Attention has pretty much always made me anxious.
This weird thing happens to me where I can subtly, casually flirt and I don't overthink it because I don't overthink it.
But then the girl will pick up on it and flirt back and THAT throws me.
I'm like, What!?
That wasn't supposed to work!
Why did that work?
And what I've come to learn is that a lot of the time with women, they're doing it for the exact same reason. Because they're just as flabbergasted by men.
I think that a lot of the time for both men and women that it's easy to get swept up into a fantasy that isn't a reality, especially when we're younger. Because what we think and feel a relationship is, versus what a relationship actually is, are two totally different things.
A lot of people I think struggle with just being able to have basic platonic communication with the opposite ***, especially when they're younger and less experienced in both love and relationships in life.
The rise of hookup culture massively skewers everyone's perception about everything.
While that existed before the days of the internet, the internet, really, just became a digital map of records for it that is openly available for everyone to view, that's all.
And so the people who weren't looking for that, suddenly realized how prominent that is, and yeah, it skewered everything for everyone and ****** everything up in the regard.
Which is how you get women who have LINES of men because they are attractive, but feel as if they aren't attractive, because this digitized map has taught them that maybe they're not attractive and maybe men just are naturally dogs trying to get laid.
And that compounds the issue for men who aren't looking to just get laid, and respectfully the feminine counterweight of the exact same issue. I'd argue that it's algorithmically socially divisionary, splitting up men and women and making them not only fight against each other but also amongst each other as well, and even that's been digitally mapped.
And so anyone with a quarter of a brain that just wanted like a regular, normal, stable and standard monogamous relationship is now kind of traumatically psychologically shellshocked. Very similarly to cliche 70s and 80s movie high school dance scenes where nobody is dancing.
So then the question becomes, "Well Nox, once the ball gets rolling and people start coming onto the floor, where's that leave you?"
And the answer to that is...
I'm this kid: