Most of my life I had no confidence. Whenever I would reach out to people, they'd reject me and I'd take that as validation of my self-perception that I was socially inept. My confidence was further broken - but I embraced this because I was a validation-seeker at that time, and even negative validation of my own self-perception was still validation all the same. This happened in my marriage over years as I would initiate with my wife. Rejection after rejection broke my confidence that I would ever succeed, until I eventually gave up and welcomed a long dead bedroom.

Fast-forward a couple years. Shortly before finding the red pill, I started working out initiating sex again, expecting that because of some of my peripheral improvements I should see a changed response from my wife. I didn't. This was a covert contract: "I improve myself, she responds sexually." But I hadn't really improved myself. Sure, my physique got better from the tub of lard I'd been, but what I thought were improvements to my frame were actually hollow projections of what I had not yet become. What I thought were confident initiations due to my external behavior was really an internal way of dabbing my toes in the water. It was feigned confidence. Because I was merely playing games at confidence, when it didn't work I took that as further validation of my being a sexual failure.

After swallowing the pill, I realized a subconscious shift in my interpretation of rejection.

  • Before: Frequent initiation and rejection validated my perception that I was a failure, killing my confidence.

  • After: Frequent initiation and rejection immunized me from the pain of rejection, improving my confidence.

  • Now: Confidence is authentic, rejection is rare.

I had given up on initiating sex with my wife for a year and a half at one point - all due to the pain of rejection. When that pain had become severe enough, I developed a natural DNGAF attitude. I had hit rock-bottom so hard that her rejection no longer mattered to me. It was another drop in the ocean. When I started getting affirmation again, there was a brief temptation to salivate at the carrot dangled in front of me, hoping not to get the stick again ... but the next rejection quickly reminded me that I couldn't trust my wife with my emotions any more than I would trust a teenager with my financial portfolio. It's a bad investment.


Here's where I screwed up: more recently, I've stopped initiating. I didn't feel like I had to. After all, she was doing most of the initiation for a while anyway. So, after a couple weeks, I caught myself asking: "Why isn't she initiating like she used to?" Now, I start rationalizing that it's because she worked over 90 hours last week due to a busy-season deadline. Probably some truth there. But there were also openings I didn't take. At the end of the day, the answer to my question was simple: Because she's a woman. Women are primarily sexually responsive. I had stopped giving her anything to respond to.

What's more interesting is the small voice in the back of my head that used to be a dominant air-horn, now whispering: "She just worked 17 hours today. If you initiate, you'll get rejected, so it's pointless to initiate." Tell that voice to screw off. I stopped initiating, my anti-confident thoughts started returning.

In reality: so what if she rejects me due to her 17 hour work-day? First, maybe some sexual release would be good for her to relieve the stress - but even that is still in her frame. Better just to initiate and either (1) end up having hot stress-relief sex (is that a thing?), or (2) get rejected, making it clear to my subconscious that it's pointless to try taking away my confidence because rejection is not a fear that cripples my confidence, but an invitation that bolsters it.


As this is the RPC version of this post, let me simply ask rhetorically: When Jesus wants to spiritually reproduce through us and we reject him, do you believe his confidence is shaken? Does this kill his abundance mentality? Does that stop him from inviting us to spread the Gospel with him?