This is a question that came in from a woman through my Meetup groups.
The woman writes:
Do you think this seminar would be appropriate for a divorced man with kids in his mid 40’s? Just thinking the bar scene may not be ideal.
First off, in the long term the bar scene is not the ideal, so this is partially correct, but that’s not to say that the scene doesn’t serve a purpose in the grand scheme of things. Let me explain.
I specialize in and have studied and practiced as a life coach for just about 3 years now, so that’s my primary goal when helping someone reach their potential and at Social Serendip I always have the highest positive intentions in mind for any individual I work with.
A divorced man faces certain challenges that his younger counterparts don’t. Things like identity issues, separation anxiety and a crushing blow to his confidence are all unique to this kind of man. Plus he has certain responsibilities that his younger counterparts don’t have; bills, children, career and personal finances. Any woman he would seek needs to understand and be accepting of his situation and she needs a high degree of maturity to be beneficial to his life. On average, you won’t find these women hanging out at bars or clubs. On average. There are always exceptions. I have met my fair share of very high quality women at clubs, women like the wife of a world renown golfer and the nanny for one of the highest paid female pop stars in the world are just examples I can list.
Other men deal with some of these issues too, but the degree to which they face them is different. Typically a younger man has yet to develop his identity, while a divorced man suffers from a loss of his identity. While the younger man needs to build his identity, the divorced man need to rebuild his identity. Both problems are actually one in the same, the problem of identity. The same can be said about confidence. The younger man needs to build his confidence while the divorced man needs to rebuild his confidence, so again, the bigger problem is one of confidence.
Social Serendip doesn’t try to put band-aid’s on gunshot wounds, so to speak. We remove the bullet, cauterize and dress the wound, nourish the patient and bed him until he can walk on his own.
The reason we bring men to a night club is because it provides the highest concentration of available women, the most practice in the shortest amount of time, and very little real-world ramifications for meeting women. The next day, he can go about his life as if nothing happened. If the same man were to practice meeting women in the office let’s say, or he started hitting on some of his female friends, he’d have to face the same women over and over and it could potentially affect his career or he’d drive his friends away.
While the ultimate goal is to be able to meet women in a normal everyday setting, the benefits of meeting women at the night club, at least to start out with, trump the advantages of meeting women in his normal daily life. Once he builds up the confidence to approach and converse with women and his skills improve, he’ll find it much easier to meet women in daily life, and having easy, normal conversations are what he is ultimately trying to achieve.
So yes, the bar scene is not ideal in the long term, but it serves an important purpose when juxtaposed to the alternatives and is most beneficial in the short term.
~Matt Adams
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