Fear to Socialize

Judgmental to Avoid Rejection

As I was thinking about putting this post together, I suddenly got hit with a weird fantasy: an ex-girlfriend coming to talk to me while I’m successful. It was just this weird, pathetic, sad fantasy that sort of rose up in my imagination . I know the purpose of that fantasy was to stop me from writing this post.

It wanted to distract me and put me in a different mental frame than what it takes to write. To write this, I need to be clear, present in the room, and allow the open channel of my existence to bring forth ideas to share with you. And I can’t do that when there’s some weird fantasy playing out in my head.

And I don’t even like that fantasy; it’s just one of those things that happens when your mind is trying to play to its own ego. The fantasy could have been around anything else that somehow emulates the same type of storyline.

For example, it could have been a boss who fired me trying to get me to come back, but I’m super successful at my own business or another company. My brain was trying to hit an emotional button to get me to stop doing this work.

Do you understand?

That’s how annoyingly powerful our minds are.

We live in a crazy huge universe, and somehow we mostly get lost in our own thoughts. I don’t think it’s a good thing.

I’m currently frightened, to a certain extent, to be social and to date or even meet people.

There’s a fear inside me that carries the expectation that I have to be super successful to have a girlfriend or to date.

Some people might think it’s important to be financially and mentally stable before getting into a relationship.

I understand both viewpoints and, to a certain extent, agree.

However, to say that people should not be allowed to meet each other unless they have a certain amount of money or a perfect personality is a sort of backward version of slavery.

And no dollar has ever been worthy of a human life, ever.

Fuck what anyone else thinks.

But you can have your own standards for what you will and won’t let into your life, and that’s understandable, and I completely encourage it.

However, this world is a mix and mess of ideas, cultures, fantasies, and fears, and all kinds of stuff.

I know what I’m looking for, and I have to look for that myself.

But I can’t sit here and force you to take on an ideal version of what I think a person is supposed to be like.

That being said, it is very possible to date, be social, and live your life on little to no money.

I know this because, for a pretty solid period of time in my life—roughly three or four years—I did exactly that. I would go out to bars, nightclubs, social venues, different events, parties, or festivals, and I would meet women. I would approach women. I would practice social dynamics.

In the beginning, it was very scary, and then I got good at it after a while. Then it became kind of like second nature, and it was just this very fun thing to do—just to go out and generally be social.

Because I went out on a regular basis, I sort of got used to social venues and to talking to strangers. I got used to understanding people and social situations more than the average person would.

Unironically, my being so social on a regular basis would tend to land me jobs or financial opportunities every once in a while.

I think this post is a little bit about me convincing myself to get out and be social again.

I’ve been very antisocial for a very long time.

The irony is that when I was social, I was really good at it.

I kind of got to a point where I could go to a group of strangers, win them over, get some phone numbers.

I feel like I’ve just been through a tough time, you know?

But it wasn’t necessarily the tough time that tripped me up.

It was the way that I responded to the tough time in the short and in the long term.

In the short term, I practically fell apart.

When I reacted to something, it was typically in a spectacular fashion. I would scream at the top of my lungs. Or I would punch a wall. The pure lack of emotional control was definitely visible in those moments.

In the long term, it was basically echoes of the short term.

If something bad happened to me and it was emotionally impactful enough for me, I would carry it for many years.

I want to emphasize in this moment that there is a difference between remembering something and carrying something.

It’s fine to remember something that happened and even have an opinion on it. However, I always advise against carrying something with you emotionally in a sense that you’re always walking around in anxiety or fear because you’re always scanning for that danger to happen again.

Anyhow, I had my bad life experiences, but I was not wise enough to let go of those experiences and move on towards something greater.

Anyway, to be honest, I’m kind of losing sight of the point of this post.

So let me rip right back to the beginning.

Back in the day, I was great at socializing and talking to women.

Plain and simple. Now I find myself terrified and worried and anxious about going out. This is crazy because I have all of this past experience that says, “Actually, it’s pretty fun to go out.”

Not every day is perfect, but it’s always fun to go out.

What has been happening in my ego is that I am kind of looking at women with a certain air of judgment. Maybe there’s a general suspicion, maybe there’s a general fear of judgment, you know, maybe I look at somebody for two seconds too long and I’m in trouble.

But these are all unfounded fears, to be honest.

I know there is this crazy stuff on the Internet convincing men and women to sort of be against each other and promoting all this anger. And although I see it on these social media sites, I don’t really recall that being my experience when I would go out and socialize in real life.

When I was out, people were maybe kind of nervous, but they wanted to be out, and they wanted to socialize. Not everybody was going to be welcoming, some people were kind of jerks or whatever.

Some people will say no, but it literally doesn’t matter because you’re like, jumping into these large pools of people. There are lots of people, and you don’t know who you’re going to meet next. You just kind of keep bouncing and talking to people or whatever, and you have a lot of fun. You sort of create these natural relationships.

It’s like, yes, you are putting the effort in looking nice or going out or, you know, kind of having some cool social stuff about you, whatever, do your thing. But ultimately, you’re just flexing your social muscle, you’re getting out, and you’re talking to people.

In the beginning, you suck.

After a while, you kind of get good. There are also, you know, it’s just like life…there are ups and downs. You might have a streak where you’re not dating anybody, or you might have a streak where you’re, you know, dating a ton of people or whatever. You might get into a relationship, but who knows. As long as you’re in that sort of environment, you find yourself getting more social opportunities than you would if you just sat out.

And so as I sit here and give myself this pep talk in front of you, yeah, I have to acknowledge that I love women; women are fantastic.

Um, but, you know, just like anybody else, there’ve been some experiences that sucked.

And I allowed myself to be fed a negative opinion about all the women, and that was kind of not fair.

So there’s that part, but then there’s also the part where you’re basically just like, you know, you’re kind of just being a hater and you’re just like screwing yourself out of cool opportunities and stuff because you won’t go out, because you’re scared or whatever.

Anyway, this really isn’t a post about me trying to encourage you to go out, although I do encourage you to go out.

But this is kind of a question about, you know, something that I used to have a lot of love for, which is women, and I sort of lost it over the years.

And yeah, I’m just going to have it back again.

It’s going to be ‘normal’ like it used to be.

I’ll keep you posted.