Re: 26 and never had a boyfriend...why can't I fall in love?

Dear Tom,

Thanks for your reply. It's very complicated to explain as I don't understand it myself, and in addition to that English is not my mother tongue so some things are very difficult to express if you don't have the right words. Nothing particular happens, it's just that all of a sudden I have a totally different view of the guy who used to be a close friend. I get to know him better and better, and the more I know him the more comfortable I feel around him and somehow it keeps growing. It just gradually develops and then one morning I wake up thinking "Hey, this is a really wonderful guy!"

But at the same time I think that I have an extreme fear of getting hurt, so subconsciously I "prevent" being hurt by not permitting myself to fall in love in the first place. Or just plain denying that I'm in love with someone. Does that make sense? I personally think that it's a very cowardly attitude but for some reason I can't do anything about it.

I'm still convinced that one day it'll all work out for me but in the meantime, I feel a little under pressure even though I try not to let it influence me too much. But in my very huge family there's one of my uncles who is close to 40 and who never had a girlfriend in his life, and poor him is getting picked on a lot from his numerous brothers and sisters who are all married with millions of children. I just don't want to be him in 10 years, poor him. When I was a kid, I thought it was funny how they picked on him but when I got older I started to realize how much it must hurt him and that he really had to deal with a lot of very spiteful comments and I started to defend him. Everytime I'm with my family, I can tell that they are starting to wonder about me as well...well screw them but still it's not easy to not care about your family thinking that you are a spinster (which I'm not!). Tweet