Hello Sam

I have been wondering for some time why a male work colleague is forever putting himself down.

This man has achieved a great deal in his life, academically anyway, is good looking with a wonderful caring personality. He has higher level qulifications and is very bright, especially about women.

I will give you some examples of this.

He dosen't think he is good looking and often compares himself to (in his opinion) his far better looking brother who has lots of success with ladies.

The answer is, you are what you think you are, if you think you are a star you are!  The same applies to women!  How many women have you heard saying that they are fat, when you can literally look at them and say, you need to eat.

Many men can have lots of confidence in the things that they are good at, but then when it comes to women they have no confidence at all.  Equally people like his brother can be very confident with women, but absolutely useless at most other things.  None of us can be good at everything.

Just like women, men have awful role models to follow in the media these days.  They learn that women prefer bad boys, blokes with six packs, charmers who have exciting lives and fast cars.  That makes a man like him feel boring and lack confidence.  Then when you go on dates with women, that lack of confidence shows and women don’t find you attractive.  I don’t know what men are like to date, but I frequently find women are very narrow minded when you meet them for the first time.  They read too much into everything you say and build up a unrealistic picture of you.  I only know that because I’ve sometimes told people about my web site after they rejected me and then they quickly said one of the following, “wow I thought you were a boring, sexist, a player, not genuine until I read your web site”.  All because they’ve taken some of my words on the date and blown them out of all proportion and created this fantasy picture of who I am.  I’m certainly not a player and never have been, boring I might be to some people because I can’t suit everyone, I sometimes make sexist comments but in general they are jokes that I expect a joke back, overall I’m not sexist.  So you can see from that how dating can be very frustrating for guys that are not really very good with women.

Childhood is crucial for deciding who we are and you can bet if he has higher levels of qualifications he spent a lot of time studying instead of getting out there and getting some practice at socialising with women.  As I say you can’t be good at everything and he’s not good with women.

He has actually made a reference to his looks by saying he dosen't like what he sees in the mirror. This kind of thing said in different ways has happened multiple times. I just laugh it off but not sure if he is looking for reassurance or indeed if he is fishing to know if I fancy him??

Probably a bit of both, but most notably the reassurance.  Unfortunately when guys say negative things like this it usually means he sees you as a friend only.

It's just a constant series of putdowns about himself. He has so much going for him from my point of view and has got further in life than most people can dream of.

If I say something nice about someone (a man) he will say 'not like me then' or 'i'm so rubbish at that' and other words to that effect.

There are a lot of comments that women make about their ideal man and they talk about famous film stars.  The biggest mistake that men make is to compare themselves to these guys.  Most of the film stars don’t have as good a life as they are portrayed to have anyway.  However men like him take these comparisons to heart, just like women take comparisons to women in magazines and on TV to heart.  The reality is men and women go out with real people and not fantasy people.  I think he just has to learn to be comfortable with who he is.  He’s probably got to the point in his life, where he wants to settle down with a family and he’s getting frustrated that he hasn’t even managed to find a decent girlfriend yet, never mind get to the point in finding a woman that he can settle down with.  His lack of success with women is depressing him and making it even more difficult to be successful with women.

This man has a girlfriend but it dosen't sound like she says nice things about him or treats him well. She has told him he's an idiot or he's stupid.

I’ve had women like that in the past, I usually ditch them within a few months.  Unfortunately he seems to think he is not worthy of any woman, so he has to make do.  It’s like women that make do with bad boys.  Bad boys abuse them, but they fail to leave the relationship because they think they are not worthy of anyone better.

It also sounds like she goes off doing her own thing all the time. I've not heard this myself but he has told me this but he acts like it's a joke. She also has higher level qualifications, higher than him.

It sounds like a mismatched relationship, hopefully she will finish with him or do something seriously bad soon.  Then he can leave the relationship and find someone decent.  Up until then he’ll probably make do with what he’s got.

I think he is great. He especially knows how to treat women and is a fab listener. He also has a great knack of complimenting me and making me feel good about myself every time I see him.

I just don't get the constant put downs - like I said before I don't know if he wants to find out what I think about him?

He dosen't do this as far as I know with other female colleagues (I mentioned it to a few that he works closely with) they say they don't really know him that well.

It seems that he’s grown to trust you and as a result he knows you won’t say anything or think of him in a negative way or that he would lose your friendship by saying things like this.

This has been going on for ages and is bugging me because it's every time I see him and very obvious.

I want to help him if he has low self esteem but don't know what to say!

Thank you!

Just say what you think.  Say that you reckon his current relationship is depleting his self confidence and he needs to get out of that to regain his self confidence.  Just tell him that there are women in this world that are right for him and women that are not right for him.  He has to meet the ones that aren’t right first, before he finally settles down with the right one.  At the moment he’s standing still and not doing anything about it, to fix the problem he needs to do something about it, finish his current woman and start experimenting with other women until he finds the right one.  Everyone has different personalities and most people are only a good match with a minority of people. 

Whilst his brother might go through hundreds of women, only a minority of those women will be right for him long term.  Casanovas like his brother don’t always have it good, he’ll probably find that he will divorce many times and will never find a woman that he settles down with for life, whereas if you take more care in choosing your women you will ensure you are marrying the right woman.