Growing up, I discovered I had strong and intense emotions (this I later traced originated from my upbringing from infancy right through early childhood; I had minimal direct masculine influence from my dad). In my childhood years I did a great many things with too intense emotions. I loved too strongly, I got angry too strongly, I reacted too strongly to things around me. Due to this, I was emotionally blackmailed by my mother (she did this out of ignorance) who either shamed my strong emotional outbursts at her and others or emotionally abandoned me. This scared me terribly and to cope with this fear of shame and abandonment, I learned to bottle up my emotions, a really bad action to take as this led to a fearful, non confrontational, low testosterone, low self-esteemed, low masculine personality. I was too eager to please, allowed my boundaries to be crossed to self harming limits, too nice, too soft, too compromising, too timid, too tense and every unmasculine behavioral trait that accompanies a male child being coerced to bottle up their emotions. I summarily grew and existed on a plane of fear. The deep rooted emotional fear of abandonment and loss of love. This was my narrow, juvenile subconscious worldview.
I later painfully discovered that bottling up my emotions didn't actually keep me from being hurt with reference to my childhood abandonment experience. It did the opposite. It enhanced my ability to get hurt because I gave people and situations power over me, power only I had control over. I realise now I was my worst enemy, my sole internal saboteur. And this was done over and over again since I seemed to welcome these abuse.
This lack of boundaries was made even clearer in my romantic relationships. I always knew something was wrong from the first girl I ever asked in my third year at college (300 level) who said no even though she gave me all the "green lights" before then. And since I lost all my appetite, lost interest in all that I enjoyed that day and had my first depressive episode after my first rejection, I knew there was a problem. What the problem was, I didn't know.
What makes the whole situation funny and ridiculous is that it wasn't as if I was a a stranger to being desired by ladies. I was actually directly asked out by a number of ladies during this period. But my worldview was dominated by the rejections I received and potential fear of rejection over the love and desire I was shown.