Grief is scary. Rare is the person who shouts, ‘Bring on the grief!’ but the more you experience grief and then recognise how it opens you up to feeling alive, the more you will welcome grief. It is a necessary part of the healing path and a sign that sustained healing in the body, mind and spirit is actually happening. Until you allow the grief to come and flow, the grip of resentment will continue to provide a false illusion of control when it actually causes further pain and suffering.
-Suzanne Jones, There is Nothing to Fix
There’s an episode of South Park in which Stan’s girlfriend Wendy turns out to be somewhat tougher than we imagine, and squares up to the class bully and bastard bigmouth Eric Cartman. She tells him she’ll give him a kicking as soon as school is over. Cartman, desperate for a way out, comes up with this not-so-ingenious evasion.
During the pandemic I had little to do but work, read and work out. I read a lot of books. A few of these were sent to me for review by publishers who I believe had found my details on a publication database. I’d listed myself as covering psychology.
Back in October ‘20 Ascot Media presumably found me there and sent me a copy of There is Nothing to Fix, a self help book by Suzanne Jones. A really interesting book about trauma, and recovery through therapy and support groups, There is Nothing to Fix stayed with me long after I read it. In particular, the above quote I couldn’t shift from my mind. Not the exact wording, but the principle – the avoidance of pain.
I have spent 40 years afraid of being hurt. I’m responsible for my own actions, and always have been, but there has been one thing that I’ve been hung up on for a long time. 5 of those years – secondary school – I dealt with a lot of verbal abuse from girls. They would make a lot of personal negative comments about my appearance. They’d pretend to be interested, and I’d fall for it every time, then brutally dump me. They’d get their boyfriends to threaten me. One of the girls even beat the shit out of me when I was on rollerblades. She was a head taller than me (even when I had blades on), and a lot stronger.
A lot of this happened not because of how I looked, but how I behaved. I have short term memory difficulties from an acquired brain injury, a result of a complication at birth. In secondary school I was insecure, frustrated, childish and a loner. Learning my way around a massive building and trying to remember rooms, names of teachers, names of pupils and – let’s not forget – what I was actually being taught in the lessons, was too much to handle.
I pretty much went mad. I don’t want to give too much of an example, but I was not popular. Whenever I was interested in a girl, the response was rarely ‘no thank you,’ it was a tirade of insults to keep me as far away from them as possible.
Let's jump forward to my mid-20s, to 2007-2008, when I was reading a lot of information from dating guru David DeAngelo. I found him through a Google search. I checked his site (no longer valid), started reading, and started taking on board his teachings.
Within 6 months, I’d lost my virginity at the age of 25.
Slight overshare, perhaps, but we’re talking about trauma. There’s no other way of making the point. In those 6 months of reading, though, I took on a lot of character-building information. I can still remember a ton of it. I remember sitting at my computer literally crying as I realised what I’d been doing wrong my whole life. Every email that was sent out informed me more and more.
I somehow got out of the habit of reading the emails. Maybe they stopped being sent. I dunno.
There was one particular point that he made, though, that I can’t get out of my head, yet, paradoxically, I am still yet to take on as a 40-year-old. (Predictably, I can’t find it anywhere online now, so you’ll have to accept my paraphrasing.)
DeAngelo explained that, you could look at a woman, like her, go over and talk to her and get a resounding no. She might be polite, or she might not be. But if she rejects you, you know. It’s over. You move on. The damage is done. If you don’t approach her, for whatever reason (for me it was fear that I wouldn’t be good enough), you’ll spend the rest of the night- possibly even the week- thinking, what if I’d just tried? What if things had worked out?
That pain of regret will be so, so much worse than any rejection she could give you.
DeAngelo is right. I know this and have acted on it with success. Sometimes they’re interested, sometimes they’re not. Yet I still find I can freeze with fear, and not make that initial approach. Then I go home wishing that I’d made the move.
In contrast, I’m reminded of an incident after a Miss Swimsuit UK event a few years ago. Believe what you want, but I’d been there to get selfies with zed-list reality TV stars, not just to ogle women in bikinis.
Not just.
After the event we’d headed to an after-party in a venue nearby. On entry, I realised from the couplings and dress sense of the clientele that this was a gay bar. No biggie. Been to many. But I do get a lot of unwanted attention from gay guys, and always have, and I was starting to get looks. Some guy struck up conversation with me. I brushed him off.
For whatever reason, the group seemed to split apart -maybe someone went to the bar, someone else went to the restroom, etc etc. I was stood on my own. I needed to raise a flag.
Fuck it, I thought. I’m in a distant city, nobody knows me, and if I meet anyone nothing’s going to happen anyway. I’m giving my mate a lift back to Manchester, so I can’t do anything with anyone tonight or after. It means nothing.
And I know how I’ll feel if I don’t try.
Across the room, someone else was evidently feeling out of place. A tall, traditionally beautiful, perhaps Arabic looking woman, maybe in her mid 20s.
Let’s do this.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Matt.”
“Matt, I’m not the kind of girl you should be approaching,” she claimed. “I don’t even come to this kind of place.”
“Me neither,” I interjected. “I’m from Oldham.”
Once she started ranting about her family having land in Saudi Arabia, I walked off.
Big exhale. Well, I thought. Not had rejection like that since school. But I did it. She didn’t waste my time, she made her thoughts clear, and they were exactly what I expected. Any other approach I do is unlikely to be that bad.
I don’t remember making any other approaches that night, but generally speaking, it was a decent night.
Contrast that with countless other nights during which I’d seen someone I’d liked the look of, and I’d not approached because I expected to get exactly that response. Afterwards, I’d spent more time wishing I’d just tried, feeling more turmoil than I would have felt if she’d have blown me out like Arabic Girl did.
But then, also, compare that with other nights when I just thought, fuck this, and made a move, and got somewhere. Some of these women were astonishing. They could have had anyone, but were happy – at that moment, at least – with me. With all my self-doubt shoved to one side, I achieved what I wanted. Literally the only thing genuinely stopping me – not my disability (when I explained memory difficulties, most girls were fine with it) – not my looks (it seems not everyone agrees with certain girls from 3 decades ago) and not my mental health, but my own belief systems that have been the issue behind all of this.
Cartman humiliated himself far worse than any beating ever could (plus he did get beat up). David DeAngelo and Suzanne Jones are both absolutely right: The pain of hesitancy or evasion, and more pertinently, regret over inaction, is far more excruciating than the pain of rejection outright insult.
To polish off this thesis: a quote from Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power. In particular, Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness.
Understand: If boldness does not come naturally to you, neither does timidity. It is an acquired habit, picked up out of a desire to avoid conflict. If timidity has taken hold of you, then root it out. Your fears of the consequences of a bold action are way out of proportion to reality, and in fact the consequences of timidity are worse.
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