I’m good at the beginning. I can start a conversation and make someone feel comfortable. The women I talk to seem to enjoy it, and for the first few weeks, getting close feels natural.
I know how to show interest. I want someone to feel cared for, to feel that I like talking to her and that she matters to me. Early on, that seems to come across. There’s attraction, the conversation feels good, and I think it might keep going.
Then something changes. I can’t seem to get past those first few weeks without losing the connection I thought we were building.
She becomes irritated with me. I get clingy. Eventually, she blocks me. It has happened often enough that I’m describing a pattern now, though I still don’t understand it well enough to explain where it begins.
That’s what makes it so confusing. I can see the start, when she enjoys talking to me, and I can see the ending, when she doesn’t want contact. Somewhere between those two points, my attempts to stay close become part of the problem.
I can admit that I get clingy. Saying it doesn’t tell me what to do differently in the moment. I don’t know when the attention that felt welcome starts feeling like too much, or how to recognize the change before we reach the same ending again.
Being blocked leaves very little room to understand what happened together. The conversation is over. I’m left with my own version of it, including the early weeks when things seemed to be going well.
I keep losing people after a beginning I thought I knew how to handle. I don’t want to keep making someone uncomfortable, and I don’t want every promising connection to finish this way. How do I figure out what changes after those first few weeks?
