I think sometimes my interest is in finding friends and sometimes I am looking for a romantic partner. I think one thing that makes a difference is that I can usually find what someone else is interested in interesting but it is harder to maintain that interest. So, I guess I want friends to be more interesting than romantic partners? But that isn't necessarily true given that my main friend isn't super interested gaming stuff but she finds most of what I talk about to be interesting.

In general the reason I tend to withdraw when I could definitely be friends with someone is because of my poor social skills, depression and social anxiety. So with the latest person that happened with I silently freaked out and convinced myself that I shouldn't talk to her because it made me some sort of creep. And to be fair I have acted as a creep at least once during a study abroad program. My reaction to realizing that stupidity involved talking as little as possible and trying to not looking directly at anyone for a week. All the stupidity from that period cost me some potential friendships and good experiences because I avoided everyone connected to that incident to that. And I preemptively blocked one other person that I had a crush on that could have been a friend so I would never be tempted to be a creep and interact with them.

Truthfully, thinking of all the women I have had crushes on. It makes me feel like a creep.