Scared of Rejection

I understand that you feel afraid of rejection. Since most people hide their feelings, you would have no way of knowing that everyone shares your fear! This means that if you wait to take action until you have no fear, you will end up a lonely old man! What you along with the rest of the human race need to do is to feel afraid and take action anyway.

You said it's not easy to run into her, but you have run into her before, so you will again. You can either wait to run into her or be proactive and find a way to make contact.

If you want to get the ball rolling, phone her. Tell her that you've enjoyed your recent talks, that speaking with someone who is so bright is very refreshing to you. Tell her that you've missed seeing her and that you would like to continue the conversation. Ask if you could get together.

When you get together, let the conversation flow naturally. You don't need to jump the gun and 'propose' to her right away. Enjoy your time together and let the connection evolve naturally. Watch for signals from her that she is romantically interested. You are looking for her to send you green lights that say she's interested in becoming more involved.

These green lights include: approachable body language; eye contact; arranging to bump into you; making physical contact, etc. When you receive green lights, you will feel less afraid to move the relationship to a deeper level. My consult Is She Interested in Me? can help assess her degree of interest.

As for your fear of losing the friendship, don't move to deepen the relationship until you get the sense that she is interested in more than friendship. If you wait until you see her green lights, then your fear of losing the friendship will be moot, since she will be telling you that she wants more than friendship. As you broach the subject of wanting more than friendship, you can still share with her how important her friendship is to you and that you don't want to lose it. This will be very endearing to her and will make her feel even closer to you and more desirous of a deeper relationship.

As for your concern about your age difference, this shouldn't be an issue for her. Women tend to be attracted to older men anyway. It's not as if you lied about your age in the first place. I'm sure that the age issue is yours, not hers. You feel ashamed that you didn't qualify earlier, and this is why you wanted her to think you're younger than you are. If you are comfortable with your age and the age at which you qualified, so will she be.

The real issue here is how hard you are on yourself. Each time you self-attack, you lower your self-esteem another notch. The lower a person's self-esteem, the more he/she tends to self-attack. You're in a vicious cycle. I have to wonder if your self-talk is an internalization of the critical voice of one or both of your parents. Each time you are hard on yourself, examine who you sound like. Mom? Dad?

With each self-attack, identify the true origin of the voice in your head and say to yourself, 'Hi mom (or his dad). There you go putting me down again.' As you become conscious of who is talking down to you, you will begin to separate you from them. As you separate, tell yourself kind and loving things. Tell yourself that you did the best you could. You qualified as soon as you could. Be kind to yourself and realize that your performance was certainly impeded by your low self-esteem.

When you are more forgiving and understanding of yourself, you will find that others mirror back to you the same level of acceptance. You sound like a sensitive and caring man. You appreciate this woman for who she is. This is what will draw her to you, not your age or when you qualified! Let me know what happens.