gushing desperation

If there is one kind of behavior I find most unnerving it is when someone gushes towards or about me. It is bad enough, when you pay me a simple compliment, that I recoil. Lay it on real thick, throw in sexual innuendo, or continue to pursue after my response, you start creeping me out. Try to impress me in any way, and you try impress the wrong person. I will either be oblivious to it, or be put-off by it. Offer your phone number, insist you wish to chat with me elsewhere, especially MSN or Yahoo, and I will back away. Quickly.

In the social not-working or online dating setting, People take the simple act of logging-on, or adding to the ‘buddies’ list, as a sign that I want to ‘get it on’ with that person. They write to me in very ‘loving’, ‘lusting’ or ‘longing’ terms. Often, I cannot react in the same way. First, I cannot be that forward unless I know the person that well. Second, I am not that skilled in the language of lust, neither able to read beyond the words nor express in words that I am confident will relay the correct impression. Thirdly, if it don’t spark immediately, the opposite party may have added too much fuel for there to be the proper fire. Fourthly, I tend to be dense, oblivious, naive, or whatever you wish to call it. I tend not to pick-up on signs unless they are blunt, and tend to recoil from blunt signs. It takes time for me to gauge a person. Because of these four reasons, I tend to meter my conversation until I have an idea who the person is and what his intent it. Sometimes, I will chat with a person who has been gushing towards me, as long as I neither feel threatened not grossed-out. Cross the line, and I will avoid the conversation and, likely, avoid you.

I think of this after receiving a correspondence from someone I dropped from a ‘buddies’ list who sent me one too many ‘pictures found on the Internet’ in the inbox, reminded of another who, in every conversation, seems desperate to meet me, and reminded of an ‘in real life’ acquaintance whom, because he appears that desperate, I am trying to avoid to the point I avoid going out in Allentown. I do not want people to be ‘desperate’ for me. They are desperate from someone, more than likely, whom I am not. I understand their feelings. I felt the same way, too, about others. I have many of the same doubts and fears they do. I do not believe they are bad people. I still find it unnerving and scary.