Masters Of The Game.

Lately, I have come to appreciate how drastic the changes in society have become. Especially regarding relationships. Like most gents my age, we grew up in a time when we thought women were soft; they poop glitter and soft gel that smells like roses. We had a very wrong image of women.

Growing up, I have come to understand why feminists hated that notion about women. Cause that’s not who or what women are. The first and most obvious fact is that a woman is human. Not subhuman. Not an inferior human. Not a developing human like a child to be handled with care, as if their bones will break if you touch them. No.

Like you, the man, a woman is a human being. And so, how I would treat my fellow male companion should be how I should treat my fellow female companion. The Disney and Hollywood movies that always portrayed the woman as the “damsel in distress” mislead many of us to think women are these naïve, helpless creatures who need men for rescuing.

And the rules that governed societies for so long only strengthened the message of those Hollywood movies. Society teaches little girls that they are soft. Society teaches little girls that they are delicate flowers. Society teaches little girls to wait for their knight in white armour.

In these teachings, however, what I realised is that society teaches the little girl one thing that it does not teach the little boy. In teaching her how to be gentle, kind, more “ladylike”, society teaches the little girl how to master her emotional intelligence. And not only master her emotional intelligence, but how to use it in war.

The little boy is often taught to use his hands to express emotions. You know, “boys will be boys”. But the ideology of “boys will be boys” ends when the young boy becomes a young man in university.

As a little boy in primary school, he could get away with being in a fight. He will get detention, maybe be suspended, and his parents will inflict further punishment. And it will end there.

But we grow up. The wounds from the fight take longer to heal. We meet crazier guys who are not afraid to use a knife or a gun in a fight. And lastly, as adults, we get assault charges to our name, which ruins our futures. Hence, most of these guys we feared growing up, the older they get, the more they realise that without being able to fight, they have no other way to express their emotions, especially those that hurt them.

And herein lies why I took that detour. Women, when boys were told “boys will be boys”, were taught how to master their emotions. They were taught how to express their emotions without worry. Women can cry, laugh, be angry, be sad and be everything in between, and they’ll hardly face judgement.

While boys were being boys, little girls had time to learn and understand their emotions. And unlike boys who would eventually use fists to sort out their differences, little girls would use emotional warfare to sort out theirs.

And they mastered this warfare. Until they became fully grown women. Unlike men, who stop fighting because of the serious consequences of using fists as adults to express emotions, they aren’t ready for the grown woman who uses emotional warfare to fight.

And women have mastered this warfare. This warfare is an art they have mastered. Try talking emotions with a woman. Try expressing something she did and not even understanding how; you will find yourself apologising for even saying anything in the first place.

Jokes always speak the truth. Let’s take a look at some marriage jokes that illustrate the previously mentioned point:

·       What do you call a man who is in complete charge of his marriage? Single.

·       They say opposites attract—he’s the calm to my caffeine-fueled storm.

·       I got all sentimental when I saw my husband looking at our marriage certificate for half an hour. Then I found out he’s been looking for an expiry date.

From these dry humour jokes, marriage is something that a man endures for the sake of the wife. It is expected that he will suffer in marriage. It is expected that in marriage, the man should have little to no say emotionally. That power belongs to the wife.

The same in relationships. Lately, I realised something that I have struggled to point my finger at. But it finally hit me.

I once talked with this girl. You know, this girl said some of the meanest and most degrading things about men. It is safe to say that this woman hates men. But she is a woman, a straight woman, so her hatred wasn’t stronger than her lust. But she hates men.

Now, here’s the thing. I realised she actually ran game on me. She basically used me the same way men are accused of using women. She took the time to see what I need in a relationship; she embodied that need, she made me fall for her, she got my body, and shortly after that, she found something about me she didn’t like and dropped me.

If I were an egocentric male, I would say I am the one who ran game. I would say I was the one who got her body, and I made myself unlikable so she would break up with me. But this will be a lie.

After she had my body and made me more comfortable around her, I told her I have reservations regarding women. I am a grown man. I have dated quite a number of women. And these women, most of them, have hurt me. These relationships have helped me to see women as they are and not how I hope they are.

I told her these reservations. She found something in these reservations of mine to let me go. And remember, this girl hates men. She used to say things about men that can shock you. She said things that made you realise why, throughout history, queens were way more likely to wage wars than kings.

But, as a guy, I just listened. Because as a guy, I remember one girl who once said something very odd to me. I do not remember the context fully, but she asked me something, and I said no. She said I was rude and mean. For about a week, she was upset with me.

A few months later, I don’t remember the context, but she said something very similar to me when I rejected whatever she was asking for. At first, I thought that perhaps it was just retaliation. So I asked her if it was. She said that she had forgotten about that.

So I made a joke about the matter. I told her that when I said those words, she said I was rude and mean. Her response? She is a girl; she is allowed to say it. Someone might read this and think that she is immature. That this is an isolated case and not all women are like that. Boy, you would be wrong.

I see it almost every time I post anything on TikTok. Every single time I post something about the shortfalls of women in relationships, women brutally attack me. Brutally. The only thing that protects me is the TikTok Community Guidelines.

If it were Twitter, I’d be destroyed completely. And as you guessed it, the attacks are hardly, if ever, evidence-based. They are more likely emotionally charged shots with every intention to attack my heart.

From this observation, that’s when I realised that I was making a classic mistake. I was looking at women through the highly misogynistic eyes of Hollywood and the church. Years before, women could be reduced to the stereotype of being the damsel in distress who is clueless about the world. However, that is not the nature of women in the world.

Her true nature is hidden in the marriage jokes that have circulated for years. A woman is a human who has an advantage over a man. Her advantage is that she has mastered the art of playing on a person’s emotions.

Norah Vincent, in her book, Self-Made Man: My Year Disguised as a Man, made this very interesting discovery. She realised that in relationships, women have the emotional power, not the man. She found it interesting that in the year (more accurately, 18 months) of being a man, in every relationship she found herself in, she was always the problem.

The woman was never to blame. Their shortcomings, shortfalls, personality flaws or red flags carried no weight in the relationship failing. It was always, without fail, her- well, in the experiment- his fault.

One might dismiss this. They might say, well, she is a woman after all; what does she know about dating? She thought she knew, when she realised that women subconsciously continue the toxic masculine stereotypes.

No woman wants the soft, gentle, loving kind. And every man who has been in a relationship will tell you that the moment you become the soft, gentle, loving kind, your heart will be broken.

As it happened to me with the girl who hated men. She made me think she wanted a soft and gentle love. That was not the case. And she wasn’t the first. Almost all my relationships ended, or I got cheated on, or I got hurt somehow every single time I was the soft, gentle, loving kind.

It is one of those things that I struggle to understand. How is it that when I become the ideal man, I get hurt, but when I become a bad boy, I never get hurt? The answer, I believe, lies somewhere in this narrative.

The bad boy: no amount of emotional trickery can work on him. So this presents a challenge for the woman. She falls into the trap of thinking that she will be the one who changes him. She falls into thinking that she will be the one who cracks his heart. She believes that she will be the one to tame the beast.

The same with a man wanting to tame a wild beast, I sincerely believe this is why bad boys always end up with the most beautiful women. They present a challenge for her that the good guys don't.

A beautiful girl already knows she is beautiful. She is probably told 100 times a day she is beautiful. Either in real life or on social media. There is nothing exciting that a good guy can offer her. Hence, good guys finish last. Most beautiful women will go to the good guy after she has failed numerous times to tame the many bad boys she met before.

And she knows this. If you are not careful as a guy, a woman can really control you. If you happen to meet a woman who has mastered her emotions, including her seductive powers, if you are not careful, you will be her slave. She will control you. She will own you. She will make you understand how is it powerful men, over the years lost everything because of a woman.

If you don’t approach with caution as a guy, the wild flames of passion that such a woman creates in you will burn you.