Recently, I’ve been really working on how I interact with women, and what I expect from them. For an incredibly long time I subconsciously used women as a way to validate my ego. Finding an attractive women who would sleep with me felt like a bit of a win, and if I could get her to fall in love with me, it was euphoric. Sometimes I would even misinterpret the euphoria of conquering a new woman as love. Then I might even express that love to them, which never turned out well. Once I knew I had them, that euphoria faded and I had nothing left to build / look forward to so I would lose nearly all my interest in them.
Lately I’ve been working on fixing that, on discontinuing that toxic cycle. It feels like it’s been working too. I did have a short fling that was a complete dead end from the beginning, but it was categorically different from the fucked up cycle I outlined above. Overall, I feel like I’ve done quite well. I haven’t been in a super toxic situation like that for about a month now, which for me is a pretty long time. I don’t even feel the desire to chase after women on Tinder or anything. I still enjoy flirting, but more for the excitement of flirting, not even to get a phone number or talk her into getting a drink or anything like that.
With this new approach I’m starting to realize why I guarded myself so much. A part of the reason I started being so toxic is because it fucking sucks to be vulnerable. I’ve felt absolutely humiliated, emasculated and quite frankly pathetic in the short time I’ve changed.
I’ve had a couple recent situations that left me feeling sick. Sitting and thinking about them, I recognize this distant emotion. This sickness in my stomach… this voice in my head that screams “are you gonna fucking take that shit man? Fuck this ….“. The thoughts that race through your mind that her and some other dude are laughing at you right now, that they have some secret you don’t know about, etc.
It fucking sucks man. In the short term it’d be much easier for me to go back to how I was, but I’m over that shit. I have no idea what the future of my dating will look like, but I know that I’m going to focus on being vulnerable and accepting the insecurity and bullshit that comes along with it…