For the past couple of weeks I had some ideas about writing blog posts about women in my world who gave me some kind of contact information only to not reciprocate when I messaged them via the email address they gave me or the social media account info they gave me. I thought about purposefully avoiding them until enough time had passed for them to get the message that they really didn't count much with me.
I never went through with any post like that, because none of these interactions rose to the level of a big enough deal for me to hold a mad on about these women for more than a day or two or, at the most, two and a half days. These women I talk about work at food service businesses I patronize, and that's how I became acquainted with them in the first place.
I decided to patronize these women's places of employment as much or as little as I cared to on any given day or week, because the changes I've made to my game allow me to think of my interactions with them as part of some greater purpose. It doesn't matter what exactly shakes out with either of these women, because the changes I've made to my game typically give me food for thought and a viable, positive frame of reference for me to draw on for possible future situations with possible future women.
Back when I was eighteen years old, I got a girl's phone number one night at Antone's when I went to see a friend's band play. I called her the next day or day after that. She answered, said she was busy, but that she'd call me back, but she never did. I flushed the napkin with her phone number down the toilet, and in so doing cut myself off from any chance that I would wind up obsessively calling her over and over and over again.
When I was nineteen, in 1984, I developed a devastating fixation on a classmate named Cathy in my UT art class. I think, looking back, that I'd believed myself to have outgrown that tendency I had to obsess on girls and women. The fact that I became so obsessed with Cathy, who had a serious boyfriend, really knocked me into a major depression and devastating feelings of despair and hopelessness.
It took my situation with Sara in 1988 to really get a handle on how to deal with someone I found myself obsessed with. The "what if I turned my back on love" experiment opened up a whole set of new options for me to pursue in how I related to someone like Sara. What wound up happening came about as a result of me holding Sara to minimum standards of engagement with me.
Like the girl I met at Antone's, I let Sara go when she failed to meet minimum standards of engagement with me. The trick of it was, though, that Sara was someone I was really fixated on. So the inquiry into possibly turning my back on love in letting Sara go allowed me to hold her to the same set of standards as that girl I met at Antone's.
A big difference in my game from when I flushed that girl's number down the toilet involves my ability to keep contact information and know that if I don't want to contact a woman anymore, I won't. What my experience with Sara taught me, and what I've been able to build upon in the following years, is self control. These two women at these two food service places have each received just one message from me since they gave me their contact information. I don't need to resort to discarding the means of contacting either of them in order to practice sufficient self control.
With that level of self control I can patronize their places of employment as much or a little as I care to. Either of them could date ten guys each over the next three months and engage in gaudy displays of affection with dudes right there where I can see them, and it might not make a damn bit of difference to me. I just might have to bring a sick bag with me if such displays get too over the top.
I never went through with any post like that, because none of these interactions rose to the level of a big enough deal for me to hold a mad on about these women for more than a day or two or, at the most, two and a half days. These women I talk about work at food service businesses I patronize, and that's how I became acquainted with them in the first place.
I decided to patronize these women's places of employment as much or as little as I cared to on any given day or week, because the changes I've made to my game allow me to think of my interactions with them as part of some greater purpose. It doesn't matter what exactly shakes out with either of these women, because the changes I've made to my game typically give me food for thought and a viable, positive frame of reference for me to draw on for possible future situations with possible future women.
Back when I was eighteen years old, I got a girl's phone number one night at Antone's when I went to see a friend's band play. I called her the next day or day after that. She answered, said she was busy, but that she'd call me back, but she never did. I flushed the napkin with her phone number down the toilet, and in so doing cut myself off from any chance that I would wind up obsessively calling her over and over and over again.
When I was nineteen, in 1984, I developed a devastating fixation on a classmate named Cathy in my UT art class. I think, looking back, that I'd believed myself to have outgrown that tendency I had to obsess on girls and women. The fact that I became so obsessed with Cathy, who had a serious boyfriend, really knocked me into a major depression and devastating feelings of despair and hopelessness.
It took my situation with Sara in 1988 to really get a handle on how to deal with someone I found myself obsessed with. The "what if I turned my back on love" experiment opened up a whole set of new options for me to pursue in how I related to someone like Sara. What wound up happening came about as a result of me holding Sara to minimum standards of engagement with me.
Like the girl I met at Antone's, I let Sara go when she failed to meet minimum standards of engagement with me. The trick of it was, though, that Sara was someone I was really fixated on. So the inquiry into possibly turning my back on love in letting Sara go allowed me to hold her to the same set of standards as that girl I met at Antone's.
A big difference in my game from when I flushed that girl's number down the toilet involves my ability to keep contact information and know that if I don't want to contact a woman anymore, I won't. What my experience with Sara taught me, and what I've been able to build upon in the following years, is self control. These two women at these two food service places have each received just one message from me since they gave me their contact information. I don't need to resort to discarding the means of contacting either of them in order to practice sufficient self control.
With that level of self control I can patronize their places of employment as much or a little as I care to. Either of them could date ten guys each over the next three months and engage in gaudy displays of affection with dudes right there where I can see them, and it might not make a damn bit of difference to me. I just might have to bring a sick bag with me if such displays get too over the top.
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