Flint

She can't magically get into your mind and see your overthinking - the point is that if you're overthinking you're not busy doing something else - aka connecting and casually flirting. Which you should be doing. Also, so little happened so far that you might just recover from it if you course correct properly. I also have anxious attachment but that doesn't make me needy in the earlier stages. Use your anxiety about being liked to focus on connecting with the girl in front of you by showing genuine interest. If you're focused on getting to know the other person and being playful you will not have time to overthink as your brain is already occupied. Then, when you're not interacting and your anxiety creeps back do the strict minimum to see her in real life again and continue bonding that way. You will not magically fix your anxious attachment - just be aware of it and do not panic. Getting more experience will help your tremendously.

@Nito Alright. First, let me issue a general recommendation of NEVER dating anyone at work. Now, next, bloody hell please stop overthinking and overanalyzing your interactions and how every single small thing that the girl did could be interpreted as her liking you. I can feel how badly you want her to like you and she must have felt that too. Just relax. She might actually like you but you simply scared her away with her overthinking. It also prevents you from taking appropriate action. Regardless, you should be able to sense if she likes you or not when you're talking to her. The point is that you need to casually connect with the person in front of you and if you connect a little bit, simply suggest that both of you connect more. If you're stuck in overanalzying mode of how much value do I have to bring, etc. you're not connecting etc and you come off as weird. Also, since it's someone at work, it's much more interesting to take it slow and allow her to get used to you so that she's more comfortable and familiar with you. If it's more slow and gradual (meaning don't go for a number the first time unless you're really connecting) you will have more time to get to know each other and by adding one flirty brick after another you can really get things going. If you chat a bit, offer a coffee break, then another, and if that goes well, suggest an afterwork, so on and so forth. Be casual about it. But in general you need much more experience with women as most of what you do wrong will autocorrect with more experience (especially the overthinking).

Through kissing you can only get a certain type of Herpes which is practically unavoidable, but it's not the genital one. I would be most worried about HIV but there you need to use condoms and it's something you can always discuss before having sex because the woman in question is most likely aware (it can be dormant also) that she has it. Honestly just be more selective and sleep with the girls you find the hottest then, so that the risk is worth it. But again, it's quite minimal. In the same way potential planes crashes won't stop you from traveling, this shouldn't stop you from dating. If you're seeing a girl more than once you can always ask that you both get tested together so you have that piece of mind.

@Magnanimous I think you're anxious about something else entirely. Maybe the idea of getting out there and starting dating in the first place ? The hypothetical scenario where in two years time you would be having so much sex that you could get an STD is so imaginary it's difficult to see it as a realistic concern. Also, as others have said, just wear condoms.

What do you mean by dates going well ? Chemistry, deep connection and everything are an illusion if it's your first or second date. You've barely met the person. Have you slept with any of those women ? As a general rule girls will not sleep on your on the first date not to appear slutty, but by the second or third if they're into you they will happily jump your bones. Women that are really into you will not randomly ghost you. Let's not overcomplicate your life with random energetic dynamics and look for the simple solutions. Having a second/third date with the same girl and she's not sleeping with you ? You have a game problem. Also don't forget that dating is ruthless - all is fair in love and war. There is no deep connection, or real chemistry after one date. For the sake of your sanity and own feelings forget about romantic notions until you've slept with the girl and she's really invested. You can match her level of investment but never go over it. After she's ripping her short off then you can start thinking along the lines oh we have such nice chemistry. Not before. I've read in other messages that you're an INFP. You may not act too nice but you may come off and feel too soft and too nice. Have you even been compared to a teddy bear or anything similar ? (I am not trolling with this question, you really seemed interested in trying to understand the core of the issue). Also if girls start playing games you need to directly challenge them. If someone ghosted you and she's in front of you smiling and saying hi at the gym, just challenge them on that, similar to "You do realize you've ghosted me ?" and unless they provide a very good reason such as a relative's death simply say you're not accepting that into your life and move on immediately. Next, not to get stuck on girls that ghost you, go for high numbers. Meet as many as you can, then do dates. You should be immune to ghosting by the sheer amount of women present in your life, practically viewing ghosting as a blessing so that you're able to clear timeslots in your agenda and avoid the difficulty of choosing which girl to see as there are so many of them you're overbooked to the brink of extinction.

There is no fair in survival. You just need to understand that in a dating situation how well you get treated depends on how attractive you are. And I'd wager you are treating women as unfairly as they are treating you - are you giving a chance to the girls you consider ugly for instance ? Are you really going to sleep with an "ugly" girl just because of love for your fellow human ? Most women have to deal with feeling unsafe all the time and all sort of dating shenanigans - they have it much harder than you do and 99% of them remain wonderful members of society and do not harbor any hate nor ill intent towards men despite all the difficult situations they have been in. And yet you're here bitching about one failed date. Imagine you get beaten up or almost raped by your male uber driver - which could be a good reason to start hating men - and despite it happening, those women survive and process it differently, and do not end up hating men at all. So learn a thing or two from them. If someone is not into you just move on. Don't be so entitled to think that they should like you or owe you anything.

@Flowerfaeiry Hey ! What is the different spectrum/type of energies that you can hear ? Like is there a difference between sad energy vs angry energy vs happy energy ? And what is the distinction between those at the structural level ? For instance, the distinction might be speed or color, and different types have different speed and color, but speed and color in themselves are used to distinguish those energy types regardless of the actual values of each energy type. What other inherent properties does energy have in your experience ?

I'm glad you touched on this topic - because if someone (regardless of gender) produces onlyfans content isn't that person as such objectifying themselves ? If I have a display of content where I'm a sexual object to be virtually consummed by fans, am I not also seeing myself as a souce of sexual gratification ? If you're getting cat called on the street, that's the fault of the one doing it and outdated society standards. But if you put your titties on the internet can you really complain that people jerk off to them without caring about who you are as a person ? In a similar way I imagine those of creators view their "fans" as walking money bags because again there is no connection and there is nothing personal. Sex workers in real life at least would be less damaging for both parties as you are with a real person in front of you, so you have at least a modicum of connection. What I generally oppose in the current society is the lack of connection and the lack of deep relationships. We cannot be a healthy society if we only interact on a superficial object to object level and objectify each others non-stop. In essence onlyfans promotes the objectification of women/people at a large scale and I am very much against that. We need to evolve from object to object value exchanges into genuine relationships and promote the later, not the former. I saw a random reel the other day of someone coming close to a hot girl in a festival and her first reaction was "follow me on instagram". Seriously ? Until you've proven enough social value I'm just going to assume you're a dumb follower by default ? Is that how we want to interact as humans ? Sigh.

I watched the second part of the ultimate guide to post-modernism which was really amazing. At some point Leo mentions that Post-modernists are wrong in the sense that distinctions are not human so also not conceptual. I have two questions. 1) Does that mean that there are first order distinctions that just happen in consciousness regardless of humans and we as humans would always experience and perceive them in the same way regardless of how we would conceptualize them afterwards ? Does anyone have any examples of those non-conceptual distinctions ? I realize a tree is not a mouse but is that distinction really not made at a conceptual level ? Does that distinction exist in reality/consciousness if there is no one to make it ? Do we then have first order distinctions that exist inherently in consciousness and can be perceived by consciousness itself in a non-biaised way and then second order ones that exist only in human conceptualization ? 2) For first order truth, how can I be sure that my perception of it is not biaised ? When I see a tree I may not conceptualize it but the perception of the tree itself, could that not be biaised ? Color blind people perceive colors differently, similarly a mouse would perceive the tree also in a different way I presume. Is there then some way of knowing / "non-human" perception of consciousness knowing itself and its distinctions which is direct and non-biaised ? Thanks for your help, this was a very interesting point that needed more clarification. Perhaps a blogpost Leo ?

Well as incomplete it might seem it's the only working paradigm for a male to get a female partner of his choosing. There is the alternative of being alone or miserable but that's not great. I'm very sorry, but humanity in dating ? It's ruthless. Like, have you ever been outside ? I'm not sure it's a particularity of stage orange at this point but dating feels very much inhumane. The value proposition always takes precendence over any human consideration because in the early stages of dating all that matters is the value exchange. The human aspects come later. But early on ? You get ghosted, disrespected, ignored, abused and everything in between if your value proposition is not good enough. I very much so wished to be wrong and wished we could evolve towards more conscious dating but it's not how reality operates today. The "human beings" mostly operate as value exchange animals. Which is already good progress over the beige dating scene, which was "male hits female with club, drags her into cave and rapes her".

Would you actually have any tips for guys who struggle to detach their self-worth from how attractive/desirable they feel to women ? I imagine to some extent it's normal to feel good whenever you're liked and you're desired, but then ideally none of your self-worth as a man would be linked to how well you perform with women. Basing your entire self-worth on it is another thing entirely of course, but regardless society always telling you that you're worth is how much you earn and how hot of a girl you can get doesn't really help in that regard. Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Around 1:30:00 in the video you mention the dichotomies and distinctions that are made by language e.g. men vs woman and the fact that postmodernim would consider one social construct dominating the other and that those dichotomies should be undone. But isn't that essentially a value judgement of one social construct/idea/concept being better than the other ? The fact that one part of a dichotomy is dominant or superior over another is relative to a certain society or a certain point of view. So aren't Post modernists being biaised in saying that the dichotomy should be undone because they either say it relative to the idea of every perspective being equal in the abstract or in practice deconstructing a certain power structure those duality enforce in a specific society ? Even the statement that one part of the duality is dominant compared to the other is very relative.

@Leo Gura Are you using DALLE-2 or Mindjourney or ?

I'm calling it now, it's going to be a job in the future. Basically you could design a anime or manga based on AI simply with prompts with each pannel after giving the AI some more or less complete visual information on your characters. You could afterwards correct panels manually and use them as reference for training as well. So the AI prompt generation will be way faster as well. It would just become a writing job instead of a drawing one. This will save an enormous amount of time for any entretainement such as anime, manga and video games. It's just crazy. Of course every anime studio will have their own writers and Ai engineers for that purpose. Anyone doing a AI with animation capabilities as a SAAS will get billions richs. It will be the future SAP of the entretainment industry.

@Razard86 Just make a shroom tea. Grind the mushrooms into a fine powder and add into hot but not boiling water and let it steep while stirring occasionally. Some people prefer to make it into a pot but don't heat them for too long. Afterwards, filter and discard the flesh itself and keep only the infused water, like you would do with tea. I also add ginger and mint, infuse that ritualistic mixture for a while and then filter and drink it.

Credits of this image please ? It's stunning

I would keep both things separate. Tell your therapist why you think you need psychedelics when visiting her and discuss that and other things related to why you thing therapy is not doing it for you. Then, on the side, as a separate practice, take psychedelics and talk about it in therapy if needed, but don't do both at the same time.

@Loba Thanks for your very mature response. You shouldn't expect men to overcome their lust in the same way that you should not expect people to be able to deny or overcome their desires somehow. I hope you find a way to heal your insecurities and that you find a great man you're compatible with. You always could date someone very christian who thinks that porn and masturbation are evil which of course has other disadvantages. Someone into Nofap and semen retention perhaps ?

There is a big difference between being uncomfortable and trying to prevent someone from doing something and threatening to leave over it. What needs to be understood is that porn is imaginary and the man or the woman is having imaginary pleasure, vs the real pleasure that is had with a real partner. In porn, there is no true reality of another human being, all of those actors in porn movies are of course people and exist but it's not human to human interaction. One could stimulate him/herself only with the mind by imagining certain scenarios or reading erotica. So the having a lot of male friends is not a valid comparison as those are real people. As a guy would you forbid your girlfriend to read erotica or romance novels for instance ? I wouldn't because it sounds absurd. You can't really extrapolate that it means he desires to have sex with other women but you kinda can so I understand the point. And of course, he will always have desire for sexual intercourse with other women who are not you. It's just something you need to accept. It's very naive to believe you would be able to pleasure and satisfy a man to such a perfect extent that he would cease any sexual desire towards any other woman. It's simply not realistic. In the same way, how would you feel if your man forbid you from reading romance novels or any sort of erotica fiction ? What if he told you you were a traiterous monster for watching Bridgerton because you should be perfectly satisfied with the love he's giving you and you should not be imagining falling in love with someone else ? Would you not run away immediately ?

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@Adam M Based on what do you think she's yellow or turquoise ? She's not acting like someone developped at all. Turquoise you can throw out of the window immediately and stop idealizing her. What is the actual reason of her not liking you watching porn ? Because I can't find a good conscious reason for that. It seems that it's somehow deeply tied to her survival agenda if she's so deeply hang up on it. Does she have some trauma and does not like you desiring other virtual girls ? Are you not having enough great sex ? The deal is you cannot really say it's her boundairy, because it's something she would have established right away, as in : Oh I will not date someone who watches porn, sorry, is this currently something you're doing ? Yes ? Okay this is not going to work bye. if she's violating her boundairies retroactively that's on her. At present, I cannot understate how manipulative her stance of "you have to stop watching porn or I will leave you" is. The problem is, is that if you comply with it and she ignores your interest in the matter she simply does not have your best interest at heart, and once she knows she can make you comply with that, she could make compliant with pretty much anything and will over time domesticate you. It's a very controlling stance and it's not as reasonable of an expectation for instance as "I expect you not to cheat on me and if you do I will leave you". Is she controlling in any other way ? Her behaviour indicates that she's absolutely not worthwhile as a girl.

Ah, certainly. Altough I can imagine someone making them out of fun for the pure irony of it.

I know it's meants with very hostile intent but the meme's are actually quite funny if you don't take them seriously.

It's pretty much always the same story, a guy wants to have better social social skills and to have a nice girlfriend and at the same time never does any actual work to change and allow it to happen. This should be a wake up call for you. That's why I think they invented "right action" - you do what is right relative to the result you need to get, regardless of your objections, arguments and how you feel. It doesn't feel natural ? Well though tities you're doing it anyway. It doesn't matter. You don't really have a choice, either you step up and take action or you simply stay miserable. So simply have a longer chat and ask her out. Then have a date and otherwise realize you need to take more action to tackle this situation and do so.

@StaffyDoggo Stop overthinking this or making a big deal out of it. Dating is very harsh and requires you to man up, including doing things you're not comfortable with. If you have not yet destroyed all of your chances by doing nothing while you had already 5 opportunities, you need wake up and lead, so just ask her out for a coffee next time you see her. It's incredible to me that you have not chatted about anything personal after meeting regularly like here she's from, what she does, those kind of things. Just do it and learn from the experience. You can't stay stuck on small things like that forever.