Night owl here. 6-7ish hours lol. usually 2-9ish in the am.
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I made contact with a woman through a Facebook group. She messaged me back today while I was asleep, and I just returned the message now. I saw that sheād been inactive for a while.
That illustrates something. Iām hesitant. I still have to push through a mental barrier at every stage of moving an interaction forward to possible casual dating and sex.
I always have been. Matter of fact it was, as I perceived it, impossible for most of my life.
Yeah, Iāve had quite a bit of success with women, or at least a fairly high partner count. However, I didnāt initiate any of that. At least not intentionally and consciously.
Most of the time when I hooked up with a girl, it just seemed to me like a conversation started somehow. Iām never sure who approached who. And then at some point we start making out and things go from there. No clue about the process that went into making that happen, it just did sometimes.
When I thought about deliberately starting the process with a girl I wanted to hook up with or date, I just plain couldnāt do it.
Itās hard to describe the feeling that induced. It was fear, yeah, but it was more specific than that. It felt like I was on the other side of some kind of force field that I couldnāt push through. If I tried, or even tried to think myself into it, I got a physical sense of discomfort. Sort of like the butterflies in the stomach feeling, but over my entire body. Imagine standing on the precipice of a cliff about to bungee jump when you noticed that the guy who rigged you up was stoned off of his ass. Yeah, that bad, and the harder I tried to push through it the worse it got. At the time it really was insurmountable.
Now though, even though I still feel the force field and itās causing some level of hesitation I am successfully doing what Iāve set for myself to do. That is do at least one thing to Initiate or push something forward every day. -
I think that I need to do some more exercises that increase my ability to push into discomfort without hesitation.
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No sooner than I had written about that force field being insurmountable throughout my younger years than I realize that that isnāt ENTIRELY true.
I thought of one incident. I donāt recall if this was the semester that I finished flunking out of my first college or the five or six months I lived in my apartment after that. I contacted a girl on an online platform that was available at the end of the nineties and met with her.
I invited her back to my place, offered her a massage. I was bold enough to suggest she take her clothes off for it, and to my surprise she did. The rest doesnāt need to be said.
For some reason, that one time I was able to initiate an interaction and guide it all the way to sex without feeling the force field at all.
Iāll have to think on it and figure out why.
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I was almost late for work today due to oversleeping. That never happens.
Either my alarm didnāt go off, or I turned it off without actually waking up. I think it was the latter, but it doesnāt matter. Iām responsible for getting to work on time no matter what, and oversleeping by three hours isnāt acceptable.
I got here just barely on time anyway so all is good, but thatās not acceptable anyway. Iāve always lived by the āif youāre five minutes early youāre ten minutes lateā concept.
It has served me well actually. -
For the last couple of days Iāve been kind of frustrated about my lack of results in my attempts to date. I find myself tempted to get sucked into the āblack pillā mentality. You know that only the good looking rich guys with six packs and Ferraris have a chance at the kind of sex life I want to have.
Or at the very least that being an overweight middle aged guy it just isnāt going to happen. Most men are invisible to most women, blah blah blah.
There may be some truth to all of that, and some time ago, I may have fallen into the trap of accepting that and just giving up.
Now itās just making me look at what I need to change to make that not apply to me.
I need to lose some fat. Well, I know how to do that. I need to improve my social skills as they pertain to getting women into the type of relationship I want. Thatās going to take some practice, but I got that. I need to up my online game and maybe get some better photos of me. I can do that too.
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Stage two is definitely smoothing out for me. This washout week has been a hell of a lot more comfortable than the last one was. No turbulence at all as far as I can tell.
I still donāt have a full sense of what it is doing though.
I have an impression that something is changing, but not exactly what it is. -
I had a bit of a text conversation with a lady I contacted through one of those social media groups last night. I think itāll be continued.
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I had some negative thoughts creep in tod. Not bad, and nothing I canāt brush aside. But they were there.
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Iām going to āDirty Bingoā put on by one of the more sex oriented and less relationship oriented ENM groups on Sunday at a bar. I havenāt done anything for this group yet, so there should be some new faces. Iāve been putting myself out there at some kind of physical event once a week at least. So Iām putting in the work, Iāll get the results.
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**1/16/23 STAGE 2 CYCLE 3 WEEK 1**
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This entry is late because I was sick as a dog yesterday. I actually called in to work which I havenāt done in two or three years. It wasnāt pleasant to say the least.
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It was a rough weekend before that too. I really donāt want to get into what happened, but it was something that really threw me for a loop. Iām just now getting back to a sense of balance.
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The wife mentioned something interesting while we were discussing it.
She said that I see everything as a competition. Itās true. I see everything in terms of winning and losing, and hierarchy.
I donāt know that thatās an entirely bad thing, but it certainly has contributed to the problems Iāve been having throughout this run.
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I think competition is good, in business and sport, leads to innovation etc. In social settings itās draining for me and in my experience can also hurt āresultsā. Can be perceived as try hard, needy or/and pushy, which usually arenāt attractive traits.
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Itās a part of my personality that I should be aware of. If I know about it I can control it wjen itās not useful and use it when it is.
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OK, all throughout this run Iāve been hitting something. Fear. Insecurity. There are still some there even after DR and Stage 1. Donāt get me wrong Iām a lot better off for having run those. But one core fear remains. Maybe two. No, its three things and they were all entwined in what made this last weekend a rough one. Besides the stomach flu. Iām not going to get into what triggered it and brought it to my attention. I donāt want to talk about it even here. At least not tonight.
The biggest one I have, and itās shown itās face in many forms is the fear of inferiority. That may be the core of everything thatās held me back, caused me to hold myself back in so many aspects of my life.
Iāve been circling around this in this and my DE journal, but itās really clear now.
Why would I be afraid to try difficult things? Because if I fail, it shows that Iām inferior. I donāt mean it shows everyone else. I mean that it shows me that Iām inferior. Makes me admit it to myself. Thatās the worst thing to me.
Fear of loss? Not if I look at it. Why did I lose whatever it was? Because I was too inferior to hold onto it.
Humiliation? Humiliation happens when your inferiority becomes obvious to others and that makes it impossible to hide from yourself.
Fear of failure? Self explanatory.
Hating criticism? Same.
Hating being told what to do? Same core. -
OK, now weāre getting somewhere. Khan is all about seeing myself as a superior man, and thusly being one. And itās running directly into my deepest most stubborn core fear. Thatās blocking full execution and making this a really rough run.
So now what? Well, I think that I need to really lean into the discomfort.
For starters, thereās something I need to look at until I realize that it has nothing to do with me and does not reflect on me at all.
If Iām going to express Khan I canāt allow myself to hide anything from myself or to hide from anything.
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- On the financial front, I learned today that our new union is almost certain to get us a HUGE raise that will make up for not having one for the last ten years or so.
Itās enough that it will actually fulfill one of the goals I listed at the beginning of this journal.
In the meantime it sounds like Iāll be getting some of my overtime back. We may have a bit of time before the raise hits. The official negotiating meeting doesnāt take place for another month, so the extra OT will help us get through.
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- Iāve been thinking about what happened when I was sick on Monday. It really illustrates the difference between my mother and my wife, and more to the point what i didnāt get growing up that normal people do.
As much as Iāve been trying to get away from the how messed up my family and childhood was stuff, this bears thinking about.
When I got sick as a child, my parents, each in their own way, acted like it was something bad that I did (and I mean a deliberate bad act) that I did to them.
I was yelled at and usually forced to go to school or whatever anyway. There was absolutely no consideration for me, and a lot of anger that I would dare to inconvenience them like that.
My wife on the other hand took care of me. Not something Iām used to.
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**1/23/23 STAGE 2 CYCLE 3 WEEK 2**
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I went to a ālifestyleā meet and greet on Sunday. It was in interesting experience. It illustrated some ways in which I have changed for the better and some things I still need to work on.
It was crowded and very noisy. Thatās never been my type of environment, but I think I handled it pretty well. It wasnāt as uncomfortable as it likely would have been in the past.
The bad news is that I felt kind of alone in the crowd.
Everyone was talking to everyone and I spent a lot of the time standing alone.
Iāve always had difficulty starting conversations and inserting myself into groups of people who are already talking. That seems to still be the case in the type of free form environment I was in. At least where itās that damn noisy and most of the people there already know each other.
Something to improve. -
I prevented something from really biting me in the ass today. One of the things that I had to stop paying when my wife lost her income was about to become a real problem. Fixing it is going to cost me some money for a while, but it can be fixed.
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- We are having a financial rough patch because Iām not getting any overtime anymore. However, I know that Iām getting a massive raise in the very near future so I see light at the end of the tunnel. By massive I mean that Iām going to be making almost half again as much as I make now so that will go a very long way toward making things easier in the long term. Iāve just got to hold things together for another couple of months.
It seems to happen this way. It looks like my luck has run out, and then like majick something happens to turn it around.
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- I went to another event. Once again I was alone in a crowd for most of the night so I didnāt meet any potential playmates, but I noticed something.
I did not feel awkward or uncomfortable being alone in the crowd. Not at all.
That is really good progress and a night and day difference from how I used to be back in the day.
My body language and internal confidence were great, I just didnāt see an opportunity to start talking to anyone I might have been interested in.
Part of this is that Iām not used to that type of crowded noisy environments, and part might be that I am not that initially outgoing to begin with.
Iām seeing that Iām just plain not that outgoing and the āalphaā programming that Iām doing is making me more of a āsigmaā than it is a super gregarious guy who owns a room.
I like that, Iām just going to need to learn to make that work for me. I think the key is going to be figuring out how to turn one of those crowd situations into a one on one interaction. That plays to my strengths.
Also, and I might already be doing this by maintaining comfort and confidence while not interacting with anyone, I need to really refine my way of making the quiet and mysterious persona work for me.
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- Iāve been thinking about the women who have shown interest in me within, well, letās say since college. What did these situations have in common?
There have been two types. Iām not talking about two types of women. I mean two types of situation where something developed. The first is where I meet a girl at some type of of event where there is a party atmosphere. I met the one lady who Iāve actually had a thing with the first time I went to a party a friend of mine held for non monogamous type people.
There were several other offers at subsequent parties, but she was the only one I actually pulled the trigger with. That was years ago, and most importantly before COVID. She started holding the parties again afterwards, but something has changed.
Years before that I had a reasonable success rate at camping events for two different things. I could expect to get some about half of the time when I went to one of those. I havenāt done any of that in a very long time.
The second type is usually a co worker. There have been a few times where a girl who I have regular contact with for a period of time makes her sexual interest known to me blatantly after a while.
The thing about these is that there is never any intent on my part and Iām usually pretty clueless about it until she comes out and says it.
I shouldnāt be. I mean, if a girl is going out of her way to spend time around me I should really know what that means.
There was one other incident that really doesnāt fit either category.
I was working security at a university, and one of the desk girls who was nineteen (I was thirty eight) made her interest REALLY clear right when she met me.
That made my day, but obviously I didnāt pull the trigger on that one.
The question is what has changed? This used to happen pretty regularly and now it doesnāt seem to. More to the point, what was I doing then that Iām not now and how do I change it back?
Part of it is that I donāt have much contact with eligible females so the type two incidents arenāt happening because they canāt. But something else has changed.
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**1/30/23 STAGE 2 CYCLE 3 WEEK 3**
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I STILL canāt put my finger on exactly what stage two is doing to me.
So far I noticed as I mentioned that I am now comfortable being alone in a crowd. It used to be that I worried that everyone was sneaking glances at me wondering what that freak who doesnāt talk is doing here. Not anymore, I can just sit or stand somewhere, relax, and observe.
There is something happening under the hood. I can feel it, but Iām not sure exactly what it is.
I suppose I feel more confident in general. Less pessimistic. Iām kind of taking it as a Matt of course that things are going to come out OK even if theyāre tough and donāt look good right now. -
I am realizing something. Iām cut from a different cloth than most of the people Iāve hung out with in the past, and most of the people in groups that Iām trying to be part of here.
They, at least many of them see their weaknesses as permanent and unchangeable limiting factors. IE āIām fatā, āIām shyā, āIām an introvertā.
Hell, some of them seem to revel in their weaknesses and issues.
Iām harder. I see that for what it is. Excuse making. Reasons not to reach for whatever excellence that they desire. And Iāve been guilty of it too.
The thing is that all of these things are changeable, or in the case of being an introvert, something I can make work for me. It just takes work. A lot of it, but itās doable. That puts me head and shoulders above so many other people.
It also makes me think that I should find some other people who think like I do to hang out with.
There are a lot of us here, but itās not a complete substitute for real life. -
I got one of those smart scales with some of my Christmas money. You know the ones that can measure fat mass, muscle mass and whatnot.
I did not like what it had to say. BLEACH! I knew I was fat, but this is flat out unacceptable.
This has to be Wantedās doing. I know itās supposed to make you feel good about how you look, but it seems that if thereās a real problem it brings it to your attention and cuts through the denial.
I went back to the gym this afternoon, and Iām making some real changes in my eating habits.
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- Iām feeling a little, I guess, depressed or something. I just kind of feel like everything is pointless. Itās not a really distressing feeling. Just kind of heavy, like thereās nothing to look forward to. Like my life low key sucks and will continue to.
Iāve been through this before. It passes.
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- I go to the gym right after I get up in the morning. Which means afternoon because I work nights.
This morning, I just wasnāt feeling it, told my wife I wasnāt going, and looked to lie down for another hour.
Then I got up, took my pre workout and went anyway.
Iām proud to say I won this round against my inner lazy loser.
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How are you?
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Iām doing good at the moment. Why?
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