One assumption I’ve lived my life by for a long time now goes like this: "If it’s a question of me being screwed up or masses of people being screwed up in the same way, then it’s far more likely that it’s just me being screwed up.”
Just to name an obvious example. Men often come to me and say something like this: “I go out and try to meet women, but the problem is all of the girls in my town are catty and immature. So I guess I just need to move to a new city.”
Really? So, it’s not you who's screwed up, it’s the 150,000+ single women in your city who are all screwed up 一 in the exact same way. What are the odds of that?
Or you get men who claim that every 一 not some, not n but all 一 American women are fickle and too individualistic. Or that all women who dress provocatively are immoral cheaters and would never make a good girlfriend.
Men make negative assumptions and stereotypes about millions of women for no other reason than to shirk responsibility for their own shortcomings. This appears to me to be nothing but a victim mentality and it pervades a lot of men's thinking, some in more obvious ways than others.
This doesn't necessarily mean the general observations are wrong, it just means you're interpreting them in such a way to victimize yourself. Sure, American women may be more fickle and pretentious than their European counterparts (then again, they may not be). Women in your town might actually be more closed off than women in a bigger city (or they might not be). But you're choosing to let those observations be responsible for your own actions. This is the definition of being over-invested in others and being needy.
Humans stereotype for a reason: so that we can manage large chunks of information to orient ourselves more efficiently. Often, stereotypes can be useful. But usually they’re not. Often they’re nothing more than excuses — ways for us to avoid the blame and responsibility for not being satisfied with our results. And these excuses hurt us and shut us off from opportunities. If we’re blaming others, we're not learning. And if we’re not learning, we're not improving.
So returning to the “women in my town are cold” example. Yeah, they may, on average, be colder than say, Las Vegas women. But are all of them? No. Maybe 40%? 50%? But if you write them all off as being cold and use it as an excuse and not take responsibility, you're effectively shutting yourself off from 50% of the women in your town. You’re effectively missing out on hundreds of opportunities.
The same goes for complaints against American women. There are something like 40 million single women in the US. And you truly believe you can’t find one good one? Whose fault is that? It’s your fault. You’re being lazy. You’re being lazy and unfairly judging millions of women all because you aren’t willing to take responsibility for your failures.
I believe strongly in taking responsibility for everything that happens to you in your life. Our minds are always looking for ways to avoid pain and failure and rejection, and so they constantly churn out rationalizations to keep us impeccable; it's them who fucked up, not us. We’re fine. We did everything right. It's that fucked up world's fault we're not happy.
Blame is yet another form of neediness. It’s prioritizing others over yourself. As long as it’s their fault, then you don’t have to make yourself vulnerable.
But when you practice taking responsibility for everything that happens in your life, you stop blaming others. It becomes less a question of blame and more a question of sacrifice. It’s no longer their fault that you’re still single because they're all cold bitches, but now it’s your fault and a question of whether you're willing to sacrifice the extra effort or not to find a woman who isn’t a cold bitch. Taking responsibility and morphing blame into sacrifice empower: you. It puts the ball in your court and returns you to the healthy reality that the only person in this world who detemines your success and failure is you.
The question of blame, responsibility, and sacrifice is a profound one in relationships as well. Dysfunctional relationships almost always crumble under the pressure of person blaming the other for their shortcomings or transgressions. Research has shown a direct correlation between the amount of blame leveled between partners and propensity to break up. The recipe for a healthy and happy relationship is one where both partners take response for their own emotions and their choice to commit other.
Challenge yourself to find the good and beautiful thing inside of everyone. It’s there. It’s your job to find it. Not their job to show you.
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