It's because you are much safer in the club. You're not making yourself emotionally available to the room full of men there. No availability, no vulnerability.
I'm sure you already know this better than I do, but the guy in your class is giving you the butterflies because you may want to make yourself emotionally available to him, and that makes you vulnerable. That's scary. It's scary for all of us. Those of us who are not shy by nature are just covering it up with humor, warmth, charm and anything else we can dream up on the spot.
It also doesn't matter what your job is. I've spoken before crowds of 1,000, appeared regularly on live national TV, and been in bone-crunchingly stressful situations in my job and none of them have come even close to scaring me as much as that leap into emotional vulnerability. This is not even close.
Age has nothing to do with it, of course. It's part of being human. When you get a little older, you think you can control it, but that never happens. You just get a lot better at self-delusion.

Bookmarks