I spent YEARS overcoming this, but you know how it is when you learn something – it becomes part of you, and you start to think “of course it’s like this!” You forget all that hard work and mindset shifting you did.
Before this becomes common sense to me, I’d better write it down so that others won’t have to ruin their lives any further.
I was always afraid of talking to the girls whom I found really beautiful. Cute enough? yes, I could behave myself. But stunningly cute or hot?
In middle/high school I wouldn’t even admit to myself that I wanted to look at them. In university, there was one girl I liked a lot, called Anne. I immediately started flirting with a girl sitting next to me that I wasn’t interested in the least. Everyone thought I liked her instead and started teasing me, that’s how good I was at fooling myself.
One day, after I was talking with another Chinese girl (I’m usually not interested in Chinese girls, especially this one), a friend asked me if I liked her. I said no, why? He said “because that’s how you talk when you’re flirting with someone”. And he was right. I knew that already, but somehow she was the only girl I could talk like that with (and somehow we both knew that I wasn’t really interested anyway).
How could I unfuck myself?!
In fact, first I would have to learn how to talk to strangers; how to talk to women I wasn’t attracted to; how to ask women out; how to ask women that I was attracted to out; and then I could start talking to women I was VERY attracted to. Oh, and asking them out too.
Dude, you say: what about “actually getting with the girl I was really attracted to”?
Well, no. Firstly, whether such a girl is available or likes me is out of my control. Secondly, such girls are rare, and it’s rare enough that a normal girl likes me anyway! Thirdly: I really don’t need another reason to be needy.
It was easy to live with my defect in the clubs. The hot girls were so popular that you couldn’t get a word in anyway. I looked instead at the demure girl in the corner who actually would’ve been the belle du jour if she had taken the effort to dress up more. At the bus stop – I forced myself to talk to them, and resented them because they could just brush me away like a fly – apparently men all “have the freedom to go for what they want”, and what they want is sex, so they have to be on guard.
Well, not always. If someone just started talking to you somewhere, wouldn’t you be a bit wary until you knew what the deal was? I got into the habit of telling them that they were attractive right from the very beginning.
When I started dancing, it was the same story all over again, even though now I actually had something to offer (a dance) instead of an awkward conversation leading nowhere. Still, I was afraid to ask the “good” girls out to dance, and anyway everybody wanted to dance with them so they were hard to get hold of. I also had my hands full figuring out what a “good dance” was.
After some time I noticed that women have the same issue… they sometimes get afraid of dancing with this particular guy. They’re nervous they won’t be able to dance as well as they normally could. Or something.
Then one day, that started happening to me. The beginners would be hesitant and shy. Sometimes, when making a mistake with women whom I thought were better at dancing than me, they’d quickly apologize, make an excuse. Ah, they were a bit tired after work, were hungry, hadn’t danced for a while, whatever. They knew how to dance, so why were they making excuses for little mistakes that always happen anyway?
Sometimes, at dance parties where people know each other socially, women who knew me always wanted to dance with me so I could never get off the dance floor. Wait a minute, this situation sounds familiar – aren’t those hot women always hard to get ahold of because they’re always being asked to dance?
But nothing about me had actually changed! It was just their perception. I had just been improving myself linearly.
IT WAS JUST THEIR PERCEPTION.
I’m cool? I dance really well? …some people actually consider me cute? is it just because I’m 30-something these days?
Imagine, a girl probably goes through all this when she hits puberty. Just because she suddenly grew some breasts or maybe a butt, guys look at her differently and want to ask her out. It’s not like she became a better person. Maybe that’s why women aren’t completely bowled over by good looks like most men are. They know firsthand that it’s all a matter of perception.
Once you become the person others fear talking to, you realize there’s nothing special about anyone.
Today I have more female friends than male friends from dancing. For the most part, they don’t understand this struggle, nor do they really care. Tell your girlfriend about how difficult it is to ask out women whose beauty scares you, and most likely they will make it about their egos “so you find other women more beautiful than me?”
For them, getting the attractive partner is not the problem. Keeping the attractive partner is the problem.
A male friend once told me that one of my female dance friends was so beautiful that he didn’t dare say much when she was around. I thought for a while. Yes, she was very feminine for a German woman, and was cute too. But I don’t think of her as a 10 (let’s think of scary girls as a 10), more like a solid 8. Remember, you’re already friends with 10s. They’re just not 10s to you. Neither are the 10s you’re afraid of really 10s.
If you still wanna read about this stuff instead of actually going out and taking action, here’s what the Good Looking Loser has to say on the topic.
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