Did you ever feel like a "man"? Could PMO be a neurotic "confirmation of manliness"?

THIS IS ME. Trying for years to better it but to ne honest, I cant really give you good tips, since Im still strugglin with it.

 

I also relate to a lot of what you wrote, mostly this:

To this day I still feel like this. To add something I feel is definitely related, I care too much about what people think of me. The "not giving a fuck" attitude, mixed with caring too much about what people think of me, has hampered my confidence since middle school, and I'm still trying to get to where I need to be.

As far as feeling like a man, my beliefs on having a strong, sexual libido is relative to your health and well-being, not your psychoanalysis and need to feel confirmed as man. For me, to feel like a "man", is to be caring, courageous, confident, being able to provide for your family. There's a big to-do around masculinity, virility, and "feeling like a man", and I'm not going to get too deep into it. This is just a little bit of what I believe in.

 

I've felt almost exactly like this for what I can remember of my life. I had an overbearing mother and a mostly absent father (he later was home, but I was 16 when he came home for good). I felt contempt for men who were like what you described, but I can't help but think that there is a jealousy component, too.

Porn never made me feel like "the man", porn helped me escape pain and negative emotions. I've quit the porn and here I sit, in front of my computer, still dealing with those issues. I'm not sure where to turn to next to get over this hump.

If you figure it out, please let me know too. Otherwise, I think all we can do is keep our resolve to stay away from porn, hopefully start some better thinking patterns, and hopefully it will eventually sort itself out.

 

I think modern ideas of masculinity are completely toxic, I'm not surprised that so many people are looking to the past for positive male role models and ideas about what it means to be a man.

If you want to feel manly, do something positive and manly. Learn how to make an axe, spend a night in the woods in a tent and cook a meal over a camp stove. Build a bonfire, eat an apple with a sharp knife and spit the pips in the bushes. Go fishing, hunting, anything. Manly stuff. It's not about women's approval of you and it's not about sex.

 

Unfortunately, the world finds a way to suck your time away... I personally have some goals in mind and they involve a lot of work. I might be able to carve out some time soon to do some of this though...

 

PMO makes me feel less like a man, someone wrote an long opinion on one of these boards about M and how you passively reach orgasm, allowing your hand to do the work.

 

Have you tried therapy? It can help you to sort out your feelings and emotions and address issues in your life as well as provide one on one real life support. I strongly recommend it.

 

The therapy community where I live is a fucking joke. When I really needed help, when I was getting off drugs and getting divorced and became a single parent, I got taken advantage of by a counselor who was also my aa sponsor. Not sure I can trust a therapist... I had a good one that I did sort of trust but he moved.

 

I’d encourage you to find one whom you can trust. My last therapist was a nasty nightmare. Didn’t see that one very long. The one I have now is terrific.

You can also find an AA sponsor whom you can trust. Someone with a lot of time sober, who doesn’t gossip and is well respected by others. I’ve had several that were very good.

You’re AA sponsor shouldn’t be your therapist, shouldn’t be someone of the opposite sex, and don’t give them any money or anything else. If they ask for anything dump them.

 

Yeah, i'm not an alcoholic so I don't care about the AA sponsor anymore. As for the therapy, I'm going 5 states away this weekend to see someone. Thanks for the encouragement

 

I can relate to a lot of what you write. I've always seen typically alpha guys as rude and annoying, to the point where I actually get really annoyed by observing their behaviour. I've been told that girls wants a good and gentle guy and that I eventually would get "paid" for being like that. But instead I ended up like the "nice guy" in "no more mr nice guy". I too had some weird respect for doing something with a girl when she wanted me to, in a few situations. Like I somehow respected them to much to do that, in a weird way. Might have something to do with being raised by women...idk.

I've never felt like a "girl" in any way. More like a guy who don't know how to act like a man, and therefor felt more like a manchild. Because, when I realised being kind wasn't going to get me any girls, I tried to become the guy girls liked. At this point I noticed how I wasn't able to be and act like them. It was like I had sacrificed my mannerisms and macho behaviour to attract girls (not be like the other jerks), in a weird way, but ended up distancing me from other guys, and still no girls had any interest in me. I know very well what you mean by the bottom of social hierarchy and I feel weirdly inferior to pretty much any other guy and this started when I compared myself to other guys.

I feel extremely manly during sex and PMO'ing. When I'm turned on is the only time I feel anything genuinely that doesn't make me self-conscious. I don't have other "manly" ways to act, like aggression, decisiveness, intimidate others, and so on.

 

The real man is productive. Nowadays' meaning of "manly" is drinking with no limits and doing all kinds of stupid stuff just to prove something non-existent. Be better than the rest. Focus on being the best intelectually.

 

Google gender bending plastics, if you were breastfed as a child their are chemical inside the teat of the milk bottle that transfer to babies that have chemicals that turn into oestrogen in the body and affect men and women, but mainly men. But these chemicals are in everything, the teat milk bottle is the worst because it becomes warm and your brain is still developing. These chemicals are in EVERYTHING that we consume, stop using plastics and buy fresh produce. Their in, milk bottles, yohurt pots, microwave meals, plastics drinking bottles, freezer bags, clingfilm, or cellophane etc...

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7440-gender-bending-chemicals-found-to-feminise-boys/

 

There's quite a group of those chemicals, in those plastics, with critiques of the some of 'safer' ones too. There's also the creeping, apparently quite potent, more so in those more sensitive (not always by genetic results, either), inclusion of soya in things. Also possible contamination via atrazine, on other things that can get processed into our food chains as well.
As to which claims are of the greater merit to consider, it does seem it should get more of a public showing and investigation.

However how that may factor to feeling like a man for men, perhaps there may be something in mitigating those things from the diet.
I seem to recollect an Elliot Hulse (? of youtube) saying something much like, referring to soy but more broadly, 'If its good for women for their oestrogen, then its not good for me, as a man, with my manly hormones'.

Perhaps also supplementing with zinc and magnesium or carefully selecting foods to better support that, might help as well. More so if a part of it has been that a persons diet their life long has had too little supply of the necessary nutrition.

Which might in turn go hand in hand with apparently the dropping levels of testosterone in men since the 1950s, perhaps. Lack of hormones, altering the balance of roles of nature, combined with perhaps nurture, shaping emotional connections with real world interactions leading to outcomes, and relative perspectives.

 

I feel like a man when I am doing a man's thing. And hitting on a girl is not a man's thing. It's boy stuff. Boy stuff is a temporary girlfriend. My goal is to find someone to love forever. Look deeper and analyze. No way I could call her my girlfriend. Just a friend and then look at the things from real perspective and understand - is she my kind or not.
But when it comes to be a man... Well, in fights... I would like to get into one even if I'm not a fighter. But one thing is sure, I respect my name and that's what I think is important. Nobody fucks with me for more than once. I can warn you and all, but one day I'm just going to explode in your face.

Some tips: Stop giving shit. Really. Raise standarts, goddamnit. Really. Like ... No low life living chicks, just your kind of woman. Same with dudes. Don't let toxic fucks get into your life. I'm not against junks and drug addicts tho, I understand their situation and I respect what they have been through. But a dude with doritos on his belly and back on a sofa - nope.

Make your name a brand. Put a respect on it. Don't let people fuck with you. Have that attitude. Get used to it. This is the world we live in.

 

This resonates with me a lot. Seriously, about 90% of this post can be directly mirrored onto my PMO-using self - almost everything short of using escorts.

But I'm trying to better myself in these ways now. I've been working out and I'm starting to see concrete gains - not a supermodel yet but definitely not the weakest person I know anymore by a long shot. Also trying to talk to girls a lot more - not necessarily in a sexual way or to try and get in their pants, but just to experience socialising and, I guess, to practice. Like you, I really never spoke to girls unless they spoke to me first when I used to use PMO; and most of the girls that were interested in me back then were pretty bottom of the barrel themselves, haha.

Turns out PMO taught me more about virility and femininity more than my parents or my peers ever did (not that I blame them, how could they have known?), and PMO taught me very badly so I'm having to relearn a lot of things.

Hopefully, one day, if we keep improving ourselves, we'll all become proper men we can admire.

 

One potential way to broaden your contact with people, with it girls, women, etc, just to talk to them, broaden your horizon on humanity is to get some part time employment in sales, ideally door to door or direct contact work of some sort, or volunteer work or something like that. If nothing else it provides purpose and framework, to keep you at it, the whole 'its just the job and a lot of other people do this' can help get you through the comfort zone issues, of talking to people.

Also bonus with the jobs version, where you get paid, while you get to meet new people and practice your thing.

 

Just encountered this, and thought there was someone here that might find this handy, looking at what you had to say, you might 'fit'. "Conquer Toxic Passivity: Develop a philosophy of competition" by Richard Grannon on youtube.
He talks about overcoming an issue where, as he puts it, roughly, 'you should have gone through a narcissitic development phase, and you didn't, you didn't learn to say mine, you didn't learn to jostle with others, you didn't learn to compete, and now you have to'. Whilst the crux he boils it down to, may not be essentially correct for you, the over all exploration might lead you to some new notions of use.