It can show up as jealousy, passive aggressive behavior, or subtle punishment of your partner for being attractive…
Absolutely every one of us has some insecurity. In the right circumstance, with the right conditions, all of us can be made to feel that hollow feeling of impending loss– that we’re just not good enough.
Most of the time the feeling is based on NOTHING.
And yet, most of the time, that feeling can CAUSE the problem to become very real.
One of the best ways to work on creating a more passionate, more communicated, more intimate, and more secure relationship is to go to work on your own sexual insecurities.
IMPORTANT TAKE-AWAYS TO REMEMBER:
1) Confidence is sexy! (Insecurity… is not).
2) Your insecurities can become “self-fulfilling prophesies”. When you feel insecure or jealous, it’s vital to ask yourself…
Is this real?
Do I know for a fact this is real… or could this somehow just be me?
How would this situation change if I forced myself to show up as confident right now?
3) Often when our lover does something attractive — they lose weight, gain muscle, get a high status promotion, buy a sexy new outfit, make a great joke at a party that everyone loves — it can have the effect of making us INSECURE.
It’s crazy, really, but our own sense of deserving is challenged if everyone in the room is attracted to our partner. Can I really expect my partner to stay with me if secretly I don’t think I deserve it?
The result of this internal dialog is to subtly punish our partner for displaying attractive qualities.
Can you see the problem here?
Your partner actually starts becoming less attractive when YOU are around.
That obviously makes it less for YOU… And worse, ultimately that feeling of being less than their best selves when you’re around is going to make your fear of being undeserving into a reality: Your lover realizes that they are actually better off without you.
The antidote is uncomplicated but hard:
When that voice of doubt starts nagging you, tell it to shut the hell up.
Such an awesome post Alex. Thank you for raising a topic I myslef feel incredibly uncomfortable about.
I hate admitting I am like this yet feel good I’m acknowledging it and allowing the fear to be diluted with light.
Interestingly it does serve as an indicator to my feelings for others if I’m not in tune with them. As an example: my experiences connecting with woman online. If I meet and share enough time with them my insecurities are piqued with those I care deeply about but not with those I dont.
As a man in transition after a broken marriage I’m blessed to now be able to experience this emotional leverage as I unfold as a better lover and human being.
Thanks again Alex
Dane
Dane, you are a badass. I really appreciate how you are showing up as a man willing to look at his own truth… and it’s pretty clear that the next girl that catches you is going to be very, very lucky.
Great article and video! Can’t wait to see more
Why do some women use the very topic to attack us? I have encountered two women who were verbally uncool.
A mans manhood or size isn’t something a girl should attack. I know I’m not superman but im larger than average.
I am more careful to see red flags now from the on set but it doesn’t take much for a girl to really make a man feel down on the ground.
I do t fight back but I suppose I could have told this last one she was cavernous!
Advice of this would be great and thanks for the topic.
(I’m the happily married Lynne in the comments above, not the other one.) I understand a bit of what you’re talking about. I do realize men’s egos are extremely fragile. Surprisingly, women’s are, too. We obsess over EVERYTHING you say and/or don’t say (we just think you’re thinking it.) At any rate, I think what you’re looking for is 1) a real woman, not a girl who doesn’t understand how to treat a man, and 2) a stronger sense of love and appreciation for yourself. Here’s an example. My marriage wasn’t all hunky dory from the start. It took a lot of work getting here. We both had trust issues. I spent many nights rolled over crying myself to sleep. Then I started realizing I was WORTH having a man love me deeply. (And so are YOU.) So instead of being upset when he wasn’t showing up exactly how I wanted him to, I started just IMAGINING him showing up that way… how good it felt, how happy it made me, instead of focusing on what I did not want. It didn’t take long for him to start doing exactly what I had imagined him doing. I ended up with the relationship I wanted, because I kept seeing myself WITH the relationship I wanted. i CHOSE it. He didn’t change, I did. So if you’re looking for a woman who doesn’t care what size you are… stop caring what size you are. Focus on how you can learn to be a better lover, on what you can do to make her feel fabulous, loved, adored, lusted after, and imagine how incredible it feels to be in that kind of relationship… where a woman is begging you for sex because you’re even better with your fingers and your tongue than you are with your penis. Imagine how empowering that feels! Learn some really good techniques, take a tantra seminar, and let the past go. Stop looking where you don’t want to go, and put all your attention on imagining how incredible it is to have what you want RIGHT NOW. Once you get to the place where you are having this feeling all the time, you won’t need a relationship at all anymore, and when you get to that place… the Universe can’t withhold it from you.
Hey Gary, some women are simply damaged, sociopathic, borderline personalities… and for reasons I haven’t figured out, something about the dangerous crazy of those women can be very sexually attractive to men.
They say many serial killers were very charming too.
So, I don’t know, maybe you ended up with a woman that had some dysfunctional need to hurt you.
But this kind of thing is exceedingly rare, and if it’s happened to you more than once, then you have a big, bad shadow issue (an emotional issue that YOU CAN’T SEE) that is CAUSING this behavior.
IOW: A woman who attacks a man on his size is either certifiably whacky, or striking back for some crazy behavior of yours.
I strongly recommend you check out my Unleash The Beast program http://www.instant-inches.com
…yes, it is true that my marketing guys “sell” the program based on the “sex positions to make you feel bigger during intercourse,” but that is only 5% of the program. The rest is really about helping men to get clear that their size is no measure of their masculinity, and to help them through the process of building REAL sexual confidence and masculine ease around their sexuality, which is the basis not only of becoming powerfully attractive to women, but of creating healthy emotional relationships with women as well.
How else does this manifest besides overtly jealously reacting to what I might wear out of the house? Suspect this was a factor in the recent breakup of my long-term relationship. He definitely had sexual insecurities, nothing we weren’t working through just fine, I thought. I am considered pretty and I swear he was (very subtly) pushing me away. Not like this overt example tho… I’m trying to think of something he did….
Ok, one thing was to encourage me to visit a single male friend of mine (who lived far enough away I had to crash a night on his couch). I didn’t want to visit my friend (who invited me to visit) because he was single (and at one time attracted to me, tho not me to him) and it didn’t seem right to hang out with a single man. But my boyfriend insisted, and I eventually went to end the debate. (It was fine, nothing untoward happened.)
Generally, too, he sort of put me on a pedestal, which I’m sure a lot of women would love, but it felt like he was putting me somewhere where he could not join me. Like he wasn’t 100% in the relationship with me. It’s hard to put words on.
We had a great relationship for several years as he slowly sort of receded, stopped taking me out, almost pushed me away. Does that make sense? Feels like it came from his insecurities. Everything else seemed fine. I felt 100% committed to him. So bummed; he was a good man.
Yes, this is the flip side of a jealous insecurity. Many men fall in love, and the force of their love is so strong that they can’t really imagine they are worthy…
They put their woman on a pedestal. They call her goddess, and they do the whole “wife-worship” thing (I hear my Bay Area friends talk about this as a “powerful” practice). They give and give but they forget that an essential NEED for every woman (indeed, every human), is to be received.
A woman NEEDS her love to be received.
In the end, there is nothing wrong with making your wife your goddess… but ONLY if you have the confidence and self-trust to become her god.
This is SO perfect! My ex-husband was an extremely jealous guy. In fact, he was so jealous he started telling me that I was doing everything I could to sexually attract every man we met. It got so bad that I started gaining weight, dressing worse, not taking care of myself, and I ended up looking and feeling like absolute garbage. I hated feeling like this. I even stopped looking men in the eye because I was afraid they would think I was trying to “get them in bed.” I eventually hated sex with my ex because all he did was criticize me for everything. I finally left him. It took me five years to be able to look another man in the eye, and when I did, it was extremely hard. I am finally in a new relationship… married for three years now. I am not only HAPPILY married, my husband asks me to wear my sexiest clothes whenever we go out. He wants me to “show off the girls” because he says it makes every man in the room jealous of him, and he loves it. In fact, my husband loves me so much, he actually confessed he has a fantasy of having threesomes with another guy. My husband encouraged me so much, we’ve actually had threesomes 3 times now. I cannot stress enough how INCREDIBLE it is to have a man WANT me to look and feel my best. All i can say is… he gets strip-teases, lap-dances, threesomes (on occasion) quickies and blow jobs pretty much anytime he asks. (And he takes his time pleasing ME in the bedroom.) GOD I love my man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lynne, I can promise you that getting a man like that is not “luck”, but rather the work you did in recovering from your first relationship and becoming the kind of woman who was not willing to compromise and who self-resourced her sexual confidence. That’s the woman who always gets that kind of man. It takes two.
And I’m grateful that you even PROVED that for me in your wonderful reply to Gary.
fck’n awesome video – quality and narrative!
I know I shouldn’t feel insecure or jealous, but its extremely difficult when you have a wife that is not sexually attracted to you in any manner. I am deeply in love with my wife..the rejection off all sexual advances, kisses, hugs, etc is painful to me on a soulful level. I try not to show my insecurity or jealousy as I know it would only make matters even worse, but I have no sexual confidence remaining in me. We get along great as human beings, but the lack of physical intimacy has made me depressed. I don’t feel like a man anymore.
Andrew, you are in a very serious and very painful situation. If you do nothing, nothing will change.
One natural response would be to become needy, jealous, and insecure around her– and you have rightly, intelligently, and courageously realized that it would make matters worse.
Of course she is still able to sense what is happening, and I’m sure she feels badly about it, or is simply repressing her feelings around it. So the next step for you is to go to work powerfully, intelligently, and courageously on “I have no sexual confidence remaining… I don’t feel like a man anymore.”
At this moment I am working with my mentor Nathan on a program that is exactly designed for you my friend– but in the interim, go to work on this yourself. Get a therapist or coach if you are able.
Here is your daily reminder (and I would copy/paste this somewhere where you can reflect on it each morning).
1) You DESERVE love, intimacy, affection, physical touch, and sex.
2) It’s completely okay to stand up and say so, to ask for what you need– and you can do that without being needy, jealous, or insecure.
3) But to do #1, you first have to be able to self-resource #1. You have to DO the things that self-create your confidence. And of course, there is an excellent chance (though no guarantee), that if you can do #3, you won’t need to do #2, because she will offer herself to your confidence and self-resourced masculinity.
There’s no easy-button here, Andrew. You may have to suffer through a “dark night of the soul” to recreate yourself. But remember…
4) She can’t be the reason for failure or the inspiration for success. She is neither your obstacle, nor your goal. When you get that and live that, she will feel your lack of dependency on her affection and it will become EASY for her to give you that affection.
Thank you for the advice. I will paste #1 on my notepad and work on that for now. I understand my wife means well, so I’d rather fix it myself before bringing it up to my wife. At least until it is internalized.
Oh boy… Does this bring back uncomfortable and painful memories. My very first love, some 20 years ago when I was 18, and I, used to have exactly this kind of relationship, though she would do a little more than just dress sexy… Anyway, after 2 years it did end up in her cheating on me multiple times and us breaking up, but not for that reason alone.
I’ve now been married for 8 years and in a relationship with the mother of my children for 13, and things almost completely blew up last summer. Children are a challenge for most couples. This time, it was for the opposite reason: I had grown so detached that I never felt jealous at all. In fact, I hardly paid her any compliments at all either. She always dresses amazingly classy and sexy, like most women in France do. She had started having a virtual affair with a guy online, and perhaps a bit more. To be fair, I was no angel either.
Anyway… She would text him every night and I not only never said anything, I just did not even SEE anything ! Our brains can really distort reality, I can tell you that…
Here is the kicker: After a Big Bang towards the end of last summer, and we sorted everything out over the course of a few weeks, she told me it actually pissed her off that I was NOT jealous at all ! He he he… Women ! One of the two great mysteries of the universe along with time as Doc Emmett Brown would say
So, word of advice: be confident and trust your woman’s love, but don’t forget to show her yours. Don’t be jealous, but be aware that she could be someone else’s and that you are lucky to have her. And SHOW it to her. Every single day.
Hey David, it is a great point my friend. There is a world of difference between being confident, secure, and non-jealous, and being aloof, inattentive, and careless.
Many men have been taught that being aloof and careless ATTRACTS women (it’s deeply ingrained in the PUA culture), because it gives you “social status” if you care less than she does… and short term, that can trigger some instinct in a woman to try to get your attention. But it comes at the price of attacking her self esteem, becoming an unhealthy force in her life, and of course, as you discovered, long term she will find sexual attention and/or affection elsewhere.
Andrew, can you focus on non sexual caressing, touching. nurturing?It sure helps me to feel more sensual…also I take 2% testerone and that gave me back the ability to fantasize an feel more sexual ..im 66.
Thank you Sue. Even my non-sexual caressing gets rejected at times, but I think its helped keep our relationship from falling apart.
Best advice ever thank you so much I seriously needed that little man to man chat Alex
it instantly made perfect sense and man have I been in and seen that play out so many times.
I really appreciate this video as it helps me feel more compassion for my husband. I’ve never viewed him as having any insecurities. I usually see myself as the only one who struggles with a variety of those – but we’ve had this exact video happen between us! Now it makes sense!
I’m interested in the topic of weight loss now as it relates to this video because my husband insists he likes the extra weight I’ve gained from my last pregnancy, but I don’t. I’ve always been thin. Could my losing the weight actually trigger the same insecurities in him as my dressing nicely & putting on make-up? I hope Alex answers this!
Hey Anne, I have no reason to believe that your husband is not telling the truth. Many men like a few extra pounds on their woman! Currently in our culture, bigger is definitely in fashion and we are ALL affected by what we see in the media.
And, of course, it’s also possible that when wifey is too hot it makes hubby insecure. There are thousands of examples of marriages that flamed out when a husband or wife lost a lot of weight, started hitting the gym, or suddenly became famous, more successful, or wealthy… and their spouse, seeing all of this new attention, got jealous and started UNCONSCIOUSLY SABOTAGING the relationship.
This underlying sense of “deserving the love we are getting” is a gigantic issue that many of my videos and paid programs attack from different angles. It’s one of the biggest hidden issues that men and women grapple with.
Thank you for responding, Alex! I’ve recently ordered your program for myself (as in the last couple of days).
Is there a way to tell which one it is: if my husband really is okay with my weight (about 30 extra pounds) or if he’s worried I’ll lose it & be thin again (and make comments like he did about my getting dressed up)?
He actually lost weight & got in better shape during these same last few years that I’ve gained. He looks amazing!
I want to believe my husband that he is happy with my body.
I just want to make peace with the issue of my weight & stop obsessing over it. I love my husband very much & want to feel better for the both of us. That’s why I’m looking forward to starting your program!
As for all of your video is very educational. We are waiting for the next, thanks Alex