Well now... that's one difference between here and Ask MeFi.

I'll keep it shorter next time :P

Obviously I don't have the whole story, but it seems like someone who reaches out for help when she's having huge problems is actually showing some remarkably good coping skills?

(Not to imply that you have to date that woman, of course!)

I just figure everyone is crazy.

It seems to me that most negative traits about a person have a positive, attractive side. Oh, he's so spontaneous, you think- well, turns out, he's incapable of making plans more than 5 minutes in the future. Stuff like that. See if you can figure out what things attract you that may have a darker side.

On preview- what BitterOldPunk says is true. Everyone is crazy. Find the crazy you can stand.

Everyone is crazy. Find the crazy you can stand.

And recognize that you're included in that "everyone," and find those with neuroses compatible with (or, at least, minimally triggered by) your own!

occhi is right, but then, what's new?

JakeLL, since this is your first post, and I have no idea how old you are, what your experiences are, etc, I would venture to offer this advice, since you seem to ask for some:

Look to your own stuff. The last 5 women you have gone out with have had "issues," or have been flawed (not emotionally healthy) in some way. This just seems like a red flag to me, if you are so good at finding fault with those you go out with.

If everyone you go out with has issues the issues may be you own.

Of course another way of putting it is that the people you date are providing you with something you need. It's just that sometimes we need to experience a bit of unhappy to see, inside ourselves, what needs to change, mature, or grow.

For some time I found myself dating men that seemed needy, at least to me. They turned out to be emotionally cut off a bit. What I saw as needy in them was my need to connect to my own emotional or internal needs. I kept trying to help THEM connect but only ended up in relationships where I was, once again, with someone not paying attention to what I really needed. Just as I had been doing, evidently, to myself.

Projection and transference. The bane of my psycho emotional existence. We're all out of our right minds, for sure. The trick is learning how to see the thing we are lacking by examining the relationships we attract.

It's all a process. Self-examiniation is the key.

I haven't solved this one yet. Do I date the reliable, sane, intelligent people with whom my brain tells me I could have a blissfully drama-free future? Or do I date the nutcase addicts to whom I'm actually attracted and with whom I feel alive?

Answer: don't date anyone.
(This is not a good answer.)

Any emotionally health females left?

No. No there aren't. None at all. Rhetorical question, right?

I deleted a lot of comments before this one. Who knows if I'll delete this one too. It's almost 11 pm. Only the sleep gods can tell!!

On preview: I probably wouldn't have felt compelled to type and delete so many comments if OP had taken the non-gender-specific approach that s_r took. Bitching about love lives? Totally cool. Conflating a sucky love life with a stupid gender/sex battle? Blech.

^^^^^^^^^^^
OMG FRAGILE FLOWER FEMINIST!!!

you sux pups you fragile flower you!

/me wilts

LOLWTFBBQWOMEN, AMIRITE?

inB4 feminist shitstorm

Regarding the current situation: If you think she's interested in you still, you need to let her know that you don't feel that way, but that you're still honestly interested in being friends with her and willing to help her with her problems. She may be disappointed, but if her "issues" are so serious, she'll probably appreciate not doing yet another thing she'll regret.

Regarding your overall situation: What everyone else said. Figure out what's attracting you to these people in the first place -- and what's attracting them to you.

I think "find the crazy you can stand" is pure brilliance.

And I do agree with danf and arse_hat that if you find yourself again and again in a certain kind of trouble, you must examine why that is. Five times (or even more), could possibly be a statistical hiccup, but it's much more likely to be a drawing thing on your part. Does it make more sense that all of the available women in the world are deeply troubled, or that you are just really, really good at picking the troubled ones out?

I had one relationship of this type, and what I learned from that is that I really, really didn't want another one, so my psychic alarm was set to hair-trigger after that - so much so that I had to just turn it off and put it back in the box once I found a great guy, at risk of second-guessing him/us to death. But it was two years in before I did that. And it's 18 years later now with the great guy, so I know I didn't really want the crazy. I was with my earlier troubled love despite the crazy, but crazy won.

So, you do have my sympathy, and I hope you can let go of whatever that attraction is, if indeed that is the problem.

It's not feminist to say that was a really stupid way to start a post.

Hang on.. So you're saying that a gal you once went on a "Quasi date" with called you when she felt destructive(suicidal) rather than, oh I dunno, her bestest girlfriend(s), her mom, her sister, her dad, her roommate in college, someone else who knows everything about her? That's all kinds of fucked up, and most likely an act. Now, why does she feel she needs to act nuts around you?

They were probably all emotionally healthy before some damn man messed with them.

No, I think he's saying that the last five emotionally healthy females he met had Issues. Clearly a sign that he should look someplace else.

In college, my guy friends would get calls like this all the time. Women, far away from home, who perhaps felt alienated from their friends and roommates. Perhaps drunk and thus not exactly making wise decisions.

Of course, to be gender-fair, my roommate (a girl) would get calls like this from dudes all the time. She attracted crazy - like TPS said, she liked the positive side of psycho dudes, and couldn't understand why that always went with a negative side.

My thoughts:

1) With the statistics on how many women have been raped or molested in their lifetimes (1 in 4), there's no doubt that there's a lot of women hurting out there. If you keep running into women with those kinds of issues, maybe you ought to start fighting sexual violence instead of complaining that women have issues.

2) The theory behind "this keeps happening to me over and over" that a therapist explained to me: we are hurt in some major way during our childhood. We develop this magical thinking that goes like, "If I can find someone who's similar to the one who hurt me (a parent, most likely) and i can engineer the situation so they DON'T hurt me, it will take away all the pain of my childhood." The only problems are: 1) They usually act just like the person who hurt us; 2) Nothing takes away the pain of childhood except slogging through the pain in a safe place.

So I would ask you: is there a situation you're trying to "fix" from your childhood?

The kicker on all this is I'm pretty sure she's still interest and that she'll end up beating her self up for choosing to make me privy to her issues.

You seem to be presuming quite a bit there.

heehee we're all fragile flower feminists on this bus!

I haven't solved this one yet. Do I date the reliable, sane, intelligent people with whom my brain tells me I could have a blissfully drama-free future? Or do I date the nutcase addicts to whom I'm actually attracted and with whom I feel alive?

Answer: don't date anyone.
(This is not a good answer.)

Huh. That answer actually works for me. Of course, there's the coming to terms with being alone thing, but it's not that bad.

Though my choices tended to be predicated more on the belief that enough love could fix anything. Sadly, the answer to that one is no.

Alas, I like sex too much for my answer to be a good one. And I like guys. And guy energy. And guy bodies. Most things guy, actually.

My aunt's motto helped me immensely when I was younger though: It takes an awfully good guy to beat no guy at all.

(She found an awfully good guy, but not til her 50s.)

It takes an awfully good guy to beat no guy at all.

Amen to that.

[Insert 'girl' where appropriate.]

I can't say that I've ever met an emotionally healthy person, regardless of the gender identity, so I think you'd best get used to it.

Something my ex's mom told him:
"the only common factor in all your bad relationships is you."

The real question isn't "are all women crazy." (to which the anwer is: no more than all men are crazy), but "why do I only seem to attract, or find myself attracted to, crazy women?"

It takes an awfully good guy to beat no guy at all.
Amen to that.
[Insert 'girl' where appropriate.]

I can't say I agree with you there. At this point I'd be willing to take mediocre. I have very limited dating experience (I met my first girlfriend at 22), and I'm almost always single, often for years at a time, and I absolutely loathe being along. This is especially bad since it is clearly my default state. The pattern seems to be that I'll be single for a year or two, date somebody for a few months, then back to being single for a few more years. I want desperately to have a partner in life - someone with whom I can communicate my thoughts. It's almost a matter of existential validation for me. Most of the time, I feel as though I barely exist, like a tree falling in the woods, which nobody hears. I've worked hard to build a good life for myself, but it's just not enough. Sometimes I see attractive women on the bus and want to cry.

Up to a point though, it's like looking for an apartment to rent.

The good ones tend to get snapped up very quickly. The bad ones stay on the market for ages. So when you're out looking, you find yourself walking through crappy apartment after crappy apartment after crappy apartment, wondering why there's nowhere to live in this town.

*hugs pie*

Damn, dude, I am sorry to hear that. I don't have any advice on women for you (men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and I've never been to Venus...) but I do have to say, don't ever give up, if a relationship is what you really want. I've seen friends and relatives meet their soulmates at all various stages of life- some very early, some later on in life. A good friend of mine recently got engaged (for the first time ever) at the age of 40, and people had been telling her she'd missed her chance at least half a decade ago. So, it does happen.

That apartment analogy is SPOT ON!

I hear you pie, and I think it's a philosophy that's got to be based on individual experience and/or empirical evidence. I've been lonely, and I've been in miserable relationships. I'm at the point in my life where, having had plenty of experience with each, I'd take loneliness over misery any damn day.

I'm older than you, though, so maybe it just takes a while to accumulate.

In any case, I believe that it all works out in the end, and that the process of being lonely (and it *is* kind of a process) teaches you how to be self-sufficient. Or it should, if it's done right.

At this point I'd be willing to take mediocre.

I think that always sounds awesome until you are actually in a relationship that is only mediocre, and then you realize how many good things there were about being single and not having to face mediocrity and half-satisfaction every day.

I have very limited dating experience... The pattern seems to be that I'll be single for a year or two, date somebody for a few months, then back to being single for a few more years.

My advice to you is just to date a lot more. The only way to understand yourself in relatinships, and how to have a good one, is to have them. You can't get any better at relationships by having theoretical relationships (which are always fantastic!). You have to have real ones. Even if they don't end happily ever after, they help you learn about yourself with other people. As long as you don't feel you're in a repetitive, damaging rut, as JakeLL might, I think it's a good idea to actively pursue relationships if you want one. It's part of the work of life. I say this sympathetically, since I spent my 20s for some reason basically waiting for Prince Charming to come and not working on real-world relationship experience. It set me back.

What pup said is better than what I said. :)

I'd be willing to take mediocre.

But this actually is a really cool sign of openness to/readiness for relationships. So just buckle on your protective gear and jump in.

Feeling lonely while IN a relationship is 100x worse then feeling lonely when you're actually alone.

I think it's a good idea to actively pursue relationships if you want one.

I hear ya. However, active pursuit seems to yield results once every 18-24 months. That is unless, as a lolcat would say, "ur doin it wrong."

Feeling lonely while IN a relationship is 100x worse then feeling lonely when you're actually alone.

No, it's not. I've felt both.

heh, pie. We'll have to agree to disagree on that one.

Apartments and people become available. Amazing, fabulous apartments and people go unfound for long periods (people more than apartments - but hey, we found a killer apartment that was unoccupied for decades once).

The same is true for yummy jobs, or parking spaces in the city, really. But your chances of finding a great person, place, or space if you believe your chances are zero... are close to zero. I wish that I could give more insight than that, but it's not the sort of thing that is easy to break down. All I know is that if you determine that you won't get/can't have/don't deserve that thing you feel you really want, then there's every chance it won't happen.

It might happen. From some incredible and fabulous friend who pushes and pushes you to take advantage of a clear, incredible opportunity (happened to me once). Or, I don't know, the world turns upside down and you tumble, despite yourself, into utterly accidental bliss. But if not, you are left with your own certainty that it can never happen, and that is, by far, the strongest action you have working on your possibilities and potentialities.

I don't know how to tell you to try to wake up amazed, fucking amazed, each morning that a delicious ice cream sundae of love and fun and smarts like you hasn't been scooped up yet (and I exxxaaaaaaggggerate, so just forgive that and go for the kernel), but I promise you that if you can find your way to understanding that this is the case, you won't get to the end of the day without being courted.

I want to say that it's not necessary to find, develop and massage that bit of ego in you in order to attract people, and in a lot of great stories and the romantic mythology of our universal consciousness, it isn't. But I can't say that, because I haven't yet met a person convinced of their own unworthiness who is like some cologne commercial, batting away all the irritating suitors, or even finding the one single person to understand them.

A young, attractive, single woman is a great demographic byte for drawing a lot of male attention, but if she has that lack of belief in herself, the sense that she doesn't deserve love, then most of that attention (usually), or what she ultimately responds to, will so often be more damaging than fulfilling.

You are kind of like her, pie, oddly enough, though in a completely different way. You are an intelligent, attractive, single guy (in your 30s?) looking for a meaningful committed relationship. You are the guy that women are always saying doesn't exist, the Holy Grail of available men.

Does that seem bizarre to you? Impossible? It's not. It's really true. But like the lovely yet misguided girl above, you fail to recognize your worth. I don't say this to puff you up so that you get some great macho super-EGO-guy thing going on, and once finding the secret key you can tear through a swathe of women, breaking hearts left and right - because that will leave you as empty as before, and much more guilty.

But trust me when I tell you that there is nothing wrong with you, and quite the contrary. You are not a person that needs to cry on the bus, but a rather extraordinary person who needs only to exist without sabotaging himself in order to find sex, companionship, friendship, relationships, and eventually mutual and rewarding romantic love.

pie, I so know EXACTLY how you feel. I feel cursed to perpetual single-hood, although my reasons are different.

Like, I meet someone nice, and they suddenly have no interest because I was already married once, or because I can't have kids, or whatever. So I stop bothering, and just deal with knowing I'll continue to be rejected because of dumb decisions when I was 21 and a bit of genetic bad luck.

(and I have to agree, it can be better to be lonley in a relationship. at least then you get sex. well, hopefully.)

*standing ovation*

*stands next to miko and applauds taz wildly*

Taz, we need favorites, so I can favorite that comment. *more applause*

Wow, thank you.

I would add, with some modesty (compared to the wisdom above) that it's like looking for a job. You'll end up with the right one, eventually.

I spent most of my 20's single, or in short-term-tragic deals, or in love with people I could not have (one was lesbian, one was married, one left me for a married woman), but barely into my 30's I found a fit. I think that, if one wants it, one will find it.

and Pup, if I didn't already have a nom de web, I'd take Fragile Flower Feminist in a heartbeat.

I can't belive it, but I'm disagreeing with Miko. People come in and out of your life. As long as you are putting yourself in situations where there is people flow, trust your gut and be with/go after who you want to be with, and don't take on anything as practice. I find the concept disrespectful.

Taz, your note is spot-on. I had to learn that before I could find someone.

And at 44, I am approaching my first wedding anniversary. :)

and Pup, if I didn't already have a nom de web, I'd take Fragile Flower Feminist in a heartbeat.

But then how would anyone be able to tell you apart from the rest of us???

Aw, who am I kidding. We're all fucking alike.

/me wilts again

don't take on anything as practice. I find the concept disrespectful.

Oh gosh, rb, I think you misread me. I don't view relationships as practice, at all. But I wanted to encourage pi not to stay on the sidelines, and not to wait for magic. I spent my 20s under the romantic idea that 'something' would just 'come along' and I would 'know it was right.' I grew up with that belief because most people in my family had met someone that way - but they met their partners at a much younger age than I, and their advice didn't fit my experience at the time I was growing up. Some people are lucky enough to find a soul mate that way, but that's not how everyone finds a mate.

Looking back, I now wish I had been more proactive and had used the time I was available to date to let down my guard a bit, not wait for my divinely ordained partner to show up and the angels to start singing - had I done so, I think I would undoubtedly have developed better relationship skills. But that doesn't mean I think you should just go out with any old person just to keep your hand in, just for practice - far from it. I'm just recommending not waiting for a lightning bolt to strike before you make an attempt, yourself, to find and get closer to people you like.

I don't worry that a person like me, or maybe like pi, is going to use and discard people out of self-interest. I worry more that security or confidence barriers might have made me too relationship-avoidant, preventing me from taking healthy risks and learning from relationships as I went. When pi describes wanting to burst into tears when he sees someone he's interested in, I don't hear someone who's going to date someone for a shallow reason and then throw her away when he's done learning something new about himself - I definitely wasn't suggesting that at all and I'm sorry if it sounded that way. What I hear, instead, is someone who sees people he's interested in often, who yearns to talk to them and get to know them, and yet who's so nervous about it that he is missing more opportunities to get close to new people. The longer it goes on, the worse it gets - each new attempt feels scarier than the last.

I used to avoid relationships partly because I was terrified they wouldn't work out, or I would get rejected or used or cheated on or something, and I would feel worse in the end. Then a terrific therapist told me one day, soberly but warmly, "all (romantic) relationships fail, except, maybe, the last one." I rebelled against that statement at first, then chewed it over, and have come to admit that he has a point. There's nothing shameful or fearful about trying relationships and having them maybe fail. We can all survive that - people do it all the time - and go on to be happy - happiER, even, sometimes MUCH happier. Fear of failing is not a good reason to avoid relationships. There is so much about yourself you just can't learn when you are by yourself, because they are things about the way you connect with others - so the only way to learn about yourself is to allow others in. It might be that the first time you do that, you are lucky enough to spend the rest of your life happily with that person. Or it might be that you spend several formative, delightful years with the person, and then part for mutually recognized reasons. Or it might be that things are great for a while, and then a problem develops that nobody predicted. When you go into a new relationship, you can't know the outcome; but the only way to know about the outcome of a relationship you are curious about is to do your best to enter into it.

Oh, ok. Good.

*applauds taz*

To JakeLL - how old are you? There are stages in life when very few people are emotionally reasonable (I won't say healthy, because sometimes periods of emotional instability are healthy) - late teens/ early twenties is one of these. I agree with dabitch, though; this particular instance, as you've described, sounds like attention-seeking. She's finding an excuse to ensure you have to spend time together.

Any emotionally health females left?

NO. No emotionally healthy males left either. So go ahead and date her. sleep with her. get her pregnant. there'll be one more fucked up person in the world, but who'll notice?

there were about being single and not having to face mediocrity and half-satisfaction every day.

*explodes*

OP here:
Whoa that whole thing expanded exponentially and I've just come back now to check on it.

To answer some questions and address some insinuation:

I am twenty-five.

I'm not sure why there was dissent over the fact that I titled my issue with the correct gender. I'm not implying that men or boys are any better, but I didn't date any men...

To those of you who think she was acting, you really couldn't be more wrong. I've seen people seeking attention with this sort of thing and that was not what she was doing. Her anxiety was practically contagious. You don't know me, so I suppose you can doubt my ability to determine such a thing, but doing so isn't going to change my opinion of the situation. If she had any ulterior motive it could have been for empathy and compassion which I definitely did try to provide, however I have no question that about her actual mental condition.

As for her not to go to someone else, we're relatively friendly and I live literally 2 minutes away from her. Explanation enough for me considering her state. She NEEDED to not be alone.

For those of you who are suggesting I'm the common denominator, all I have to say is correlation doesn't equal causation. (Also I don't think that by going on one date I can make a girl suicidal a month later, or by dating a girl for 2 months I can cause a her to resume having panic attacks half the time she has has sex.) I can however admit that with the girl who though that relationships shouldn't require much of any effort 3 months in could be right, I don't know. I just would have felt a little better had she tried. But that one might have been me.

As for my assuming she's interested, it's not like I'm not basing this on her words and behavior. While she was over, she mentioned about 3 times that she was worried what I'd think of her and every time I assured her I wouldn't think poorly of her, she would start to protest but then cut herself off and got somewhat embarrassed. Also, when I finally walked her down to her car and she finally got in, she kinda let herself hit her head against the steering wheel; not violently, but in the way you do if you mess up going for the kiss at the end of a first date. I could be wrong, but my main point is I think ultimately coming to see me could make her situation worse.

Well, Jake, clearly your thread provided a Rorschach for all of our individual preoccupations here at metachat (myself included).

there were about being single and not having to face mediocrity and half-satisfaction every day.

*explodes*

jonmc, why do you explode? I'm talking about relationships that aren't very good, and saying they're not better than being on your own -- not relationships that are basically good. I think if a person wakes up and says "I'm in a mediocre relationship and only half satisfied," then it is probably not a great relationship. It's certainly not great to be in a relationship with someone who thinks that way about you.

I don't think that by going on one date I can make a girl suicidal a month later, or by dating a girl for 2 months I can cause a her to resume having panic attacks half the time she has has sex.

I don't think anyone is suggesting you made them suicidal or caused the panic attacks,- you definitely didn't - but that you might want to look at what's attracting you to people who are in a pretty fragile state. Over time you might get better at telling who is basically stable and who is showing signs of needing/wanting something other than a reasonably healthy adult relationship.

Exactly what Miko said. It's not that you turn girls crazy, it's not that all girls are crazy, it's that you date crazy girls. When you turn this around, and assume what psychologists would call "an internal locus of control", then the path forward is a lot more clear: Stop dating emotionally unstable people.