How A Lack Of Confidence Leads To The Friendzone | Episode 015 Video Game Addiction 

You're treating your crush as a final boss when you should be treating them like a co-op partner.

I've never been friendzoned because I never asked a girl out.

I love how Dr. K is able to point to how harmful this "nice guy" behavior is without being judgemental. I think we really are in dire need of people who can analyze these issues with the empathy of someone like Dr. K, because people aren't gonna learn or improve if we start by judging them and kicking them when they're down, rather than listening to them genuinely and trying to help them.

Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentment

Stardew Valley: Give her her favorite item every day and twice on her birthday until her heart meter fills up.

[ Angry defensive comment ]

I remember my logic as a teenager was "but if I ask her out first, that's creepy because she doesn't know me and I don't know her personally". I thought of romantic relationships as a sort of second step to regular friendships. Different initial reasoning, but it started the same process.

Solving lack of confidence is left as an exercise to the reader

"if you're really doing something out of the kindness of your heart you shouldn't expect something in return" - love this line, relationships aren't a transaction and can't be built off a lie

this guy is doing so much for free for us gamers to lead a healthy lifestyle mentally and socially

even a loss of confidence during a relationship can lead to friendzone. confidence is really everything, you gotta learn to love yourself before you can anyone else.

Interesting... this made me realise that the pattern of "giving to get" is actually the whole reason why twitch donations exist.

My God, I'm a girl and I just realized that I've been that nice guy in all of my relationships. Big L.

Simping explained by professor

Gamers try to grind reputation to unlock GF achievement and tilts when it doesn't work thinking it's a bug.

This might be a bit late, considering how much this channel's format has shifted over the past 2 years, but I think that this series was absolutely exceptional. The concise, bite-sized and self-contained nature of these mini lectures made it much more approachable and direct than 2 hour interviews (which have their own strengths of course) despite being around the same length, but they still connected in a really coherent and comprehensive way. I would honestly love to see you do another series like this, or continue this one with more topics.

Makes sense when games constantly teach us that investing in a goal will always come with a reward, like finally killing a boss after working so hard on it, or completing a long quest chain and getting an epic reward out of it.

Lady Gaga wrote: "I don't wanna be friends". That's the thing. In order to never get into the friend zone, don't pretend to want to be friends and "let things evolve". One, it's dishonest towards the other person, two, you're setting yourself up for failure and resentment. Just ask them out and be prepared for (but not expecting) rejection. Accept that they may change their mind after the first, second, third, nth date.

Holy shit, he's real. For some reason I thought of him as of a Vtuber or some shit. It kinda feels weird to see him walking around a classroom like a real human

Holy cow this got my heart racing. Everything you said describes the relationships I've had with girls. Pure truth.

I've been living with this mindset for quite a while but was just waiting for something to form naturally between me and the people involved but to no avail. After doing this for a couple of times over the years i decided to lose weight and have lost 30kg in about a year. Time flew by so i haven't really had time to realize that i have become skinny, in my mind i was still the same unnatractive guy being a nice guy to girls "out of my league" (which was basically any girl i liked). Anyways long story short after watching this the first thing i did was ask this girl out i liked and she said yes. So listen to dr K people and just ask. Worst case scenario she says no and it wasn't meant to be in the first place. Saves yourself from a lot of heartache. Keep your head up high kings!

To my knowledge, friendships that evolve into relationships are never started on the basis of one day turning it into a relationship. I think that makes the people within the friendship act more genuine and confident around each other, because there are no ulterior motives and nobody is trying too hard to be liked. Most of the happily married couples I've met either started out as GENUINE friends with no other motives, or they met and just decided to go for it without all of this false friendship and pretending to be nice just so that you can get something.

Gamers would die 99+ times in Dark Souls and keep trying, but they won´t even try to ask a girl/guy out kekw.

this all makes so much sense ive been doing it all wrong pepehands

i love his 60s woodstock haircut look

He just called all of us simps lol

Dr. K just explained my teenage life in a nutshell. I had this very revelation when I realized my strat wasn't working. I just said fuck it, asked a girl out the next time I saw someone I was interested in, and hey ho I got my first girlfriend in a pinch. It's all about overcoming that hurdle of fearing rejection, just throw caution to the wind and what will be will be.

Its scary to hear this man talk, he just be quoting my life

It seems very odd to me that the normal way for relationships to start is to ask some person out that you hardly know. People consistently confuse me

I've had this happen to me once in life, my senior year in high school and into college. A whole lot of time wasted over one person and a pretty emotionally painful experience throughout. It only took that one time for me to see the errors of my ways. Too anyone who is in a similar predicament; that someone you're interested in, do yourself a favor and go ask them out NOW, do it before you develop more feelings for them. If she says no thanks, you tell her no problem and move on to the next. It actually feels really good even if she says no, you're taking all that weight of uncertainty off your shoulders. This will automatically change your life by increasing your confidence, which only improves your ability to be attractive in both romantic and platonic ways.

trust me man it takes confidence to ask someone out in the first place

Feels weird seeing him talking while standing up. Like i feel like he is establishing his dominance over his more recent vids

This video is actually really really good.

Bro i started smiling so hard when everything he said was actually just straight facts

this is so important

Who's here after watching the whole list? Congratulations!!!!!!!! I found this video series interesting and started from Episode 004. I am not addicted to games, but this series is very educational because it links to the knowledge I studied in psychology. It can also be applied to many other circumstances like porn addiction, not able to be concentrated on doing one thing, etc. Thank you a lot.

We really need more episodes , like this is actually really helpful for us i've been to therapy for 8 years and i think that i understand myself more now just with these episodes than after 8 years of therapy. We need more AoE healing.

I'm currently in this situation SORT OF, the girl was really pushing a relationship with me first, being really flirty and clingy; one day she just told me she cant offer a relationship to me and that I need to relax, basically is only calling for favors now. I feel really used and undermined and I hope you guys never have to go through what I'm currently going through.

I feel attacked

Plot twist… he’s actually alone in a physic ward talking to himself thinking he’s a doctor but really he’s a patient .

I also want to add that when you are friends with someone and have feelings for them, and ask them out after a while - that you have been in the relationship longer than them, so give space and let them sort out weather or not they want to try a relationship. They might actually need time to figure out their own feelings and it's hard to be surprised with a confession and give a straight answear there and then

"gamers tend to give in order to get" rip accuracy, rip my life

We put ourselves in the friend zone. If you want her romantically and it's not mutual, break EVERYTHING off and be absolutely clear that you don't want a "just friends" relationship. Then you move on - you actually, really move on. The longer you stay there, being her "friend", and silently hoping, the worse you're making it for yourself AND for her. She either wants you, or she doesn't. If she doesn't, LEAVE HER. Wash your hands. You have to be in your own corner. The only circumstance in which you should CONTINUE being friends is if you can be HONEST friends with her. As in, you spend time with her in a friend capacity and aren't secretly hoping it will lead to something. This is almost impossible to do if you're attracted to her though.

This should be mandatory viewing for the internet generation.

In summation, the harder you grind your skills and relationship status the harder it is to get the girl outside of friendship, pull the slot machine without a care and just go for the girl immediately for the epic loot

Lack of confidence leads to fear, fear leads to regret, regret over and over leads to the friendzone.

It's basically a part of the book "No more mr nice guy" abridged, perfect

Not only have you been giving her the wrong signals(friend signals instead of date signals), but by doing this for an extended period of time you have also become a person of value for her, _as a friend._ Meaning that even if she might have wanted to date you when you had no other value to her, she might hesitate now that it will potentially destroy what she thinks is a strong mutual friendship. Thus creating an additional barrier to dating you.

Just wanted to drop how thankful I am for this series, finally found information I can work with and may be able to fix myself with.

This hits hard. Love all this guys videos though. Really helping me through what I consider my quarter-mid life crisis

You're literally so god damn beautiful, thank you for doing all of this!

All my friends have video game addiction because they use it as an escapist void to hide from their physically “unattractive” bodies. Some have acne, some are obese yet in denial, some are short from genetics, some are slut shamed for being attractive, some have little muscle mass, some believe the racism and discrimination they are fed by bullies/society, some have low income levels and subsequently poor diet/hygiene, some have high income levels are have unrealistic expectations and egos.

this is such a good video. this guy is really doing something

This is the best description of how we get into the friendzone that i've ever heard.

i really appreciate these videos and the part about open loop problems resonates the most with me this video the least, because of the aforementioned open loop problems XD

Amen brother , every single word comes out from your mouth was true.

2:40 "I need to get her to like me more so that when I ask her out, she'll say yes." Bizarre. That wasn't my experience in college. All I did was convince myself that sexual tension was a dead end and it was something that could be purged through friendship. Of course I came to discover that was equally misguided...

Thank you, Dr. K.! You are the heart of the world! I would love to hear more about confidence, gonna look it up around.

bruh this was unnaturally accurate. i'm freaked

Thank you for helping me for free with years of content!

this isn't just a gamer thing. most non-chad men like myself fall for this trap of thinking "nice=good" because we've been wired to think like that since childhood, whilst in reality its the opposite most of the time but thats not intuitive

This... makes a lot of sense. I'm happy to say that I don't fall into this category - but unhappy to say that it's for all the wrong reasons. My self-esteem is dogshit, but my confidence is getting better. I always thought that i'd probably want to get to know a person before asking them out, and/or have them get to know me before I do that - but just going for it might be a pretty viable method. Only problem with doing that for me would be that I'm really bad at being my goofy and emotional ol' self without dropping my guard. Trauma-induced fear gets in the way of that... and going on a date with someone without being able to do this will ultimately feel pointless to me since there is no point to it if they can't get to know the real me and learn if they like the real me. I don't know what the use of writing this in a public forum is, but hey! Why not, right?

This man legit is just the "HE DON"T MISS" meme as a person on god.

Have watched random vids from you and just found this series, absolutely amazing and game changing. The last couple of episodes didn’t really relate - I don’t have long term friends I met on games and I don’t have those type of confidence issues in real life, but my god, the addiction understanding and questions to ask yourself to define individual levels of addiction we’re mind blowing accurate, and I can no longer be blissfully ignorant about root causes. Amazing stuff..!

Strangely enough, I only turned to this after failing at being genuine. Our relationship developed naturally over a year and it seemed like it was supposed to go to the next step. But as I saw it failing, I just tried harder and got more and more robotic. What are you supposed to do when neither works? I've just learned to assume that anything I think about anything is probably wrong and hope is a trap. Needless to say, I'm unhappy.

I watched the video knowing the answer, bc its really good to watch yr vids, i never been in a friendzone, bc i never tried LOL. But i know that lack of confidence leads to a lot of stuff.

Really insightful thanks for these, I see some of these patterns in past relationships. I don’t feel any resentment though since I didn’t really ask anyone out...

I thought I was confident before But I have been enlightened now MORE CONFIDENTNESSY PLEASE!

'Giving without expectation is charity. Giving with expectation is manipulation' - Hampton, Hybrid Calisthenics

That video was spot on man great video keep up the great work.

Wait, is this dude standing in front of an empty lecture hall, pretending to speak in front an audience? This is brilliant!

Hello I idolize you my guy like seriously you have the biggest pool of intelligence in your brain and I learn so much from watching you thanks for being so influential I couldnt live without your work thanks:)

This is what I always thought about "incels" They have low confidence, low experience, they just need to breathe build the confidence.. Live love learn the outcome

I am almost 19 and i am just starting to realize how i think and behave and why it hurt me so many times and i felt worthless. This is so helpful I'm glad i am aware about it now and idk where to start exactly but I'm trying to improve my self worth as of now.

hated man says painful shit, loved man says warming words you have quite a damn life right there bud when you can look at things from the third perspective

Thank you dude this series was so helpful, everything I watched before on this topic was pretty basic and unhelpful but your shit was eye-opening. If heaven exist you going.

Such a great video, i found myself in this exact situation. Thinking that maybe if i invest so much of my time in the person then i'll be entilted to some type of "reward", only to get smacked so bad by reality lol. Very helpful video

gamers treat real life like everyone has an "interaction meter" like from one of those dating sims. The more stuff you "give" the more likely it can go to the next level. In which it'll never happen irl. i was like this way back and i cringe and scream myself out to try to get rid of that embarassment.

You can’t control another persons emotions, sometimes you get put in the friend zone because you aren’t attractive/valuable to that person in a way they would ever take you serious in a relationship, hurts but you’ll probably get over it, all emotions and forms pass

Man, I feel like HG has been on youtube my whole life. And yet here it is, first video, 4 years ago.

yeah been there, done that... didn't resent the person but ended up resenting myself, cause i assumed there must be something severely wrong with me if she still doesn't want me after that much investment :/

Holy moly this is soooo truuuue. Thanks for the vid and the great content!!!

So where's episode 16? I thought we'd get into how to increase self confidence.

Very great series. So underrated. But, where are the other next videos? Are there any? Thanks a lot for this series. All of these apply to me.

The Sims strategies don't work?! I even made sure to not repeat conversation choices.

So i'm a female that plays video games with literally all guys for the past like, 5 years. I dont know HOWWW many times ive been REALLYYYY close friends with a guy just to have them ask me out, and when i say no, they just block me, curse me out, doxx me, EVEN THREATEN ME, or they get jealous of someone else im friends with and do the same thing. I'm talking friendships that lasted like 2-4 YEARS!!! I think i can trust this person with all my heart, consider this person the most important person in my life, and if i say no, THEY DITCH. I've had AT LEAST 4 guys do this to me.... AND IT SUCKS because they never indicate how they truly feel AT ALL. I love making friends and im ONLY playing games to PLAY GAMES... so when ive had guys do this to me, it honestly just makes me really depressed, lose all of my trust in people, makes me NOT want to make friends anymore. Do what Dr. k says, grow your confidence, dont waste your time, because it hurts BOTH sides so much.

By listening to this video I just realized that I don't talk to the opposite sex at all unless they talk to me first. 😓 Sometimes I think I'm not as bad as I think I am, when it comes to socializing, but then it's times like this where I realize that no, I was right, I really am bad.

I have never actually asked anyone out, probably because I didn't see anyone to ask out, but thanks to you I got this info before I got embarrassed.

So essentially we’re trying to max out affinity to get the romance dialogue option

I mean I think this is spot on but I also think there is room for situational awareness too. To use the example given in the video, if the girl has just been through crap with her asshole boyfriend, she might not want to think about being in a relationship with anyone at all. I feel like there's this thing where when the nice guy is there for the girl that he is interested in but she's just gone through something bad, and it feels like just a generally inappropriate time for the nice guy to bring up his own interests, and then that sort of extends into becoming the lack of confidence at what might have been a more appropriate time.

This title feels like those "tough pill to swallow" memes

A Harvest moon analogy, Talk to get to know buy gift. Raise their hearts to lvl 3 then ask to date and at lvl 5 you marry

Don't worry about women until you get yourself together first mentally/physically/financially /thead

Getting rejected right from the get go is much better than being rejected after investing so much. I've experienced this and moving forward was actually very easy

7:20 "If you are really doing something out of the kindness of your heart, you shouldn't be expecting something in return." Exactly. Christians, Stoics and Buddhists would all concur I think.

So true, when I went 24/7 out with friends and stopped playing completly I would get a lot of girls. But after I stopped going out and just stayed inside because of games I would still get some girls but not like before.

The thing that attracted me to my husband was that he was a nice guy - he wasn't just nice to me, he was nice to everyone. The the guy I dated in high school was nice - but the more I got to know him, the more I realized that he was nice TO ME and he was rude to others: his mom, the waitress, other drivers on the road. It took me a while to dump him, but I knew it needed to be done. My husband and I are celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary next week.

This video hit so close to home......wow.

I think a big part of what makes this sort of behavior so sad is that the act of “giving to get” is deeply rooted in fundamental insecurity and shame. I know he pretty much already covered it, but it’s so much more insidious than I think most people realize. I’m a woman myself, but all my life I’ve approached relationships with others from the subconscious belief that I’m not enough as I am, and the only way that anyone will want me around is if I give them something. I never viewed relationships as a give-and-take because I was never comfortable with being treated as though I deserved anything. To this day I honestly feel severely uncomfortable when someone is kind to me or expresses interest in me because I’m unused to it and I feel like they’re doing it because they want something from me. Acts of kindness from others always feel more like a contract wherein I have to give even more than they do in order to settle some imaginary debt. I’m the most comfortable when I’m being mistreated and taken advantage of because it’s what I’m most used to, which sucks to realize. It’s pretty much the same thing as investing in a relationship in the hopes of someone becoming romantically interested in you, but for me it’s more like giving just to justify my presence in someone else’s life at all. Either way it comes from a place of believing no one could ever want you for who you are because you believe that who you are is “wrong”, and that’s a really difficult belief to shake. Even spending the past couple of years coming to terms with it myself I’m still struggling constantly to unlearn the toxic beliefs I’ve always had about myself. It made me sad listening to this just because it makes me realize how (basically) universal this experience is. The sooner you identify those toxic beliefs, though, the sooner you can start to heal.

This video should have at least a million views