I had a frustrating experience a few summers ago.
I was at the beach with some friends, aaaand I really wanted to play some volleyball (plus also get laid with a volleyball girl). So I wandered away from my group and joined in on a beach v-ball game feat. a girl who was just my type.
I vibed with her a bit, held the frame, teased her, built up some comfort and talked about our athletic backgrounds with her… I had her hooked, right? Now all that remained, number-closing her, obviously.
Number-closing, right? Wait, why am I not number-closing her?
I just froze. Played it way too cool with some more DHVing. I liked her but I was terrified of her rejecting me. All I had to do was say “hey, you’re pretty cool. Can I grab your number?”
But I didn’t.
The whole Uber ride back to my neighbourhood, I was silently raging at myself. I could have picked up this girl I found super attractive, but I was too much of a coward to jump on it. Now I’ll almost certainly never see her again. Even years after it happened, this experience makes me feel a serious twinge of regret.
If only I knew then what I know now. That the sexual tension I was feeling meant I SHOULD have escalated, that it was the opposite of a bad thing. That playing myself like a too-cool-for-feelings self-unaware douche was kryptonite to beautiful, emotionally stable girls and catnip to broken, whoreish ones. That all I had to do with that girl on the beach was relax and be myself and let the natural tension between us move things forward.
If only I knew then what I know now. I’ve thought this to myself way more often than is necessary, to say the least. Fantasizing about traveling back in time and redoing things with my current wisdom.
And I bet I’m far from the only one who thinks about this.
Regrets suck.
That time when you could have approached that girl… but you were too afraid of rejection to man up and do it.
That time that pretty girl liked you… but you self-sabotaged and played it way too cool instead of escalating.
How much faster, earlier, more progress you could have made in the gym if you got your diet and recovery right.
If you worked on your business earlier instead of slacking on meaningless BS all the time.
What if you hadn’t done that one thing that ruined part of your life?
I think about these past experiences of mine A LOT.
And maybe you do too.
Why regrets exist
Look, I won’t hit you with the “everything happens for a reason, so be grateful for your past mistakes” speech. Odds are that isn’t what you need to hear at your current step in the journey. If someone told that to me, who currently ISN’T fully over that shit, I’d want to hit them with a chair.
Everything does happen for a reason. And sometimes, that reason is that you’re a dumbass.
Regrets are a forging fire. Before you can reframe them and be grateful for them, you need to embrace how much they suck and WHY they suck.
Regrets exist to correct your course in life. The pain they inspire is basically telling you – “You’ll hurt even worse if you make the same mistake again, so DON’T. Have some awareness. Be a bit smarter next time.”
I didn’t approach for a long time after meeting that beach volleyball girl. I was too busy going through some seriously traumatic shit to meet girls sober.
But when I got into daygame and made daytime approaches a bigger part of my life… I’d always think back to her and how damn FRUSTRATING it was to know I could have escalated but didn’t.
So with every girl I was attracted to after her… I escalated, even if it meant embarrassing myself or risking a painful or volatile rejection. I chatted up the cute front desk girl at the gym and took a walk with her after closing time. She had a long-term boyfriend, but our interactions after that were alright. I slipped my number on a piece of paper to a hot barista and told her to text me (she didn’t), then instantly defused any potential awkward tension every time I saw her after that. I picked up a girl I had a group job interview with, and went on a mediocre date with her later that week. I felt fear or uncertainty during all those experiences, but I decided a lack of regret was more important than my comfort.
I have no regrets about any girl I’ve met after that beach volleyball girl. Hurtful as it was, that experience taught me a valuable lesson every guy who wants to win at dating needs to know – rejection is better than regret.
Even if things didn’t go perfectly during an approach or a date or an interaction, I did what I could. I valued more important things than fear and comfort. Rejection is better than regret.
Will you regret doing it… or regret not doing it?
I ask myself this all the time now. Especially with the ladies.
I’ve talked before about how selective I am when daygaming. How I do max 3 approaches a week, if any. Now how do I decide which girls I (and the guys I work with) should approach?
By narrowing them down to the girls we’d regret NOT approaching. Not just approaching any half-decently attractive girl for the hell of it. I’ve never been into spam-approaching like that. I feel it saps your energy and your focus. We only approach the girls who WOW us, who make us feel something. Because we viscerally want these girls for reasons which aren’t always apparent to our conscious minds. Even if we get rejected or things don’t work out for whatever reason, these are the girls who are meant to teach us lessons, to get us understanding ourselves, women, and the world just a bit better… Preparing us for the girls who ARE good fits for us, so we can be better men with them.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve chatted up a girl I was drawn to and things didn’t work out with us… But I learned an extremely valuable insight that I still hold dearly today.
I believe in both predestination and free will. I believe that most of your life is out of your control, but I DON’T believe every mistake you’ve made was part of a larger plan. Sometimes, you take an L just because your values were off, you chose poorly, and this is your opportunity to choose better values… or stay in your same old patterns of fear and stagnation. In any case, don’t be too much of a self-critic. Girls and seasons of life come and go. Your attachment to the past ones is there for a reason – to teach you how to make your future better than your past, no matter the circumstances. As long as you’re aware of the true lessons they’re teaching you.
Brother, I’m not a perfect man. I’m not genetically blessed with height or model looks. I have a lot to learn about business and there are domains of my life where I don’t quite measure up yet.
But I’ve put my reps in with the ladies, and had my fair share of pleasure and pain with them, along with more invaluable lessons than I can count. I’ll know exactly where you’re going wrong with your biochemistry, positioning, and mindset. And I’ll know exactly how to bring out the parts of you that attract the girls who are just your type. 😉
If a dating life with no regrets is what you desire…
Cheers,
– Ben
