The High Status Male

Lately I’ve been peeking at some of the search terms that guys have been using to find this blog, and I’ve noticed the term “male virgin” comes up somewhat frequently in various different forms.  I don’t really have anything amazing to say about this topic at the moment, but I researched around a bit and found some posts on other blogs that I thought you might like to have a look at:

The Modern Savage — The Dilemmas of Male Virgins

This is actually a very interesting blog in general, not just this particular post about male virgins.  The writer gets into statistics and charts quite a bit but keeps everything very intriguing and avoids getting dry and technical.  There’s also a ton of good links on this blog, enough to keep you busy poking around for a while.

Tre’s Sugar — Dating a Male Virgin

The key question posed by the male virgin himself is short and straight to the point, but you should really find the thread of follow-up comments by women to be very interesting indeed. Take a look.

Health Central — Male Virgin at 29 and never dated

This one is a bit more clinical and has to do with coping with the anxiety that’s created by being a male virgin. Some good links showing you where to get help if you feel that you need it.

Again, not all of you will be interested in this particular topic, but I know this hits a note with some of you and so there it is.  My own rule on this issue is that you should NEVER reveal your virgin status to any woman that you are interested in dating, and you should try not to let it affect you at all — although I know this becomes a heavier lift as you get older.  The problem isn’t so much the status itself as the obsessive focus on it, which tends to corrode away at your confidence.

Two things you need to pound into your head about this subject as it affects you personally: NO mentioning it to the girl EVER, and NO fear!

Keep you focus on charming her and off yourself as much as possible… just assume that your animal instincts will get you through the cherry-popping okay.  If it really freaks you out then use a hooker if you have to (a time-honored de-flowering method for men throughout the ages…).  Just do whatever it takes to put your virginity behind you and move on.  Don’t make it into anything more than the non-issue it really is.  You will always be miserable to the degree that you allow your negative thoughts and emotions to guide your behaviors and actions.

I’m interested in your comments and thoughts.  Let’s kick this around some more.

More Topic-Relevant Information:

What kind of advice do you have for guys like me who are about to graduate college and enter the working world, but only just recently began improving their relations towards girls?

Barry

Hi Barry,

Thanks for writing.  Well, I don’t know if you’ve read any of my materials but you ask a very broad question that I address in various different ways in my books and audios, so I wouldn’t know where to begin trying to synopsize all that down into a simple bit of magical advice that I can give you.

One thing that I think you may have overlooked in all this agonizing though is motivation.  And I don’t just mean motivation to chase after women, but a motivation to do all those scary and potentially painful things that you must do (such as face down your fears, actually approach women and not just dream about it, etc.) in order to make serious changes in your life.

There’s no painless way to catch up once you’ve fallen behind the average person in terms of romantic skills — there will be embarrassment and bad emotions to experience and push through as you stumble and bumble your way to eventual competence.  It’s like anything else that you’ve been studying at school.

Here’s the one big thing to remember: the longer that you wait to tackle the chore of learning these skills the more embarrassing and difficult it will be to swallow the inevitable flubs that you will surely make along the way.  That’s because we naturally assume a greater level of romantic and social skill in people as they age, and when this experience is missing it diminishes us greatly.  The awkward romantic mistakes made at 16 may be laughable and expected — but those same mistakes made at 36 are sad and can sometimes even seem tragic.  So DO get to work facing down your fears and get this stuff handled — those fears won’t always self-correct, as a lot of people think they will.

Get yourself motivated to run that gauntlet of fear and fuck-ups!

Finally, you should understand that the “23 year old virgin” thing does actually leave an invisible stink on you that many women can actually sense before you even say anything to them — and this often ruins your chances to make a powerful, high status male impression right off the bat.  In this ” virgin mode” you’re always fighting an uphill battle again a nasty bad vibe that you’re sending out ahead of yourself… making the task of hooking up far more difficult than it should be.

I would therefore make the somewhat radical suggestion to you that you get yourself an escort or a hooker or something and just get laid already. Just be done with this whole virginity deal!  The longer you wait the more you end up over-thinking the whole thing until you’re completely locked-up on the issue. Hiring a courtesan is actually a time-honored way for a boy to become a man, and is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.  Just keep it all on the down low if you want to and no one will ever have to know your business.  (Although maybe some of your frat bro’s could help hook you up?… if it wouldn’t destroy your rep with them to even ask such a thing?)

The important thing is to just get the stink of pussy ON you and get that virgin stench OFF you! Then you will experience a more natural shift in your attitude that will be far more attractive to women and give you a real shot with them.  Don’t get yourself all tangled up worrying about the “right way” to lose your virginity –  women obsess about that sort of shit (some of them, anyway).  Guys just need to get the V label off them and move on.  Hope this gets you thinking and ultimately motivated to begin staring down your fears.

Hi Mike,

What you are doing here is amazing, you’re giving us an opportunity to grow as men!

Let me introduce myself, I’m a tall man in my early 20’s and I weigh about 225.  My problem is that I’ve never had a girlfriend and I’m still a virgin.  I’m very shy — for some reason I can’t stand the idea of being alone with a woman.  I think I have rejection phobia.  A few years ago I was in line to lose my virginity I thought, but I couldn’t get it up! I think this experience made me even more afraid of women.  I’d appreciate your help and advice.

Robert

Bob, the thing about sexual issues caused by excessive virginity is simply this: at some point it comes down to just getting the stink on you, no matter how you have to do it!

I recommend that guys like yourself who are so incredibly shy — and especially if their shyness is tied to sexual insecurity — should just go ahead and get an escort and do the deed already! Get all that nagging doubt about your sexual prowess out of your head so that you can understand “deep down” (unconscious mind) that you can perform with a woman.

Once you’ve been popped your male “vibe” will adjust itself to confirm this by making you more at ease around women, which improves your reactions FROM them and opens up opportunities to make a connection. A male virgin carries an invisible tag on him that women can pick up on it somehow. It usually provokes disinterest and makes them regard you as some kind of asexual creature — which makes the task of hooking up doubly difficult.

You are always being faced with having to take an enormous, paralyzing risk to meet anyone — and this is a really stressful way to live.

So get busy getting this issue cleared up for yourself and then take the steps necessary to get out there on the social field of play.  Go take a look at my PUA Product Review pages.  The top listing on each one are books that sit on my own personal bookshelf here at home, books that helped me overcome huge negative issues in my personality that were keeping me shy and unable to connect with women.

Hi Mike!

Here I am 26 years old and still a virgin.  I can’t get rid of the self image which tells me that I’m not boyfriend material, and somehow I feel inferior to other men.  I’m not being treated as equal among men who are more successful with women and physically stronger then I am.

It seems that I suffer from a kind of social phobia.  I have fear of contact with people.  For example, I’m very nervous when I go to the store to the point where I start to stutter and speak in that ugly submissive voice.  The question is – how do I change all this — how can I defeat fear?  Do you have a suggestion how could I reframe my thinking and my self-image?

Thanx my friend,
Robert

Hey Bob,

Well, you ask the million dollar question; how to defeat fear?… a primal emotion that holds us in a mostly neurochemical grip that can be made worse by the actions of the conscious mind.  Any program that helps individuals confront phobias (and social phobia is as real as any) always focuses on gradual exposure to increasingly stronger episodes of that person’s worse fear (desensitization) in an attempt to convince the mind of the harmlessness of the stimulus — which is always far less that perceived.  But perception is reality, if it’s real for your mind, then it’s real… period.  You can use techniques like NLP, that are mechanistic and promise fast results, but it all comes down to changing the thinking of your unconscious mind.

As for your actions around women, you’ve fallen into a pattern of poor thinking habits and ineffective ways of interacting with them based on your fears.  What you need to do is act in a way that demonstrates both to the woman and to your unconscious mind that you are not afraid to show off your feelings. Next time you get a chance with a girl anywhere, turn, smile and say something like this: “Hi, my name is Bob… I think I saw that (necklace, dress) on the cover of a magazine the other day, it really looks terrific on you.”

Something that you would never say ordinarily.  Something that shocks your unconscious, and changes it’s self-view.  It doesn’t even have to go any farther than that.  Just flirt and walk away.  It’s training.  If you do this enough times, one day something will snap over like a light switch in your brain, and you will suddenly feel acting in this fashion to be “normal”.  At that point your fear doesn’t really exist in the same way it did before.  It’s less focused, weaker.

Until you do this sort of homework you will never see any real change in yourself — even if you find a way to force change, you will always find yourself slipping back into old habits and patterns.  That’s because the unconscious will gradually guide you back towards the reality that it is comfortable with.  That it believes in.  You can’t talk to this part of the human mind, you have to show it. Demonstrate for it.

Mike,

Tonight I cried.  Yesterday was my 20th birthday. Tonight I was on the phone with a girl that I have been talking to ever since I was 15, — a span of about 4 years, but ONLY on the Internet.  She’s in another country.

In the past 2 years we’ve gotten really close, and yet it hurts so bad because she is the ONLY one I have.  And it hurts because sometimes I yearn for touch, and to just feel something REAL, yet the closest we can get is our voice on the phone.  And even then I close my eyes and try to make it feel so real.  We’ve got the “Let’s not keep each other tied up, and allow freedom until we can meet” type of thing.  So she’s gone out a few times, yet has stayed single for the longest time in her life because of me.

Tonight she mentioned that, after graduation, she and her best friend — AND two guys — are all going off together on a road trip.  Because it’s a 12 hour drive, they will be staying over at a hotel.  I find myself getting caught up in all these jealous emotions and other negative thoughts… and then the reality of my situation just hits me and I burst into tears.  I feel like such a loser.

You see Mike, the only girl’s I’ve ever “been” with are all on the net — from the time when I was 14 years of age until now — these girls that I became “net boyfriend and girlfriend” with have in one way or another made me cry.  The first one gave some guy a blowjob, the 2nd got pregnant, and the 3rd one found a boyfriend, had sex with him, and then decided to tell me only after I was already “in love” with her.  It’s destroying me how I’ve never had any experience with any REAL girls… not even a single kiss.  Never a girlfriend.

Three different times I’ve laid awake alone in bed while my friend did his girlfriend in our hotel room on our trips, praying to God… “Lord, when will it be my turn…”  Three years I’ve walked around with friends while they were constantly busy on their cellphones with their girlfriends.  Just looking around and asking… when will I stop being so lonely… when will I be blessed with being able to so freely feel these wonderful emotions… the closeness, the love…  But I know that I PUSH it away because of the shame.

I drove to the beach last night and walked on the path, praying to God each time that I would some day bring a girl with me… very often seeing people with a friend or lover while I walked alone.

The lonely, quiet feeling walks along with me each night.

I don’t know how to break past this wall. I want to be able to have more than just ONE girl that I am close to so that I do not cry and feel so lame when she tells me she’s going off on a trip with a guy.  Arrgghh, as I typed that my chest got tight, and now I’m trying to hold back the tears…

I don’t know if you’ve heard of “Somewhere I belong” by Linkin park…but these are the words

I wanna heal…
I wanna feel…
What I thought was never real
I wanna let go of the pain I’ve felt so long
I wanna find something I’ve wanted all along
somewhere I belong
somewhere I belong…

Every area of my life is being affected by this.  I’m at rock bottom.  Please type back something comforting.  It’s been 20 years of this bullshit suffering.  I wanna heal.

fallen,
Jerry

Hey Jer,

Where do I even begin with a guy like you?  A four year e-mail and phone “affair” with a girl from another country?  Are you kidding me… this thing had “hopeless” written all over it from the very start.  And you’re saying that these are the only kind of “relationships” you ever have?  Your e-mail address says it all my friend, delusional is the word for you. (NOTE: the writer’s e-mail address suggests that he lives in a permanent delusional state)

You don’t need any more comforting words, what you need is a swift kick in the ass.  You lie awake listening while your buddies get laid in the same hotel room, wondering when it will be “your turn”?  It will be your turn when you wake up from your whimpering dream-state and begin to do the serious work — and take the real social risks — that it requires to have a real interaction with another real human being.

You sound to me you are wallowing in what psychologists call “learned helplessness”… a state where you take a completely submissive posture towards life and feel you can do nothing other than hope, wish and pray that good things will happen to you — and then you lie around whining and complaining when the gods fail to smile upon you.  This is a totally ineffective way to deal with ANY aspect of your life, not just meeting women.  No one gives you nuthin’ in life… you’ve got to go out there and steal a piece of it for yourself, and you have to fight for every last little goddamn thing that you have.  Period.  We fight Nature, we fight each other, we fight with our own demons.  We fight or we die.  Nothing on this planet would’ve ever been accomplished or built otherwise.

You seem to understand from my book about the problems created with hidden shame issues that control your responses to life.  That’s great, but now you have to DO something about it.

You begin by erasing all your delusions and getting a grip on yourself.  The next book I’m writing deals extensively with this sort of thing because I see too much of it, but I’ll give you a little preview right here.

Basically, you have to start by dumping that “Carmen Electra” vision of your future girlfriend that I know you hold dear, and start working in the real world of genuine, flawed women — and you have to start at the bottom.  That’s right, the bottom.  You have to pay the social dues you’ve been running away from all your life.  I’m sure you’ve had shots at all sorts of women who didn’t meet your high standards for whatever your imaginary lover should be like, and you let them pass you by because they weren’t perfect enough.  But playing these chances for all they’re worth is ultra-valuable as a learning tool, because they get you real world experience that will begin to break apart the unconscious fears and biases that are holding you back from making any real progress.  I know, you can’t be bothered to learn like this… somehow you should just float to the top of the pile without doing any work.  And now you’re in “pain” because reality and delusion refuse to match up.

Well at what point does your pain begin to exceed your fear? THAT’S when you’ll start the journey towards healing my friend.

Listen, these remote e-mail and chat encounters are pure bullshit and will get you nowhere.  I always advise guys to do as little e-mailing and phone yakking with women as possible because you need to be face-to-face with a woman in order to send her all those critical non-verbal signals of desire that get her juices flowing for you.  These powerful signals of ‘male display’ tap into parts of her primal mind that cannot be touched remotely.  Letters from afar DO build desire and always have, but only AFTER real passion from real-life encounters has already been established between a man and woman, NOT as a cowardly substitute way of creating that passion in the first place (by ducking your shame).

You’ve got to get some stank on your hang low — plain and simple!  That’s how you begin to get some game going for yourself and to get the correct attitude and vibe beaming out of you.  Your 5th girl from now is going to be that dream girl you’ll be walking down the beach with someday.  But not now, you’ve got lots of work to do to get there.  You’ve got to get through 4 relationships (even if they’re only one night stands) with some hogs and dogs before you’re even remotely ready to meet her.  Shit-can the Internet as your socializing vehicle and get some real face-to-face skills! Study the book for nuts and bolts advice on the mechanics of what you should be doing.  Reduce your arrogant standards and get busy or things will never change for you.  You MUST be proactive in life.

Sorry this wasn’t the love letter you were expecting — but fortunately Time is still on your side.  Think this thing will all work out for the best if you just stay the course, remain submissive to your shame and wait it out long enough?  Think again.  I get similar letters from guys in their 40’s who are ready to drive off a cliff after a lifetime of frustration as a result of having pissed away most of their real chances in life with women… and all because they’ve remained in pursuit of this fantasy social partner who they haven’t a clue as to how to go about finding — and wouldn’t know what to do with her if they DID anyway.

I’m 21, I have never kissed a girl.   Any girl that has ever shown interest in me has been the pursuer, I am non-aggressive — just like those loners you talk about in your book.   I would like to think I am decent looking, but any time the moment arrives when a girl is interested, I freak out.   And not just a normal freak out like you would expect… I get crazy.   I will immediately bail on the situation no matter what cost.
I have walked home in anger 25 miles at 2 AM because my friends once tried to set me up with this girl.

The epiphanies I felt I had while reading your books have not translated into everyday life.  I have tried the desensitization techniques to no avail (did you ever realize how inexplicably embarrassing it was for me to wear that damn rubber band?  I had to make up a new excuse for everyone that asked).  I have read 3 other books on techniques to overcome fears.  All sound good on paper.  None work.

Long story short, I really like this girl.  Turns out she is into me too.   As a matter of fact, she has liked me for a while.   Well, good old me hasn’t done shit about it for a month now.   In my mind I have tried, but I can’t even sleep I’m so nervous.   Well, tonight she told my friend that she’s not waiting around forever.   I’m desperate man now.   If you could slap some sense into me, refer me to a psychiatrist for some meds, anything!   I would greatly appreciate some help.

Victor

Hi Vic,

When I hear a story like yours I feel like the best thing I can do through an e-mail is just try to give you some perspective on the whole reality-fantasy thing.   You have a man’s body but a boy’s brain in terms of how you relate to women, and this stems from the fact that all your “relationships” with women have been mostly of the imaginary variety.  UNTIL YOU MOVE WOMEN FROM THE REALM OF THE IMAGINARY INTO THE REALM OF “BEEN-THERE-DONE-THAT”, YOUR BEHAVIORS SURROUNDING THEM WILL CONTINUE TO BORDER ON INSANITY. Just as you’ve been describing to me.

You are being driven insane by obsessing over something that you desperately want, but won’t allow yourself to have.   Shame or not, this topsy-turvy view of life will not change until you somehow get yourself to experience a real relationship.   If you’re a virgin, then do whatever it takes to get laid — go get a hooker if you need to… who gives a shit?   Men have historically had their cherries popped by whores.   It was considered a perfectly reasonable way to introduce a guy to his own sexuality and prepare him for being married.   The method doesn’t matter… only the outcome.

The point is that once you have sampled women FOR REAL, this frenzy in your skull will begin to subside somewhat and you can then act from a position of normalcy instead of madness.   Accept the challenge and grow up — the frightened boy is growing crazy trapped inside the man!

No pill that you could possibly gobble down will help this situation, only prolong it.   And any advice that you get from a therapist will be some fancy variation of what I just told you.   Fuck all that — face down your shame and get busy. Start at the bottom with the ugliest bitch you can find and move up from there if you have to.   Doesn’t matter what kind of hog she is… the experience will be transformative for you.

Mike,

How do you bring up the safe sex question?   Many of the blogs I’ve seen talk about showing your lab results, etc.   Hey, I am almost a goddamn VIRGIN it’s been so long since I’ve been laid!   I am CLEAN, CLEAN, CLEAN and don’t want to do anything to ruin that status.   Disease free and I want to stay that way!   Oral sex is one of my favorite things and I want to make sure that I preserve the full enjoyment — I don’t want to have any lingering doubts about whether or not she’s STD free.

Eddie

Hi Ed,

About the only advice I can give you here is the standard deal, the hated C-word… condom.  The first few times you bang these chicks you always have to use one of these damn things because you just can’t trust anybody until you get to know them better.  I sure don’t.

If you’re a real stickler about this issue then you should get tested and be able to show the results to anyone, just like those blogs suggest.  This makes it less audacious for you to ask her to do the same thing for you.  Lead by example. This is of course a tricky topic to bring up, especially before the first episode of sex.  That’s why it’s best to just matter-of-factly whip out the condom right from the very first go.  This is better than starting a long discussion about it prior to actually getting naked.  Then you can feel more comfortable raising the larger issue later on after sex so that you can both “stop using these stupid rubbers” and take things to the next level, barebacking.

As for going down on her, this would be out of the question until those test results come through or you can otherwise be convinced by her that she doesn’t have anything nasty going on there.   Otherwise you’d have to use a dental dam or something, and that’s really getting kind of clinical and is a big buzz kill.   Or, dive into the abyss and hope for the best but beware… chlamydia and genital herpes can be transmitted via oral sex.  Yikes!

Sorry I had no magic answer for you.

Mike,

I recently got done reading your recent book “She’s yours for the Taking”.  It was really great, and I think you do an amazing job letting the product speak for itself.  I read a lot of books which deal with psychology, and I don’t know that I have seen an author who communicates their message in a more effective way.   In fact, I find that reading your stuff ends up helping me grow as a person just as much as it helps me with girls.  All that being said, I was hoping to take you up on your free e-mail service once again because your advice really helped me last time.

1) As a 21 year old who has never been involved in a long term relationship, how did YOU get started dating experienced girls when you admit that you had very little of any yourself?   I guess I am still somewhat ashamed about my lack of any relationship history.

2) I imagine people have asked you for your opinion on the importance of penis size?  My question is, how do you think this subject fits into the whole male dominance idea
Can a guy who is much smaller than average ultimately be ranked as a very high status male among women?

3) The last question I have sort of relates to the whole bar/club scene.  Lately I’ve noticed that I’ll get real down on myself if things don’t go my way, and alcohol only seems to add to these negative feelings.   In fact, I notice myself thinking about all my insecurities — sometimes it even carries over to when I’m sober.   When was it that you started becoming more relaxed and having fun when going out?

Sincerely,
Steve

Look Steve,

At 22 I seriously wouldn’t worry about having had any sort of relationship “history” yet, or that the lack of such is any sort of big negative for you.   Teens just date around and experiment anyway — relationships are a more adult thing, and you’re only just getting cranked up for that right now.   And please don’t be jealous of these “teenage sweetheart” couples that seem to have been so lucky to have found each other and rush off to get married a few years out of high school.   Most of them are in for a rude surprise: it’s called boredom.   Many of these dream relationships won’t last and even if they do, who the hell just wants to stick with one person all their life without first sampling what the world has to offer?   Count your blessings that one of these insecure little shrews didn’t get her hooks into you in 10th grade, and that you are now free to plunge headlong into a world of possibilities now.

My first real relationship wasn’t until the age of 26, and prior to that my social life was a barren wasteland — but I don’t recall that any of this was ever an issue with any girl that I met subsequently.   I never mentioned it or had any reason to.   They’re sometimes more interested in how many women you’ve slept with, and for that I gave you a formula for that in SYFT if you need to create a nice “white lie” for yourself.  I would just promote the fact that you’re a free spirit, hard to pin down, and haven’t found “the one” yet. Not that you’re a commitment-phobe or anything (which you’re still too young to be anyway) but rather, a prize. See, it’s not these silly things in your past, it’s your attitude about them.  You can either be ashamed of something about yourself or proud of it, and most people will simply follow your “modeling” and go along with your lead.

The penis thing is another perfect example… no one knows what’s inside your pants but you, right?   And hopefully, by the time she finds out it’ll be too late!   Look, you can either act ashamed of a small dick or proud of what’s hiding in your shorts… and I’ll just have to believe what your attitude about it seems to proclaim about you because I’m not going to ask to see for myself!   Right?

Attitude!

This is how politicians and movie stars put themselves over — they design a bullshit cover attitude of power or elegance or whatever and then shine it in our face until we all believe it too.  (Not me though, I’m too rock hard cynical and impervious

As for bars, I never really got comfortable hanging out in bars and that’s why I designed a way to operate in the “real world” using the pull tabbing deal I laid out in SYFT.   No sense beating yourself up about the fact that you just may not be temperamentally suited to enjoying this type of “fun”.   Just take a more casual attitude and drop all the pressure on yourself to accomplish anything in there.   You may find this works best!  Soon you’ll be more in control over how you spend your time and less manipulated by the demands of your friends anyway.

Hey Mike,

I’m really hoping you can help me out.   I’ve had really bad social anxiety that started when I was like 14…I’m now almost 22.   I’m a lot better than I was, but I still have trouble driving to places I’m not familiar with and meeting girls and stuff.   I still have a constant fear of messing up somehow and looking like a idiot.   I’m a lot better because I started lifting weights and I don’t feel as skinny and awkward any more.   I now have some confidence, and I’m absolutely going crazy sitting inside and not having a life!

The reason I sit inside alone?   I have no friends.   I haven’t gone out with any friends in like, 5 years.   Because of this I’m terrified of meeting a girl and having her find out that…

1. I’m a 22 year old virgin… never even having had a girlfriend.
2. I’ve sat inside and wasted years of my life because of this horrible disorder.

How on earth do you hide these things from a girl?   She’s going to know when there’s no pictures or proof of ever having a girlfriend or going to proms in high school, etc.  Plus she’s going to know I’m a virgin for obvious reasons if we do have sex.   What if the girl I meet runs into somebody that knows me from school and tells her how much of a loser I was in high school?   No friends, no girlfriends, picked on, quit school, etc.  I’m just so terribly ashamed of my past.   How could I ever feel like her “man” when she would knows those things?

I know you went through some of these things and I’m sure you’ve given advice about this matter before.   Do you just be honest right up front with the girl you’re dating?   I assume you would be taking a huge risk of scaring her away by telling her “I’m 22, never had a girlfriend, virgin, and I have no friends”

I obviously have no one to talk to except you, so your advice would be so greatly appreciated.  I want to date even though I’m still incredibly shy.   My hormones are driving me insane!   If I don’t get pussy soon I think I’m going to lose my mind.   Making things worse, I’ve actually been called “hot” by some beautiful girls in the past year, and my not being able to do anything about it is making things even worse!

Please respond back with some advice if you can.  Thanks.

Jack

Hi Jack,

Thanks for writing and sorry to hear about this ongoing nightmare that you’ve been living, maybe I can give you some food for thought to help you out a little.   Although I’ve never actually had SA, you sound a lot like myself when I was your age in some ways, and one of things that I know you suffer from is a lack of perspective.

I get letters like yours from guys who are 52, not 22.   So relax.  You may think it’s the end of the world but you’re still very young and have tons of time to straighten yourself out.  You’ve already taken great positive steps to get yourself improved physically, now you just need to get your mind (actually, your unconscious mind) to catch up to the reality of this newer you.   You see, it still thinks of you as the skinny kid and holds tightly to all the bad ideas you had about yourself, and so this is why you’re not seeing any real changes yet in your head from the changes you actually made to your body.

What you need to do is begin with a mental clean slate and make a quantum leap in your attitude, because it is here where we create the reality of our existence… good, bad or ugly.   I’m sure you probably know this on some level.   You must sweep away the shame from the actions in your past whatever they are.  Your “past” is your teenage years, which are now dead and gone and will have a diminishing importance to who you are about to become as you move into adulthood UNLESS YOU CLING TO THESE BAD IDEAS and never let go of them – in which case you will be writing me again when you’re 52 (don’t bother, I’ll be dead by then ;-(

This whole SA thing is just a phase you’re going through, not a lifelong death sentence.

As for your situation with friends… time to break with the past and make all new ones now.   They only know the “old you” anyway and are therefore poisoned.   Get out and join some places where you can meet new people and start off on the right foot with them.   This is vastly easier than trying to convert old friends, who will only hold you back by trying to keep you the same as you are for their own twisted reasons of pecking order and status.   You like to exercise, for instance… so why not start with a health club (I’m assuming you probably work out at home)?

Get a trial membership and try a few different ones before signing up long term.  Visit each a few times and see who actually goes there.   Make sure you find one with a lot of cute women rather than a lot of old farts (like mine! ;-(   Sign up for the classes — especially stuff like yoga or body sculpting when the women tend to go.   Or try other types of venues if you don’t like that one, you must have some interests.  Right? Maybe a book club or astronomy group.   Desensitization will break down your social anxiety slowly by hooking you up with people with whom you share similar interests.  This gives you shit to talk about, an “in”, so to speak.

And when you meet these new friends… HAVE A NEW ATTITUDE!

You are not the guy you used to be — and so drop all his old thoughts, anxieties and assumptions about yourself. Model the behaviors and attitudes of the type of guy that you want to be and then SELL THAT to everyone you meet.   Play it like a game at first if you have to… like you’re on secret camera and you’ll win money if you can convince others that you’re a normal, interesting guy instead of who you imagine that you are right now.

Fake it until you make it and the attitude becomes absorbed into your unconscious if you have to.  Have patience with this process, you didn’t get SA overnight, you won’t correct it instantly either.   Incremental improvement, just like you watched your body grow stronger and bigger as you worked out.   Understanding root causes to your problems will help you to avoid repeating the same mistakes in the future.   We have to try to “understand” our way out of the mental prisons that we create for ourselves, what other way is there?

Think about it, try something.   Take some action to reverse your reality and your thoughts will follow soon enough.   I was exactly in your place at 22 and felt like killing myself from the frustration of a dominant, monster mind that could only put me down inside.   You can kill this beast, make it your life’s mission!