Dating For Men -- How to Get the Better of Disappointment, Pain & Suffering and Turn it Into Dating Success

So yesterday, my team lost in the semifinals of the World Cup.

In a completely unexpected finish, Italy scored in the last minute of overtime, right when everyone expected the game to go to penalty kicks.

Of course, my first reaction was complete incredulity. I mean, that ball didn't really go into the German goal, did it? It couldn't really be over for them, could it?

And of course I felt grumpy for the rest of the day, hugely annoyed by this disaster of cataclysmic proportions.

Or was it?

Lest you think this article is about football, fear not. It's about something else.

It's about pain and suffering. And where they come from. And what you can do about it to master it and use it to your benefit in your dating life and beyond.

See, at that moment when 'my team' lost, I felt seriously bummed out. I mean, we were so close! We were supposed to be the champions! The host country! And I replayed those last moments in my head, trying to rearrange it such that it gave me the outcome I wanted.

Unfortunately, there was in instant replay telling me beyond a shadow of a doubt that it ain't gonna happen, buddy. Your team lost, fair and square.

But who is this 'my team' anyway? I mean, I've been a fan of the German team since I've been a kid, but I'm not really German. And even if I were German, it's not like I had chosen to be German just by virtue of having been born in Germany. It would have been an accident.

Nationality, like our name and our religion, is not something that we choose. It's just given to us, and at some point we decide to have an inordinate attachment to it. An attachment so strong that sometimes we're even willing to fight, kill and die for it. Pretty strong stuff.

So there it was, the source of the suffering: attachment. I had chosen to attach my happiness to the outcome of something outside of myself, and when that outcome was not aligned with my projections, I suffered.

This is the kind of stuff that we covered in the Transformation Weekend this last June, and I'd like to give you a shortened version of it here.

There were two steps here. I had decided to become attached to the performance of some team. And then, I had decided to create future projections of what should happen with this team, and become attached to reality aligning itself with those projections.

Now, let's bring this back and make it relevant to the whole dating thing, which these articles are supposed to be about.

The fact is that of the 32 teams in the finals of the World Cup, one team wins. 31 of them lose. And there is no way around that.

Similarly, in your dealings with women, you will 'win' far fewer times than you will 'lose'. And this could translate into a lot of suffering for you, should you so choose.

You see, there is a difference between pain and suffering. I remember one of my yoga teachers once said, as he walked around the studio while we held some contorted pose for far too long: "Pain happens. Suffering is optional."

And at that moment, I got it. Pain happens. Somebody sticks you with a pin, and you go 'ouch'. That's pain.

Then you can grouse, complain and whine about it for days afterwards, wailing, "Why meee? Why with a pin? Why on my pinkie finger?", making yourself and everyone around you miserable. THAT'S suffering. And it's *always* optional.

Pain isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's good training for life. And most of it you can bear fairly easily, look back on it aftewards and say, "Hey, that wasn't so bad." As one of my favorite crazy philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche, once said, "Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich staerker."

What does not break me makes me stronger.

Every time you willingly experience pain, it no longer has a hold on you. Instead, it empowers you by expanding your comfort zone, your envelope of existence. This is called acceptance. And it is the opposite of attachment.

In fact, it's fear of pain that holds you back from most success in your life. Most people won't give up their comfortable but mediocre 9-5 jobs to strike out on their own and make millions as an entrepreneur, because of the fear of potential pain. What if I can't pay my bills? What if my friends and family don't approve? What if my girlfriend or wife leaves me?

What you have to remember is that this barrier, this 'activation energy', as I like to call it (for the scientists out there, it's actually a term from thermodynamics), is not a bug. It's a feature.

A match is designed to burn, and to burn easily and spontaneously. I would imagine that if a match had feelings, it would enjoy burning, since it's what it was born to do.

But before it can burn, someone has to scratch it hard, strike it against a high-friction surface. If I were a match, I would imagine that this would probably hurt. Most likely in the head.

But then, after that, I get to fulfill my destiny by burning brightly. A moment of discomfort, but then massive reward.

Now you can think of all aspects of life as massive combinations of little chemical reactions like these. And to me it makes all kinds of sense that to get to the downhill part of anything, you have to climb up a hill first. To get to the part of the reaction that proceeds spontaneously and effortlessly, you have to get over the hump, the energy barrier, the activation energy.

So where are these humps in your dating life and the rest of your life? Are you afraid of saying hi to her because you might get rejected? Get over it. Just go over and say hi. Tell her I sent you.

You can't go talk to her because she's in a fancy restaurant sitting with her friends and she doesn't know you? Well, she's never going to be eating *alone* in a fancy restaurant, and every women you've ever dated started as a stranger, so it's not a bug, it's a feature. Get over it. Tell her I sent you.

Once you're there and you ask her out, you might get turned down and embarrassed, so you can't do that? Well, you just told me that you don't know her, she's a stranger, so what do you care what a stranger thinks about you? I mean, you can't talk to her because she's a stranger, yet you care what she thinks about you even though she's a stranger? Get over it.

You can't get yourself to take salsa classes 'cause they're too far? You just haven't gotten around to signing up for that great night class you've always wanted to take? Too much effort to plan that awesome trip where all your friends told you you'd have an amazing time? Get over it. Get over the hump. Get over the activation energy barrier. Or, to paraphrase that shoe company, "Just Tao it."

Now, if you've been paying attention, there's a deeper pattern emerging here about the structure of suffering.

The fact is, suffering doesn't really exist in the now. It only happens when you project into the future or ruminate over the past.

I suffered when I projected that my team would perform in a certain way, and that projection did not match reality. I also suffered when I looked back on what happened and tried to change it.

Now if instead, I had focused on the fact that I had the freedom to take time off in the middle of the day, get in my own car and drive to my favorite neighborhood sports bar, and I got to sit down and, footloose and fancy-free, watch on huge, big-screen TVs the sport that I've enjoyed watching since I was a little kid, I'd realize that life is pretty darn good. And the fact that some strangers across the ocean played a grown-up version of some backyard game and one bunch of them 'won' and the other didn’t wouldn't have bothered me so much.

So let's bring this back to your dating life and how you can apply this wisdom. Chapter 55 of the Tao Te Ching says:

The Master's power is like this.
He lets all things come and go
effortlessly, without desire.
He never expects results;
thus he is never disappointed.
He is never disappointed;
thus his spirit never grows old.

He doesn't expect; he doesn't project. Therefore he is never disappointed and his spirit remains young.

This is such a crucial point because it's so easy to let yourself become disappointed in the dating arena. It's just a plain and simple fact of life that people will not conform 100% to your wishes. And another fact that you're bound to garner many more 'losses' than 'wins'. As I say in The Tao of Dating, pain is wishing the world to be different than it is.

You are most effective with women when you are in high spirits and relentlessly positive. Moreover, by the law of attraction, in that state you will attract women of a similar temperament. Good thing.

There's another key point that's emerging here. In Chapter 36 of the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu says,

If you want to shrink something,
you must first allow it to expand.
If you want to get rid of something,
you must first allow it to flourish.
If you want to take something,
you must first allow it to be given.
This is called the subtle perception
of the way things are.

Those of you who have read The Tao of Dating may know that this is my favorite passage from the book. And, for the Tao of Dating version, I'd like to add one more line to that passage:

If you want to gain something, you must first be willing to lose it.

This goes back directly to the discussion on pain and suffering. We avoid most of the endeavors that can lead to our greatness because of fear of loss. Make yourself one with the loss, *accept* it, and you're practically invincible.

So when you see that amazing woman that you're just dying to speak to, or ask out, just think to yourself, "I cannot possibly lose her, because I don't have her to start with! I can *only* gain here. And if it doesn't work out, I'm perfectly cool with that. This can only be fun."

You can't lose what you don't have. Right? So just go for it. We talked about this a lot in the Tao of Dating Transformation Weekend: loss and disappointment are mere phantoms that you create yourself to get in your own way.

Remember that no one can make you feel disappointed without your having consented to it first. So set your life up such that you don’t allow any of that stuff in. Get rid of expectation.

And when you replace expectation with a burning desire to just see what happens next and how life gloriously unfolds in the present, as it always has and always will, miracles will happen. In your dating life and everywhere else. And your spirit will remain young, and you will be fulfilled regardless of external circumstances. After all, the Tao of Dating is all about fulfillment.

I went over a lot of points in this article, so let's recap:

1) Get out of win-loss mode altogether and start seeing the bigger picture.
2) Practice acceptance instead of attachment.
3) You get what you focus on. So focus on all the great things that are going for you in every moment of life. Especially when you think things have gone to crap. It's never entirely true.
4) Anchor yourself in the now to get rid of disappointment.
5) Reality is what you choose to make real. So make real the things that empower you and expand who you are.
6) Pain happens, but suffering is always optional. Exercise the option to feel things that are more fun than suffering, always.

Just Tao it,
Dr Alex