Disclaimer…
This is not a Manosphere bashing post, despite the title.
For the record, I believe that certain people and places in the are doing a great service to men.
There are a lot of great resources to help me fix their bodies, their mindset, and many other aspects of their lives.
There are a lot of great resources for understanding the… unique psychology of women.
All this can be very helpful, and no doubt has helped a lot of men.
But here’s the thing…
All the good things mentioned above?
They can serve as a means to an end, but not an end in themselves.
Because there’s no end to self-development.
Do you ever stop needing to improve your body? Do you ever stop needing to improve your mindset?
Do you ever stop needing to understand women? (maybe if you go MGTOW, which is a terrible idea, as we’ll discuss in a future post)
There are 2 layered problems here… one leads to the other.
The first layer is the internal motivation that drives men to the Manosphere (and I keep capitalizing it, like a proper noun!)
Most men discover these blog or subreddits for one reason:
Problem(s) with women.
Either they can’t get a girlfriend/date/laid, or whatever it is they’re seeking when Google leads them down the rabbithole.
So they’re given tactics: a set of commandments, or isolated pieces of advice about diet, exercise, frame, being “alpha”, or some other “solution” to all their problems.
Presumably the most desirable outcome to this is to hook up with as many women as possible.
In the worst case, it becomes a form of revenge for all the times a man has been spurned.
At some extremes, men are even mocked for wanting a LTR or to get married.
But the point of all this is, the product of Manosphere “self-improvement” is aimless physical pleasure.
Unfortunately, without the proper grounding, this is a road to nowhere.
What the Manosphere is missing…
Is a true source of identity.
(Can you guess where I’m going?)
Without a foundational understanding of who you are, self-improvement devolves into chasing after physical and material pleasures that ultimately still leave people feeling empty.
I think RooshV is a perfect example of this, and the path he’s on now is amazing.
Long story very short, he woke up around age 40 and realized that his life wasn’t going anywhere.
He’d accomplished all that he’d set out to do (which essentially amounted to sleeping with a lot of women around the world), yet he was still lonely and unhappy.
And this is ultimately the outcome for all men who follow the same path, whether they admit it or not.
Where does our identity come from?
I’m going to argue that, unless you find your identity in Christ, you will never find the contentment and fulfillment you are looking for.
No matter how much money you make, how many “relationships” you have, how shredded you get your body.
If those are the things that define you and give you identity, you will eventually find yourself broken and alone.
Here’s what Paul writes in Ephesians:
4 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5 God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure
Ephesians 1:4-5, NLT
At the root of everything we do when we chase after the things in the Manosphere is the desire to be accepted and loved (as unmanly as that may be to admit.)
But that love is not something you’ll find that way. You can’t earn it.
God has freely given you the love and acceptance that ultimately matters, you just have to take it.
So where does that leave us?
Once again, the manosphere has many valuable things to tech men,
Masculinity, physical strength, and confidence are essential.
But defining yourself (finding identity) in using those attributes for temporary physical pleasure is a losing game.
Read that passage from Ephesians one more time (and keep going!)
Separate the wheat from the chaff in the Manosphere.
You may have been hurt, and that’s what lead you there, but the answers you find will not satisfy you and will not fill that space in your life.
Only God can, and has, done that through his son Jesus Christ.
You’re accepted, loved, and you are enough.
Find your identity in that truth.
If you have more questions or want to discuss this, leave a comment below.
If you don’t want to leave a comment, reach out to me at Mattie @ bringingmenup dot com.