Men, Are You Scared of Rejection?
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Every man wants to meet an amazing, beautiful, perfect woman…until he actually does and realizes that she’s probably looking for an amazing, beautiful, perfect man. Odds are, he doesn’t think of himself that way (and the closer to amazing and perfect he is, the less likely he’ll see himself as such. With me so far?).
He looks at his own profile, notes the unfortunate lack of pictures of himself wrestling alligators or accounts of a successful start-up company for saving orphans, blushes over the apparently-childish interests he listed, and wonders why on earth she’d be interested in him. He imagines her taking one glance at his profile picture, noting his glasses and bad skin, and turning her perfectly-shaped nose up in a huff.
So, he doesn’t bother trying to message her and moves on, while women complain that there aren’t enough good men around.
Before and After
To build confidence in such matters, a lot of people recommend the old ‘before and after’ cliché; “before, you didn’t have a date. After, you still don’t have a date. Are you really worse off?"
Except it doesn’t work like that; before, you had no date, after you not only have no date but you have the knowledge that someone has positively rejected you.
Yes, you are worse off.
Rejection hurts. It hurts when someone tells you flat out why she isn’t interested, and it hurts when she doesn’t (most of the time she won’t). There’s simply no getting around it. If you put yourself forward, especially to a girl who seems out of your league, you’re probably going to be in for some pain.
The thing to remember is that you and I, as men, were not put on this earth to avoid pain: we were put here to achieve. God does not demand that we be safe; He demands that we have something to show for ourselves after our time on Earth (see Matt. 25: 14-30), and He doesn’t consider fear of failure an adequate excuse.
Presumably, we are here because we want to find, woo, and win an amazing woman. That’s going to require us to risk the prospect of failure and humiliation. So does every worthwhile achievement. We men ought to be risk takers, adventurers, the ones who, in the words of Rudyard Kipling, “Can meet with triumph and disaster / and treat those two imposters both the same.” Seeking to avoid pain should not be our first, or second, or third priority.
Besides, if you can’t even face the pain of a possible rejection, then why, exactly, should any woman be interested in you?
What Women Want
I think women, as a rule, like men to be masculine, just like men like women to be feminine. Women are attracted to confidence, strength, and courage. Why do you think it’s a cliché that ‘bad boys’ get all the girls? Not because women necessarily like badness, but because in our world, if often seems like only ‘bad guys’ show any strength or personality. Women also swoon over the likes of Mr. Darcy and Mr. Knightly in Jane Austen’s works because they are supremely confident, self-possessed men.
Call it sexist if you want; I call it reality. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. I think a woman has every right to expect her suitor to be a man: someone with courage, self-assurance, and, again confidence.
Make Yourself a Man
If that isn’t you, then work on making it you. This doesn’t mean changing your personality; on the contrary, it means being more yourself than you have been and making yourself comfortable in your own skin.
How do you build confidence? By achieving. You should set yourself goals and meet them. They can be small ones at first, i.e. “I’m going to wake up a half-hour earlier” or “I’m going to read a work of classical literature,” or “I’m going to jog every day this week.” The point is that you begin to convince yourself that you can achieve what you set out to achieve.
You will also need to correct your thinking, for as a man thinketh, so he becomes. Odds are, if you lack the confidence to ask a girl out because you’re worried what she’ll think of you, you are dealing with some bad thoughts. You need to identify and correct the ideas that are keeping you from being the man she deserves.
If you’re naturally introspective, this will be easier than if you’re more extroverted. You might want to carry a notebook to jot down ideas as they come into your head to better identify the problem areas.
It's All About The Embrace
Again, the goal here is not to be someone you aren’t; it’s to be confident in who you are. The specifics of your personality, even as far as attracting the fairer sex is concerned, are less important than the fact that you embrace them wholeheartedly.
True, if you’re, for instance, a huge gamer who is passionate about video games, you might find that a lot of women simply aren’t interested. But if you embrace this interest, strive for mastery in it, and don’t care a whit for what anyone thinks of you for it, you will, for that reason, be more attractive than someone who is diffident or half-ashamed of his own personality and interests, even if they’re much more mainstream.
Of course, you should always be striving for virtue and to be a man of God, but part of that means having the courage of your convictions and being comfortable in your own skin. If you can do that, you shouldn’t be afraid of what anyone thinks of you.
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