Oddball Tries to Become Confident

[Erioc]

So I tried, many times, to do the Newbie Assignment. I failed at Day 4: "Hi". I posted my failures a couple of times on the forums and failed many more times without having posted about it.

Today I tried Days 1-3 at once and I realized: I had actually always failed at Day 3: "Eye Contact". Let me elaborate...

When I spot a girl in the distance walking in my direction, I look into her eyes very, very late. It's too uncomfortable otherwise. If I do establish eye contact "too early for comfort", I do keep staring, I don't look away, but due to that "pain", the next girl I happen upon I only look at as late as possible...maybe three seconds of eye contact before she passes me.

Today I walked around for three hours and learned a lot and pondered more.

For example, I am a real oddball:

While I am very social with acquaintances and acquaintances of acquaintances, animated, inspiring, holding a strong frame, strange girls scare the shit out of me.

If I need to ask for directions, I can "police stop" the hottest girl walking my direction and confidently smile at her and ask her for directions, while keeping good eye contact...but I cannot say a Hello "without a good reason".

I keep great eye contact in conversations with people, even if we just met...but "random" eye contact with girls I like the look of is nigh impossible ---- but I can easily look any other age or sex in the eye and smile and greet them.

I love to meet closed off/cold/taciturn people and try to melt them...when I have, for whatever reason, a captive audience in social circle, I usually manage to at least get them to open up a bit.

Anyway ... it boggles my mind!

Without trying to over-analyze, the reason is surely some kind of a small but complex trauma from when I was younger, not having had any shorter or longer relationships with girls during my formative years.

(btw., my stats are still:
all social circle:
• asked out three girls (two went on a date with me)
• had sex with one girl sans date, another girl I dated, so: sex with two girls
• cuddled + got a BJ from a third girl I did not go on a date with

• zero cold approaches)

Today, I failed very, very many times at establishing eye contact with girls, even when I noticed very clearly that the girl, still quite far away from me, already was looking at me when I spotted her. The only semi-successes where when I looked at them very late.

After these three hours of "experimenting", I felt dejected, unconfident, small, almost worthless. Winner Effect vs. Loser Effect...

So...I want to conquer this problem, with confidence. Why? Because I want to ace the Newbie Assignment!
Even though I fare well without sex (>4 years already) and I don't want a girlfriend, jerking off is very one-dimensional and feeling a girl's body and seeing desire in a girl's eyes is very satisfying for the ego...so if I need to baby-step (mouse-step?) myself into talking with girls, so be it.

How I plan to go about baby-stepping myself:

First, I'll start with a VERY easy assignment. I'll force myself to look into the eyes of girls/"stare" at girls when they're already only ten feet away from me.
When I have finally managed to stare at TEN girls, I'll go two ways:

• I dial up the "pain", I increase the distance to fifteen feet (FIVE girls).
• I force myself to SMILE (however awkwardly) at FIVE girls from ten feet away and keep eye contact.

Then:
• I increase the distance to twenty feet (FIVE girls).
• I force myself to SMILE (however awkwardly) at FIVE girls from fifteen feet away and keep eye contact.

10 + 5 + 5 girls to stare at
+ 5 + 5 girls, in addition, to smile at

It's already dark here but I'm going, NOW, to the main station (bus-streetcar-train) where there are still ample of girls about and stare at TEN of them from a relatively painless distance. I want to feel confident, enjoy some Winner Effect.

I'll be back.

 

[Erioc]

Well, this was mighty interesting!

First of all: I must admit I do not know how many eye contact-instances there were. In any case, there were well over ten. More than once there were >2 eye contact-instances in one go and the situation was overwhelming.

What I can say, though: this outing was eye-opening.

I went to the train station and walked around the streetcar stops and the train platforms.
~30 minutes.
I walked very slowly, I kept my eyebrows high-neutral or high and my expression as un-frowny as possible.
Well...I NEVER walk this slowly. It feels fabulous! I express to the world "I am not in a hurry", I feel unhurried and the world seems to see me as "a dude who is not in a hurry".
Positive feedback loop.
I got a lot of looks from other people (all ages, both sexes). I also focused and refocused on the Alexander techniquesque "fishing line holding my head up, fishing hook pulling my sternum up."
It was very hard to keep me eyebrows up!! Obviously I am used to walking around with a very serious expression on my face

I barely could smile, so fixed was my face.

I also noticed that while I could often keep my eyebrows somewhat high, I felt that my eyes had more of a "condescending look" rather than looking like I'm smiling.

In any case, the reactions:

I noticed that girls who noticed, from afar, that I had spotted them...whom I then looked away from and only resumed looking at at a distance of ten feet...either didn't look at my face again (and had an aloof expression) or if they did look, looked away immediately up and to the side in a bitchy way.

I noticed I was spotted by a late-teen cutie with her boyfriend...whereby it didn't seem that I had noticed her already...when I was ten feet away from her I looked at her and she looked down in an "attracted" and ashamed way. This one surprised
me a lot.

All men I looked at while keeping my eyebrows high and wearing a positive expression didn't stare at me as they often do but either looked down/away very quickly or held eye contact in a non-threatening way.
I surmise that looking strong and assured but not threatening turns off the male competition/threatening instinct.

I went to McDonald's and while waiting for my order I noticed a Hindu girl staring at me strongly. She didn't budge. I up-nodded at her. She kept staring.
Then she looked to the side.

...then I caught her looking again, and she quickly averted her gaze down.

When she handed me my order she wouldn't look me in the eyes, she looked down and wouldn't return my gaze in the slightest.

I strolled around the streetcar platforms again and noticed many eyes on me, most of which belonging to girls in their late teens. All returned my gaze in a friendly way for a short moment before looking to the side or down.

The last thing I noticed on my walk was a young, cute girl, roughly 40 feet away from me, looking at me, who then tucked her hair behind her ear.
I then changed the platform, posted up there as sexily as the "unsexed" me knows how to, and kept an eye on her using my peripheral vision.
I said to myself: she's gonna change to my platform.
And she did.

She made me think about a certain phenomenon:

I regularly see girls 40-60 feet away from me looking at me, who then brush their hair back when they catch my gaze.

I never understood this phenomenon.
Often they do this while walking away from me.
But they only touch their hair when I look directly at them...

If anybody is reading this and knows this phenomenon, I'd appreciate hearing your analysis.

Now...the verdict of the day:

Walking slowly while keeping my eyebrows high feels like a performance. And despite it beinga performance, it feels electrifying to meet a cute girl's eyes.
In spite of the above, when I stop "performing" I notice that I'm quite unconfident. If I need to speak with somebody my
voice is not my usual relaxed voice I have at my disposal while talking with my friends and family.
I can quite easily look a girl in the face at the distance of ten feet. The thought that I have to SMILE at her too sounds crazy, though! Let's see whether I will feel confident enough for that tomorrow.

When out and about I will try to put a slight smile on my face in addition to my high-kept eyebrows. Most likely it will be easier to transition to a smile from that than from my (obviously...) usual "serious face".

Before hitting POST REPLY I practiced my "open expression" in the mirror. My facial muscles don't like this position, lol! I usually either smile wide and high or have a frown on my face...really gotta practice this "in between" facial expression!

Until tomorrow...oh boy!

 

[gameboy]

I never understood this phenomenon.
Often they do this while walking away from me.
But they only touch their hair when I look directly at them...

If anybody is reading this and knows this phenomenon, I'd appreciate hearing your analysis.

It's an IOI... she's interested in you.

 

[Erioc]

For anyone short on time/only interested in "did he manage to do what he set out to do?!".
No, I did not.

More details below.

First:

It's an IOI... she's interested in you.

Thank you for the answer, @gameboy!

It happens quite many times that my peripherals are drawn to a girl but she is looking down and fiddling with her hair or face or clothing when I catch her. As in: she is not paying me any attention. And she might be on the way somewhere else!

I do believe you that it is an IOI...just...I wouldn't know what to do with that interest.

I'm sure it'll sort itself out the more I go out and when I manage to fuckin' open my mouth. First things first:

---

I spent in total five hours trying to achieve what I set out to do.

The "smiling at five girls from fifteen feet or further away" I did NOT manage.

Getting to "looking at five girls from twenty feet or further away" was a funny one.
First: two hours of nothing.
Then: eight girls in three minutes.

I first when to the university campus and tried to look girls in the eyes there. I could not.

Then I went to the city center and strolled around, trying to look girls in the eyes. I could not.

At some point I managed! But it was quite close. How far again were twenty feet?? (lol)

I quickly stopped at an walking street intersection with a nice view of a seemingly pretty blonde, forty feet away from me, whose age I couldn't discern. I then opened up this thread to check how far away I should start looking at girls.

First: bummer, my first eye contact of the day didn't count!

Then: I put my phone away and felt somebody staring at me. It was a short Latino-looking guy. He took a while to finally look away.
I had already started moving me feet slowly toward where my memory remembered the blonde girl had been standing...so I wasn't looking where I was going.
Well...

Within a second I almost crashed into the blonde girl! I had to swerve.

She was looking just past me and could easily see me with her peripherals.

She was obviously doing it on purpose.

But... my subconscious mind knew what was happening ... while my logical mind needed a couple of seconds to make sense of it.

Well...she was damn pretty, alright.

I laughed out loud and had a stupid grin on my face and then went to the marketplace and just stood there for five minutes, contemplating why I couldn't look girls in the eye from twenty feet...

I felt more and more unconfident. I hate this feeling!

At some point I put myself together and decided to stroll around some more and try again.

When I looked around I instantly spotted a (South?) East Asian girl fifty feet in the distance. She wasn't really walking my way. So I decided to find another one.

BUT NO!

I had chickened out in similar situations so many times before, that I decided to alter my heading and walk past her. And I did. And I looked at her at a distance of twenty-five feet. And she looked back when she was close. And she looked away. And I didn't die.

I made an audible "yuhuu number one" and directly searched for more girls.

I set a timer and went for it.

I forced eye contact with seven girls and the timer showed just over two minutes when I was finished.

Most girls broke eye contact to the side.

One (or two?) broke eye contact down.

None held it.

My eyebrows were held somewhat high, but I wasn't smiling...

I then stayed out for three hours more but my smiling muscles didn't join the party. I could smile about something to myself ... but I couldn't share it with any females at 16-30 years of age. Older women or men I can smile at.

---

I failed today's assignment, but I'm not giving up on this. Not this time around. Fuck no. Done it dozens and dozens of times!

I am going to rather figure out what I CAN do at the moment and work myself up from there.

For example...smiling at senior citizens, middle aged women, etc. Asking where the city center is, next subway station, etc. Baby-stepping myself with even smaller steps. I don't care how basic/vanilla/sissy/cowardly I gotta baby-step myself, I'm doing it.

I'm going to be skipping my commitments tomorrow morning and going out. Will write about what transpired tomorrow.

If anyone made it until here: thank you for reading my whining! Bye

 

[Erioc]

Okay very long day today, just arrived home, very tired, will write the most important details in bullet points:

• spent in total at least six hours walking around (and 1.5h of productive time in my professional life lol...no wonder I usually have no money left at the end of the month )
• I cannot keep an open, inviting, facial expression, eyebrows high, eyes relatively open (as opposed to high eyebrows+squinting) and a slight smile on my face... it is kind of "fixed" in place
• I can look girls in the eye at a distance and hold it...while keeping a serious expression my face (FML)
• I can ask for directions despite actually knowing where to go, but it costs me overcoming A LOT of internal resistance and I often say "ah no I'll ask the next person" and lose many minutes in overcoming myself – if I truly need to ask for directions it's still VERY easy for me to ask the next person I see, even if the person is a good looking lady

more postive:

• got an overwhelming amount of looks from girls today, or looked at a girl and she was just looking down...and quite some hair tosses and even, at one point, a girl walking past, really pretty (managed to steal a glance), very blatantly trying to get my attention while I was animatedly talking with a friend...who then twice walked somewhere where my friend and I would walk past and signaled me again from there
• today I felt much less confident than yesterday and surely expressed it in my face and with my body...so the above point surely has to do with the fact that today I seemed more "attainable" and thus got signaled much more...I think even my "softened" facial expression is far too serious and even intimidating...

I'll update this journal once I manage to fix my basic issues. Seems like it's gonna cost me a lot of walking around and overcoming myself. Really, really strong resistance. Let's see how long it's gonna take.

And yeah, it'll take however it long it needs.
I'm doing this for real this time around...at some point I won't be in my early thirties anymore...womanless...wifeless...and yeah, I'm NOT going to date in my social circle (yuck)...so I'm gonna have to fight my demons till the bitter end.

Thanks for reading, dear stranger, take care, and ciao

 

[Erioc]

Finding of the day:

When I'm out and about, raising my eyebrows and smiling lightly, while walking slowly and sexily,

or when I'm with acquaintances, speaking slower, being witty, not showing any body ticks

...it's all a show.


When I'm all alone, I move faster, more antsily, I let some of my old ticks come to the surface, my facial expression is 'heavy', etc.


In other words: When I'm in public, I'm mostly 'acting'.

No wonder I've felt, for years, that I'm "faking it" (---until I'll be making it...?). I am faking it, and I won't be making it anytime soon, if I stop faking when I'm all by my lonesome.

Thus, verdict of the day:

I must become the persona I am outside of the safety of my room...

Btw: Today it finally clicked. I now truly see how all low-level naturals I've met (haven't ever met any serious playboys) sport some version of the facial expression Chase calls The Cute and Sexy Look most of the time. And especially when they're not engaged in a conversation. link