is it common for men in love to feel not elated and joyful all day and night but somewhat moochy, moody, and melancholy instead?

well im guessing the delicate thing means that i am, the moody thing just seems to be an after/side effect of that, as i dont like feeling like that all the time. and after resisting the concept that i might actually be in love for months on end, i think i can safely say that i am now (well i hope i am, or im better at lying to myself than i ever previously thought).

Lighten up, Francis.

As is:

I haven't been in love, per se, since I was eighteen. I used to get crushes fast-and-furious, now I'm lucky to have them once/year. And these are largely ephemeral. But if I am in heavy crush mode, I'm preoccupied and grouchy, especially toward the person I desire. I try to find reasons not to like them; and when I'm successful I feel even worse.

When I was a kid - 16, 17 - during the height of my horniness I'd gladly hook-up with anybody/anything that could relieve me. This could (and did) mean as little as smooching and as much as aquatic fucking. I remember being confident and assured of my sexual desirability [potency, functionality, personality], and tossing myself into situations about which now have nightmares. I'd shift in and out of long melodramatic moods, and specifically a silly kind of present-tense nostalgia.

Sometime after my second major break-up, in college, I moved into a kind of prolonged blue-funk. I'd be loathe to call it depression, because of the specifically psychological baggage that term carries about, but it's certainly a kissing cousin. And I was thrown on Zoloft for a while. When I hopped off the meds, I began to notice that I was no longer interested by romantic relationships. I considered this a callusing, an effect of the break-up, but I'm not so sure anymore. It's been more than half a decade now, and I've not had any real relationships. I've done some hooking up, tried to convince myself I'm fascinated by certain girlfriends (I'm not), and generally tried to reinterest myself.

But no dice. I actually wonder if the prolonged Zoloft / alcohol / dope routine I was following for a while altered my neurochemistry. Not sure, honestly.