People of the opposite gender

[Aedin]

I don't really view this as a prayer request, more of a general chat thread, so I thought it was best to post this here. In my trip to Massachusetts, in the airports and at my hotel, I've seen all these cute girls. I'm not the kind to go up and talk to random people, and the few times I have, things didn't go well. I'm not really sure how to explain it. Whenever I see so many cute girls, I feel kinda sad because I don't know them, I feel sad that I'm lonely and single, and I just kinda wish I knew all these girls I see, even if it's not in a relationship sense. I guess I was hoping to get some info about other people's experiences, both girls and guys, and if they have similar experiences, what they do to help, whether it's religion related things or not (and most of the religion related things are praying and trusting God, which I've heard before, and am already doing, so non religion related things would be preferable).

And just to clarify, I don't deal with lustful thoughts about them. I'm not trying to get advice about dealing with lustful thoughts, I don't even feel a physical urge to do anything with these girls. My stuff is all mental and emotional, which is part of why it's harder I think.

[Kunoichi]

I don't really view this as a prayer request, more of a general chat thread, so I thought it was best to post this here. In my trip to Massachusetts, in the airports and at my hotel, I've seen all these cute girls. I'm not the kind to go up and talk to random people, and the few times I have, things didn't go well. I'm not really sure how to explain it. Whenever I see so many cute girls, I feel kinda sad because I don't know them, I feel sad that I'm lonely and single, and I just kinda wish I knew all these girls I see, even if it's not in a relationship sense. I guess I was hoping to get some info about other people's experiences, both girls and guys, and if they have similar experiences, what they do to help, whether it's religion related things or not (and most of the religion related things are praying and trusting God, which I've heard before, and am already doing, so non religion related things would be preferable).

And just to clarify, I don't deal with lustful thoughts about them. I'm not trying to get advice about dealing with lustful thoughts, I don't even feel a physical urge to do anything with these girls. My stuff is all mental and emotional, which is part of why it's harder I think.

Hey Aedin,

Well the only thing that I have realized is that one: You have to be YOU. I can't tell you how many guys have approached me (and still now even tho I'm married >< lol) and just tried to hit on me and be who they think I would want in a man..

I personally have made more friends by not worrying about whether or not I had friends. I grew up with very low self esteem, very very lonely and have since then been through my own harrowing experiences (harrowing to me mind you)...but you have to realize that you may want to change your mental process. You are sad because you are single and lonely..yet in actuality HOW lonely are you..really? We often as human beings assume that if we are not surrounded by people that we can relate and connect with..well that something is wrong...either with us or them...and that THAT fact is simply WRONG! Yet, even if it isn't necessarily enjoyable all the time..you have the oppurtunity to build relationships both with you family, your small circle of friends and your God.

As far as getting religion related ideas...religion ideas are not going to do much if you do not realize the significance in them. Praying is great, as you are communicating with God - but...between you and the Lord, are you really talking with God (having a conversation) or are you simply requesting. And while if you ask, he will give you what you want...it just may not be in the way that you want. You may ask "Lord I do not wish to be lonely!" Yet, you may find yourself without many people or friends to connect with. Is God really depriving you of friendships or is he teaching you how to be content without friends...as even friendships in the end will perish as human beings perish.

Just some thoughts brother...they are merely my own opinions and I always ask that you take them with a grain of salt and prayfully as I am merely human myself ^_^

God bless

[Raiden no Kishi]

Rai's First Rule of Talking to Girls: All girls are human beings just like you.

Just talk to them like they were anybody else. Trust me, many of my friends are attractive/"cute" girls, and there's nothing about that that makes them radically different to talk to than any other Homo sapiens on the planet.

Rai's Dad's First Rule of Talking to Anybody: Ask them open-ended questions about themselves.

This one works. My dad's been a salesman for years and years in some form or another, and is always very laid-back and comfortable talking to absolutely anybody. He taught me this rule that he learned from real-life experience. Now if only I would be assertive enough to put it into practice more . . . ^_~

Follow these two simple rules and you'll be well on your way. You'll learn the rest through experience.

.rai//

[Arrancar]

I don't really have any advice, as I'm in a similar situation. I have a really hard time connecting with people regardless of my environment, so I spend a lot of my own time feeling lonely. I don't talk to random people and I don't often speak unless spoken to. (Social anxiety doesn't help. I always get the impression that people think I'm an idiot regardless of any signs pointing in the other direction.) Even online I can't manage to connect with many people. It's disheartening to say the least. I see other people having fun with their friends or significant other and wish I could be like them.

I really wish I had something more constructive to say here. I hate it when I hear about others feeling lonely, because I'm very experienced with that feeling and know it isn't a good one to have. I guess my reason for posting this is in hopes that you won't feel like you're dealing with it alone, or something. Sorry I can't offer anything better than that.

[termyt]

I know exactly how you feel. I feel the same way a lot. You see a cute girl and just wish you could be friends. Because I've experienced this and meditated on it (because I am old and have had time to do so for a long time), I have some insights. I think these are basically true for myself, but different people vary.

Part of it is loneliness. Not a loneliness as in “no one likes me” or “I have no fiends” or anything like that. It’s more like a desire to have a different life than the one you do now – a kind of escapism. Not knowing a single detail about the girl’s life or personality, you adopt a kind of idealized fantasy of what it must be like if she were a part of your world.

It is a kind of lust. I think it’s important to realize that. It’s just not necessarily sexual – there are other kinds of lust. It is also part selfishness – we are naturally more concerned with how things affect us then how we affect others (I don’t want to be mistaken here – it may not be a bad kind of selfishness – we all have a natural degree of selfishness necessary to maintain our own well being). If we come to grips with the causes of our behavior, we can better meter our response to it and keep the behavior from become unhealthy.

I think it stems from the very human desire to belong to a community mixed with the excitement of encountering the unknown.

Humans are, of course, communal by nature. We want to be accepted by and we want to be able to accept the people around us. Once upon a time, our societies were organized around this fact. You had your village. It has a few dozen people in it all of whom you knew and depended on. Each member had his place and was necessary and wanted. This engenders a feeling of usefulness and belonging. (Think of the general feelings that come when you use the word “neighbor” and the word “drifter” to describe someone.) Your world was defined by the people around you and you helped define theirs. (Even now writing this, I feel a longing for this kind of community.) You pretty much had to travel to find someone you did not know intimately so when you came across someone you did not know, it was an event. I think this is the way we were intended to live.

Today, however, we are much more disjointed. Our community is no longer geographic. Our friends and family – the people we commune with – are spread out all over the place – sometimes with thousands of miles between while we don’t even know the people who live in the house next door. Most of us live in communities with populations at least in the tens of thousands instead of dozens (I live in a small rural community, but there are still 50,000 people in the county I live in). This means we constantly run into people we do not know – who aren’t a part of our “community.” These people are a mystery to us. We have conditioned ourselves to ignore most of them but not all of them are easily ignored. Every once and a while, we will see something we are attracted to and it triggers our desire for community – especially for those of us who do not have a strong connection with our “communities” due to introversion or depression or even a wanderlust that makes us at the same time desire and resist community.

So, for those of us who don't really feel like we "belong" where we are are enticed by the idea of belonging to a different community and see other examples of that as exciting and very desirable - a "grass is greener" type of thing.

Hopefully that wasn’t too random. Those thoughts are more or less straight out of my head. I hope they at least give you something to ponder if you share these feelings. The rest of you can marvel at the weirdness of people who aren’t like you (which is often more fun and more educational.)

[joshua8416]

you must be yourself
you must treat them with respect
and you must treat them special because they are special

[Nate]

[LadyRushia]

All lulz aside, girls are normal people (mostly). Just strike up casual conversation with them like you would anyone else. Ask people what they like to do for fun, what their favorite food is, etc.

[GeneD]

:lol:

[EricTheFred]

Ahem. Yeah.

Now, back on subject. To the original poster:

The solution to loneliness is trust in the Lord. I wish I had realized this when I was Lonely myself, but instead, I felt the exact same way you do. And, I know exactly what you mean. It wasn't some kind of lust or perversion making you feel that way. It was just the reminder that you were, as of yet, unattached.

I didn't know, until I met my wife, that I should have simply trusted God and got on with my life. That's not to say I should have just waited for God to drop a girl in my lap eventually, and stopped trying to meet persons of the opposite gender, but... I shouldn't have felt so sad about it.

Don't know if that helps. Maybe just knowing you are normal and others here indeed have had the same experience will help. God Bless.

[xblack_x_rosesx]

I don't know.
With stuff like that I couldn't really let "fate" happen, I'm a really... hands on, do it yourself kind of person.

I'm also really... out there. I talk to people all the time, I can't name the countless people I've gotten phone numbers and email addresses from just from talking to someone in a line-up at a grocery store or at a concert- and I'm like 17!
Just going up to people and saying hi does wonders. I mean, sure, you might strike out and get shot down (I've had lots of people go "... wow, you're really weird... go away now?" But i counteract by laughing maniaclly, therefore they end up thinking I'm actually insane as opposed to just creepy ) but the ones that you do hit home on will always be good ones =]

People are fun, you just need to be less serious about it, and think of it as a sidenote of whatever you're doing as opposed to centering yourself around it.

... I repeated myself a lot.
I don't think I'm much help at all, lol ><

[xblack_x_rosesx]

OH!

One of my best friends is a girl that I randomly ran up to and said was pretty at track and field in grade 7, and once we got talking it was a score. We're still like, best friends.
And another one of my best friends was a guy I met at a concert, and turns out he went to my school and stuff.

And my boyfriend ran up to me in the cafeteria two years ago and gave me a christmas card randomly, and we've been dating for a year =].

I don't know, i think bottom line- randomness is good.
If you strike out, you can just play it off as "it was a fun random gesture" and if you actually begin talking to the person on a serious note, you could really make an interesting friend, and eventually get very close to them =]

[Warrior4Christ]

I can't name the countless people I've gotten phone numbers and email addresses from just from talking to someone in a line-up at a grocery store or at a concert- and I'm like 17!

Maybe you should've asked for them name as well...

Some situations make it easier to randomly talk to someone than others.
At camps or Christians groups it's usually easier to get a conversation started, since most people are in the mindset of starting conversations with people. And so it happens more naturally.

[xblack_x_rosesx]

Maybe you should've asked for them name as well...


--

Haha hush! That too, I mean, its usually when I'm in the city so its not like I'd see them again by chance, therefore email and stuff works...
I get their names too =p

[Gabriel 9.0]

I don't really view this as a prayer request, more of a general chat thread, so I thought it was best to post this here. In my trip to Massachusetts, in the airports and at my hotel, I've seen all these cute girls. I'm not the kind to go up and talk to random people, and the few times I have, things didn't go well. I'm not really sure how to explain it. Whenever I see so many cute girls, I feel kinda sad because I don't know them, I feel sad that I'm lonely and single, and I just kinda wish I knew all these girls I see, even if it's not in a relationship sense. I guess I was hoping to get some info about other people's experiences, both girls and guys, and if they have similar experiences, what they do to help, whether it's religion related things or not (and most of the religion related things are praying and trusting God, which I've heard before, and am already doing, so non religion related things would be preferable).

And just to clarify, I don't deal with lustful thoughts about them. I'm not trying to get advice about dealing with lustful thoughts, I don't even feel a physical urge to do anything with these girls. My stuff is all mental and emotional, which is part of why it's harder I think.

Looks like you, me and other guys deal with that a lot.
my advice is just be yourself, if a woman wants to act funny to you for no reason whatsoever. Just move on, its not worth your time in the first place now it may hurt for a bit, but God will indeed send you the right one. I know and trust in God that he has a special lady for me to marry one day, whether I know her already or not.
Its best to be patient and wait on God's timing, like on anything else.

Keep fighting the good fight man:thumb:.
Everything always work out in the end when following God and anything is possible through him, never forget that:cool:.



God Bless.

[ADXC]

I don't have a girlfriend or whatever. And this is just in general(This has nothing to do with dating or of the opposite gender, just randomness that I actually got to experience.). I went to Best Buy and was looking in the anime section, when I met this guy who also liked anime. And before you know it, it was like we were old pals. We just took like 10 minutes talking about anime and such. That was really the first time I really actually talked to someone who I didn't know(Talk as in have a conversation with in public.). So I thought that was cool. But chances of that happening again are slim.


Sorry for going off topic.

[Shilohan ninja]

corny high-pitched chipmunk voice: Lonely, I am so lonely, I am nobody on my own...

Seriously, though, be repectful and, above all, be true to yourself, be you. I've found it helps to smile and say "hi" or something along those lines. ( I usually say "Herro", but it's up to you entirely)
Don't try and be all flirtatious and cool, that just sends the wrong message. It makes you look like you think you're the cat's meow, so to speak, and that turns off a lot of people, sooner or later anyway.
Sure, it's okay to be attracted to someone, as long as it's not lustfully driven. It also helps if you refrain from ga-ga over them when they're around. That turns off a lot of people real quick.
If you're looking for a soul mate, something that one of the pastors at my church has said, and something that I try to hold true to is that life is like a race; when you see someone of the opposite sex keeping up with you, take their hand and keep running. Basically, God will bring the right person to you, someone who's on the same page with you. Just be patient.