I am completely overwhelmed when I perceive chemistry with a woman (M/24/german)
There's a girl in my gym and we had a lot of eye contact for quite a while now. Been going to the gym since 2023 and i had kind of a more intense eye contact with a few girls now I'd say, but this is the first time in the gym where she makes it pretty obvious that she likes me (prolonged eye contact, walking by me and turning head to me with a smile, pretty sure she was looking at me through the mirror today). So i feel like there's chemistry between us despite never talking to each other.
I'm overwhelmed because my body reacts to her, when she's close, like it's a tiger. My heart rate goes up and I'm in "alarm mode" which is mainly my social anxiety/insecurity (CPTSD) speaking i think. I've been meditating for nearly two months now and I think it's starting to help but this situation is stressing me out.
As I said I'm an anxious person in general (even tho I don't look like I am most of the time) and have all kinds of insecurities and whenever I perceive that a woman I find attractive is attracted to me it all gets 10x times worse.
I have not been in a real relationship yet. Also I'm a virgin.
FYI I only asked a girl out once (3 years ago) and told her i thought she was cute. It was I'd say 10/10 awkward and I didn't know what to even say and I had no idea what I was doing, all i knew was i had to tell her that because I couldn't live with the tension between her and me anymore. Turns out she was also way too young for me... so it was not a enriching experience to say the least. I was proud that I did it tho.
The thing is, this was at a weekend trip with people from church, so I saw her for 3 days straight and I think that's the reason I could even muster up the courage to tell her that + dude the tension really was too much for me, I kinda had to get rid of it. And even though she admitted having feelings towards me too, we never really spoke since.
Back to the girl in the gym; I feel this pressure so my way to deal with it is to logic my way out of it. "She's not really my type", "I don't think she's a good fit for me", stuff like that.
tho I kinda want to talk to her, not because i think she's the one or something like that but just to gain experience and be more brave (maybe that's also me applying logic again idk). Also Talking to a woman isn't a proposal, my mind always goes to far in such situations. But it just feels so f*cking unnatural to me and Idk what I'd even say.
But yeah thinking differently won't solve the problem cause my nervous system will hyper activate every time we're close anyway. The only thing I could get out of me was a smile (or me trying to smile like a human..) when we walked past each other.
Point is: I'm disappointed with myself that it occupies so much head space and I don't seem to be able to act on it. Also I think of all kinds of reasons (I'm not good looking enough f.e.) to not talk to her, or any girl, to calm myself down so I'm not constantly disappointed with me. In theory i think I could be someone who is good with girls (witty, not a 'nice guy', good listener,...) and it kinda eats me up from the inside that I'm 24 and wasting my potential and won't find a relationship.