I don’t usually do this, but here is something one of my male friends wrote about going out alone as a guy. I’ll post my response later, I just want to let this churn for a while right now.
Yeah, it’s hard to get past. I”m still pretty self-conscious about it if it’s a new place I haven’t been. I feel like the “creepy guy” and it messes with my head. But if I’m there with friends, it’s not like that at all.
Being with friends gives you a “home base” to return to when you need comfort. Go open a chick, she laughs at you and walks away, who cares, just go back to your friends and chill with them for a bit. No harm done, you’re still cool.
But if you’re alone and you open a chick and she laughs at you and walks away, lol, now everyone sees you get laughed at AND that you have no friends It’s like, reverse pre-selection. Anti-selection? It’s like, you can get hot chicks interested in you simply because they see you with other hot chicks. This is the opposite of that. When chicks see you alone and getting rejected by other chicks, they pre-reject you and you have even less of a chance
Sadly, that’s how it works a lot of the time. Not always, but a lot of the time. There are exceptions to everything, however. A lot of it is in your head, I think. If you go out alone and think you’re awesome, you’ll have better luck. But you have to actually think you’re awesome, not just pretend like it, because then that comes off as fake, and that can be worse than just being the quiet alone guy who sits in the corner with his beer and doesn’t say anything. But if you believe you’re awesome and you’re congruent with it, then you’ll have better success. In those rare situations when I’m confident, things tend to go well. When I’m faking it (deep down inside I know if it’s fake or not), they tend to not go as well. lol, I have had nights where I was such a nervous wreck and not having any fun because I was trying so hard to look like I was having fun Fake it til you make it Gotta sit a certain way, posture, body language, expression, do this, do that, slow movements, am I leaning back far enough? Am I drinking too fast? Gotta look like I’m a cool confident guy who’s having fun. But I wasn’t, my mind was going non stop But when you’re actually having fun, you usually do all that stuff subconsciously anyway so you don’t even have to worry about it. I hope that made sense. But again, that’s all better than sitting hunched up in the corner seat of the bar by yourself being afraid to talk to anyone. And even that is better than staying inside being afraid to go out.
So it’s like, going out alone can help your confidence, or it can further damage your confidence if you have a bad night and let it bother you and rationalize it as “well obviously I had a bad night, because I suck.” On those types of nights, I tried to look at it more as “well, ok it sucked, but I give myself props for going out alone and pushing myself out of my comfort zone.” So sometimes it’s just like little baby steps of progress like that. Even if you don’t talk to anyone (dudes or chicks), whether because you’re afraid to open anyone, or because no one wants to talk to you, at least you did it. Trying and failing is 10 times better than not trying and rationalizing. It leads to personal growth, I think. Seriously, some nights literally all I could do was just to cheers the dude next to me at the bar. I was nervous as heck to actually open anyone. I’d get there, excited, pumped up and ready to rock, and then it’s like BOOM lol i’m here by myself, everyone thinks I’m a loser, no one wants to talk to me, I’m just gonna go take my place at the bar and not bother anyone. So in that case, just cheersing someone was progress. Other nights, it’s like, I forget I’m by myself cuz I’m having such a good time. Progress doesn’t seem to be linear. Some of my best nights were followed by streaks of bad nights. You just gotta keep trying to make progress.
So it’s like… I’m way more conservative when I’m out alone. And I recognize that this is an ego defense mechanism.
And it’s all because I still care what other people think, although less than before. It’s hard to overcome.