What am I doing wrong? Attention from men

[Treetopssofee]

WTF

I'm a happily invisible to men menopausal woman.

Until the last month or so! Men are paying me attention and I don't know why, I don't like it, and I cannot for the life of me figure out what I've done to unwittingly encourage it.

What am I doing wrong? I like the safety of being irrelevant and invisible and unfuckable. For context I was a very early "developed" tween and got a lot of unwanted attention from grown men which I've been delighted to age out of.

I don't make it my job to make small talk with performatively lonely looking older men in coffee shops

I don't make myself small for man splainers.

I don't laugh at shit jokes

I don't step out of the way first on footpaths

Hatred. Yep you really hate me for not wanting to interact with men.

How does it affect you so badly I wonder?

I don’t think people hate you OP, we pity you 😂

Okay

What do you think I'm missing out on by having as little to do with men as I possibly can?

I hate attention so I get where you are coming from but I don't see men as just "men". I would hate for someone to just define me as a "woman". I'm a human being first and foremost and that's how I see other people, men and women. But I don't have any traumatic experiences so my vision isn't clouded by that, which surely makes it easier. I only avoid men who aren't earnest and who treat me like a woman and not a fellow human being.

What if that is what's happening? People (including men) are just treating you nicely and don't care about the fact that you have a vagina. If you have never had male friends I suppose it's difficult to take in. I have a normal father, brothers and sons so I might be biased.

If men just treating me nicely and no differently to men, then why did they stop for a decade and a half when I went and got not-young?

This is not a unique experience to me there's another current thread going about it.

I never said that I've had no male friends. Because I have.

I never said I had a bad relationship with my father, because I didn't.

I never said I've never been close to my brother, because I have.

I think you might have super-imposed an idea that I came out of a nunnery, had an isolated trauma with a bad egg, and have been hiding away in social isolation ever since.

This, character and back story hasn't come from me or my posts, because I've had a full life with all kinds of relationships. These are all your assumptions. I do not invest in men any more. That doesn't make me some kind of under exposed wildling who wouldn't know my own shadow and makes fire with flint (actually I do that sometimes for fun. But can also use a boiler 😉)

I don’t hate you. I think you are mentally ill and need some help with that.

And what is your diagnosis?

Give me a list of symptoms, because obviously if you're TRUELY concerned that I'm having some sort of MH crisis, you will want me sign posting myself to professionals right?

What am I presenting with?

What's so "mad" about having not missed men, when they wrote me off?

As well as earphones and a hat could you wear a big lapel badge that says Fuck Off. They will notice you, but they will be looking at you in fear and won’t want to interact.

Saying the OP’s vision “ is clouded” is quite pejorative is it not?! Most sensible women are more wary of strange men than they are of unknown women if they have any common sense.

Just a thought. I don't tend to speak to or smile at women I don't know not because I have "written them off" but more because, pleasant as they may appear to be, I suspect they would not be grateful for attention from strangers. Are you sure it was this, rather than some aversion from knowing you, that led to men "ignoring" you. Though I can't say why this might have changed.