The only sure path to improving your dating life is to improve yourself. But what happens when nobody else seems to notice these changes?

Going from the sad sack loser – an “average frustrated chump” in PUA parlance – to being someone who was confident and at ease with himself and who actually was skilled at meeting women, getting dates, getting laid – took years of work. I had to fight a lifetime of ingrained bad habits, self-limiting beliefs and the adoption of somebody else’s identity of who I was.

I was, frankly, rather justifiably proud of the improvements I’d made in my life… but while my friends in my adopted home town revelled in my newfound identity, my childhood friends didn’t seem to notice at all.

In fact, at the time it seemed to me as though they were actively working to force me back into my old identity: The One Who Was Not Good With Girls. Any stories I had about the women I was meeting or the dates I had gone on were seen as exaggerations at best – outright lies at worst. Any opinons I had about approaching women were met with disdain. In fact, if we were out at bars, they’d treat me as a joke for their entertainment – “Ok Cassanova, show us what you’ve got. Go talk to that girl at the bar! Ooh, ooh, and you have to use this line!”

It can be frustrating,  maddening even, when nobody wants to acknowledge just how much you’ve improved. It can make you doubt that you have actually changed at all. To make matters worse, it can make you lose that progress you fought so hard for. When the people whose opinons matter to you seemingly refuse to acknowledge how much you’ve changed, it can lead to you falling back into your old, bad routines. What’s the point in changing when nobody notices or even cares?

Why is it so damned hard to change the way people see us?

Turns out that it’s a mix of social dynamics and how our brains work.

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