[philosophical_recovery]

I think I have something to add to this conversation after some reflection from one of General Stalin's comments on the Forum Lounge a few weeks back.

Sweet jesus this ended up being a long tangent longer than I thought it would be.

General Stalin Wrote:

@El_Gostro and PR:

You owe it to yourselves to learn (or re-learn) to enjoy women. That is the "next level" if you have to call it something tangible.

Get to a place where extracting sex from a female is not their only thing of value. Learn to love and appreciate the soft, fun, and feminine nature of a woman.

I think a serious over exaggeration a lot of men tend to believe in this community is that just about all women they meet in the States or Western-Country-X is going to be some harsh, manly, uncaring, masculine piece of sloppy shit who will not be sweet to you, form any sort of attachment, or show any gentle, caring, or woman-like qualities at all. A woman doesn't need to be 1950 Betty-Homemaker to offer a soft, affectionate, and nurturing feminine presence. You also don't need to buy the cow to have such pleasures.

This made me ponder a bit.

I had told myself that I was over bitterness and other issues with women, and I was doing a fine job of hiding reality. GS hit on something here, and it took me a while to get to the root of it.

Long story short: Severe trust issues couple with rejection by girls AND friends during my youth. A lot of this contributed to me being highly introverted as a teen.



Those issues made me very skeptical of texting conversations of women. I lost a lot of connections/bangs after initially getting girls' numbers and failing to build comfort via that medium. I hid my frustration over it by giving up at the first sign of resistance with any girl. Not even hearing a "no" via text. Just not being very playful, not being very forward looking, and getting that acidic bitterness build up in my throat at the first sign of trouble.

I kept throwing myself at what I was doing, which was working to some extent, but could have been much improved. My patience, however, was close to zero. I could have a strong sense of playful humor about many things, but that fear and past haunting of rejection still rattled me to the core. I remember being laughed at as a kid, sometimes by groups, sometimes getting into fights, over various embarrasments. Ostracism is a thing. So even a whiff of anything resembling that sort of mocking behavior put me in a state of FEAR.

I was in total denial of my FEAR.

This kept me from being fun or that interesting about the situation. My curiousity flagged. Why didn't she text back? I don't know, I was too afraid to push it out of fear.



FEAR kept me from texting back the EE girl with wonderfully large tits that gave me an amazing blowjob on a first date. Why? She didn't text me first! Wouldn't I seem silly texting her first!? That's ridiculous, but it was what I was telling myself! When I saw her again weeks later walking by on the beach with a male friend, clearly happy to see me, I had realized my hard-headedness too late.


FEAR kept me from pursuing, at all, an amazing, smart girl that told me over and over again that she would drive the 2 hours in shitty weather to see me. Who would call me to see how I was doing, who I enjoyed being around just because. This was years ago, but I had gone into a mild depression for a couple of months over this due to my inability to face the truth of my fear.


All this, my patience playing the largest part, was tested recently. I was doing great the past couple years getting numbers and bangs through meeting girls in the flesh and from online, then I got into a relationship. It went sour, and I was hesitating getting back into pursuing things. I had another girl around that was happy to sleep with me, but I couldn't stand being around her for long periods of time post bang.

Cutting that additional dead weight off, I started looking at better options. One of the girls I met recently was giving me very strong indications of being interested, and I finally broke the seal on this process again by getting her number.


But guess what?

It took her 2 days to respond.

That bitterness came back.

Why was this girl, who was coming up to me all the time, flirting, enjoying my teases, acting somewhat submissive, taking so damn long? It was a like a bath of ice water splashed on my face. My patience with the thought of it hit zero.

I waited 2 weeks. Texted her again. Didn't expect a response. Wondering, really, if she was laughing about me. Are her friends laughing about me? Are they going to mock me? I've been rejected before, but after such a long time of not doing any real approaching, these fears from my youth haunted me. Me, a grown man. Me, who has slept with more than his fair share of women. Me, scared to death of my teenage years replaying themselves.

This weekend, I stumbled across an old journal entry about that amazing girl that I never persued. I saw my thoughts at the time, then looked at the date. 7 years ago. Why didn't I try anything? She was literally throwing herself at me and I had written about how much I wanted her in my journal. What was causing me to trip all up over my own dick?

That fucking fear.

So this new girl, probably 12 years younger than me, is in my mind, laughing and mocking me with her friends. That's my subconscious all running about, keeping me from doing anything about it.

I didn't want this teenage scarring to control me anymore.


WIA asked a good question in another forum post: What do you do when a girl gets offended at your Netflix 'n Chill date? That whole thread made me think even more about this issue. Did she say no? No. Does she really act like she doesn't want to see me at all? Unsure. What can I do to turn this imaginary NO into a YES for me?


Guess what? As soon as I called her, she picked up in a couple of rings. Bubbly, talkative, wants to get together. Busy. Has an extremely shitty phone that can't text for shit.

And I'm torturing myself over middle school issues. Hiding from the reality of my old fears. Not hitting them head on.

I can talk my way in with a lot of girls if I just keep my fear in check. I've got to look at those inner demons and laugh at them.

Patience isn't the problem. It's coming up with a fun way to change it up.

That's what I lost, the fun. The playfulness. Too afraid to enjoy it.

[General Stalin]

PR, I'm really glad that my words could bring that out for you.

I've been there man. That bitterness and scorn from past love and fear of rejection is real and not rare. You're not alone. I've had it, and it does go away. You can conquer it.

It's something that's somewhat difficult to give real useful advice on because it's something deep in your psyche that ultimately you need to get over on your own terms. All I can tell you is how it worked for me:

Learn to stop being worried about what might be. One of my biggest hurdles and hangups with women was I hated having to emotionally deal with the fact that I may not be able to see the potential of a relationship come to fruition. Something as simple as a promising text I would romanticize as possibly working out to be an awesome interaction/first date/relationship. Then the possibility of her ghosting would make that insecurity creep into my mind. It would make me upset, put a lump in my throat, and the defense mechanism I used was to never put myself out there enough to have it come up. I would expect the worst out of every interaction so if it went south then I didn't care because it's what I expected anyway. This caused me to put relatively little effort into interaction with girls, and if they put up any kind of resistance, as you said, I would just eject. That surely cost me a lot of possibly good times.

If I had to pinpoint a specific time when this became totally became clear to me, it was around this time last year when I was on a business trip in OK. Here is the post:

thread-52607...pid1203620

After that interaction, things quickly started falling into place. I didn't resent the relationships I had that went nowhere, and I didn't get upset when I had a promising conversation/date that didn't lead to anything. I learned to appreciate the present and live in the here and now. The past is gone and tomorrow is never promised. This moment right now is the only moment that truly matters. You'll coming to realize that worrying about what is going to happen tomorrow hinders your ability to enjoy right now.

Once you can command that mindset, then worrying about how alpha you are coming across, how long you both are waiting in between texts, whether her nuanced responses are warm enough to continue or to "ghost" her will not matter.

Nothing bad will happen if a text conversation doesn't go perfectly. Nothing bad will happen if a girl blows you off. Nothing bad will happen if you don't got on a second date. Nothing bad will happen if you don't get laid. Nothing bad will happen if you have a stale interaction. There are so many women, so many possibilities, and so many other opportunities for good times to be had its not worth sweating petty shit. Lighten up and have fun. Always ask yourself if you are having a good time. If you're not, then change it.

[jiff]

(11-01-2016 08:52 PM)XPQ22 Wrote:  

The "three date" rule seems almost quaint these days. Every girl I've banged in the past year was attracted to me enough to bang on the first, or at the very least progress towards sex on the first, stop short, then move forward all the way on the second.

A girl who didn't have sex with me on dates one or two, but still wanted to meet up for a third would legitimately puzzle me.

I had this happen to me in Thailand. Girl drove me everywhere, recommended food, suggested outings, etc. All in all a great experience and was sweet but would very smartly turn down any advances. I cancelled our third meeting and she threw a huge tantrum through text. I ghosted her and ended up going to Nana. Lessons learned I suppose. She was around 22-23.

[Uhondo]

Great posts here from Philosophical and Stalin;

Quote:

Nothing bad will happen if a text conversation doesn't go perfectly. Nothing bad will happen if a girl blows you off. Nothing bad will happen if you don't got on a second date. Nothing bad will happen if you don't get laid. Nothing bad will happen if you have a stale interaction. There are so many women, so many possibilities, and so many other opportunities for good times to be had its not worth sweating petty shit. Lighten up and have fun.

This needs to be the mantra, as always.

[Palo_alto]

The chase is better than tha catch