I was not afraid of women in high school

For a long time I had thought it was possible that my extreme fear of women was something genetic and innate to myself. I thought maybe men are naturally afraid of women, and I have some genetic flaw that makes me much more afraid than I should be.

But then I thought back to high school. When I was 15 in my French class I met this guy in my class who I would talk to. The classes were open seating and there were more desks than students so we would sit next to each other and talk. After a while these two girls started sitting next to us and they would talk mostly to him but sometimes to me. I remember being kind of afraid to talk to them, but not extremely afraid, for example I remember I said something funny and they laughed. Certainly I was not afraid of simply being in their presence.

If those girls sat next to me today, I would probably have a heart attack. They were more attractive than any woman I could hope for today. But the funny thing is that when I was in high school I didn't think of them as being attractive, because they weren't the popular girls. I wouldn't have turned them down, but I didn't obsess about them, or have prolonged fantasies about them. Today, if those girls sat next to me, I would obsess over them, and I would be so afraid to talk to them.

This means I developed my extreme fear of women some time during or after high school. After high school I would stop coming into consistent contact with young women, so that's probably it. In college I studied a male dominated field, and ever since have never been in an environment where I came into consistent contact with young women.

So this all means religion really is to blame. If lack of consistent contact with young women is what caused me to develop a fear of them, then my religion has failed me, because religion is supposed to be a place where one can consistently come into contact with young women. My religion though has only old ladies. Maybe if my religion brought me into consistent contact with young women, I would not have developed a fear of them in adulthood. But the leaders of my religion were running a shit show, and drove all the young women away, so in my 20s I never met young women despite being extremely religiously active. This is likely why young women seem so alien to me, and why I fear them so much.