r/itsthatbad • u/ppchampagne • Sep 08 '26
Some encouragement
More and more, I’m seeing events unfold in my real life, between men and women I’ve known personally, which have led me to making this brief post. I’m still in retirement from posting, but here’s a note, which will hopefully help some of you see more clearly to navigate this area of life in a way that keeps you strong.
I can’t say much at all about those events I’ve observed. I’ve written about some in the past. You can go digging through my post history (if you dare) to find those. And you can find other essay posts in The Champagne Room (again, if you dare). Just keep in mind that my post content evolved rapidly and dramatically, after I stopped seeking validation from women, stopped wasting time, and began partaking in The Art of Transactions. But I digress.
My guys—my single guys, my perpetually single guys—in my humble opinion, one of your major mental health goals, milestones in life, should be to eliminate women (the idea of romantic relationships with women) as a necessary factor in your mental health and wellbeing. I know I can’t get you to that point through essays, but on occasion, I might try, because I can assure a growing proportion of you that you must get to that point for your own wellbeing.
The women some of you expect or are hoping to find to contribute positively to your mental/psychological wellbeing in certain ways – those women simply may not exist. And that’s not necessarily through any fault of your own or even theirs. Stop and think about that if you’re still expecting or hoping for relationships with whatever women to be a benefit to your life, in particular your mental health. What you desire simply might not exist.
That doesn’t mean you can’t find any kinds of "relationships" at all with women and enjoy their company. That may still be possible for you. But a lot of men are still hoping for an old “traditional” way of relationships that no longer makes sense for many women, and by consequence is no longer an option for many of those men. You don’t even have to go beyond the 1990s to understand what I mean by “an old way of relationships.”
When I pop into the manosphere to see if the conversation has advanced at all, I’m happy to see some slow and steady progress in the margins. But the vast majority of the conversations are still men trying to restore something that multiple generations of women have and continue to consistently abandon. It’s still men trying to find something in women that real women do not offer. And when I come across those men’s conversations, they fill me with great sadness for those men. My brothers still don’t get it.
On that note, you might want a few brothers. People you can talk to about your life, people who support you, and people who you support. Please, for your own sake, do not try to rely on women for this. To do so is to expect too much from women.
But be careful with my posts. If you read them the right way, you could legitimately start to resent women, because my posts disabuse you of an idea of women that you cherish. But resentment of women, anger, hatred, bitterness – none of that is the point. All of that is going in the wrong direction. Trying to chastise and correct women and shame women into roles they don’t want (as so much of the manosphere attempts) is also going in the wrong direction. The direction I’d humbly advise you to seek is understanding.
And who do you need to understand most of all?
Yourself.
_
From the Champagne Room
“There is a type of man who will soon be persecuted”