I spent Saturday night at a bonfire with a group of Gen-X Mensa members—a couple of us lasted until the wee hours of the morning and eventually began a conversation about how the men in the group felt insecure around women. (Incidentally, it started sometime around 2:00am—the God Hour.) The final result… there obviously weren’t any ultimate conclusions, though I’m left to wonder whether it was because we were butting heads or speaking entirely different languages.
What’s most unfortunate is that I felt like the go-between in the group. I used to be horribly self-conscious around women I was attracted to; since my time in California with Scarlet and everyone else in the mansion, I feel (somewhat) more confident. In the end, my personal experience didn’t matter: the final result was still “Why?” “Because.” “Because why?” “Because!”
For the ladies out there who can’t relate to the men’s point of view, I need to make something completely clear: being self-conscious is not something you can just shrug off and decide it’s not there anymore. Since that night, I’ve literally spent hours trying to think of something else you could compare it to. I could say “It’s a character trait that develops over time,” but since that wasn’t sinking in, how else could I describe it?
It may seem habitual, something you keep doing over time, but it’s not like a bad habit. You might be able to stop biting your nails cold turkey, but that nervous feeling in your gut is a trait that won’t just go away when you really want it to—hell, it’s usually when you really want it to go away that it springs up in full force.
I thought about comparing it to smoking, but it’s not an addiction, either. Being self-conscious will never give you a rush, it won’t help you relax or fit in and it can’t accomplish anything which might seem fulfilling. Moreover, if you can get past the point of feeling nervous around women, you don’t have to worry about relapsing. (I can’t attest to this final point for certain, but I’m down to half a pack of shyness a day…)
A lack of confidence around the opposite sex is a character trait, something that gets imbedded in your system and festers there for a looooooong time—it’s like gut rot. Sad to say, it’s very difficult to have your emotions amputated. You can’t tell someone, “Don’t be so greedy!” and expect them to start donating all their disposable income to charity the next day. It’s not that simple.
For some reason, the women we were talking to couldn’t or wouldn’t look at it that way. They just kept asking “Why not?” When you run out of reasonable explanations… “Because!”
There was one thing I managed to come up with that related to another part of the conversation: why men in a relationship seem more confident around women. (Yay me! One decent metaphor!) Compare men’s interactions with females to cliff diving.
Guys who are self-confident walk up to the edge in anticipation of the rush of jumping and falling down into the water. Self-conscious guys creep forward, look down and think, “Man, this is high… I wonder if there are sharp rocks below… God, that’d hurt really bad… maybe jumping isn’t a good idea.” Guys in a relationship have a safety rope tied around their waists. If they have any lingering insecurities around women, they can still dance along the edge and then pull themselves back into the arms of their partners.
Still hard to understand? I don’t blame you—it’s still hard to try to explain it. All I can ask is for women out there to be patient: if a guy walks up, stares at his feet and has trouble talking, wait and listen instead of shoving him away—there may be sharp rocks below.
