No More Mr. Nice Guy: Breaking Free Activity 2

I read No More Mr. Nice Guy once and now I’m trying to do all the breaking free activities listed in the book. The first activity was to find three safe people. I will publish the activities on this blog that I deem safe for public consumption. Here is the second activity:

Why would it seem rational for a person to try to eliminate or hide certain things about himself and try to become something different unless there was a compelling reason for him to do so? Why do people try to change who they really are? Take some time and think about this. Is this your behavior or the behavior of someone you know?

People try to hide certain things about themselves because they don’t want others to know. They don’t want others to know because it would change the way others view them. It could change the relationship or even end it. The best way to avoid this is elimination, but some things cannot be changed.

People try to change who they are because they do not think who they are is good. They do not like the way they feel, even though emotions cannot be controlled. They do not like the way they look, they do not like their history, they do not like their failures. They are forever stuck in the denial phase, never fully accepting themselves, yet just by living, they are a constant reminder of their self-perceived shame.

I see this in many men, many of my friends. I used to be like this, and to a certain extent I still am. I may be still very ashamed of myself, I just don’t see it. Introspection is difficult. Whether this is due to emotions getting in the way (I don’t want to see it) or I just can’t see it (it’s normal for me) I can’t tell.

In the past I tried to hide many of my feelings and faults. I’ve had countless crushes on girls and never told them, fearing rejection, believing that I had nothing to offer them. I used to think I was different, not a typical guy, so I tried to hide most typical guy behavior, such as loving sports, cars, women or displaying any sense of machoness. Sports and cars I don’t care for, so that was easy. I still feel uncomfortable sometimes talking about women in “disrespectful” ways, such as talking about how I want to fuck them or other things I want to do to them. When I do talk about it, I am usually doing so in a joking manner, as though I am trying to convince myself, “It’s okay, I’m just joking about fucking a girl in the ass and making her suck her own shit off my dick. I don’t really want to do that.” By making these things a joke, I relieve myself of the guilt of possibly being a pervert, a sexually driven man, or just a human being with wants and needs.

I also generally associate displaying machoness with insecure guys. I try not to think of myself as being insecure, but ironically that’s what it makes me. I should be proud of my masculinity, proud of my muscles and my sex drive. It amused me to act weak so that other guys would prove their machoness and install my air conditioner for me. But it would have felt better if I installed it myself. Whenever I do things myself, I feel proud that I am able to do so. I should not deprive myself of this feeling.

Nowadays, whenever I get strong feelings of reluctance for anything, I try to logically figure out the validity of my reluctance. If the worst thing that can happen is a little embarrassment, I go do it. For example, I was once tired, but there was a ledge right next to a cashier. I wanted to sit there, but didn’t want to because the cashier was right there. Then I figured, the worst that can happen is I would be asked to get up. I wouldn’t get kicked out, banned, or arrested. So I sat, and it felt great. Nothing happened, of course.

Most recently I asked a guy if we had sex last week. Perhaps he would have punched me. Probably not, though. What wound up happening became an amusing story instead.

Of course, there are still many things I fear doing. I still fear jumping into the middle of a circle of girls in a club and dancing with all of them. I still fear talking to a guy and a girl clearly on a date. I still fear touching girls when they haven’t shown any signs of interest. I still fear the awkward silence when I call a girl and run out of things to say. I fear randomly changing topics in a conversation with a stranger, thinking that it’s unnatural. I fear that girls don’t really like me, and if I continue talking to them they might find me boring or weird, so oftentimes I leave the interaction before I get to that point. (“You can’t fire me, I quit!”) I fear letting my parents know how much I am really paying for rent. I fear that telling the whole truth to my parents will cause them agony. I fear letting my parents know my current career plans.

Fear is not my ally.