On a recovery note, I'm nearing 100 days without PMO. It seems slightly anti-climatic because whether it's 100 days, 300 days or 1000 days, I should be keeping away from P regardless. Also, 100 days in this current year seems different to 100 days at any other time because all days just seem to blend into one another right now. Groundhog Year....
Anyway, moving on to one of the items I mentioned in my previous post: superiority and inferiority. Although it was something I did think about and actively notice that I was thinking about it (during the time of romantic encounters / relationships), I never reflected on why I often had thoughts around superiority and inferiority in the context of romantic relationships.
When at high-school all the way to 18, I remember from 16 onwards that I always felt inferior and had confidence issues around girls. I know I will have been regularly MO'ing and PMO'ing at this time so I suspect this didn't help. Being less attractive than others, I lost ever more confidence when I regularly made friends with girls and then began experiencing romantic feelings towards them but was then always completely overlooked by them. Being the recipient of a number of callous quips (in relation to my appearance compared to my wider friendship group) didn't help matters. I always felt that if a girl was to go out with me, it'd be because I was 'punching well above my weight', so to speak. There was arguably a considerable amount of truth to this considering I attracted virtually no female attention from maybe 14 onwards. As such, I felt inferior to those around me.
Moving forwards four years to when I began going out with my very first girlfriend, I received quite a significant confidence boost by virtue of a girl ACTUALLY liking me. However, superiority and inferiority quickly entered into the mix for a number of reasons. The girl in question was far more experienced than I was in a relationship and bedroom context and I felt inferior due to believing I would not live up to expectations. Strangely though, I actually felt like the more superior person in the relationship based on my own thoughts and unfounded perceptions around social hierarchy. The girl came from a lesser background that I did and her life and career aspirations were a lot different to those of mine. In my mind I wrongly believed that she would be glad to go out with me (and for many years, I thought) because I was 'above her' (socially) and therefore she was 'punching above her weight'. I don't think there was any point where I ever felt her equal. As detailed in previous journal entries, my girlfriend ended the relationship after four months.
A few years later I met up with a girl three times and on the final occasion when I went to see her, spend the day with her and stop over I remember thinking that I was better than her. Again, this was based on her background versus mine, her job and aspirations versus mine, and a few other things too. As with my first girlfriend my mind was telling me that I was better than this girl and she was doing well to be being with someone like me. Well after that third meet-up I never saw her again through her decision to not continue seeing each other.
Shortly after, when I was in a relationship with my last girlfriend, for a while I felt equal to her. Soon this dynamic changed when I learnt more about her, learnt about her friends, her job, her past relationships and what she'd done in her life. I rapidly felt more and more inferior to her. I just didn't feel like I was good enough to meet her standards. Regardless of what I thought or felt, my ex ended things with me after four months. In the early stages of the relationship, these were the most fun times and I don't believe I thought about superiority or inferiority at all. We were just two people going out and that was it - I lived in the moment and had fun when I was with and that was about it. It was only after knowing her for a couple months that I began thinking I was 'punching well above my weight'.
Moving to the summer of 2019 when I was seeing a girl for maybe a month, slightly longer, I don't remember thinking all that much about superiority and inferiority. This was slightly odd considering the situation and what my mind usually 'judged' female companions on; this girl came from clearly a very well-off family. Normally, I would typically think that I wasn't good enough for this girl but based on not having all that much in common and me just not fancying her, I was the one to end this casual and intimate, albeit non-sexual, relationship. I think during this 'relationship' I was in a place in my life where I was very comfortable with myself and my social life. For this reason I was able to judge the relationship on its merits (i.e. commonality, compatibility and if I was attracted to this person) rather than having any thoughts on superiority or inferiority.
Anyway, I don't know why in previous relationships I have regularly thought about superiority and inferiority, almost always based on purely arbitrary criteria that my brain decides to focus on. What is my problem? In day-to-day life I pride myself on trying to be as unjudgemental as possible and tend not to think of myself as superior or inferior to others. I came to the realisation a long time ago that there are likely to be millions of people who are in a worse financial situation, career situation, safety situation, health situation etc. when compared to me but who are far happier than I am. Do I think too much? Is my underlying self-confidence at such a low-level even though my superficial confidence level can come across as quite high? What is my problem? Why do I almost always put myself down? I think in answer to the final question harks back to my own attractiveness and the difficulty I have in attracting girls (contrary to what the above paragraphs my lead you to believe). At high-school my close male friendship group all regularly attracted female attention with me always being the singleton, and it's a similar situation with my current (if there are still my friends) friendship group. All are in long-term relationship but even when we used to go for nights out, all the others would always be the ones acquiring attention from girls - not once on a night out did I ever get any female attention. Not only did this not help my self-confidence but I suspect it ingrained the perspective of me being inferior to all other girls.
