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When we think of the manosphere we often think of angry men hating on women. Perhaps somewhere along the line these groups of guys had their feely feels trampled on and went on an all out misogynistic tirade against their gender opposites. This is what most people think that haven’t had the misfortune of seeking advice from these sphere’s anyway.

Rolling back twenty years or so I was a “nice guy,” I was one of those men that would help out whenever needed, not have no in their vocabulary, and would go out of my way to help women even if it was going to cost me in the long run, be that financially, emotionally, or physically. I’d be particularly attentive to those that I had attraction to. I needed to know them first of course.

At the time I didn’t see anything wrong with this behaviourally. My mother had always said to me that I needed to be, “strong” and “kind” for these women. Even now, you can find her waving her finger at me if I’m doing anything she disapproves of with my wife. She’s always been a strong advocate for women — even if that’s detrimental to my emotional wellbeing. I guess sometimes that isn’t a bad thing.

Nevertheless without going into to much detail about the psychological effects this played out into my childhood with my friends, and with my family, it would be safe to say that the way that I was raised wasn’t particularly proactive in finding a suitable mate.

You see I was raised by a strong woman, and my father, absent that he was, would only come and see me every year to wave his finger disapprovingly at me as to how, “soft” I was becoming. If you haven’t guessed it yet then male (fatherly) approval is extremely important from both men and women in their adolescence and younger years.

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So coupled with my mothers overbearingness and my father’s disapproval I found myself in tough waters with women (there’s obviously more to it than that but I’d rather not be writing a 6000 word essay tonight). Whenever I found a girlfriend it would last perhaps a couple of weeks at best and then they would tell me that it just wasn’t working out. I just couldn’t keep them. I was unconfident, insecure, and definitely needy.

I also knew I was one of the lucky ones. Some of the other guys I knew couldn’t get passed the first hurdle. I was a good looker back then, plus I had an addiction to sports and well, I was quite buff — so finding them was not as hard as it could have been, but keeping them was way harder.

I think my longest dry spell without sex had been at least five years. It’s not something I wave around proudly, alas, to get my message across I have to dig deep into the troughs of my memory.

Then along came 2006. This was the year I wanted to tell a girl I was working with that I liked her but didn’t have the stomach to. My shyness was crippling and my social anxiety overbearing. In the end I made a fool of myself and ended up hurtling into a pit of depression — this was also the year I was fired from my job for taking days off work to sit in the pub and drink stupidly.

Anyway, angry that yet another lady had slipped my fingers and the world seemed to be against me I managed to stumble on, “No More Mr Nice Guy” by Dr Robert Glover. It was a book written to help males like me make sense out of the world that seemed broken, against them, and highly unfair. To me some people used to just get advantages and me on the other hand would have to work incredibly hard for the same things.

This book absolutely changed my life beyond recognition. I mean it wasn’t the only book I read of course but it was a starting point for me. It made me realise that I was basing my self worth on how people saw me as an individual rather than how I saw myself. It also changed my thinking from what I could get from the world to what I could give to the world instead.

So I delved into the manosphere and began reading and watching hints and tips that really helped me over the next several years get what I wanted out of life. It definitely isn’t something I could learn overnight — it even just started off with a nightly walk around the countryside to soak in the sights and have some me time.

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From there I started to build on myself. This is what a lot of people don’t get or understand. They think the world is broken so they need to fix what’s wrong with the world. But it’s far more simpler than that. The world will always be broken — if you want the best and most impressive results then you start fixing what’s wrong with yourself first.

Interestingly enough many years later I found out through my work place that I was probably Autistic. This was solidified when my son was diagnosed with autism too. We look back and it looks if my Dad could have been that way also — so it seems heavy on my side, autism.

A lot of people also say to me well you don’t seem like you’re autistic, and sometimes I struggle with it myself. My wife always asks me well did I start off this way or did I have to work incredibly hard on my social skills, on basic things that mostly come naturally to others? And she was right, if it weren’t for the work I’ve done on myself levelling up the way I interact with people I would probably be in the same place clueless, and more than likely very angry.

This is why I feel bad for the incel community. I read article after article from people condemning the incels for what they’ve been up to lately but no-one seems to try and dig a little deeper as to why they are like this in the first place.

Probably a lot of it isn’t what you think either. I’d hazard a guess that a lot of the incel community are guys that are autistic and struggle to understand people and thus take out their rage on the internet. Some even take that rage into real life if encouraged enough. But I understand, it is frustrating wanting to communicate with someone you like but you just don’t know how to or are scared of the consequences.

Of course I’m not giving them a free pass here — those internet forums are filled with so much rage and once I had a look and I was rather shocked to say the least.

But as long as we kick the dog whilst it is down, it will stay down. Then once in a while it will bear it’s teeth and try and bite us if we don’t stop.

With all that I met my wife in 2008 after two whole years of working hard on becoming a better person for myself, my family, and those around me. It’s 2021 and we’re still extremely happily married so I must be doing something right.

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<center>*(wife & I, 2009)*</center>

It’s not like I stopped when I finally caught the woman of my dreams though, no. It was a continual process of building on what I had become. The more I learned, the more I built on the learning. It was the manosphere, and to be honest some pretty kick ass counsellors that helped me build myself into a different person.

It’s also a continual process. I fuck up, I learn, and I accommodate. I’m not perfect. I never will be.