“Anger is a self-preserving and self-protecting energy. Without this energy you become a doormat and a people-pleaser.”
John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that Binds You
It may seem obvious that guys who get angry easily and react readily have little to fear in physically threatening situations, thus feeling more confident than guys who do not. What is not so obvious is that guys who are able to freely express anger are very attractive to women. When a woman sees a man expressing anger, her subconscious recognizes his ability to protect her from physical threats. He seems strong, determined, able to act to de- fend his turf and the things that are important to him; including her. It's no surprise that boxers invariably have hot girlfriends, and that violent men never have any problem finding damaged women to abuse. They are drawn together like the poles of a magnet.
Often us “Nice Guys” think we're not supposed to get angry, that we should have a more controlled emotional response to difficult situations, or that we're somehow doing women a favor that they'll appreciate if we never get angry. Nothing could be further from the truth. Women want a man who is prepared to go into bat for them, and while a smart man knows Sun Tzu's dictum that the best battle is the one that you didn't have to fight, never getting angry just makes you look like a pathetic sop.
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Some guys have no problem at all getting in touch with their an- ger; in fact, it's so powerful that it seems to take control and the problem for them is expressing it in a manner that is constructive rather than destructive. Men who express anger destructively may still attract women but they'll be the damaged ones you don't want. If you can learn to express your anger constructively, you will attract psychologically healthier women. But there are many guys who don't even seem to feel anger and this is a problem. I
know, because I'm one of them.
Anger is an emotional response to situations where someone is threat- ening us or violating our core values. Its purpose is to motivate us to act in such situations so that we, and the people we care about, are protected. Someone cuts you off in traffic or drives through a red light causing you danger, and so you get angry: your adrenaline starts pumping, your senses become heightened and you're more alert and ready to drive defensively to avoid a collision. That's a constructive response. If you fly into a massive fit of road rage and try to ram the bastard right off the road, that's not going to work so well. But if you just don't feel anger at all, that's a problem.
Some of us grew up in situations where we were taught that an- ger was bad, or wrong. We got punished severely when we ex-
What To Do
•Allow yourself to get angry
•Stand up for yourself •Get a punching bag
or baseball bat •Take up boxing or
martial arts
•Read Radical Honesty by Brad Blanton, Ph D.
•In relationships, express the hurt and sadness beneath your anger
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pressed anger naturally or we saw it expressed so destructively by adults that we decided that it was just plain evil. As a result we promised ourselves that we weren't ever going to feel our an- ger regardless of whether it was warranted or not. We put a lid on it and shut down part of our normal emotions. Often this hap- pens when we are very young while our parents are our main teachers of how emotions should be handled. We saw how they handled their emotions and either learned from their example or rejected their example and went to the other extreme. Shutting down your anger is particularly likely if your parents were the typical emotionally repressed parents of the 1970's or 1980's where every emotion was switched off or subdued.
In my case, both my parents were emotionally constricted. And that's putting it nicely. My father seethed with such unexpressed frustration that he would fidget, fuss and mutter angrily under his breath loud enough that it was audible in the next room. All it took was for my mother to walk in and rip into him for being such an idiot, and the powder keg would explode. Their loud screaming matches would go on late into the night, and often turn violent. They were unable to constructively express their an- ger so they bottled it up until it exploded, again and again and again. Destructive expressions of anger like this just hurt other people, and that leads to a cycle of guilt and remorse that feeds further resentment and anger towards each other.
If you grew up around a situation like this, it's possible that you did what I did and shut down and/or internalized your anger. The problem with this is that the pressure cooker still needs to vent somehow, and if we couldn't vent through the normal emo- tion of anger, the emotional center of our brain substitutes some other emotion that we think will be acceptable instead. In my
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case, I substituted sadness. My childish thinking was that it seemed OK for me to feel sad whereas anger seemed wrong be- cause it hurt other people. When mummy got angry she said horrible things about daddy, and when daddy got angry, he got violent. Thus began years of training my brain to respond to situ- ations where I had every right to be angry, with sadness.
Now imagine what happens to a child who has chosen to substi- tute sadness for anger when he turns up to school and starts get- ting bullied. Instant target. And the more pissed off I should have got, the sadder I felt. I wasn't taught to tell bullies to “Fuck Off!”; I was taught to turn the other cheek. Perfect recipe for low self-esteem and life-long misery. As time drew on, sadness morphed into frustration and depression. All because I decided that anger was inherently wrong. Big mistake.
If you find that you never get angry, there's a good chance that you've repressed your anger and it's coming out as some other emotion. You may be so out-of-touch with your anger that you don't even feel it, and never express it. In this case you need to start practicing expressing your resentment in order to get back in touch with it. Brad Blanton's excellent book Radical Honesty
has a chapter devoted to learning how to express anger and re- sentment constructively, which I highly recommend.
When you're in a situation where someone violates your values, observe your own response and consider whether it's the appro- priate one. If a shopkeeper rips you off or sells you something that's clearly broken, do you think “Why me?” or do you think “You bastard!”. Get in touch with how you feel when people do things that should rightly upset you, and start expressing your resentment when it's the appropriate response. Simply say “I re-
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sent you for ...”. Be specific. Talk about behavior, not about per- sonality. Keep it formulaic until you begin to get in touch with your resentment when people violate your values. Even if you only begin feeling mildly-irritated, that's a start.
When people ask you how you are, start telling the truth; if you're pissed off about something, say so. You'll be amazed how accepting other people can be and even how it can build rapport with women. I recently spent three months rehearsing for a mu- sical during which I was sick the whole time. As a result, I was pissed off and in a bad mood at pretty much every rehearsal. I fi- nally decided I'd had enough, and told people how I was really feeling whenever they asked. Instead of being repelled by my an- ger, women were attracted. Every rehearsal they would come up and ask me how I was, and give me loads of hugs. I ended up at the after-show party hanging out with three women: one on my lap, one on in my left arm and one in my right. I was truly shocked because the notion that anger was bad and that other people wouldn't accept me if I expressed it had been so strong for me.
Violence against another human being is never a good option but that doesn't mean you shouldn't get angry. You need to find a constructive way to express your anger that doesn't hurt anyone else. Otherwise you end up either repressing your anger intern- ally, or stuck in a vicious cycle externally; neither of which is where you want to be.
Once you've verbalized your resentment to the person you're angry with you may still feel agitated. Sometimes it isn't even possible. The best way to express your remaining anger con- structively is to punch or smash the crap out of some inanimate
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object when nobody else is around. Don't do this in front of chil- dren or other people who might be frightened by what you're up to. Buy yourself a punching bag and some gloves, and go hell for leather when you feel irritated. If a punching bag doesn't do it for you, try something like a baseball bat; I find this works much better for me. I have an old lounge which cops a hammering every time I'm feeling anxious, frustrated or irritated, because I know these are really just displaced anger coming out as some- thing else.
Your parents are often sources of repressed anger. No matter how good they were, or pretended to be, they will invariably have let you down at some point and you have every right to feel angry with them for those times. If you grew up with commandments like “Honor your father and mother”, you may have some work to do to get in touch with the anger you feel towards them for overlooking the next bib- lical verse: “Parents, don't frustrate your children”.
Believing that it's wrong to be angry with someone who has done so much for you will push that anger deep down where it might take a while to connect with. You cannot truly honor your parents, or forgive them for their failings, until you have pro- cessed the anger towards them that you might have buried. When they continue to treat you as a child long into adulthood, tell them that you resent them for it. Be specific. In my case, it
What To Avoid
•Violence
•Getting into fights •Hurting yourself •Substituting other
more “socially
acceptable” emotions for anger
•Freaking out the neighbors
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took a long time to get in touch with the anger I felt towards my parents.
Being free to express your anger will relieve a lot of internal stress, but it's not the end of the story. Underneath anger is al- most always either hurt or sadness. The defensive protection of anger is helpful in situations where the relationship with the oth- er person isn't especially important, such as with a stranger. You get angry, stand up for yourself in the situation, and move on. But in an ongoing relationship it is better to be willing to be vul- nerable and expose the underlying hurt or sadness behind the anger. Otherwise it's possible to get stuck in a vicious cycle of perpetual anger towards another person. Research has shown that venting anger simply makes you more angry, and this hap- pens when you're using anger to avoid feeling the underlying hurt. Learn to express your hurt and sadness towards the person who has “made you angry”.
Allow yourself to feel whatever you feel without judgment. Learn to express these feelings constructively. When you feel angry, consider whether what you're really feeling deep down is hurt and sadness. Don't use anger as a cover to avoid feeling vul- nerable. Learn to expose these more vulnerable emotions in your relationships and you'll find your relationships becoming deeper and more authentic.
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Step 17: Learn to Love Yourself
“I define love thus: The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.”
M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
Women are attracted to guys who are at ease with who they are. You need to learn to love yourself, warts and all, if you want to be confidently attractive to women. It's not about being perfect; it's about learning to accept yourself complete with your imper- fections and limitations. Face the fact that you're not perfect and will never be, and you're half way there. The girls you'll be at- tracting aren't perfect either and women often feel even more in- secure about themselves then we do. So finding a guy who is at ease with his imperfections helps them feel more comfortable with theirs. Women generally feel more deeply than men do so this is a bigger deal for them than you probably imagine.
Learning to love yourself is an essential step to allowing yourself to be who you really are without being fake. Women are much more attracted to guys who are relaxed and real than they are to guys who are trying to “fake it until they make it” in order to get girls to like them. This is another reason why you need to stop trying so hard (Step 3) and start being yourself. There's a better than even chance that underneath that exterior shell you've con- structed in a vain attempt to get people to like you is a warm, funny, smart guy that any girl would just love to have some fun with if she could only get to the real you. The problem is that
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you're probably projecting a facade to protect yourself from get- ting hurt, and that's just pushing the girls you like away.
For the longest time, I tried really hard to get people to like me by trying to be what I thought they wanted. This was most ap- parent in my relationships with the women I was attracted to, and the effect was buried pretty deep down in my subconscious. I had to start by allowing myself to be real with the people around me and sharing what I really thought and how I actually felt with them; rather than telling them what I thought they wanted to hear. In many cases, I was shocked to find that people accepted me the way I was even though I didn't feel the way I wanted all the time and wasn't perfect. In fact, I found we could re- late better because they often felt the way I did too.
Occasionally I encountered someone who found it off-putting when I shared what was real for me, because it triggered their insecurities. If you come across people like this don't try to justify yourself to them, just move on. After a while I learned to be more authentic with women and started attracting them without even trying. Initially, they weren't the women that I found attractive; women I found attractive freaked me out and caused me to raise my defenses again. This never worked. How- ever, being authentic with women whether I found them attract- ive or not became a stepping stone towards being real with wo- men who I did find attractive. As I gradually learned to love my-
What To Do
•Focus on your strengths
•Get a Life Coach •Read The Road Less
Traveled by M. Scott Peck •Do The Human Awareness Institute's workshop on Loving Yourself
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self for who I was, I found less need to maintain the facade to protect myself. Then the attractive women I'd always wanted started flowing my way rather than being repelled in the oppos- ite direction.
Dealing with your emotional baggage (Step 12) is an essential part of learning to love yourself. If you hate yourself deep down because you've got trapped emotions that have never been ex- pressed, then you'll just be trying to stick a Band-Aid® over a bul-
let wound without ever removing the bullet. The surgery to re- move the bullet may be painful, but it's better than leaving it there to give you lead poisoning. Once you've learned to exist without the approval of the women who you would like to at- tract, you'll find that they start gravitating towards you. The oth- er steps in this book will give you some handy skills to keep these women interested in you but none of those skills will make up for the shortfall of not loving yourself. While it may be diffi- cult at first, the rewards are well and truly worth it.
Loving yourself helps enormously whenever we encounter rejec- tion from women. Learning to deal with rejection is especially important if you are attracted to stereotypically attractive women because they get so much attention from men that they develop an automatic tendency to reject any advance, as a defense mech- anism. You need to learn to be comfortable with an apparent ini- tial rejection and not take it personally. Learn that rejection is about what happens in someone else's head based on their world view and their prejudices, and has nothing to do with you.
Don't mistake a playful tease or criticism from a woman for rejec- tion either; a tease actually means that she's interested in you on some level. She's putting you to the test to see whether you have
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what it takes to play ball at her level. Rather than getting defens- ive when you encounter rejection or teasing, just play along and tease back playfully. When I stopped acting like a wounded child in the face of a woman's tests and started acting like a man who wasn't fazed by rejection, it was amazing to me how often wo- men would respond with some kind of advance towards me. Not every woman is going to like you, so you need to start learn- ing to deal with rejection. The way to do this is to allow yourself to experience it, and then process the feelings that arise in you when it occurs. Often nobody has taught us this fact and we just