Big Mistake

Today, I came back to my digs in Namur in order to bring last year's course notes and syllabi, but also clothes and food. Staple elements.

At 11 am, I went to the city hall in order to hear the mayor's speech on the occasion of the Fêtes de Wallonie in Namur. The matter is this speech only started at 11.40. If there is any non-Walloon who reads this, I have to say there is an urban legend that says that Namur is a slower city, where people talk slower and… think slower. Even technology works slower. It appears to be true on some occasions.

Anyway, after the speech, we were offered a drink (beer or orange juice). I walked back to my digs. With no internet connexion, I was unable to do anything useful (and I'm not talking about writing posts on this blog), then I decided to go… walking, once again. I knew there would be another official speech to be given by Rudy Demotte, our Ministre-président.

I climbed at the top of the Citadel, and so did official vehicules transporting ambassadors, members of parliaments and ministers. But I realized I wouldn't be allowed to listen to the speech, for it was to be done in a giant tent that you could enter only if you were a VIP. On the opposite side of the road, roughly 50 people beloging to the RWF (Rassemblement Wallonie France, "struggling" for Wallonia — how dumb can be!) were demonstrating. Rather silently, I must say.

Later, I went walking in the city, where groups were singing and people drinking. The streets were slightly being filled with waste. I walked and I nearly bumped into Alexander, that old friend of mine. I was glad I met him, because I hadn't seen anyone else I knew. We both went eating crisps (delicious food, believe me), then we made our way into the overcrowded streets of Namur. At 10, there was a fireworks show to be seen. It lasted 30 minutes — definitely the longest in my entire life.

Then I met another friend of mine, a girl that was living in a digs in the same building as me and with whom I've always got on very well. I spend the following three hours with her and two friends of hers, we were all drinking tiny glasses of pékèt (the local Walloon drink). Round 1 am, just before my friend left us to go back to her flat, I was foolish enough to dare asking her "the" question (basically if she wanted to go out with me), because after all I was a little tipsy, otherwise I'd be too shy.

To make short, let's say that she turned on my invitation by saying that she wasn't interested in me and that I was the exact opposite of what she was looking for.

The last time I got rejected was 14 months ago, and the reason was that the girl I asked out had just been asked out ten minutes earlier!!! You can imagine how I was: destroyed, shattered, annihilated, obliterated. Something like this in my mind:


(Illustration for Magic card "Obliterate", by Kev Walker.)

And I looked like this:

(Illustration of Magic card "Assassinate", by Kev Walker.)

Or that:
(Illustration for Magic card "Incinerate", by Zoltan Boros.)

Basically the "Wrath of God" effect:
(Illustration for Magic card "Wrath of God", by Kev Walker. Man, that guy's great at drawing destruction and pain! By the way, this is my favourite piece of Magic artwork.)

So, I was devastated back in that time. And I had to deal with it alone, because it happened just before the summer holiday. I had hardly anything to do to busy myself with. I don't like losing social contact. That's why I'm so happy to go back to university — even if I know I'll regret these words very soon…

Back in June 2006, I got rejected because of a question asked too late, or else she'd accepted.

Since then, I never practised courtship with a girl. Maybe because I feared I'd need a great deal of time to go out with a girl, but also because I'm hopeless at asking girls out.

I went surfing Wikipedia to look how to translate "se prendre un râteau" and I found a link to another article about love-shyness. Here are some interesting bits:

Love shyness is a phrase created by psychologist Brian G. Gilmartin to describe a specific type of severe chronic shyness. According to his definition, published in Shyness & Love: Causes, Consequences, and Treatments (1987), love-shy people find it difficult to be assertive in informal situations involving potential romantic or sexual partners. For example, a heterosexual love-shy male will have trouble initiating conversations with women because of strong feelings of anxiety.

Dr. Gilmartin researched this phenomenon exclusively in heterosexual men, concluding that (1987, p.1) love-shyness "afflicts approximately 1.5 percent of all American males...[and] will effectively prevent about 1.7 million [U.S.] males...from ever marrying and from ever experiencing any form of intimate sexual contact with women."

There's also a list of criteria, enlightened by reseach on a large number of heterosexual men. I don't correspond to most criteria, but this one struck my mind:

(…) he is a male who desperately wishes to have a relationship with a woman, but does not have one because of his shyness. In other words, he is not a man who consciously chooses not to have romantic or intimate relationships; rather, he wants such relationships but cannot establish them.

That's my problem, I admit it, and I'm dealing with it. The proof is that I actually dared ask someone out. Real love-shy people could not. And most criteria don't apply to me, for instance because I do have many social contacts (I mean at university), including with girls. Apart from that, I also discovered I'm afflicted with involuntary celibacy:

Involuntary celibacy is the state of a person who has not established an intimate relationship or engaged in sexual intercourse for reasons other than voluntary celibacy or sexual abstinence. The term is used especially for adults who, despite general expectations, have had little to no sexual or romantic experience.

Definition

An involuntarily celibate person is someone who fails to initiate or sustain a sexual or romantic relationship, despite his/her desire to experience such a relationship. Afflicted people may suffer from loneliness, frustration, (…).

They also say there are criteria, but just a couple apply to me. My case isn't hopeless, after all. I really want to have a girlfriend. I'll turn 20 in five months' time and that's one of my goals up to then (apart from passing for all my exams). Wish me luck!