No worries Happydude. It’s also a subject that I have a personal investment in so perhaps there’s some mutual therapy going on in me logging on here and taking up far too much space in your journal haha. If so, thank you!
Do by all means enjoy yourself, live life and take time if that’s what’s right for you. You have no obligation to respond to any of this in some arbitrary timeframe or even at all. It’s my choice to post this and you don’t owe me anything. This can also be very difficult subject matter and your willingness to engage in this discussion at all indicates a confidence & wisdom that I feel at times you might not fully see in yourself.
Anyway, more thoughts (yay!)
Throughout my life I have become highly attuned to noticing how girls...
Regarding this evidence of lack of attractiveness & not being noticed, as someone who has never been out with you, hung out with you or knows what you look like, I am just going to have to more or less take your word on much of this. With that said though, there are some things that stand out from what you have written.
Much of this negative self-appraisal and evidence of women not noticing you in a romantic way that you’ve stated above seems to come more from self-beliefs & perceptions than any concrete instances of rejection. There may be real, tangible instances of such rejection but I didn’t catch any here.
Re something like the face, even if your face is as you say it is (a self-perception which I once again have to take your word on) do you believe you have no attractive qualities at all? And even if you somehow really do have no attractive qualities to women, there’s nothing at all you can do about it? No other redeeming qualities you can focus & work on developing instead? Nothing at all? Nothing? Really?
I mean, really there could be so many factors going on here and I don’t believe going into speculation is going to be helpful but I feel like, if you really want to find someone, there are a lot of options that have not yet explored and a lot of self-beliefs that not yet been questioned or confronted.
A really basic example of something like this would be that perhaps bars, clubs & nights out with mates may not be the best place to find a quality woman who’s going to appreciate you for you and stick around for a long time? Not necessarily a problem as we live in the age of the dating app for example and you have more control over this stuff than ever. That particular option has it’s own challenges but I won’t digress into that here. Shared interests & clubs, social groups etc also all provide opportunities (though are not purpose made for this so should not exclusively be used that way, might come across a bit threatening)
Another thing here is I noticed is in this appraisal of women you often refer to women you’ve met as somewhat of a uniform collective. I’m sure you realise that there are billions of individual women in this world all with unique values, desires and qualities they look for in a man right?
So when you know that you will almost certainly get rejected, it then becomes a choice between proceeding and receiving the rejection, thereby dealing a hammer blow to an already-shattered confidence, or circumnavigating the rejection altogether by not even trying.
Once again I’m hesitant on how I go about asking this, but is it fair to say that you have a considerable fear of rejection Happydude?
Have you thought of what correlation such a fear may have to some of the self beliefs & observations you stated earlier?
Is there a point in your life that you first recognised this in yourself or have you always felt this way as long as you can remember?
Can you articulate how or why the consequence of rejection is so strong & devastating that you would avoid anything that exposed you to even a mild risk of it? Even if it may mean giving up on finding the connection you find yourself desiring so?
On the topic of Attachment Theory…
Okay so I should preface this by saying I am obviously neither a psychologist or formally trained in attachment therapy which is a complex subject so if you are interested, perhaps it might be a good idea to seek out further information from professional sources. The reason I bring up Attachment Theory is that it by it’s very nature suggests that things like patterns of self defeatism, over-thinking, negative self perceptions, co-depencencies, specific anxieties around relationships & all of that stuff are A PRODUCT OF what could be an insecure attachment style not vice versa. Like a runny nose being symptomatic of what could be a flu.
The origins of insecure attachment styles have their roots back to an individuals earliest childhood experiences. It goes deep.
This is not something to feel bad or negative about. This is a tool that we can use to find deeper, more meaningful and ultimately more constructive understandings of why we have the beliefs we have, why we fear the things we fear, why we worry so much when we know we shouldn’t, why we perceive ourselves the way we do and from there, how we can live in a way where such things no longer hold us back from getting what we desire from life and finding the connection and happiness we’re looking so hard to find.
It is also helpful as with this knowledge, we can perceive such things in others which is both helpful for our own self-preservation as well as giving us a more holistic, objective point of view of perhaps why women have not treated us well in previous relationships, why they leave, why they bounce from person to person, why things just never seem to work and that it’s not all our fault if they don't.
There is power, strength & a greater self-confidence to be found in the knowledge that can be found here.
In my (only) two relationships I managed to end up with girls who were both very different but also quite similar…
So in short, not exactly relationship material yeah? Well you know some warning signs that you need to avoid in future and that, looking towards the future, is a good thing.
I myself am a recently-turned 36 year old man and I have been in three relationships in my life. Only one of them lasting longer than a year. The shortest being three months. So we are quite similar in that respect.
All three of these women were unusually assertive, self-centred and chose me more than I chose them. Even after this point, they pretty much dragged me by the hand through much of the relationship and all wound up leaving me after cheating on me for periods of time. They were messy, unhealthy, damaging relationships that I clung onto like a crying child to his mother because I did not believe I could do better.
So yeah my mistake was, instead of looking for the kind of woman I wanted, I tried to find this in whoever would do the scary work so I wouldn’t have to face rejection. This merely lead to the worst kind of rejection happening to me three times in a row.
Like a PMO relapse, we can choose to resign ourselves to the belief we are doomed forever, or use these difficult relationship experiences as things that can make us stronger and wiser in future endeavors.
Which way that goes is, like most of this stuff, up to you.
There is no need to apologise for discussing this. All of this clearly correlates to both your PA as well as mine. It’s a very big part of we come back to P again & again even though it’s such a bleak, awful addiction. We do because deep down we carry a belief we’re incapable of attaining anything better and that is a belief that will lead us nowhere. Life is short and, if we want to find someone who can really make us happy, we need to conquer this shit to move forward.
I am no psychologist, I’m not a professional, I don’t have all the answers or really enough skill to articulate this in a way that is as helpful as it should be so I don’t want to get into doing to many of these sort of posts but before I finish this, know it’s coming from a place of compassion, understanding and a common purpose in this fight we’re all in and support each other together. There’s still a long road ahead but we can do this, we just need to find a way to frame all this stuff in a way where we can give ourselves a real chance.
Stay strong man, don’t be a stranger. Wishing you well in your journey.