bsthatcher said:
Mike -
I believe what you are experiencing here is a bit of cognitive dissonance.
Let me explain.
Being a long-time member of SoSuave and a self-proclaimed former AFC, it is clear at one point in your past - likely around the time you joined SoSuave - you had a bit of inner-conflict that re-shaped your priorities toward life.
Of course that conflict was the societal pressure and uneasy feeling of not measuring up to your peers when it came to attracting women. You possibly felt other men had one-upped you in this department. And you possibly also felt that maybe you weren't giving women as much priority as you should have been given your perceived under-performance - which was possibly compounded to a great degree by hanging around other people who regularly talk about women or who go to great measure to improve their performance with women.
That was your first moment of cognitive dissonance.
You chose to confront that conflict head-on, shift your priorities and 'solve' the problem once and for all. You adjusted your reality.
Now that you feel successful about your ability to attract women as you have said, what you are doing is re-evaluating - once again - actually how important it is for you now to exert the same amount of energy toward women as you had in the past.
The reason you are actually experiencing conflict is because your increased priority placed toward women in the past significantly helped you, and you fear that reversing their priority back a little may possibly hurt you.
It won't. If you don't want to fvck a woman, then don't fvck her. If you don't want to date a woman, don't date her.
You already know what it takes to attract the girl you want. You may want to brush up on those skills once in awhile, but until a woman comes along that excites you to your core, you do not have to date women who bore you to death.
Of course that is difficult to do when you are continually surrounded by people who are re-framing your reality to make you believe that you should always have a woman around - no matter how boring she is.
My suggestion: Try to ease the burden of work and get excited about something in life again. You sound as if you've lost a lot of passion and need something to light your fire again.
This was a really good post and I'm sorry I looked it over the first time I scanned over this thread earlier today.
You described me pretty well. I was an AFC back in high school, but I wasn't unpopular or anything like that. I went to parties and stuff and had a ton of friends. I played sports and girls were physically attracted to me. All my friends, however, were not like me in that they got girls and all got dates to formals. I went to my prom and other dances senior year of high school, but I went with girls who would only consider me a friend when, needless to say, I wanted to be more with them. I had one LTR, but we went to different colleges and all she did was cheat on me the entire first semester.
All my close buddies had girlfriends and I just wanted the same thing. I had one friend in particular who was a complete a$$hole and he used to make fun of me for my lack of game.
I spearheaded the problem as you say when I was a freshman in college. A web engine search turned up this site from when it was on a different server and at another URL. From that point on it wasn't a race, it was a marathon that I kept gradually completing over the course of four or five years. I really turned the corner my fourth year of college and just felt insanely great about myself. I finally became a DJ.
I used to get thrills and the biggest highs off going out on dates with girls, having sex and having multiple girls like me at the same time, but recently the thrill has just been lost for me. I had two decent plates spinning, and I literally did not give a sh!t about them at all. I didn't care that I was hooking up with them, and I didn't get off on the fact that both of them were fighting for my attention. Three or four years ago those two plates would have made me the happiest man on earth for an entire month.
I just don't feel a sense of success or satisfaction from dating or from relations involving women anymore, whereas I remember two or three years ago I would go out on dates with girls or hook up with them, and I'd be so pumped up afterwards that I'd go to the gym and lift weights or play basketball for hours. There was one girl who I worked with in college. She was gorgeous and all the guys used to drool over her. But she was considered off limits because she was shy and was the religious type. Still, I managed one night to meet up with her for drinks and I hooked up with her. I was so fired up about it that after she drove me home the next morning I ran like five miles on a hungover and empty stomach. I just don't get anything close to that kind of a rush anymore.
I guess the original gist of my post was that I'm not feeling like a sense of success or satisfaction from spinning plates and stuff anymore, so why waste my limited amount of time on it?
This is probably the cognitive dissonance you brought up.
Though, I'm still going to try to get back in the saddle in a couple of weeks. I think STR8UP made a great point when he said that guys always have to be on their game. We don't have the luxury of sitting back and letting things happen. Following his advice, I'll get a couple more plates spinning around the end of the month. Your advice is still very well-taken.