Death Bed Conversions

Photo Credit: stanleyjwhite.blogspot.com

“They always come back.”

That was the words of my father when talking about women. And business, and anything really.

As men are trying to re-make themselves and unplug from a world that absolutely abhors them, using them only for labor and enforcement, we see them blazing trails into new areas, thumbing their nose at all the haters, fighting everyday to claim their piece and peace of the world.

The phenomena of what I call “deathbed conversions”, that of women who love you only when you’ve changed for the better, is relatively new. It happened to me, and it continues to happen to men when they divorce or breakup with a woman.

Many women, as society has taught them, are sacrosanct. They are the true believers, the line of purity when it comes to virtue, goodness, and ideals. Toxic masculinity has no place in our femcentric society. And in relationships, women are taught that they are correct, the gold standard, and that the men are the ones who need to step up to the plate to right their wrongs.

When you are told by society that you aren’t wrong, that you are the goal, that you are the “Queen”, that you are empowered, and that you represent the feminine, that even your wrongs can be forgiven and celebrated, that anyone who criticizes you for whatever you’ve done is a misogynist, a hater, to be shunned and destroyed as you get yours.

So when marriages go south, many women’s first instinct is to put blame upon the man she married, as if her choice of that man has no consequence, as if her actions in the said marriage are infallible, as if she looks at herself constantly and says, “this problem is not me, it’s him, because I’m the woman.”

So she tells him to go to therapy, tells him to get the help to make the marriage that he’s destroyed right again, because, if she’s at fault, it flies in the face of everything that society tells us about women in relationships. They can’t be wrong, so it MUST be him!

But then he gets better. He starts to take back his life. And she does one of two things, she either criticizes him and makes him go to a DIFFERENT therapist that has her goals in mind, or she begins to fall in love with the man she really wanted, without doing any work on herself, because, why would she when she is right?

Shifting the Goalposts

Eight years into my marriage, my ex told me to go to therapy. I was having anger issues at work and I needed to get those sorted out. Through 2 years of therapy, I slowly found out that my problems weren’t my job, it was my marriage as well as the dominant women in my life, including my ex (wife at the time).

But the real benefit of the therapy was my red pilling and unplugging. I saw an instant increase in the quality of my life. My anger went down precipitously. My work was better. But my home life, the thing I was convinced was fine, was getting worse. And when my then-wife was told in 2015 that I wanted to leave the marriage, she recommended joint therapy in concert with the therapy I was doing. (Notice the absence of her needing therapy.)

I requested that she go to therapy by herself as well, even have her go to my therapist. She went once and was convinced she was “Fine”. And with each passing session, I was getting better and better.

But slowly, she started to become convinced that my therapist wasn’t helping me (even though he was). Her problem wasn’t that he wasn’t helping HER make me into someone she wanted.

Many women in divorce or separation situations request the men to have therapy, while they themselves tend to not seek therapy unless it’s joint. The man then goes to therapy and improves in his life. Then she sees him improving and isn’t happy he’s not improving the way SHE needs. She thinks she’s not the problem, so she should be part of finding the solution for him.

This is when women who go to joint counseling try to use the therapist to gang up on the man. And men are overmatched and many times bullied into agreeing to things they don’t want.

When I was in therapy with my ex, I let her choose the therapist (a mistake men should not make). You need to have input on who you are going to work on your marriage with. She distinctly wanted a therapist to bully me into accepting the fact that the entire failure of the marriage was MY fault. So, with all the will power I could muster, I went in completely expecting to be ganged up on in the therapy sessions. And for a couple, I was. The first therapy session, he asked us both, on a scale of 1-10, how dedicated to saving the marriage we were. She said 10. I said 0.

So her line of attack began with trying to turn the failure of marriage to me. As I stood my ground, dodging and parrying her attacks on everything from my sexual prowess to my career choice to my family dysfunction, the therapist started to see who the problem was.

So as we progressed through therapy, my ex continued (and still does to this day) to say and believe that her role in the marriage was sound. And as our therapist turned to her more and more to question her roles, she became defensive and even tried to suggest we get another therapist, one who could see her side much better. She was trying to rig a game that was already rigged but she wasn’t worth a shit at playing.

So she tried to move the goalposts. I had done everything she had requested and she still wasn’t satisfied with the outcomes. And after I saw her blatantly trying to rig the therapy, I cut off everything. You can’t negotiate with someone who isn’t prepared to work in good faith to hold up their end of the bargain.

And for every man like me that stood his ground, there are hundreds that don’t. They get bullied back into marriage by guilt and shame, condemning them to always thinking they aren’t to have a say, nor are their concerns about their wives not getting help even warranted.

And many women (especially BPD) fly off the deep end when their delusions suffer from continuing letdowns when they can’t find accessories for their control issues over their husbands. And then, we start to see anger and bile coming from their mouths, until they see the man their husband is becoming as he works on himself.

As they writhe on the bed of divorce, hatred, and disdain for her husband and all who won’t work to bring him back to his senses, she suddenly notices a man whom she sees as high value, a man who has been going to therapy, the gym, and is working on himself for his post divorce world.

And as the light shines over her, she suddenly starts to want him again.

And Then She Wanted Him….

My ex wanted to save the marriage. Not me. She didn’t think she did anything wrong. But when she saw the man I was becoming, she realized that she had made a mistake. But she still wasn’t willing to fix herself, nor was she going to let me ever forget that the divorce was my fault.

But as I became more of the man I wanted to be, after all the bile and venom she had thrown my way, she started to want the man I was becoming. The problem here, as many men have found out, is that she refuses to change herself. She doesn’t believe she’s the problem, so when he becomes a masculine man with purpose, leadership, and goals, he understands that she can’t just come waltzing back into his life.

And damn, will she ever try. When my ex started seeing the man I was becoming, she instantly turned over into “nice woman” and tried to sneak back into our relationship, saying we should reconcile. This after weeks of cursing me out, calling me names, insulting my sexual prowess, family, etc., she suddenly became attracted to me again, trying to meet with me, asking to spend more time with me, and even bringing dinner over to my house when I had the kids.

As a man, you’re going “WTF?” But this conversion, as I call it, happens with exes in marriage or just dating. They either break up or get broken, then as you improve your lot in life, becoming a better man, she swoops back in thinking you’re now deserving of her.

The fact that she can be so brazen as to try to enter your life isn’t the problem. It’s the fact that men actually LET HER BACK IN. And if you let her back in, the same shit ensues from before. Why? Because she still refuses to fix what was hers.

With her reinforced belief from societal norms that she can’t be the problem, men are left with little choice but to leave her and move on with his life. And she’s left to writhe in agony, cursing a man for making his life choices without her, and forever stuck in the morass of why she can’t be wrong, with this same toxic attitude affecting her in her future relationships.

This is the basis of feminism’s toxic hold on women. After they clamor for the man they now want and don’t get, they drop out and are completely convinced that they aren’t the problem in anything. And this is why you see many feminists and liberal women single into their middle age years.

The very potent and poisonous pill that women take is that they would rather be right and alone then admit fault and work on themselves. The absolute hatred of doing anything for the pleasure or compliment of a man overwhelms the chance to be happy.

So they sit and die on their beds…but it’s a slow, tortuous death.

Women and men should want to improve themselves. Working on yourself and humility to see that you need improvement are keystones of a healthy life. But many women are convinced by women that raised them, feminists that preach to them, and a society that speaks to them, that they ultimately aren’t the problem, it’s the patriarchy keeping you down. It’s the ingrained misogyny that men have cultivated to keep the slay kweens down.

This is why these “deathbed conversions” happen. Women who want to control a man until he decides to not be controlled anymore. And an uncontrolled man is what makes her panties soaked. She really is all over the place, simply because she has never been told that she needs to work on herself, nor was she humbled enough to take responsibility for her actions and beliefs.

Cake and eat it too, rinse and repeat.

So be aware of these games women play. And understand that you can choose to walk away, choosing to opt out of the attention Olympics and the emotional games that women inevitably play during divorce proceedings.

Keep your head about you and allow the deathbed conversion to expire and pass. She’s not going to be a part of your life anymore, so treat her portrayal as just that, an act meant to distract you from the life you want.

Yes, there can be reconciliation, but only if both parties agree and understand that a marriage takes TWO and they both should be humbled to make real life changes to save the marriage. The problem is pride gets in the way for many people, dooming any chance for a recovery.

And as men we can identify and avoid unhealthy women in the first place, not marrying them in the hopes they’ll change, and vice versa with women.

She can’t be saved if she refuses to save herself.

Journeys

“Why do you even want to go anywhere by yourself?” A voice crackled over the phone.

“I love taking vacations by myself. It’s incredible. Why don’t you try it sometime?” I responded.

“It just sounds boring. What are you gonna do?”

“Anything and everything I want”, I replied.

“I just don’t get it.”

My friends and family, for about two years now, have been wondering why, every January, I decide to go on vacation by myself.

They wonder why for the past 24 months, I’ve taken my vacations from my life as a single dad and a business owner, to travel all over the USA by myself, meeting great people and experiencing life first hand with my own eyes.

They wonder, many times out loud, what possible good could come from a man traveling by himself to witness the world, the people, and the places that make the inhabitants of said destinations proud to call them home.

As I hung up the phone, I had to sit back and understand that some people will just not get it.

Some people will never want to go on a trip by themselves, let alone to new places.

Some folks can’t even be in a room alone for a few minutes, let alone be on a plane, renting a car or getting an Uber or Lyft, and just driving to a place they’ve never been.

It terrifies people to be around all things new. They cling to their comfort zones with such ferocity that there’s no chance they would ever leave that bubble, always clinging to their worlds, petrified to leave the sanctity of a miserable, mundane life just to say they’re safe and sound.

Comfort zones, while seemingly helpful, can turn anyone into a scared little child. We yearn for the world we can control, with no surprises, and robotic consistency. Because it’s safe. But it isn’t.

And after my divorce, it’s exactly the reason why I decided to leave the comfort zone for the wonders of the world beyond, regardless of what they might be.

How It Started

Comfort zones for me, when I was younger, were a steady diet. I had to have them and I seldom left them. And when I did leave them, I was petrified to do so, resulting in prolonged periods where I would just stay in the only place I knew, to try and make it another comfort zone.

No where was this more apparent than when I went to college. It was the first time I was in a new place, where I didn’t know anyone, and I was terrified to talk to anyone. For the entire first semester of my freshman year, I stayed in my dorm room with a shitty roommate, who afterwards left because we couldn’t get along.

So for the rest of the first semester, I left my dorm room for class. That was it. I didn’t even eat in the cafeteria because I was so terrified of the world. I would warm up stuff in my microwave in my room and eat small meals.

I lost a ton of weight because I wasn’t eating. I knew something was wrong with me. It was a miserable existence, with trips home on a shuttle to my family wondering if I had major psychological issues to overcome.

The simple yet complicated point was that I was so ensconced in my comfort zone, I would do anything to keep it. To the hardest line I could. Limited contact with anyone. Head down, eyes averted, no small talk.

It wasn’t the best time.

I eventually got out of my shell in college with the help of a new roommate who was more social and helped me get out of my rut quite quickly. The guy was an alpha chad (literally named Chad) who would pull girls in and had a collection of undergarments that stretched the entire 150 feet of our dorm wing. I can’t say enough about what he did for me, allowing me to see the college life I had yearned for, but never had the courage to go out and get. And I really never did either. Most of my college life I seldom dated, kept a small group of friends, and regardless of how much I thought I was getting out in the world, still held to the comfort zone I knew and wanted no matter what. I graduated and got my own apartment, and my comfort zone came with me.

My apartment life consisted of going to work, hanging playing video games with my two best friends, and occasionally drinking with my college buddies.

Then, in 2003, I started to come out of my shell again. One of my friends got a new boat and I saw it as an opportunity to try something new. I had never really been on a speed boat before, and after he invited me for the first time, I decided to put myself on a new path towards slowly but surely getting out of my comfort zone.

So every time he invited me, I went. I didn’t care how much is pained me to go outside, I just knew that getting out was the way to go. And it was a great summer. The summer of 2003 gave me my first real taste of what life could be like outside of my comfort zone. I would meet girls (still was really shy and didn’t date), hang with new friends, and get plenty of exercise and vitamin D.

But it all ended after I met the woman that would become my ex-wife.

It wasn’t that she set me back, it’s just that finally, mercifully, I met a woman who wanted to be in the same room with me. Through eHarmony, I decided to use my new found confidence to try and land a mate, even though I admittedly had more work to do. But at 27, I wasn’t getting any younger and the constant barrage of my family wanting me to “settle down” was reason enough to try and find a woman.

And the woman I met was VERY introverted. So with her at my side, I went back to the comfort of the zone. Because it was where I was supposed to be. It kept coming back to me and saying, “you need to be in the zone, you like it there, and it makes you feel good.”

So I got to married life, raising a family, and we went on family trips. I had NEVER gone anywhere by myself, and I didn’t think I ever would. Why would I need to if I was happily married?

Then, things changed again.

How It Happened

In February of 2015, I had an epiphany. It was a paradigm shift of epic proportions as I decided to leave my marriage and wife of 10 years. Why did I do it? Because the comfort zone I loved so much became a noose that was strangling me. We weren’t happy in our marriage for a plethora of reasons, and we were kidding ourselves if it was going to get better.

For nearly a decade, the comfort zone of my marriage was just that. It was suffocating, not only because we didn’t do anything about it, but also because I was terrified of leaving the comfort zone again. The lifelong problem I had with living in a comfort zone was becoming too depressing to overcome. And I was taking my kids and my ex with me. I had to evacuate. I had to leave and realize that my life wasn’t getting any longer and living in misery wasn’t helping anyone involved in my life.

I had to make a decision. The comfort zone had to go. If I was going to truly look back at my life and be happy, I had to get out of a dysfunctional marriage to finally take charge of my life.

With the decision to leave, my life became chaotic. I became more depressed and suicidal. I didn’t realize how much work it would take to remove myself from a life I didn’t want, but still have aspects that I needed to provide for. I had to understand that getting out of my comfort zone involved changing the rules of the comfort zone by keeping one, but allowing myself to get in and out of it when I wanted to. My kids and ex needed stability from me. My ex needed a co-parent who was on the same page and providing what he needed to. And I wasn’t there.

I was still searching for the person I needed to be. A father’s journey began with realizing that there had to be a JOURNEY. Or several. So I booked flights in 2019 and 2020, gassed up my car and drove, and went to find the person I was.

How It’s Going

It took my first vacation alone, in 2019 to Los Angeles, CA. I went there because it was a place I know I would never visit again, but was a place I wanted to see. There were great people there that I met, enjoyed new places, and saw the world for the first time by myself.

I enjoyed the trip so much, I decided to book more. Yes, to meet women. And yes, to meet and talk to people I’d met online, and yes, to meet my Fraternity of Excellence brothers.

It was my middle finger to the comfort zone that had dogged me all my life. It was the “fuck you” to all of those people that told me my life wasn’t mine, it belonged to those I provided for. It was the stick of dynamite to the world that had protected me so much that it had taken away my zest for life. I was taking it back.

It was a hammer to the mirror that those that had laughed at my journeys. I was in it to spite them as well, and my trips became a symbol of my rebellion against those family and friends who ridiculed me for wanting to live the life I wanted.

But I went too far. I was traveling more and more and my kids and family life were suffering. My kids needed me and here I was smashing my comfort zone to bits. I didn’t care, until last year, after my last trip to AZ, I saw that my kids were suffering because I wasn’t there.

I finally realized, after all the times I’d had, that there had to be a balance. There has to be a comfort zone, for a solid foundation, but there has to be easy access out. It can’t be a prison, it has to be just another stop in your world, but one that provides consistency and stability for those that rely on you. But it also provides something else for me. It provides a launch pad to greater things, it provides a shelter for when I fail, it provides peace when I’m at war, and it provides needed pain for me to get up and get out. In short, my comfort zone these days isn’t a comfort zone, but a home base for which to go out and conquer the world. A man’s home is his castle.

What’s To Come

What new journeys have taught me? I need more of them. But I also need to share my love for these trips with those that rely on me. My kids will be accompanying me on many of these future trips, but I also have to hold a trip, by myself, in the highest importance.

I took my yearly Florida trip this year because I needed it. I needed the time alone to refresh and recharge. I needed a free week to do nothing and do everything. I ate where and when I wanted, I went to places I wanted to, I went to beaches, driving in my convertible, I talked to the locals, I shopped, I took naps, and I had no one telling me what I needed to do, what schedule I needed to keep, nor what time I needed to be somewhere.

This is what vacation truly should be. And I can’t recommend taking a vacation by yourself enough.

You need the time to connect with yourself. You need to challenge your comfort zones, you need to attack your mediocrity by experiencing new and different things. It’s why I’ll continue to go on trips by myself until I die.

But what’s most important, is that traveling has taught me that the world isn’t as bad as those who are terrified of it make it out to be. It’s incredibly freeing to be able to hop on a plane, go to someplace you’ve never been (or a place you know well but want to experience again) and live a life away from the life you know.

You owe it to yourself to not only get out of your comfort zone, but to make it your fortification to conquering your empire. This is your life and you want to make the most of it. My way of making the most of my life is to face the world with my chest out and chin up. I’m tired of being afraid.

The best line I can ever think of for this situation is from “The World Is Not Enough” where one of the characters says: “What’s the point of living if you can’t feel alive?”

Ask yourself what your point of living is? Is it to be safe, or is it to feel alive? Mine is to feel alive, and I’m never looking back.