Going through the spiral

[Raphael]

I'm starting to get bored writing about relationships.  I think I'm just going to write a few other posts then move to other things. Also, I think I'm going to completely cut out the dating section of this forum because honestly, I might vomit one day while reading this place.

[Raphael]

I might be a bit crazy... so what?

[Raphael]

@Raphael Don't be afraid of Red, embrace Red.

[Raphael]

1 minute ago, Raphael said:

@Raphael Don't be afraid of Red, embrace Red.

Ok.

[Raphael]

I'll never grow without integrating Red. I need to integrate it in a healthy way. I need to try on my dad.

On 8/6/2021 at 11:08 PM, Nahm said:

If you’ve never tried so hard and gotten so angry that you’ve punched a hole through the wall, you just ain’t living.  

 

[Raphael]

Existential Happiness

In terms of happiness, I resonate enormously with the video below. Assuming that I have a functional base, I'm first and foremost counting on myself to make me happy. The happiest moments that I experienced in my entire life were moments of deep solitude, I wasn't doing anything special, yet the kind of joy that I experienced were outside of normal human experience. I'm talking about deep existential joy: the kind of joy that can make you cry, the kind of joy where you feel ecstatic, the kind of joy where you are blown away by the magnificence of existence, the kind of joy that people notice when they see you, the kind of joy that is abnormal. The only moments where I experienced this amount of happiness were moments of deep solitude. It doesn't mean that I'm always happy when I'm alone, I obviously also experienced deep depressions while being alone. I experienced pain in solitude and experienced pain with people. I experienced happiness with people, however, I never experienced deep existential happiness while being with people. Maybe it's because I never found extremely aware people IRL, so thinking that I cannot experience deep existential happiness with people might be a limiting belief. I see a bias within me that puts solitude on a pedestal while dismissing social relationships and I don't think that it's healthy to be too much oriented towards it. I have shadows to explore here, I see past experiences and conditioning in my life that caused me to have this orientation. I'm definitely dismissing too much the value that someone can get from relationships.

 

[Raphael]

How Much A Relationship is Important for Me

Thinking about relationships made me reflect on the question of how much having an intimate relationship would be important for me. And the answer to this question is: I really don't know. This area is probably one of the areas in life where I'm the most hesitant. I see the potential of a relationship, I see the potential in the experience of having a deep emotional connection, sharing vulnerabilities with a girl, and having sex. However, I also see the trap of relationships, the trap of seeking happiness through someone else.

I know why I'm hesitant and I know that it's not healthy: I got very badly brainwashed by my dad. He planted a seed in my brain at a very young age by telling me how bad all people are. Nope. People aren't necessarily bad, people are just how they are. I might resonate with some of them and not with others, some of them may help me, some of them may cause me pain, that's all.

I also might be hesitant in this area because of how difficult relationships have been for me in life. Because of how abnormal I always felt, because of how strange and unique I always felt. I recently wondered if I didn't have a light form of autism after doing some research on this subject. Some traits highly resonated with me:

• Trouble reading social cues.
• Participating in conversation is difficult.
• You have trouble relating to others’ thoughts or feelings.
• You’re unable to read body language and facial expressions well. (You might not be able to tell whether someone is pleased or unhappy with you.).
• You don’t like to look at someone’s eyes when talking to them.
• Building and maintaining close friendships is difficult.

https://www.healthline.com/health/autism-in-adults#highfunctioning-autism

These are difficulties that I dealt with most of my life. But I think that it's just a limiting belief because I did have periods where I have been more social and do have some people in my life that I enjoy talking to. So this is BS, I don't have autism even if I can relate with some of these traits while reflecting on my life.

I might have started life as being naturally socially more incompetent than average people, but that's fine, that's just a skill to develop. I see a pattern in myself that is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy: because of how difficult relationships have been for me in the past I'm tending to avoid them. This is a trap that is keeping me stuck. After all, what if I develop myself as an awesome man and attract an awesome girlfriend? What if I have an amazing relationship? I cannot know if I don't try, I cannot know if I stay stuck in the same thinking pattern. I think that I have all the abilities to create an amazing relationship, I just need to push myself out of my comfort zone.

Having an intimate relationship is definitely something worth trying. This is life, life is about experiencing it, living it, living it to the fullest.

[Raphael]

Thoughts About Incels, Redpill, Blackpill, and Other Similar Things

The first time that I learned about incels was maybe 1 - 2 years ago while reading the dating subforum, before that, I wasn't spending that much time checking this place. From what I know, these groups are hate groups consisting of mostly sexually frustrated young men who think that they cannot get laid because they don't look good enough. When I learned about that a few elements resonated with me because:

1. I was and still am a virgin.
2. I did experience some shame in the past because society tells me that I need to be in a relationship and/or fuck women.
3. I did have some resentment regarding women at some periods of my life because I never felt taken seriously by girls when I was at school. (However, who never felt a bit of resentment towards the opposite sex whether man or women? Almost nobody.)

So... the following thought appeared in my mind: "Am I supposed to be an incel?". Then, I did a few more research and discovered some pretty crazy things: incredible levels of misogynistic views, calls for mass rape, calls for attacks on women, etc., and saw this as way too extreme for me. I also learned that incels create hate stories to explain their difficulties and label some people as Chads, Femoids, etc. And... that's everything that I know about incels. I also don't know that many things about ideologies like Redpill, Blackpill, etc. except that they are highly toxic ideologies with misogynistic views. I think that if I was desperate for relationships I could have fallen into that but as I didn't care about relationships most of my life, it didn't happen. And even if I did come across these things I think I would have avoided them because: 1. it would have reminded me of the trauma of seeing my mom being disrespected by my dad and it would have been intolerable for me. 2. my awareness is naturally too high for these things. When I see hate, judgments, stereotyping, and dumb ideological debates, I know something's wrong. I feel it when it's bad.

Also, the obsession with look as being the only thing that women care about felt particularly dumb to me because I look good. When it comes to look, I don't fit the typical masculine standard. My face fit, but my body doesn't fit because I'm skinny. However, what I noticed is that I fit much more according to the feminine perspective (and honestly what else do I need?) because I had women telling me that I look very good, I noticed looks from women in the past, some people told me that I attract a lot of girls eyes, and my sister told me that all her friends think that I look good. Most of the time, I don't put enormous effort when it comes to clothing, I just dress simply with a tshirt/hoody and pants. However, I did notice that when I do an effort and put a shirt like this I get complimented and people notice me much more. I had guys getting jealous of me because of my look and I also had guys implying that because I look good I should get a lot of girls... well... no... not if you don't put yourself out. When I was in high school, I had a friend who was very skinny and with a less good-looking face than me... and this friend was incredible with girls simply because he was very social and funny. His look was never an issue for him, he didn't care and got a lot of success with girls. The fact that women only care about looks always felt like nonsense for me because I have the look. In one of his first videos, Leo said that he thought that good look would get him a girlfriend and it felt pretty dumb to me.

When I think of incels I think of people with serious mental health issues. I see people who got brainwashed by pop culture and because they don't fit the portrait ideals they hide into shame or project it as hate, it is similar to religious people who cannot fit religious ideals and therefore live in shame. These people need serious mental health help which is the reason why I disagree with Leo's response here to — I suppose — an incel.

Quote

Lol

Stop making dumb excuses and go talk to girls.

And stop reading that incel, red pill, black pill toxic trash. What's gonna kill you is not your height, but the shit you feed your mind. You are like a radical Islamist terrorist or white nationalist, feeding your mind with garbage ideology that will ruin your life.

They are some truth in this response, but I still think that this is inappropriate because if someone is complaining about a perfectly normal height than this person certainly has other psychological issues. Here are my thoughts about this case:

• Nobody knows anything about this person. Nobody knows his real mental state and his intentions.
• Some people committed suicide after posting on an online forum, but most people didn't. Suicide after an online post is definitely something that can happen and therefore needs to be taken seriously.
• If this person is depressed for such a ridiculous thing, then he likely has other interconnected issues that he needs to take care of first.
• Even if he goes out, approach girls, and get into a relationship, the relationship will be toxic because he has too much-limiting beliefs.
• #1 priority for a person like this is to fix his mental health and clear the brainwashing. That might take 1 year, 2 years, or more, but this is essential if he doesn't want a toxic relationship. The basic first, then girls.

The tough approach doesn't apply in this case because we don't know that much about this person. Depressed people want help, they don't want to be ridiculed. In some cases, ridiculing can work, but they are too many unknown variables in this case.

I want to conclude here with just a few thoughts about me. So, how about me? How do I see myself? Well... I'm just a guy who goes through life, who has his difficulties in life just like everybody, who had a lot of difficulties regarding relationships, but who wants to improve and who tries to do the best that he can to improve. End of the story.

Edited August 9, 2021 by Raphael

[Raphael]

Nobody have it easy. Arguments such as "Meeeh... all women are sluts" or "Meeeh... all men are assholes" leads to nowhere.

We blame society for it, yet we are society at the same time.

 

[Raphael]

Yesterday's breathwork session was more powerful than I expected. It didn't felt powerful in the moment, but it had effects until today in the afternoon. I didn't sleep because of that, I felt the trauma processing during the night. I woke up very agitated and started to release a lot of things: I screamed a lot, punched my bed a lot, moved my body to let things out.

[Raphael]

Sometimes I wonder what people thinks of what I write here and the image that people have from me from what I write. I noticed being afraid of sharing some stuff because of fear of judgement.

Overall, I think that I have a pretty high awareness and can have quite sophisticated thoughts, but at the same time I feel that I have a dirty side. I think that this dirty side can show up sometimes and I'm a bit afraid of the image that I can give when it happens.

What do you think of me?

Edited August 9, 2021 by Raphael

[Raphael]

I think I might like older women lol.

My main reason is the maturity level. In terms of maturity, I feel way ahead of people of my age, I always felt like an old man in a young man's body. One day my sister told me that I was a young-old, maybe when I'll be old I'll be an old-young lol. I always felt a huge disconnection between me and people of my age. When I was a kid, I preferred spending time with adults rather than other kids of my age. I relate with some things of people of my age but don't with many things, I relate with the maturity of some older people but don't with many things.

Overall, it's difficult to find mature people, even with people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, etc.

[Raphael]

Ok. I had some thoughts about pickup but I'm going to let that go and move to other things. Enough with dating and relationships for now.

[Raphael]

 

[Raphael]

Things will happen, they'll just take the time that they need to take to happen. No need to stress out, but only to enjoy life to its fullest.

[Raphael]

I'll become as awesome as a man can be while still staying true to myself.

[Raphael]

I wonder if one day people are going to stop building things around me. These guys literally never stop. It has been almost two years that there are constructions all day long every day of each week.

I want a bit of calm, please. I'm very sensitive to noises.

[Raphael]

My growth has been spectacular in the past 5 years even if I still haven't sorted out many things of life.

[Raphael]

There's really something going on with my gut. I experience very frequent burps, my digestion is irregular and strange, I always feel like I have residues in my intestines. I feel that there is a connection with stress, quality of thoughts, quality of focus, sleep, and gut.

 

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/fodmaps-101

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods-high-in-fodmaps#TOC_TITLE_HDR_11

Edited August 14, 2021 by Raphael

[Raphael]

My Current State

This is my current state:

• Quiet
• Observant
• Thoughtful
• Insightful
• Messy without being a complete mess
• Often distracted by thoughts
• Have difficulties controlling myself from reading this forum
• Often have sleeping problems
• Average self-esteem
• Average confidence
• Average social skills with some social anxiety
• Uncomfortable with dating
• Not assertive enough
• Not decisive enough
• Not responsible enough
• Pretty good integrity
• Rather polite, but sometimes gross
• Lonely
• Poor
• Self-employed working on building a solid financial foundation
• Can easily stress and over-dramatize things. In consequence, I can burn myself quite quickly
• Minimalist
• Simple in appearance but with a deep complexity behind the scene
• I feel like an adult, but sometimes also like a kid
• Very wise, but sometimes also very dumb