Late Bloomer

I was a late bloomer... didn't get my first snog until I was 19 years old. It wasn't really due to physical appearance, I'm not an ugly bloke... that being said I also realize I'm not God's gift to women either... It was more a lack of confidence thing.

At any rate, several years back-- when I was 19 there were 2 people who changed my life substantially. One was a passing acquaintance I merely knew online who gave me the advice which stuck with me all these years:

"Don't rely on your charm. You have none. Just relax and be yourself."

(incidentally he also went on to say something to the effect of, “It doesn’t matter how tight your jockeys are, the human tongue is at least 3” long.” And “Your best chance of a date on a Saturday night is your right hand.”)

The other was my first girlfriend who gave me the shot of confidence I’d been lacking prior to knowing her. She believed in me and in so doing got me to believe in myself again—for the first time in a long while. We parted amicably and even still keep in touch. Her influence on me has been a lasting gift even as our lives have gone in rather different directions.

There’s a type of bloke out there who thinks of picking up women as a “game” and fashions himself as being a “Pick-up Artist.” Their perception of themselves instills them with a confidence. And generally the "confidence" PUAs have (or appear to have) is false. It's held up based on a script these blokes expect the women to follow to a “t”. Once a woman goes "off-script" the confidence crumbles.

Either way it's all about having confidence-- not too much as that often comes across as arrogance or even as being superficial and/or fake—with pick-up artists, if the perception of confidence is strong enough it creates and perpetuates the reality. But that confidence is still held up by a perceived script that sometimes the prospective sheila follows and other times goes off script.

In the end it's pretty damn simple, you have to like who you are as a person, be confident with who you are... and just be yourself. If she's a good match, things will just click and if things don't click chances are it wouldn't have worked out anyway as the two of you may likely just have incompatible personalities. Life’s too short to dwell on it.

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