How To Kill A Man's Soul.

Lately, I have been getting a lot of emails from guys. Emails from these men expressing their pain and hurt they experience as men in today's world. You know, what I find powerful about this happening is that, 13 years ago, I started this blog because my heart was broken. And of course, by a girl.

I couldn’t tell my family about it. Their approach was “heal and move on”. Even though I told my mom, she is my mom after all. She tried her best to help me to forget about her. But she’s my mom, and as a teenager, I couldn’t tell her everything.

I couldn’t tell my friends either because they were as immature and young as me. And to a great extent, some of them had not experienced what I felt. Their approach was to laugh and make jokes about it.

But the pain of betrayal is not a laughing matter. I vividly remember, even though this happened 13 years ago, how I was beginning to go crazy. Every waking day, the only thing that was on my mind was my then-girlfriend’s betrayal.

And another reason I could not fully express what I was experiencing at the time was because of the shame of it all. As a man, how could I let or allow or not see that another man was with my woman? In a way that I only should be?

It has been 13 years, yet I still remember everything about that day. She asked that we meet up in the regular spot that we met whenever she was visiting her grandma in the neighbouring town. I hopped on the bus, excited to see her.

It was the 28^th of December. It was my day off that day as I was working as a waiter. With the slave wages I earned, I bought her a teddy bear, a bracelet and a box of chocolates as a belated gift for Christmas.

Imagine. I am in a public bus, as a guy, with all these items in hand. I’m from a small town, so some of the elders in the business with me that day were judging me. But I was a boy in love, so I did not care what they thought of me. I was about to meet the love of my life, the girl of my firsts.

The girl of my firsts, she was. My first hug, my first kiss, my first date and my first to see me bare. It is safe to say that I was madly in love with this girl, and she was my everything.

After the 40 or so minute awkward bus ride, I arrived in QwaQwa. Again, getting off the bus in the heart of the taxi rank, with a large teddy bear, a bracelet and a box of chocolates, was extremely uncomfortable. But again, I did not care as I was going to meet the woman whom I had surrendered all I am to.

A 5-minute walk later, I arrive at her grandmother’s house. Across the street, a few houses away, there were guys outside. These guys, as I was walking to my ex’s grandmother’s house, saw me. They laughed at me. I figured that it was guys being guys because if I saw a guy holding a teddy bear as tall as him, with a bracelet that sparkled in the sun and a box of chocolates beginning to melt through the box, I probably would laugh at him too.

I waited for a few minutes. And there she was, the love of my life. I could feel something was off, but I didn’t think much of it. She glanced at the guys laughing, and she shied away, not looking too long. So vivid is the memory, I still remember the outfit she wore that day: black heel boots, a high waist jean and a pink sleeveless shirt.

The sun beaming on her face, her beauty left me in awe. Her body mimicked the Coke bottles of the 90s. Whenever she visited me in Harrismith, guys would wonder how I, the village nerd, got such a beautiful woman. At that moment, pride filled my veins. Pride that this beautiful woman was mine and mine alone. So I thought.

She greeted me with a beautiful, pristine smile. However, she asked that we go to her room, stating that it is hot outside. Gladly, I accepted. Plus, I was getting annoyed at the guys who went from laughing at me to now calling her by name. She led me to her room, where it would be the last time I ever entered the sacred space that introduced me to my manhood.

We sat for a while. Talked about how the day was going and so forth. She went to the kitchen and came back with a plate of food for both of us. She said that her grandmother said hi. We talked and laughed like any other normal date we would have.

Hours later, I told her that it was my time to go. She held my hand and just said wait. There was a pause for a moment. An unsettling pause. The kind of pause that you experience in the middle of the night when you hear a random sound. She was not looking into my eyes. Very usual for her. A moment later, she just leapt in for a kiss. A kiss that led to the last time she would have me.

On the bus ride home, I was perplexed by the pause. But in the same breath, I thought that it was just her being her. She was dramatic at times and had a flair for theatrics. I figured maybe she saw it in a movie or series or something. As weird as it was, I made nothing of it.

About 2- 3 hours later, when I got home, I got a text on my phone:

“Please call me: its important”

It was around 7 pm. I realised that I didn’t have airtime and so, I made an excuse to my parents that I was going to the shop to buy some bread. Even though there was bread, I lied and said I wanted white bread to make lunch for work.

I didn’t want to reach home to call her. Instead, I figured I would take the long route back. I bought R60 MTN airtime. I called her.

“I have something to tell you”

For roughly 45 minutes of the call, she was telling me that she had slept with her ex. That on the 26^th of December, this ex had organised a small braai and invited her. She accepted the invite. Later that night, when everyone had left, the ex asked if she could bring her laptop to take some movies. She went to her grandmother's house, got the laptop and went back to the ex. Details were not provided, but she said that one thing led to another.

In this call, she explained that her ex lived across from her grandmother’s place. I know understood that the guys I saw earlier were not laughing at the gifts I had. They were laughing at the fact that I was the fool who was in love with the girl the owner of that house had slept with. She tried defending him that he is an orphan, and that is how I know that he owned the house the guys were chilling at.

That single call broke me. From that single call, I have never been the same. For a long time after that call, I was insane. I began stalking this guy, hoping to see him and kill him. I tracked his every gig, every party, as he was a DJ. The only thing on my mind was that if I found him, I was going to kill him. Most of his gigs happened at night. I thank my parents’ strict rules and strict curfew. If it wasn’t for it, I am convinced I would have killed that guy given the chance.

Killing him was literally the only thing I was thinking about. Day in and day out. I returned to university, but instead of studying the Law of Thermodynamics, I was studying how to murder someone and make them vanish from the face of the Earth.

This deep mental war was going on inside of me. To my family, I failed because I lost interest in engineering. I believe that the one person who could truly tell the state of my mind and heart was my brother, because he would check up on me almost every other day. Even my sister, but because I had spoken so highly of my ex to her, I would tell my sister that school was the reason I wasn’t myself.

The girl who broke my heart, weirdly, still had my heart. That’s the twisted part about betrayal. Love makes a person so pure in your eyes that you can’t see the poison they really are. That year, she too came to the same university. Things were intense, but I was a boy in love. From a church background, believing in the power of forgiveness, I continued dating her.

I forgave her, hoping that it was a foolish mistake never to repeat itself. But I was the fool. Like a criminal who goes to prison for petty theft, when the criminal leaves prison, they graduate from petty theft to armed robberies or home invasions.

The same with her. Her cheating ways became worse and more complicated. It took me years to fully comprehend the full extent of cheating she was doing. And years later, when we met, she confessed to the fact that it was good that we eventually broke up because she was up to no good.

What’s crazy, obviously, you will see the signs. But love blinds you from them. Completely. If I continue to chronicle every deed she did, this mere essay might become a fully fleshed novel.

It eventually got to the point where I had enough. It eventually got to a point that I felt I had to get my mind back. I had to find a way to restore my being. And like most guys, I decided that the only way to regain my masculinity, my pride as a man, was to date as many women as possible.

And I did. I studied seduction. Every video, every book, everything and anything I could get my hands on about seduction, I studied. The Natural Lifestyles, in their peak, was my go-to YouTube channel. These low-energy dudes who were not like the extravert guys in my social circles were teaching me how I, as an introvert, a low-energy dude, could date beautiful girls. Their advice worked.

I began to date more women. And this, this allowed me to forget my ex. This allowed me to realise that my anger was misplaced at the wrong person. Her ex was just being a guy. Charge it to the game. The person in the wrong was my ex. This realisation finally freed me from the shackles that the love I had for her had over me. This realisation finally allowed me to regain my heart from her.

But it wasn’t easy. It took years. A full decade to be extent. I met a girl who I was her first. I met a girl who did everything to love me. But because I was still healing from the hurt that my ex had done me, I could never love that girl with all I am. At that time in my life, girls were merely score points on my imaginary scoreboard.

At that time, I could care less about the emotions of a girl. If she discovered me cheating, I wouldn’t apologise. I’d just cut her off and continue with the girl I was cheating with, and probably cheat her too.

Sometimes, when I got caught, I’d take it as an opportunity to practice my ability to influence women. I’d try to get her to understand that it is all a mistake and a misunderstanding. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. But it's safe to say that during that time of my life, love had no meaning for me. In fact, it was dead to me.

When love dies in a man, he no longer sees women the same. Women lose their charm on him. Women are no longer the soft petals of the rose. They become the thorns on the stem. They begin to exist only to serve his lust and nothing else.

One thing that I realised was that my ex did wrong was that even after she cheated, she did not stop. Instead, she would compare me to the other guys she was dating. She would, at first, subtly try to change my wardrobe. She would try to suggest hobbies that I never found entertaining. She would try to mould me into the guy she was dating outside of me.

At the end, when she gets caught, she would tell me I am insecure. I am weak. I’m a ‘weirdo”. I am this, and I am that. She would never take accountability. And I would learn as I began dating more women that when women get caught cheating or entertaining the idea of cheating, they can never take accountability.

Their first response is to deflect the shame (or regret) to you, the guy. She will call you weak, insecure and all these other things. Accountability, never. This is important because whenever you get your girlfriend doing something suspicious, and she begins deflecting, calling you names and whatever and not taking accountability for what she has done, she 90% of the time guilty of what you accuse her of.

This understanding has helped me not to find myself in the same mindset I was in 13 years ago whenever a girl does me wrong. This understanding of how women deal with regret, shame or guilt of the consequences of their actions has helped me as a grown man to never allow myself to get into the mindset I was in 13 years ago. A mindset that had me thinking about murder. Murder of another man and murder of myself.

Lucky are you if your girlfriend can take accountability. We are humans, and we will make mistakes. When we make a mistake, and it is a mistake that involves another human, taking accountability in that instance can help the other human deal with feelings you caused in them. Unfortunately, many women lack this ability to take accountability for their actions, especially if it hurts another human.

After all, that’s all we can do as men. We can only live and grow. We will be hurt. We will be tested. The pain only makes us stronger. Pain from love allowed me to meet a deeper and richer side of my masculinity that I would have never met if I had not been hurt. It is true, even at my big age, I still get hurt by women. But one has a better coping mechanism because of these past experiences. That of my first girlfriend and others one met along the way.

Now, one has the maturity to know it is not the end of the world. It may feel like it. It will definitely feel like it. Some men even take lives because of it. But trust, it isn’t.

A painful truth: A girl to you might be your everything, but to another man, she is just meat for the night. She might not know that to the other man she is just a quick snack to be discarded after, but to that man, he knows.

So you, as the main guy, never make that woman your everything. Learn to love her, but not unconditionally. Impose the same conditions she has on you. Impose the same expectations she has for you. Impose the same treatment that she imposes on you. If she remains, then maybe she loves you. But if she leaves, starts calling you weak, insecure, and so forth when she tastes her own medicine, leave her.

Trust me when I say the girl you think is a 10, there is a 20 out there who will love you as you are and love you completely and fully.

It is an evil world we live in. We, as men, need to navigate the evil to live and love freely.