Confidence: you have to have it, and no one can give it to you

Field Reports & Anecdotal Experience Men's Pheromone Advice & Field Reports
1

OK…in a bit of a funk today and have to vent so sorry in advance!

If you guys want to be successful in your dating lives (or even just everyday life!), you HAVE TO HAVE CONFIDENCE. It’s super sexy. It’s like a magnet. Turn it on and people and good things just gravitate toward you. Have a lack of it and the magnet turns the other way…total turnoff! They’ll run faster than you can keep up!

I live with a guy (my husband) who is sorely lacking it and no matter how much I try to build him up, my ego has sorely come to the realization that I can’t fix everything for everyone. No one can give you confidence…it’s all up to YOU! I’ve seen confident people and am attracted to that. And then I’ve seen someone with such an utter lack of confidence and it really is a complete and total turn off, no matter how nice the person is and I feel everything from pity to sadness but definitely not attraction.

So, if you’re lacking confidence, how do you get it? I don’t know. I’m not a freakin psychologist! Fake it, borrow it, inject it, hell…even steal it if you have to! Just get some!!! Put on some A314, Ammo, or even a shot of Shine to help you out…just do something!

I’ll go crawl back to my cave now…

~River

PS: Can A314 be administered intravenously?

What can I get my man to be more "manly?"
2

I laughed little when I saw this. There’s a thread about confidence in the Lounge section. It grew to 17 pages long, due to the bickering that happened there at one point. It quieted down since then, but the posts are still there. Perhaps you should check out that thread and see what useful information you can extract from it, because some of the posts actually talk about how to gain confidence.

One question, though. You’re saying that your husband lacks confidence, and that a lack of confidence is a turn-off. So what attracted you to him initially, enough to result in you two getting married? Was he more confident in the past? Not snide comments, just genuine curiosity.

3

Come back out of your cave & show some confidence River.
Not sure about 314 IV but I will tell you that confidence is LEARNED … no one is born with it. Sooooo, how can we steer hubby to a WIN that will start him on the path ?

4

Threesome…that’s a confidence booster.

5

I was going to say I was young and stupid, but I guess that’s not very fair, is it? LOL! No, you’re right, TA, we were both confident and attracted to each other when we first met, hence the marriage. But alcohol (his drinking) and having to tow more than my share pretty much whittled away MY confidence over the years. Now that I’ve got my groove back (yes, pheros have helped a bit), HE’S the one lacking in confidence. I think he feels like I’ve left him in the dust. I’m trying…I really am, but arggghhhh his self-deprecation is getting the better of me and I find myself being pole-vaulted AWAY from him attraction-wise. But maybe confidence and attraction are in the mind of the beholder, eh? I can’t figure that one out yet…

I don’t know but I feel like I’ve been banging my head against the wall. You know the old saying…you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink…

X (bang head here!)

Ummmm…well…never considered that option before!

6

This probably “feels” like it’s helpful advice to be giving to us guys.

If we don’t have success with women, we’re not confident. Period. Telling us, “Well, all you have to do is be more confident,” is worthless advice.

You might as well tell a homeless person, “Well, all you have to do is be more wealthy.”

7

I usually just fake it. Gotten really good at it. Sometimes I’m scared shitless but I can fool most people and even myself. So you can at least look, speak and act confident!

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Didn’t mean to insult your intelligence Ball.Saxbury. Just venting and I thought perhaps you guys could give ME a bit of advice. Sometimes it just helps to say your thoughts out loud, ya know? Thanks for telling me I’m full of shit…it’s good for the soul! :slight_smile:

Ya, I know what you mean Gegogi. When I said that I “got my groove back”, that’s exactly what I did. I put myself waaaaayyyy out of my comfort zone and just started faking it. People started reacting to me differently and it was sort of addicting so I kept doing it even though I felt about as akward as a pig on ice. I know I’ve made a fool of myself a couple of times “faking it” around people who obviously saw right through my little ploy, but what the heck, sometimes ya just gotta roll with the punches. I’ve definitely gotten more good out of it than feeling foolish and just like you, either I’ve really fooled myself, or I really am a more confident person today and am seeing the results of that. Now if I can just get hubby to have a little faith in himself…life in River’s world would be soooo much better…

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You don’t say what he lacks confidence in, River, but I’ll give you a few examples of what gave confidence to people I know.

First is a guy who was a total wallflower. Socially inept, talking to strangers and even family members who he didn’t see often was totally out of his league.

Women? Forget it. He looked at them with longing and at the same time, like they were dangerously unstable weapons. He would literally run a mile if one of them even glanced in his direction.

Until one day, his cousins decided on tough love. Literally picked him up by the scruff of his neck, took him downtown to a crowded club and left him there.

He panicked and tried to run. They were expecting that to happen and were waiting outside the club to herd him back in. Poor guy was ashen-faced and hyper-ventilating. Begged them not to send him back in, but they wouldn’t listen.

He was forced to interact with others and gradually, his apprehension disappeared. The transformation didn’t happen overnight, but he’s now the most social, funniest, wittiest guy I know. Never boring.

He has a wife and three kids now. A totally different man from the one he was 5 years ago.

Then there’s me. Nowhere near as bad as the guy I told you about, but when women invited me to dance at parties, I would literally shrink down and make myself as invisible as possible.

Until one day, a woman who knew me well and who wouldn’t take no for an answer, forcibly dragged me onto the dancefloor.

I was utter crap, sticky feet syndrome. But I found I loved it. Learnt the Latin styles of dance and never looked back. Now I’m the one dragging them. They never turn me down.

You need to be thrown out of your comfort zone. Forced out at gunpoint, almost.

Musk

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Reps to you man, that was awesome. I have a friend eerily similar to the friend you are talking about. He, however, is a buff, fat korean guy and at 225 pounds, he may need more people to keep him coming back to the party to start talking to people. Definitely an inspiring post!

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You’d be amazed what the mind/body can accomplish when in a certain situation…

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I think you hit it right on. When you two first met, your husband’s confidence level matched yours. But when you “got your groove back”, he felt upstaged. I don’t recommend you trying to build him up anymore, because you said it’s not helping. Instead, get him some books on the subject, and encourage him to take lessons on something he wants to learn. If he succeeds, it’ll give him an ego boost that’s likely to carry over into other areas of his life. And in his defense, I’m thinking he might be interpreting your attempts to build him up as criticism, which is why I advised against it. He’ll be much more likely to listen if the same “criticism” comes from a book, a website, or some other neutral source.

Given your husbands low confidence, I don’t know if any potential third partners are going to find him sexually attractive. But with that said, whatever you do, don’t withhold sex from him. From a male point of view, a woman willing to have sex is one of the greatest signs of being desirable. However, if you’d be willing to do a threesome, you can promise your husband you’d do it if he starts thinking better of himself. The catch is that you’d set the standard of what constitutes “thinking better”.

Don’t mean to gang up on you, but I have to agree with Ball.Saxbury here. For someone who doesn’t know what constitutes being confident, the advice “be more confident” with no further explanation will sound vague at best. Perhaps this page from WikiHow will be of some help. Heck, show it to your husband; I’m sure he’ll appreciate it, especially since it’ll help him get that threesome faster.

13

Don’t take it the wrong way. You wanted to vent like you do to your girlfriends, we heard and wanted to “fix it”, like guys do. Guys aren’t “listeners” they’re “fixers”, Venus and Mars.:smiley:

14

I think she wanted advice from men on how to fix a man’s problem. We gave the advice that a man would respond to, hopefully. :slight_smile:

If she wanted to vent, she’d be in the women’s forum.

It’s up to River now if she wants to take the advice and run with it. :slight_smile:

Yup, definitely a ‘fix it’ problem.

Musk

15

A314 - That’s the ticket!

Before he leaves in the morning:
A little massage oil/gel in the palm of your hand. Put a drop or two of A314 in. Rub it on his upper chest and neck.

Do it again when he gets home. Hell, the attention alone should give him a boost.

Be patient. Stay with it for several weeks before expecting any results at all. Gradually up the dose.

Might want to stay with the almond oil based stuff. Guys like the nutty smell and it covers A314 pretty well.

Try these:
Biotique Ayurvedic Products
https://www.lorannoils.com/p-8916-soothing-formula.aspx
or maybe try one of the retail cocoa butter oils.

Good Luck.

Keep Trying.

Truely, O

16

Yeah, thinking like a girl just isn’t cutting it, apparently.:roll_eyes:

Thank you EVERYONE for all the advice, and believe me, I’ll be trying all of it, everything from backing off, to books, to A314… (do you think I should just leave this stuff “lying” around in hopes he’d notice and be interested rather than feeling like I’m pushing stuff onto him if I give it to him directly?)

You guys are the best!

Nothing less than I expected :slight_smile::wink:

17

Probably great advice. Just the extra little attention from River will surely make him feel like a king. Add the extra boost of A314, he’s bound to get some good attention.

Play to his imagination to get him to go along with it. It could be fun and a very interesting experiment.

18

Men are wise to that. It’s like a broody woman leaving baby magazines or a subscription to Bride and Groom magazine lying around.

We’re not fooled.

Don’t forget the tough love option. Seriously.

Good luck.

Musk

19

Yeah, maybe he doesn’t need to know about the A314, huh? He doesn’t buy into the effectiveness of pheros anyways…of course, getting a chest/shoulder massage every morning may just change his mind!

20

“tough love option”: Please explain what exactly that means to a guy. For someone who’s always been able to relate to guys fairly well, seems I’m struggling lately in that department…

Geez…maybe I’ve become TOO “girly-girl” lately!