Dear Dr. Love;I am 33, male, professional, very busy and successful in my career. However, I have no luck in relationship with women that I like the most and have significant feelings for.To give you some background; I was born and raised in a very loving, caring and stable family and knowing myself, I don’t think I have significant psychological deficits due to my childhood upbringing, except, I was brought up in a middle eastern and conservative family.I started dating from age 28! Mostly because I was too busy with my education, and I date about 2-3 times per month, so far with ladies that they already have relationship or broke up recently.\Just to give you one example about my problem: I met this beautiful Irish-American lady at the hospital where I work, actually she came on to me!, and after three weeks of playing hide and seek, I finally had the guts to asked her out! We went out, a couple of times, to a nice dinner at nice restaurant,Eventhough I had, and still do, significant feelings for her, I was not able to express her those feelings. I became nervous, panicked. Make the story short, she stopped talking to me and asked me not to call her anymore.I hate to say this but the same senario has happened to me multiple times in the past and this situation has made me depressed, (believe me I have no S/H Ideation!)If you can please let me know what I should do, is it a missunderstanding from mybehalf or cultural glitch or what?
One reason you may be coming up empty handed (if I may say) is that you don’t communicate your positive feelings.You said that you felt strongly for this woman, but that you were too panicked to say so. The other person wouldn’t know that you are feeling panicked. All she sees is a man who is not interested in her, and she cuts contact with you.I think you need to work on understanding why you are so panicked to reveal how you feel. Are you afraid to be rejected or laughed at? In the end, your holding back may bring about your worst fear: you get rejected all the same.What do you have to lose by taking the bull by the horns and simply telling a woman that you like her. If she rejects you sooner rather than later then you will experience the same pain, sooner rather than later.I am sure that these repeated relationship failures are not making it easier for you to speak up. Since women drop you sooner or later, you have been traumatized by repeated rejections. The fact that you know rejection makes you fear it all the more, which must make it even harder for you to speak up.What you need to see is that your holding back insures rejection. Go for broke. Speak from your heart. Women want to know what you like about them. They also are drawn to men who can speak about their feelings.So, next time take a chance. I bet you won’t be rejected again. I can’t help but point out that you have been dating women who are already with someone or who have just come off a bad relationship. These types of women are scared of commitment (seeing you while they are involved with someone else says that they aren’t ready to commit to one person).And women who have just ended bad relationships are traumatized and scared to reconnect. The fact that you choose women who are involved or coming off a bad relationship–essentially women who aren’t good relationship bets–makes me wonder if you are actually the one who is scared to become involved.By choosing women who drop you, the problem seems outside of yourself. Your mind may be putting up a smokescreen in which it hides the truth from you: the truth being that it is you who is scared to get close.Read my Advice Archives under fear of commitment, fear of intimacy, in order to see if that ‘s your problem. You will need to take a mult-pronged approach to this problem in order to resolve itSimply modifying your mode of communicating will not suffice if you are also dealing with an unrecognized fear of involvement. I would suspect that the latter is true since, as I said, you are choosing women who aren’t available for one reason or another. Have the courage to look inward and you will find the answer.