I am stunned by the amount of understanding and compassion with male sexual frustration you often display in your writing; not many women are that sympathetic to this particular hardship. Because I was very obese during my teenage years I never quite developed ability of talking to women, and because my parents were abusive alcoholics I have a lot of difficulty in forming any kind of relationship. I am now 22 years old and though I’ve lost the extra weight and have some good things going in my life, I’m still very depressed and so sexually frustrated it sometimes manifests as a painful feeling in my chest. I think spending some time with compassionate professional might help alleviate the pressure so it would stop being such a distraction. How exactly should I proceed with this? How do I contact the girl, how should I explain my situation, and how can I make sure that she is sympathetic and honorable, so the whole experience is therapeutic and enjoyable and not frustrating and unsatisfying? Though I hide it from everyone I am actually a very sensitive and fragile guy and I would hate for the whole experience to end up in more trauma.
I do believe it’s possible for an escort to help you to develop confidence, if you pick the right one. Luckily, this isn’t as difficult nowadays as it used to be because of the magic of the internet. I’ve given some general advice before about how to use it to get a good, reputable escort, and you might also want to read my advice to a young man whose frustration has turned to anger and fantasies he’s uncomfortable with. Though your reaction to the lack of physical intimacy isn’t the same as his, the core problem is not dissimilar. As such, my advice to you is similar: Go onto the escort boards, research the ladies in your area, and find one with a reputation for patience who also advertises that she’s “newbie friendly”; these ladies will be more likely to be willing help you though the screening process, and will also probably have more experience with virgins (don’t worry, you’re not remotely alone in that department). If you take your time and find a kind, sympathetic professional, I think there’s a very good chance a few visits with her will help you to develop the confidence you need to go out and speak to girls in a non-professional setting. Good luck, and if you have any other questions please don’t hesitate to ask!
(Have a question of your own? Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)
This is awesome advice but I have a feeling this young man’s problems run deeper than just sexual relationships.
Need to get off the line … “I am this way because my parents …”
Kiss of death – you cannot proceed to greater things without abandoning the whole notion that you are who you are because of “this” or “that”. Everyone is born on this planet with some kind of baggage. Some are born with more than others – but all must strive to work though their issues.
When I was a kid – I built swimming pools for my uncle in South Mississippi. I remember building a pool for a guy who told me that he couldn’t swim and was deathly afraid of swimming. I said to him … “Why the pool then?” He told me that he wasn’t religious – but that he believed that the purpose of life was to resolve every single fear, weakness, and shortcoming a person was born with. It was his intention to learn to swim and swim in that fucking pool every day during the summer. I don’t know if he ever did it – but I do know he looked pretty damned determined.
An escort can help him with his sexual frustration and make him more confident with his sexual performance – and that’s why I think you’re advice is spot on. But the thing an escort cannot help him with his own sense of value to women that he’s not “paying”.
If he’s a virgin – you need someone caring and someone with whom failure – or lackluster performance, is not going to be an issue. Escorts are great for this – for me, it was a 35-year old lady when I was 17. In his case – I’d go for an older woman because I remember that, after I had sex a few times with that 35-year old woman – girls my age weren’t intimidating to me at all after that. I was bolder than shit.
I’m a bouncer in a bar – and I’m an old guy – young girls come up to me all the time lamenting the fact that guys won’t approach them. You wouldn’t believe it – beautiful girls. They sweat the fact that maybe they wore heels that are too high and they are too tall with them on – and maybe guys are intimidated by tall girls. Or they think they are too dressed up with a LBD on – and maybe they should have worn shorts or something. These are hot girls and they are just begging for guys to approach them – but they won’t.
One of the bouncers in the bar that I work with is 22 years old. He’s decent looking – nothing I’d really go for if I was a chick but he’s in shape and not ugly. Dude is FEARLESS in approaching women. He’ll spot a hot chick that no one is approaching and then ask me if it’s okay if he clocks out early – and then he’ll make a run at the girl. I can’t tell you how many times he leaves the bar with the girl.
I saw him off duty the other day with a girl and he took me aside and, with a genuinely surprised look on his face he said … “I’m pretty good at this – and I don’t know why”.
I told him why – it’s because he tries.
So the few guys out there with CONFIDENCE are going to get laid at a staggering pace – because there are too many “sensitive” beta males that figure they can’t bust out of that mold and they’ll never approach a girl.
It’s like the lottery – you can’t win if you don’t play.
Interesting and likely productive exercise in self-knowledge and psychology there. He knew that if he built the pool, he could either learn to swim or explain to himself and maybe others just why he built it. He put himself in a place where he knew he would have strong incentive to follow through.
Lord Buckley was very instructive on the subject in his Jonah and the Whale routine: “If you get to it, and you cannot do it, there you jolly well are, aren’t you!”
I liked the way he thought – I’m not sure of the wisdom of purchasing a pool before he learnt to swim – but I have always tried to live my life by what he told me – because it was an exciting epiphany for when I heard it.
Basically – you have a life – and before you die – you need to perfect yourself by overcoming every single fear or weakness you have – that is the goal.
For example – when I qualified Diving Officer on my submarine – I was initially a crappy diving officer. I couldn’t hold depth to save my life – especially near the bottom of the ocean. I left that boat and then went to another command – at the White House actually. Three years later the Navy called me up and asked me if I wanted to be the Chief of the Boat of that same sub. I said “yes” – and I was terrified, because the COB is supposed to be the best Diving Officer on the boat. Well, I just told myself that I was, by fucking God, going to succeed at this. The first week I was on the boat as COB – we went to near bottom operations (of course!) … I took that boat down to 50 feet off the bottom and we went up hills and down valley’s and my depth (or altitude actually that close to the bottom) was spot on – within an inch the whole time. One time I had a fire in the Ship’s Control Panel and had to “hover” the ship for 8 hours while the repairs were made – we had no propulsion! On a sub – it’s almost impossible to hold depth without propulsion. I found a way to do it though – and remained on depth within 12 inches the entire time. Twelve inches is less than the length that John Holme’s Johnson was – so that’s not bad.
I’m not a special guy – I’m still trying to figure this whole thing called “life” out – and I’m at least half-way through the game already.
But that is how you develop self-esteem and confidence. You address your fears and weaknesses and conquer them – doing that is an incredible ego boost.
Another thing I’ve always tried to live by – and I really had no articulation for this until I saw Matt Damon in the movie “We Bought a Zoo”. He said in that movie – over and over – “All you need is 30 seconds of courage”. Resolve yourself to get in the mix and then give yourself permission to chicken out if the shit gets too deep. What you find is … that it’s the “getting in” that is the most terrifying and once you’re “in” … the rest is usually manageable. I remember this coming to light very vividly once while sitting in a Cessna aircraft waiting to climb out on the wheel and skydive. I was terrified but I told myself – “All I need to do is find it in me to climb out on that wheel – everything after that is just falling!” 😀
People invest TOO much money and time in shrinks. A shrink will never solve your problems – though he / she can point the way. I’m not sure too many of them really want you to resolve your problems though. YOU are the only one that can solve these things – if you abdicate that power – then you’re just sitting around waiting to die as a scared person.
That’s really the choice we all have.
There’s a lot of truth to this, speaking as one who deals in an ongoing way with various social anxieties, which is a big part of what lies at the root of the questions posed.
Anxieties lie to you. Constantly. They lie to you in a sweet, seductive way that tells you how much better it would be to run away from the fear gnawing at your belly, because then that pain would ease. But it doesn’t, not really, like the coward that dies a thousand times. And it’s not so much that the fear is scary, but that avoiding the cause feels so much better. And some of these anxieties whisper at you like they’re the hottest woman you’ve ever known offering you her willing body for the night.
There’s a trick I learned after spending some months talking to a therapist about depression and its related anxieties. It’s really simple, if you have the presence of mind to think of it, whilst the hottie is breathing softly against your neck. Which is not easy and sometimes seems impossible. What you do is trick the lying minx. When you know the course of action you plan to take, you start upon it, and when the decision point comes, you look past her and say to her, “Isn’t that Johnny Depp over there?” She gets briefly distracted, and you continue on your way. She never gets any smarter and doesn’t realise what you’re doing, but if you can do it consistently, eventually she realises she just can’t deal with you when you get in these moods and breaks up with you to find someone more pliable and obedient.
It sounds silly, but it’s really that simple, in my experience. Your “mantra” doesn’t have to be this phrase or any other. It just has to be something that breaks your self-destructive train of thought for a second or two. For me, it’s sometimes as simple as looking away from what I’m doing for a second to notice something in the background scenery, or trying to remember if I have enough cereal to get through the week. It’s mundane and simple, but it distracts my thoughts for a critical second, and I’m past the obstructive cow, and she doesn’t seem at all pretty or intimidating from this side and can’t for the life of me remember why I thought she would be.
You have to do it a lot, and it’s difficult at first, but it gets easier as you build your self-confidence. I still need a lot of work, but I’m getting better at it. It’s hard for me, though, because I’m not generally a social person with strangers. But it works. Not all the time, but it works.
Clint Eastwood,Harry Callahan: “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Magnum Force (1973)
‘…I think there’s a very good chance a few visits with her will help you to develop the confidence you need to go out and speak to girls in a non-professional setting.’
Until he gets himself a girlfriend and she discovers about his sexual past and that he lost his cherry to a hooker.
I think he’s merely replacing one problem with another.
Yeah but … if he don’t tell how’s she gonna “discover”? 😉
He needs to get in the saddle quick.
I now conjure the immortal wisdom of Ferris Bueler …
In all my years of enjoying the company of ladies, it never once occurred to me to worry that I was cheating on some imaginary future girlfriend.
A) how would he find out; and
B) if she’s the type to hold that against him, probably not worth keeping anyway.
It’s really important to find a compatible spouse, if you have enough of an adventurous streak to try things like this, you want your spouse to be at least ok with it, if not enthusiastic about it.
It’s a simple Q&A. “I desperately want to get laid, will an escort help with that?” “Yes, just make sure you don’t waste money on an incompetent. ”
All the rest of the stuff is just an excuse to see an escort, which in a properly ordered world a man wouldn’t need. It would just be “I have money, I can spend it on an ‘Xbox One’ (or whatever the latest useless gizmo is) or on a nice lady to have some fun for an hour or two. I think I’ll hire the lady.”
Instead we have, “I have money I can spend it on [useless gadget] or [redacted/forbidden/sexcrime]. Looks like I have to buy another [piece of junk] to fill the void inside me.”
You have the funds, she wants the funds, she’s willing to do what you want for them, go to it.
To be fair, that XBoxOne or whatever you pay for ONCE, and you can play it over and over again, for many hours. The lady will be gone in an hour and if you want to play again, it’s another Xbox’s worth of cash.
Which is fine if you’ve got that kind of cash and/or don’t mind this being a once-a-year treat.
I will make another suggestion: a sexual surrogate or someone else (a very understanding Professional sex provider whose interest is not just “wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am/ where’s my money” sex) a truly hip psychiatrist/clinical psychologist might be able to get you in touch with. This is about much more than having sex, this is about learning the social actions for a shy young man to learn and to build his confidence so he can be a good sexxual partner in the future.
A sexual surrogate is a prostitute, no matter how much they protest that they aren’t. An escort can probably do just as good a job for less money. I’ll let Maggie do the honors of posting a link to her column where she rebuts the assertion that sexual surrogacy is different and “better” than prostitution.
That would be “Accredited Whores“. 🙂
There are two differences: 1) the guy might feel more comfortable deluding himself into believing he is seeing some sort of health professional for his problem, rather than a “mere” professional sex provider; 2) he might be able to take the cost off on his taxes because she has an MSW in psychology as well as a winning personality and all sorts of experience.
Yes, I know I’m parsing, but for young men like this, I feel I should do the parsing so they don’t have a chance to talk themselves out of what I believe is a positive experience due to guilt, etc..
Your obesity is not the problem. Lots of fat and ugly guys date the most beautiful women.
I think it’s your insecurity. You don’t approach women.
I have the same problem.
I would advise not to visit prostitutes. It costs money, and it still leaves you with an empty feeling. I know it from my own experience. On top of it, I have erection problems and I’m afraid the women are coerced.
Thanks to Maggie, I now know that the odds of my meeting a coerced hooker, even if I could afford to hire one every week (and chose to spend the money that way) is so low I might as well worry about finding a dead fly in my can of tuna. Yeah, it could happen, but it probably won’t.
Krulac, I don’t know what your definition of “hot” is, but I have been seeing a working girl for long enough for her to spontaneously disclose quite a bit about her personal life…and she is gorgeous…I mean she literally worked as an international fashion model, and she’s tall, and she’s so damned intimidating in her beauty that the first half dozen times I saw her I was shaking like a leaf until she “relaxed me”.
Does she moan about guys not approaching in her “civvy” life? Ah…no…she gets stopped on the streets of NYC on a daily basis. CEO’s stop in Mercedes and get her number and ask her to dinner. The merest glance gets whichever guy she wants to come over to her at a bar. She’s directly propositioned, with more and less degrees of crudity, several times a week. She’s nice and friendly to all (except the rude ones of course), but very very very few are chosen (if you don’t meet her through her advert, then you don’t get to sleep with her, unless you are her boyfriend). She’s VERY fussy. Don’t give this guy false stuff about how beautiful girls and just waiting to be picked up. They are waiting to be picked up by THE GUY that they want to be picked up by….and he might not even be in town that night.
Why not just leave it to Maggie, the professional, and not confuse the poor guy with locker-room stuff?
You need to read more of the columns here, Kris2.
1) Amateurs cost money too, usually indirectly (gifts and favors)
2) Professionals (good ones, anyway) will not mock you for your problems, unlike amateurs
3) Coercion is the exception in prostitution, not the rule
The guy is asking about escorts, so I’m not going to wonder if he can afford them. He can or he wouldn’t be asking this question.
Certainly if I ever come into money… actually in that case I’m going to be looking for a brothel. But I’ll still re-read your advice to clients before going.
I was this guy when I was younger and I saw an escort and had a lovely time so I certainly wouldn’t discourage you or other young men who are reading this because this post is super old now. That being said I would caution this idea that going to see an escort and seeing what this whole sex thing is about and satisfying that burning curiosity won’t “relieve” you for very long. You’ll probably feel even hornier! It turned out that whole sex thing and oral sex(omg every teenage boy fantasizes about this) touching and playing and having a good time with a beautiful naked woman thing was in fact all it was cracked up to be and then some. It’s not like I tried it and went whatever, so that’s sex. That’s not how it works. So just know that, it brings up questions you should ask yourself? Do you want to make seeing escorts a regular thing, can you even? Do you intend for it to be just a one time thing? It’s not bad, I am certainly not trying to say that, I think it can be really healthy and life affirming to get your sexual needs met in a upfront and honest way and boost your confidence and comfortability around women. But it can also do the opposite, and it can be kind of addictive especially when your young. Gotta learn self control and to take matters into your own hands sometimes. Who the hell are these idiots who tell kids masturbating is irresponsible, it’s often one of the most adult responsible decisions you can make. Some of those women will completely blow your mind(and other things lol) others will be downright boring, and some will take advantage of you, and unfortunately because of all the criminalizing bullshit it can even be dangerous at times.