Regaining Confidence
When the culture calls masculine confidence toxic
If I gaze hard, back into the days of my relative youth, I can see myself brimming with overconfidence. A swagger. A sense of invincibility. Once, a woman half my age with whom I had a three-month affair, told me that when I got up onstage to host The Moth StorySlam I looked as if I either had just had sex or was about to and she found it appealing.
If I look deeper, I can see that a portion of that swagger came at the price that I was often a genuine asshole. Unrelenting in my belief of my beliefs. Unassailable in any argument (and, man, did I love to argue). What I saw in myself was an Alpha Male. What many others saw was a complete dick, ready to shout you down if you disagreed with one or the other premise I had latched onto.
Then came divorce number two, the one that ended because the ex-wife had an affair with a good friend for a year and, after hours of talks, aborted couples therapy, and her going on a soul searching vacation with her family, a decision to end things. Following up on that was my summer of predatory toxic maleness—having sex with anyone and everyone in bar bathrooms and alleys and occasionally someone else’s bed. On Match.com I met Alice, a beautiful, educated Korean woman who was the daughter of surgeons, the cheerleader in high school, the hoarder of sexy long boots and mini-skirts who also was a bona fide Marxist and social justice activist. The sex was fiery and spot on. Unfortunately, she didn’t like much about me otherwise. Four years off and on.
Alice spent a lot of her time knocking me down a few pegs every day. A litany of things about were not right and needed fixing. I was too much centrist. I was too loud. I didn’t listen. I was incapable of following simple directions. I was too open and public about my life. One of the moments that pushed me out of that relationship was a friend mentioning that he thought maybe I’d shrunk. I hadn’t but I had taken to stooping a bit, looking down at the ground like a dog too often berated for simply being a dog and not understanding why.
I left. I decided that I needed my swagger back. Just as I was on that path, I met my third ex-wife, fell madly in love with a woman who, it turned out, didn’t fall in love with me but saw an opportunity to marry a love drunk idiot. We married despite good friends warning me to calm things down. She didn’t really like me much either but was less invested in the relationship so her grinding on my self esteem was more subtle. It was, as I recall, a bit of that Stockholm Syndrome routine.
One day I was the greatest husband ever. The next I was fat and old. Then the following day I was such a dedicated writer. Then I was such a miserable addict to smoking and coffee. The back and forth was fairly constant and, like a bad toothache or a twingy lower back, I got used to it. By the time I woke to the fact that she had a boyfriend and had been working as a prostitute on the Las Vegas Strip for a few years under my nose, I had so little swagger or confidence left that being thrown away like a used condom felt completely natural.
I’m now free of wives or girlfriends. I’m looking around, trying to figure out next steps. And I realize that I have zero swagger. My self confidence is at an all-time low. All of the myriad flaws pointed out by both Alice and Dana over the course of nearly twelve years are all I can see when I look in the mirror. I admire the real men out there. Not the bros or the wealthy or the cryptocurrency types. I admire men being men. Yes, I recognize and agree with the biological science that says that gender is not so fluid as to indicate that there is no such thing. There is such a thing as a man and I’m one of them. At least I used to be.
Sitting here in Wichita, I wonder what needs to be done to regain the best parts of that confidence. Without the unrelenting asshole section (which, let’s face it, may be a feature rather than a bug). My mom wisely tells me to ‘fake til I make it’ as that has helped her along the way. That seems harder than it sounds because I don’t even know if I have the capacity to fake something that seems so distant. Like faking being able to run a four-minute mile. Doesn’t work that way at least not in my estimation.
I remember when I decided to lose eighty pounds. I was pushing 265 lbs and realized I had to lose the weight. I settled on a goal of 185 lbs because that’s how much I weighed when I graduated high school. Instead of pushing it too hard and failing, I decided that it took twenty years for me to gain the weight so if it took me twenty more to lose it, so be it. It took two but that’s because I did it one pound at a time, gradually, consistently.
Maybe rebuilding confidence is like that, too. Slowly rebuilding, one brick of swagger at a time, until one day, I’m back. Without the asshole part.
I think a bit about those younger guys who never had that bluster of confidence to recollect. I’ve read that less young men are going to college, are having sex, are engaging in society on any level than ever before and that speaks of a deficit in self assurance. Feeling valueless is rough. Never having felt valuable in the first place seems rougher. What would I tell one of them about finding that essence of manhood that has been depleted in me?
Go to the gym. I always feel more self assured when I’m feeling fit.
Go to a bar without the expectation of anything but a good beer and a shot. The expectation of company begets a desperation that smells like teen spirit.
Get enough fucking sleep.
Do things you’re almost good at. Get better at them by doing them.
Go bowling. No one feels bad if they suck at bowling and it’s fun. And there’s beer.
Beats me, gang.
It all reminds me of articles I wrote years ago about what essential qualities (besides a penis and balls) makes a man a man.
A few years ago, I came up with the following list:
A man protects those in need of protection.
A man is not petty.
A man is a source of safety in an unsafe world.
A man makes mistakes, admits them, and learns from them.
A man is not selfish or filled primarily with self interest.
A man picks her up at the airport without being asked to.
A man asks questions about others and follows up by LISTENING.
A man will fuck you but make sure you cum, too.
A man never throws the first punch and NEVER hits a woman.
A man holds open the door for everyone.
A man trains those younger than he to replace him.
A man treats every woman as he would have others treat his mother and treats everyone the way he would expect to be treated himself.
A man tips well.
A man is rarely offended by personal slights or insults.
A man takes responsibility for what he does and says.
A man fights for the equality of all.
Again, a nice list. Maybe even a good list. Certainly a list to work toward.