Diary of the Despondent

December 31, 2019December 31, 2019 / T Wayne Hicks / Leave a comment

One of my favorite bands is Breaking Benjamin. I discovered them in 2005 after a sales symposium I went to and a colleague from Pennsylvania mentioned his close to home town band had hit it big with primal screams, towering riffs, and ice-cold lyrics.

And as I grew fonder of them, one of their songs, with probably nothing to do with the subject, hit home as an anthem for the forever plugged in male attitude that I’d experienced for the vast majority of my current adult life.

“The Diary of Jane”, which officially has something to do with a movie star from the ’40s, I think, had lyrics that screamed through my head as the forever hopeful beta man who’d prayed, pined, and yes, even wept over that “perfect” girl for him, the girl that he loved that didn’t love him. The lyrics tell the tale…

“If I had to I would put myself right beside you
So let me ask you,
Would ya like that? Would ya like that?
And I don’t mind If you say
This love is the last time
So now I’ll ask,
Do ya like that? Do ya like that?

Something’s getting in the way
Something’s just about to break
I will try to find my place
In the diary of Jane
So, tell me
How it should be?

Try to find out
What makes you tick As I lie down
Sore and sick
Do ya like that, Do ya like that?
There’s a fine line
Between love and hate
And I don’t mind
Just let me say,
That I like that, I like that

Something’s getting in the way
Something’s just about to break
I will try to find my place
In the diary of Jane
As I burn another page
As I look the other way
I still try to find my place
In the diary of Jane
So tell me
How it should be?

Desperate I will crawl
Waiting for so long
No love, there’s no love
Die for anyone
What have I become?

Such was my lot in life throughout my 20’s and briefly after my divorce before I truly became knowledgeable about the ways of things.

Rationalizing Dust

As with most times in the lives of our current modern men who are lost, I call the 10 years between 18 and 27 of my life the “lost decade” simply because I felt I squandered my youth on the fruitless pursuit of true love, passing on from one female crush to the next, desperately hoping that this girl would love me. I didn’t have sex, I kissed four women, I rarely dated, hung with friends, played a shit ton of video games, and generally went from woman to woman like some damn episode of Quantum Leap, hoping that my next crush would be the one that set me free, that this love would be “the one”.

Pathetic? Sure. But when you see that many men are taking this path these days, it’s becoming more problematic seeing men, young men, believe the lies that I believed, and be balls deep in the fiction. My lost decade involved crushes on 5 girls, each who came into my life on more than one occasion, and each time, I was convinced fate, more than anything else, would show them that I was the guy for them.

But fate, or as I now prefer it, “rationalizing dust” is a losing and sometimes deadly game for men.

Fate, hope, and destiny are banners for the weak. I firmly believed, at my young age, that I only had partial control of my life, and these three magic words above were truly in control. So I lived my life on these as fuel. If I truly wanted, yearned, and pined enough for a girl, that she would be mine. I would use any sign, any small gesture, even her talking to me, as a rationalization that “this is why we’ll be together, this is fate taking the wheel.”

Absolute madness.

But the harshest truths are the ones that we refuse to accept, simply because it goes against all we think we stand for, all that we were told we believe. And we as men don’t want to believe such things, because not only does the truth not spare our feelings, it kicks the living shit out of us and then makes us get up for more. We want the feel-good story. We root for the underdog. But as you know if you’ve done any gambling, the underdog seldom wins. And consistently playing that role as a man looking for a woman will yield terrible results, not because of fate, destiny, or magic fucking words, but because of brutal, cold, real, reality.

Call it a pill. Call it whatever you want, but it’s the hardest, most real, most unfortunate truths about women that I didn’t, nay, refused to recognize in my gumdrop, lollipop, unicorn world of hopes and dreams. And these truths are what make or break men in their dealings with the opposite sex.

Fate is fantasy. It’s the belief that something will happen, and when fleshed against the rigidness of reality, it buckles like a belt.

The girls that I fell in love with never cared for me. In fact, more often than not, I was a nuisance to them. And, as the lyrics above opine, most, if not all of the time, I didn’t even register in their psyche. No pages in their diaries for me. None. Zip. Zilch.

Years of my life were wasted on girls who didn’t give two shits about me and never would. I should’ve done more, been more, worked on myself more. Regret is a bitch, and you can’t get those years back. “Die for anyone, What have I become?”

Women who did like me weren’t the ones I wanted. And the ones I wanted would never return the affections in the way I wanted.

Romance isn’t dead, it’s just misplaced and misused by men desperate to prove something to women who don’t care if he proves anything or not.

There are always other dudes. And until you can prove you have better value than the majority, there will always be other dudes. Pragmatism trumps idealism every damn time.

Nothing you “do” will make her like you. She’ll find an attraction to you in how much you invest in yourself

Women are emotional creatures. That doesn’t make them bad, in fact, it makes them the exact opposite, but you have to know what to expect, how to deal with them, and their chaotic and unpredictable patterns that seldom side with logic. Men and women really are different, but that’s a good thing.

Hating women for being women is misogynistic. You believe that they are operating in bad faith. And while some of them truly are, many of them don’t realize they are, nor do they care to understand if they do. Hate the game, not the player. Societal advantages for women have been around for eons and will continue because they outnumber men on this planet. Majority rules. We can still rail against these disadvantages men face, but it won’t change the big picture.

With these truths in tow, many men need to move forward to their new lives under these truths.

But many men just can’t. Hence the title of this post.

The Six D’s of a Man’s Life Realization

I was there. I didn’t want to believe any of this. I still fought every day to believe the fairy tale, but it didn’t matter. The plug was pulled and I was out there floating. Many men will just float for decades, hoping to find that the dream really was true, many others will just continue to live their lives as if they weren’t aware and be disappointed. Still more will try to rationalize the irrational, stretching their beliefs into taffy to justify the behavior of others. And unfortunately, many won’t either unplug fully or those that do end their lives because they can’t believe that they were so wrong.

They feel they’ve wasted their lives on a narrative that wasn’t true, not even close, and rather than accept the hard work needed to pick back up, they won’t. They let go.

However, I, among many other men in this sphere that have all unplugged (yes, they all have), are living proof that there is life after death. The old you dies with all of the false knowledge you had and the new you arises equipped to deal with this new reality. It’s harsh but one thing that I can say is that you can be stronger. You can survive this new environment with renewed hope because the hope now comes not from outside forces, but from within yourself.

Self-empowerment and improvement is a cornerstone of this new reality. Faith is put into yourself which makes you more able to survive and thrive.

Here’s the six D’s I used: Denial, Disappointment, Despondency, Discovery, Drive, Domination

My message is simple. It’s never too late for you. I don’t care if you’re 20 or 80. You take responsibility for your life, your beliefs, and your knowledge at the age you do and you then grow with it. The bitter pill isn’t bitter, it’s only bitter for those that refuse to understand that the bitterness is a phase on your journey and it too will pass.

I want to show men that even after the harsh truths above, the six D’s that they go through in this process. I’m writing about this very issue in my book. The seventh D, divorce, is in some men’s lives as well as a phase of discovery.

This isn’t self-help as much as it is self-information. Men need to be aware of all of this crap because I sure as hell wasn’t and I can tell you my father nor my grandfather was either. And with masculinity under attack, the numbers of single mother households growing and the daily messages I get from men struggling, it’s only going to get worse before we can stem the tide.

We’ve lost too many good men to their own weaknesses. We can’t lose any more. The message needs to get out and it needs to get out in a big way.

Women aren’t your problem. You are. Your pining over women is wasting your resources. You’ve forfeited your life direction for a fiction. Something that you can’t control. But you can control this. You can control what you do.

That’s why I’m here. That’s why I do what I do.

It will never change the fact that there will always be men that need help getting out of this morass they are currently stuck in because of society telling them what’s best for them rather than looking inside themselves. Weak men will always be a battle that needs fighting. But the real fight is getting this information to these men without it being attacked as being anti-female or misogynistic. It isn’t and never was. Male empowerment isn’t taking anything away from women, it’s sharpening the roles of each sex and playing to strengths that have been around for thousands of years and aren’t going to go away because of “feelings”.

So stop pining over a woman, deriding your despair into victimhood, and trying to justify the lies that have been told to you. Get out of your own head and get your ass to work. You’ll thank me when you get to the other side and see how fucking awesome it is.

Open your eyes and live. Your best years are ahead of you.

Resignation Superman

December 30, 2019December 30, 2019 / T Wayne Hicks / Leave a comment

There was a time, not so long ago, that men were superheroes. Many lost their lives in wars fighting against tyrannical dictators hell-bent on destroying a way of life we all hold dear, an idea we all cherish, that of freedom. These men were tough, strong, dedicated, purposeful, and fearless. The life they lived after their times of service paled in comparison to what they went through. As the wars faded and the men went back to work, they became their jobs, focusing on providing for their families and moving through their lives after traumatic events where they became heroes.

But, as it turns out, this may have been our best generation. Because as with all things that happen, when there are no wars and the enemy is vanquished, we become our own enemy. None of this was bad until the unintended consequences took over. With liberalism and the Sexual Revolution, men became not the saviors of our way of life, but the reasons we have wars, disease, and bad things. Without a real enemy, women turned against men, burning bras, railing about being oppressed, and declaring war on traditional gender roles, as if as of those were necessarily bad.

We went into the ’80s and ’90s and oughts continuing on a spiral down. Women not only wanted to be like men, but they also wanted men replaced and watered down to breeding stock. Ironically, they wanted men with guns to command men to be more docile. The emergence of the “doofus” father figure (Homer Simpson, Al Bundy, etc.) was a mainstay. He was the comic relief for the family that the mother was leading. Men became dumb, bumbling, and ineffective at leading their families, a far cry from the leading man of the ’50s and ’60s.

Men were now comic relief. And we were told by countless women championing equality that this was a new way forward. This was the future. Women were deserving of a man’s life without the consequences.

What’s funny, as my friend Jack always seems to succinctly point out, is that feminism as a whole is just making it up as they go along. They got the right to vote, so they pushed more. They have all the rights and privileges as men (despite their harangues about the mythical wage gap), but feminism can only thrive when they are a victim. Feminism is chaos, unorganized.

Ironically, women could not get these new rights without men with guns. That’s the catch here. And it also pisses women off something fierce, which is why you see feminism angered about the armed forces and men in uniform. They can’t stand that they have to rely on men to enforce their whims.

The problem with feminism, as there are so many to even count or comprehend, is that in order for it to flourish, it has to demonize the other sex. It just can’t be happy in its femininity, with all of the great things that women bring to the table just by being beautiful, feminine women. It had to have more. It had to have the benefits of being a man while avoiding pitfalls. But here’s the issue: Feminism is dying. How do I know? Because they’ve gotten everything they wanted, now they have to weaken men by claiming “toxic” masculinity. That same toxicity that saved our world from evil men just 80 years ago has been shit canned for the chaotic, uneven, absolutely bastardized version of civil rights in this new decade.

Men can use women’s bathrooms, white men are the devil, and more grievance-mongering by the radical, feminist left. And it will get worse before it gets better, but I can assure you, it will get better.

The Push to Weaken Masculinity

There has been a concerted effort to weaken masculinity for years now and it has crescendoed into an active effort to demean, clinically oppress, and undermine men and what they stand for.

And unfortunately, many men are letting it happen. Rather than keeping sharp and raising their levels, many millions of men have given up, happily floating through life as the do-nothing lummox, drinking with his friends, settling for sex once a month, gladly putting down his responsibility to the feminist wife who wants it all, until she doesn’t.

Men have relinquished their roles because it’s easy, technologically feasible, and encouraged by a society hell-bent on putting men on a path to oblivion. Gone are the days of men who would take control of their families, lead despite opposition, and do the tough things it takes to be a man in the 20th and now 21st centuries. Men were given a “get out of jail free” card and they took it by the millions until the feminine imperative decides to chaotically change the rules again.

That’s the deal here. Men are letting the chaotic flow of feminism take them to wherever it goes, and even the females leading the charge have no freakin’ clue how to direct the river. They just see what they can get away with and run with it. Whatever they feel they can justify and move the needle any more in their favor, they will take. But what’s happened?

Instead of taking power, women have found that what men do is tougher than they thought. They’ve found that living the man’s lifestyle while rewarding to a certain extent, is hard. Women who were strong leaders in their 30’s are now on dating apps because no sane minded man will date them. Their feminist, militaristic views of where men should fall in the new order will result in them simply settling for a man who is a weak, delicate supporter, just to get laid more than likely.

What these women fail to realize is that by weakening men, they’ve cut their nose off to spite their face. They’ve taken the foundation away from a strong society and replaced it with only gravel, which with one shake will give way.

Men have given up because they don’t believe the fight is worth the fuss, they just don’t care anymore, or will gladly let the women do the heavy lifting. Laziness, indolence, and selfishness have continued to be the cards millions of men punch because society has allowed them to do it. What will it take to get them back?

Resignation to Reconquest

I believe that men’s natural drive to lead will come back. The resignation will be short-lived because men are needed to take their rightful place as patriarchs and foundations of strong societies. When human beings attempt to ignore their natural preclusion to a hierarchy, Mother Nature works it all out in the end by replacing the weak man with the strong. History time and time again has shown that societies with strong men at their center thrive and grow. It happened with the Greeks, Persians, Chinese, Romans, Arabs, and Christians.

What feminists fail to realize is that their little victories trying to demonize men will eventually cost them the whole war, because they don’t want to recognize humans’ natural tendencies to arrange into the male-female hierarchies that dominate our history. Every time we as a human race attempt to break away from Mother Nature, she pulls us right back into our natural tendencies. We can’t break free of nature, even if we have a higher capacity of thought than any other animal. It still doesn’t change our insides, our hearts, our bodies, and how we operate.

Nature still wins. And in this case, nature will continue to win until we stop fighting it and start cherishing our natural heritage. If we don’t, then we will go the way of so many empires before us, much sooner than they did, because we refuse to pick up a weapon out of shame from our supposed female “betters”. They aren’t our betters, no one is. They are complimentary. Working together as natural allies is the only path forward.

Having hurt feelings doesn’t do you much good when facing a loaded gun.

Being trite or dismissive will get your throat slit by those who don’t give a damn about anything else but their own survival.

All of this technology, the borders we have, the walls we erect, are meaningless unless there is a Superman to help enforce it. And those Supermen, every day, stand a post with a gun and watch those who wish us harm. And if they resign, God help us.

But I feel good knowing that I stand a post in my own life as opposed to the millions of men who’ve unknowingly put their guns down for a life of luxury and no responsibility. I feel like those men will either fall off naturally or pick up a weapon because one way or the other, it’s going to happen at some point.

One of my favorite groups of the ’90s was Big Head Todd and the Monsters, and my favorite song by them is the title of this particular blog post. The lyrics of their song bite deep. What happens when men decide to put down their guns and stop fighting for the world that needs them?

He’ll come flying out of this town
A resignation superman
And today the bad guys win
‘Cause he turned his cape in
Now, he says
And I’ll turn my back on this world
Yes, I’ll turn my eyes from this world
Oh well … Yes, he’s tired of fighting in this town
All the suffering and vice
He wants to fall in love
Maybe settle in and live a life
And I’ll turn my back on this world
Yes, I’ll turn my eyes form this world Oh I want to believe in you now that I’m suffering
Oh lord, I need to receive your hand in my heart And he keeps an eye upon this town
The resignation superman
He’ll keep himself amused
With the evening news
Oh my …
And I’ll turn my back on this world
Yes, I’ll turn my eyes from this world
Now I broke my back on this world
Now I’ll wash my hands of this world Oh I want to believe in you now that I’m suffering
Oh lord, I need to receive your hand in my heart

The strong men are still here. They just need to be awoken.

The Narrative

December 18, 2019 / T Wayne Hicks / Leave a comment

Ah, Hollywood.

For decades now, the city out west has been trying to define pop culture and change society. Hollywood and it’s products have a larger effect on people than we realize, especially in defining changing roles in the world between the sexes. Hollywood has always been a catalyst for change, but with more and more people watching more and more Netflix, movies, etc, you start to see patterns develop on how Hollywood and the liberal culture that drives it want men and women to behave.

And as a younger man, I fell for it hook, line and sinker. With such a far reaching entity such as this, it’s bound to affect many people with it’s misleading stereotypes as well as it’s fairy tale endings that always seem to work out for everyone involved at just the right time.

When I was terminally single in my 20’s, I always watched a ton of movies and shows that were showing the plight of the single man and how if he just did that one nice thing, a gorgeous woman would drop out of the sky for him, and he would live happily every after.

The sell for TV shows like Friends, movies with Hugh Grant, etc., was that no matter how emasculated a man was, his quirky, funny, and wholeheartedly feminine self would always get the girl in the end, because that’s how it always works, right?

Many of the producers of such shows were either women trying to project what they thought men should be like, or weak willed men who truly believed, as many millions of men before and after them have been raised to believe, that men were supposed to be nice. Niceness, in all of it’s unfettered, unmotivated glory, would get the girl in the end.

I’ve spoken at length on the nice guy phenomenon and how I was just like all those other guys, truly believing that the Hollywood way was the only way, as this was all you ever saw on TV in my time (90’s). Ross Gellar was going to get Rachel. Everyone roots for the underdog. The problem is, like you see in many sports these days, the underdogs don’t win very often because they aren’t the quality of the winners. But where did all of this perpetual bad dating information resonate from?

The “Just Be Yourself” crowd and most of the other feminized sects of TV came from feminism and it’s influences creeping into TV and movies. The real start of this intrusion was in the 90’s, right about the time the male tough guy hero was at his peak and as the ought of the 21st century came around, gone were the tough guys and out of the blue appeared the guys who were quirky, socially awkward, video game nerds who weren’t particularly masculine, but still commanded the female attention because this was how it was supposed to be.

I was a nerd, still am to a certain extent. I had two friends in school and they had no friends. I played Dungeons & Dragons, Magic the Gathering, video games of all shape and size in the 90’s. Generation X, my generation, was the generation that was going to re-define men in to a more pleasing, less conflicted feminism induced shape. And as I was that in spades, I decided to take the Hollywood version of the “Homo Novos” and apply it to my life, with disastrous consequences.

I literally went out into the dating pool with the “poor me” syndrome that permeates modern men and their single lives. Never did I try to learn a new skill, work on improving my life, or even get my whole career in shape. I focused on looking for women and trying to look as pathetic and needy as I could. Because that was what I was shown would work. Any woman I had any remote interest in, I would decide to be as nice as I could and my misery was the focus of my life. These miserable guys? On TV they would always be in a scene where they’re at the grocery store with sad music playing, pining for their “one”. And their “one” would feel sorry for them and come running. This is how it was!

Was I weak? Hell yes I was. But it wasn’t like the single man narrative was changing outside of the glowing electric box. Everyone in my world believed the same things I did. My friends, family, co-workers, every damn man I knew believed the same things I did. The ones that didn’t? The ones that never watched the crap. They were too busy winning football games, fighting the enemy on foreign shores, and cutting down trees into firewood.

As I no longer watch much TV or movies, I have been peeking in recently to see what Hollywood continues to try and sell men, and quite frankly, it hasn’t changed at all and if anything, this behavior has gotten much more ingrained into the male psyche.

The story’s the same. Man pines for any woman in his life, flash to him carrying a basket in the grocery store, sad music. It keeps replaying like a bad film with no audience, but the narrative has to continue to be pushed.

A man’s goal is not a woman, but watch any movie or TV show, and you see a man working towards that goal. The two dimensional place holder guys who are just there to prop up the “strong female lead” play the same role in every last movie they’re in. Men are secondary, females lead. Not at all how life was intended, but muh feminism.

I think of the movie “Rocky” and how all the narratives need to fall the way that one does. His woman was an afterthought in that movie. The goal was to win. The goal was to get better. The goal was to train.

The ultimate goal for any man should be what’s in his best interest. Whether it’s taking down terrorists to save the world, fighting an opponent in the ring, or finding out who the hell he is and loving that person, regardless, the whole fairy tale that Hollywood indeed gift wraps in a crap sandwich every month is a WOMAN’S fairy tale.

Every story that floats down the crapper water coming out of Los Angeles every week is a female’s wet dream. Men have no place in it except as breeding stock or arm candy. And it’s not as if women have had a chance to have better ideas, they just chose not to use them and instead pined for the days when they could be the “men” in the story.

And here, they now have it, and like clockwork, the feminization of media continues, but it’s not what women expected.

Nope, instead of getting billions of dollars for a new remake of the female version of Die Hard, they are getting shit canned by the American public, a group tired of listening to the tired wails coming from the place that used to be a magical town that defined masculinity in actors such as Cary Grant, Sean Connery, and John Wayne, and femininity in actresses like Katherine Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, and Grace Kelly.

Instead, it’s the narrative that drives Hollywood now. And as we saw earlier this year with “Joker”, Hollywood hates men, but men still sell, and sell very well, and will continue to sell. Production companies aren’t selling a product as much as they are trying to push a way of life, but unlike in the decades before, this way of life is turning off a majority of the American public.

The bottom line of this and every other story that’s come out of that town is what makes money will ultimately win over. Why a flick with a strong male lead is a dying breed is a feminist wet dream, but the strong male lead will continue to be successful.

And men aren’t going anywhere.

Get Away From the Box

So, that begs the question, what can we do?

Well, my biggest issue that I had to overcome was to recognize the crap and get the garbage out of my life. The narrative can’t be disseminated if it’s not being watched.

So turn the damn thing off.

The best part about my life is that I’m not shaped by the events on an electronic screen. And I appreciate that my views are no longer influenced by a device that has no interest in my life, only my money and my time.

When you start to realize that none of the FICTION that is produced in those studios have any relevance in your life, you’ll look forward to making your own movie, under your own direction, about the triumph that your life truly is.

I really wish that I would’ve discovered this sooner in my life, because my ignorance got the best of me and my real beliefs that this was how the world really was drove me into my marriage and my fake life until 4 years ago.

Unplugging isn’t just about taking responsibility for your life, it’s truly about unplugging from all devices that give you a false sense of what’s really going on out there. It really is the Matrix, because it’s developed by people with an agenda that really don’t care about you or your problems, but want to spread a belief or behavior that they wholeheartedly endorse.

Taking responsibility for your life begins with accepting what is real and what isn’t. And a narrative parroted on TV isn’t real life.

It never was.

The Chasm

December 8, 2019 / T Wayne Hicks / 2 Comments

Four years ago this week, one of my good friends from college ended his life.

He was having a huge custody dispute with his ex-wife after she cheated on him with one of his friends. He was fighting for visitation rights for his two kids after he and his ex got into a fight and he was arrested and slapped with a restraining order. He had struggled for over a year with the divorce proceedings, losing his cool time and time again and seeing less and less of his kids.

So, the great equalizer, so he thought, was breaking in to his ex-wife’s apartment on a cold December Sunday and blowing his brains out in her dining room.

I can’t be sure of why he acted with such horrendous judgement. I can’t be sure that he was tired of the process and had no where to turn. He was alone, fighting for his kids, and getting kicked and punched in a metaphorical sense by the courts and his ex, so it seems plausible. He was looking for a symbolic gesture, the ultimate “fuck you” to his ex. I can’t put myself in his situation, although I’ve seen similar things happen to men, but I can’t possible fathom what he was thinking that terrible Sunday.

The story that seems to stick from his family and friends is that he was going to “make an example to his ex”.

What ended up happening was nothing like he planned.

His ex, after the initial shock, quietly called the police, had them clean up the mess, fake mourned with the kids, and resumed her life. Everything this horribly symbolic gesture he thought was supposed to get out of her, regret, sadness, misery, being lost, pining for him to come back, didn’t transpire. She cashed the life insurance check, went to the funeral, and then went on with her life.

That’s cold shit. But it’s also fucking reality.

The bottom line in this sad situation is that the only people affected by his selfish act were his kids, who don’t have a dad anymore, and his family, who are without a brother, uncle, and son.

The harsh truth: His ex didn’t give a flying fuck about his death.

His family has suffered for years this time of year because he decided to make a life ending decision. Instead of a holiday filled with happy times with him, his family mourns every year over the loss of this man.

And there lies the crux of why men are doing these terrible things to themselves.

Suicide in the United States is quickly becoming an epidemic. 7 out of 10 suicides are men. These men are similar in mindset to my friend. They feel they have to struggle with life’s problems alone, lest they be ridiculed and made to feel inferior for not dealing with their problems “like a man”. These men don’t go to therapy, as they think it makes them look weak, won’t solve their problems, or is a taboo brought down by other men who “have their lives together.” Society in general wants men to grow up and deal with their problems, but they give them absolutely no road map on how to accomplish that.

I’m sure, never in his wildest fantasies about his suicide, would he have imagined his ex coming in, taking a mop and bucket to his mess, wiping the walls with a wash cloth, and moving on with her life. Raw, isn’t it? It’s a messed up situation that he was hoping would end in his ex crying on his remains. But his story, just like all the others, ends the same. He’s not here anymore by his own hand. A selfish act intended to make a huge point ends up only costing some drywall, carpet, and bleach.

The chasm, or the breach that he was looking into, was one of symbolism, pain, hardship, and hopelessness that many men face everyday. But the issue here that I’m getting at is what they think they are doing by sacrificing their lives for some unknown principle, belief, or slight against someone, doesn’t even affect that person most of the time.

Men who feel they have no where to turn will often take their own lives because they lack any sort of out for their overwhelming feelings of depression. Many don’t want to go to therapy, join a men’s group, or talk to a religious leader because they fear they will look weak, be ridiculed, or have their dirty laundry aired to the congregation during Sunday brunch.

So they double down on doing the things they were doing that weren’t working to get out of the hole they’re in. Their feelings of potential embarrassment about being “broken” or needing help override their very real need to seek out professional or group help.

Don’t Be Afraid to Get Help

As I write this, I think about my own denial about getting help for my issues, until I actually broke down and went to a therapist. While therapy is STILL to this day looked down upon as being weak for men to do by society, it was the greatest thing that I have ever done. Not only did it help me get out of a tailspin of a marriage, it also got me my life back. It got me through the depression and rock bottom parts of my divorce where I was contemplating doing the same damn thing my friend did 4 years ago.

I got help, and I’m here today to tell men once again that getting help from someone, any one, will save your lives. But you have to reach out. Trust me, the help is there. I’ve found a men’s fraternity that has given me new life and more help than I could ever imagine. These new fraternities or men’s groups have the potential to help men so much. Therapy and talking to a neutral party can help a man get out the shit that’s weighing him down and making him suffer. The times are changing, but men’s problems are still the same. There are many outlets for you to grow and get better, but it starts with you getting over the idea that you, yourself, can get out of this mess. If you could, you wouldn’t be in it any more.

The chasm that many men face is too daunting, too difficult, too dark to try and traverse. So they give up and fall in. What they don’t see, what they never see, is the bridge just off in the distance, or the chasm closing a few miles down, or the path down the chasm that takes them to the other side with a little bit of work. Their vantage point is one of hopelessness, only seeing where they are standing at that point in time, looking down at their feet and the endless below. They can’t see, or perhaps don’t want to see, the whole picture because it doesn’t fit in their narration of how their life tragically ends. They put an emphatic period on their story by falling into the chasm without even stopping to think who it will affect, how, and why.

She Doesn’t Care

This brings me to the other issue of this blog post, that of the why. Many, many men commit suicide over a woman in their life. They see that she’s cheated on them, so just like my friend, their great equalizer is supposed to be a tragic death throe as their ex dives at them in horror at what they’ve done.

Let me be blunt guys.

The only women that you’re hurting when you pull the trigger are the women in your family. They’ve lost a son because he couldn’t get over a girl who easily got over him. Your sacrifice doesn’t mean SHIT to any girl that you feel it will. Your ex-wife or girlfriend doesn’t care about you killing yourself because of her. She’s already rid of you and all you’ve done is pointlessly, selfishly, ended your life to see what she’ll do.

You won’t fucking see it because you’ll be DEAD.

Many men don’t think any of this through when jaded by a lover or ex.

They just pull the trigger.

The pain of your loss won’t be felt by anyone except those that love you. You are selfishly stealing years away from them because you can’t handle the fact that a woman cheated on you, or left you. This is where you precisely need to “man up”.

Go to therapy, unplug and take control of your life instead of letting a woman with no interest make you do terrible things to yourself.

Crossing the Chasm

I miss my friend. I miss him every day. I miss him even more now knowing that I didn’t reach out like I should have, but even if I had, I don’t think he would’ve taken my help. What can men do to help? What can men do who are struggling? How can they cross the chasm?

I will recommend to men exactly what I did.

First, recognize you have a problem and you can’t solve said problem without help. It’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay to reach out if you’re struggling. How will you overcome obstacles if you don’t have help?

I think of it like my Spartan career. When I trifecta’d in 2016, I needed a team of people to help me overcome obstacles. Sure, the ones I did alone made me feel like a bad ass, but still, I needed help with a wall, the rope climb, or a traverse wall, I had to have another man help me out. No shame in admitting that, nor is there shame in accepting the help. I still got my medal and my t-shirt, and I did it with teamwork. The same goes the other way. You can help others who need it by reaching out and asking them how they truly are, how their life is going, and where their hangups are.

Men have to realize that ANY chasm is not an impossible task. There are bridges, other people, and choke points that will get you across. You just have to believe. Just like lack of belief is strong in determining if a man will take his own life, the reverse can help save it. If a man knows there are ways out of his situation, he will be more willing to trudge on and fight. It’s when that belief doesn’t exist that he will spiral down into telling himself it’s hopeless.

It’s not hopeless, gentlemen.

It’s never hopeless.

I’m a shining example of what can be done if you truly reach out for help. I’ve only gained in my masculinity and my manhood by asking other men to help me achieve things in my own life.

Guys, if you are struggling with thoughts of suicide and depression in your life, the first thing you have to do is recognize the problem. The second thing you need to do is seek help from either a therapist, religious leader, or a men’s group of like minded men. The third? Action.

These things alone will help pull you from the chasm and get your life back on track. But be prepared to understand that it’s still on YOU and that you must take these steps to get your life back. The men can help you on the path, but you still have to take the steps to make it happen. Accountability and tough love are in for you, because you aren’t special, your problems are the problems of many other men, and a greater man can overcome these problems with relative ease compared to you.

You can’t just float and hope the wind blows. You still have to take positive, real ACTION for your life to get better. That’s the way it is and that’s the way it will always be. But the sooner you take action to pull yourself away from the chasm, the quicker your life will become a special work of art that has meaning to you again.

Guys, suicide and depression are real problems. I’m not going to pretend they don’t exist. But you have to reach out and get help. You have to accept you have a problem, you have to accept that you need help, and you have to accept the action needed to be taken by you to get past this.

Don’t be a statistic like my friend. I miss him every day. His family misses him. He took his life because of issues he couldn’t get over. He didn’t ask for help. He is no longer here. Please, please reach out for help.

My DM’s are always open on Twitter. My email is bubonicplague7@gmail.com. Reach out for help. I’m here for you.

The Single Mom Dating Dilemma

December 6, 2019November 17, 2020 / T Wayne Hicks / 1 Comment

At 43 and single, I’m finding many of the dates I’m having with women in their 30’s and 40’s are with women who are single mothers. This was going to be inevitable as I am trying to date as many different women as I can all while getting to know who I am, what I like, gaining experience in dating all types of women.

So it goes without saying that dating single mothers is extremely complicated. Many women are not choosing to be single mothers on purpose, so you have to be aware that there are major reasons why they are single. From reasons like a boring marriage or lack of sex to more serious issues such as spousal abuse, drug addiction, or adultery, these women have been through some serious stuff and for many, it has scarred them for a very long time, if not for life.

Many of those women have major trust issues, lack of sexual appetite due to major abuse or trauma, and are embittered by their exes’ lack of commitment to them in their time of need. Plus, on top of this, you have a society that empowers single mothers to be victims all while shaming and berating men who had nothing to do with the situation. Add in the State as a third party to the marriage and you have the makings of a giant dumpster fire.

There’s a huge stigma in the manosphere about single mothers and with very good reason. Many of them are damaged, bitter, and just plain unpleasant. There are men like Rich Cooper and others that are leading the charge against single mothers as damaged, not worth your time, and swearing off on them altogether. And with all the terrible examples out there of women who have taken their situations out on everyone else but themselves, it stands to reason that some of those assumptions that Rich makes are correct. He’s right about many single mothers who become almost militant feminists in a crusade against men. He’s right about the sense of entitlement in single motherhood and I’ve seen it first hand in the dating world. There is a noticeable amount of women who act this way, and Rich is correct to warn men about them. They aren’t looking for a complete relationship with another man. They’re looking for a meal ticket, a support check, or are ready to manipulate an unsuspecting man who is looking for sex and letting thirst drive his needs.

While my endorsement of Rich will no doubt get me some blowback from the other side of the manosphere, I will tell you that while I agree with him on many things about single mothers, it’s a bit more complicated, especially as a man who’s currently in the dating pool full tilt and is seeing these things every day. What am I saying?

I’m saying it’s not all cut and dry, black and white, solid 100%. There are many types of single mothers out there and while many are absolutely monstrous, I can attest that there are just as many that are wonderful people. So what’s the difference? The difference is the amount of responsibility they take for their lives. Let me explain.

The Camps

I put these women into 4 camps. Camp 1 is the worst of the worst. Feminists, militants, anti-men who blame everything else on their lots in life. These are the moms who get triggered by doing anything remotely having to do with pleasing a man, instead blaming all men for their ex’s terrible behavior. Camp 2 is women who are less militant but still have a very clear bias towards men and especially their exes, blaming them for all the unfortunate things that have happened to them, but not all the way to man hatey status. Camp 3 are women who have softened and are accepting the fact that they can’t continue to blame men and their exes for issues. They have taken a certain amount of responsibility for the directions of their lives and are trying to get out of the tailspin that the lack of blame for themselves had put them in. And finally, Camp 4 is the reformed, feminine single mom. She’s not making excuses, pulled up her big girl pants, and has completed herself in a flourishing manner. She also won’t put any blame on anyone anymore, and also won’t deal with weak-minded men either.

The type of men that these women will search for is inversely proportional to which camp they belong to. In short, weaker men (betas) tend to gravitate towards the 1st and 2nd camps, where the 3rd and 4th get more mature, masculine men. Also, time is a huge factor in moving from 1st to 4th camps. Generally, the longer the time span from her being “wronged”, the more accepting she is of her circumstances and her faults in that choice.

Also, to no one’s surprise, women in the first two camps are usually more liberal than the last two. Camps 3 and 4 are learning more about personal responsibility and have let time hone them a bit, so they tend to be more feminine and conservative.

Camps 1 and 2 tend to look for weaker men to support them and their feminist crusade against the bad men that hurt them.

Camps 3 and 4 tend to look at themselves as independent and don’t blame. They look for men who are complete as they complete themselves.

Why do they go to these camps?

Many of these women married their alphas who rang their bell knowing that they were trying to change him. When they knew they couldn’t change him, they suffered through while enabling him for the sake of the kids or the marriage. They suffered through abuse, cheating, or worse.

Many women who are single mothers have endured emotional or physical trauma for this choice. But something kept them in the relationship. Maybe hypergamy, maybe sex, maybe duty, maybe something. But it’s kept them there too long and they struggle with why they couldn’t make him the way they wanted him because they were so hot for him.

Now, they are looking for a man for a meal ticket, a father to raise kids that aren’t his, or worse, both. I don’t recommend any man signing up for this if the woman EXPECTS him to help her raise the kids or provide money for her and this family.

They also feel like they have to blame other things besides themselves in order to overcome this hiccup. They overcompensate with being born again virgins, becoming radicalized feminists, focusing on their careers, or trying to wed a beta guy to try and show that their choice wasn’t the issue, it was the man and only the man. No amount of voodoo or choice is going to change the fact that she did indeed make that decision to sleep with, marry, have kids with, and enable the man she now blames for her lot in life.

The bottom line is owning a choice. Many single mothers refuse to believe that they had anything to do with the life they chose, that that life was thrust upon them as they were just in love and trying to make it work. It follows on the feminist line that women are infallible, incapable of bad things, and can’t be held responsible for their actions, which is horse shit.

It stems from a liberal, victimhood mentality that permeates the single mothers of our Western society. But I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t permeate them all. It doesn’t. There are good ones out there. I will explain.

NAMALT (Not All Moms Are Like That)

Where I split with some of the manosphere regulars is what I’ve found in the dating world. There are moms out there, good, hard-working moms, who are complete and wonderful. In my limited 3 years experience, I’ve found the rule more than the exception obviously, but I will say that I have gotten into relationships with good women who really were “wrong place, wrong time” types of women. They were dedicated, feminine, and supportive. They took responsibility for their lives. They didn’t let their single mom status divert them from trying to be successful. Many of them are conservative-minded and very family-oriented, yet also independent in accepting and overcoming their disadvantages. They have a man to raise their kids, their dad, or if they don’t, they aren’t relying on a man to raise them. They raise them on their own and don’t expect you to jump in and help, or worse, rely on you as a meal ticket.

While any “red pill cred” I had left with the manosphere may diminish by me saying that NAMALT, it’s something that I’ve actually witnessed in the trenches of dating. And as much as I agree with parts of the red pill argument, I still have to report what I see, honestly and upfront.

While we see some of the worse offenders through Rich Cooper, Rollo and others, we don’t see the success stories that I see, so that’s why I write this blog today.

So, gents, it’s up to you. If you don’t want to date single mothers, don’t. I’m not telling you to do it anyway. You have every right to live your life and date who you want. But I’m telling you that through my dating experiences, there are good ones out there, feminine, man-loving, good-hearted, supportive, beautiful mothers out there.

Hopefully, with this blog post, I can both assure men and also make them aware of the good, bad and ugly of the single mom world. Because there are ton of the last two with our society standing by as a willing accomplice.

But trust your gut and know that the good ones are out there. They are worth it.