self-limiting beliefs Archives - Paging Dr. NerdLove

Ask Dr. NerdLove: How Do I Cure Commitment Phobia?

October 15, 2018 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hey Doc,
Appreciate the site, and your responses to so many of us trying to figure this whole “desire for romance” thing out. It’s not easy, so thank you.

My question to you regards the idea of “commitment-phobia”. I put it in quotation marks because, while I had heard the term before, I never really knew there was a pattern of behavior associated with the phrase. I just assumed it was what people told themselves/others when they were rejected by someone they fancied so as to alleviate the sting of that rejection. Plus, I know it’s not an actual, clinical diagnosis with criteria that need to be met and so forth so I never really thought it could be a real thing.

Until it happened to me.

I was telling my buddy that the great woman (we’ll call her E) I spent two months with abruptly ended everything and pulled the “I’m not ready for a relationship” card (another phrase I never take at face value, to be honest) out of nowhere. My buddy was aware of how quickly things between myself and E escalated, and upon hearing of her very sudden and unexpected departure, said “yeah dude. She’s afraid of commitment.” After telling him I thought that was bullshit, he went on to explain that commitment-phobia unfolds exactly how things unfolded with E and I. Commitment-phobes are super, crazy hot for you at the beginning, but the second they feel like a real relationship is forming, with obligations and expectations they’ll need to meet, they leave. They’re terrified of these obligations, these expectations, so goes the theory of commitment-phobia.

I started reading what the internet had to say about commitment-phobia and was floored. Blown away by how SPECIFIC these sites/authors were relaying E’s behavior. Our relationship was textbook commitment-phobia, come to find. We met through a friend of a friend and immediately hit it off. Numbers were exchanged that first night, flirted for about a month before our schedules allowed us to see each other again, and we were off and running. Text messages throughout the day, staying with each other two, three nights a week, dinners cooked, friends met and sex, sex, sex. Each and every time we were alone at either my place or hers, it went down. And SHE initiated virtually all of these things. I never said no to her, despite thinking once or twice that we were moving pretty fast, because I was absolutely crazy about her. She was amazing. We had “the talk” two weeks in, where she told me she thought about some reasons she shouldn’t move things forward with me but that she ultimately decided she had to be with me, she felt for me that much. “There’s no way I can not be in a relationship with you” she said, verbatim. I was absolutely over the moon. Couldn’t have been happier to hear her say that, I was head over heels for this woman.

So, this goes on for two months until one Monday night (she always came over on Mondays after her dance class and stayed the night with me; again, we definitely had a routine of shared time down by this point) she arrives without her overnight bag. I ask why she doesn’t have it, and she tells me we need to talk. My heart immediately sunk. Those are never good words to hear from your woman and sure enough, she did what everyone does when they tell you they “need to talk”. She dumped me. And did it by explaining how perfect a guy I am and that “this isn’t some Tinder shit with you, I think about you way too much, all day, and I can’t have that in my life right now. I’m way too busy starting my career and I’ve been through a lot of changes in life recently. You’re such a good, genuine person and I can’t give you what I know you deserve right now, so I have to end this.”

Crushed, broken-hearted and dejected I told her I wished she felt differently, that I would hope this could be something we actually talked about before she made such a big decision, but her mind was made up. So, I told her how much I cared about her and how awesome I thought our connection was one last time and then let her go.

But she didn’t let me go. Again, according to the patterns of behavior associated with commitment-phobia I read so much about, the commitment-phobe will end the relationship only until the anxiety they feel over being in a relationship and all the expectations with it subside, and then they’ll be back in touch. And E was. Not specifically to get back together, but to ask questions that didn’t need asking, to make comments that didn’t need to be made and just overall being unable to go without being in touch for more than two or three weeks at a time. I ultimately had to tell her not to be in touch with me for any reason, no matter how big or small she thought it was unless it was to discuss the rekindling of our intimate and romantic relationship.

To sum things up, and my question to you, is what I should be making of all of this and are the red flags described in the ideas of commitment-phobia something I need to pay closer attention should I find myself in a similar situation in the future? “If it feels great and is moving quickly because two people legitimately have deep feelings for one another, and they realize this soon, then SHUT IT DOWN because one of you is a commitment-phobe”. That just sounds crazy.

Or could E have been legitimately honest when she said she wasn’t ready for a relationship when she did so much, and went so far out of her way to make me think she did, and that she was into me and was in it for the long haul? If that’s the case, how is it possible the idea of her not being ready for a relationship only occurred to her after making it a point to spend as much time with me as she could for two whole months? She’s a mature, adult woman who is HIGHLY educated (38 years old with a Ph.D. in psychology FFS). How could she NOT have known she wasn’t ready for a relationship when we flirted for a month and then she solidified everything herself by bringing up “the talk” and telling me she had to be in a relationship with me?

I’ve had my fair share of experiences with women, I know when they pull the “I’m not ready” card it’s because they’re just not into you, but NOTHING about E’s behavior made me think she wasn’t anything but crazy about me.

What am I missing here?

Signed,
Victim of Commitment-phobia?

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: How Do I Escape My Red Pill Past?

July 27, 2018 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hey Doc, I’ll get right to the heart of the matter.

Growing up, I’ve had a leftward political migration. Where as I was a run of the mill, centre-right type with a very poor grasp of politics and the history that goes into it, I’ve migrated more and more towards what might be called the left, as broad and useless as that term is. This is something which is quite rare in guy with my background which is a middle class, upper caste hetero guy who grew up in India during the early 2000s. I went from thinking Nazis were these cool looking villians and having Nazi propaganda poster as my Facebook picture to actually understanding the depth of their barbarity and desperately trying to scrub that from my page. I went from thinking that while feminism was necessary in the past but is now out to destroy video games to realizing that I mostly agree with feminists. I went from being uber-religious to being an atheist. From thinking that free markets solve everything to realizing that the genuine pitfalls of capitalism and a need for social democracy. This will all get important in a bit.

Part of that was the fact that when I was younger ( 18ish ) I was drawn into PUA stuff, which I admittedly just skimmed through instead of reading it thoroughly. But the fact is if you’re repeatedly exposed to something and you don’t make an effort to pushback against that from a skeptical viewpoint, it seeps into your worldview. This all kept building up and as I was conditioned by various experience, I was turning into this “Nice Guy” stereotype, something I was driven away from by reading things like Heartless Bitches International (Which I think should be required reading for anybody complaining about being Friend-Zoned) and books like No More Mr. Nice Guy (which, admittedly, I still haven’t completed, in that I’ve read the book but not followed along with the exercises in it).

But somehow I still was being sucked deeper and deeper into the orbit around The Red Pill, and while I never visited those subreddits I still, on an honest reflection, found that my views and theirs kinda overlap. I’m nowhere near as misogynistic as them, mind you. It’s that I find myself reading some blogpost from people like Rollo Tomassi and thinking with something quite resembling a deep conviction that women can never love men, not really. That they are all really hypergamous, and any pleasantness on their side is just a facade, a way to get stuff done. This put me in a really dark place in 2017 and was exacerbating the anxiety and depression I already deal with. I thought, when the world’s so bad for those with girlfriends, what’s the chances of a 21 year old fat virgin who does not match the ideals of hegemonic masculinity that are prevalent in my culture.

Thankfully, I found many resources to get through that helped me through that time, I was talked down from that by an uncle who was a player in his 20s, but is single now (in his 30s). I found the ExRedPill subreddit that was massive help, and through them I found things like the works of bell hooks, Mark Manson and you.

And even though I have largely overcome the bad part, I think, I still have this bubbling feelings of anxiety from the residual attitude I have. I still feel hopeless and despondent when I read so many studies about things like “Bad Boy” allure or ones how females are more likely to rate High-T indicators showing males as more attractive while they are ovulating and Lower-T indicators showing males while they are not. I admit, I’m not that well-versed on how to distinguish between a good and a bad study. However, from one statistic class I took I know that bigger the sample size the more confidence one can have on extrapolating it on the general populace. I am also skeptical of studies that seems completely trusting of assumptions baked into their methodologies and aren’t cross cultural.

I’m sure that there is a lot of confirmation bias involved in this. But I don’t know how to get out of this rut in my brain. For all that I have read on gender and socialization, I can’t get behind the outright denial of evo-psych I see so prevalent on the left, even while granting that 90-95% of “research” that comes under the banner of evo-psych are fucking bullshit. I can’t agree with the assertion that all the differences we see are socially constructed given that there is a ton of research showing how sex differences emerge by a very early age when not a lot of socialization has taken place, but at the same time when someone says something like “It’s all biology” and “There are only two genders”, I can only think of how unbelievably naive they are on this topic. But all of this is besides the point.

The thing is I have better things to focus on than this. In 2017, I put no effort into campus placements because I was struggling with this, and the anxiety it built up. Similarly now, from time to time, I become embroiled in this, fall down the rabbit hole and don’t focus on things that are more urgent, more important, like that fact that I don’t have a job still and am dependent on my parents. The fact that I’m not working hard enough towards my portfolio. The fact that all the friends I had in college are in different cities, the nearest one being a 2 hr metro ride away, and most of which were toxic and performance-based anyway, where only 2-3 of them I can say had any mutual ‘philia’ and I’m not doing anything that would change that.

How can I get past these attitudes so that they no longer cripple me on my path towards self improvement?

Choking on The Red Pill

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: How Do I Stop Hating My Body?

October 16, 2015 by Dr. NerdLove 85 Comments

Hello. I came to you because of an online friend. I have struggled with anorexia since I was 12. I’m almost 14 now. I came here because people won’t take me seriously because of my age.

I also struggle with depression and severe anxiety, neither of which help with my case. I am about 5’2 and weigh approx. 113 pounds. I used to weigh only 98, but after treatments and therapy my weight has been increasing.

I find it very hard to reach out to people because of this. When my anxiety kicks in, it’s practically impossible. I just switched schools because I couldn’t face returning to my peers after they knew about my disorder. I need some help, because if I can’t find ways to cope with how my body looks, I’ll most likely drop out of school again.

After gaining weight in therapy, I’ve felt so horrible about how I look. Most of my peers are 3 or 4 inches taller than me and weigh 10 or 20 pounds less. I need some help with overcoming these feelings and not letting my anxiety get the best of me.

Stranger in The Mirror

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5 Ways You Sabotage Your Love Life

May 18, 2015 by Dr. NerdLove 506 Comments

One of the most important things I can teach people about dating is simple: dating success is 80% attitude and 20% skill and presentation. No matter how good looking you may be or how suave you may think you are, a shitty attitude is going to sabotage your success and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Behind every hot man is a line of people who are absolutely sick of his shit.

One of the things that people rarely seem to understand is how your attitude and beliefs color everything you do. Like the elephant and the mahout, what you believe controls what you perceive. When you believe that women, for example, are hypergamous bitches who are obsessed with status, you’re going to see everything as being a shit test. When you think that women only date men who are $Quality_You_Don’t_Have, you’re going to sabotage your own love life by missing out on the women who dig what you have to offer; you will literally miss every single signal and indication that they send you.

Let’s look at some of the most common self-limiting beliefs that men have that sabotage their love-lives.

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These Self-Limiting Beliefs Are Holding You Back

July 11, 2014 by Dr. NerdLove 855 Comments

Here’s a secret a lot of dating coaches won’t tell you: most of your dating problems are in your head. This isn’t to say that they don’t exist – it’s that most people’s sticking points tend to be the result of self-limiting beliefs. And the crazy part is that we tend to want to keep them. In fact, more often than not, people will fight harder to reaffirm their self-limiting beliefs than they will work to change things – no matter how miserable it makes them.

If you bang your head against the wall for long enough, eventually it stops hurting... — If you bang your head against the wall for long enough, eventually it stops hurting…

We get a lot of things wrong when it comes to dating. We tend to make a lot of assumptions about what our partners find attractive in others – usually based on incorrect information. We let intellectual fallacies color our conclusions, which quickly become self-limiting beliefs, and those beliefs quickly become the TRVTH as though they were carved into stone tablets from the top of Mount Fedora.

"Women are hypergamous bitches for indeed All Women Are Like That. I AM THE LORD... m'lady" — “Women are hypergamous bitches for indeed All Women Are Like That. I AM THE LORD… m’lady”

The problem is that – as I’m fond of saying – most of dating success is in your attitude. Your attitude is a self-fulfilling prophecy; if you believe you’re already rejected then you will be. The more you buy into these self-limiting beliefs, the more impossible you make it to get better. If you’ve been stuck in a dating rut – if you can’t get over that metaphorical hump¹ – then it’s time to start checking your attitude. If you’ve been holding onto these self-limiting beliefs, you’re not going to progress until you learn to let them go.

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