Journey to feel

Shame, guilt, and anxiety

I’m tall and handsome with dark hair and eyes. I’m of a medium build and I have been on the skinnier side for the majority of my life. Some people have looked at me in the past and assumed that I’m a model or called me a poster boy.

Despite the above, I have struggled with approaching women for the majority of my life. I had anxiety about rejection and I got super stressed when approaching women. Up until recently, I felt guilt for even going on dates with two different women in the same week. I used to feel shame for having desires and wanting intimacy.

I felt this way because it was a show, a mirage, a performance. My authentic self was nowhere to be found. I was trying to game the system and do the “right” things to pass as “normal”.

Approaching women

Today, I’m able to approach women while being fully in touch with my authentic self and my desires. I look women in the eye, say that I’m attracted to them, and that I would like to get to know them. I still feel resistance before approaching women because rejection is still often scary. However, I continue to practice, explore, and learn. I generally follow the below steps:

• When I’m attracted to a woman I get closely in touch with my desires and I find the words that describe them accurately, honestly, and respectfully.
• I remind myself of the awesome satisfaction I feel when my desires are expressed. I used to feel a lot of regret after not acting on my desires in the past.
• I remind myself that most of the time rejection is about the other person and their availability or readiness. Rejection does not effect my self-worth.
• I take action and approach the woman I’m attracted to.

As I gained confidence, I noticed that the easiest moment for me to approach a woman is when we first make eye contact. Things unfold smoothly and intuitively when I take this approach. I also found that my inner resistance and critical voices grow stronger the longer I wait. So, I try to go through the above steps as quickly as I can and often skip ones I don’t need at the moment.

Personal experiences and learnings

Here are a few of my insights that helped me on my journey to get in touch with my desires and express my attraction. Read my Path of change blog post to learn about how to make a change in your life.

• Making changes to my diet and implementing an exercise routine helped me feel better about myself. Physical exercise is the simplest and most accessibly way to help energies flow in the body and restore some balance. Read my Your body is your temple blog post for more details.
• Attaching ourselves to specific outcomes limits what is available to us and sets us up for failure and pain. For example, if I have a goal of getting the phone number of a woman before approaching her, I’m going to feel hurt if I don’t get her number. However, she could have a million valid reasons, completely independent from me, for not giving me her number. Maybe, she is in a healthy long term monogamous relationship or she has a hard and fast rule of not giving out her number on first contact due to past bad experiences. Instead of deciding upfront what is going to happen, I get into the mindset of curiosity and aim to explore what is possible and available with the people I approach. This takes off a ton of pressure from both parties.
• I reframed rejection as a gift of clarity, learning, and celebrate the person honoring his/her “no”. Till this day, every time I get rejected I learn something new about myself. I use these learnings to adjust my mental habits and actions. In fact, I have started to seek out women who are confident saying “no” because this is a strong signal that they are clear on their self-worth, boundaries, and desires. This doesn’t mean perusing women who had said “no” to me. A “no” is a “no” and it doesn’t require any explanation.
• I worked with a dating coach, briefly, to get myself more comfortable and practiced with rejection. There are lots of benefits to having a dating coach from being held accountable to using a well defined and experience based approach. I recommend Timothy Bray who helped me on my journey.
• I now take full responsibility for my own personal domain (words, thoughts, feelings, expectations, etc…) and create space for others to take full responsibility for their own personal domains. River Roaring runs a wonderful workshop called Wheel of Consent, that shows how to create clarity in intimacy and puts the concept into practice right away.
• A European pickup artist once told me that the most attractive characteristics of a man are confidence, leadership, and being a challenge. My take is that all of these are about the authentic expression of the qualities and not about memorizing a script or wearing the mask of a fake persona. Developing these skills takes time and require investment in learning, personal growth, and practice. For me:
  • Confidence comes from accepting and being at peace with my body, my circumstances, and where I am on my journey. I also gain a lot of confidence from consistency and from demonstrating my strengths to myself.
  • Leadership is all about empathy, creating clarity, and initiative. There are a lot of good material on leadership so please dive in and educate yourself.
  • Being a challenge is something of a combination of the first two. I aim to openly live a life aligned with my self-worth avoiding arrogance and openly taking credit for my contributions. Being comfortable in ones’ own skin and enjoying life is very attractive.
• Sex positive play or temple parties have allowed me to put my newly acquired intimacy skill to good use and practice them. I’ve been able to shed layers of shame and guilt around attraction, intimacy, and sexuality. These experiences are not for everyone and clearly demonstrated self-regulation skills are required.
• We are all beautiful and messy human beings. I grant myself grace every step of the way and don’t beat myself up for mistakes or setbacks.