u/fakeprincess

I’ve been trying to get romanian deadlifts right for 5 months now and I’m not getting anywhere with them. It’s *so* much to focus on— the hip hinge movement doesn’t come naturally to me, I have to correct my anterior pelvic tilt before hinging, I have weak ankles and abs, and because my torso is so long my arms are either going away from my shins causing me to feel the exercise in my lower back (bad) or I have to use my shoulders a lot to keep the bar close to my body.

It doesn’t seem that there’s any real alternative to the RDL, I’ve watched all the videos etc. and it’s still so unnatural feeling, I’m only feeling it in my hams and glutes half the time, and I can’t go up in reps or weight at all without it all going to shit. I suspect my height / torso proportion is giving me a hard time and I really want to know what made this exercise click for other similarly proportioned people who struggled.

Someone sent me a “crush” on partiful a couple months back. People either don’t express interest in me often or I don’t pick up on it, and I have been rejected a lot, so I’ve been single for 8 years and went into a bit of a spiral trying to figure out who sent it (it remains anonymous unless you send one back and then the app tells you that you matched).

I looked up how the feature worked and narrowed down a list of people I thought it might be and sent a crush to some people, including my super hot guy friend whom I’ve known for 15 years. I didn’t get any matches, and forgot about it for a couple of months until said hot guy friend rsvp’d to my birthday party in the app and then 4 minutes later sent a crush back to me and we “matched.”

He didn’t say anything about it at my party, but neither did I. I kind of want to send him a lighthearted text that leaves the door open for us to actually try dating, but anytime I’ve asked a friend out or expressed interest it’s ruined the friendship. I’m also aware that it’s *such* a silly app feature and he very well could have sent it as a joke when he logged into the app to rsvp and got the notification that someone crushed on him.

Is it even worth me saying something to him or should I just wait and see if he says anything? I don’t want to miss an opportunity if we both would be open to dating but are feeling shy about it, but I’m also really tired of putting myself out there and getting rejected so I wish there was a really low-stakes way to do it. I feel like this is the only subreddit where people will understand my struggles and not only tell me I need to grow up and talk to him!