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As part of my Real Men Feel podcast, we have a private Facebook group. With over 100 episodes, plenty of topics and guests have come from that group. Once what happened in the group was the subject of a show. I would love to do that again, but the person I would have invited to the show left the group before I could ask him to appear.
One member of the group saw something posted by another member that he didn’t like. He raised the issue with this comment under the offending post.
Advertising pornography. WHY is this allowed in this group?
This could have been, this should have been a group with real value.
Allowing this post tells me the site is garbage.
Up to this point, what he did was fantastic. He shared his opinion, which I’m all for. But he promptly left the group before any conversation could happen or even before an admin could agree with him and delete a post.
Why raise the issue if you aren’t giving anyone a chance to get back to you? The author of the content that he considered to be porn responded to the comment asking exactly what the man thought was pornographic about it, but the original commenter had already fled. The blog post itself was about intimacy in relationships and didn’t contain any nudity or explicit language, unless you think orgasm is a dirty word.
I wonder how often this guy gives up or retreats when confronted with something he doesn’t like. I’m not writing this to call anyone names or embarrass someone, but this was his chance to add value, to engage with other men on a topic he seemed to genuinely care about. He had never made a comment or post in the group until this one. How many potential growth experiences or new friends never get a chance because he quits?
This sort of “I’m taking my ball and going home” attitude bugs me because I lived my life that way for many years. I was a quitter. When life got challenging, I gave up. I didn’t have a shred of resilience. It went so far that I made multiple attempts to end my life.
Life is so much better, in my experience, when we are willing to be open and especially when we are willing to be wrong.
As children, we’ve all run away from something we didn’t like, or at least we desperately wanted to. But as adults, as men, isn’t it time we ask for and expect more from ourselves and others?
At the very least, ask some questions and learn more about what you don’t like before you take your ball and go home.
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Photo by Daniel Hansen on Unsplash
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