Sup y'all I asked out a girl I've really liked she denied the invitation :/ I feel pretty sad about it and I don't really have someone to talk to about this since my closest friends have horrible views on women and relationships in general. They'd just give me horrible advice that would just get me more upset, so I guess I'll go and rant about it here while I listen to sad music lol.

I got to know her through a friend group that formed after I finished highschool and we still hang out as a group every once in a while if everyone's in town so I see her on a semi regular basis.

I first started having feelings for her a long time ago, back when I was up to all kinds of stupid shit and a generally annoying person, I like to hope that I've been improving although I'll probably look back in a few years and think the same thing :D. Anyways, our friend group went on a vacation back then and I tried to kiss her towards the end of it which she just kind of pushed me away. I still have intrusive thoughts about it to this day 😖.

Safe to say I had no idea how to approach a girl back then and I'm still struggling a lot with it to this day. I'm pretty good at socializing and getting people to laugh and I also think I'm decent at flirting but once it get's to intimacy I get extremely scared of making advances so when I do it just turns into me being very awkward. That's probably why I generally avoid situations where someone would expect me to become intimate with them. Just thinking about kissing someone gives me huge anxiety although I also want to experience it, which is why I have never been in a relationship and only had a few intimate experiences with a friend who lives in another city. I identified as demisexual for a while due to that but I'm kind of unsure about it now. Maybe it's also some psychological issue going back to my childhood.

So after that happened I kind of gave up on her and that was that, until like 10 months ago. She texted me out of nowhere asking for some advice with her younger brother who apparently had drug problems, since I'm somewhat experienced with drugs and addiction and I also study psychology. I gave her some advice on how to approach and support someone suffering from addiction and gave her some resources like Narcotics Anonymous etc., so far so good. I then asked her whether she wants to talk about how she's coping and to my surpise she did, and really opened up. We talked about how we both feel responsible for our younger siblings (we're both the oldest) and how it can be hard when you don't get through to them. She seemed really thankful for that and I felt so happy that I was able to give her some kind of support dealing with that shit.

At that point the feelings were starting to come back. I started to really admire her again. She's super smart and you we've had long talks about law and the feasibility of a peaceful revolution given german law (she studies law), feminism and some other stuff. I've learned a lot from her and she also seemed to appreciate and enjoy our conversations which we have been having more and more of since she texted me about her brother. Shortly after Christmas we were on our way to a club when she rightuflly dunked on me for a bad prositution take which got me motivated to look into the issue from a marxist perspective. I found the book "revolting prostitutes" being recommended on lemmygrad and I went through it in 3 days before I gave it to her for new years eve, which she was super happy about. She was rellay suprised and had the most beatiful smile when she opened the book. All in all I had the feeling that everything was going pretty well.

We just came back from a short vacation with a part of the friend group mentioned above. That is, her and three other (male) friends were visiting a common (male) friend. So she was kind of part of the "guys vacation" which was a bit awkward but it all went well and everyone had a good time. We (as in me and her) even enjoyed a stroll at the beach with the rest of the guys being like 100m behind us. I was feeling like I was walking on clouds, it was great :) I couldn't get myself to make a move tho, since all the other guys were there and that really gets my anxiety regarding intimacy going so left it at that, which I think was the right call. By now I've figured it's better to let it all develop at a pace I'm comfortable with since I don't want to put myself in a situation were my anxiety fucks me over again.

She called me this morning because she had apparently lost her wallet on the flight back. She found it like 10 min later and we texted a bit joking about it. I then decided to shoot my shot and ask her out for dinner. I figured it would be a good time since it's not very common that were both in the same place and I didn't want to wait for another few months to get the next chance. Also we just had some nice moments together on vacation so I didn't want to lose the momentum. Anyways, she responded that she wouldn't really have time and we should just hang out with the whole friend group instead.

Now I'm having a really hard time interpreting this and just feel sad overall since I had a really good feeling about this. I don't now whether this is her way of saying that she's not ready for a proper date yet, or whether she just sees me as a friend? I've been questioning everything I was interpreting about how things were going and wondering whether I was just stupid and looking through rose tinted shades (is that a saying?). Maybe proposing dinner was also too uncreative? I'm also scared that I'll never find somebody and my time is running out. Generally I need a lot of time of getting to know someone before I can imaging having a relationship with someone and she seemed like the perfect match. I admire so much about her and don't really know anyone like that :( What am I supposed to do? Try to forget about her or keep taking it slow? I feel like her response was quite clear and I don't want to annoy her anyomre if the feeling isn't mutual but then again I can't imagine there are no feelings at all on her side and feel like I shouldn't give up on it yet.

Shit sucks but writing this makes me feel a bit better at least. Also I'll go and play some poker with a few friends now so I'm looking forward to that. Anyways, feel free to give me some advice it would be much appreciated. Y'all seem to be decent people who have more experience with this stuff so I'd love to hear your thoughts comrades <3