| I wouldn't latch too strongly onto not being "man" enough. Your partners can tell there's a problem, but aren't sure how to articulate it, and "man enough" is as close as they know how to describe it. You have behaviors which you learned as a child in response to the situation you found yourself in at the time, and those behavior patterns such as conflict avoidance which served you well at the time (or at least were the best that a child could come up with), no longer serve you well as an adult. Thus rather than saying "man enough", I think a better description would be not "adult enough", in that particular area of conflict resolution. I suspect you feel insecure about whether your partner likes you because this pattern of conflict avoidance may mean you haven't tested prospective partners while dating by showing them the real you and seeing whether they like that or not. The way to build confidence is to address the area where you are weak by learning and practicing in that area until you are good at it, and then you will automatically have confidence about it. E.g. if you don't have confidence that you can ride a bicycle well, the solution isn't to pump up your confidence by boosting your manly power, the solution is to practice riding a bicycle until you are good enough at it, and then you'll feel confident about riding bicycles. Thus I suggest your first priority should be to study and practice effective conflict resolution, asking for what you want, being assertive about things you care about, setting strong boundaries, etc., ideally in an experiential setting where you can practice interactions rather than just reading about it. Then I think you'll find that women will find you already manly. Confidence is sexy. Not the fake confidence of boosting yourself up to appear confident while ignoring problems, but the true confidence of being able to say, "yup, I know how to handle this". |