Face it guys, we need to LOVE women on all levels.
Here is how I look at it. If you want to be a top NBA Basketball player, you probably need to love the game, I mean that is what every shirt 13 year old inner city kids wear these days "Love Da Game, PAYCE" or something like that.
Well with that said, I notice there are a few certain but distinct frames lots of guys (and even girls) have when it comes to the opposite sex.
All right, this idea of mine isn't trying to figure out the mind of the "jerk" versus "nice guy". I think a jerk and nice guy has more to do with insecurities on a slightly larger complexity than the above.
What this comes down to is this: Do you, right now, have significantly more guy friends than female friends. I do... I only have a few female friends and I know why, I am recovering from being a full blown #1 listed above. I'm not sure if some of you guys have read my earliest posts from over a year ago (I took down my original posts because I felt they were a bit too personal), but I generally didn't have a female friend for longer than a few months (like if she was in one of my classes or something).
On the surface, this is what it was for me: I have no sisters and no real female presence in my family, except my mother. When I was very, very young (like 3-6 years old) I had a good female friend in preschool and we would hold hands every day, run around, go on the swings, but then out of the blue around the age of 6, we both got very awkward around each other and I have no idea why.. I think she got very shy and I sort of anchored that reality in my head, my guess is my shyness and lack of connectivity towards women has to do with anchoring some kind of a shyness back around that age. I think another big, BIG part of my issue is the whole "cooties" fad? Remember "cooties" I think I took that a bit too literally and I really did think there was something wrong with women (haha). I still was sexually attracted to them, but I felt something was wrong about it. My sexual attraction confused me on non-obvious level, I just didn't understand why I was attracted to "gross" girls with "cooties" (I partially blame the dumbasses I went to school with haha, even though they got girls. Nah, its my issue for taking playful teasing seriously).
Kindergarten turned into first grade, first grade turned into second, second into third, third into etc etc.. well now I am here trying to repair a bad anchor.
Now here is where the whole "fear" of women may come from. We fear the unknown, we fear what we do not understand. Well I somehow failed to understand women on a fundamental level.
Since I didn't understand women that well, I came to the wrong assumptions. I used to get picked on quite a bit by girls back in my day---looking back, it could have just been for attention or just because kids-are-kids. But I took it the wrong way. I took it as: those who make fun of me have higher value than me. In other words, if someone made fun of me back when I was around the age of 10, I assumed they knew what they were talking about and I took it as they had some kind of authority over me.
I recall in third grade my teacher made me cry for some stupid reason (he was an asshole if I recall correctly, just some average Joe who hated his job or me), and so when I cried, a bunch of girls came towards me and made the "ahhhhhh" sound. I was confused, on the outside I had tears, but then I recall for a few seconds I felt like "what the fuck, why are these girls caring about me, they talk shit about me". I didn't understand women, I filtered that scene as an anomaly.
For anyone who is reading this and does interact with women, you know... that women are NOT high value and they do not want to be higher value than their lovers. I say this out of my current experience, ever since I started acting and feeling higher value/status than girls, 90% of girls are very shy, introverted, and conscious of what they are saying around me. Because of this, I am now fundamentally confused. All my life, for the better part of the last 20 years I looked to women as being higher status, now its taking a completely 180 and every girl I have gotten to know, even older ones, have self-esteem issues I can just smell from their small facial expressions, voice tone, how they look down a lot sometimes. I sort of expected girls to be like Hollywood actresses in a good movie or TV show. You know what I mean? Remember Elaine from "Seinfeld"? I sort of expect girls to be like that, high self esteem, funny, quirky, always having something to say, etc etc.
So what the fuck happened? Its like my whole idea of women has always been wrong. No wonder girls like Jerks, they need a man who will dominate them, nice or mean! Well here is what I need to get over: throughout grade school I'd have a crush on one or two girls for the course of the year or the semester and I would quietly obsess over them. I would think of them as being super high status over me, I'd hope they would choose me and send me a secret admirer card, I also thought if I initiated anything they would repel in utter disgust and laugh with all their friends if I showed ANY interest at all... thus I sort of shut off that part of my social muscles, you know the social muscles that allow you to flirt with random girls.
I need to learn to accept and love women for who they are and let go of my past assumptions. I still have issues in maintaining a friendship with a woman. As in, if I am with them face-to-face, its all good, we'll have a good time. But when it comes to calling them, meeting them for lunch, hanging out and having fun, I generally don't do that. I dont' even naturally think of it "Oh, I wonder what Jess is up to"... As of now in my immaturity, I don't form strong friendship bonds with females. The female friends I do have are the girlfriends of my good guy friends and we only seem to hang out when they invite me, I don't actively call up female friends as ask them to lunch and here is why I think this is so:
However, what is going on in the deeper levels of my conscious? I think I expect the wrong things from women... because I am not low value third grader anymore, girls don't just talk shit to my face anymore, they can't. They don't have the balls to do that unless its a clear joke or in a Club.
Well most girls are far from Elaine (as I wrote about above), they need to be opened up, they need to feel comfortable, they need to be in their comfort zone (just like almost everyone on this planet). I need to accept girls for who they are as humans who have human needs. I need to stop with my bullshit ideas that hanging out with a girl whom I'm not sexually interested in (just interested as friends) I need to stop thinking I am leading them on if I hang out with them. I need to stop being resentful if I am with a hot girl in an LTR. Basically I need to grow up more and not let superficial shit get in the way of forming strong, deep friendships with people and girls.
Any advice form anyone out there, I'd be interested in your diagnosis.
(This topic was partially sparked by this great thread: http://simurl.com/love_women_mm)
You say you need to do xyz. Do you want to?
Assuming you want to, What about approaching making female friends like improving your game, i.e. with practice. You made list of the things you think might help you attain that goal of actually being friends with a girl, such as calling to see how she is doing, or for lunch etc. And now you are aware of your unconscious incompetence, its roots, how it grew, why not start practicing conscious competence? (I first heard that phrase from a professor, and I thought it came from Nathaniel Branden) You already seem familiar with the principles.
I used to have almost exclusively male friends (I'm female), and now I have about a 60/40 split (women/men). It took years of directed effort and figuring out what kinds of qualities I wanted in my female friends.
Posted by Anonymous | Tuesday, October 17, 2006 1:36:00 PM
Radiantsun,
I wish you left me your email address so we can more easily correspond.
Thanks for the advice, but I have some specific questions for you... (not like an interrogation or anyting, just maybe you can clarifty for me)
bigsend (at) gmail.com
Thanks!
Posted by BigSend | Tuesday, October 17, 2006 4:49:00 PM