I reflected a bit more on the original post. What do suggest to break free from this frame?
I for example feel old and complacent. I don't take risks anymore like I used to when I came on this board. Although not very "successful", my life was much richer back then. I used to get pretty good motivation from being angry at my ****ty life. Now that anger is replaced by dull comfort.
It's like my ego made me lose this incredible desire to experience awesome things (such as hot women, adventures, whatever). You describe the problem perfectly but I don't know where to start.
I'm not pretending like I've transcended all the issues in the OP (a lot of those were directed at myself, as much as anyone). I still catch myself internalizing rationalizations that protect my ego and allow me to stick to my comfort zones.
Like, I grew up in an environment where my emotions weren't validated--mom and dad were both a little emotionally unstable so I had to be this stoic little almost adult-like figure; I've never felt comfortable expressing my emotions (or even feeling them, really). Emotions were scary and bad. So when I read something like,
Women want you to be the rock and to never show emotions, I was like,
Hell yeah! I don't have to experience that type of discomfort by actually putting myself on the line. And then we reaffirm this comfort-zone by looking at our past--
I loved that girl and then she ****ed me over and invalidated all those emotions, never mind all of the other issues and weaknesses
we brought to that relationship.
But the problem with that mindset is that there is joy in self-expression. And girls, really, crave to experience you emotionally. Passion is more seductive than aloofness, probably for the vast majority of women (though you can always find girls who also grew up in emotionally invalidating environments and'll use you for their repetition compulsion of trying desperately to get acknowledgement from an emotionally unavailable male--and these women will probably be 'wh0res,' further reinforcing the 'correctness' of your ego-investments). So I've focused on self-expression for its own sake--I'm not saying to go all Oprah, but be honest with yourself and allow girls (and more importantly yourself) to experience your full range of feeling. Whether the girl responds to it well or not doesn't make your emotional experience any less valid (though I've found they can't get enough
).
Or I've never been a great texter--all of my text convos were boring. So when I read
Don't text women like their little girlfriend. Text game doesn't exist, I was like
Hell yeah! Don't have to work on that--even though I have friends that I've seen text their way into girls' pants over and over. But then I started having some girls, really cool girls that I actually liked, start blowing themselves out when I'd only hit them up once a week to hang out.
Low interest--oh well, their loss. But then I started texting some of these girls--just to see what would happen and to see if I could make those interactions entertaining for myself. And a couple of them came back around
enthusiastically. Some were even super high interest--I just wasn't giving them enough of myself and they figured I just didn't give a damn. But whether it worked or not, I ended up having a blast.
But to take all of that a step further, all of the times in my life that I've been the most fulfilled were the times when I was struggling toward something or experiencing something new. All of my closest friendships were formed with the guys I struggled with--the guys I played football with (especially the ones who came in with me as freshmen), the guys I worked at sh1tty jobs with, the guys I met those first few weeks of college when we didn't know anybody, the guys who went out with me to try and figure out how the hell to meet women. While men instinctually
crave comfort and safety--whether that's in the form of a cushy job, or the illusion of unconditional love, or the avoidance of women, or sitting on the couch instead of going to the gym, or watching Netflix instead of going out--we are built to struggle daily. We're built to see what's over that hill. We're built to see what happens when we eat that bright red tomato that looks poisonous as ****.
So see what happens. Play around; make it fun. You're never too old to experience something new--but it'll require you to extend yourself more to get that emotion than it did when you were younger (novelty, past a certain point, requires creativity to attain). I can promise you that there are still aspects of your personality that you're not comfortable with sharing with other people--yet--but freedom comes from that self-expression. Always find ways to push yourself and to make things new--for you and her. I'd highly recommend meditating if you aren't doing that already (go more in depth about it here:
http://www.sosuave.net/forum/index.php?threads/1st-post-need-to-turn-my-life-around.232939/#post-2323986). And RSD has some great free content on Youtube (Julien especially) about the concepts of 'self-amusement' and 'emotional expression' (once I got past my ego-investment of 'PUA is lame, I don't need help to meet girls').
