Sometimes, words that people can say, even in perfect innocence, can act as timebombs; at least if we are not reflective enough about their true meaning.
The story I have to tell to you today is from my college years, which in the UK is equivalent to the end of high school.
Many years ago, I knew a sweet woman from my college class, that I definitely had a crush upon.
We used to chat a lot, and on the very end of our A Levels, in a slightly clumsy gesture, I bought her a terracotta warrior and expressed my sentiments.
She was half amused, half embarrassed, and said “Oh no, don’t!” although these were really not malicious, but more playful.
But it was the words she said afterwards that really stuck with me.
“Actually, you’re a really nice guy!”
This was obviously a way of softening the blow that she wasn’t interested in me in that way: it was a Platonic friendship, not something with any prospects of romance.
Yet for some reason, I got it into my head that it was because I was a nice guy, not in spite of being a nice guy, that this rejection occurred.
A little further down the road, when I started university, I got it into my head that women wanted men who were rough and aggressive, and started getting whiny and petulant.
As I’ve mentioned in the Good Men Project before, I never got into incel subculture; in fact, during my Bachelor’s Degree, I’d never even heard of them!
However, the moaning was based on a manufactured grievance; it was partly that I was not taking care of my personal appearance and hygiene, no doubt a common enough factor among many of the long-term single.
Eventually, I did however meet the woman of my dreams, but things just didn’t work out.
It all just seemed to good to be true: how could someone this amazing, possibly love someone like me?
It was actually my gentleness and my sweetness that she loved too.
Eventually, however, our divergence in studies we had to spend some distance apart, even though we didn’t want to.
And when that period ended, we argued a lot.
I was largely to blame: I was very argumentative, and ever since then, I have blamed myself for our break-up.
I grieved a lot for her pain, and how it was my fault, because when I was on the verge of abandoning her, she just cried and cried and cried.
But one thing that has also struck me as deeply poignant is that it is precisely what she loved most above me, my gentleness, my tenderness, my sweetness, that I hated most.
My argumentative behaviour appears to have been some kind of rejection of that part of me she cherished so dearly.
Over time, I fell into alcoholism, and my porn addiction deepened also.
Eventually, I binned the bottle, then some years later, got clean of pornography as well.
But one day, it hit me as a kind of ‘Eureka’ moment, that my college mate’s telling me I was a nice guy, and my incredibly immature and ungracious response to that, must have been one of the roots of the breakdown of my relationship with my ex.
On some deep subconscious level, I must have taken ‘You’re actually a really nice guy!’ as the kiss of death.
Even as contentious a singer as Morrissey once sang:
It’s so easy to laugh, it’s so easy to hate
It takes strength to be gentle and kind
Over, over, over, over
It’s so easy to laugh, it’s so easy to hate
It takes guts to be gentle and kind
Sadly, all this has been a hard-won lesson.
I wasted several years as an addict, constantly being an edgelord and even a hater online.
Or as Soren Kierkegaard once said:
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
Addiction recovery doesn’t just mean not succumbing to any vice again, it means building something beautiful out of the wreckage of my life.
One thing I am certain of is that I will never again see gentleness, sweetness, kindness and compassion as detrimental to my masculinity, ever again.
I’m determined to be a real man, a true man, an authentic man.
And I will never let myself go down that road again, of despairing of goodness as the foundation of genuine masculinity.
—
This Post is republished on Medium.
—
Photo credit: iStock
