All Episodes
Previous Next
May 17, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
07:00
How to Deal With the Fear of Rejection in Your 20s
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
That's not a small consideration, particularly for men, right?
So the typical thing is some guy says, I'm afraid of spiders to his friends, right?
So what are his friends' first impulse is to cover him in spiders.
Now, you could say, no, no, no, there's just exposure therapy and they're trying to help, but that's not really the motive, right?
Or if a man says, oh, I really like that girl, a lot of times he'll be...
Or they'll make, oh, why don't you go talk to her?
They'll say really loudly with the girl in the vicinity and so on.
And this can happen with women as well.
But a lot of times for men when we're growing up and we're open and we're vulnerable and we talk about what we think and feel, well, that's kind of used against us.
And that just makes you a little bit more guarded.
And so going back and trying to figure that stuff out is really important.
So if somebody lacks empathy, let's say that the woman is entirely correct.
He just lacks empathy.
Okay, well, why?
Why does he lack empathy?
And that is a very interesting story and journey to go on rather than just morally condemning someone which just drives them further away.
How can men deal with a fear of rejection productively?
Hmm.
Yeah, that's one of the biggest passages.
In a man's life.
And I'm old enough now that I've seen that fork in the road, right?
That fork in the road where somebody's like, the young men are like, I really want to go talk to girls, but I don't know, they turn to, you know, the usual substitutes of video games and pornography instead.
That is catastrophic for men as a whole.
It's very hard to recover from taking that route of avoidance, particularly in your teens and early 20s, because it just gets worse and worse.
Later on, a fear, a necessary fear that is avoided tends to strengthen.
And it's sort of like if you're on an airplane and the door's open and you've been kidnapped, but you've managed to chew your way free and it's coming out over the water, but it's climbing.
It's like, when's the time to jump?
Well, the answer is as soon as possible because it doesn't get better from here.
Like if you jump to 50 feet, you're probably okay.
150 feet, kind of rough, 1,000 feet.
I don't know what happens, but it's probably not good.
Things, necessary fears avoided, tend to strengthen over time.
And if you think you can't do it now, it's probably not going to be any easier.
In fact, it's probably going to be harder down the road.
And of course, in the modern world, if men avoid that process of just...
Asking girls out and some say yes, some say no, some laugh at you, some whatever will spread rumors, some will be offended, whatever, right?
I mean, if you avoid that and then you stay single into your 20s or maybe your 30s, then most women will assume that you're just a video game pornography or weed addict or something like that and then you lack necessary skills.
Like, it's one thing if, you know, you go out and get your job in your teens or whatever and you start your work experience that way.
Okay, you can get jobs.
You can learn how to navigate because, you know, the worst bosses are at the bottom.
Like, good bosses don't end up managing teenagers.
They end up managing professionals.
So, the worst bosses are all at the bottom.
So, it's real trial by fire.
When you get your first jobs and if you wait and don't get a job until and you're still unemployed but no work experience in your 20s or your 30s or whatever, I mean, who's going to hire you?
Because the one thing your boss knows for sure is you're fine not working.
It hasn't bothered you, and that's just going to be negative for the boss as a whole.
You know, there's the old saying in business, if you want something done, give it to the busy guy, right?
Because the guys who aren't busy aren't good at doing things and just are bad places to park your necessary tasks.
So, a fear of rejection, it is, you know, it is tough.
You know, most men, we have a strategy, which is we aim high, right?
We aim high, and then we just...
Lower our standards until a woman says yes or a girl says yes.
And that's entirely reasonable.
That's entirely the right approach because it's hard for a man to gauge his own sexual marketplace value.
At least it was when I was a teenager.
So yeah, you sort of aim at the top and work your way down until a girl says yes.
And then you're just trying to flail your way forward and see what's going to happen.
And hopefully you have parents who can help you with this kind of stuff and give you good advice.
That's not as common as it used to be, I think, because values have changed so much that parental advice is not particularly helpful for a lot of people these days.
But yeah, to overcome your fear of rejection is you just have to take the long view, which is it's going to hurt now to be told no.
Sure, I get that.
But what's it going to do in 10 years if you avoid that?
You know, if you're 18 and 17 or whatever, you don't ask any girls out.
Okay.
27, 28, early 30s, you still haven't asked a girl out?
Well, then what?
It's going to be almost infinitely worse.
Because either you're going to ask a girl out, or a woman, I guess, by that time, who's got a lot of experience in dating.
That doesn't necessarily mean she's got a high body count, but she's had some experience in dating.
In which case, you're trying to play chess with someone you're just starting to learn, and they've already been doing it for 5 or 10 years.
They're not going to want to play with you.
Because the skill disparity is too wide, right?
Or it's going to be some other woman who doesn't know what she's doing because she's never dated, and then you've got two people trying to flail away, trying to figure out relationships on the fly with no experience.
And the odds of that working are low.
And of course, the other thing too, when you start asking women out in your teens, you have a pretty wide market to choose from.
Because very few of the women are married and have kids and all that kind of stuff.
But, you know, women get, do you think, the claw, right?
The claw, like in the arcades, right?
The claw is taking, constantly taking great women out of circulation, right?
If there's a great woman, you know, she's moral, virtuous, and courageous, and all these kinds of wonderful stuff, beautiful.
Then some guy's going to date her and snap her up real quick and marry her and make sure she's happy and stay with her and so on.
And so the pickings get real slim.
Real slim.
In your early 30s in particular.
What do they say in Japan?
The Christmas cake girls, which is after the age of 25. Nobody wants them.
Like, after the age of 20. After the 25th, nobody wants the Christmas cake anymore because, you know, it gets kind of brittle.
So, who's left?
Right?
Who's left?
Do you want to go to a garage sale first thing in the morning or last thing in the afternoon?
Well, if there are going to be treasures to be found, it's going to be first thing in the morning.
Because last thing in the afternoon, what's left?
▲
Export Selection