Here’s me again venting about my mental health and dating life to complete strangers on the internet, and once again this isn’t gonna go into any subreddits. Feel free to leave a comment or DM me for whatever reason if you feel like it

I finally got into a dating app, and faced the same communication problems on their end I mentioned in my first vent post, and went on a date with this girl I matched with after a few- frustrated conversations with other matches. So far so good, cut to a few days later, I’m telling my mother about how it went and everything and show her a picture of the girl I went out with, which was- well, quite a bit on the fatter side but I didn’t care much, and that’s the main reason for this post.

She went on a rant about how I have zero attitude, and could get a much better girl if I tried actually going out to clubs and bars and “living life”, that I should literally be looking for signals everywhere that a girl took interest in me (yes, everywhere. Including the subway I take to college and lines at the grocery stores, as per her examples), like prolonged looks and all that jazz. She said the girl I went out with is fat, ugly, and looked completely different from the other pics I had (no filters, the difference was on the makeup which wasn’t even that heavy).

This went on for quite a bit and every time she called me a lazy slob for trying to look for someone “the easy way” through my phone I felt worse and worse. She said multiple times that people on those apps are “scraps”, “leftovers”, basically people who nobody else wanted so they throw themselves at lazy guys like me to take them. On top of that, every time she makes sure to rub on my face the fact that she supposedly saw multiple women throughout the last couple years taking interest in me based on how they looked at me.

It’s been a while since she made me feel this miserable about myself and how I try to find people to date. I- don’t even feel like texting the girl right now, for the rest of the day. I’ve never felt like this much of a loser.

I am above average on looks, I don’t lack communication skills, I don’t smell, am polite and I know how to talk with a woman both irl and online once we meet… but I do lack the extroversion to go out to bars or parties, alone, just to find and approach women to flirt with them. I can’t, I just can’t. I get nervous, I feel like a creep trying to force myself into someone’s life just to get a relationship out of them. And to make things worse I can’t even take a fucking hint, unless it’s pretty damn obvious someone took interest in me, I simply will not notice. Especially if the so called signals consist solely of looking at me with a cutesy face and an occasional giggle, which I get told happens a fuckton. I don’t see it, simple as that, goes straight over my head.

Some tell me “you gotta notice the hints”, “you have to be aware of the girls looking at you”, yada yada but HOW!???? How tf can people have this much awareness of what’s going on, and just- know when someone’s interested rather than just like- looking? I ask how and they go “you just gotta know man”. God damn frustrating.

Is this true? Is my only chance at finding someone nice to go partying or to bars? Searching for every little unusual look I get in the street everywhere I go?

Fuck I’m lost- I hate this. I hate it. I hate seeing how naturally all the other relationships happen. It’s always “we met at work”, “we had mutual friends”, “we had classes together”, “we did xyz together and we just hit it off”, but I can never get a taste of how that feels. Including in people near me, the perfect match seems to just fall out of the sky right onto their laps. Some of those are also introverts and rarely party, and a friend of mine is worse getting women and getting hints than I am (his words), but BAM, perfect match hit him on Instagram DMs about 3.5 years ago, and they’re still together to date. It just seems to flow so much better for everyone.

It must be my fault. I must be the one doing something wrong, and I can’t even ask my mother, who’s the one I should be able to trust the most, because then she’ll just either tell me to go study women, go figure out, go on a rant about how finding people online will only get me scraps or tell me I should “be on the hunt” everywhere I go. What am I doing wrong? Is my mom right?

When is my turn to be happy? When??

This is so, frustrating.

Must feel nice to have someone