I think that this:

I'm waiting 48 hours to call so I don't seem desperate.

is cancelled out by this:

I'm a 26-year-old guy who's been on 30 dates this year in hopes of finding a woman to build a long, healthy relationship with

and, well, this:

I've never fallen for somebody so quickly, and the thought of her not liking me tore me apart inside.

Dude, you're in your twenties and desperate for someone to love you. That's not healthy. Healthy people don't get distraught at the thought of a first date not liking them. I'm with Amy in that you likely already tipped the woman off to your desperation and that's why she was distant. The fact that she said she'd go out with you could mean that she didn't know how to kindly say no, or it could be that she's as desperate as you for a relationship and is willing to overlook your rampant neediness. Not good.

I'm an emotional guy, and the thought of her not liking me is SO hurtful that this will take a while to get over -- if I ever do.

Holy crap. Reading this letter, I think good advice for many of the people we dissect and mock here would be to read their own missives as if someone else had written them. So, LW, pretend you're reading your letter for the first time in an advice column and see what you'd think about the person who wrote it. My advice: examine why you need to find a long, healthy relationship right this second. Wanting that as an end result of dating is fine, but needing it so much that the thought of a woman you just met not liking you tears you apart is not (but it is very telling).

Though many young men grow up wanting to be superheroes, I'm thinking that you don't really want to be I'll-never-get-over-it-if-the-woman-I-went-on-one-date-with-doesn't-agree-to-stay-with-me-forever Guy. Though the costume would have to be pretty amusing.

Wow!

I agree that there's a good chance that he's giving off a creepy vibe.

How the hell did he work himself into such an infatuation before he even met her?

Re: 30 Dates

This guy may be running into the fact that the girls he's meeting, at his age, are getting past their 'emotional guy' phase. They don't find his sensitivity and vulnerability attractive any longer.

I wonder what it was about her that ignited his hormones so much. If I were a bit more Freudian in my outlook, I'd speculate that a certain gesture, intonation, stance, whatever, reminded him of his mother.

Enjoyed the reference to Miss Polly Urethane, Amy: "if she's the sort of woman you pick up in an adult bookstore, then take home and blow up with your bike pump."

Oh dear. I detect the type of neediness that springs from having absolutely no understanding of what an adult relationship entails. Boyo thinks Girlfriend will be the be-all and end-all of his existence, and will be sadly disappointed when she turns out to be just another human with wants/needs/desires of her own.... He'd be much better off with Rosy O'Palm and a collection of Jenna Jameson dvd's.

Dude. Stop it, just stop it. Figure out who YOU are first, before you try to figure out who you are WITH SOMEONE ELSE. Cliched as it may seem, "to thine own self be true", because if you aren't real about who YOU are? NO GIRL will want to be with you. Why be an extension of someone else? Dating is supposed to be for fun, to find out about people who you might like to have a relationship with. But the most important relationship is the one you have with yourself! You might want to work on that some more, before you try to have one with someone else.

Just stayin'.

PS - Needy guys are a definite turn-off to almost all of the girls I know.

Dude, a few things:

First, calm down! You're only 26 years old, and lotsa guys don't marry until they're past 30. You aren't up against the clock or anything.

Second, calm down! You seem to be treating the whole dating thing as a painful duty, when it's supposed to be kind of fun.

Third, calm down! Ease up on the emotional stuff if you can. Like Kat writes above, no woman is going to make you whole. She can't. Once you wrap your arms around that idea, you can get more comfortable and confident in your own skin, and can even play things a little coy (if that's the right word), like Miss Alkon advises some of her clients. The girls will dig you more if you do that.

Now, don't get me wrong -- I can see where you're coming from (it's not for nothing my office mates called me Commander Dateless or 0-for-90s back in the day), but I suspect your coming on a little strong in the wrong way.

This guy needs to do BOTH of them a favor and not call her back.

Then he needs to get into therapy and learn what the hell happened to him to set him off like this.

Women can smell desperation and it stinks of weakness. And healthy women aren't attracted to "weak."

I'm used to seeing this kind of stuff from 40-year-old women desperate to have a baby.

LW, women are attracted to men with their shit together, and you come across as an emotional fixer-upper.

This woman may like you, or not. If she doesn't, then she's not the right person for you, no matter how awesome she is.

Also, listen to Old RPM Daddy and calm down!

Flynne:

I think the letter writer has a bigger problem; there are women who like the vibes he is giving off, because they want someone pliable. He needs to be careful or he will find himself attached to someone who thinks of him as a Play-Doh fun set she can make and remake constantly until he has no clue who he really is.

Oh for fuck's sake. Go jerk off a couple of times (like a real dude) and you'll be fine.

I know Amy doesn't throw these LW's to us right away, so I hope this guy got some sleep before he called her, otherwise he probably has the restraining order by now.

He sounds like the poster boy for that Barenaked Ladies lyric--"I have a tendency to wear my mind on my sleeve, I have a history of losing my shirt--" The old phrase refers to wearing one's heart on one's sleeve, and in this case the line works either way.

I feel kinda sorry for the guy, because I always wonder how bad it has to be before you write to an advice column, especially one that uses the tough-love approach! I hope he took her advice to heart.

sadly, I think you need to get thyself to a therapist STAT - this kind of emotional immaturity is only going to lead to life-long misery if you don't try to get professional help ASAP. no one likes a desperate whiner.

What is it about her that infatuates you?

This is coming from a guy who married a cute, funny, brave, adventurous, smart girl after knowing her for not even a year. Oh, and we had a bit of a language and cultural barrier as well, but let's not let that get in the way of a good story. Her parents, being survivors of Hiroshima, weren't exactly thrilled about their daughter marrying a Marine either. Well, sometimes the impossible really does work out, but clearly nobody is ever going to pay for my advice.

If she's into you enough for a second date, find out if there's any there there. Impossible as this may be to believe, there is more than one good looking woman in the world who will date you. What do you have in common? Do you like the same things? Does she bring out the best in you? What about money? (You do know it is the leading cause of breakups, right?)

Or just be real lucky, like me. No charge.

Yeah, yeah, everyone is so right.

But I still remember a hottie I saw on campus many moons ago. She passed me by several times on campus, seemed to want to talk. I think I am still in love with her.

That said, I have been snubbed, rejected, dismissed, overlooked, laughed at, stood up, ignored and whatever else probably deep into the four digits of times.

LW, get used to it. It happens. There are other girls, and they all have three holes. You only have to bat .150 or so to keep yourself busy.

So get busy.

Piggybacking on what Kat said:

One of the best pop psych books I ever read was "A Knight In Shining Armor," by a shrink named Harvey Hornstein, IIRC. Dr. Hornstein had built a practice working with men who had had numerous romances start well and then go hideously sour, and he had identified what he called "Man-Servant Syndrome." The genesis of Man-Servant Syndrome is the man's belief that women have the magical ability to make their lives okay, to make *them* okay -- the real-life ability to kiss the frog and turn him into a prince. (In shrink-speak, Hornstein refers to this as "libidinal bounty. Whatever.) He decides he has to serve a woman to induce her to do her magic for him. The service takes three basic types -- doing bold deeds in front of the woman (the guy who flexes his muscles, gets in fights over insults to "his woman," etc), doing things for the woman (lifting, toting, paying for stuff, the whole "don't worry your pretty head about that" thing) and teaching things to women, which I call the Henry Higgins Complex (I always attracted that type.)

The ugliness starts six months or a year later, when he realizes that despite the girlfriend, he's still the same schmuck he always was, with the same problems and the same self-doubt. At this point, he doesn't realize "Oh, shoot, she never had the magical power to begin with." No, he is convince she's holding out on him, cheating him of the libidinal bounty he has *EARNED*, damn it. And the fighting begins.

I've been in this relationship. I'm betting most women have been in one like this somewhere along the line. And yeah, Kat, it sure does sound like this guy is expecting this girl to kiss him and turn him into a prince.

When I first met my ex, I was convinced I had to put up with a certain amount of BS to have a relationship. She turned out to be a fixer. I often wondered if she was acting down to my expectations. We made a fine pair...

PS I admit I was a head case and she probably resented it although I don't think she was consciously aware of it. Her Mom was the Puppet Master in the family.

Some people are very shy and/or introverted. I'm a gregarious introvert. At 48, I still feel very awkward in new social situations. Online or once I get to know you and am comfortable, I'm very open (often to the point where people think I'm an extrovert.)

When I first meet people I don't like looking them in the eye for an extended period--it feels like I'm intruding on their space. It takes a lot of effort during job interviews to force myself to do that.

If you like her, give it a chance. (Though recognize that if she is shy and/or introverted, you may not like the results.)

Oh, and please stop the 48 hours bullshit. You're 26, act like a fucking man. If you want a woman, a real woman, don't play childish bullshit games and if she does, dump her and move on.

Here's what you need to do. All those women in your life, that you have on those pedestals? You need to reach up there and pull them down. Otherwise you are condemned to a life of misery. Because you're the kind of guy who will attract women who are borderlines and narcissists, and look for men to prey on. Take this from someone who knows.

You need to get to know women as human beings, not goddesses. You need to find out that they have weaknesses, make mistakes, mess up their lives sometimes, just like everyone else does. They have self-doubts, unmet desires, and daily-life annoyances, just like everyone else. Once you've done this, being in the presence of a woman won't freak you out so badly.

Uh, I'm already running. You sound like trouble, OP. Heed the "handful of sand" advice. The harder you try to hold on to a fistful of sand, the faster it sifts away. Hold your hand out flat and the sand will rest there easily.
Try to latch on to this girl, or trying to make her like you is not going to work. She will either like you or she won't. Get used to it. Affection must work both ways whether you like it or not.

Dana-

Very interesting! Wow, this theory sheds some light on a few of my past BFs. In my experience, this kind of approach involved the guy looking at me literally like a starving, begging puppy dog waiting for a treat he knows is there somewhere, watching my every move to see if or when i'd give whatever magic "good boy" validation he was looking for from me; making a big SHOW of all the tremendous sacrifices and hero-like favors he did for me, which were always trivial and done only to manipulate me and benefit him; making me entirely responsible for the state of his ego and for maintaining it, i.e. knowing when it was lacking and in need of ME to restore it for him, thereby making me entirely responsible whenever he didn't feel like a hero. What fun! LW, don't do those things! They are guaranteed chics-be-gone behaviors!

Thanks for the book recommendation, Dana!

I gave my little brother Amy's old book, Free Advice (if I remember correctly?). He was falling into the putting-women-on-pedestals habit. She talks about figuring out who you are before trying to embark on a relationship. My brother found it very helpful -- and of course FUNNY -- as did I. Seems like it would be a good one for this LW.