Hello everyone, I'm new to the forum. I just wanted to share my story with what seems to be an extremely supportive community.
I'm a junior in college. I actually first started perusing the manosphere the summer before my junior year in high school and managed to use all that information to land my first girlfriend. I felt like I was putting everything together: she was really wowed by me and was crazy about me. But I was still a petulant kid who refused to speak to her friends for lack of confidence and was an admitted virgin, while she was rather experienced. She broke up with me, and I fell back into depression and moping. I completely forgot about everything I'd learned, though some of the stuff just became ingrained in my way of being social (taking up space and dominant body language when standing, sitting, and talking in particular ways, slow and fluid movements, a lot of which I gleaned from this website called changingminds), as well as teasing and mocking being the dominant mode of my interaction with girls. And I could pick up cues from girls really well. I hooked up with some girls during spring semester junior year and senior year, which hit a peak after I got into a pretty good college and I was dating a couple of girls at once. One girl even told me that she didn't like me like she liked other guys: she said she just wanted to fuck me. I was really proud of that, strangely enough. It's not to say that women were all over me, I had hooked up with six girls after my initial girlfriend, but it was just kissing, the occasional BJ and fingering. I was confused. I wanted love and I didn't know if I wanted to lose my virginity before marriage. And on each girl I grafted an ideal, masking and distorting who they actually were.
I go to college. I don't really meet many girls. I meet two girls spring sophomore year, decide 'fuck it, I'm sick and tired of being shy', and I act like myself, doing whatever I want. They both seem attracted to me, one I think because I'm entirely indifferent to any and all of her reactions and always acted vaguely disappointed, and the other because I always insisted, like an asshole, that we do things my way, and she liked my sense of humor. But the girls disappoint me. I try to talk about my insecurities and reveal myself entirely. They turn away in disgust and I walk away alone and hurt. At the end of fall semester junior year I had been spending time with three girls that I liked. My actual thoughts at the time 'I don't just want sex. I want love. I don't want animal attraction and lust. So I will build a foundation of friendship first, and then move romantically.' So that meant sharing yourself with another person, your feelings, who you were, and hoping that they would love you for it. All three of these girls rejected me after a romantic advance.
Today, I am spending a semester abroad in London. All three of those girls assured me we would stay friends while I was gone. I texted one and she never replied, another I don't want to speak to, and the third, the one I liked the most, has recently stopped answering my calls, which were about once a month. I am the only guy in my study abroad program, which is just for my college and only nine people, so I live with two girls. I've spent time observing them, listening to their complaints about men and their lives. But basically one comment one girl made, someone highly educated, a feminist, and very proud, sums up what I saw. She said that the only men she's ever been attracted to were ones that made her feel bad about herself. Not that they were jerks mind you, but that they just made her feel inferior. This same girl tells me stories about how her father is the king of backhanded compliments and how she has always relied on him to protect her.
All of this rang a bell. I recalled the manosphere. I reread the evolved landscape of ideas and decided to seek out women, armed with this information and now convinced this was how I landed my first girlfriend. I was sick and tired of searching for a fantasy and ending up rejected and hurt. I ignored the girls in my program: I had revealed insecurities to them about myself and I felt that they weren't attracted to me because of it. So I shaved, got a haircut, basically came out of hibernation, pumped myself up with positive thoughts, and started to put myself in social situations. I went out to cafes, bars, parks. To be honest, I still didn't have many real conversations, but I felt so uncomfortable just being around so many people that I felt I had to acclimate myself to that level first. I tried to work up the courage to go to a club alone but I couldn't do it.
One day, I lay in the grass at a park and was working on a drawing of Ludwig Wittgenstein. An Estonian girl came up to me and we chatted for a while. I felt like a pretentious ass telling her that I was drawing a portrait of a famous philosopher and that I went to an Ivy League. But DHV right? And I hadn't done those things just to meet girls but because that was who I was. So I shrugged off those thoughts and just acted like myself, not masking any of my thoughts for fear of being an asshole like I usually do. I asked her to get a drink with me but she said she didn't drink anymore. So I got her number and asked her out to coffee instead. She came to my tube stop and I walked her back towards my apartment, showing her around. I asked if she wanted to see my apartment and she said ok. She said she was tired though in the elevator and I replied 'Luckily I have a bed.' And we went to my room and I had sex for the first time. Then I gave her tea.
So I'm dating this girl now. I like her, particularly because she's willing to fuck in public toilets. But, strangely enough, I actually think she is impeding my development. I haven't had the time to go out and meet other girls because of classes and having a girlfriend. I also mentioned to her that I would like to sleep with other women, which she freaked out at and I had to promise her that I wouldn't. At this stage of my development, is it really worth it to be tied to one chick? At least I'm having sex I decide.
Anyway, this post was really long. But I'm elated at this development. Imagine what would have happened if I'd actually stuck to my old ways: sharing insecurities. I've led this relationship the entire time and I've done my best to just be strong and confident. So in that sense, I'm learning a lot. I've been writing down lessons I've learned from each interaction with her. And I've gotten enough confidence to talk to random girls. I talked to an Italian girl on the street a couple of nights ago and teased her about her English, which she responded well to and then I walked away. But I still a) don't have enough confidence to open with girls at bars: I've gone to some alone and had a pint, caught some girls staring at me, but, seeing as how they're in groups, my heart stops at the thought of approaching them b) don't have enough heart to go to a club alone, and c) don't really know where else to meet chicks besides a bookstore coffee shop that hasn't yet yielded a single conversation.
I know that this is a standard nice guy decides to live in reality story, but if anyone would like to share specific experiences when going through the same thing, or any advice for me personally that'd be great. Right now I'm afraid of the disgust and vitriol that I've started to treat the female sex with. I feel angry that me acting like what I've always thought of as an asshole could be attractive to someone. And I still feel so hurt that those three girls just didn't care for me at all. Good fucking lord. Look what I'm doing. Sharing my feelings like an idiot beta. And there's another problem: I want to talk about my feelings because I'm an emotional person. But girls won't like me for it, and guys will just look down on me for it. I figure my family is the only place to turn. But doesn't that mean you'll never have anyone outside of your family actually know you?
Ricky Raw has some good posts about how people like me turning to the PUA can turn into heartless, empty bastards. But do people here feel like that's actually been the case?
Thank you
I'm a junior in college. I actually first started perusing the manosphere the summer before my junior year in high school and managed to use all that information to land my first girlfriend. I felt like I was putting everything together: she was really wowed by me and was crazy about me. But I was still a petulant kid who refused to speak to her friends for lack of confidence and was an admitted virgin, while she was rather experienced. She broke up with me, and I fell back into depression and moping. I completely forgot about everything I'd learned, though some of the stuff just became ingrained in my way of being social (taking up space and dominant body language when standing, sitting, and talking in particular ways, slow and fluid movements, a lot of which I gleaned from this website called changingminds), as well as teasing and mocking being the dominant mode of my interaction with girls. And I could pick up cues from girls really well. I hooked up with some girls during spring semester junior year and senior year, which hit a peak after I got into a pretty good college and I was dating a couple of girls at once. One girl even told me that she didn't like me like she liked other guys: she said she just wanted to fuck me. I was really proud of that, strangely enough. It's not to say that women were all over me, I had hooked up with six girls after my initial girlfriend, but it was just kissing, the occasional BJ and fingering. I was confused. I wanted love and I didn't know if I wanted to lose my virginity before marriage. And on each girl I grafted an ideal, masking and distorting who they actually were.
I go to college. I don't really meet many girls. I meet two girls spring sophomore year, decide 'fuck it, I'm sick and tired of being shy', and I act like myself, doing whatever I want. They both seem attracted to me, one I think because I'm entirely indifferent to any and all of her reactions and always acted vaguely disappointed, and the other because I always insisted, like an asshole, that we do things my way, and she liked my sense of humor. But the girls disappoint me. I try to talk about my insecurities and reveal myself entirely. They turn away in disgust and I walk away alone and hurt. At the end of fall semester junior year I had been spending time with three girls that I liked. My actual thoughts at the time 'I don't just want sex. I want love. I don't want animal attraction and lust. So I will build a foundation of friendship first, and then move romantically.' So that meant sharing yourself with another person, your feelings, who you were, and hoping that they would love you for it. All three of these girls rejected me after a romantic advance.
Today, I am spending a semester abroad in London. All three of those girls assured me we would stay friends while I was gone. I texted one and she never replied, another I don't want to speak to, and the third, the one I liked the most, has recently stopped answering my calls, which were about once a month. I am the only guy in my study abroad program, which is just for my college and only nine people, so I live with two girls. I've spent time observing them, listening to their complaints about men and their lives. But basically one comment one girl made, someone highly educated, a feminist, and very proud, sums up what I saw. She said that the only men she's ever been attracted to were ones that made her feel bad about herself. Not that they were jerks mind you, but that they just made her feel inferior. This same girl tells me stories about how her father is the king of backhanded compliments and how she has always relied on him to protect her.
All of this rang a bell. I recalled the manosphere. I reread the evolved landscape of ideas and decided to seek out women, armed with this information and now convinced this was how I landed my first girlfriend. I was sick and tired of searching for a fantasy and ending up rejected and hurt. I ignored the girls in my program: I had revealed insecurities to them about myself and I felt that they weren't attracted to me because of it. So I shaved, got a haircut, basically came out of hibernation, pumped myself up with positive thoughts, and started to put myself in social situations. I went out to cafes, bars, parks. To be honest, I still didn't have many real conversations, but I felt so uncomfortable just being around so many people that I felt I had to acclimate myself to that level first. I tried to work up the courage to go to a club alone but I couldn't do it.
One day, I lay in the grass at a park and was working on a drawing of Ludwig Wittgenstein. An Estonian girl came up to me and we chatted for a while. I felt like a pretentious ass telling her that I was drawing a portrait of a famous philosopher and that I went to an Ivy League. But DHV right? And I hadn't done those things just to meet girls but because that was who I was. So I shrugged off those thoughts and just acted like myself, not masking any of my thoughts for fear of being an asshole like I usually do. I asked her to get a drink with me but she said she didn't drink anymore. So I got her number and asked her out to coffee instead. She came to my tube stop and I walked her back towards my apartment, showing her around. I asked if she wanted to see my apartment and she said ok. She said she was tired though in the elevator and I replied 'Luckily I have a bed.' And we went to my room and I had sex for the first time. Then I gave her tea.
So I'm dating this girl now. I like her, particularly because she's willing to fuck in public toilets. But, strangely enough, I actually think she is impeding my development. I haven't had the time to go out and meet other girls because of classes and having a girlfriend. I also mentioned to her that I would like to sleep with other women, which she freaked out at and I had to promise her that I wouldn't. At this stage of my development, is it really worth it to be tied to one chick? At least I'm having sex I decide.
Anyway, this post was really long. But I'm elated at this development. Imagine what would have happened if I'd actually stuck to my old ways: sharing insecurities. I've led this relationship the entire time and I've done my best to just be strong and confident. So in that sense, I'm learning a lot. I've been writing down lessons I've learned from each interaction with her. And I've gotten enough confidence to talk to random girls. I talked to an Italian girl on the street a couple of nights ago and teased her about her English, which she responded well to and then I walked away. But I still a) don't have enough confidence to open with girls at bars: I've gone to some alone and had a pint, caught some girls staring at me, but, seeing as how they're in groups, my heart stops at the thought of approaching them b) don't have enough heart to go to a club alone, and c) don't really know where else to meet chicks besides a bookstore coffee shop that hasn't yet yielded a single conversation.
I know that this is a standard nice guy decides to live in reality story, but if anyone would like to share specific experiences when going through the same thing, or any advice for me personally that'd be great. Right now I'm afraid of the disgust and vitriol that I've started to treat the female sex with. I feel angry that me acting like what I've always thought of as an asshole could be attractive to someone. And I still feel so hurt that those three girls just didn't care for me at all. Good fucking lord. Look what I'm doing. Sharing my feelings like an idiot beta. And there's another problem: I want to talk about my feelings because I'm an emotional person. But girls won't like me for it, and guys will just look down on me for it. I figure my family is the only place to turn. But doesn't that mean you'll never have anyone outside of your family actually know you?
Ricky Raw has some good posts about how people like me turning to the PUA can turn into heartless, empty bastards. But do people here feel like that's actually been the case?
Thank you