I was too (and still to a degree am). I once shared a rental with a female socialite. She said she accepts EVERY invitation to go out and suggested I do the same.
Getting used to being around people and being in awkward situations where you have to talk to randoms will develop calluses. It is a skill you can develop by just practice. (public speaking is another example).
I look forward to talking to you in a random party! :)
One of my no-gos was going to weight room/area of the gym (I could tolerate cardio area) and one of the first homework activities things my therapist gave me was going to weight room and sitting for 5 mins to do some stretches. It was awful, but within a few months I slowly progressed to the point I was even confident enough to work with a personal trainer.
Slow but consistent incremental exposure to my triggers absolutely made a huge positive impact for me.
Due to a back injury (from pushing myself too hard, it wasn't just a shit-happens injury hencemy user name) that had me in horrible pain for the last 2 years I now get literal panic attacks in the environment I used to go to RESOLVE a panic attack. Ain't that some shit? My fear of reinjuring myself and going through the whole experience again is just too much. Even though I've learned my lesson and just desire to stay fit and functional I don't think I'll ever step foot in a traditional gym again. I like being able to sit down to make a poop in the morning without a burning ice pick shooting up my spine... I see what pro athletes talk about when a catastrophic injury and the painful and lonely recovery process robs them of the confidence to perform.
In between the pandemic and this injury the last 3 years have been very isolating. I've developed real fear of being in public from the amount of time I've been alone and physically confined. I feel like I got out of a 3 year relationship with a crazy overbearing girlfriend that no one could stand to be around and realizing how it just pushes people away.
Is getting better but doing things like progressing from a coffee to-go from a cafe, to actually sitting down for prescribed lengths of time and observing the waves of anxiety has been... interesting. You have to continually and willfully push your boundaries as you said but in safe increments the same way you increase your lifts in safe manageable increment. But it's hard to quantify how much more difficult one social setting or situation will be versus another. What's the "add 5 pounds" for exposure therapy? Haha. I'm sure it's different for every person.
I work with a therapist and it's going to be a process. Just started doing in office visits again. Social calluses indeed.
In the same way I associate discomfort and stress with progress in powerlifting (and subsequently in physical therapy) I try to tell myself that I'm not going to improve socially by putting myself only in comfortable situations.
Good luck. Looks like you've got a program that is working.
Sitting at home watching Netflix all evening and doom scrolling won't get you invites.
I've learned to really enjoy all the other feelings around sex not ejaculating and that has given me a whole new lease on the act and my partners have really, really appreciated that I don't go for 5 to 10 "cum and done".
There's tons of methods of training yourself out there. Just Google around. It really helps when dates are thinking if they should keep dating you.
And yes, sex isn't everything but good sex sure does help and it's an intrinsic, important part of coupling.
I agree 100% and echo the same.
> Just Google around.
Google and YouTube will give you pelvis exercises, and that’s “not” the solution. My friends with that syndrome have met therapists and doctors to no avail.
I've heard these numbers passed around but does anyone have a source for this? I ask in part because my own life experiences and observations match well with your first sentence - a person who works on themselves, IE: has hobbies and activities, has a viable career, etc - will be attractive to someone out there in the world. There is a body size and shape that will appeal to everyone, education and career are negligible as long as you are doing "something" with your life, etc.
My experience, too, is that the energy of meeting someone in person is much better than "meeting" someone online. Also, it's much easier to qualify if the person you're dating is mentally stable and at ease with themselves if you see them in person. It's way too easy to hide serious character flaws when only chatting online. But for a relationship, they'll be deal-breakers.
That means unless you want to waste hours on dates that lead nowhere, you need to quickly meet the other person in-person to do the basic sanity check.
Plus there's all that pheromone stuff which is impossible to check for online.
I do not believe this to be true just based on what I observe in my social circles. It might be a bit skewed but these numbers sound absurd - do you have any source to back them up?
Men and women are not so different.
I am sorry but this is BS. Mathematically speaking it's impossible.
It's the emotional component which makes people feel like perennial underdogs and say abominations like the above.
No matter how rich you are you can only bring one girl to a dinner date per night. Even a guy like Dan Bilzerian is on the record saying that a vacation in which he brings more than 8 girls rapidly becomes hell
What is true is that the top 1% of males is desired by 90% of women but that is also true the other way around given that men too have become extremely vulnerable to PR , advertisement and the promotional industry in general. So they deeply desire Kim Kardashian even though the college girl next door is probably conventinally hotter considering age and height.
That means dinner isn't required. Plus if the average unlucky guy has 1 date per 2 weeks, it would be entirely possible for a lucky guy to have 14x more dates. A 14:1 starting ratio leading to a 10:1 success ratio seems plausible to me.
I don't think he was suggesting that those successful men are dating 8 women concurrently - rather, that the other seven women themselves would rather be single than date anybody in the "bottom" 90%. I've been married for a long time now, but this matched my observations from back when I was dating, and from everything I've heard, things have gotten much, much worse for men since I left the market.
The basic problem is the dating apps have made the pool so large that they can keep trying to get the top 10% and the well never runs dry. Thus they don't settle for what they can actually get.
Thus you get a lot of men with no dates and a lot of women who get dates with men they aren't good enough to actually hook. In reality both sides lose.
Only if you assume the "dating pool" is 1:1 men/women. If you take the view that it's 10:1 men/women then that conclusion is "obvious."
And at least in the context of Tinder, I have read that the ratio of users leans men.
Rappers, actors and people who feel the need to bring 5 or 6 girls on a date, that's so rare that doesn't even merit counting. And also it ends up pretty quick.
Dinner is no longer a requirement. Being exclusive is no longer the assumed default.
What emotional component? Who said anything about dinner?
You bring a girl over at 6, then another at 8, then 10.
You have a different girl for every day of the week.
It's well known most girls during a certain period of their life will prefer to have a fraction of a high value guy than all of a low value guy.
And that girl has a different guy for every day of the week.
It's like war. You only occupy the territory you control with your line of fire.
Likewise you only occupy the time of the person who is with you. As soon as they are out the door then you don't occupy anything anymore and other people will.
It's not a new concept either. All Playboy bunnies had boyfriends and they devoted their time 85% to their boyfriends and 15% to Hefner.
Hefner got more variety in exchange for less claim on each individual Playboy bunny time.
Remember, for most people most days it's no date at all.
I'm not stating this to brag but only for context: I get many concurrent matches when I'm on dating apps. I'm wealthy, pretty good looking (but short which is a big hit), and have a lot of hobbies and am in good shape. Overall, I'd say I get ~100x more matches than most guys and actually have girls who slide into my DMs on Twitter and Instagram. I still deleted all of the apps because I'd rather meet women in real life and I'm way happier and suggest all guys do the same for their mental health.
Online dating doesn't compare to real life. Not saying it can't happen (my ex-ex-girlfriend and I met on Hinge and it was great), but it's just not the same. I find I can meet higher-quality women in real life because I can show up with full energy and depth and showcase confidence in a way that's impossible when she's looking at me in a sea of other matches. I also think dating apps are a bad deal for women as well. They meet a bunch of men who will sleep with them but aren't looking to settle down. It's hard for women to judge the real energy and confidence of a guy online. It's just not a great dynamic for both parties IMO unless you're exclusively looking to hook up (which is fine and people should do what they want).