Dear Jenny:

I read your two recent replies on another thread, excellent replies. As to your most recent post, you wrote that you are “too overwhelmed with all of this right now”- do take breaks along the process any time you need a break. You don’t have to read or answer this post until you are willing and able to answer it. You can take days, even weeks, take as much time as you need.

You shared that ever since you were a teen, you were attracted to and turned on by “this kind of men only.. hyper-masculine.. chauvinist kind of men”, unattracted to men who are “polite and good.. nice respectful”, and repelled by men who are “too good, dropping everything for you kind of guys”.

“How can I possibly change that”?- as the very intelligent young woman that you are, you know that it is easy for you to learn something new academically. But to learn something new emotionally- that is a process that is gradual and takes a long, long time time (because emotional learning is literally about changing elaborate biochemical processes in the brain/ body). You can’t will yourself into being attracted to a nice guy, you can’t be attracted to nice guy just because you now understand the Why.

Understanding the Why is necessary to start the slow process of becoming attracted to a decent, assertive man. In that process, you will learn to notice assertive behaviors and appreciate those. Over time you will feel attraction to those behaviors.

When you encounter an aggressive man and feel an attraction toward him, you can reframe your thinking and your feeling of attraction will follow the changed thinking. For example: you are at a restaurant with a man who yells at a waiter/ server, if that turns you on, look at the server’s face and notice a hurt feeling there, or anger, and focus on how the server probably feels- that will lead you to feeling empathy for the server and anger or disgust at the one hurting the server.

anita