One of the things that I've always struggled with is the emotional pain of frustration with how things are in my life. On one hand, frustration could be the fuel that ignites a positive and inspiring attempt to deal with a problem once-and-for-all, but it can also lead to despair, anger, hopelessness, and giving up. And we know that emotional state is a huge part of having natural success. If we're frustrated, we'll act desperately, we'll act needy, we'll act inadequate, we'll act secretly angry, we'll act negatively. It takes a great amount of effort and acting to pretend not to be these things.

How we deal with frustration tells us a lot about how we deal with stress in general. Financial stress, work stress, health issues, and other types of stress can also wreck our emotional state if we don't know how to deal with stress. We know that people who are good at dealing with stress and successful in spite of pressure are generally more attractive people and more fun to be around. It's why we celebrate winners.

But an important aspect of stress and frustration is expectation. That is, the degree to which you expect something, desperately want something, or feel that you need something, determines your level of stress. For example, it is extremely stressful to try to flap your arms and try to fly into the air. However, we don't really stress about it, because we know it's futile. In a way, giving up is the release of stress, because by no longer trying, you don't need to flail endlessly.

While it's easy to give up on flying with your arms, it's not as easy to give up on something that is connected to our biological needs. For example, eating food and having sex and forming romantic relationships all have a biological source that allowed the human species to be successful.

A lot of people try to give up on dating to release the stress but they only find themselves lonely anyways. This is because it takes quite some herculean willpower to suppress biology. I do know people who have given up on dating per say because of the unfavorable dating environment based on very logical conclusions about divorce and modern attitudes, but the issue with that is the biology still exists. If the dating environment was favorable even they would accept dating just like everyone else, so their biology hasn't really changed. They claim they don't need it, but their biology clearly still has the desire. This isn't to say this approach is wrong or bad, but it's just to make it clear that there is a battle going on inside of you.

So how do we deal with the frustrating aspect of dating? Because it's inevitably full of frustrating things. Rejection. Women ghosting you. Being ignored. Shit tests. Angry feminists. Bad dates. Lost opportunities. All types of failures. Sitting at home alone, feeling lonely and desperate. Self-hate and low self-esteem. Loss of money spent on dating ebooks, barrage of marketing, changing yourself, new clothes or styles that don't make you happy, pickup lines. It's all a source of energy expenditure leading to frustration because of your inner biology.

Since changing our biology to become asexual isn't quite available yet with the latest CRISPR technologies, and life-like relationship-holding sexbots are not available yet either, we'll have to make due with what we have. Without a paradigm shift in how we view dating, it is very difficult to cope with the stress.

I think there are various things that we must do to manage the frustration:

  • Shift the expectation to smaller goals, ignoring the larger goals for now. Furthermore, don't let time expectation be a factor. It doesn't matter whether it takes a month, a year, or 5 decades. Any urgency should come from a source of excitement and inspiration, not from a source of dread (e.g. not "omg how long will this take -__-").
  • Maintain a sense of self-compassion and treat yourself like someone you love. Be patient, be compassionate, be caring. Give them room to be themselves, to feel their emotions without judgement. Be your own best friend. Applaud your successes no matter how small. Be your own cheerleader and uplifting coach.
  • Remind yourself that the inner biology is actually quite silly in a lot of ways. You've been programmed by nature for survival of your genes and human species. That programming could be entirely different if you were gay, or a female, or asexual. It's almost completely random, so don't go crazy over it. Acknowledge it, but don't let it become the master, and you the slave. There is more to life than just filling up the planet with more humans.
  • Fulfill some of your biological needs through other means than dating. For example:
    • Build a social circle of friends. Even if it's online. It satisfies some of that need for connection.
    • If willing, watch some porn or bang some prostitutes.
    • Get a pet. Dogs will love you unconditionally.

This concept has also been called "not being outcome dependent". I think that statement always needs clarification, because everyone is trying to achieve an outcome. We're not trying to get rid of any kind of outcome, because we can certainly do that by just giving up. Nor is it easy to emotionally detach ourselves from rejection. Instead, we want to change our goals to be attainable and set them higher as we improve. So I'd call this, "not being dependent on excessively out-of-reach outcomes".

So let's say you're struggling and you can't get laid. Well, are you getting phone numbers? If not, why obsess over such a later stage outcome? It would be better to obsess over starting with numbers or dates. No numbers? Then don't obsess over that, start with the precursor to messages which might be improving your fashion, fitness, etc. There are different levels you should be improving at, and there's no need to be jumping to level 99. Get good at whatever level you're at. If you're socially awkward and autistic (like me) then start there. Just make friends and converse. Don't obsess over more than that for now. Have blind stupid faith that it will come. Because even if it doesn't come, improving yourself is a excellent goal anyways.

Dealing with stress by breaking things down and having various alternative outlets for your desires or expectations can help reduce some of the frustration. Of course, it may not eliminate it entirely.

But I hope that this is useful to someone, because I certainly started in a very negative mindset most of my life feeling extremely frustrated and negative.

You might be able to learn special techniques and act "cool, confident, and in abundance". If so, great. But some people struggle with putting on that fake show, and it might be worth taking a more basic approach to deal with the issues deep down inside. Some people find that success breeds confidence, but for me, that wasn't true. I had some success, and by all means, those things should have made me more confident, but they didn't. And that was because I simply moved the frustration bar higher. That's not a sustainable approach.

I think it's much better to deal with your underlying ability to deal with stress and frustration before even beginning on the journey. Otherwise, the journey is miserable and the reality is that life is about the journey. What you've achieved doesn't matter that much after the dopamine of success wears off. Your adventure, story of struggle is the most interesting part because it constitutes the majority of your life. Don't live your life just to make the final 5 minutes of it great. Those final 5 minutes are not particularly any more significant than the 5 minutes you spent yesterday afternoon.

Please leave comments about your stories of dealing with frustration and any advice you have for others.