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Use your anger

Jesse Martin

May 10, 2014


After my breakup, several years ago, I decided I wanted to get better at interacting with women. I had always been nervous and shy around women and it left me without any control over my love life. Like most guys my success was largely dependent on random interactions through my social circles. Once in a while I would meet a girl, through a mutual friend, and sometimes it would turn into something, most often it would not. Like most guys, I had no control over my love life.

There are troves of information on the internet on how to approach and attract women, and I dug through a lot of them. I watched videos, I read ebooks, I even took live courses and practiced approaching women almost non-stop for a year.

This improved my confidence and shaped a skill set with which I was able to gain some control over my love life. When I go out I can approach women, interact with them, and if there's a mutual click I can often leave with a number, or escalate things on the spot. Overall, I'm pretty happy with where I am right now.

Like any skill, and perhaps moreso than any other skill, you need to keep practicing to stay on top of your game. Right now, I haven't been practicing a whole lot, and today it hit me in the face.

A few weeks ago I met a girl that I had approached at the train station. We hit it off, went on a couple of dates and became intimate. I liked her.

Neediness kills attraction. Your mindset needs to be this: you as an independent man, are on a course in life. If she wants to join, and you want her to join on that course, that's great, if not, so be it. You stay your course.

When you're in a committed relationship, you can consider diverting the course for her, but you can never let her direct it. You need to be aware of your boundaries and you need to step up when they're being crossed.

What happens a lot is that guys start off on their own course and they meet a girl they like. They quickly change their course to accommodate her, and that's precisely what ends up pushing her away.

Women want to hop on with a guy on a course that appeals to them, they don't want to have to define a guy's course. That's not to say that women can't have an independent course. They just want a guy's course to be appealing and stable.

In general, I practice what I preach, I really do. But I slip up too sometimes. And this week I slipped up.

There was no exact moment to pin point where I screwed up, it's more the vibe I was communicating when I look back at my actions. I liked the girl, but I gave in too soon. We went on a couple of dates, but she also cancelled twice. It didn't bother me, even though it meant I lost an evening where I could have done something productive.

But the fact that it didn't bother me, was the problem. The guy I intend to be is an independent, ambitious, driven person. If someone else in my life cancels on me, last minute, twice, I would be very stern with them. I would tell them that I'm not angry with them, but that I need to know that when we make an agreement, we both hold our end of the bargain. That's what I would do with a stranger, with a friend, with family, but for some reason not with a girl I just met.

Why? Because I liked her.

More precisely, because right now I'm living in a new city (I like moving around), and she was the only girl in my life. This puts you in a scarcity mindset and makes you want to hold on to this one girl. But the reality is that there are thousands upon thousands of beautiful inspiring women in every major city. There is no reason to obsess over one girl. Let alone let her change your behavior in any meaningful way.

You need to escape the scarcity mindset.

What I find interesting about this whole ordeal is that if feels like a mini breakup. I had a mini relationship with this girl. We were intimate, she rejected me and I felt sad. It's the same roller coaster I experienced years ago, but with 1ft drops instead of 100ft drops. But it has all the same turns and twists, all of which are too familiar.

Luckily I know what to do in these types of situations.

I embraced my sadness. I savored it. I explored it. I focused in on it, and went into sort of a depression power nap. Like a power nap, I let it consume me for a brief period and was able to shake it off after an hour or so. The only difference being that there is no sleeping involved. I expect to have to repeat this process, each power depression being less intense than the one that preceded it.

Now I feel anger. And man, am I going to use it.

There's an expression that fear is a gift, because it's an emotion that guides you to do sensible things as opposed to life threatening things.

I believe that extends to all emotions, all emotions are gifts and they are all meant to guide you. So you should listen and embrace.

Helen Fisher believes anger is there to help you extricate yourself from the relationship. Knowing that, that's how I am using it.

As I savor the anger, I'm thinking "f*ck that bitch". Why would she not even respond, that's just fucking rude. I am an awesome guy. Any girl that passes on me is insane. I am now inside an anger power nap. Like my power depression, it will only last a short while.

I'm sure there's more to come, as I said, I'm riding the roller coaster again, just with smaller drops and ascents. But by embracing every twist and throwing my full weight in every turn, the second and third times around won't affect me at all.

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