Whatever wonders if I mean it:
It’s just that when I hear Vox say something along the lines of “pick a fight with your wife in order to work out your fear issues”, then I start wondering if he’d really do that if he was in someone else’s shoes.
Yes, absolutely, because it’s not a question of “picking a fight” at all, but rather not going out of your way to avoid conflict. There is a crucial difference there. Conflict avoidance can be a good thing, but not when it is driven by nothing more than cowardice. I believe in the principle of conquering your fears by facing them. When I was young and a little afraid of the dark, I used to sneak out of the house and wander through the woods at night. Not only did my fear of the dark disappear, but I soon came to love it. I also developed an aversion to sunlight and discovered that I rather enjoyed biting attractive young women in the neck, but that’s probably just a coincidence.
When Ender briefly developed a reflexive fear of the ball after a foolish coach allowed him to get shellacked in goal for more than 45 minutes from the penalty spot, I bought him some wrist pads, taught him a modified martial arts block, then spent about 20 minutes a day charging towards him and throwing the ball directly at his face from the penalty spot. I also taught him to step forward into the ball and attack it by blocking it on his padded forearms. He soon realized that it didn’t hurt and by the third day, he wasn’t the least bit afraid of the ball anymore. By the end of the season, he had acquired the nickname “toro” for the way he would fearlessly charge toward attacking players and cut down the angles of their close-range shots as they approached goal.
The core concept of Game involves consciously emulating the behavior of those who naturally succeed where you fail. This is a concept that is applicable to a far greater range of human behavior than the male pursuit of women for short-term sexual pleasure.