Marriage is my life's best and worst decision

For people on mobile phones, here are the labels to speed you around the blog:

Marriage Problems
Marriage Solutions
Single Life Then and Marriage Now

This blog is a warning to those contemplating marriage from a man who has been married since early 2008.

It all started in the beginning of January, 2008, after four months of dating my then-girlfriend-now-wife. I had just returned from a Christmas trip overseas, and a few days went by before she told me her period was late. Being ever the optimist, I just wrote it off as something that women go through every once in a while and dismissed her concerns, telling her it was natural and it sometimes just happened. We were using protection. How could she possibly be pregnant?

Then a few more days went by. A week. Two weeks. Still, no period. I think at that time, I knew I was absolutely screwed, but I still held out the hope that this was just something her body was going through, and that it wasn't the end of everything I had worked so hard to achieve. I'll never forget the day when I heard the news: January 24th, 2008. She wanted definitive confirmation of whether or not she was pregnant, and had taken a birth control test from a local store.

Positive. Then, in a panic, she tried another: positive. She hurriedly called me, frantic that she was going to have a baby with someone she had only known for a few months. I reassured her that it couldn't be true, and even if it was, that I would take care of her. I meant what I said, and my actions since then have certainly proven my honesty. But at the time, I still held out the hope that this was all a mistake, a dream, something, anything but a baby. She told me that that night, she would go to the hospital to make absolutely sure if she was pregnant or not.

I went to work, taught my students, and was on my way home at around 9:00 that night. I was walking my usual way home, when I felt my cellphone begin to buzz in my pocket, indicating an incoming text message.

Everything slowly went dark. Vibrant shops and bustling people turned into colorless blobs and were reduced into obstacles I didn't want to walk into. All of my dreams fled my mind in an instant, and were replaced with defeat and pessimism. A sudden weight bore down upon my shoulders, a feeling which has not left me to this day. How did I know she was pregnant? If she weren't, I reasoned, she would have called me, not texted me. Already knowing the answer, I opened my phone, and read the confirmation of the end of my life.

Being in shock, I don't remember quite what I said to her when I called her back. It was probably something comforting, letting her know I would take care of her and the baby no matter what. I vaguely remember that after I hung up, I wandered home in a daze, showered, then went to bed, hoping that when I woke up, it would all have been a dream.

It wasn't. I woke up the next day feeling as helpless and defeated as I did the night before. Not long after the news came, she pressured me into marrying quickly, because people over here "tend to talk" when a pregnant girl is not married with the man who fathered her child. I obliged, and we were married a month later.

During the time we had gotten the news, but were still living apart, I was trying to live up my life as best I could before I officially lost everything. When she wasn't over at my place, I traveled as much as possible, hung with my friends, spent as much time alone as I could, did everything I knew I wouldn't be able to once we moved in together. But all the while, the stress of everything I had just lost was weighing down on my shoulders, and soon enough, my job contract was up, we moved in together, and my son was born not long after.

I'm going to get into the things I've lost and how miserable my life is in future blog posts. This introductory post shall serve simply to explain my overall situation.

Marriage is the best decision I have ever made for everyone around me. Coming from a family of at least three generations of abandonment, abuse and neglect, I was one of the first to break the cycle and stick around to raise his kids right. Every person in my life has been enriched by my decision:

- My wife has a husband and son, when she thought she would never have either, and I paid off her unpaid back taxes and college debts. I also gave her her own place to live and got her out of her mom's house. She has frequently told me that she is more emotionally mature than before, and much, much happier with her life.
- My mother-in-law has a grandson to dote on, I personally paid off her massive bank debt, and I'm also supporting her, since she's too old to work.
- My sister-in-law has a nephew to dote on, in addition to me, again, paying off some of her debts while she was unemployed for two years.
- My mother has a grandson to dote on.
- My sister has a role model to look up to as a good parent to her own surprise child.
- My son has the father and life I never had growing up, living in a house of fun, love and discipline to grow to be a strong and honorable man.

Sounds like a pretty sweet deal for all involved. Everyone made out like a bandit, right?

No.

Marriage is the worst decision I have ever made for myself. I've had years to sort this out, and I can definitively say that, aside from my son, marriage has provided me nothing I couldn't have gotten anywhere else. More importantly, it has robbed me of nearly everything that made my life worth living, and given me little else than problems in return.

In short, this is what marriage has given me:

- More stress.
- More work.
- More chores.
- More debts.
- More drama.
- A family, which is primarily hard work, routine and sacrifice, with only scattered, isolated moments of happiness and fun.

And this is what marriage has taken from me:

- My money.
- My emotional stability.
- My dreams.
- My free time.
- My freedom.

If you wish to know more of what I have learned and experienced as a married man, at the bottom of this post are three labels:

- For essays or experiences on why marriage will drain and ruin you, especially if you are a man, click "Problems."
- If you already tied the noose and need advice on how to deal with your life and/or awful wife, click "Solutions."
- To compare an unmarried man's life to that of a married man, click "Then and Now."

Next, my policy on commenting: I will not censor comments, positive or negative, provided they contain nothing illegal or threatening, or aren't blatant spam trying to advertise something. On the other hand, I don't expect rational discussion over a topic so enmeshed with tribalism and the biological drive for sex or children, so to save yourself some time, try not to leave comments that marginalize me, or derail the conversation from the points I've brought up. As such, you should avoid:

1. Changing the subject

"You should have known what could happen with a girlfriend."
"I wouldn't want someone like you as a husband."
"Why should I believe someone who was short-sighted enough to smoke cigarettes and get cancer?"
"You'll get no pity from me."
"And yet, life goes on."
"You just married the wrong person."

You can discuss other things on this blog, but if you're trying to sell marriage, acknowledge my major points first.

2. Namecalling and loaded language

"You're a bitter loser."
"Why should I listen to a misogynist?"
"Stop whining."
"Learn to be more mature."
"Wow... this blog is pathetic."

Smearing my character or acting dismissive doesn't change the logic of my statements.

3. Strawman

"More chores doesn't make marriage bad."
"You wrote an entire blog just looking for people to take your side?"
"You should go back to your bar and club girls."
"Why do you want people to abandon their children?"
"Just because you have a bad marriage doesn't mean all marriage is bad."

Please don't stuff words in my mouth (or make baseless and false assumptions), then declare victory over your caricature.

4. Denial

"You're a liar." (Fail to mention how)
"You're wrong." (Fail to mention why)
"Shut up."
"Go away."

Just saying the first two doesn't make them true, and all four variants of the same logical fallacy are only intended to get me to shut down without logically acknowledging my points.

5. Arguing from exception

"I'm happily married, so you're wrong."
"My friend is happily married, so you're wrong."
"Not all women/marriages/etc... are like that."

Finding one, or a small handful, of exceptions to a general rule is intellectually dishonest, because you fail to address the logic or evidence of the rule. The only thing you succeed in doing with this logical fallacy is proving that an exception exists, but unless I use the word "all" to describe marriage or anything else about it, then you are proving nothing.

6. Postmodernism / Relativism

"You do realize that other people like different things than you, right?"
"Am I not allowed to have my own views?"
"Well, that's your opinion."
"Let's agree to disagree."

My logically sound views being different from other people's less convincing ones doesn't make mine unworthy of consideration, and it doesn't equate the two in any way.

The current record, and apparently most popular combination, for intellectual dishonesty is Changing the subject, Namecalling and Strawman, 3/6. I have spoken to less than a dozen people online about marriage, but this same exact combination actually happened in no less than four different places from four completely different people, showing the prevalence of this kind of refutation. Basically, ignore the message, then attack a caricature of the messenger in an effort to smear him. I would appreciate it if you were not like these people, or the dozens of others who mix and match the above methods to champion marriage with few to no convincing points whatsoever.

Finally, I want to thank all the well wishes and posts of concern about my current status, which is quite different from what this top post introduced (i.e. my life leading up to 2012). If you don't wish to poke around my blog to find the important posts that led to me changing my life, this is the most important:

2012-2013 Marriage Review

Curing depression and attracting girls

Do you want to get better?

Until you answer this question affirmatively, not even God can help you. If you can say yes to this, please keep reading.

***

I'm not selling anything. I'm not asking you to join a religion or spend any money on anything. I'm not going to recommend you get on any kind of medication. I will not fill this blog post with nothing more than pithy statements about "being yourself" or "the right one will come along someday." I'm writing this blog post to give you exact descriptions of the problems you have that are leading to your depression and/or possible lack of success with women, and instructions on how to fix these things. So let's not waste any more time and get to it.

You're depressed because you are missing one or more of the following things:

1. Integrity
2. A goal
3. Thought control

1. Integrity

To cure depression, this is the very first step. If I have noticed any common thread among people with depression, including myself from the age of 14 to 21, it was this: you have no sense of personal identity and/or no personal code of ethics of what constitutes the ideal you. Those without integrity are doomed to drift about in whatever group they've adopted the identity from (racial, gender, political, familial or something similar), and leave their personal sense of identity and happiness open to change, or even attack, by people in this group.

If you define yourself by the group that you belong to, your life and happiness will be subject to violent and forceful change any time someone in that group judges you, or anytime the goals of that group change and you are forced to adjust your identity or leave the group. If you have no sense of identity at all, your happiness will be at the whims of any random person who judges you, and you will have no defense against it because you have no idea who you are or what the ideal you is.

For those of you with this problem, the solution is to define what you want to be, then ask yourself if the current you matches up to this ideal you. In order to define this ideal you, I suggest this process:

1. Make a long list of the people you admire in the world.
2. Define what makes them your idols.
3. Combine and generalize these traits until you have a short list of attributes ("Famous" and "Rich" could combine to "Successful," for example). 2-4 of them is best, because one may be too focused, while more than four may be confusing and hard to remember or work towards.

When the list is complete, focus every action and thought of yours from this point forward on fulfilling the conditions you've laid out for yourself. Fail to do this, and your tempestuous, ever-changing sense of identity will be as chaotic as the life you're currently not enjoying.

2. A goal

Without a goal, it's easy to lose motivation and backslide into your old ways, no matter what you're trying to do to fix yourself. This goal is different from your ideal self because it is an external one, a goal that you focus your studies, experience and work towards obtaining.

This problem is an easy one to solve, and merely involves asking yourself what you like to do. When you've found that, translate that into an occupation that you can work with to make money while you enjoy this thing. If it can't translate into an occupation, then make this goal something that you realize when you are off of work. So I wouldn't recommend making "Become a rock star" into your goal because of the abysmal success rate of this dream, but "Play awesome music with people I like" will be something you can obtain with strong effort, and who knows, that tangential rock star dream may just come about for you. But whatever goal you want will be good for you. Fail to do this, and you will drift about with no purpose for the rest of your life.

3. Thought control

What are feelings and emotions? They don't come from the heart, and they aren't ephemeral phantoms that can't be defined or reasoned with. Feelings and emotions are instinct, nothing more than animalistic, automatic thought. They arise from thinking about something for so often that the idea becomes self-perpetuating.

If you've ever wondered why a person says they love someone they hardly know, and they have absolutely no explanation as to why, it's because they keep thinking about this person. If you've ever wondered why you're depressed, it's because you either focus your thoughts on the unhappiness inherent in your life, or because you allow the chaos in your brain to run in every dark direction uncontrolled.

This step is absolutely vital to curing depression. No matter how good of an ideal you that you create, no matter what kind of an excellent goal you have in mind, both of them will go absolutely nowhere unless you can focus yourself on what you want to be, and what you want to do. Actions, feelings and emotions, every single one of these things is first caused by what you think and cast your attention towards. Imagine killing someone, and your body will tense up, your breath will become shallow and you'll be ready to fight. Imagine sleeping with a person you hardly know, and your body will react to prepare yourself for sex.

You must, must, must focus your mind on your ideal self and goal if you want to cure your depression. Replace all negative thoughts with realistic or positive ones. Do not engage in the comfort of self-destructive thoughts of giving up and lazily embracing nothingness. Fight these automatic thoughts, these feelings, as hard as you can and do not backslide even once; this process of thinking realistically and positively will turn from active chore into passive and automatic if you just keep at it for a week or two, a month or two tops. Fail to do this, and your mind will be sending signals to your body and emotions to shut down and remain as stagnant as they have been since your depression started.

And that's it. Define who you want to be, define what you want to do, and don't stop focusing your mind on these things until you have accomplished them.

Too often I have seen people, including my old self, get stuck on recognizing that they have a problem, but refusing to take that second step and create a plan to fix their problems. I've seen people point to their broken families or a disease that causes their suicidal tendencies, disorders or depression, then just throw their hands up and say, "That's how it is. I'm depressed and that's why," then go back to wrap themselves in that unhappiness.

One of these reasons for not changing is the idea that a chemical imbalance causes depression, which is a condition that makes it impossible to fix one's life. It's a sort of circular problem where the condition attacks the very thing necessary to fix it: motivation. It's been my experience, however, that the common understanding of the causality of depression is backwards: it's not a chemical imbalance that causes depression, but depression that causes the chemical imbalance. It is your body reacting to your unhappy and chaotic thoughts where it stops producing as much Serotonin or Dopamine to cause your body to shut down. Once you've started taking step 3, thought control, seriously, you should see a rise in your natural energy levels as your body reacts to your new state of mind.

I also understand the things that have caused you to become this way, mostly related to western culture and family structures. Many of you were raised by broken families where your parent(s) had an awful method of raising you, most likely one of the three common mistakes for western parents:

1. Disciplining children harshly, or even abusively, for every minor infraction, which leads the child to shutting down.
2. Disciplining children not at all, which leads the child to having no clear boundaries and becoming a bully.
3. Being very erratic with discipline and giving both strong and weak admonishments seemingly at random, which leads the child to becoming confused about proper behavior and either becoming a bully or depressed.

In the latter two cases, you can see that the child will have a poor personal sense of identity with such poor boundaries set. Even further, in many cases in western culture, you'll see parents spending time with their children only when they're bad, and hardly spending any of their free time just to hang out or share activities with their kids when they are good. This leads to an even further poor sense of identity as the child seeks an understanding of self from peers, culture or other groups, which leads to the problems associated with the first step of identity above.

It doesn't help either that western culture pushes this narrative that you should just be yourself, and that if others have a problem with you, it's their fault. But what if you aren't a good person? What if you aren't where you want to be? "Be yourself" is awful advice for those with no sense of identity and who don't judge themselves by the high standards they set for themselves, and only makes the identity problem even worse. Not caring about what others think only works if you are acting in a moral way that is aligned with your ideal self.

So I understand that some may not have known the way to fix their troubles and chosen to remain stagnant, but now that I've laid it out for you, it's time to take action. Whatever happened in your family or past to cause your unhappiness is not your fault, but now that you're old enough to do something about it, every moment you spend unhappy now is yours take responsibility for. Fair or not, it's you who is suffering, and you need to pull yourself out of that hole.

You don't have to worry too much, though. I've used these three steps to cure depression, stop smoking and even become attractive to women, and in each of these cases, it only took 1-3 months to make the bulk of the changes. Get started today, and you too could be that ideal self you wanted to be before the end of the next season.

Attracting girls

I put this together with curing depression because so often, these two things go hand in hand. There are many of you who want a girlfriend, but are unable to do so because of your depression and the lifestyle that you are living right now. But know this: you can make the changes above while you take the steps necessary to attract women. These changes, too, should not take more than a few months. Before this, you must first understand what women want:

Power. That's it.

If you believe women want respect, kindness, understanding or any of that touchy-feely garbage that's constantly shoved down your throat from all directions in western media, change your mind right now. You've no doubt tried the methods listed for you by your so-called cultural betters, and where has it gotten you? Friend zoned, disrespected, laughed at and rejected. Commit this to memory: women want power, and nothing else.

Now there are subsets of power that women enjoy, like:

- Confidence (you're a charming leader who can influence others, so you're strong)
- Fun (ditto)
- A fast car (you're dangerous and don't care, so you're strong)
- A motorcycle (ditto)
- Excitement (ditto)
- Money (you can move the world, so you're strong)
- Muscles (obvious)

And though I don't encourage these things, they still exemplify what women want:

- Tattoos (you don't care about consequences and are ready to fight, so you're strong)
- A criminal record (ditto)
- A violent nature (ditto)

But all of these things trace back to power. Do you see women out and about with skinnyfat nice guys time and again, or with the tougher men? Will you believe what the media and family tell you, or your own lying eyes? Don't make excuses and say that you're better than this, or that you have standards, or that you shouldn't have to change who you are just so you can avoid making positive changes in your life. If you read the first part of this post about curing depression, you should know that identity is malleable and you can be who you want to be. If you want to attract women, you have to play the game and acquire power.

If you've heard that women only go out with tall guys, or handsome guys, or rich guys, you were misled. Some women have absolute standards of height or income or something else, but for most of them, it's a hidden point system where you are granted more or less respect depending on where you stand with your overall power in multiple categories. An ugly man can easily overcome his drawback by getting larger muscles and a nice motorcycle. One of my apartmentmates in college, for example, was a 5'2" Indian guy who was dating a 5'8" white girl, and I'm certain it had everything to do with his muscles, basketball ability and overpowering charm and confidence. If you use your financial situation, height, nose or anything else about your life as an excuse to why girls will never like you, you are not only keeping yourself from improving the many other ways that you can attract women, and you are not only missing the point as to what women find attractive, but you are exuding a weak and defeatist attitude that women can smell like dogs can smell fear. In every way, wrapping yourself in this thinking will keep you from breaking out of your lack of luck with women, and/or keep you firmly depressed.

So with all this in mind, the answer to attracting women is simple: acquire and do as many of the things above as you are comfortable with at the same time. Do push-ups and lift weights to develop muscles, learn to ride a motorcycle, get a job and use some of the money to get some nice shoes (because women really care about footwear for some reason), join sports clubs to get in shape and learn how to speak with and charm others, and above all else, focus your mind confidently on a powerful mindset that you will do this, and you won't give up, ever. Remember: mindset is the originator of every action and emotion you have.

There's no reason why you can't cure depression and become an attractive man at the same time. Plan it out and get to it. Today.

One last thing: get off the internet and stay off of it. Aside from getting IMs to meet-ups with friends or girls, checking the weather, getting movie ticket information or getting quick information on how to deal with problem people from man-friendly sites, something bite-sized and fast like that, there is no reason to be on the net. It's a fake place filled with fake, illogical and socially autistic people bubblewrapped in their safe spaces because the real world and real people are too dark and scary for them to deal with. Everything you need to practice and personally learn about women and society must be learned offline, and the net should only be a tool to acquire quick information and ideas about the world, not a replacement for a real life. Live there, and you sabotage your own efforts to cure depression and meet girls.

That's about it. If you want to print out a handy checklist to fixing your life, I'll summarize everything here and you can fill in the blanks with who you want to be:

__ Define self:

______________

______________

______________

______________

__ Control thoughts

__ Goal - ______________________________________

__ Acquire power:

______________

______________

______________

______________

______________

______________

______________

______________

Good luck. But if you stick with these directions and don't give up, you won't need it.

Marriage review, 2015 to 2016

Still chugging along to 2027:

Fights

There were no fights with my wife this year. She tried checking up on me two or three times, but I swatted all her s*** tests away with denial, orders and cockiness.

Chores

I think I did the dishes once and the laundry once in the last year, and that's it. My wife adores me now more than ever before compared to when I did the chores for 30-60 minutes every night, which is completely counter what those "Want sex? Do chores!" articles from western media state.

Were I still single, I would have done every chore once a week. This means that chores is the only improvement of my single life to my married life now.

Sex

I get sex two to four times a week now because I directly push for it, or she comes after me. Cocky strength is what gets her in the bedroom, not respectful communication.

If I hadn't married, things would be much the same, but I would have more varied partners, so while it seems nothing much has changed, things would still be better if I were still single.

Money

I've saved nothing that isn't going towards family expenses or pending college bills. The saving should be done in about two or three years.

As an unmarried man, I would have saved $5000 for emergencies, and had around $90,000 extra to give to charity, buy cars, take long vacations or anything else I wanted.

Time Off

This year, I had 60 or 70 days off of work, all Sundays and holidays.

As a single man, I would have had two days a week off from work, at least 120 a year. If you include the time when I was planning to take a two or three month vacation every year, this number would be even higher.

Travel

I've lived in four cities.

As an unmarried man, I would be living in my twelfth city now, and I have a rough idea of where I would be living at this moment.

Friends

I've made two hundred friends, none of whom are still in regular contact with me.

As an unmarried man, I would have made about 2400 friends, and been in regular contact with about 20-30 of them. All those people I could have helped or learned from, all those experiences I could have had, all that potential, gone.

Fun & Adventure

I've had about five to ten fun days out with my wife and/or son, all this year.

If I were still single, I could have written over 1400 Then and Now posts on my great life, about 200 a year.

Summary

Things have improved little by little in my married life, especially since I took my balls back and realized the truth that women want power and nothing else, but it still isn't anything like my single life was.

Also, with my blog being noticed here or there on the net, I have gotten a few commenters and other truth seekers coming around to see what they could learn about women and marriage, and I'm happy to help out. Again, if human beings were capable of looking at themselves honestly and getting past their illogical beliefs and actions to make necessary changes in their outlooks and lives, I would be going from site to site and telling everyone of what I knew about women, marriage and relationships.

But they aren't. So I won't. I will keep serving those who come around of their own accord, though, so no worries about me going anywhere.

My history with women

Another month of nothing has gone by, but at the risk of sounding like a broken record, that's marriage. My wife has been submissive in every possible way as I act like the tough man she's always wanted me to be, and I've noticed many changes in her behavior compared to five years ago. On her own, she's texted me thank you texts at least ten times for being an excellent father or husband in the last month. She's ready to sleep together on command and hasn't refused me for non-medical reasons for the last six or twelve months (it's actually on so much that I think we're outpacing ourselves when we were still dating). She bought a book about minimalism on her own last week and started sharing how she's not only limited her purchases over the past year or two, but also how she's ready for us to travel the world with nothing more than backpacks full of supplies in eleven years. She's even asked my permission to sell an extra cheap purse that she bought online. She is eager to prove herself at all times to me and is constantly seeking my approval and confirmation, and she gets it, with added instructions on what I expect from her next.

And no, I still don't recommend that you get married, not if you have things you want to accomplish in this world. I'm still forbidden from sleeping with women who are clearly interested in me and about fifteen years younger than my wife, and I still can't travel the world for another decade, when I will have waited a grand total of about 20 years before I can hit the road again. My son is the best product of this marriage, but those of you who live in a western country don't even have legal rights to your children as long as your hypothetical wife can pull the plug at any time for any reason, and take your kid away a literal 90% of the time these things go to court.

So same old, same old.

If human beings were capable of introspection, logical thinking and the diligence necessary to eliminate personal problems as they arose, I might be taking my wisdom from website to website and trying to save as many men as possible. But most people have zero interest in these truths, and every response I get will almost certainly be from the logical fallacies I mentioned in the top post:

"Wow, just wow. Are you kidding me? (NAMECALLING) I can't believe you think all women are slutty manhaters (CHANGE THE SUBJECT, STRAWMAN) who have nothing better to do than conspire (STRAWMAN) against micropenis (NAMECALLING) losers (NAMECALLING) like you. Everything you've just said is literally just your own opinion, (RELATIVISM) and doesn't apply to every woman everywhere (STRAWMAN, ARGUMENT FROM EXCEPTION). I've been married for twenty years and I've never acted like your wife has (ARGUMENT FROM EXCEPTION). Just because you have a bad marriage (STRAWMAN) doesn't mean all marriage is bad (STRAWMAN, ARGUMENT FROM EXCEPTION). Go back to your mom's basement (DENIAL, NAMECALLING) and get some therapy (DENIAL, NAMECALLING) for your obvious mental issues (NAMECALLING)."

I've beaten my head against this brick wall enough times to get nothing more than a splitting headache and a big purple welt while some variation of the above comment is my only response. I've tried to save men from themselves by encouraging them to not get married or lose their power in a one-sided relationship only to see them do it anyway, including friends and family, time and again. The moment I realized I was no longer responsible for the behavior of others because they would never listen to me (about two years ago), and the moment I stopped feeling guilty for holding this knowledge to myself and only providing it to my son, who actually listens to me, was a moment of great release for me.

I am not the Pied Piper. I am not a catcher in the rye. I am not my fellow man's keeper. I am a protector of secrets, the holder of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the spirit that protects a treasure trove of knowledge on how to deal with women. I catalog the wisdom of men far wiser, more intelligent and more experienced that I ever will be, and season my own experiences throughout to prove the efficacy of these masters' teachings. What I don't do is set out to gain converts from a populace of illogical, self-destructive westerners who would cling white-knuckled to their pretty lies while the women in their lives utterly destroy them in every possible way. And if I have written well, if I have provided keen insight to you who read this, know that it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.

So with nothing much to mention about my marriage, as boring as it is, I thought I'd write another post on how to deal with women, using my past self and my dealings with trying to find or keep a girlfriend. I apologize for not having much else to say about marriage for the time being, but there are about a hundred posts in the archives of why you should not get married, and if it's any consolation (I know it is to me), but the less I write about the pain of marriage, the more it shows that my life as a married man is more gruel, less torture.

Now on to the point of this post. When I used to watch YouTube movies and keep in contact with western culture over six months ago (and leaving the west's degeneracy completely behind has done wonders for the peace in my life), I used to watch MGTOW and red pill related stuff all the time to gather information. One of those kinds of videos was response videos to woman worshipers attempting to give men advice on how to meet girls for a relationship, and I couldn't believe how backwards the information these advisors would give. Literally every time I ever tried any of the worshipers advice on communication, romantic gestures, equality, honesty and respect in my youth, it blew up in my face.

So as a public service, I'm here to share my romantic history, with special attention paid to the mistakes I made dealing with our double-X friends for the benefit of any men who find this blog. So have a seat on ol' Uncle John's lap and let me share with you the shame of my sexual past, so you can make sure not to follow in the moronic footsteps of the woman worshiper I used to be.

1. Kelly

Before I get into Kelly, I'd like to share a story. I was 16 or 17 and really getting into the thick of my depression when a friend of mine loaned me Final Fantasy 8, a game from the late 1990s about an emotionally distant, teenage mercenary (Squall) who meets a girl (Rinoa) that throws his entire ordered life for a loop. Through the course of the game, she slowly falls in love with him due to his strength and leadership skills, and especially after he promises to protect her after saving her life. On the other hand, he only realizes and accepts her love when she falls into a coma after a decisive battle later on. Risking everything to cure her, Squall slowly begins to open up and accept the help of his friends to bring Rinoa back to consciousness, and promises to stand with her, even against an entire world that would see her as an enemy. After the last battle, Squall finally calls out to his friends and his love to save him when he ends up all alone, and in the end, Rinoa is finally able to find and rescue him. In the final scene, Squall shares both his first smile, and first kiss, with Rinoa on the balcony near the place they first met.

This game affected me deeply when I played it in the midst of my depression. It was a simple and fun game without too much strategy and involved a lot of collecting, but those setpieces, the music, the scenes that displayed pieces of my teenage life in a fantastical way led me to seeing a lot of myself in Squall. We were both abandoned at a young age, we both developed walls to keep others out, we were both moody and obsessed with getting better (physically for him, academically for me), the only real difference between us was that he was highly respected for his strength and became a strong leader who did everything to remain out of the debt of others, while I was a largely ignored part of any group of friends I was with and relied too heavily on people to support me financially and with my life goals. Nonetheless, the game hit me right in the heart, and from the moment I finished it, I wondered if my own Rinoa was out there. Although this goal of mine eventually led me to the path of healing and it will always remain my favorite game of all time (I just finished playing it again last month), in truth, I had gotten the message of the game wrong, and I wouldn't know it until that fateful day in Then and Now 17 when I truly understood what it was trying to teach.

Final Fantasy 8 wasn't teaching me that through love and sex, I would solve all of my problems. The moral was quite the opposite: once you've dealt with your problems, you will find happiness that enriches your life. This is made quite evident in the actions of both Squall, and his adopted sister Ellone, who was taken from him at a young age. Each of them deals with their problems in the completely wrong way and suffers for it: Squall forgets his past through the use of his powers and is unconsciously antisocial to avoid being hurt by others again, while Ellone repeatedly uses her own power to return to the past as an observer in a vain attempt to change history and the mistakes made there. The message is clear: the past must be remembered and learned from, not forgotten or relived, and only then will you find peace (Squall through Rinoa, Ellone through their mutual father Laguna). But I was just a teenager, so I got the message wrong for four years, and that was the beginning of my search for a girlfriend. So with this bit of nerding out finished, on we go to Kelly.

I had three classes together with her from junior year: Communications, Math and Art History. During the first, I hardly noticed her or knew who she was because we seldom talked. Sometime after that but before we had the latter two classes together, I played FF8 and was affected heavily by it. Then one day, I was walking into the school library when I saw Kelly about twenty feet away. She turned to me, smiled and waved, then walked off to find her book.

It was almost the exact same scene where Squall and Rinoa first met at his graduation party. Kelly even kind of looked like her. At that moment, I was struck with a sudden sense of fright, courage, dizziness, attraction and weakness, a feeling that any man in lust could tell you all about. I decided at that moment to ask her out.

I remember that Valentine's Day well. It was raining as I walked to the florist that was about ten blocks off campus, and I used several days' paltry lunch money to buy a single white rose, the color of innocence. As lunch ended, I went to Art History class and secretly held it in my lap for the whole hour, shaking like a leaf.

When class ended, I met Kelly outside and gave her the rose, asking her to go out with me. She agreed... and I had never been so happy in my life. I told her I would make a plan, then I went home on cloud nine.

The next day, she was super quiet in Math class and only smiled a little when she first saw me. I didn't say anything to her, and when class ended, she left without a word. Lunch eventually came and went, and during Art History it was the same thing: quiet and ignoring me, then leaving the class without a word.

I followed her outside and could tell from her body language that something was wrong. "You don't have to go out with me if you don't want to," I said. "I want you to feel comfortable." She suddenly brightened and said it would be better if we remained friends. I didn't eat or sleep for the next few days, and my depression got even worse as I saw my "destiny" taken away from me and replaced with the same heavy unhappiness that had been my life since my depression started at 14.

What I did wrong

Where to start? My hair was too long. I didn't shave once in my life up to that point. I wore T-shirts, shorts and sandals no matter the weather. Despite all this, she was still willing to give me a chance, at which point I should have had a plan for what we would do for our date. I should have had some kind of vehicle, especially a motorcycle, if I weren't such a craven coward to get behind a wheel or handlebars by that point. I didn't change seats to sit next to her during Math class and start laying it on thick ("You ever been on a motorcycle before?" "You ready for tonight? I'll handle everything, just dress nice and have fun.") I self sabotaged by giving her an out after Art History class. The romantic gesture seemed to work in the beginning, but everything else was a disaster. I was nice and communicated well in the beginning and always showed her respect, but in the end, it was fruitless. Should I have communicated more like western advice says? Maybe, but keep reading.

2. Nancy

She was my TA in college, and older than me by about eight years. I bought her a pot of flowers (thinking if one rose wouldn't do it, a bunch of little flowers would), and brought it to her at the library on the pretext that I wanted to redo a quiz, and she pulled me to the side in anger and read me the riot act for five minutes on how inappropriate it was to ask her out. After that earful, she asked if I wanted her to keep the flowers, and I said she didn't have to. I took them outside, dumped them in the trash, and went home to cry.

What I did wrong

I shouldn't have asked out my TA. I shouldn't have been keeping that ridiculous look that I still had from college, but at least I cleaned up after this stupidity. If I really thought I had a chance, I should have worn something to display my status as a strong man, like a leather jacket with a motorcycle helmet under my arm, or beefy muscles. At the very least, I doubt she would have rejected me as angrily as she did.

3. Sara

I met Sara in one of my classes, and she was a kind, funny and smart girl. After class, she and I would go to the library to study together, or I would take her to the computer lab to show her funny animations on the internet. When she had problems with her parents or related stories like how her uncle and aunt stayed together without love for the sake of their children, I listened patiently and gave her advice. I stayed positive and shared my interests with her, and after she shared her personal website with me, I went there to post messages to her and talk with her friends (every one of whom was a man waiting for their chance to date her, as I was).

One day, while she was driving me back to my dorm, I asked her out on a date. She said ok, and I made some plans for dinner for the next night. When we got to my apartment, she wasn't smiling as much as she was before, and drove off without much of a word. I got on my email, confused, and messaged her: "You don't have to go out with me if you don't want to," I said. "I want you to feel comfortable." She replied back in a few hours, saying we should just be friends. I shut down for the next few days in sadness.

What I did wrong

This is where I was finally taking the advice of the woman worshipers step by step and word for word, doing everything they told me to do. I spent time with her, I shared my interests, I listened to her problems and offered advice, I waited until we were closer before I made my move, and I was kind to her the entire time. And yet, she still said no.

Let's move past the self-sabotage at the end, which was the last time I did that with any woman. This girl never thought of me as anything more than one of her chick friends. I studied with her, listened to her troubles and laughed with her, but those are the hallmarks of thirsty and effeminate losers who don't have the confidence to dominate the girl they're interested in with charm, strength and guidance.

Kelly might have been possible and I might have even been able to sleep with her before we graduated if I weren't a loser. Nancy was a no-go. But I am absolutely sure that if I hadn't listened to the stupidity of woman worshipers about respecting women's space and seeing her as my equal and friend, rather than showing her my strength and guiding her to fun and excitement, that Sara would have been my first.

My clothes were cleaner, but I needed muscle when I entered college. I should have been pumping iron from the moment I entered to have some decent bulk before I took that particular class with her. I should have gotten a license by that point, rather than allowing the girl I wanted to get with to drive me home like she was my mother. I should never have shared my interests with her and instead focused on hers with orders and power, hardly smiling all the while. "You like art? (Direct and to the point) Show me something you made. (Commanding interest)"

I met her a year later by chance. She was dating a new guy who had a permanent scowl on his face and who, I later learned from her, chose his job over her. He told her to wait for him for two years before he came back from working abroad, and she did.

Respect, friendliness and communication accomplished nothing with this girl. But it gets worse.

4. Leena

Yes, that Leena. I first met her because she was the friend of my apartmentmate downstairs. I hardly talked to her when she came by, and though I thought she was cute, I didn't really pursue anything. I don't remember exactly what changed that, but I do remember that she joined the church that she eventually got me into, and after she had dealt with her personal problems and found a good path in life, she suddenly seemed to shine more the next time I saw her. Eventually, we struck up a friendship and started emailing back and forth.

She and I talked over cafeteria food once or twice, and as I got to know her spiritual side, I fell more and more deeply for her. Leena, unlike Kelly and Sara, was the first girl I ever truly loved, both inside and out.

I remember going on a big long drive with her as she took me from place to place around her hometown, showing me a lot of her favorite shops and places she had lived before, and when we came back to my dorm, I was shining more brightly than ever before. Every one of my roommates was laughing at the glow I had around me from being with this kind and fun girl. Later on, Leena and I took another drive around until we came to a restaurant where she had to pick something up from a friend of hers. A waiter there gave her his number before she left, and when she got back to the car, she told me that it was very strange, and that she had no intention of going out with him.

In truth, though, this was the car ride where I had planned to make my move. I was sure that the waiter's number giving was going to affect my chances somehow, but I didn't want to wait any longer like I had with Sara, so I asked Leena out in front of my house. To her credit, she refused directly. I was so used to rejection by this point that I let it slide. I was deflated for a few days, then began my search for another girl soon after.

What I did wrong

Leena and I most certainly would have ended up together if I hadn't listened to the fools who dole out wrongheaded advice on how to handle women, but where to begin? There were so many mistakes.

First of all, I shouldn't have waited until she went to church to notice how cute she was. She used to be a girl who felt in the shadow of her happy sister and had no goal in life, but if I had swooped in at the first moment I met her by noticing her diamond in the rough situation, I could have been the guide that she needed to live a fulfilling life. Instead, she was far beyond me both before, and especially after, her religion had improved her.

She drove me around, just like Sara. You never, never, NEVER let a woman you're interested in drive you places unless you just got into a fistfight and don't have the power to hold the wheel. Letting a woman drive you around is proof that she wears the pants in whatever relationship you have with her, and her dwindling sexual interest will reflect that.

If I had driven her to the restaurant to pick up her stuff, I should have laughed at the waiter who gave her his number, then immediately made my own move. "He gave you his number? Ha! That's great. But you'd do much better with a guy like me." (She giggles, then I return a cocky smile) "I'm serious, babe. I'll pick you up tomorrow at 8, and I'm bringing my bike, so don't wear white." (Bark a confident laugh) "I'll show you I can beat a waiter." Instead, I waited until the end of the trip and asked mommy for a night out.

What did all that kindness, spiritual sharing, communication, humor and respect get me in the end? A one way ticket to the friend zone.

5. Crystal

I met her in class shortly after Leena's rejection, and I had no idea how damaged she was when I first met her. All I thought was that she was a cute and somewhat sarcastic friend who made our lessons even more fun. I didn't really even fall for her during the months we studied together, but at the end of class, I just decided to give her my email address anyway. She smiled a bright smile and joked, "Is this how you ask for someone's number in the 21st century?" I laughed and said yeah.

We got together once or twice to eat as friends, where I was kind and friendly, communicated well, showed her respect, and listened as she described her troubles with her overbearing, possibly abusive father. I showed her concern and gave her advice on what to do, and after a while, began to feel like I wanted to be with this girl so we could both help each other: I would be the one to help her overcome her troubles, and she would help me to be the man I always wanted to be.

I set up a date and she agreed to go, and for the first time, a girl I asked out went with me. We ate dinner and talked, then I took her on a moonlight walk around the park, holding her hand. She didn't squeeze back the entire time, forcing me to hold hands with a straight, deadfish hand from an unwilling girl. I was confused, because things were going so well between us before the date was planned, and I did everything society said I should by being understanding and helpful.

The date was officially over when her father called her cell in the middle of our walk and yelled at her, then when he was done, we talked about it, then I took her home.

But we weren't done. She told me she wanted to be friends by email, and though I stayed away from her for a few months, eventually we both ended up heading to a party together. She told me there about her adventures smoking pot and getting drunk all the time, and seemed to be way more interested in talking to other guys than me, no matter how nice or patient I was in listening to her stories. I watched over her as she got drunker and drunker, until one of her friends noticed and said to her, "John's been like a guardian angel taking care of you this whole time! What a great guy! You should give him a kiss as a thank you... on the cheek, at least."

Without missing a beat, she chuckled, then proclaimed, "I'm not that drunk."

I went home soon after, feeling the absolute pain of the drunken barb, and we didn't talk for a day or two, until I got an email from her saying how sad she was about her life. I decided to confess my love to her by going outside her apartment complex and calling her house phone on my cell, and one of her roommates picked up and said she wasn't there. I knew it was a lie, so I said, "I'll be waiting outside if she needs me." After hanging up, I stayed outside, lying on the grass on my side, waiting for my cell to ring and for her to rush into my arms, but she never did.

Hours later and in the darkness, a security guard surprised me, kicking me in the shoe and telling me to get lost. I moved to another location and lay down there, until a man in a car drove by and gave me his jacket, afraid that I was dying from the cold. At that point, I knew I was acting like a complete fool and went home.

What I did wrong

Notice how Crystal liked me in the beginning. It wasn't because I respected her or communicated well; it's because I IGNORED her. I wasn't interested in her for months, and during this time, I was doing well in class and focused more on a core group of friends who had each other's support as we studied to pull in those high grades. It was only when I started showing interest in Crystal that she started to pull away.

When she started bringing up those personal issues, I started in with the nice guy support thing that dries up the affections of any woman. If I had had my head screwed on straight, I would have ordered her to do something to change her life then moved on to something else. "Stop answering the phone for your f***head of a father." (Pause) "Great, now I'm pissed off." (The ambiguity of this sentence, whether I was angry at her or her father, would get her extremely interested in me) "Get your jacket, we're going out to dinner." I seriously doubt her father was doing anything other than trying to get his daughter to stop self-destructing, but salvaging this date would have required taking his position as the new authority in her life.

I should have done more physical stuff while we were out, like shooting, rock climbing or just motorcycle riding, anything but a lame walk through the moonlight with an obviously messed in the head girl. And when her father called, there should have only been two words: "Hang up." Or, if I felt the desire, "Give me the phone," followed by reaming him out. This would have been a negative move for her family and her and I'm glad I didn't choose this route, but with a girl like Crystal, this was the option to start seriously dating her. I hope I've been clear that the troubles I had with this girl had progressed too far by this point, and an ideal fix to her sudden loss of interest in me should have taken place long before this point.

Communication, respect and understanding got her to lose respect for me, and lost me a chance with this girl (and though I have no doubt that I would be able to guide her to a better life with the personal power I've cultivated now, this failure was probably for the best), while condescension, order giving and cockiness would have had her beholden to me.

The drunken party request was equally pathetic, and I should have either joined in the drinking and gotten up into her business with brash confidence, or looked at her with condescension while she was sloppy drunk and bailed, making it clear that her behavior was disgusting to me. If she truly liked me, she would have chased me outside where I could tell her exactly what I expected from a woman, and the loser she was was not it. Then she'd either move to change or go back to the party, and either way, I would have lost a poisonous influence in my life.

A few years later I met her again and by that time had finished my transformation into the motorcycle riding, muscled bad boy, and I took her to lunch and half-talked half-ignored her because I had no interest in her. She couldn't stop looking at me and asking questions. Yet more proof that power, confidence and danger are what excite women, not communication, respect and comfort.

6. Leena 2

Yep, back to Leena I went. She hadn't originally given me a reason for turning me down, so I thought there would be a possibility we could still get together. I did what I could to improve my fashion and charisma, and after several friendly lunches where we talked about life and shared our personal experiences, I asked her out several times over different meals. The first few times she was vague and told me that she wasn't ready, or that she was a bit busy, or that she was waiting for life to settle down. The final time I asked her out, I straight out asked her if she wasn't interested in a relationship, or not interested in me.

"Both," she answered. With that, I completely gave up on her and made no further moves until I came abroad. Two months later, she was dating a guy who ordered her around and called her peasant trash, and she gave her virginity to him before he dumped her.

What I did wrong

It should be clear by now. You don't make friends with girls you want to sleep with. You don't communicate with them like equals. You don't come to understandings or show respect. You develop personal power to attract them, tell them how it is, then be a commanding force in their lives to hitch themselves to. I had already blown it big time with Leena in my first clumsy attempts, and the only way I would have been able to salvage it is if I had my motorcycle then, and if I blew her off multiple times to go out with other women, real or fake, to make her respect the man that I clearly wasn't.

7. Andrea

I met her online in a depression and suicide forum and she lived a thousand miles away. I supported her through email and listened to her problems. I asked if I could fly up and meet her. She stopped talking to me. I was an idiot.

What I did wrong

This was the last dreg I tried to save from herself. I suppose if I wanted to get with her, I should have sent her a muscled picture of myself next to a nice car or bike, and been less supportive and more commanding/leading while I messaged her. But I didn't. I got news that she killed herself a year later.

8. Emily

I was invited to a party by some of my tutor students, and she was one of the girls there. I talked with her in the main party area for a while in a friendly manner, shared my interests and got to know her and her country a little better. I showed her my skill in her language, tried to be funny, and talked about her and my dreams for life. She gave me one word answers to everything and feigned interest, and when the party petered out I didn't even bother asking her for her number, because I had seen those telltale signs of a disinterested girl many times before, and wasn't interested in getting rejected for the twentieth or thirtieth time.

What I did wrong

I didn't have muscles. I didn't have her get me drinks or anything. I simply talked with her like an equal and respected her space, and women hate that.

9. Georgia

We met at my tutoring job as language partners. I spent time around campus with her and tried to get to know her, and she showed absolutely zero interest in my communication, friendliness or respect. She also mentioned that she was in love with a local tattooed guitar player who had rejected her multiple times. I didn't bother attracting her inevitable rejection by asking her out.

What I did wrong

Clear enough yet? Respect and communication do nothing, power is everything. A disinterested and flaky musician will always trump the complete attention of a nice and communicative woman worshiper, no matter how many other women Georgia had to share a tough guy like him with.

So by this point of my life, nearly 4 years had passed since I finished FF8, saw Kelly in the library and began my quest to find the woman who would fix me, and Georgia was the last straw. I was confused, broken, unhappy... a complete failure, nowhere near the man I wanted to be, and no closer to love than I had ever been in the first place. And that's when Then and Now 17 happened and Leena sent me on the way to becoming a better man.

Three months later, I had muscles, a motorcycle, and my first girlfriend. And here is where this post starts to show the see-saw of silliness regarding my inability to understand what women truly want, and me putting these ideas into poor or accidental practice to get varied and confusing results, until I finally learned the truth about women.

10. Ina

Georgia introduced me to Ina, and we first met at the cafeteria I worked as a server and cook. I sat with legs spread around a chair facing backwards, looking cocky as all hell, but all completely by accident. I set up a time for us to eat dinner, then we saw a movie or two over the following weeks where we talked and hung out like friends. I was also taking Argentinian Tango lessons and had her dance with me in my apartment, then shortly after, I got my first motorcycle and learner's permit, finished my biking classes and took her for a drive around my parking lot, then a few days later, down to the beach at night.

Under the moonlight and next to the ocean, I kissed her, and she smiled. She tried to politely reject me by saying she was too old for me (she was eight years older than me at 29, but she looked, acted and sounded like she was 23), but I told her not to worry about it and we began our relationship right there. I drove her home, kissed her again, then went home to sleep on cloud nine.

Things were passionate and great for a few months as we escalated bit by bit, fooling around in my apartment while my roommates were out, until just a few months later when we slept together on Valentine's Day. She was my first.

As our relationship continued, I started doing what I was taught from society regarding women. When we went to lunch and had finished with the tray and trash, she was super scared when I moved to take care of the garbage because she wanted to be the one to do it. I told her that I would take care of it, and she could just relax.

When we moved in together, I started training her to treat me like an equal. For example, I taught her to tell me to be quiet when I said something goofy by mimicking her voice and cutely saying, "Shut up" whenever I said silly things, until she started doing it herself.

Over the next few weeks and after this unconscious training, she started refusing sex for stupid reasons. Then she started to berate me. We had our first fight when she asked me to mail some letters, I said I would do it later, she yelled at me, then I apologized like a beaten dog and took care of it.

The sex refusals spread out until we only got together every two or three weeks. Her rudeness increased more and more. I kept apologizing and vowing to do more as I was taught, and her behavior got worse.

She moved back to her home country and I followed her to be with her, and though I tried, I couldn't find a job. She berated me and talked down to me, and when I explained myself, she only improved her behavior for a short while before it was back to the usual.

I came home and stayed in touch over the phone with her until she came back to America to visit me, where she seemed to be much more interested in talking to my best friend and teasing me in front of him than she was in talking to me. She did the same thing with my family.

When she went home, I broke up with her on the phone, and we never saw each other again.

What I did wrong

At first, my confidence led Ina to looking up to me, respecting me and soon, joining me in the bedroom. The moment things began to slide downhill was the moment I started to take on aspects of the browbeaten TV husbands, and my own four fathers.

I should have let her clean up after we finished eating, and not said thanks at all. "Good" would have been enough before I directed her to go somewhere else with me.

She never would have started disrespecting me if I had never given her license to jokingly tell me to shut up, and she would have known that her place was to the side and below me.

I never should have put up with any of the fights she started and instead either come back at her twice as hard or just left the house, followed by being extremely vague about the people I was hanging out with while I was out. Either way, following up the fight shutdown with an order or two would have solidified my place back as the leader of the relationship.

Instead, I abdicated my power to her, and showed her the respect of an equal. I communicated my unhappiness with our lack of a sex life very clearly. I showed her respect when she had troubles with me by making changes. I did everything society told me I should do with an unhappy woman, and it just made things worse: the sex became more infrequent, the demands and insults got worse, and she was even showing more interest in my best friend than me.

If I had awakened to the nature of women and the lies of society before I started dating Ina, we would be married with kids now (we even had their names picked out), no doubt about it, though marriage would have brought about its own life draining problems as I've explained on this blog.

At this point, I was back in America and working with female co-workers at a hi-tech gadget store and full of anger for the ways I had been neglected and abandoned in my life, and this stage would continue for the next two years. I was yelling at bad customers and disrespectful kids and stomping around like a complete a**hole. Soon, both of my female co-workers discussed highly sexual stories with me, and one of them even offered me a blowjob in the back while she was on the phone with a guy she knew, but I played it off as a joke because she was kind of a skank and I didn't want to catch anything.

Later, I was in the city getting my passport and visa done to go abroad, and some random girl walked up to me and saw my helmet and leather jacket for my motorcycle, and despite my grunting, kinda rude replies to her questions about my bike, she still shyly and apologetically begged to give me her number and for me to give her a ride.

Where was my communication and respect here? Where was the equality and kindness? I showed none of these things to these girls, the complete OPPOSITE in fact, and yet at least two of them were ready to jump my bones, more than any girl I had EVER treated with respect before.

11. Nara

I actually met Nara right before I got together with Ina at a bus stop on my college campus. I didn't want to take the bus, but because she was a pretty cute looking girl and I saw her reading Douglas Adams, whose work I had read, I struck up a conversation with her. She was funny, smart and interesting, and we talked for a while before her bus came while I pretended to be waiting for a friend. Before she went, she gave me her email address and DeviantArt profile, and I recommended Terry Pratchett's Discworld series to her, since I assumed she was a fan of British humor.

I talked on and off with her, hoping for something to spark up, but nothing really came out of it. But by the time I was dating Ina, she finally got back into full contact with me like she wanted to get closer, but it was too late.

After Ina and I broke up, I got back into contact with her on a lark. I had finished my job at the gadget store and was gearing up to head abroad so I wasn't going to let anything stand in the way of my dreams by getting involved with her, but we went out together along with her hugely overweight friend. We all went shopping together and mallratted for a while, then when we left the ice cream store, I took Nara on my bike and zoomed around the parking lot to find her car. At home, I checked her overweight friend's Myspace page for fun, and it was filled with the depressed posts of a jaded, unloved woman, where she blamed her being the wrong race for the reason she wasn't getting any romantic gestures. For someone to be so blind to the revolting state of her own body was a sight to see.

Later, I took Nara to see X-Men - Last Stand and spent more time watching the movie than talking to her. Finally, when it was just about time to go abroad, I emailed her and joked that I had a crush on her, and that if I weren't going abroad I would "be all over her." "Totally mutual," is what she replied, and directly stated that while the motorcycle was a part of it, mostly that I was charming and cool.

What I did right

She had little to say to me when I was sharing her interests and commenting on her art, showing her kindness in the initial stages. Then later a crush on me? This for a guy who was more cocky than friendly? This for a guy who didn't communicate much? This for a guy who pulled her around the mall like a kidnapper? Where was the adoration and love for a kind, communicative, respectful man that western media constantly puts forward? I did exactly the opposite of what I was taught, and received this girl's lustful eyes more than my attempts to respect ever did before.

I found Nara on Facebook about seven years after I left America, and I found that not only did she become a huge Terry Pratchett fan, but she married a guy who looked like me. Perhaps it was coincidence and perhaps not, but one things is clear to me: western ideas about chasing women are completely backwards.

With enough money to move to this country, so began new experiences with women... with the exact same results.

12. May

What I did right

I wasn't terribly interested in May, though she was kind of cute, and by the time I had the opportunity to possibly heat things up at her apartment, I was already dating my wife. As I mention in the Then and Now, she was a bit hard to warm up, but as I kept up my confidence she liked me more and more... especially after I handled the angry foreigner.

She emailed me quite a bit, set up a lot of meetings and even let me sleep over at her apartment (platonically), because she recognized the power in my character, and because she was attracted to my aloofness in that I spent much more time looking at sites than I did at her.

Communication, respect and equality had nothing to do with May liking me. It was my goal driven attitude and personal strength.

13. Tina

What I did right

Tina was the same as May: I wasn't super interested, I spent more of my time looking at food or buildings than her, and she rewarded my behavior with lavish affection and apologies for not speaking more.

14. Sammi

What I did wrong

Good lord did I botch this one. Sammi was a hot one as I mentioned, and my behavior in keeping in contact with her by communicating every day or so through text or calls, my kindness when we first started holding hands, and my respect for her decision to not move so fast led immediately to her flagrant disrespect, communication shutdowns and overall distance from me. I did exactly as society told me: to keep in contact, to respect her wishes and to be nice, and the result was the exact same thing as it was back in America: utter failure.

15. Olivia

What I did right

Even in my thirstiest days, I had two major standards for women: no fatties, and no b*****s. Olivia was the former, and because I was so put off by her appearance, I looked away from her twice as much as either May or Tina. For that, she loved me twice as hard. I didn't communicate well with her at all, so I guess you could say I was disrespectful by focusing more on trees than my conversation partner, and though I was kind to ask her questions about herself and buy her lunch, I still ended up in the exact OPPOSITE place that society told me I would be. My actions should have caused Olivia to bail and find someone nicer, but instead, she chased me even harder.

16. Nell

What I did right

In hindsight, Nell was an excellent match for me. Thin, cute, loved to smile and grounded through her religion, but I didn't consider her a possibility because I thought her religion would require me to join if I wanted to get with her. The irony is that I'm more spiritual now (but not religious), and this girl was chasing me throughout our entire time together because I unconsciously kept her at a distance due to her religion.

She chased me not because I was a nice guy, not because I communicated well, not because I was respectful, she chased me because I had the attitude of a high status guy who valued his mission of travel more than her.

17. Mary and Isis

What I did right

I had zero interest in club girls or lushes, especially after my experience with Crystal, and Mary and Isis' hard attention on me during the club dancing and after our drinks was palpable. I hardly talked with either one of them, and instead encouraged them to talk about themselves while I gave them half-hearted or teasing answers to what they shared. I danced alone and away from them. I praised their country, and not them. I did everything but what society encouraged me to do to earn a woman's respect, and got exactly what society insisted they wouldn't give me: their adoration. I would have had more experiences with them if, as I mentioned, I didn't lose the email account I used to talk with them.

18. Piper

What I did wrong

She had the look I was into, she was cute and shy, and she had a killer body. I chased her with kindness and respect, communicated with her about her dreams in life, kept in contact with her afterwards, and got nothing more from her than long delays between emails and disinterested replies every time I spoke with her. When my email account went down, I lost contact with her, but nothing would have come of it anyway, counter to what western culture taught me.

19. My wife

What I did right and wrong

You know all about what I did right and wrong with her if you've been around this blog. She adored me in the beginning as I kind of ignored her, treated me like garbage when I submitted to her, and now treats me like a king since I know what makes her and woman in general tick. If you want to take a look again, the Problems posts detail the strife, and the Solutions posts detail what I did to fix everything. And again, it is ALL counter to western culture's logic regarding women and respect.

And that's it. Literally EVERY time I've done what western culture told me to do, I've been rejected, friend zoned or had a girl who was interested in me or dating me suddenly pull away and reject me. Literally EVERY time I've done the exact opposite of what western culture says and been a commanding, cocky, power flaunting semi-brute, women have fallen for me. I take anecdotal evidence from people with a grain of salt, but I would say that nineteen examples of what I share on this blog all going nearly EXACTLY as predicted by the model of women being power obsessed should be rather convincing. This is especially considering that there were some girls in my life (Ina, Crystal, my wife) that I've gotten multiple rank up and rank down responses from as I've increased or decreased the power I've flaunted. This post also doesn't include the myriad of women I've met only for a few brief minutes or hours who, without fail, all acted exactly in accordance with that basic truth: women submit to and love power and powerful men, and they ignore, despise or even abuse weak men. Far from the nineteen examples here, there have been around fifty individual cases of women responding to power exactly as I now predict.

I look back on my time with girls when I was younger in shame for all the wasted time and idiocy. I was blinded by a woman worshiping culture that has no clue as to biological realities, and I made mistake after mistake with them until I finally found the truth from men far better than me.

My son will hear these truths. He may ignore me as well, but with the loving strength I have over him as his father, at least there is a better chance that he will avoid my mistakes. Perhaps he won't listen, but maybe after he tries the western culture approved tradition of gift bearing, communication, kindness and respect to no avail, my words will come back to him.

What I don't look back on with regret, however, is on any of the women that might have proven better girlfriends or wives than my current one. Specifically, Sara, Leena, Ina, Nell or Piper would have made for an excellent partner, probably better than my wife, but I don't regret not being with any of them. Why?

Because women are interchangeable. Every one I've ever known has been an empty cup, filled with the water of their family, culture and lover, most especially whichever one is the most powerful. If you saw me and my wife today and compared her to the woman she was before she met me, you wouldn't recognize this mini-me who has every part of my personality (minimalist, frugal, spiritual, nerdy interests, self-controlled, etc...). Had I the same personal power when I was 17 as I do today, there is no doubt that I could make even a girl like Andrea into a halfway decent partner.

So that's it. I hope you learned something from my occasional, accidental displays of power before I finally found the truth of women, and don't follow too deeply into the mistakes I have made. At the very least, I hope you understand what you're getting into when you start dating a woman, and especially if you marry her. And if you choose the latter, for God's sake don't do it in a place that's hostile to men. If my wife and I lived in America and I was acting the same way that I do now to keep her in line, even I don't know if I could hold her there while culture and her harpy friends whispered in her ear to blow up her family, and follow the hedonistic and hollow lives that they had taken up to destroy their own futures.

Ranking up your girl

If you don't control your woman, she will ruin you.

I never thought I would write those words, especially given my youth where I was impressed upon by everyone to defer to women at all times. If I had the chance to see where I was today and how I treat the women in my life, from family to friends to co-workers, I would wonder how I could be so popular with all of them. I wouldn't have understood how cockiness, order giving and stomping around inspires women to be deferential and sweet. Indeed, as a young man, I always wondered why it was that women I asked out would reject nice me so handily, but then they would go on to date guys who treated them poorly.

In this post, I'd like to present a ranking scale of where you and your wife/girlfriend are, and what you can do to upgrade her. I still don't recommend marriage for any man with the way the anti-male laws are today, and for all the many reasons I've written on this blog. This information, I hope, goes only to dating men, or men who are married with children who want to protect their kids by taking control of their marriages. Childless bachelors have little idea of the naked terror a man feels when his kids are in danger of being harmed or removed from his life, but I know about the empty pit in the stomach, lost weight, chaotic thoughts, dizziness and suicidal fantasies. Trust me. So let's get to it:

Rank S - Superb
- Does as her man says, with little to no question.
- Initiates sex some or most of the time, and it's on upwards of five times a week.
- Proactively cooks and offers massages, presents and other shows of love.
- Proactively thanks her man for what he does.
- Checks with her man before making a decision.
- Makes almost immediate changes when her man's desires contradict her personality or actions.

Ranking up
Since there is no way to rank up from a Rank S woman, being at the top and all, I'll instead offer some basic advice on how to keep her here:

- Don't every apologize. Ever. Even if you do something horrible like accidentally run over her cat, focus on what you'll do to make it right, or on how you made a mistake. Never, ever apologize to a woman, unless you're joking.

- Never ask her permission. When you're going to do something, treat it as a foregone conclusion. "So, what do you think about that? Is it ok if we take a vacation to Russia?" and words like this will slowly rank her down because she sees you as not leading. Instead, "Hey, I've got some money saved up, so let's go to Russia in two months" will show her who is making the decisions in the relationship and keep her in line. If she does protest or offer criticisms, do it anyway/go without her/laugh off her advice, anything but actually giving her any kind of credence. If she ends up being right about something, take her advice with a light, cocky grudge. I like to squint my eyes a little, lift my head up and look away from her, pause for a few seconds, exhale deeply, then concede her point... then either add my own idea on hers or order her to do something. For example, if she suggests I take a long sleeved shirt to town, I'll say, "All right. It needs to get some air." Or, I might say, "Yeah. Hey, I'll call thirty minutes before I come back, so make me some burritos." Every time you ask a woman permission for something, it's a tacit admission that she sits at the big kid's table... and she should never think that.

- You can offer her compliments, especially if she's making changes you like, but always follow up with how she can do more or do better. If you keep complimenting your girl, she'll become complacent and stay where she is. But if you say, "Nice waist. Way better than before. Keep going." It not only shows her that her old waist was unacceptable, but she still has changes to make.

- Be physically dominating. Every once in a while, grab her or get up in her business. I like to put my hand on her waist as she walks by every once in a while to stop her, then look sideways at her for a little bit. It's up to her how she responds (usually she giggles or smiles), but if she asks what I want, I use my other hand to finger tap my cheek twice to get a kiss. Get up behind her while she's cooking, only an inch or two away, then delay a few seconds before growling, "Love hamburgers, babe." Or grab a breast. Or both. When you pass her in a hallway, give her a butt a dominating, light swat or squeeze.

- Order her around. You can thank her and show appreciation for her actions so you can encourage her to do more of them, but don't use words like "please," "could" or "would." As a man, the most polite word you should use for your girl should me nothing stronger than "can." Compare the feeling between "Could you make me a sandwich? Thanks a lot!" to "Can I get a sandwich, babe?" Women love taking orders from strong men because it shows them who they're deferring to.

- Use fewer words than she does. If she gives you ten words describing her troubles at work, answer with five. If she says she loves you, answer "Yeah," or "Same." On that note, try to avoid telling her you love her, even if you do. I honestly don't think I've told my wife this for the last six to twelve months, but she's told me several dozen times. You want her chasing you, and being quieter is one way to get her to do that. If you ever tell her a long story or joke and she responds with a shorter answer, freeze her out and ignore her until she comes to talk to you again, tilting the balance of power back to you. It won't take long, trust me.

- Never show weakness. Never show fear. Never show any feeling besides confidence, irritation if she makes a mistake, or some other emotion of power. Weakness is to women what obesity is to men, sexually speaking.

- Don't respond to her nonsense with passive-aggressive copy-mockery. Before I stopped engaging with western people online, I used to see a lot of this in comments sections and videos where someone would repeat words of someone else, but change the words slightly to make the other look foolish. For example, one person might say, "You DO realize that guns can be used to protect children from home invading predators, right?" to which someone else would respond, "You DO realize that the police can help, right?" or "You DO realize that guns can be used to kill innocents, right?" This concept also applies to copying the actions of someone else to karmically punish them for what they've done. For example, if your wife burns the pizza she cooked but she lies that it tastes fine, then you would cook burned sandwiches the next night and say they tasted fine. This kind of catty nonsense gives your girl two impressions: first, that the two of you are equal, otherwise the man wouldn't be copying the woman in word or action. You and your girl are NOT equal. Second, it calls out the negative actions of your girl, which is good, but provides no sense of leadership to what she should do instead. In the pizza and sandwich example, a better move would be to cook the best meal you possibly could, serve it to your girl, then after she ate it, get right up in her business and say, "Tell me that was delicious" with a cocky smile, and she'll agree. If she says it wasn't, jokingly threated to kick her ass, then pick her up, throw her into bed, rip off her clothes and go at it. If the kids or someone else is around, still pick her up, but throw her on the couch and tickle her until she submits.

Rank A - Arguing
- Argues with her man about things every so often.
- Initiates sex rarely, and it's on once or twice a week.
- Cooks and offers massages, presents and other shows of love when asked, but sometimes refuses.
- Proactively thanks her man for what he does, but sometimes forgets.
- Makes some unilateral decisions.
- Makes some personal changes at her man's request.

Ranking up
Some men may find this kind of woman attractive, one of those "strong and independent" types that the media goes on and on about, but I personally find them draining. They will constantly second guess what you do, and even after you consistently prove that you know what you're doing, they'll be back time and again to complain about something else, which also puts them at risk to ranking down to Rank B, given enough leeway. A quick example from my vacation last month with my mom and sister:

Sister: What was that he tried to give you?
Me: Stickers. You can exchange them for free stuff, but I'm not interested.
Sister: Wait, but it's free stuff. Why don't you just take them home?
Me: It's basically exchanging $25 of purchases for $1 of candy. I don't want the food anyway and it's not worth it.
Mother: But maybe they'll change what they offer.
Me: They don't.
Mother: But it's free food. Just take them back with you. You're going to come back later anyway, right?
Me: I don't want the food, and it's a very slight save. It's all just a ploy to get me to buy more than I want right now so I can collect enough stickers to get something I don't much want anyway later on.
Sister: Are you sure?
Me: Yes. I'll save more money this way.
Sister: Ok...

(Ten minutes later)

Mother: Why did you close the window? It's stuffy in here.

To avoid this constant second guessing, I find Rank S women to be way, way more appealing to live with. If you have a Rank A on your hands and want to rank her up, you should always follow the advice given above in Rank S, with special focus put on points 2 and 5: never ask permission, and order her around. Flip the relationship and make it clear that you are calling the shots. Give this a few days, a few weeks maximum, and you'll have yourself a Rank S on deck.

Rank B - Babying
- Does not do as told most of the time.
- Initiates sex only if not asked for a while. Denies sex a lot, leaving it to once or twice a month.
- Begrudgingly helps out around the house when asked about half of the time.
- Condescends to her man and orders him around.
- Acts unilaterally with big decisions and doesn't trust much, if any, input from her man.
- Hardly ever changes.

Ranking up
Your girl has gotten this far because you haven't been acting like a man. If she has just started being like this, it's probably going to get worse in a few weeks or months because you are doing everything wrong, and you need to take my advice immediately. If she's been like this for a while and hasn't gotten worse, then you're doing some things right and others wrong, so there's much more hope for you.

Rank B women feel that your leadership isn't good enough to lead your relationship, and have started to take a more proactive role in guiding things between you. She takes on a motherly role to direct things in a way she thinks is better, but this directly contradicts her genetic code, which screams at her to submit to a powerful authority. As such, she treats you, her man, like a baby, because if you aren't her master, you are her child.

When you have a Rank B on your hands, you'll find that nothing you do is ever correct. You put the dishes away wrong, you ate your chicken incorrectly, you need to put on more clothes, you should tell your boss about your troubles, you need to exercise more, your friends are a bad influence, could you open the window that's right next to me, could you turn up the TV when the remote is right in my hands... a Rank B will make you feel like you're back in grade school again.

To rank this girl up, follow all of the advice mentioned above under Rank S, and especially the points mentioned in Rank A. She is testing your authority, and you have failed time and again to provide the leadership she wanted. You need to turn the tables on her, and you need to order her around EVERY SINGLE TIME she tries to baby you. When she asks you to close the door, and even if you're closer, answer, "You can do it." This not only gives her an order to follow, but the addition of the word "can" makes it like a challenge that she needs to accept to prove herself to you. If she refuses, it also gives you the easy response of, "What, you can't do it?" Then you can laugh at her and walk away to do something else, showing that you don't put yourself below her anymore.

Remember, she only gives you a hard time because you let her do it. I know taking back your balls and standing up to your wife feels strange and uncomfortable as hell the first time or two you do it, but that's what deprogramming the woman worshiping brainwashing that you received your entire life feels like. Keep this up, and your wife will rank up and you'll wonder how you ever bowed or scraped to her whims in the past when being a man feels so much more natural... for the both of you.

Rank C - Criticizing
- Flagrantly disrespects and flaunts the authority of her man.
- Never initiates sex, and frequently denies it for upwards of a season.
- Hardly ever shows love of any kind, and when she does, only under passive-aggressive protest.
- Criticizes her man for everything he does (even in public), always demands more, and never thanks him.
- Engages in any kind of behavior she wants, often contrary to what her man wants simply to be contrarian.
- Never changes.

Ranking up
Understand that your girl is Rank C because you let her get here. I understand that you probably weren't taught well by your absent/hangdog father, your ball-busting mother and your woman worshiping culture (I sure wasn't), but now that you've found this blog, you have no excuse. It's time to get your life back, and rank this Rank C woman up.

In all honesty, though, if things have gotten this bad, my advice might not even work and you should really consider breaking up or divorcing, but if you're married with children and you need to protect your little ones, go balls to the wall, do what I say and hope for the best: your children do not need to see their mother breaking you down like she does, or they'll likely grow up to do/receive the same thing.

As usual, you'll need to follow the Rank S advice above, but in this case, hold off on points 3, 4 and 5 for a little bit because you're dealing with a Rank C who doesn't trust your authority yet. Complimenting her will swell her head even further, even if you follow it with a dig. Trying to proactively touch her will probably provoke a negative physical response. Ordering her around will make her laugh at you. No, a Rank C needs to be improved at the base before you can do anything else. So what should you do?

First of all, immediately shut her out. Spend as much time as possible either away from the house, or with your kids, whichever is applicable. Give her one word answers to everything, leave the house to hang with friends or watch a movie without telling her where you're going, refuse anything and everything she tries to offer you, and avoid eye contact at all times. If she stands in front of the TV or something similar to force you to look at her, glare at her then order her to move. If she asks what's wrong, shake your head at her, snort derisively, whatever it takes to nonverbally show your displeasure, then disappear for a few hours. Do not ask for sex, and if she tries to initiate with you as a sort of apology (she's probably confused about what's going on and thinks sex will solve it), refuse her. "Not interested" is a good answer. Delete her text messages without reading them. Refuse her calls.

The purpose of this exercise is to shake up the comfortable little world she's built up where you hop to and do exactly what she wants, but even more importantly, for her mind to swirl with a thousand chaotic thoughts of what is going on in your relationship. "Is he cheating?" "Did I forget something?" "What happened?" You want this chaos to swirl around her mind for a few days or a week (any more than that, and she'll probably start cheating or preparing to leave you, if she hasn't done one or both of these already). Then, when it seems like she's at her breaking point, there's only one thing left to do.

Yell. Let her corner you somewhere, then turn the tables and put the utter fear of God into this woman who has disrespected, used and taken advantage of you for so long. Tell her about all the things she put you through, about every one of her failings as a human being. Do not try to meet her halfway by apologizing, even if you've made a mistake; just verbally trash her actions and character. Also, don't cuss more than necessary because you want her to fear the ideas behind your words, not necessarily the words themselves: wield your words like a scalpel to cut her metaphorical heart out, and leaving her a crying, apologizing mess of blubbering clay that is ready to be remolded into something beautiful. Take that chaos you created in her mind throughout the shutout, and prepare to shape and direct it into a better direction: one that you have chosen and you will lead better than she ever could.

When you're done, disengage and put her on freezeout for a while, prompting her to cook for you, initiate sex and otherwise chase you. For my wife, I went about six months before I started giving her compliments in addition to orders or cooking for her, because I knew then that she was to the side and below me again, and it was safe to offer niceties here and there. And for God's sake, do NOT forget to lead her now that you're back in charge: if you yell at her but just go back to the life where she called the shots, you'll be back in this position again in no time. Ever wonder why you had a father, a friend or someone else who kept getting back into it with their girl, fight after fight? THIS IS WHY.

One last note, though: if you live in a woman worshiping country that has passed domestic violence laws that translate "yelling" as "abuse," you can consider doing everything above except replace yelling with icy cold condescension. In fact, this may be more effective than yelling if you live with a naturally rebellious woman who fights everyone, but I've successfully ranked up my mother, sister and wife with this technique at different times, all three of whom are fighters to some degree, and not one of them has dared to return to Rank C. All things considered, if you live in a culture that will view you as the bad guy no matter what because you are the male, I again advise you to just break up with your Rank C girl and not make the same mistakes again with your new one. If you're married with children, though, this is what you need to do to get your life, and the lives of your family, back on track.

Rank D - Dangerous
- Violently disrespects and flaunts the authority of her man.
- Frequently denies sex and only initiates as a show of power and control.
- Never shows love of any kind.
- Physically assaults her man when her ridiculous requirements are not met.
- Flaunts all authority and does anything she pleases.
- Never changes.

Ranking up
You are in mortal danger living with this woman. Perhaps this is your fault because she started at Rank A or B, but through your constant refusals to lead or deal with your girl's nonsense, it's fallen to this point. Perhaps another man abdicated his duties (her father or ex), and now you're dealing with the fallout. In any event, there is only one way to rank up a Rank D woman, and it's not therapy or religion: she will eventually relapse, I promise you. The answer to a Rank D is a haymaker.

Don't do it. If you beat your Rank D girl into submission to protect yourself and bring her back from the edge, you will be punished for it. If it's not her ex, it will be her brother, her uncle, her father, the police, a judge, prison inmates, or someone else. For defending yourself, you will be jailed, beaten, or even killed. Your only answer to a Rank D woman is to get the hell out of there, or if you are married with kids, record her abuse, then get the hell out of there. Understand?

Men pre-1965 in America knew that striking a woman is the quickest way to rank her up, and the only way to fix her when she's fallen this far. You might have seen these kind of premeditated attacks in the media on classic TV shows or documentaries. But many of those men also used physical violence as a way to control their women in cases where it wasn't necessary at all, where any of the above techniques for Rank C, B and A women would have worked just as fine. The major point is, there is almost never a good reason to strike a woman, and even when there is, you will pay for it as a man, no matter who the aggressor was. So just don't do it, and run. Run hard, run now, run silent, run deep, run like Mexican water through a first-time tourist, but the key word here is "run."

Really, if my ranking system of women holds any kind of water, it would account for the cycle of abuse that women undergo with violent boyfriends or husbands that they stay with. A powerful, violent man gets with a woman at Rank S or A who respects his confidence and strength, but as time goes on, she starts to dig more and more at him and his actions by s*** testing him through criticism, disrespect and other nonsense, ranking down to Rank B, C or D. The violent man, either raised by another violent man or with no good father in his life to give him proper techniques for controlling women, beats the daylights out of her. She immediately ranks back up to Rank S to follow this powerful man who "loves" and "protects" her, and he begins the process of reconciliation where he apologizes for what he did, taking better care of her. She immediately loses respect for this supplicating woman worshiper, ranks back down, and the process begins anew.

I know this might be a lot to take in, and when I was reading up on information for men about troubles like this, I felt overwhelmed as well. But to help you where I had less guidance, let me assure you that a change in mindset is the absolute most important thing. Just by coming to this blog and reading this far, you've at least shown an inquisitiveness to what may be going on in your relationship with your girl, and accepting that you might have a problem is the first step. Having some self-respect, taking back your balls and standing up to the mini tyrant in your house will come next, and in each case, your thought processes will change to provide you the words and actions needed to keep your girl in line. You don't need to follow each of the examples I provided to the letter; they will come naturally to you because of your new mindset. I've just provided basic blueprints and suggestions.

I know this is true because I read blogs on dealing with women and how to answer this or that text, or respond to this or that s*** test when chasing girls, and the author would provide sample answers on how to make her like you better. When I first started reading in 2012 while I was awakening to what it meant to be a man, I would struggle to come up with an answer for several seconds, and it would always come out wrong or deferential. Just a year after I started making changes in my life and marriage, I can now pick nearly perfect answers (sometimes word for word, based on what the author wrote as a possible answer) in less than two seconds. It's all about the mindset.

The best one I've found in Chateau Heartiste by Roissy. If the Don't Marry blog beat me over the head with the realities of how I was completely wrong about women and relationships, then Roissy crucified, disemboweled and dismembered my woman worshiping carcass with his shiv, leaving me to slowly put myself back together like the T-1000.

I've grown stronger for it, and you can too.