Unavoidable Avoidance

Here's the break down: you like a guy, but you are too scared to talk to him. Then amazingly one day he talks to you. You have a great time with him one night. You still like him. The next day you avoid him at all costs. You know that you are avoiding him, dare I say hiding from him, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. All too often you continue avoiding him until you have totally obliterated any chance of forming a relationship with him. Unfortunately, you have successfully made him think that you are not interested. You continue to like him until he goes for another girl, at which point you convince yourself that you don't like him anymore and try to find another guy that you're interested in. Then the vicious cycle begins again.

While I was writing, I thought of another avoidance scenario: A guy likes you, but you don't know it; you think you are just friends. Then you realize he likes you more than you like him. You freak out. You avoid him, until you feel like you have extinguished any feelings he might have had for you. Eventually you try to be friends with him again, with an incredible feeling of guilt for having treated him so badly.

In both situations, you know you are avoiding him, yet you can't do anything to stop it no matter how much you want to. In the first case, ideally you would talk to him and act like a normal person. In the second scenario, ideally you would talk to him and clear things up. Notice how both solutions require confrontation. Yet regardless of the fact that you know you're not doing what you should, or even what you want, you can't get away from the avoidance stage. It is unavoidable.

There are exceptions of course. But I think I have identified these as outside forces which have to be greater than the natural tendency of avoidance.