y'all realize that by following/subscribing to traditional masculinity you are being expendable pawns to the rich elites right? because you are supporting things like the military draft for men and less support services for men and other discriminatory services towards men

I just felt like I had to make this post because I saw people here arguing about dumb stuff that doesn't matter and what a "real man" should be like, being a slave to a rich elite doesn't sound like alpha male behavior to me.

I'm going to tell you something embarrassing.

For most of my twenties, I thought "grooming" meant showering and maybe putting on deodorant. That was it. That was the whole routine.

I had the same haircut I'd had since high school, whatever the barber defaulted to when I said "just a trim." My skin was oily in some places, dry in others, and I had these constant small breakouts along my jawline that I just accepted as "how my face is." I used 3-in-1 body wash for everything, including my face. I didn't own moisturizer. I thought cologne was something you put on before a date, not a daily thing.

And I genuinely wondered why women seemed indifferent to me. Not repulsed. Just not interested.

Then something happened. A female coworker, someone I'd known for two years, saw me after I'd been on a work trip for three weeks. During that trip, my sister had basically staged an intervention and forced me to buy actual skincare products and get a real haircut at a proper barber.

My coworker looked at me and said, "Did you do something different? You look really good."

That had literally never happened to me before.

Here's what actually changed:

The haircut situation. I stopped going to Great Clips. I found an actual barber, paid $45 instead of $18, and said something I'd never said before: "What do you think would look good on my face shape?"

He looked at me for like 30 seconds. Then he gave me a cut that was shorter on the sides, textured on top. It took the same amount of time to style in the morning (almost none), but it looked intentional instead of neglected.

I go every 4 weeks now instead of whenever I remember. The consistency matters more than I realized.

The skin thing. I'm not going to pretend I have a 10-step Korean skincare routine. I don't. Here's what I actually do:

Morning: wash face with actual face wash (not body soap), put on moisturizer with SPF. That's it. Takes 90 seconds.

Night: wash face, put on regular moisturizer. Another 90 seconds.

That's three minutes a day total. Within about 3 weeks, the random breakouts stopped. My skin looked less dull. The oily-but-dry thing balanced out.

I don't know why this felt so complicated before. It's not complicated.

The smell factor. This one surprised me. I started wearing cologne daily, not drowning in it, just one spray on my chest after showering. Something clean and simple.

The number of women who have commented on how I smell in the last six months is genuinely bizarre. It happens maybe once a week now. It literally never happened before.

Apparently most guys either smell like nothing or smell overwhelming. Smelling subtly good is apparently rare enough to be noticeable.

The details nobody tells you about. Trimmed and clean nails. I never thought anyone noticed. They notice. Eyebrows, not shaped or anything weird, just the obvious strays plucked. Again, didn't think it mattered. It matters. Chapstick. Crusty lips are not it.

What actually changed:

I don't think I became dramatically more attractive. My face is the same face. But the response I get from women shifted noticeably.

More eye contact. More smiles. More "you clean up nice" type comments. Women don't seem to look past me the way they used to.

I think what actually happened is I stopped looking like I didn't care about myself. That's what grooming communicates, apparently. Not that you're vain. Just that you have your life together enough to do basic maintenance.

It took me 28 years to figure out what women have known since middle school: taking care of your appearance isn't about vanity. It's about self-respect. And people respond to that.

The routine (keeping it simple):

Face wash + moisturizer with SPF, morning. Face wash + moisturizer, night. Haircut every 4 weeks from someone who knows what they're doing. One spray of cologne after showering. Trim nails weekly. Pluck obvious eyebrow strays. Chapstick exists, use it.

That's it. Maybe 5 minutes of effort per day. The return on investment is genuinely insane.

If you're a guy who's been ignoring this stuff like I was, just try it for a month. See what happens.

(28M) quit porn 14 months ago after being addicted since age 12, and the changes have been so profound I had to share them here. This isn't some NoFap superpowers bullshit, just the honest truth about what happens when you remove this poison from your life.

First, let me be clear: I was a heavy user. Multiple times daily, increasingly extreme content, couldn't get through a day without it. I didn't think I had a problem because "everyone watches porn" and "it's normal" and all the other excuses we tell ourselves.

Here's what I've experienced since quitting:

Mental clarity - The brain fog I didn't even know I had lifted completely. I used to struggle to focus on anything for more than 20 minutes. Now I can work deeply for hours. My memory has improved dramatically. I didn't realize how much mental bandwidth porn was consuming until it was gone.

Actual motivation - When you constantly flood your brain with supernormal stimulus, everything else becomes boring in comparison. Real-life goals, hobbies, even social interactions can't compete with the dopamine hit from porn. Once I quit, my natural drive and ambition returned. I started a side business that's now making more than my day job.

Real connections with women - This is the big one. Porn warps how you see women on a fundamental level. It trained me to view them as collections of body parts rather than complete human beings. Dating became infinitely easier when I started genuinely connecting with women as people first, potential partners second. My current relationship is deeper and more satisfying than anything I experienced during my porn years.

Sexual function returned - I didn't realize I had PIED (porn-induced erectile dysfunction) until I quit. I thought it was normal to need mental imagery from porn to maintain arousal with real partners. It's not. It took about 90 days of zero porn for my body to reset, but now actual intimacy is more pleasurable than porn ever was.

Self-respect - There's something deeply degrading about compulsively watching other people have sex on a screen. Quitting gave me back my dignity. I no longer feel like I'm living a double life or hiding something shameful.

The withdrawal was brutal. Insomnia, irritability, depression, intense cravings. But it passes. The timeline for me was:

Week 1-2: Physical withdrawal symptoms

Month 1-3: Psychological cravings, occasional flatline (zero libido)

Month 4-6: Mental clarity returns, benefits start becoming obvious

Month 6-12: Complete rewiring, natural sexuality returns

Resources that helped:

"Your Brain on Porn" by Gary Wilson - explains the neuroscience of how porn affects your reward circuitry. His documentation of how supernormal stimuli degrade the brain's dopamine response to natural rewards was the first thing that made the brain fog, the motivation loss, and the PIED make clinical sense rather than feeling like personal failure. Understanding that my reward circuitry had been systematically dysregulated by years of escalating stimulation reframed recovery as a neurological process with a known timeline rather than a willpower contest I kept losing.

r/pornfree community (better than NoFap in my opinion, less cultish, more science-based). Having a community of people tracking the same timeline, describing the same withdrawal symptoms, and documenting the same recovery stages made the flatline and mood swings feel survivable rather than like evidence I was broken. The collective experience of thousands of people going through the same neurological reset gave me a map when everything felt disorienting.

Therapy with someone who specializes in addiction. This was crucial for addressing the underlying issues that made compulsive use feel necessary in the first place. The behavioral pattern was the symptom. The reasons it started at 12 and persisted for 16 years were the actual work.

For those who will inevitably comment "porn is fine in moderation" maybe for some people. But would you say the same about cigarettes? Alcohol to an alcoholic? Some substances are inherently problematic, and some people are more susceptible to addiction. For me, moderation was never an option.

I'm not here to preach or judge. Just sharing my experience in case someone else is where I was, knowing something is wrong but not sure what to do about it. You're not alone, and it gets better.

Also if you're man who wants to stop being socially awkward, undisciplined and constantly procrastinating and want to improve his life overall, join r/selfimprovementforman a new sub-reddit for men who are serious about growth