Month: March 2020

The Family Contract

/ T Wayne Hicks / 2 Comments

So I don’t do a ton of dad posts on here simply because I have a lot of guys like me who are riding out the dating market, but I think that some things I’ve done in the past few weeks warrant me diving into this realm.

At this particular moment in our history, dads are needed more than ever.

So, as I move back and forth from a country traveler, dating enthusiast and woman lover to father, provider, and co-parent, I have a unique perspective into the world of the single father. And I’m still learning more and more.

More recently, my oldest daughter has been struggling with something that I struggled with my entire adolescence and young adulthood, anxiety and depression. I will say that I suffered from both when I was her age, but it hits home when your kid has to deal with what you had.

I should’ve prepared. I should’ve done more, but I didn’t. You can’t prevent your kids from having these issues, and indeed when they start to get them, you feel powerless to try to help. But there is a way you can help them.

Draw the Line and Abide By It No Matter What

So there we all were, in a quiet room, starting the discussion. I began:

“Today, we are going to be doing something we should’ve done a long time ago, we are going to draft a family contract. This contract will contain a list of covenants that we (all of us, no exceptions) have to accept as law in both of our households. We are all integral in crafting it, so everyone’s input is required. If at any time you choose to walk away from negotiations, you give up your input and still have to abide. Your mother and I are both giving you an opportunity to craft something meaningful that our family can get behind.”

So we did it. For three hours. It was the most amazing thing ever. Sure, there were laughs, tears, yelling, arguing, as well as some compromise. But each person got their chance to get their voice heard, and through careful crafting, we came up with 10 main basic rules that needed to be followed as the “Law of the Family”.

As in your own life, setting boundaries is of utmost importance in this aspect of family. Kids need to be taught about consequences, both good and bad, that are in effect and will be enforced. Parents as well should abide by the rules, as there were several set for myself and my ex by the kids, and we have consequences that we must enforce as well.

The main purpose of this family contract? Accountability.

We all needed it, yet for years, even during our marriage, we left it adrift, choosing inopportune times to enforce, or not, rules that weren’t printed, filed, or even signed in agreement. Too often, parents are the tyrants and their kids are the subjects.

“Do as I say not as I do” is a parenting method that relies on parental power of the adult to make the rules. This “might makes right” may have been the only outlet for parenting that we know because our parents did it.

I was spanked as a kid, most of the time knowing exactly what I did was wrong, but once again, my parents didn’t have a “10 commandments” of right and wrong, and it can be confusing for a kid, especially doing stuff that’s borderline.

This is where myself and my ex had to be different. Not only did we have the challenge of two different households, but the challenge of a divorce was also present. Luckily, I am on the same page with my ex. And that’s an important aspect that I will discuss…

Be On The Same Page

None of the above, and I mean none of it, would be possible unless you and your spouse are on the same page. You have to be united in both installing and following the rules to the letter.

This same page gets a bit more dicey when there’s a divorce involved.

The vital part of this whole thing was my relationship with my ex.

Ever since the end of our divorce, my ex and I have gotten along so well (even better than when we were married) that this installation of these rules was EXTREMELY easy.

But before you present the whole issue to the family at large, you must have the discussion with your significant other about what you plan to install.

We had a catalyst of troublesome behavior, talking back, too much time on electronic devices, chores not being done, etc, we had to take back the house with little fanfare, and let the children know that not only were we in charge, but they were going to have vital say in how the new rules were going to be implemented.

But something had to be understood. I and my ex had to get our issues out and resolved before we presented anything to our kids. You want a united front on this one, because not only does it give the kids confidence in the implementation of the rules, but you have confidence in each other when presenting and working through the rules.

Luckily, we have very few issues, but if you and your spouse or ex have underlying resentment, disdain, or problems, you have to resolve those first and be ready to uniformly implement the contract as if either of you were the same person. Kids will more often than not try to bend the rules depending on the parent present, which is where problems arise, because naturally one parent will let something slide while the other one enforces.

This gives the kids conflicting info and makes a confusing situation even more so, as well as unenforceable as both parents set different rules.

So being on the same page is critical for this to be enacted. Once you are, you have to set aside some time to get it down on paper with your kids. And please keep in mind, THIS WILL NOT BE QUICK.

There will be tears, because, you are finally setting boundaries for your kids, and depending on how long you’ve waited, it will take some time to get everyone’s input. It took us three hours on a Sunday afternoon to hammer out 10 rules.

But we did it, and the understanding we got, especially when everyone was involved to help craft, made this agreement as strong as our family bond.

There are consequences, and they are understood. There are rewards as well.

And yes, I had to stop goofing off and teasing people. And my ex had to be present and accounted for when the kids needed something.

We all have to do things in this family to contribute, which makes this agreement stronger by default. We also left the open room to re-negotiate after one week, which we now agreed was working well.

While many of the below rules are common sense, you have to write it down to make sure everyone understands, from limited time on iPads to school work to a proper bedtime routine to feeding pets, there has to be engaged action and reaction for each. Written apologies, actions versus words for good and bad things. All in there.

Mutual respect, everyone behaving better, and a strong contract still being followed is what we wanted, and slowly, it’s what we are getting.

And now, it sits in a public place (my kitchen) as a reminder of the agreement our family made to be better in all aspects of our life, and what consequences, both good and bad, will come of this contract.

I can’t recommend this enough for every family.

The Grey

/ T Wayne Hicks / 1 Comment

“Life is not a game, it’s a song.”

-Five Finger Death Punch, “Brighter Side of Grey”

The cold desert morning cut through me as I pulled out of the parking lot. I signaled right, even though I knew not a damn soul was out at this hour.

Just my own nervous habits, I guess. Making sure everyone knew where I was going, even though I didn’t want to leave.

My rental car cut through the chill in the air as I merged onto a desolate I-10 on my way back to Phoenix, on the way back to my old life, on my way back to my own reality. As I drove in silence, I realized what I had been dreading for the entirety of this trip was finally happening.

There were three things that I knew I couldn’t avoid and I knew were the honest truth of my current situation.

  1. I had to leave.
  2. I wasn’t coming back.
  3. I was never going to see her again.

We had shared our goodbyes in the early hours and we both knew it wasn’t going to be easy. But we both knew it was coming. We knew this wasn’t going to work, it never works, and with each of our situations, there wasn’t a chance in hell we were going to be different.

It seems exceptions only work for exceptional people with exceptional resources.

So I drove. The traffic was slowing as the sun rose on this picturesque scene in the middle of the Arizona desert.

Regardless of how it worked out, I still had a flight to catch, a life to go back to, and a world that wasn’t going to have her in it, no matter how many stars I wished upon.

Silence, sweet silence, gave me pause to think about what I had just experienced, the fun times, the great sex, the amazing people, the venues, the food, the weather, the world that I had a chance to broach for 6 wonderful days.

But I also knew that I was kidding myself if I was going to bring any of it back with me.

This isn’t Hollywood. I wasn’t riding off into the sunset with the woman I love after saving the day, I was riding off into the sunrise alone, heading back to my life.

With a heavy heart, I boarded the plane. I was never coming back here again.

“She’s only yours for a limited time.”

This is the struggle many men and more recently, myself, has had to come to grips with. There are certain things that float around the ‘sphere that we tend to make fun of as cliche, but when they boil down to it, they are correct.

This rings very true for many men. My last few relationships haven’t been relationships as much as they’ve been a quick window into what could be if circumstances weren’t working against me.

But that nasty word, “reality”, intrudes all too often to men who think romantically and not pragmatically. This is a red pill truth that is all too often beaten up because it is used in a way that tells men that they shouldn’t even try to have her in their lives.

Because indeed, it’s better to have her for the time you have her than to never have her at all.

This is all too often an excuse for men to avoid women, go MGTOW, and admit that Hypergamy, that horrible boogeyman to men, is an unstoppable force that men cannot overcome. She’s always going to be looking for a better dude than you, right? She’s always looking for another option, right?

The black and white that red pill purists are trying to have doesn’t work when you throw in the grey. It works in theoretical work, but when in the field, it tends to be determined differently in different situations. There are men on this side of the world that have been in long term relationships and marriages for a while now. But what makes them different is the fact that they’ve entered into it on their terms, under their own frame, and with the guidelines of a “REAL” reality that she can be there with them for the entirety of their lives.

The problem is that men need to be able to ascertain that regardless if she’s only going to be in your life for a short time is that your life is better when she was in it than when she wasn’t. Women in general fulfill men’s lives if men understand exactly why women do what they do.

The reason I traveled to Arizona was to have a vacation by myself, she was the very good icing on the cake, but I let myself get sucked into the mantra that “anything is possible” even when it most certainly wasn’t. Her life was in Arizona, mine was in Indiana. There wasn’t anything that was going to change that. She knew it and so did I.

But the “grey” I can take from the black is that at least I got to spend that time with her. I’ll probably never see her again, and that’s okay. Because I made the most of the time I had with her. And that’s where the pragmatic needs to show itself to men.

Men will try to move hell and Earth to make something happen romantically that shouldn’t. They’ll travel hundreds, even thousands of miles, rearrange their lives, and forgo things they shouldn’t because of the “special” times they have with a girl they connect with, never questioning if they should just chalk it up to a great weekend, week, month or year of having fun with a woman whom he connects with.

And while having to leave is certainly depressing, it helps to be grounded in a reality (especially mine), where the chances of anything happening past a great experience are nil. I have two kids, I have a business, I have a life of my own in my own state. I’m not going anywhere, nor would I want to. Even if I didn’t have my reality and was single, I wouldn’t change my entire life to pursue a woman, because there are many more important things going on that I’m building.

But it still doesn’t mean you, as a man, should avoid meeting women and experiencing all that life has to offer.

You can’t let the prospect of you potentially falling for a girl dissuade you from wooing her. You have to be able to disconnect, but you also have to remember….

The roller coaster of life is worth experiencing.

Women love and leave you and you MUST feel those feelings. It makes you a better, more lived, well rounded person. A tree that’s been through hell and back has the rings to prove it. It’s lived a life worth living. Are you going to look back with regret that you didn’t take that trip, meet that woman, have awesome times? No one wants to be regretting on their death bed.

It’s why I had to feel the gut punch as I left Arizona that day. If I hadn’t done everything I did, even knowing I wouldn’t see her again, what kind of life was I living?

The pain was worth every part of the pleasure.

Who wants to live a life that avoids living?

“Long Distance Relationships Don’t Work.”

Depends.

This is another manosphere mantra that for the MOST part is correct.

I’ve met a few couples who have managed to make it work, but knowing that one or the other was going to move (in most cases, her to him, him to her very seldom works out for anyone), they made plans. They have to not be too attached to their locations, but they would have to be committed to a life with you, and many women won’t or in my case, can’t, do that. They have families, they have roots, and so do you.

Men make the mistake of trying to make a long distance relationship work, especially with a woman who has many options around her that she doesn’t have to work for. Regardless of how much fiction I wanted to believe, there wasn’t a snowflake’s chance in hell that anything was going to happen that would’ve changed this. She doesn’t have to move, she has a ton of other options closer, and I knew this.

It still sucks, though.

I’m not saying it doesn’t. I’m just saying that when you get attached to a girl, especially one that lives far away from you, you have to be realistic about what is going to happen. You can’t rearrange your life for her, she doesn’t want that and you shouldn’t either. Enjoy the moment for what it was and move on to another moment.

There will be other girls, I promise.

But don’t kid yourself about making an LDR work. It’s a correct assumption that a majority of them don’t work out, either by hook or by crook, you’ll have to make that decision sooner rather than later, so get it out of the way. The longer it festers, the worse your recovery will be.

There are too many options around you right now that are both more advantageous by location, as well as financially beneficial. You can’t be flying back and forth from distant locations hoping to make it work when another dude can be in your lady’s house in 5 minutes. You have to think logistically.

I knew, quite accurately, that as the feelings subsided on that cold morning as I was driving away, that nothing was going to come of this. There wasn’t a magical ending that was going to bring her to me, or me to her. And there wasn’t anything that the mileage between us was going to solve, it was just making the truth that much easier to see.

But you can’t tell a guy in love this. He sees only the Hollywood ending, when he moves to be with the woman he loves, only to see her resent him the minute his plane touches down. She doesn’t WANT you to be with her, because if she did, she would be on a plane to see you. Guys have to realize the moment is just that, a moment, and if she wants anything more, SHE has to make that move.

When the guy makes the flight, the move, the life change, the timer is ticking on the end of the relationship.

I’m not saying never, but I’m saying it enough that men should avoid it.

You can’t force anything if she won’t make the move. Stop trying to force something that isn’t there.

Gotta Feel It

It blows.

The gut feeling that I felt as I drove away. The certain truth that I wasn’t ever going to see her again, the fact that I had to leave to go back to my life, and that she wasn’t going to be a part of it in any way, shape or form.

But I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Because the feelings I had when I saw her in person, all the great times I spent with her, the feelings we shared, the times we had, can’t be matched.

She’s an amazing person and I hope she can find a guy that will make her happy, but she and I aren’t it. I had a hope, but with all the available evidence and with everything that I already knew, there wasn’t a chance.

Hope can be an effective tool but it can also be a damaging self immolation and skewing of reality.

So we’ve moved on.

But you can’t be afraid to feel. You can’t be afraid to put yourself in situations where you’ll feel a plethora of different emotions. That’s life, that’s the reason you live it.

I’ve had a large amount of different feelings in my life, from joy during the births of my kids and my wedding, to defeat when I was struggling with depression during my divorce, to sorrow when I lost my friend who killed himself over his ex-wife, to hope when I log in and see a man’s DM to me saying I’ve helped him overcome something in his life he wouldn’t have without me.

But I do what I do, I go where I go to meet new people and experience life with others. There are always going to be peaks and valleys, but avoiding them altogether to avoid pain is a life not lived. Pain helps us grow. Pain helps us appreciate the times we didn’t feel pain. Pain helps us prepare for the good or bad times awaiting us in the future.

You can’t avoid it, so accept all the feelings in your life, because this is life.

Stop being afraid of everything hurting you and start preparing yourself for experiences you can tell your grand kids about, experiences you can use to fuel your life, experiences that fill the photo album of your mind and heart.

But most of all, stop avoiding your own reality. It’s good to escape to another world for a while and have some fun, but realize that you have your own life and there are many women out there who are clamoring to be a part of it. Women who are in your town, your church, your local area that are attractive and wanting a dude just like you.

Regardless of how I felt on that morning, driving back from a life that I couldn’t have, I got on the plane, and flew back home.

My life is here. I got off the plane, got home, hugged my kids, dried my eyes, and focused on the fact that there are many women who want to be a part of my life, and they don’t have to uproot their own existence to be there.

So my journey continues….

And to my beautiful Arizona woman, I want you to know that I cherished all the times we spent together, the talks we had, the moments we shared.

You are indeed a very special person, and I can’t thank you enough for making this time one of the most amazing times in my life.

I wish you the very best.

Stop being afraid to live you lives, men. You have a whole world out there to experience. Stop being afraid of pain, hurt, heartache, or disappointment.

It makes the times you succeed, truly fall in love, smile, and laugh much more enjoyable.

Never be afraid of the pain of getting burnt by the fire, because all the other things the fire brings you are more than worth it.

I still referred to this quote as a reason men need to face life with their chest out:

Never be afraid to feel.

There’s always a brighter side of grey.

I’m writing this in case I’m gone tomorrow
I’m writing this in case I’ve moved along
There’s something that I hope you’ll remember
That life is not a game, it’s a song

So take the best parts of me
Locked away without the keys
And know that I’m forever by your side

When the lights go down
Know that I am never far away
When the sun burns out
I’ll be waiting on the brighter side of grey

If you’re reading this, I know you’re feeling sorrow
If you’re hearing this, I know you’re probably scared
Just know that all the things you want are borrowed
And all you get to keep is all you’ve shared

So wipe away the tears for me
Know that we’ve made history
Remember no one ever really dies

When the lights go down
Know that I am never far away
When the sun burns out
I’ll be waiting on the brighter side of grey

When the lights go down
Know that I am never far away
When the sun burns out
I’ll be waiting on the brighter side of grey

Promises

/ T Wayne Hicks / Leave a comment
Photo Credit: wordsIseek.com

Back when my marriage was spiraling out of control towards the inevitable conclusion of divorce, I was having to justify my decision to end this union with all of my family, friends, and co-workers.

The unavoidable question would always start the conversations.

“Why did you do it?”

There were many reasons I tried to justify my actions, with these being the primary:

  • Sex was non-existent
  • We were two people running a business, not a marriage
  • No communication
  • Lack of understanding
  • Change averse
  • Staying married for the kids was toxic for said kids

But the biggest one, after 4 years of reflection of my decade long marriage, was one thing.

I didn’t keep my promise.

I had made a promise to my then girlfriend, future wife, and future ex on a cold day in Noblesville, IN at a Wal-Mart. And no, I didn’t propose to her there, or the marriage wouldn’t have lasted longer than Black Friday.

It was a serious conversation we were having about her father, who disappeared from her life for 5 years. She straight up told me about this rough time in her childhood, where she literally didn’t have a childhood because of a crazy ass mom and a dad who left her. She was essentially abandoned by her dad and in absolute disgust, her mom took her anger for her dad out on her, her sister, and her cousin. There they were, living together while their mothers did everything but raise them, and their father, at least for two of them, had essentially abandoned them.

She didn’t trust men, and why would she? Having that stuff happen made me realize that despite all of my parent’s issues, they stayed together, worked on stuff together, and truly loved each other. What compels a man to leave his family, even if he didn’t like his wife?

So there we were, on that day, talking about my commitment to her.

How I wouldn’t leave her….

How I wouldn’t run when the going got tough….

How I would be different than her father…

All because I wanted to make her happy.

I was keeping a promise because I thought that was what she wanted me to do. We had been dating for almost a year when this happened, and I wanted her to think I was different. I wasn’t. I failed.

A Choice

So, flash forward to the end of our marriage, my justifications for leaving, and my reaching for anything that would make this choice feel better.

There wasn’t a way to feel better, it just sucked. I had to go through two years of therapy to try and avoid the major issues confronting me and my marriage, and trying to find a way to keep my promise. I kept coming up short. I had written a check that was going to bounce. And it was past me’s fault.

I knew I’d be breaking my promise. It was all my fault for doing so.

I had told her that I wasn’t going anywhere, no matter what. I had made vows to the same commitment. I had reneged on my promise.

I hadn’t just broken it, I had shattered it, ran a lawn mower over it, and taken a sledge to the rest.

I’d made a promise to not leave her, no matter what, because I’d be proving her right, because men leave.

At every therapy session, at every discussion with my then wife, at every family function when asked “How are you guys doing?”, I had to think about my answer very carefully and lie to cover up the promise I made.

So here I was, breaking promises to family and friends to keep the promise I made to my wife. I had to miss events, I had to tell my friends I couldn’t hang out. I had to tell my co-workers they couldn’t count on me because my wife needed me to be there. And be there ALL THE TIME.

What promises are worth keeping? What promises are worth breaking?

NONE.

But what do you do when a promise you made is affecting your life so adversely that keeping it is destroying your soul?

What do you do when a promise you keep is keeping you from making other promises or worse, breaking promises to other people you love?

What the hell did I do? I was torn between a choice of the promise I made to my wife and promises I was breaking to everyone else, especially myself….

That was the reason I had to have two years of therapy to convince myself of the correct answer. No one was going to understand it except me, and even then, I would get backlash from all of the family and friends I was trying to protect by making this decision.

In other words, it was a shit sandwich with no choice but to take a bite.

When you make too many promises to too many people, you’re eventually going to be forced to break all of them….no matter the situation.

So I had some soul searching to do as I pondered my decision. I knew I needed to take my life back, because I had made a promise to myself to change, put myself back in charge of my life, stop doing things to make people happy and start doing things that made a difference in my own life.

And I knew, when I made this choice to leave my wife, EVERYONE was going to hate me for it. When you choose your own self interest after years of choosing everyone else’s, you’re bound to be on part of the journey alone because of all the hurt feelings. Once again, a shit sandwich….

So, I made my decision. And 4 months later, I was alone in a gigantic house, no furniture, going to my mother’s place for dinners, 40 year old grown man trying to get his life together. But I knew that my decision would have short term consequences, the long term of being able to look at myself in the mirror again was severely outweighing the short term stuff.

But I still couldn’t escape the fact that I broke my promise. I screwed up royally, and this break would affect me for the next 4 years, in all facets of my life.

Getting Passed It

My life was a mess, but it was at my own choosing. I’d much rather rebuild from the rubble into something I wanted versus trying to balance all the promises I made that I couldn’t keep. It was me trying to make myself happy versus trying to make the world happy.

I still had lit the fuse….and the shit had blown.

So, I continued therapy to make sense of the rubble and piece it back together into some semblance of order in my life.

I remember a night in particular, drunk off my ass, three days before my closing with a shit ton to do to the house, deeply in debt, depressed, suicidal, and having empty sex. I was stressed beyond belief, contemplating bankruptcy. It was then I was at rock bottom, and I saw me for who I really was. This was my decision, but this was what I needed in order to be who I wanted to be.

You always second guess decisions that are going to adversely affect your life as if they are even needed. You look back and wonder what you could’ve done differently, but as I stared at my drunken reflection in the mirror, I realized that the promise I broke freed me from a life that wasn’t real, that wasn’t me. And I needed to break the promise in order to get on with my life.

But I knew it was going to suck, and it sure did. But slowly, the rubble of the broken promise started taking shape into a life that I could actually have to make the promises I really wanted to make. The promises that I knew I could keep.

You can’t pick the promises you want to keep. You have to have the confidence to make a promise you’ll be sure to keep. Breaking promises is a serious issue and I, of all people, know the consequences of it.

You have to be able to understand that you make mistakes, that we all make promises sometimes that we shouldn’t, and we all do horrible things to ourselves in order to keep them, JUST TO MAKE ANOTHER PERSON HAPPY IN THE SHORTEST OF SHORT TERMS.

Promises are what you do for people, not how you feel for people. If you truly love someone, you won’t have to make a promise because your presence, your true self is enough for that person to know you are there for them. A promise is a task, not a goal.

But you still have to keep them. You still have to have your integrity. A promise is an extension of yourself to someone else. And if you can’t keep your word, you really don’t have much left to keep.

Which is why, 4 years later, after countless hours of guilt, shame, and perceived failure, I can finally make promises again, but I’m careful what I promise and who I promise to. You have to take what you can do very seriously because when people count on you, you have to come through for them for yourself, not for what they can give you. A promise is trust in yourself, what you can accomplish, and who can trust you.

Because if you can’t trust yourself, who the hell can you trust.

Driven

/ T Wayne Hicks / Leave a comment

When I was younger, I used to drive. And I mean drive. When I was in the midst of thought about my purpose, my meaning, and in those years, my unhealthy continued pining for a girlfriend, which I specifically thought was my purpose.

Damn, how far I’ve come.

Those days, living in my two bedroom apartment in Indianapolis, IN, with my two best buds and immediate family as the only outside contact for me, working 14-18 hour days on a cold dock, I had to wonder what the hell my life was going to become.

Dealing with eternal anxiety, with OCD thrown in to boot, I had just struggled through 4 years of college with no clue on how my life was going to go. Terrified to go anywhere, relapsing my senior year of college, still a virgin, I was told to go to work, get a car, get a job, and the wife / kids thing would come into place. I was at an impasse in my life, but really? I wasn’t. I was at an imaginary wall. A point that didn’t even exist but for in my own fucking cranium. I was to grind eternally at work until I was ready to have a family, and then I would find a wife and do the life thing.

Except, I was struggling with finding a girlfriend. My horrible social skills had culminated at that point in my life with just 5 dates, several kisses and an impromptu blowjob for hanging a girl’s vertical blinds. I was 23 years old.

So, in the midst of this “pretend” crisis in my life and it was a “pretend” crisis, because I didn’t see what real crises people were going through. In my shitty little world, it was all about me and my “pretend” crisis, but it led me to a tactic that has helped me sort through the difficult issues of my life, more difficult than this minor bullshit, and it is, driving.

I used to saddle up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, get into my GMC Truck, and drive. I drove for hours. For a few years, it was on I-465 (the loop) around Indy, then in the boonies around my stomping ground near Greenwood, IN. I would just drive. A full tank of gas would drown out the anxiety. One night, I drove to Fort Wayne and back, a 3 1/2 hour jaunt, and my longest drive was in the middle of the night on a Saturday night to Chicago and back.

I just drove. Why? Because it cleared my mind. It allowed me to make sense of the senseless. And with the growth of my own character, it has become an indispensable asset in my quest to seek truth in my own life as well as take real time to make real decisions that I know need time to simmer.

Alone With Thoughts

What many people don’t understand, especially people who believe that they don’t need it, is that time alone is one of the most valuable things you can possess. With men these days, they barely have enough time to process everything in their lives, let alone taking an hour a day to get the fuck away from it all. Wife, kids, job, family, bills, etc, it all coalesces at their front door and won’t go away. So he copes, deals, and but never fully exorcises those demons. And they don’t go away…

The only way many men could and should cope is by having a healthy amount of alone time.

When I was single in my 20’s, I pined for a woman because I felt very alone. And I was, I didn’t have many friends, and only in 2003 (5 years after graduation from college) did I finally start to understand that that alone time I so foolishly squandered pondering for a girlfriend was and should have been used to get to know myself, travel, explore, and understand what I wanted. I was so focused on getting to the goals set for me by others that I completely forgot to set goals for myself! My life was being lived for others.

So I drove.

Between 1998 and 2003, I easily logged 50,000 miles on my truck just driving. Two – three times a week I would drive. I would drive, and drive, and drive. And it was invaluable to clear my head.

As 2003 ended, when I was lost at the beginning of the year, I had a girlfriend and was headed to marriage in 2005. I was still lost, but I felt that at least I had some kind of direction, even if it was the direction that I truly, deep down, thought I didn’t want to go, at least I had accomplished what my family and others were wanting me to accomplish.

It would be a decade before I finally got the hint that my life needed to change.

As my decision to divorce in 2015 finalized with my official divorce almost 4 years ago, I was again on the road in my Jetta. The drive has been indispensable to me as an effective means of getting my mind right and clearing out so I can make good decisions about my life.

But now, instead of having to make decisions based on what everyone else wanted of me, I now make them for me.

Being Alone and Being Lonely

There are vast differences between the two. Being alone is a vital part of a person who is mentally fit and healthy’s life. It is an important aspect that many millions of people don’t use as an effective way to stem the tide of anxiety and depression. Instead, they hope for a pill to make them all better. And that mentality has us where we are today.

Being lonely was a big part of my life. I wanted to have folks in my life. But make no mistake, being lonely was a “me” issue. It wasn’t anyone else’s fault. You can be alone and be completely happy. And you can be lonely and be terribly unhappy. The tie that binds is the fact that both are completely your issue as well as how your perspective runs. It’s all internal, it’s all manifested in how you are able to process your time by yourself. Many people feel sorry for themselves. Many struggle to take the time to understand that their alone time isn’t a time to pine for what they don’t have. It’s a time to appreciate what they do have, who they are, and how valuable they are to themselves.

Alone time is a REQUIREMENT. You cannot function as a person unless you have time to decompress. Whether it be meditation, breathing, or just 10 minutes of quiet, you have a choice to make yourself a priority in your life, and alone time does just that. As I often say, “You cannot pour from an empty cup.”

So I drive.

The miles of pavement, the lights, the quiet. The stop signs, the horizon, the clouds, the sky. The potholes, the road hazards, the other drivers. The world without physically touching the world. I let my mind wander and contemplate. I need to process my thoughts, my emotions, my world.

So I drive.

Snow, sleet, rain, fog, day, night. Headlights gleaming through the night, or reflecting on the other passing cars. The shadows of buildings, the neon lights of 24 hour joints, the letters on a sign falling down. The places still in business, the places out of business. I have to figure things out, but I have all the time in the world because, as the world goes, I drive through it. Time stops when you’re driving. Night becomes forever. Yellow lines pass into infinity under your tires. I have to figure things out.

So I drive.

You have to let yourself be with yourself, by yourself. People that don’t give you that time are clingy, needy people. There has to be boundaries for you to have this time. There have to be lines people can’t cross where your self care trumps everyone else (and it does). My self care was non-existent for over 20 years. I had to get away from the world to get myself right. I had to escape to have some time to figure things out.

So I drive.

Last night, I was driving in Phoenix, AZ. I decided, with a bit of excitement, to take a lesser route back to Tucson. I wanted to go away and be by myself deep in the Arizona desert. So I got on US 60 and took off east towards Tucson. I was in nothing but desert, with only the mountains and brush for company. I needed to see the desert, the real desert, not the I-10 passing by desert. I got out of my car on several occasions and took pictures, but I noticed one thing….silence.

The desert is so quiet. Many folks would be unnerved by the silence, even being afraid of being out in the middle of nowhere at night in the desert. But not me. I had to think. I knew myself, and I knew that I was okay. I wasn’t concerned about anything but getting my thoughts out and being content with this world. And I smiled, knowing this part of my life, this world I’ve created for myself, is the most contented I have ever been. It’s amazing what a good drive in an amazing world can do for a person.

So, if you find yourself wondering about yourself, wondering about your world, may I recommend a drive. As the song below states, a song I’ve loved since college “The road unwinds towards me, What was there is gone, The road unwinds before me, And I go riding on”.

Take a drive. You’ll be thankful for that time to unwind and be alone. It’s not only therapeutic, but it’s a requirement. Alone time. Try it sometime.

Driven up and down in circles
Skidding down a road of black ice
Staring in and out storm windows
Driven to a fool’s paradise

It’s my turn to drive
But it’s my turn to drive

Driven to the margin of error
Driven to the edge of control
Driven to the margin of terror
Driven to the edge of a deep, dark hole

Driven day and night in circles
Spinning like a whirlwind of leaves
Stealing in and out back alleys
Driven to another den of thieves

It’s my turn to drive
But it’s my turn to drive

Driven to the margin of error
Driven to the edge of control
Driven to the margin of terror
Driven to the edge of a deep, dark hole
Driven in, driven to the edge
Driven out on the thin end of the wedge
Driven off by things I’ve never seen
Driven on by the road to somewhere I’ve never been

Driven on, driven in on the thin end of the wedge
Driven out, driven to the edge
It’s my turn to drive
But it’s my turn to drive

The road unwinds towards me
What was there is gone
The road unwinds before me
And I go riding on

It’s my turn to drive
But it’s my turn to drive

Driven to the margin of error
Driven to the edge of control
Driven to the margin of terror
Driven to the edge of a deep, dark hole
Driven to the edge of a deep, dark hole