I made a similar post a couple of years ago, but I think it’s time again after seeing a few nice-guy/incel posts here. So, guys who have made it to the other side, what would you say to your previous self? I’ll leave my own personal answer in a comment below.
This is all going to sound super dumb and obvious, but I think that underlines how delusional young straight men can become about themselves and the world. The first step was sloooowly coming to the realization that:
A) I’m not unique, special, important, and/or entitled to anything. Ever.
B) I’m not nearly as fucking smart as I think I am, and everyone else is much smarter than I think they are. Which is the perfect combination to make me incredibly stupid.
After it took me embarrassingly far into my 20’s to come to terms with all that, I literally had to start from scratch on retraining how I thought about how I interacted with/viewed everything and everyone.
I had no empathy, respect, or regard. I spent years blaming my lack of quality relationships on other people and “society.” Whatever the fuck that means.
I was living in a vacuum. All I could do was judge people on whether or not they were worth my time, while having zero understanding that I absolutely wasn’t worth anyone’s time.
I thought being funny, knowing things, and being good at stuff made me a real catch and, sadly, better than everybody.
My father is a massive selfish pile of shit, and I spent my youth hating him for all of those exact same behaviors. I dunno what finally let me see it, but it took way too long to get there.
Years later I would read a quote from (I think) Sylvia Plath about how “women are not machines you put the nice coins in until the sex comes out” (paraphrasing, didn’t Google) and that exactly defines how I thought about women.
By my late 20s I had begun correcting my perspective. I spent a lot of time working on what I have to offer, rather than what others can offer me. It improved the quality of all my relationships. I’m in my early 40s now, ten years into a wonderful relationship. I look back at myself and think about how small and fragile I was. Now I think a lot about time. How precious it is, and you can’t get it back. My partner now loves me so much, I want to try every day to return that love and be worth her time.
I see other guys at all ages living in the same sad little world I lived in. I wish I could run a seminar teaching dudes they aren’t that fucking great.
My experience echos yours. Bad examples of manliness, seeing things as transactional, and being so focused only on myself.
Making friends with some really great people and getting treated for depression helped me break free from the cycle and start putting others first and understanding myself more had really helped me be a person that other people can enjoy being around.
Can you elaborate on your second sentence some? Trying to understand better where this comes from
My dad has a narcissistic type of personality. I’m going to just insert this bit from Mayo Clinic to save me a ton of time.
So long story short, a lot of treating the world like it owes you something and being an asshole to people when they don’t live up to your unreasonable expectations. Everything had to revolve around him, and that is the example I got, as I wasn’t around many other adults.
Relationships were transactional. I did this, this, and this, so now you owe me this, no excuse. It’s like grinding in a game. Complete these objectives, earn this reward. But that isn’t how life is. You can do as you please, as nice or rude as you want, but so can everyone else. If I did something nice for someone, that should be out of wanting to be nice to them, not to make them owe me something and being rude if they don’t see it that way.
In the OP’s nice guy scenario, guys will compliment someone, do them a favor, listen to them when they need someone to talk to, and not see that as being a friend or supportive person, but basically as points. I helped you, so now you should owe me a date, for instance. You see the boyfriend thing not as a partner, but a business relationship. I did this, so why aren’t you doing that? You aren’t thinking of building an equal partnership with someone, you are being selfish and inconsiderate of them as their own person. It’s totally hollow, because even though another person is there, they’re not really actively involved in the relationship, they are basically a game piece in your eyes when you think that way. You don’t care what they want or feel, you see it as they owe you something. And who would want to be with someone like that? But a person with that mindset can’t place themselves in the other person’s shoes and they lash out of anger instead. The other person will usually just WTF on out of there, and I don’t blame them.
So much of my life has been me losing friendships for having an egocentric view like this. Everyone tires of it eventually. Some last longer, others see how you are right away. I am constantly reminded of such cringe stuff I’ve done, and now that I understand it after getting medicine for my depression, I was able to see what I was doing and fix it. I found better examples of how to be a respectable person, and made friends with women instead of trying to “win” them. Now I’m able to be an interesting and well rounded person that people will naturally like…usually. Some people will still dislike you, not want to date you, or be rude to you for no apparent reason, but that’s just how it goes, and I can handle that now.
I’ll shut up now, since that’s a lot, but if you want to hear more about anything else, or if I’ve missed the mark on what you’re looking for, I can talk more.
This one hit home for me. I had solid friends who I thought would be lifelong friends, but even they tired of my constant sarcasm and annoying tendencies. When you’re constantly a drag to be around, why would others want to hang out with you?
Yes, I lost some really great people along the way. But I understand it perfectly now why they felt they had to move on from me.
I’m glad we can have conversations like this here. It feels really important to discuss this, and I hope the person I think that inspired you to make this post reads this and can turn his life around.
It isn’t always easy to publicly admit we used to be this way, but I feel it benefits the community as a whole.
That’s what I thought personally, there were some nice-guy incel posts being posted here, and I’m open about what I used to be. God knows when I was younger I was looking for guidance, I can’t imagine looking now and seeing all those “alpha male” bros on the internet, it probably is tempting. They’re saying all the easy answers, that it’s women’s fault, that you just gotta be more manly.
I’m proud of what this space is, where we can be open and honest, and I hope that the person who inspired the post reads through this. It is not the easy path, but it’s the best path forward.
This right here. Exact same thing for me.
Your first line of how it all seems stupidly obvious now is so true. But that’s the thing about being self-centered, that you can’t get any other perspective on it.
I’m glad you were able to get out of that cycle!
It’s still there. If my little ego gets bumped too hard, or someone isn’t having any of my shit on an off day my knee-jerk reaction is to go right back to that place. But I try to keep my poop in a group, most of the time.
Poop in a group is good 😄
And it was depression that was keeping you in that mindset?
After getting my depression treated, I was able to really work on myself better and have lasting results. With the untreated depression, it was like trying to rebuild a house while it was still on fire. I’d try to fix one part of my while the other stuff was still actively messing me up. Getting treated let me let go of a lot of things that were just a byproduct of my own mind and focus on what the root causes of things were. I wasn’t reliving slices of all my previous bad days every day. I could come to terms with things in my past, see what I did that was cringe/jerky/etc and understand it and see better ways to go through life.
It was far from a quick fix, and I still have to live with that part of me, ala The Babbadook. This year in particular has been very hard on me. Medication just lets me manage it, it does nothing to fix core problems. That’s why many people go to therapy in addition to medication. Meds do just enough so I can sweep away the bad crap my mind tries to trick me with before it causes trouble.
What it feels like and how people react to it is different for everyone because we all have different brain chemisty and different underlying and associated issues. For me, a quick visit to my GP and a cheap Rx for Lexapro gave me what I needed. My partner had a much harder time and it took a few years to get sorted out. She also talks to the therapist and has done DBT programs and group therapy to get where she is, while I usually do ok on my own or just talking things out to her or friends.
It can be a real struggle, but it really sucks being your own worst enemy and is far, far worth it to talk to a medical professional if you think you are having problems. No matter where you try to hide from things, you can’t escape your own mind, and it knows every way to really mess you up if it wants to. It isn’t being weak and it doesn’t mean you are a bad person, it’s taking personal responsibility for yourself. You wouldn’t try to heal a broken leg yourself, and a mind is no different. Some things are best left to the pros.
Huh. So the depression was using up so much mental bandwidth it made the difference between being able to reflect and improve and not being able to. Interesting. I’m glad you’ve figured it out.
Parents modeling shitty behavior definitely happens, but usually kids gravitate towards or away from it pretty continuously, depending on their own personality.
I always knew he was a bad example, but having to grow up in that environment gave me a crappy set of social skills for when I was in the outside world from my family. I had to play the transactional game to stay out of trouble, and worry about my own well-being for most things. From spending my whole development years that way, I knew his behaviors were bad, but without any other context, I couldn’t grasp that I was doing much the same things. I was just being me and what I felt I had to do.
There’s obviously a lot left out of the story, it’s 40+ years of life. I started making progress acting like a decent human in my later 20s / early 30s as I moved out and started meeting better people and being able to spend more time around them. After my wife divorced me, I spent a lot of time by myself reflecting and that was when I went to the doctor about depression as I was completely humbled and ready to face up to having problems I couldn’t fix on my own.
After getting medicine, it was the last boost I needed, as I was able to let go of a lot of things holding me back. Whenever something would go bad, it would feel like it would drag every memory of me screwing up or people “screwing me over” back up to the surface and it would just swallow me whole. I couldn’t get anywhere because I’d just go into survival mode and shut down. Medicated me can tell those memories to shut up because I need to tend to the current thing that needs my attention. Which at that time was for me to stop being a jerk.
I still get mad at myself for all the bad things I did to people and to myself, but now they moreso serve as a reminder to stay being my best than something that really haunts me. Everything is just more manageable is about all I can say. It’s hard for me to really accurately verbalize my feelings through all these time periods without really taking a ton of time. I just think a lot of people, especially men these days, suffer with a lot of this stuff, and I’d rather rehash my worst times than see people get sucked down deeper into manosphere and incel crap. I haven’t forgotten for a second how bad and lonely those feelings are, and I don’t want to see other people go through it feeling alone.
Wow, congratulation on coming all the way back from that!
Thank ye. I am much happier now, but I’m also super ashamed that it had to happen at all. Like how long it took me to realize that all people are equal is super lame. I think about it all the time. It scares me how easy it would be to just not care about anyone and behave however I want, and just move through life like that. Like a lot of people do.
Interesting answer. Would you mind trying to explain a bit how you think you got that way in the first place? Where do you think that early mindset came from?
I mean my parents are not good people. Huge part of it. Alcoholism and anger pretty much ruled the roost in my childhood.
Not that it alleviates me of any blame, but I’ve always been very comfortable with negativity and confrontation.
I also think they’re is a lot of it that comes from "children raising children; " In regards to how much behavior I learned from boys my own age, and boys only slightly older, but no less ignorant.
It’s funny how sensitive I was to anything remotely hurtful, and simultaneously completely without empathy for anyone of any kind.
How did you managed to find time to work?
I mean, the only real convenient part of an existential crisis is that its with you, every minute of every day. So being a bag of shit goes with me everywhere!