Sean, seems we share membership to the same exclusive group. Or is that exclusion group?

Don't make me go southern on y'all.

Sean, you need to find an opportunity to name-drop your awesome goats cheese/fig/parma ham recipe at her! Or some other awesome recipe!

Or, alternatively (and I can never follow this advice, but it's good advice nontheless) you need to reflect that life is short, and just go ASK HER.

Sean, I feel your pain, but I am also kicking you in the pants and telling you to just talk to her, period, and the single/dating part can come later. You have many attractive qualities, but self-pity is not one of them. And I say that as someone in the same boat.

Most guys that I'm interested in seem to have no interest in me.

ION, walking from Soul Vegetarian over to Sticky Fingers is odd. First, you go by a bunch of hair salons and stores selling African stuff. Then, houses, getting progressively better-maintained as you go. Then you turn onto 14th, and suddenly, there's a mall there! Out of nowhere, a zillion chain stores and shiny things and huge signs.

I was actually working up the guts to ask her, but right now, she's using all of her free time to flirt with somebody else. Asking her out at this point seems a little tacky.

And I know self pity is not attractive. I just don't know how to stop that, except by not thinking about it. Which doesn't seem like it would help either.

And I know self pity is not attractive. I just don't know how to stop that, except by not thinking about it. Which doesn't seem like it would help either.

...my first thought was: "liquor!"...but that's probably not very practical.

Nah, I got nothin'. Asking someone out in cold blood boggles my mind.

Well, you can't stop feeling it, but you might want to think about the fact that those feelings are lies. Things ended badly with S, but there was a relationship there to end. That proves you can be attractive to a woman right there. Feeling that you aren't is a real feeling, but i isn't TRUTH.

The only way to change your circumstances is to step out of your comfort zone. Make a vow to speak to every woman you find remotely interesting. Not asking them out, just chatting with them. Once you get to that point, one of them will flirt back and then...

I guess I just don't know how to take my defeats. On West Wing, Josh Lyman once said he never learned what to do after you tell a girl you like her. I never learned even that much.

And as far as S goes.... I wound up with her because she persued me. My first reaction was actually that I wasn't interested, because something seemed not right with her. A reaction I should have stuck with. The things setting off alarm bells back then turned out to be what helped drive us apart. Really there's a lot of details about that that only a small handful of people know about, and I won't go into here.

But ultimately, I went out with S because I was tired of being lonely, and was feeling like she was the best I was going to do in this life. The end of that relationship has left me feeling like that was the best I'm going to do in this life.

I'm pretty damned lonely, and I've been lonely for much longer than I've been single. And I feel like my idiotic mistake cost me the time period where I had the best chance of finding somebody. Also, that the only women who are attracted to me are dangerously crazy women I need to flee from as fast as possible.

And really, i am going to try and stop with the self pity now. Probably by pretending to be a completely sexless being.

Sorkin men are sort of uniformly known for their lack of game, aren't they? Unfortunately, I think his strategy for this is, like, mushrooms.Which I can't endorse.