The High Status Male

Mike,

While I don’t necessarily agree with every single thing in your books, I did take away quite a bit of good stuff — and I kind of tailored a few of your ideas and techniques to my own liking.

I want to be in the game of women and sex, but I’ve kept myself away from women romantically for my entire 25 year life up to this point.  I am talking about having no kisses, no girlfriends… not even girls that are “just friends”.

Masochism, I know!

It was a combination of different things such as my twisted view on religion and the personality that people expected of me.  Anyway, I was quite successful in other areas of life and have been seeking knowledge to improve myself even further in all areas… this was my impetus to seek out and buy your books.

Now I actually outwardly project the type of person that I always have been.  I am a suave, quick-witted engineer and Renaissance Man.  I dabble in a lot of interesting things, and that gives me a ton of conversation starters with the ladies. Recently, one cutey said she was going to “make me” meet her again (said that in a flirty way, not in a crazy way).  How cool is that?

This life change is like going from black/white TV to HD… stunning!

Ryan

Hi Ryan.

Great to see that you’ve made a breakthrough in your life when it comes to women.  Here’s an insight for you and since you are a self-described and fellow Renaissance Man (we should start a club …  I expect you to investigate it further.  What you call masochism I’ve come to understand as self-hatred — and a lot of us harbor this demon in us at all various levels, many of them far below out consious radar.  And these are the most dangerous types.

Why?  Because if we don’t know they’re there, and therefore never take any action to cure them. That’s because we’re never quite enough of a mess to think that we really need any serious help.  But we do.  We may understand when someone is being and acting obviously self-destructive — drinking themselves to death, a big time drug addict, a self-mutilator that needs a stint in a mental hospital, and so on.  But our own self-destructive, self-hating behaviors are subtle and they don’t interfere with our ability to live 80-90% successful lives in many ways, and therefore we never really think of ourselves as self-hating. That’s for the crazies who pull out their hair or cut themselves with razors, right?  Not so.

In some ways these people are lucky because they are so bad that they attract enough attention that someone intevenes and gets them help.  But what about the rest of us, the “stealth” self-haters?  Is something as silly as shyness a manifestation of scary-ass self-harted?

It is.

The problem all begins when we make these Faustian bargins within our own heads where we allow ourselves success in one area of life (acedemic notariety, good health, lots of money, etc.) but then feel the perverse (self-hating) need to compensate for all of it somehow by frustrating some other area of our lives, or thwarting a great personal desire.  And if this “frustration/compensation” zone happens to land on top of your ability to create personal relationships with women, love them, have social success or even real live sex… then you end up becoming that sort of puzzling personality who seems to have tremendous success in some areas of life but is a miserable failure in others.

I was this guy for many years!

So I know all about the shame and embarrassment attached to it.  The knowledge that you have failed to match up to even the most rudimentary of expections by friends and family.  What’s going on?… this is the self-hatred mechanism at work in your deep unconsious mind, that’s what!  Don’t ask me why this shit happens, but a ton of people wrestle with their self-hating selves and have no idea of what’s going on inside their heads to cause it.

They are as much a puzzle to themselves as they are to others who care about them.

I think it basically has to do with being driven too hard by parents or peers or something else early on in our lives, until we end up taking on some of their “motivational disdain” that they developed to steer us straight (or into some other kind of mold that they had in their minds of how we “should” be)… and then reflecting this poison back on ourselves.  We’re are all victims in some way of this “Stockholm Syndrome” thing where we take up the cause of our own oppressors, and then continue to torment ourselves long after they are gone from our lives.

the way out of this trap is what I call the Double C’s: Consciousness and Compassion. First you must become self-aware of what is happening to you, what you are doing to yourself.  This is the Consciousness, or self-awareness part of the equation.  Only when you have discovered the true nature of the problem and have dragged it out into the sunlight can you begin to change it.  Then you have to learn how to exhibit the same sort of Compassion towards yourself (quit being so hard on yourself!) that you most likely extend towards most everyone else in your life.

Are you as hard on your aging parents, co-workers, casual friends, nieces and nephews as you are on YOU?  Probably not (in fact you may even over-compensate and become “too nice”, which also ruins your HSM vibe with women).  This can be a tough nut to crack and “unlearn”, but herein lies the answer.  Once you have practiced the art of self-compassion and broken the back of your own insideous self-hatred, THEN you will be able to lower the wall and accept those things into your life that haven’t been denied to you, but rtaher that you have been denying yourself all along.

If you want to read more about this subject, check out the book “Compassion and Self Hate” by Theodore Rubin.  It’s the top (Amazon) listing on this PUA Resources page.