Hey, I'm a 28M and recently I've been finding out that, if I'm compared to my closest friends, I get overshadowed by them to other girls.
A couple weeks ago, I was at a bar with some of these friends and a group of acquaintances where there were some girls that caught my friends' attention. On the other side, I wasn't interested in these girls, as I thought they were just friends and there is no sexual/romantic interest, but I admit I was exchanging glances with a random girl that was next to us, playing with her friend. Although she was frequently looking for the eye contact with me during that time, I didn't approach as 1. I'm shy; 2. She was with a friend. Shortly after that, I left the bar alone on my way home, leaving my friends in there.
The next day, I wanted to catch up with my friends about the previous night for the gossip, and one of them said to me something that I never expected: The random girl that I found attractive and her friend, started engaging with my friends all of a sudden, and told this guy that a friend of his(me) couldn't keep an eye off her, but that she preferred him over me, and handed him her IG. My friend didn't like her anyway.
Obviously, when he said that, my ego got pretty hurt as the statement was clear. Also, my friend is more introverted than me, so there was no situation where he started engaging or talking with her. But IDK, it felt pretty hurtful.
In another situation with a large group, a friend of mine introduced us (this friend I told about before and me) to a girl he knew from work, just for the sake of meeting her. This one was pretty funny because this girl asked for my friend's IG straightforward in front of me (didn't look like some 1 on 1). When I jokingly said if she was going to ask for mine too, she laughed and "yeah yeah, sure". Turns out she accepted and followed back my friend, but in my case, she didn't accept my follow request even. When I told the friend who introduced us about this, he told me basically that it shouldn't measure your worth or be a proof that you have no game whatsoever.
But I feel that it is. I'm obviously not blaming my friends in this instance, nor the girls I talked about (it's their choices and preferences), I'm just venting about the consequences of this on your self-esteem. Feels like a loop that feeds itself with this scenarios.
