I won't ask you out... (yet*)

and, * = maybe?

I have always had some amount of social anxiety.  "I don't people well" is the colloquialism I most often use.

That, along with being an introvert, meant I didn't get out much.  And when I did, so many things would press in on me in social settings that I would find it hard to make any kind of connection.  So, asking people out from the few connections I had made was extra fraught with anxiety and fear. 

Therefore I rarely did.

Then I transitioned and embraced the true me that I had been hiding for so long.  With that transition, I was much more able to relax in social settings and go along with the flow.  I added other fears, but they were never quite as large as the constant self-policing that I needed to navigate the world from within many different closets.  I am still an introvert, but with the shedding of all my closets, the mental overhead of maintaining them was gone and so my ability to enjoy social occasions with a much slower drain rate means I don't need to spend so much time alone to recharge between times.

Which brings me along to Polyamory.  I am, and have, and do believe in multiple loving and deeply connected relationships that have no boundaries on where those relationships can go.  Just friends, ok; cuddle buddies, awesome; friends with benefits, bring it on; dating and romantic, nice!; and lifelong fully-entangled partnership, count me in!  I am open to letting those relationships I have, and will continue to form, go to whatever level they are comfortable at.  I welcome it.  Actually, I really want it...

but

I am still transitioning, and I still have anxieties, and -hardest of all- I have my terrible self-worth.

All of these things mean that, while I am open and welcoming and desirous of any and all of the above depths of relationship with lots of people in my social network now, I will not ask any of them to join me on levels other than friends, and often not even to there.  I am just too afraid that my self-estimation is entirely correct and people really don't like me and asking them to be friends is just putting them in an awkward place.  Better to let them approach, because then I know they are actually there because they like me.

I won't send you a friends request on social media, I won't intrude on your conversations at a munch, and I definitely won't invite myself along to a small group outing where 'everyone is invited'.

And, if that is so hard for me, imagine what wanting to advance higher on the hierarchy of connectedness I listed above is?

Terror-filled.

I am not proud of this, nor do I like it very much, and I am working on it.  But there it is.

Another element to my journal title is that every relationship that went at all right in my life has been at the impetus of my partner; I was the one receiving the interest and the being 'asked out'.  None of the dates I tried to start have ever worked out.

Kinda hard to reach out with that track record, no?

Now, my anxiety waxes and wanes, my self-worth sometimes rises, I sometimes just get the courage or the gumption or the sheer cussedness to make a step and ask for a connection.  I reach out and ask someone if they want to be friends.  Very often it is met with acceptance and reciprocal desire.  I say never, above, but never is not truly how it is; just rare.  Hopefully as this happens more and more I will gain more confidence and self-worth.  Maybe some day I will be comfortable asking someone out on a date.  But I have three decades of going the other way to work through, it will take a while.  And, it may take longer than any of us have or want.

So, I won't ask you out, yet, maybe; I want to but I can't.  But if you are interested, I will likely say yes.