A self-reflective ode in dedication to the struggle of men everywhere!

[Hero_99]

Well, I have seen a few things recently that have sort of dishearted me and being that I am always able and willing to help out a friend, even at some personal costs, I have something very very important to write here that may provoke some people to judge and hate me, and others to praise and love me. I hope for the latter, but in any case, I feel that such divulgions may be beneficial in that I can sense a deeper feeling of where my loyalties lie and who my friends are, much like the seperation of sheep from goats. By all means, trust your whims. It will benefit both of us in the end.

 

 

Before I begin I am going to make a confession. The confession is that I am not a perfect person. That I am a person who has made alot of mistakes, has lots of regrets, suffers from grief, and to top that all off, I have had overly abusive and emotionally immature people as parents. Some of these things I could have controled and did not know how, and some things I could not begin to control, such as how I was treated by the people who birthed, raised, and were suppose to guide me. To say there is guilt, yes ... and I even inherited it. Indeed, I am far from perfect.

 

I will continue by making another confession. That is that in my whole entire life, I have always tried to do the right things in this world. I have always striven to be a good person in this world, someone who is kind, giving, yet is not a push-over. Also, someone who can be trusted, loved, and accepted. And most importantly, I have always tried to overcome and cover my blind spots, to make my unconscious elements real and to control them. Sometimes I have succeeded in doing this, other times I have failed miserably and with dire consequences. Indeed, while I do try to do the right things, I have failed to follow through in even the most basic understandings of what it means to be good. I have not always been a good person.

 

Even though I am imperfect, unaware, and fail oft to do the right things. In other words, human. I do know a few things though, and these are some very important things. Things that every man should know and do. The first one is this, and that is that men should have dreams, visions, inspirations, and the drive to make them a reality. The meaning of this is simple. This means that men should be constantly challenging themselves, finding new leverage, and seeking advancement and improvements on themselves and in their lives. The second goes similarly, that is that men, in their own strength, should respect and support the same for others and sincerily encourage them to complete their goals. Both of these things take wisdom, maturity, and a deep inner strength that many men lack. If only in our youth we, as men, were we able to understandstand this importance in all of our undertakings, we would not be suffering such hurt, regret, and grief because we failed in our past relationships. Because we were hurt and did not understand why nor understood that we deserved better or even how to get better.

 

Of course, in my younger days I did not always know this principle, as I was just as pathetically blind as the next chump down the corner. I've been haughty, cocky, egotistical, and a taker just as much as I have been a wussy, clingy, giver. Neither one of these things are good, atleast not in themselves. However, through the school of hard knocks, knowing better eventually became my struggle, my goal, and my destiny. To overcome myself and to triumph over my weaknesses. This is my ultimate goal and I have a feeling I will be very very busy, unless the Good Lord comes or I die first, I may never complete this task short of a miracle from God. And I seek that. As you can see, I am also a man of great faith.

To help to understand this principle, I should probably state the intent of what I am about to say before I become Bob Marley's Ghost. I want people such as myself to become conscious of their actions in other that they may receive the same sort of happiness that I seek, because we are all seeking similar things. I would not be happy if I somehow had somehow managed to derive the keys of happiness from all of this and could not share it with anyone. In fact, I would consider that my hell. thereforeeee, I believe I have a responsibility to say some of the things that I am about to say, even though I am revealing things about myself that may seem odd or make for uncomfortable topics. My friends, however, will see this as the source of my strength. You know who you are ...

 

As I have already stated, similarly to many people I suffer from grief, hurt, loneliness, etc. I am not a perfect person, and I am human. I also stated that I had irresponsible people for parents. Let me add one more thing to the list here ... I have been seriously and mortally wounded by the opposite sex and have suffered from immense personal acceptance issues. I have a difficult time thinking that I am worthy of the love and acceptance of other, essentially because I did not have the acceptance and approval of my parents growing up [my father was both absent throughout my life and had unrealistic expectations of me that I could never fulfill] and this was further amplified by the fact that on account of all of this I was not the most popular kid on the block. Actually, that was mostly on account of my father as well, because the communities we lived in all knew my father and were scared of him. In other words, I got crap from the neighbor kids on account of my father because the other parents in the neighborhood could not do much against him even though he did some really insane stuff, like walking outside on the front porch and shooting above peoples heads in a residential neighborhood when he did not like the fact that people did things around the property, like walking, talking, playing music, or setting off firecrackers. Things normal people do when they want to have a good time, except some ogre pops up from under a bridge and tries to do God knows what. I hate trolls.

 

I am getting a little off topic. This is not at all about my father, nor myself, or the neighbors, or Good O'le Mr. Bob Jones. It is about awareness. More specifically, awareness of actions that may lead to greater success with the opposite sex. I will even go so far as to say some rather controversial things, like that men who get dumped and cheated on may actually deserve to be dumped and cheated on. WOAH! what is that now? I sense that someone may be tempted to do a copy/paste on that and tried to write a hugh rebuttal before reading the rest of what has been written here. Woah now pardner ... you are being a little too hasty there with the copy/paste. You have my personal invitation to read on and I sincereily hope you do, because it is going to be of some benefit to you even though you may not initially like what I am saying here. Lets move on then.

 

Like many men, I want to have a nice girlfriend. Yup, I do. Ever since I became aware that men can have girlfriends. Many men are the same exact way, hopefully. Note that I said "girl friend" and not "girl friends," meaning that I am one of those one woman only men and tend to avoid the many shallow opportunities to have multitudes of women. This may or may not be a good thing, but that is not the point. The point is this. When I was 14 years old and had my first girlfriend, I became so attached to her, so clingy, so emotional that after she tried to have sex with me for the first time, she decided to treat me like crap and to break up with me because somehow my mother found out I was out in a vacant lot about ready to stick the wood to the flame, and I am not going to explain that I think you get the point. She broke both of us up and made us come in the house for lunch where there were a bunch of guest and many watchful eyes. This event, even though to some of you reading might think that this is silly or that is rather minor as it may not have been an experience which you have shared, had a serious impact on the rest of my life and caused me to literally waste hugh sections of it on account of associated fears in connection to the horrible emotional trauma I faced and had subconsciously associated with women, simply because I just 'wanted to do what came natural.' In fact, for weeks after that I literally wanted to die and was seriously so sick and so emotionally hurt that I became bed ridden and could do nothing but constantly moan and groan and suffer in agony. To say the least, I was immature, I had no guidance, even worse I was given contradictory information from a parent, and that was that sexing girls is inappropiate. This was also supported by the fact that this girlfriend I had purposefully tried to hurt me later by speaking as though she already had several boyfriends [she was totally lying and it was obvious] and also immediatelly found another boyfriend, who she talked about all the time. That just freaking hurt. I suppose justice was met when a few years later she got knocked up, had like 5 kids, and is 200 and something pounds overweight. Nuff' said ... I am just glad those are not my children *shivers*.

 

As far as girls go, I pretty much avoided girls for atleast ten years after this, until I was about 22 or 23. I had a few girls that liked me and ironically a few that also wanted to have sex with me, but I wouldn't because they were actually not the most attractive girls and were also mostly just sleeping with anyone and I became several times the one who was next in line. Don't ask ...

 

However, an important thing happened in my life here [about 22 or 23]. I had just lost alot of weight about this time and was working out. I decided that I would actually try to motivate myself to do alot of self-improvement. So, I began searching on the internet for things I could use to improve myself. I read alot of psychological material and other stuff. The only problem here was that I was actually starting to become more interested in girls at this time as well, actually, mostly in result of the fact that they were apparently noticing me for some reason I did not know at that time, but I sort of have an idea now looking back. In any case, I still had my fears and I still was not able to get a girlfriend even though I obviously had some sort of options with the ladies. As you would expect, I looked for solutions.The solutions I tried I could not say were the healthiest of solutions. At this time, I believed the partial myth [yes, I am saying myth along with partial, you'll see why] that women like jerks and that nice guys are always getting friend zoned. So, as would logically follow from this, I decided that in order to increase my options and make me much more attractive to the ladies that I already am that I would try to become a jerk and not a nice guy. Well, believe it or not, I did attract women doing this ... women who were slightly different in mentality than the ones who were liking me before. Women, who were not only sexy, spunky, and attractive, they had absolutly no problem flaunting their sexuality about and towards the people. I would literally play games with these girls, tease them, tell them they were naughty and they would respond with more of the same sort of sexual flaire. But, you see, I was also still a bit attractive to the girls who liked me beforehand, maybe a little bit more so, but I also lost face with many of them because they were good girls and I was acting like a complete . As a result, I ended up attracting the really evil ones to me. And guess what ... I GOT HURT AGAIN! I got hurt, because the girls who liked me as an had little loyalty to me, and I trusted some of them. Eventually, after almost getting molested by a girl I was macking inside of a church during a church service [HO HO!!! Bet you did not see that one coming!], I found out that she was doing the same exact thing with about 5 or 6 other guys. Not to mention the fact that I lost some face with some close friends because of the way I was acting and also that I was really being an irresponsible loser. And not only that, I may have hurt a few other people when I was off playing games and doing risky behaviors. So, ummm, yeah ... I guess I was not faring too well as a jerk either.

 

Then, of all things, it began to hit me suddenly that there is a pattern in my life. A pattern, by which I was not only allowing my fears to dictate my actions, but that there was a certain part of my self I was not managing effectivelly. I was not controlling myself properly in regards to women and I struggled to know why. I either would cling to them and become spineless and needy, or play and use them like spindolls. This triggered me to do alot of self-reflection and reconsiderations to the goals of my life and what it was that I really wanted to do, and then one day it hit me:

"If you really want to have and keep a woman, if you really want to be happy, set yourself some goals, and continue to give yourself some challenges. And most importantly, do what God requires you to do. If you do this, you will have satisfaction in your life and never fall into the nice guy trap of depending upon a woman too much or the dreaded opposite."

 

Well, I guess like many men I am still waiting for my woman. Probably because I am still struggling to become the man I want to become. It is a long ride, but I think I am getting there. I am not really sure if I have changed much, just a little wiser possibly. I got some nice houseplants and some nice artwork now, and I live in an apartment. Eventually I will hopefully be able to find some nice work abroad after I graduate next year in Germany [and before I return back to get my masters degree]. And hopefully, I will be wise and mature enough to make some sort of relationship work.

 

Ohh yeah, and I am still struggling to overcome the Jungian fears lying deep in my subconscious on account of the trauma I received. I am working on overcoming that as well. Its horrible since most men have the fear of death with women anyways, guess I got a double whammy.

 

Best wishes! Hope someone here can learn from my mistakes!

[ghost69]

nobody is perfect.

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[robowarrior]

This is just one side of the story,what im wondering is, can you consider yourself successfull at life?

[Alabama]

But people can only learn from mistakes...and then make more mistakes. You're talking about getting a girl, by improving yourself, right? Even then that is no guarentee that will work. It is all dependant, I think, on not just improving ourselves but experimenting, and most important, keeping plunging ourselves into society. If we just improve and leave the social world, we lose something: a chance. We need to socialize, too, not just improve ourself. But good advice.

[nbr21081]

Good Post. There are not many replies because you have spoken a truth that does not need debating. No news is good news, right? except of course when you find the truth, post it on a forum, and no one responds....I guess when you have found a truth, there is no need for a forum of discussion about it. So. I agree with you, and wish you the best of luck in your journey. You give me hope and faith that there are men out there matching my own struggles and journey of self awareness and improvement. So thank you.