Tough love for my dudes
My boys, my fellas, my homies, gamers, my dear virgins. Reading everything you write is saddening and depressing, and the fact that this sub is filled with posts about young men's struggle with kicking off their sexual lives is worrying. Yesterday I saw a post from a woman, saying how she's wary of men, and despite it being hard to swallow, I can totally see her point.
We can do better. I don't remember seeing so many desperate guys online and offline even 5 years ago, it wasn't a thing back then. Now I can't even find male friends. Every time I get to casually talk to a guy, our talk will inevitably turn into him venting about not being able to get laid, and me awkwardly listening. Do I empathize with those feelings? Yes! I've been in a desperate place myself many times. But the thing I don't empathize with is their readiness to blame everything and everyone around them while maintaining a ridiculously high bar for themselves: I'm not clapping 5 different asses in a day because society, beauty standards, popular culture, and women are being unfair to me.
The main reason why you, my dudes, think you're not dateable, is your looks. You think that if your jawline was stronger, cheekbones were more apparent and your penis was the length of your leg, you'd get more women. But in reality, it's this worldview that makes you insufferable to be around, for women and men alike. This worldview makes you resentful, angry, frustrated, and insecure. I'm saying this not to hurt you, but to give you hope: this is not a mental illness you have. This is not something you cannot possibly change. This is a distorted, practically made-up picture of reality that was fed to all of us by social media, dishonest content creators and influencers, movies, and the fashion industry. But most of all, by your fellow loveless dudes on the internet. You're trapped in this bubble because, to people who aren't sharing your worldview, it's exhausting to be near you. I'm sorry for the harshness, but sometimes we need to endure the pain of a piercing needle to get a vaccine.
Some say guys just need therapy, guys just need to talk to a professional. As a huge therapy user and advocate, I think that's not true. A therapist is a doctor, but this is not a mental illness. Therapy is one of the tools you'll use to heal yourselves, but no doctor will ever cure you of a destructive ideology. Only you can help yourself getting out of it, when you decide that you're done with being miserable. Most of us need a father or an older friend, whom a therapist won't ever be able to be. A more experienced, trusted guy who'd set up on the good path. It's horrible that nowadays those functions take on themselves content creators, who literally profit from their audience being as miserable and unhappy as possible.
I'm not that old, I'm still in my 20s, but let me be that older friend for you today. I was in relationships before, I've dated for a while, and I'm not a very handsome guy: the black circles around my eyes make me look like a panda on a good day, and Emperor Palpatine on a bad one. But there are things I've learned that prevented me from falling into the black hole of the incel community, and I hope those will challenge your views.
- Beauty isn't THE quality. It's ONE of the qualities. Looks are not unimportant, a woman picturing her ideal partner thinks of a handsome, tall, confident, financially stable, caring, supportive, mature, and emotionally available man, who's kind to her and gets along with her family and friends. But there are no real people like that, everyone's gotta have their set of drawbacks, and both men and women often happily end up with people they would never swipe on a dating app. We all compromise one quality for the other, we prioritize and we decide what is more important for us, and what is less important. To most, your physical beauty is not the most important factor, because...
- Beauty is a matter of perception. People, who are beautiful inside, are perceived to be more beautiful outside. Imagine a girl in luxurious clothes and an arrogant look in her eyes, and then imagine her not dressed up, smiling, laughing, and playing with a dog. Which version you'd fall in love with? Inner and outer beauty are not separated, they are rigidly connected to each other. There's a reason why any article on filling your Tinder profile out there tells you to put in it a picture with animals, of you doing your hobbies and having fun with friends. Because photos express much, much more than your facial features. Learn to see that around you, and you'll understand. Hence,
- You need to learn genuine kindness and compassion towards everyone. Your kindness should be your trait, not the tool you hope to get sex with. You think you're kind, but how often have you helped a woman out in the hope that she'll notice you and marry you immediately after? And how many of us have resented someone for not responding to us with the same compassion we gave them? This is ingenuine. Your kindness shouldn't be conditional. And once it's genuine, you'll feel kindness towards yourself as well. And if that alone won't remove any blocks on your way to the life you strive to live, this will make you a happier and more wholesome person, who you'll be able to love.
Of course, I'm just speaking from my life experience. I'm not married yet, hence I'm still struggling myself. But I really hope this was something you needed to hear all this time.
I really need my dudes back. I really need my good-time boys to hang out with. But finding someone my age, who's not obsessed with their own misery, has proven to be a struggle. I really hope that we all get better one day. And although we can't heal in a moment, let's at least try.