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GUEST POST — Flirting and Forgiveness

July 6, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Doctor’s Note: today’s column is by Dr. Timaree Schmitt, host of Sex With Timaree and co-host of DTF: Darryl and Timaree Fun Hour. Also updated to add commentary on apologies and making amends.

There have been precious few upsides to the pandemic for me. But one highlight was discovering the You’re Wrong About podcast.

It’s hosted by a pair of journalists obsessed with exposing the way we collectively misremember history- or failed to understand it at the time. They have covered the Kitty Genovese murder (origin of the myth of “bystander apathy”), inner city gangs in the 90s (more a media narrative than a real phenomenon), and even the life of Marie Antoinette (she never said that thing we all think she said).

There is no shortage of topics for the You’re Wrong About podcast to explore, because, let’s be frank: we’ve been wrong about nearly everything, at least initially. As a species we’ve struggled to understand the world, making best guesses and learning bits and pieces over time, through a horrible process of trial and error.

Take the idea of germ theory of disease. It’s the concept that microorganisms and bacteria are responsible for many human illnesses. It was proposed a thousand years ago, but it wasn’t until the end of the 19th century that researchers came to accept that objects too tiny to be perceived by our eyes could be causing so much trouble.

Nowadays we can read about physicians of the 1850s going from performing an autopsy straight to delivering a baby without washing their hands and laugh riotously at the stupidity. How silly of them! How could they not know?

But we’re not smarter for having been born later. We simply don’t know what we don’t know. And until someone discovers something and effectively shares that knowledge, we will continue to not know.

And that’s how I feel about the way I learned about gender, consent and flirting. As a kid, I didn’t find it particularly confusing, because the narratives were actually very simple.

The idea was that women don’t really want to have sex; they just seek love and a partner who can take care of them. Men, on the other hand, want sex and validation and use love as a way to get that from women. Women are responsible for saying no to sex or providing it to those who are entitled to it. A man’s goal is to get access to women’s bodies. If he does, he is revered as capable and masculine, and it kind of didn’t matter so much whether he got that access through seduction, emotional manipulation, wealth, or even force.

This narrative was presented to me from every angle: romantic movies, jokes, the sexuality education I received. It was implicit in the articles in Cosmo and Maxim, song lyrics, and even the academic writings of evolutionary psychologists.

I don’t believe the sources of that narrative meant to harm. I don’t think the writers at FHM were actively thinking, “let’s completely remove all sexual agency from women and actively contribute to a culture that normalizes and excuses sexual assault.” I don’t think that a bunch of ad execs were sitting around a table saying, “I want women to feel preoccupied with being assessed as sexual objects and for men to be completely disengaged from their own emotions and unable to have healthy, intimate relationships.”

I think they were, like all of us, steeped in a culture that is ignorant. We had not yet realized that we need to wash the metaphorical germs off our metaphorical hands.

I was mad about all of this for a very, very long time. But that anger didn’t actually make me feel better and sometimes it was a barrier in being able to educate others. To move forward in my own life, I now embrace forgiveness: for all my favorite movies that told me it was ok to ignore boundaries and be emotionally manipulative for the sake of “love.” I forgive popular songs for normalizing treating people as objects. I forgive my school for assuming we were all straight, cisgender and wanted to get married and work in finance or whatever.

And I try to forgive myself for the ways I was a real douchebag too, hurting people’s feelings and making choices that today fill me with disgust. As a bisexual girl, I internalized both the messages about what to expect of men but also how to treat the women I dated. There weren’t many models of how I, a femme, should approach and romance another femme. So I took a page from the book of the straight dudes whom I thought -at the time- were cool. I was aloof, played games, was inconsiderate of boundaries, and ghosted on perfectly lovely humans. I’m filled with embarrassment at the thought of it now.

Forgiveness doesn’t make any of those actions OK. It’s just saying that no one benefits from carrying around icky anger and shame forever, hauling around baggage like it’s a trove of treasures.  We have all been harmed and we’ve all harmed, but we have to keep going. This requires acknowledging that we were wrong and committing to doing better.

A lot of Men’s Rights Activists (and conservatives in general) have a hard time with this. We may have been reared in a similar environment: same country, maybe the same religion or time frame. But instead of grasping that perhaps the culture’s framework around gender was wrong, they double down. Effectively it’s like saying: “if I start being concerned about germs getting me sick now, all the times I didn’t wash my hands: I was being stupid. And it means the sources of information I’ve trusted all my life might be wrong, which makes me feel uncertain and anxious. And we can’t have that.”

When we realize we’ve messed up, the next stop on the train is owning up and making amends. This is critical if we are going to continue to be connected to the person harmed, but a good idea regardless. Apologizing isn’t just about clearing the slate, but about rebuilding trust and establishing myself as a person who is worthy of their time and capable of learning and growing. Doing the work of being vulnerable in this way and attempting to repair damage not only demonstrates to others that we’re serious, but the act is a commitment to our future metaphorically hand-washing selves.

So what should my apology look like?

  • It requires a display remorse for having harmed the other person- which is categorically different than being regretful that they’re upset with me.
  • Admit responsibility- acknowledging that harm came from my action, regardless of what I intended or why I didn’t think it would be harmful at the time. Explain that I understand what was wrong about the action from their perspective, validating their experience. Skip excuses, minimizing or derailments about how I too have been harmed.
  • Attempt to make amends, thinking carefully about what I can do to set the situation right. Let them offer a solution to fixing what was damaged.
  • Offer assurance that it won’t happen again and then make an actual plan to avoid a recurrence. 

All of this should be offered directly and privately to the harmed person and we have to be ready to hear that they don’t accept the apology. And then we go from there, rededicated to the gameplan.

So what does this mean for flirting, seduction, and managing boundaries now?

First, we can make sure we are clear on the basics of consent, regardless of gender. Most of us get the idea that “no” means “no,” but we’re still working on affirming a “yes,” even in the small ways: offering touch before doing it, even ensuring that people feel free to leave a conversation.

Planned Parenthood has a great acronym for explaining consent: the FRIES model. They explain consent is:

  • Freely given
  • Reversible
  • Informed
  • Enthusiastic
  • Specific

All our choices must be made freely: without fear of repercussions for saying no, without coercion or the influence of drugs or alcohol. We can revoke consent at any time, even if we have said yes already or engaged in an act before. We communicate and agree on things like condom usage or how we’re going to navigate a risky act and ensure everyone is genuinely on board with what’s happening, not just going along.

This requires that we be truly attentive to the other person, staying present and looking for signs of their enjoyment or annoyance, anxiety, even zoning out. Basically: stay engaged in the conversation (or sexual act) and adjust according to their feedback.

It sounds like a lot of thinking and work. And to be real: it is. But rather than making sexuality more serious or stressful, this model of ongoing communication can make flirting and sex a lot more pleasurable: treating it as a creative, exploratory act, not a competition with a goal. We can derive pleasure from our partners’ pleasure, and collaborate together on flirting or sexual acts, approaching it less like a hunter and prey and more like musicians in a jam session.

And we’re not alone in this endeavor. Not only are there plenty of workshops available (shout out to my friend Vonka who teaches femme flirting), but lots of websites (including this one!) and articles and people you can hire to talk you through this process! 

And yes, we’re going to mess up and make awkward missteps. Knowing that it’s part of the process: we’ll apologize, try to set things right and do better going forward. We will also be rejected at some points. But when we approach with a different framework: the idea that sexuality and flirting are ways in which adults can have fun -not as inescapable fates of biology or the source of our validation- we’re liberated. And when we acknowledge that we have much more to learn -and always will- we’re preparing ourselves to adapt more easily.

Going forward, I’m going to be less interested in being “good at flirting” and more interested in being good at listening and showing interest in others. It seems like a good start.

 

Dr Timaree Schmit has been a sex educator for more of her life than not and is on this planet to bring rational, sex-positive, empirically-based knowledge about sexuality to audiences everywhere. She works as an adjunct professor, guest lecturer, writer, consultant, and host of the Sex with Timaree podcast and co host of DTF: Darryl and Timaree Fun Hour podcast. She is the LGBTQ and Sexuality affairs contributing writer for Philly Weekly and a long-time community organizer in the queer performance scene, and advocate for sex workers rights.

So Your Friend Is Making Porn: A Guide to Not Making It Weird

May 11, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdown has had a number of surprising side-effects. One of them has been an explosion of social-distancing influenced horniness. This in and of itself isn’t that unexpected; Thanatos and Eros go hand in hand, after all. Many people respond to stress and the threat of death by wanting to reaffirm life — and there’re few ways that make us all feel more alive than some good ol’ bangin’.

The problem is: social distancing, a lack of testing and no vaccines means that hooking up with people is a no-go. La petite mort has an entirely too high of a risk of bring la grande mort along with it. As a result: there are scads of horny people with nowhere to go and nowhere to blow.

 

Not that this doesn’t stop folks from trying anyway.
(via straightwhiteboystexting)

Of course, where there’s a demand, the market will rush to match the supply. So it shouldn’t be surprising that there has been a veritable explosion of people turning to making porn while they’re in lockdown. In fact, the influx of self-produced porn has become so ubiquitous that even Queen Bay herself dropped a reference to the subscription site OnlyFans in Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage”, giving the platform both an awareness boost and a dose of social cachet. People who’ve turned to various forms of sex work, including lewd cosplay photos, camming, and video work, run the gamut. There are folks trying to make the ends meet, experienced sex-workers changing mediums, people who’ve always had an exhibitionist streak, and folks trying to stay in the spotlight.

But regardless of why folks have turned to amateur porn, one thing remains true: discovering someone you know is naked on the Internet can make things awkward in ways you might never have expected.

When it’s your ex, it goes from “awkward” to “this all ends in fire.”

This leads to a host of questions that many people never expected to have to find answers for: what do you do when you find out that your friend, your co-worker, your friend’s sister, or your kid’s babysitter is making porn? Do you mention that you know or that you’ve seen it? And is there any way of consuming their content that isn’t inherently creepy?

[Read more…]

Help, I Find Sex Disgusting

April 10, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove,

I am a straight man in my mid-twenties who had had absolutely zero dating experience until relatively recently. In part thanks to inspiration from your blog, I started working towards self-improvement and tried putting myself out there more, and I finally began to get a few dates. Eventually, I had my first (and so far only) sexual experience involving another person, which ended badly. I brought a woman back to my place after a second date, and she said yes to sex (I had never done more than make out). I started going down on her, which she seemed to enjoy, but I threw up on her. Quite understandably, she asked me to stop and drive her home. I sent her a text the next day apologizing again for what had happened, but unsurprisingly I never heard from her again.

This incident was a stumbling block in the path of the confidence and momentum I’d been building up, and I haven’t been able to get a date since. Given that I only have this one experience to draw from, I have no idea whether this was a one-time reaction or something likely to recur. On the one hand, it’s possible I simply ate something that didn’t agree with me (I don’t think alcohol is the culprit, by the way, as I’d only had a single drink with dinner). On the other hand, this could easily be something that happens again. I am a picky eater who sometimes gets nauseous from food with off-putting tastes, smells, or textures, so that could be the reason. Her vulva smelled pretty bad to me, and I kept getting pubes stuck on my tongue. Since I have nothing to compare it to, however, I have no idea whether most women would be similar or if I was simply dealing with a case of unusually bad hygiene.

Also, I feel bad saying this, another possible factor is that she was… I wouldn’t say unattractive, but approaching the limit of what I would find physically attractive. She was a nice person, and I try to keep an open mind and not have too high standards for physical appearance, just as I would hope others would do for me. Still, I wonder whether I would have had the same reaction if it were with someone I were more strongly attracted to. Finally, a contributing factor was probably the fact that I was nervous. It was my first time getting naked with someone else, and I had thought I was about to lose my virginity. The irony is not lost on me that if nerves were playing a major role, then that makes me nervous it could happen again, which in turn makes it more likely.

I’m at a loss for how to approach this the next time I find myself about to get sexual with a woman. Presumably, saying “I’ve only done this once before and I puked on her” would send most people running for the hills. However, it also feels unfair to a potential partner to not warn her that I’m concerned that I could vomit on her, since I don’t know which of the aforementioned factors were involved and which ones could arise again. I feel really bad for the last woman and wouldn’t want to put someone else through that. How should I handle this going forward?

Weak Stomach

[Read more…]

Episode #133 — What Do Women Find Sexy In Men?

February 12, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Do you know what women find sexy in a man? Not attractive, not aesthetically pleasing but what makes a woman want to peel a man’s clothing off with her teeth.

A lot of guys… don’t.

In fact, a lot of guys have the absolute WRONG ideas about what turns women on. If you want to be sexier than other guys, then you should know what draws a woman to a guy… and why she says YES to sleeping with one guy and no to the rest.

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS:

  • What men DON’T understand about desire and arousal in women
  • Why physical looks aren’t the same thing as being sexy
  • What your presentation says about your desirability
  • Why women don’t actually LIKE “alpha males”
  • What all the great seducers have in common

…and so much more.

RELATED LINKS:

How To Be Sexier

Why Women Say Yes To Sex

The Science of Nice Guys

The Truth About Casual Sex (And How To Get It)

The Secret to Getting Laid (Without Losing Your Soul)

Listen Here
Download Here


Don’t forget to subscribe and review us on iTunes , Stitcher and on YouTube.

Like the podcast? Become a Dr. NerdLove patron at Patreon.com/DrNerdLove

Want more dating advice? Check out my books at www.www.doctornerdlove.com/books

[Read more…]

Learning The (Love) Lessons of End of Evangelion

June 28, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

One of the issues that can make discussing dating and self-improvement difficult is just how abstract some of the ideas we talk about can be. It’s one thing to talk about concepts like the difference between internal or external validation or what being charming looks like in practice. That’s why it can be handy to have an example to turn to, an easily accessible reference that can make some of these concepts a little simpler to understand when we see them played out in front of us.

And now that now that Neon Genesis Evangelion is out on Netflix, we’re going to take one of the most cerebral and philosophical and in some cases mindfuckingly weird anime series out there and wring some self-improvement advice out of it and answer some of life’s biggest questions.

Neon Genesis Evangelion
Yes, like that.
Wait, what do you mean “again?”

And just a head’s up: we’re going to be talking extensively about both the broadcast series – including the series finale – and the movie End of Evangelion, so consider this your massive spoiler warning.

PART 1: GET IN THE FUCKING THERAPIST’S OFFICE, SHINJI

One of the things that draws people into Evangelion is the character of Shinji Ikari. He’s very much the audience’s avatar, their entry point into their participation this world — something that’s fairly standard for most television series, and especially a mecha-action series like Evangelion; in fact, over the course of the first third of the story, the series is an almost prototypical example of the genre. At first it seems like it’s going to be the same story we’ve seen a thousand times before, just standing out by being more visually striking than other, similar entries, with designs, themes and visuals that other shows and movies would blatantly rip off years later.

Looking directly at you, Pacific Rim: Uprising.

Also it may be more than 20 years old, but the theme song still slaps.

But it’s the character of Shinji that’s the real draw. Unlike a lot of protagonists in shows like these, he’s… well, he’s kind of a whiny little jerk. He’s pretty much in a constant state of anxiety and self-doubt, always feeling like he’s been tossed head first into a life that’s continually raging out of his control. He’s overwhelmed by his responsibilities, alternately confused and scared of the new status quo he’s found himself in and he finds himself almost desperate for the approval of the adults around him… especially his cold and distant father.

And you thought YOU had daddy issues…

Emotionally, he’s a wreck; he has no self-confidence to speak of, he vacillates between being attracted to, confounded by and frustrated with the women in his life. He constantly feels like they’re teasing and taunting him for no reason and those moments of what seem like sincerity and genuine connection are then met with more mockery.

Half of the time, he wants to run away from his responsibilities and the insanity around him and isolate himself in his own little world, but feels like he has no choice but to come back and deal with it, despite having no goddamn clue what to do.
And despite however hard he works at the one thing that seems to bring his life meaning — the one thing he hopes will gain him the approval of others — it never seems to be enough. Which only increases his constant fear of abandonment.

So hands up if any of that feels familiar to you.

It’s not really surprising that so many people find that Shinji really resonates with them; his inner emotional turmoil mirrors what so much of the audience feels. In fact, part of the genesis1 of Evangelion was creator Hideki Anno’s dealing with his almost crippling depression; the story of Evangelion — and Shinji in particular — is the story of Anno coming to terms with his lifelong struggle with depression, alienation and the feeling that he lacks self-worth. And he put a LOT of himself in the character of Shinji.

In a way, Shinji is the ultimate wish-fulfillment character; because the audience identifies so strongly with Shinji, we want to see him succeed and get everything he wanted because it feels like the audience succeeds along with him.

Just as importantly though, because so many people identify so strongly with him, Shinji represents an opportunity to talk about how to achieve the goals that he and the audience share — the desire to find the happiness, validation, acceptance and love, that Shinji is longing for.

But in a very real way, Shinji — and by extension, the audience who identifies with him — is the author of his and their own misery.

So without getting too deep into the lore, one of the ideas that is presented is the concept of the AT Field. In the show, this is represented by an impenetrable barrier that the Angels manifest that shields them from harm.

…most of the time

As the show progresses, we discover that all living, sentient beings have AT fields… and the AT Fields are the manifestation of our fear of being hurt, which is keeping us isolated from others. This is reflected in one of the recurring themes of the series: Shinji’s isolation and loneliness and the way his unwillingness to connect with others conflicts with his desire to be accepted.

He wants people to validate his existence but by the same token, he can’t bring himself to accept it, and his progression as a character is the continual confrontation with the reality that he can’t rely on his relationships to other people to define him or give him meaning. Part of the pathos of his character is how often the things he craves most are denied or pulled away from him.

But as cruel as it may seem, those moments of loss and denial are indicative of lessons that Shinji — and by extension, the audience — needs to learn. In fact, we regularly see Shinji literally confronting himself in an attempt to come to terms with what needs to change for him to actually be happy and self-actualized.

LITERALLY.

The problem… is that Shinji represents two very distinct paths that the people who identify with him tend to travel down down.

Between the broadcast series and the film End of Evangelion, we get two different versions of the end — the end of both the narrative and the world. In both versions, NERV has failed, having been betrayed from within from the very start; the apocalypse is upon us and the Instrumentality Project has begun, causing all life on earth to dissolve as everyone functionally reunites into one universal being… essentially Buddhist concept of the dissolution of the self and ascension to Nirvana.

It starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes and aeroplanes…

But the two versions of the apocalypse go in very different directions.

Now I’m not going to get into the meta-aspects of why the series ended the way it did or why  End of Evangelion was made and whether it’s Anno’s giant middle finger to fandom; that’s not really relevant to our discussion here.

Instead, I want to talk about how, in a very real way, the difference between the ending of the broadcast series and the movie represent the two paths that Shinji — and again, the audience — face. One version serving as a guide… and one as a warning.

PART TWO: CRUEL INCEL’S THESIS

The movie End of Evangelion looks at the darker path for Shinji… one that actually seems more than a little prophetic, all things considered.

One of the constants of fiction is that we’re often willing to overlook the darker or problematic aspects of characters, especially characters we identify with strongly. This is in part because we’re given insight into their thoughts, their feelings and motivations, which tends to cause us to be more understanding, if not sympathetic; we feel like we at least appreciate their reasoning, if not their actions. That, in turn, makes us more inclined to look at their behavior with a certain amount of compassion or even empathy.

Or you might chuck it across the room instead of pondering whether morality means anything when you think you’re stuck in a dream…

But it’s often also because, well… we recognize those sides in ourselves, and we don’t like to acknowledge them.

And in End of Evangelion, both the narrative and the creator are unwilling to overlook or gloss over the less admirable sides of Shinji’s personality — and because the audience identifies with him so strongly, they have to take the journey with him. And it isn’t pleasant. Just as Shinji does, we aren’t just forced to acknowledge our darker, shadow side, we get our faces rubbed in it.

One of the things that the End of Evangelion drives home is just how one-sided Shinji’s desire for connection really is. He desperately craves that relationship, but he isn’t willing to meet people half-way, not in any way that matters. He ultimately wants them to break through his AT field — as it were — and form that connection for him.

Part of the problem is that Shinji is so absorbed in his own world that he rarely stops to consider or even understand the lives of the people around him.

Now this is understandable; part of the reason for his personality being what it is, is that he’s absorbed with his own trauma. And he’s gone through some serious shit, from having seen his mother die in front of him, to being deliberately abandoned and isolated by his father, being dragooned into being a literal child soldier in a cosmic, existential war and dumped into multiple situations — sexual and otherwise — that he’s just not equipped to handle.

Oh and he’s piloting a robot that’s powered by the soul of his dead mother.

But understandable isn’t the same as acceptable, and the fact that he’s dealing with trauma doesn’t excuse his behaviors — behaviors that, in many cases he knows to be wrong.

Like when he masturbates over Asuka’s comatose body.

(Which, incidentally, isn’t the first time he tried to do something to Asuka in her sleep.)

Neither, for that matter, does his suffering from trauma make him unique or special. In fact, pretty much every main character is dealing with major amounts of trauma; Asuka’s mother killed herself in front of her, Misato was at ground zero for Second Impact and had to watch her father die in her arms, Rei is isolated and functionally abused by Gendo and NERV.

Neon Genesis Evangelion
“No it’s cool, we’ll make the dying girl get in the creepy robot and fight a goddamn ANGEL instead.”

The fact that Shinji is dealing with some real shit doesn’t give him a pass, especially when the other characters — who are equally as traumatized — are proving to be more functional and self-actualized than he is.

But the root issue here isn’t Shinji’s fear of connection or self-absorption, it’s his unwillingness to confront it honestly or work to find a solution.

What he wants more than anything else is validation, but he’s never willing to give it to himself; he’s always looking for it from other people. He pilots the EVA-01 specifically because he feels like it will make him valuable to others and that means that they’ll take care of him and never leave him.

He’s the definition of somebody who lives for external validation; he relies on others to give his life worth and meaning. And the problem is that he can’t have it, certainly not for long. Everyone else has to lead their own lives and are dealing with their own drama. Frankly, most folks are clinging on to their own sanity for dear life as it is; they don’t have the capacity to keep other people from drowning. And even the most well-meaning of people can’t be relied on to give his life meaning or live his life for him because lives change, priorities change and people leave… or die.

This living for the regard of others make Shinji an ultimately passive character, and once all of those sources of validation are taken from him, he literally has to be dragged and sexually bribed into doing his job.

 

This version of Shinji is uncomfortable to watch because, honestly, it’s seeing a version of him where the comforting excuses get scoured away and we’re forced to see him at the ultimate end of his path, where his sense of entitlement and resentment has blinded him both to how others feel, but ALSO why he’s so miserable and lonely.

He treats people like literal objects; he may feel awful about it AFTERWARDS but not enough to stop in the moment. He gets angry that other people won’t just GIVE him what he wants — love and validation. But the issue isn’t that what he wants is unreasonable or that he’s unworthy of it, it’s that he’s demanding it without consideration for others… which reaches its ultimate expression in his sexual assault on Asuka’s comatose body.

Nope, not getting past this any time soon.

And then the world ends and Shinji has to confront his own existence and choices and have his soul laid bare. Shinji has no choice but to answer for his life and the decisions he’s made as the women in his life call him to account. He — and by extension, the audience — is forced to confront all the ways that he and we sexualize and objectify those characters, reducing them to little more than tits and ass even as he begs them for love and understanding or castigates them for not giving him what he wants

.

Shinji complains that they betrayed him, only to be told that there was nothing to betray; the only thing they “betrayed” was a one-sided belief he had about them as people and what their responsibilities were to him. He complains that it’s unfair for them to expect him to understand him when none of them will talk to him, only to have the fact that he never TRIED to understand thrown back into his face.

He demands to know why they couldn’t be nice to him and is unable to accept that they HAD been. Instead he launches into a rant that about how they tease and taunt him and mislead him, not realizing that the reason why they seemed to be so confusing and misleading is that they were dealing with their OWN trauma and he never stopped to consider that… because it made HIS life difficult. 

Even as he switches gears and begs Asuka for her approval, saying that she’s the only one for him, she refuses to leave him this final comforting lie and rips even THAT illusion to shreds; he doesn’t want her, he just wants someone to fill the hole in his life. She just happens to be the closest warm body, the one who he’s the least intimidated by. Meanwhile he’s refused to grow, take responsibility or do the work that’s needed to be someone who can love and BE loved.

It’s at this point that Shinji’s loneliness, selfishness, and need for external validation curdles from understandable teen angst to pure anger and HATE. His misery and fear of being hurt gets turned outward in frustration and rage at the people he feels are denying him what he needs and he lashes out with terrifying violence and — even after being given what he theoretically wanted — he ends up more alone than ever.

It’s a very incel-y response, more than a decade before Elliot Rodger’s murder spree.

Now some will argue that this is unnecessarily harsh, even cruel. But in this path, Shinji repeatedly REJECTS the kinder approach. He refuses to try to understand or to see beyond himself and clings to his belief that he did nothing wrong and was denied the things that he was owed. He projects his AT field even harder, even as he’s being implored to let it down. He’s unwilling to listen to the kinder, softer arguments and, as a result, he gets those excuses scoured away in the harshest terms possible and is left to suffer in his own impotence and misery.

PART 3 – The Hedgehog’s Dilemma

 

The other path open to Shinji involves not just him coming to terms with his desire to connect with others, but also how to achieve it.

Just as he has his confrontation with himself in the world of the Dirac Sea in episode 16, The Instrumentality Project sees him spend the last two episodes of the broadcast series in a state of unification — seeing not just into the hearts and souls of his friends and loved ones but also confronting his loneliness and fear of abandonment.

However, in this branch, things take a much more hopeful tone.

Just as before, Shinji is confronted with his need for external validation; he only pilots the EVA-01, for example, because feels that it’s the only way he can be of use. He sees this as the only way he can get people to acknowledge him and care for him. Shinji feels like he has to be needed by others in order to have worth.

In reality, however, he’s trying to avoid being hurt. He feels that if people need him, then they will have to accept him; otherwise he risks rejection. And because he doesn’t feel that he has value, he doesn’t believe that other people might accept him for himself.

But what he still doesn’t realize is that other people can’t give him value. The only person who can ultimately give him what he needs is himself. Everything that can be given to him can ultimately be taken away — through time, through change or through death.

However in this version, he’s far more willing to listen, to consider that maybe, just maybe, he’s wrong. That the world he sees where he’s useless is just that: a world of his own creation. And because the world is always changing and evolving, he too can change.

In this branch, because he’s willing to listen, he starts to learn. He learns that perfect freedom comes not just without limits but without anything that lets us orient ourselves and becomes meaningless. But in a world with greater structure, a world where we see and interact with others and learn the boundaries of our sense of self, we learn not just who we are but who we can become.

This culminates in his entering a new and entirely different world — a world where he never became an EVA pilot. And while his life is different in that world — he’s more confident, more secure — he’s still himself. The more self-assured student and the anxious EVA pilot are the same person; he has the potential for both inside himself. He could easily be either of those people… or many many others.

So while his feelings of inadequacy and his fear of rejection are real, they’re ultimately the creations of his own mind, to accept or reject and to shape as he chooses.

Unlike the Shinji in  End of Evangelion, THIS Shinji makes a break-through: he may hate himself… but he can learn to love himself. And in doing so, he realizes that he can give himself the validation that he needs, that he can learn to understand himself and accept himself. Not only can he improve and grow and become the person he wishes he could be, but also that he has the right to exist, to take up space in this world. More than that… he wants to live, to grow and change.

And with that revelation: the world around him changes in accordance to his expectations and he finds himself surrounded by all the people who love him — including his parents — who congratulate him for finally making his breakthrough.

For the first time, he realizes he’s not useless, that he doesn’t need other people to justify his existence and — most importantly — that he’s truly NOT alone; the world has simply been waiting for him to realize that and let it in.

Which is what WE need to learn: that the things we assume are our limitations and inadequacies are only real because we choose to believe that they’re real. But by that same token, we can rebuild, we can advance and that we’re not alone… and that we can learn to love ourselves, and, in the process, learn to connect with others honestly, instead of isolating ourselves in our misery, hoping that other people will do the work for us, before it’s too late.

  1. badumtish [↩]
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About Dr. NerdLove:

Harris O'Malley (AKA Dr. NerdLove) is an internationally recognized blogger and dating coach who gives dating advice to geeks of all stripes. Making nerds sexier since 20011

Remember: Dr. NerdLove is not really a doctor. [Read More …]

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