Read a harrowing story on Twitter the other day:
It’s a long thread… you can go through the details yourself.
But to TL;DR… this woman was dating a man and became pregnant with his child.
Because she (African) was from a different background than him (Pakistani), however, his culture wouldn’t accept her.
And so, while claiming to want to support her and the baby, over a period of months he was quietly poisoning her with abortifacients; giving them to her as “prenatals” and even inserting such pills in her vagina under the pretense of sexual foreplay.
In the end, the child was totally messed up and was miscarried later in the term.
There is no way to describe this other than evil. But what struck me about the thread and the reason I decided to write about it was this section:
As you can see, this guy is emoting like crazy towards her. He’s sooo in love with her, she’s amazing, all he can think about is being with her, blah blah blah
This stuff is likely nauseating for you guys to read. It’s extremely needy, and reminds me of stuff you see teenagers write each other.
But what I think the woman herself misses in her pain is that this wasn’t all an act.
This guy DID have these feelings for her. He wasn’t lying. He is simply emotionally twisted; his obsession with her isn’t incongruent with his desire to harm her.
To piggy-back off of yesterday’s email, she was clearly in the masculine role here. She was cool to him, and acted as if she didn’t need him (she didn’t) even as he dumped all of his feelings onto her. This drove him crazy, and led him to seek more and more attention and validation from her.
So if he wanted to make her happy, why did he kill her baby?
2 reasons:
1) It’s not clear he would have done this if she had validated him more. He had a “love-hate” dynamic with her, because he needed more affection from her but never got it. This is NOT to excuse his actions, but in his emotionally unstable mind, her “emotional neglect” for him became a justification for him to act as he did.
2) He was also looking for validation from his mother and family. He didn’t want to be “bad” to them, so he was caught between two sources of validation. In order to not affect his position with either party, he tried to take the sneaky way out: causing her to have a “miscarriage,” which would solve all of his problems. Neither she nor his family would hate him.
I’ve spoken about this “dark side” of nice guys before, in depth. But what I want to emphasize here is the reason nice guys have such evil within them is because of their guilt and shame.
It is guilt and shame that causes people to be sneaky, because they don’t want anybody to find out about them.
If this guy were more masculine, and was willing to express how he felt WITHOUT guilt or shame, then he would have been able to either confront his family and deal with the backlash… OR he would have been able to leave the situation, and let her take care of the kid alone, as she requested.
But because of how controlled he was by these emotions, he couldn’t own up to either looking bad to his family, or to being a delinquent father. In both of these cases he would look bad to people. So rather than face his faults, he doubled down, and committed true evil in an attempt to save face.
In other words… he avoided responsibility at every opportunity.
WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT MEN *DON’T* DO
Anyway, the point of all of this simple.
Even if you are nowhere close to this guy’s level of darkness and depravity, you must understand that every bit of shame you have in you becomes a vector for weak behavior and evil acts.
Your level of manhood is DIRECTLY correlated to your ability to take responsibility — even for the worst things.
Shame festers in hiding, and it withers in light.
You must take ownership.
But I know all of this is easier said than done. Many of you have secrets you are terrified other people might find out about:
Sexual experimentation with other boys in childhood.
Compulsive and extreme pornographic habits.
Regular retreats to massage parlors; liaisons with prostitutes, affairs…
And those are just some of the more mild ones.
The good news?
You don’t need to post about this stuff on social media to release the shame.
You just need to talk through it with somebody. To go through it all with someone who isn’t going to judge you, and who sees it in its proper context.
Perhaps you have a friend you trust enough to do this with. Who has deep self-awareness and competence in human psychology; who gets what you went through.
But perhaps you don’t.
Which is one of many reasons you should consider working with me.
A lot of coaches will tell you what to do with women.
But they won’t help you to heal.
Not so with me. I am non-plussed by the dark side of human nature.
I’ve seen it all.
Which is why I can banish the demons from your life.
Apply here: www.patstedman.com/application
– Pat
