an urge to engage in a debate on evolutionary biology, but you quickly find your composure.
"It's okay, I don't want to talk about it anymore. I'm going to fix myself something to eat."
"No, please don't, let me do it. You had a rough day and you need to relax, just sit here and I'll make you something. Let's see ... How about a vegetable soup with little dust bunnies? I hear it's really good for your heart."
How long do you think you would last in this setting? What would it take for you to accept that you were better off having no friends at all? At which point would you realize that you need to extricate yourself from this friendship as a simple matter of maintaining your sanity (or indeed saving your life)?
And yet, doing so would effectively mean letting go of the person you have been waiting for your entire life.
If the idea of being in any way associated with a person like this is beyond anything you feel would be humanly possible for you to maintain, then you are guilty of just that - being a human being. In fact, chances are, within five minutes of meeting this person they would effectively wipe out any chance of even touching on the outer edge of your social circle.
Yet, please notice that they are all that you have ever looked for in a friend - they personify all of those precious character qualities that you could have only hoped to find in one person, until now. So, what are you going to do? You're going to let go of all of it.
The point is that human affairs are complex and often made up of conflicting interests and causal links that are not immediately obvious. Decisions people make with respect to who they associate themselves with are often arrived at by virtue of ethical consideration and sometimes sheer necessity, as in the case of the above mentioned friend. As nice a person as they may be, outside of the Flat Earth society (
http://theflatearthsociety.org/cms/ ), they are unlikely to enjoy much of an appeal.
So, in many cases, a person's failure to react in a way that would align with our expectation is just a reflection of the specific circumstances of their own life. A refusal to employ someone with a law degree from Harvard says nothing about this person's expertise in law and could be a simple case of the position already being filled. Likewise, a refusal to perceive someone as our best friend could be nothing more than a statement of our loyalty to someone else who already fills that spot.
And as depressing as this may sound, consider the alternative: How would you live your life knowing that your spouse is one chance encounter with an attractive stranger away from filing for divorce? That the amount of time a close friend can allocate to you will become progressively smaller as new friends come into her life? Not only would this make for a life of ceaseless anxiety and render us completely unable to form meaningful bonds - it would completely dissolve the concept of ethics as we know it.
There are, of course, also those who are for one reason or another simply emotionally or intellectually unreachable. Doing what is ethically right - often by their own admission - is not part of their mental landscape. Their sense of ethics doesn't extend beyond whatever gets them to where they want to be in the shortest time possible. They don't care about empathy or people being nice to them, nor do they even notice when somebody is. They're simply not civilized like that. This is how wars get started - some people simply don't know better than to settle disputes violently. And once again, you can hardly hold it against them - they are nothing more than a product of an environment that failed to deliver for them. They are 21st century troglodytes, basking in their own world of utter intellectual depravity, blissfully unaware of the ripple effect they are having on their surroundings. This in part goes back to what I was saying on the other thread about the chemical origins of feelings and behavior.
So, I wish more than anything, Veruca, that I could deliver a line like "If the way you are on the forum is anything like the way you are in real life, you have nothing to worry about, just be yourself and everything will eventually fall into place". We all know, however, that life doesn't always pan out like that. Some people don't care if you are nice to them - some because they don't know how to and some simply because they can't allow themselves to care (at least not to the extent that you might want them to). It might be that your next crush is the nicest person you have ever met who also happens to be happily married. Maybe a good friend from work will move abroad and the challenges of living in a foreign country will prevent her from maintaining regular contact with you.
The only rational approach to your problem is to ask yourself what it is that you really want and how that will affect your environment, and then play your best odds on that. What kind of people do you want to surround yourself with? What kind of people do you find you get along with the best? Is it kind, generous people? Highly intellectual people? Curious, inquisitive people? A combination of all? Then work your way down from that. Look at what normally attracts these people and what kind of people they tend to associate with. Kind, loving people (people like yourself, that is) are probably that way for a reason - meaning they are actively aware of the effort they are expending to be that way. Curious people would probably appreciate being treated in kind - that is, your being as curious about their life as they are about yours.
Simply put, you need to strike the correct balance between what you think is the most ethical lifestyle choice you can make and what will get you where you eventually want to be. If you think that the way you are right now around people, this other person that comes on is unethical, then just stop being that way. Take a chance on doing the right thing and see where it gets you. Letting go of the past is a difficult thing to do, but if you feel that the way you treat people by being this way is having a negative effect on your life and the lives of others, then at the very least you have a moral obligation not to be careless like that. Put your best person hat on and live your dream. Hopefully, it will create a filter around you that will keep the junk out and only let the finest people through.
There is a saying that I really like, you may have heard of it: "I always wanted to be somebody. Now I realize I should have been more specific." I think it applies to your situation just about perfectly.
But still, when all is said and done, the most you can do is play the odds. The good news is, if you do this, the odds are something will eventually work out.
