MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) is a loosely-knit movement that certainly draws a fair amount of criticism. It concerns men withdrawing from the sexual marketplace to pursue their own lives, independent of pressure to pickup girls, get laid, or get married.
With articles like the brilliant “The Sexodus” on Breitbart, MGTOW is beginning to make more sense, perhaps mainly in its very moderate interpretation: that men need to detach from women and sex for the sake of their own mental health. (There are certainly some extremist elements to the movement that I do not care for.)
When I was about 17 years-old, I hung out with a few guys almost twice my age. We went to a biker coffee shop on a rough side of town, where they asked me “Son, what’s your number?”.
“Huh? My number?”
“How many women you’ve fucked’
“Umm, one”
They all burst out laughing at me. One of them remarked that his “score” was in the 30s.
“When I was 17, it was a lot higher than one, I can tell you that.” The immediate feeling I felt in response to these guys I barely knew was intense shame.
This was an impressionable experience. As I grew older, that score obviously increased, but I felt an invisible pressure, and even when I’d hook up more, I did not feel relieved. It was never enough to feel satisfied.
“It seems real men, like those guys I met, are always banging new girls. Why am I so far behind? So inefficient?”. Thoughts like this would plague my head constantly.
But unlike another addictive vice (money), the game of sexual politics sometimes feels unwinnable (for both sexes). While we can control our bank account through hard work, many men get stuck at improving in the sexual marketplace despite how much they invest their time into this area.
This is largely because of the infectious inconsistencies between what women say they want, and what they really want (as the “Sexodus” article illustrates, what women want is less the sensitive boyfriend and more the ripped shirtless warriors in Game of Thrones).
And, it’s not easy for a 28 year-old information technology professional who’s 145 lbs, has a square face, and hair growing in unusual places to suddenly live up to those expectations. When they try, often what’s created are laughable examples of men trying to be something altogether alien to their true natures.
Dating advice does help. The PUA movement caters to the large amount of American males who feel sexually unpopular. The advice on this site is designed to provide a solid baseline and grounding in that area. However, for many men, playing “the game” can be an enormous undertaking that is simply not worth the amount of work it takes.
Our friends and inner circles understand our true value and importance as human beings, but on the sexual marketplace: it’s brutal, and always will be brutal. Judgments are made on a split second basis, because that’s how long it takes for attraction to occur. You could have a Nobel peace prize for negotiating a treaty between Israel and Palestine, and you can still be absolutely invisible to the women you desire.
If a woman is not attracted to you (because of your body language, your height, your level of game, your alpha attitude, or whatever), but you are nonetheless attracted to her–it’s a fight you can almost never win.
And, attempting to continually win such a fight will result in mental health problems. The same mental health problems I’ve seen so many men suffer from since I first started to meet guys who seek help with dating and attraction.
Because at the end of the day, what I’ve found that most men want is not merely the validation of getting a girlfriend. This is fairly easy to accomplish. They want the options, they want the “proof” that they are attractive and masculine.
Dating somebody or entering a relationship does not cure that. They want to believe they are worthy and attractive to a multiplicity of women. They want the ability to go anywhere they want, and attract a large amount of sexual options. It’s intoxicating to be attractive to women. It’s like a narcotic. The most powerful narcotic in the world. Any straight male desires it at some point.
And, it’s reinforced by Western television and culture. Men are bombarded by imagery that equates their worth as human beings to their sexual value. In the PUA world, I’ve seen this made manifest. The pressure is enormous, and when a man cannot possibly live up to cultural expectations, his world feels crushed.
He retreats to porn, video games, and other dudes who he can vent with. He may even develop a bit of animosity against women.
He will have also developed, perhaps, an intense self-loathing. He’ll have forgotten his true potential, as all of his mental energy has been spent on self-consciousness.
He could have stood for great things in his life, but instead his focus was directed entirely at trying to fulfill the behemoth expectations of the sexual marketplace.
Often, in our 30s, I think these self-conscious directives begin to change. Some resign to their self-perceived unpopularity with women; others “settle”, marrying the first girl who shows interest so they can simply end the never-ending treadmill of seeking female validation.
Meanwhile, men are not living up their highest standards. And, the great irony is that because of their obsession with sex, and the fact they have put pussy on a pedestal in this way, that is a primary reason they are not attractive in the first place.
No great man cares about these things. As soon as you begin to WORRY about your sexual popularity and viability; you are giving away little pieces of your power.
As soon as a man goes in the mirror and hates himself for his beer gut or his pasty skin because it makes him unappealing to women, and be begins to ruminate on those thoughts, he’s drifting far from his true potential as a human being, and the amazing things he can accomplish that have nothing to do with whether random people want to fuck him or not.
And, when a guy reads excess material about picking up chicks (including even on this site), and he places too much attention and importance on the topic, he also surrenders his value.
The only solution for the “Sexodus”, for the mass of men crushed by lifetimes of rejection on the sexual marketplace, is to deprioritize every aspect of the attraction / pickup / dating / sex / relationship process.
I don’t agree with everything I read on the MGTOW sites, but the core concept is still something to take away; are you leading your OWN life or are you trying to live up to the expectations of a society that tells you that your worth as a man depends on your desirability by women?
Finally, if you feel stuck at “game”, and feel depressed — consider that you are putting women and your sexual utility on a pedestal where it does not belong. To begin to lead a life truer to yourself, you must unplug from dating, from women, from game, PUA–all of it.
And after you rediscover yourself, perhaps you can fiddle with the area again. But, your worth as a person has nothing to do with how much sex you’re getting or not getting in the meantime.
Literally just stop thinking so much about it. Walk away.
