How to be the ideal me

[dashfinn]

I've been thinking a lot this lately: how to reach to being the best possible version of me. Warning about the length: this is going to be like a mini-novel.

 

When I was born, my parents were drug-addicts and alcoholics, and I got taken into custody. I lived in a foster family for a few years until my grandparents decided to adopt me. As kid I liked to draw a lot and was always kind of dreamy, like staring out of the window when eating. I liked the artistic things already as a kid. My grandpa being a retired army officer, I got a really strict upbringing. He used to beat me as a kid, not like slap in the face but like hit me with full-swing clenched fist, like you would hit a grownup man in a fight. I had a lot of shame of the fact that I got beat up at home, and usually avoided the topic back home. My grandpa was a bit of joke among my friends, seen as this overly uptight old man and I always envied the cool, laid-back parents my friends had.

 

We visited my mother sometimes, she had divorced with my dad and had a new guy, and also still had the alcohol problem. She bought me a carton of cigarettes as a present when I was 14. She seemed to be like a mess, everytime I saw her. She had kids with this new man and used to beat them all the time, when we were there.

 

When I hit puberty, we started to fight a lot at home. I became rebellious toward my grandparents and ran away from home for days sometimes. I also got a guitar and started to write songs. I found out that if you write a song to girl, it is very special. So I did.

 

This was also the time when I attempted suicide with pills. Me writing this now tell that the experiment back then failed. One time one of my friends came to our house and threatened to beat up my grandpa so bad that he wouldn't ever walk again on this earth, if he laid one more time his finger on me. That was too much. I got thrown out of home and was on my own. I had heard about an orphanage and went there. They had no room for me and they found another orphanage/facility for me from another city. So then I left friends, moved to a new city and started everything over.

 

Ages 15-20, I struggled with school, getting a degree, trying different jobs. None seemed to work for me, and nothing motivated me. At age 18, I got the call. My dad had died on drugs. His insides failed after years of drugs, pills and alcohol. I hadn't seen the guy in my whole life, he promised to come visit at my grandparents when I was kid, but somehow he always bailed out. My dad wrote me a letter a couple of weeks earlier and asked to write him back and tell how I was. I was furious when I got the letter and never wrote him back.

 

In my early twenties I was living in my own home. I was finishing my degree, finally getting one. I also had a super crush with a girl, that was one of the "really hot girls in town". My friends laughed when I said that I would be with that girl. Eventually I did, but I was a mess and it didn't work out and she left.

 

During my twenties, I hung out with wrong friends: thieves, alcoholics in the making, drug users and depressed people. Because of my family history, I never used drugs but I got sucked into their world. It was like poison to me, but of course I didn't understand it at the time. Friendships started to crack. I lost my job. Then I became homeless. At the lowest point, I was living at my friend's sister's who was a meth addict at the time. I had a dirty mattress in the middle of the room. When one guy who I knew got shot in the head one night behind a bar, I knew I had to get out of there. I moved to my friend's place (who's sister was the meth addict) and he started to plant idea in my head that I had moved away from the whole city. He said I could do better.

 

Moved to a new city. I was 24-25 then. Got a job from an application process that had 300 participants. I wore a suit in the interview and had practiced all the questions beforehand and done my research. After I got the job, I started to fix my job: paying off debt, buying basic furniture a piece at a time and slowly, slowly making new friends. It wasn't until I was 27-28, when I started to think what had happened to my life.

 

Now at 31, I am still incomplete as a man. I feel like I've lost my whole twenties in first destroying my life and then fixing it. While the other guys in their 20's were out hitting on girls, having one-night stands and starting long-term relationships, I was focused on getting my life in order. I feel like I lost 10 years of my life. I've now gotten my life in somewhat order and am looking to go out and date women. I has turned out to be a bit hard.

 

Women want the man to be experienced and have great knowledge about relationships. And at my age, they usually do have that. But I don't. At this age, it's also really difficult to deal with insecurities I have about myself. I know the recipe: get in shape, pursue your dream, grow to be confident and have a sense of humor. Also, good hygiene. In other words, be the ideal man. The ideal version of me. But that takes years. I feel like I'll end up being 35 before I even can start dating women. And then, with most women, it might be too late. In their eyes, I would be too inexperienced, with too rough past, too much risk for the woman, not probably a good husband/father material and so on. I understand about being hopeful about the future and never giving up, but **** it feels hard.

 

At times I feel like human waste. Like a sad, rotten piece of meat, that no woman would ever touch with a long stick. All my dating experiences seem to end for the girl seeing me just a friend or her not being sexually attracted to me. I try to forget my past when dating, and really go for her but somehow the dating always end up dying.

 

Girls do like my life story. They like that even though I had a rough past, I've managed to get out it and survive. They like my personality. And I do that my life has been something out of ordinary. But I also feel this tremendous outside and inside pressure to be equally and exceptionally successful in every area in my life: to be world-known artist, to have male model type of body, be extremely well mannered gentleman, to have that top 1% income level, travel in 100 countries and live in all the biggest cities. All this before I can start dating the right girl. Even if I could pull that kind of lifestyle off, there would be no room for a girlfriend.

 

There's no real question here. Partly this was my therapy session, partly making sense of all the confusion in my head. I guess my concern is do I ever get to that expeptional success level in life and do I even have to do it. Why there are saggy, distant, abusing and lazy dudes who have wives and girlfriends? Am I really so much worse than those guys? I don't know. If you have any thoughts, I'd be happy to hear them.

 

Thanks. Sorry about the length of this.

[GirlOnTheBlock]

Dear dashfinn, there are so many sides to your story that I can't reply to them all, but just know this: there is no 'ideal you'. They say practice makes perfect, right? I'm not convinced that such a thing as perfect exists, but if there would be a way to get there, practice is that way.

 

Everything you have done before has not been a waste. It made you who you are today. And if you continue to live your life, you will become the person you can be tomorrow.

 

I've found there is no use in thinking about becoming better. Surely you can set goals and work towards them, such as working out, but also allow for surprises.

 

So go out into the world and be. Hang out with people. Travel. Work. Work as hard as you feel comfortable with. Date women (at your age, they're not girls anymore, just like you aren't a boy, though you might feel like one). Try not to tell them too much about your past, but talk about the present and the future. If you are attracted to a woman, tell her. If she seems open to it, take it a step further. If she's not, at least you gave it your best shot.

 

Listen to this:

[mea_M]

This is my take. Whatever makes your soul happy, do that.

 

 

 

Mea:)

[dashfinn]

Thanks GirlOnTheBlock for the reply, I appreciate it.

 

I think there are ideals in being a man and ideals in dating. For the latter, the same characteristics rise again and again, when women describe the man they want:

 

• confident
  
• strong
  
• a sense of humour
  
• ambitious
  
• is a gentleman
  
• in great shape
  
• boldly sexual
  
• and so on
  

 

While I understand nobody should go out for getting these traits just for the sake of getting more women, I do think that picking the right ones for self helps both in man's life and in dating. Not many can be all of those, nor they should but they should think how those traits fit in their life.

 

And that's the point: evolving and growing as a man. As the man I was born to be.

 

But yeah, you're right. More practice, less thinking. More doing, less talking. All the big things I've gotten in life I've got through action, not thinking. It's a good reminder. Although I've though a lot of the things before I've done them.

[GatsbyMH]

Dashfinn,

 

My goodness, what a life you have lived so far. You have such strength. If I weren't on the other side of the world from you, I would meet you somewhere, buy you a beer and shake your hand and maybe even give you a hug.

 

Despite what you might think, not everyone gets all the ducks in a row by their thirties. My 20's were not near as volatile and destructive as yours (no where near it actually) but they were wasted in my opinion. The man I am now at 37 is not who I was at 31. And I wouldn't want to go back. We can't change the past so we can only learn from it.

 

Growth and becoming a better you continues your entire life, until your last breath, if you do it right. There is no stopping point where you can say "Okay, I've got all the necessary tools to be the person I want to be now." We are constantly evolving, growing and changing.

 

Don't think that you have to be a perfect person since you've had such an imperfect life thus far. When you meet the woman you want to be with the rest of your life, she will accept you for your strengths and your weaknesses. Don't assume that the woman you end up with doesn't need to grow too. No one is perfect and the beauty of finding someone to be with is that you can grow together as individuals.

 

My honest advice is this. In the woman you end up with, be her best friend. Don't just say it. Do it. If you find yourself forcing that bit of a relationship, the marriage won't be as strong. Not to say that you can't be best friends and have a great marriage. I just found in my own life that being in love with my best friend makes our relationship that much stronger. Your bestie knows your fears and weaknesses. They won't ridicule or ignore them, they help you through them when they know you might struggle, and you should do the same for them.

 

Good luck.

[melell]

You know what, the ideal, or ideals are all coming from you. Some people share them, some people have other ideals. BUT i think I know what you mean..

 

What you have achieved is something to be proud of. Many people don't even get that far, and many many people give up.

 

I can relate to a lot of what you are saying. The same background. Getting close with toxic people but not actively participating, pulling myself out of it, starting again.

 

I recently finished a masters and it made me feel proud- for about a week. Then back to feeling like I haven't done well enough with my life/could/should do better.

 

In all honesty I feel like I am really hard on myself, and it sounds like you are too.

 

Even if you don't feel it, I promise you, you have done well.

[Outsider77]

Wow your life sounds so much like mine. Except I'm a woman, and people don't like screwed-up women. So I don't tell many people my story.

I wasted much of my life because of things that were out of my control. Lots of bad things happened to me. I never got to experience the things that most people get to. I am trying to fix things, and have been for years. Hasn't worked yet.

 

I don't think you need to be exceptionally successful. How many people really are? People dream of being rock-stars, astronauts, doctors etc. How many people really do that? You need to be the best that you can be for your own sake, not because you need to impress a girl.

 

Women don't expect perfection from men. At least the ones who are worth dating don't. You need to find out what you want from life and how to get it. Find a woman with similar interests who likes you for you. They do exist. Why do you want to marry a woman who is mostly concerned about how successful you are? That doesn't make for a good relationship.

[skydiveaddict]

I've been thinking a lot this lately: how to reach to being the best possible version of me.

 

Do everything and anything that you are afraid of. That's how you become the best version of you.