Fear Is Okay
I could continue living here in Altoona. But now that I’m finishing my second year of my sabbatical, I feel drawn to reentering the game of productive living.
This interim however was good because I realized, thanks to the thousands of love rejections that I’ve received over the years, that most women find me unattractive. I’ve come to accept this as an inalienable truth of my existence, and there’s very little, if anything, that I can do about that. So encountering the fear of rejection as often as I have makes perfect sense.
Consider that since most women aren’t attracted to me, most will act put off by my approaches. Also consider that my fear level is like a gage that reads their level of displeasure as I move in. The more they dislike me and the closer I get, the more fear I feel. Fear represents a prudent sensitivity to their feelings, because it warns me to stay clear of those who consider me the reject. Through their body language, it knows what they’re feeling before they say anything. Thus, it saves them the torment of verbally rejecting me, and me the humiliation of being verbally rejected. So given this sensitivity, it’s natural that my approach anxiety would typically be high, as the odds that she’ll welcome my approach are, as experience shows, quite low. There is nothing irrational about this. So my being afraid of rejection is healthy and should not therefore, be vanquished. Thus I have now officially abandoned my efforts to get rid of this fear, because I should feel anxious about approaching women who wish that I would not approach them.
Further, I no longer feel compelled to try to change her mind when she rejects me; an exercise I feared intensely due to its implied assault on her freedoms of choice. I wish not to bully anyone into liking me. If they don’t do so of their own accord, then I don’t need them. So I accept that some women will always frighten me because most will simply never like me. These I should avoid. I should leave them alone as my fear advises, instead of defying that fear by bothering them. I will always be somewhat afraid of rejection; especially chronic rejection. The trick though is to find situations and people where this fear is reduced. This happens in social environments where chronic rejection is less likely to happen.
By accepting the fear, ironically, I have in fact reduced it.
