Social Coward or Social Casanova?
Article Source: Dating Books For Men. Copyright 2008
Author: Michael Pilinski
S P O T L I G H T
Michael Pilinski is the author of
Without Embarrassment
To learn more about how this book compares with others in its genre:
I will bet that the following statement is true of any guy reading this who does poorly with the ladies: You don't really understand what it is you're doing WRONG that makes you so unattractive to women - for the
exact same reason that "Casanova", who scores left and right with them, doesn't understand what he's doing RIGHT.
In my experience it doesn't matter which one you happen to be - both the schlep with women and the Casanova are fairly clueless as to why they ended up the way they are in terms of their skill level (or lack there of) when it comes to charming and seducing the ladies. Of course, Mr. Casanova is happy with his situation. The schlep, not so much!
I believe that both these sets of behavior patterns and attitudes, which lie at opposite ends of the personality spectrum, are the result of accidents that occurred when both you (sorry, but I'm assuming you're the schlep) and Mr. Casanova were just beginning to notice girls sexually at a young age - sheer
random events which involved elements of good or bad luck - and little more.
It probably went like this: YOUR first trial and error experiences occurred with a girl who simply
did not like you (perhaps due to personal issues of attraction and anxiety that had nothing to do with you). The result was that you ended up with a
negative reinforcement of your earliest efforts at seduction and socialization. This awkward and possibly shameful first attempt at romance robbed you of the critical early confidence you needed to keep experimenting and practicing your skills with the fairer sex. It kicked off a
descending spiral of inaccurate behaviors which then led to more and more failures with women as time went on, further stunting your social development.
More failure then resulted in a complete loss of confidence, a growing social ineptitude and an ultimate withdrawal from the game of flirting and attempting to game women. Your behavioral changes might have further progressed to episodes of delusional thinking, dark fantasies, and eventually drug and alcohol use. In other words, your character changed to make it even less likely that you could successfully interact with women, and voila'... a "nerd" was born!
Our Casanova, on the other hand - due to simple GOOD fortune and nothing else - may have tried the exact same moves during his adolescent years, just as you did, but HE happened to choose a girl that LIKED him, and who therefore responded favorably to his fumbling first efforts. Get the picture? He lucked out and got a positive response to the exact same inept moves that you made! Merely because of random good luck, Casanova happened to choose a girl who responded to him in an
emotionally reinforcing way.
This "big break" (the one you missed out on) gave Casanova confidence AND positive social feedback - which further provided a laboratory to fine-tune his social behaviors. Maybe he grew up in an environment which supported, or even encouraged, those initial experimental behaviors - a supportive older sister, or a female friend, that he could talk to in confidence whenever he needed advice. Someone to make the female psyche seem less mysterious and intimidating to him. You, on the other hand, may have grown up in an all-male environment in which women seemed remote and unfathomable. Possibly your every move in this arena was met with
scorn and ridicule whenever you actually tried to act, making you even more gun shy after a few failed tries to get it right.
And so... you learned to associate fear and paralysis with the idea of courting a woman!
Anyway, my point is this: Your downward turn could just as easily have been an upward turn had your luck been good instead of bad during those first early experiences. I believe that this element of LUCK is more pivotal in our lives that most of us realize. The timing of the luck is critical as well: it sets the stage for the interplay of key events upon which your self-image is manufactured in fits and starts. You see, there is really no fundamental difference between the
Social Casanova and the
Social Coward. Both individuals are simply the end result of being turned out in opposite directions at a critical point in their lives.
Stated another way, your current status as a social coward is MOSTLY "nurture" (or in your case, the lack of it) and LITTLE in the way "nature". So... you are no more genetically programmed to fail socially than the Casanova is to programmed to succeed. Both of you simply learned how to win or lose with women as you traveled along divergent social-life paths.
Think about that for a moment. What if that first nervous reach for affection had gone differently for you? What if that first girl you ever asked out had said yes and then became your "girlfriend", instead of laughing in your face and running off to tell her friends that you were such a loser?
Imagine how your social skills and confidence would have improved over the subsequent months and years if that time had been spent in social interaction (good, bad or ugly) with women instead of social isolation? This would have given you a whole different concept of yourself and made you an entirely different person than you are today.
And to think that it all turned on that one, damned UN-lucky first break!
Well, don't you think the time has arrived to stop allowing this effect of random chance to continue directing your destiny? Isn't it time to make a course correction back into the world of the living (and the socializing!)?
There ARE resources listed on this site to make it easier than you might think -
but it all begins with a decision by you right now to REFUSE to let the faded echo of a long-gone series of negative events continue to shape your life. Until you make that one decision, nothing will ever really change for you. That's where it all has to begin... with a decision FOR yourself, rather than against you.
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B Y T H E S A M E A U T H O R . . .
Michael Pilinski is the author of
Without Embarrassment
Michael Pilinski, the author discussed in my Without Embarrassment review, is a deep-thinking battle-scarred woman's man, who has figured out how to ascend the Male Dominance Scale by which women grade men as a potential mate. Care to improve your score?
To learn more about how this book compares with others in its genre, or read and in-depth review:
