 Why are we so afraid of rejection? Why does rejection have such painful effects on us? Because back in the day when we were living in a hunter and gatherer society, getting rejected pretty much meant you're going to die. Because if you're ostracized from the tribe, you're out there in the jungle all by yourself. You are going to die. That's just what's going to happen. So we had our genes evolve in a way that said, do anything possible so you don't get rejected. Even if I have to throw pain in the mix, even if I have to make you more aggressive, even if I have to dumb you down for a little bit afterwards, like your genes will do whatever it takes to have you avoid getting rejected. Now, all of that is of course no longer relevant in the 21st century. There's now thousands of people out there in your town, in your city alone. But our brain, our genes still work like that. They say rejection, that's dangerous. Avoid this at all costs, whether it means you're obsessing about this person, whether you're obsessively following them on social media. You're scared to talk to new people. That's all your 200,000 year old genes trying to protect you. And it makes complete sense looking at the study. A lot of our clients are highly analytical, highly skilled. And when you go on an app and you go on that first date and that person doesn't want to see you a second time, or you work up the courage, you walk over there, you try your best to approach and strike up a conversation and it doesn't go well. It's easy to feel angry. Science shows aggression goes up. And it's also easy to feel dumb, to feel like, why is this not working? What's going on here? I know I'm a great person. I have all this awesome stuff going on. Why is this approach not working? And as Johnny highlighted, while your strategy online needs some work, you probably need a profile audit and redo. You need better pictures. And your conversation skills on that approach and non-verbal skills need work and improvement to not only allow yourself to be more effective and to strike up a conversation and generate attraction, but also realize that in these moments of repeated rejection, your anger is going up and you're feeling less in control because scientifically speaking, we're lowering our IQ when we're facing this rejection repeatedly. So it can feel overwhelming and you can feel lost coming out of a relationship and not having been in the dating game for a while and start facing rejection either out in the street or out at the bar or online. And in that lost sensation, it's easy then to just give up and say, I'm writing off online dating. I'm screw dating in general. And we saw this study that like 66% of men are not in committed relationships while most women in the study 30 and under are in relationships and men are getting more and more frustrated. So the science is working against us. Our strategies are not aligning to help us be more effective and more attractive version of ourselves. And what we don't wanna see is you get in a downward spiral and just completely remove yourself from the dating pool because that's not an effective strategy. Well, how many times can you put yourself out there and get rejected and keep your head up? After a while, you slowly start to feel defeated, frustrated and that's when you're frustrated, you become tired. When you're frustrated and tired, that's when your inner critic has free reign to beat the hell out of you. And it will because now you're working with a data set that doesn't look very good, that shows rejection. It is beating you up and now, as I mentioned, your inner critic is going to town. And think about what it takes to leave a relationship. There's especially if it's been a marriage that has been going on for a decade plus or even a long-term relationship that has been going on for a few years. By the time you get to a point that you have to pull the plug and end the relationship, a lot of damage in the relationship has already taken place. And for the guys out there, your first thought is, do I still have it? Or the one thing that can make me feel better in this moment is to share it and to be with somebody else. So I know that no matter what, everything is going to be okay. And we've already just discussed in the earlier part that the worst thing you can do is immediately go out there and start dating again. That is working against you. That's why taking space, creating some space and taking some time to process this is so important. And then while you're getting physically fit and processing the trauma that you have just left, this is a great time to then start looking at that profile and at what skills that you can be developing to make yourself a better person because you're going to need it when you dive back into the dating pool.