As long as I can remember, I’d always been ‘in love’ with the idea of love. 

Even as a young boy, I remember always dreaming of having the ‘perfect family.’ 

I wanted to get married to a wife who loved me and desired me. I wanted to treat her well, love her, be loved by her, and live the perfect Hollywood romance story. 

Then… real life hit. And I quickly realized that life wasn’t that simple. 

In high school, I got good grades and tended to excel at most things naturally—but I learned very quickly that I sucked at dating. 

The other boys around me were getting girlfriends, enjoying intimacy, experiencing romance, getting all kinds of female attention, etc. 

Then, there was me. I was the lonely ‘nice guy.’ I was the guy that all the girls liked as a friend—never as a boyfriend. 

Eventually, I did end up meeting a girl who liked me. And I jumped all in on that relationship and got married at the age of 20. 

The only problem was that I never really learned how to date with the proper mindset. I never learned how to create my own masculine value. I never learned to embrace natural, positive, healthy masculinity for myself—and my entire life (including my new marriage) suffered for it. 

I was a weak, purposeless, insecure beta-mentality man with a self-destructive victim mindset—and I was completely lost in my own life. I drifted aimlessly from job to job before starting my own freelance writing business in 2009. My wife and I didn’t have a fantastic relationship from the start—and it really only got worse over time. 

2 kids later and 10 years into a marriage filled with brokenness, resentment, hurt feelings, and a lack of purpose—we separated and ended up getting divorced. 

At the age of 30, I moved out of our home and into a little one-bedroom apartment at the edge of town. I contemplated giving up on life. I was depressed, anxious, financially ruined, emotionally devastated, separated from my children, and hopeless.