Returning to the dating scene after 6 years. : Relationship Forum ...

Hey all, joined up needing advice.

There is a girl at work who is flirting very aggressively with me at work so I took her out for a drink afterwards and talked for a bit.

My background is as follows.

I was sexually abused as a child which even with a decade of therapy leaves me with sometimes crippling trust issues and contributes to the social awkwardness and anxiety. I also was diagnosed with childhood onset schizophrenia before I entered middle school which became schizo-affective disorder bi-polar type. This contributes again the trust issues due to paranoia. Dating experience is limited at best which kinda blows. She knows none of this. I am 25 years old.

When I was 16 I got a first girlfriend and we dated for about a month, one day we went to a waterpark and she and I separated for about 30 mins and she ended up lost. When we hooked back up she was irate and cussing me out telling me I was cheating on her or some $#%^. I dealt with this for about 10 minutes when her father picked her up and left me behind. She called the next morning but I made it clear I wasn't going to be treated like that and we were done.

I didn't give up then, I dated a few other girls off and on and eventually transitioned into the online dating scene. I developed a few relationships up into the age of 19 where I fell head over heals even having not met the person face to face. They all ended up fizzling out after similar arguments to the one above. A few literally left holes in me due to how close I had come to them.

At 19 I gave up and while battling my mental illness which was full of constant ups and downs. After high school I kind of went into full isolation mode and had almost no contact with the ouside world other than work and the few friends I had. The lowest it got is when I ran out of meds in 2010 and overdosed on 100 - 325mg aspirin and about 13 - 300mg seroquel. I honestly don't know I made it out of that alive.

After a few months my Illness starting improving due to a somewhat better outlook on life. I still didn't want a relationship due to my feelings carried over from past relationships and time after time, ignored women who flirted constantly with me most men would never turn down, and these women are even EXTREMELY out of my league, and every time I ignored them or walked off when I reached my limit.

In the past few years my in activeness caused me to jump up to 300lbs, and my eating habits caught up with me which caused over the course of 3 months from initial symptoms almost ended with my gallbladder exploding while waiting for surgery.

Since then I've dropped about 40 lbs, starting walking 2 miles a day if not working. I work a very labor intensive job in the sun all day with shade. I also started attending college for Automotive Technology in Jan 2013 where I easily co-exist with all walks of life without the schizoid symptoms taking complete control.

Two days before I started my first semester my grandmother who raised me was diagnosed with stage 3 non-small cell lung cancer out of seemingly nowhere. While I was waiting for her biopsy results I had my first major hallucination since I was about 8 years old. I was also very out of it in class, spacing out and shaking. She died on March 12 2012 after the hospital burned holes in her lungs.
I took a week off from work and school and came back and have been passing all of my classes with a 3.5 gpa even while dealing with extreme stress which usually triggers psychotic episodes. I know when they're coming so I can brace myself and ride it out over the next few days with double doses of Seroquel.

Well this girl at work has been all over me the last week and I initially did my usual "oblivious to your flirting" routine but as I worked with her more something felt odd, I actually felt she is completely different in every way from the women I've dated in the past.

I stepped WAY out of my comfort zone and asked her if she wanted to chill and talk after work. Everything turned out well and I told her we will chill again but didn't really ask her out. My past feelings and making my fight or flight mechanism go into hyperdrive.

I really want to just call her tonight and while not talking about the past abuse or schizo-affective tell her I really like her and want to date but explain to her that I haven't been a relationship in a long time and would like to take it slowly. Hopefully she'll understand.

Advice and encouragement is welcome, my friends and family aren't helping. All they're telling me to do is get her in bed right off the bat which is pissing me off slightly.

Source: http://www.psychforums.com/relationship/topic114973.html

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