Whats in a name

 

I said my late wifes name out loud today. I can’t have spoken it in a while because it almost felt foreign. I was kind of sad to realize that, but nice to know I’m moving forward.

Imposter syndrome

 

Scroll on past this post. It’s shit.

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I spent my childhood being told that I was stupid.

Over and over for years until I was convinced that I was.

I had no clue I could write more than basic sentences until I was 40.

Even now there’s a part of me saying YOU ARE A LIAR!!!! A FRAUD!!!! And no matter what anyone tells me, I feel it.

Sometimes that part of me gets loud, very, very loud.

I have to step back and I can’t really say much because no matter what, I cannot believe anyone when that part gets loud. I end up feeling like I’m just a joke who is being laughed at. Just like I was when I was a child.

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Be kind to the quiet weirdo, he’s been through more than you know.

Knowledge of women

I get asked at times, how do you know so much about women?

So, over the years I have known a number of women who have been kind enough to answer questions. Deep, explicit questions. They know I’m not angling for sex, it’s knowledge. I still have go to women that I ask things of. Kinky? I know who to ask, BDSM? Yup, Older women, covered.

Sometimes I research, there’s info on the net, in the right places.

But those women have been, and still are, amazing sources of knowledge.

Random thing, around 50% of women prefer one breast over the other one.

Is it cancer?

 So I got a scan because I have blood pressure issues. 

There's a "dark mass" on my kidneys. Now I'm in a purgatory. Waiting for answers. 

I'm sad and terrified. But people either don't want to know or want to talk directly about treatments. 

And I dont know what I want. I feel so alone. 

A shower together

 

Some time ago I was talking to a woman who had a lot of interesting things to say. One time she utterly stopped me in my tracks. She told me how she took her Dom (yes, she was a sub) into the shower, washed him down and towelled him off afterwards.

Now a bunch of women are going, “so?” and I’m telling you a bunch of guys are stunned.

I’m 52 years old and no woman has done that for me since I was about 4. But this isn’t about childhood memories. It about being cared for. Men are expected to be tough and suck it up, and we are and we do. But, to be cared for like that. Intimately. I’m telling you, it threw me for a few days. Ladies, do this for your man, he’s going to be so stunned, it will make his year.

The Lonely Warrior

 

 

There were two of us. Now there is one. She fell in the greatest unwinnable battle, and I had to, I had to fight the ones who killed her— because that's what's left to do with a promise once the person you made it to is gone.

She asked me once, in the quiet.

Why do you do it? she asks. Why do you pick fights you cannot win?

Because it's the right thing to do, I tell her. Because I promised I would go until I could go no more, and a promise doesn't expire just because the person it was made for did.

The battles have cut you so deep, she says, and she's not wrong. My scars tell a journey of where I have been — every one of them a place I chose to stand rather than walk past.

You are broken, she says. You are weary.

My head is bowed. My heart has been shattered — that's true too. Yet still I stand.

It's hurting you, she presses, gentler now, the way she always got gentler right before she said the hardest thing. You need to stop. There is nothing you can gain from this.

Ahh. But there she is wrong.

I gain humility, knowing that I can be beaten. I gain patience, knowing there will eventually be a conclusion. I gain love, knowing I do this for others. I gain empathy — knowing suffering, I can understand others' suffering. I gain courage, knowing I can stand before impossible odds. I gain honor, knowing I did the right thing.

So once more I stand. And I fight the unwinnable fights.

Though I stand alone at the gates of hell, I will not turn away. I have been here before. Old wounds open again and again, but that has never once been enough to stop me. Not through the turmoil in my spirit. Not through the pain in my heart.

I will rise, You will not stop me I tell her.

You will NOT stop me, I say again as much to myself as her.

I do none of this for me. I do it for the broken, for the hurt, for the downtrodden. I know I cannot win. You don't take on the world and win. But that was never the point. Not winning is not the same as giving up.

I'm so tired, though. I'll admit that now, quietly, where no one else can hear it. I am beginning to falter. I get knocked down and get up, over and over, but there will soon come a day — I know this — when I will not be able to get up anymore.

Is this the fate, I wonder,

And somewhere just behind me, softer than an answer, I hear her finish the thought

...of the lonely warrior.

Primal

Your scent hits me first, before your skin is near,

A wild signal cutting through the doubt and fear.

No slow dance needed, no polite little plea,

You belong to me.

Forget the reason, forget the gentle art,

We’re tearing down the walls right from the start...

This savage clash when we collide!

Where all the careful manners run and hide.

It's a fever burning deep inside the bone,

We burn perfectly when we are alone!

My grip is iron, pulling you down low,

Every ragged breath is where the wild things grow.

No more whispers now, just the sound of teeth on throat,

This raw vibration is the only note!

Don't ask for soft... don't ask for slow...

Just take this hunger where the wild things go.

TAKE IT! Own the heat, let the edges fray...

We ain't here to whisper, we are here to stay!

Just let it burn... just let it bleed...

FUCK!

The fate of our files

 One of my jobs I had as an IT person was about a year after someone died, I would delete their files from the servers. I always looked at the the file count in their documents before I did. It was confidential things so I never looked at what was in them, but I would think about all that time that person had spent creating those files and for what? Just me quietly coming along, no ceremony, no looking at the files. Just a simple, purge a year after they die.

Is that the fate of my files too? I guess it is.

10 years today

 

On this day 10 years ago the Drs kicked my wife out of the hospital. She was still protesting at them as I wheeled her out in a wheelchair down to the car. And then I drove her to the hospice. They had starved her and dehydrated her for 3 days promising her life saving surgery, it never happened.

10 days later I sat beside her as she turned to me, took her last breath and I saw the vein in her neck stop pulsing. That moment is stained on me. I’ll never forget it.

Good girl

 

You showed up steady, quiet, ready — good girl.

You were patient when the world wasn't — good girl.

You stayed present when presence was hardest — good girl.

You settled into it like you belonged there — good girl.

You said yes before I finished asking — good girl.

You waited, hands folded, eyes soft — good girl.

You remembered every little thing I like — good girl.

You wore what I chose without a word — good girl.

You slowed down when I asked you to — good girl.

You kept your eyes on me when the room got loud — good girl.

You didn't rush the silence — good girl.

You leaned in instead of pulling back — good girl.

You reached for my hand first — good girl.

You softened instead of closing off — good girl.

You let yourself be seen — good girl.

You asked for what you needed — good girl.

You were honest even when it cost you — good girl.

You gave me your nervous and your brave — good girl.

You trusted me enough to let go — good girl.

You made the ordinary feel like something — good girl.

You blushed but you didn't look away — good girl.

You wanted to please and weren't ashamed of it — good girl.

You held still and let the moment last — good girl.

You glowed when you got it right — good girl.

Desire

 

Desire,

An echo in the darkness of our souls,

A touch that ignites a thousand goals,

A yearning so intense it steals control,

It's a flame that never grows old.

It's a flame, it's a dance,

A magnetic, hypnotic trance,

A fervor that enhances the romance,

Desire, in its powerful stance.

A whisper grows into a fiery roar,

A feeling that leaves us craving more,

A hunger that consumes us to the core,

Desire, it's you I adore.

It's a heartbeat, fast and wild,

A rhythm driving us both wild,

A longing burning like fire,

Desire, you take me higher.

An allure that forever beckons close,

A dream where inhibitions decompose,

With every beat, you're all I need,

Desire, you make me plead.

A passion that only you ignite,

Electric touches in the pale moonlight,

In your arms, I lose my fight,

Desire, you're my appetite.

An urge that never loses fire,

Taking me higher and higher,

In your embrace, I'm complete,

Desire, oh desire, you're my heat.

Closer

 

Closer.

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Don't move. Don't test me.

You're doing so well being patient.

I can hear your heartbeat from here

Louder than anything you're saying.

Hands down.

Eyes up.

You wanted my attention —

now you've got all of it.

Closer.

Not yet — closer.

Every inch you give me, I take slower

You're shaking and you haven't been touched

That's exactly how I like you.

You keep testing how far quiet stretches

Findin' out real quick it doesn't break

I don't need my hands to have you

My voice already knows the way.

— Say my name like you mean it.

— Now say it again, slower.

Closer... closer...

sex over 50

 

OK, I'm going to say it. There's this societal expectation that women over 50 have closed up shop. Sex is out, desire is gone.

 

Here's the thing nobody tells you: desire isn't gone. It's dormant. If the sex is bad or non-existent, a woman's drive will quietly switch off — why keep the engine running with nowhere to go? But give her good, available sex, and something else happens entirely. That switch flips back on, and it doesn't come back at half-strength. These women turn into horny wee things whose drive can outpace most men half their age.

 

And it throws them. Not because anything's wrong with them — because nobody warned them this was allowed. Society spent fifty years telling them that after menopause, wanting anything was off the table. So when the wanting comes roaring back, it feels like a glitch instead of what it actually is: normal.

 

It was never broken. It was just waiting for a reason.

A real Dom

 

Ever since you were a little girl you knew how to scan a room, you knew how to deflect, how to calm. You knew when to walk away, and when to run. And sometimes, how to shrink down and take it because running made it worse.

That knowledge has served you well and continues into adulthood. You know when to laugh at just the right moments, how to not be too much and how to be just enough.

And then he came along and fucked up your life in the best way. Not by taking control — you'd been controlled before, you knew what that cost. He took the control you'd been carrying alone and made it his to hold, so for once you didn't have to. He never told you who to be. He told you exactly what he wanted, and left no room to guess, no performance required. There was nothing to scan for. He'd already named it.

And the thing is, he wasn't some prince on a white horse. He didn't save you. He gave you permission — not to obey, but to stop bracing. The vigilance had a job once. With him, though. It was no longer needed. You looked for some time, expecting it to go wrong, waiting to see some facade drop, it never did, and you felt yourself open up, you could tell him about your blunders and he never judged you. He had an ability to take your day out of your hands, do it all while still making it all about you and you became a happy little princess. He slowly built you up, convincing you to do things you never thought you would do.

I haven’t mentioned sex in this piece and I’m not going to. But if you find this man, what you have in fact found is a Dom. The real ones will care for you every bit outside the bedroom as in.

Little sub

 I look down at this 5ft nothing wee thing staring up at me defiantly. 

I smile at her and gently say, “You are so small. Look at me, I would tear you to shreds”

She looks up at me with the defiance of a sub. 

“You don’t scare me, I’m resilient, I can handle anything you give me” she’s trying so hard to sound tough. 

She’s so adorable. I know I’m going to cave to this wee thing, but she’s going to have to fight for it.

Panic attacks and what to do

 If someone is having a panic attack, you have two immediate things you need to do.

You need them to understand where they are. And you need them to understand that right now, they are safe.

The first one is the most immediate need. Most of the time, it will resolve the second issue on its own.

So, first up — don't go "Look at me! Look at me!" That's going to overload them even more.

You need them to say their name. It's grounding — it brings them back to themselves. "Tell me your name," even if you know them well. It's not for you, it's for them. This first step may take a few repeats before it registers. That's okay — be gentle, don't rush.

If their breathing is ragged or they can't catch it, this is a good moment to slow that down too. Get them to breathe out longer than they breathe in — count it with them if you have to. It won't fix everything, but it takes the edge off the physical panic while you keep working through the rest.

Once you get them saying their name, you've made it through to them. Ask them to repeat it — "again, what's your name." When they tell you, say "Good." A bit of praise helps more than you'd think.

Next, get them to tell you what day it is. If they don't know, tell them, then ask again. Get them to repeat it back — "my name is ___, and the day is ___." They've already started to be distracted from the panic, without realising it.

The next step is bringing them to where they are, right now. If they've called you, get them to describe their surroundings. "Look down — what's on the ground? Dirt? Grass? Tiles?" Ask about the pattern on the tiles. If you're sitting with them, ask them to point out something that's a colour — "tell me something that's green."

Get them looking around. Your goal is both distraction and pulling them back to the present, so they can see for themselves that they're safe.

Start asking about their plans for later today, and maybe tomorrow. By now, they should be a lot calmer.
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This may not be the perfect system but its what I do for people in overwhelming situations.

Life n depression

 

In life we have our ups and downs

We simply have to make the best from what we have

And that's ok

Never give up

Tenacity is strength and bravery

To continue with what we do in life

Onward, even when it's heavy

Days will turn, this too will shift

In the end its what we do

Enjoy that we have, treat it as a gift

That time of the month

 AAAAARGGGHHHH!!!! It’s not fair! This sucks!!!!!! My daughters friend is a little yelly this morning. I wander over to her room. “Period has arrived huh”? I say. “It’s so unfair” she complains. “Good news! I haven got mine” I tease. “Yaaaaahhhhh” is her response to that. “Need some painkillers”? She nods “And chocolate”? “Yes?” she says. I go off, grab her some food, water painkillers and a bit of chocolate. And I smile, knowing I have a home that’s safe enough that women can tell me these things.

Peace

 

It took 9 months, but its finally happened. I’m starting to feel a measure of peace. The anxiety is dropping. It’s an odd feeling. I’m not on edge anymore. I’m not terrified when I wake up in the mornings about what’s going to happen. There’s still that background nagging, but there’s also so much peace. I can breathe, I can relax into myself.

Now to figure out how to heal this body. Soon, but this week I’m going to just be, there’s no rush.

Learn to channel your anger

 

Learn to channel your anger.

I sat in a room with the people who killed my wife. Was I mad? Sure was. It was also terrifying. People have said they would get violent. Nope. That anger was sitting. I used it to give me focus. I spent 2hrs quietly and calmy ripping those people to shreds. No raised voices, no accusations, they had no way to come back on me. Just facts, one after the other and they had nowhere to run.

Decompressing from stress

 

10 years ago my wife had terminal cancer. I helped her all the way. Never stopped. My body literally fell apart, from how hard I was pushing. I was going blind from ocular migraines, that would stop me for 30mins and then I would carry on. I was bleeding, from everywhere, my nose was the worst, gushers, almost every day at one point. I was also peeing blood. The scary ones were when I bled from my ears overnight.

There were times where I was running on 3hrs sleep. Still gave everything I had. She had to do her own dressing changes for a long time, in the bathroom, hanging over the bath, 10 years later there’s still blood stains in the bath, no matter how much I scrubbed they won’t come out, I even tore part of the bathroom out to get rid of the blood. She refused to let me help. So, every night I sat outside the bathroom on a shitty stool and talked to her, played music on my phone. 45 mins to an hour and a half. When she was in pain I was up, if it was 3am, I was there.

Sometimes in the evening, I would settle her in front of the TV and for an hour or two I would sit in my office right beside the lounge and play a video game. This wasn’t avoidance, this wasn’t me being callous, this was me needing to decompress. My world, everything I had built was crashing, my wife, my business was crashing as I was busy looking after my wife (I’m still paying off the debts I rang up) and I had to stop. The game was for kids, Farming Simulator. Round and round paddocks in circles. A game where I barely had to think, but enough to keep my fucked up brain occupied.  

Therapy was pointless for me, did nothing, my wife was very, very sick and there was nothing they could say to make that better.

So, yeah. Guys needing to play a video game for a little can do more than talking to some random person who can’t help. If you find therapy helps, then good for you. But judging people when they need other ways to decompress. That’s fucking low.

He was a good man

 I have walked through fire and rain

Carried more than my share of pain

I have fallen, I have risen slow

I have reaped the seeds that I did sow

I was not the best that walked this earth

But I fought to prove my living worth

Held my own through the darkest nights

Kept my candle burning, kept the light

When all is done and I face the fading sun

Do not weep for me, do not come undone

Just say a quiet prayer, let the stillness speak

He was a good man — not perfect, but a good man all the same

I loved the ones who needed loving most

Stayed when others faded like a ghost

I leave no throne, no fortune, and no fame

Just the quiet hope they'll speak well of my name

I do not ask for glory

I do not ask for more

Just leave me to the mercy

Of what I'm walking toward

When all is done

When all is done

May they say I tried

I hope you say I was

A good man

The More of a Man You Are, the More of a Woman She Will Become

 

The More of a Man You Are, the More of a Woman She Will Become

Look at those scales.

One side says asshole. The other says overly nice guy. And right now they're perfectly balanced — because most men spend their entire relationship lives trying to figure out which way to lean.

Wrong premise entirely.

The man who tips toward asshole mistakes cruelty for strength. He confuses her walking on eggshells with her respecting the ground he stands on. It works, after a fashion — until she either leaves or hollows out completely. Neither outcome is a win. Neither makes him more of a man.

The overly nice guy thinks he's solved it. He's done the reading. He knows about toxic masculinity. He apologises pre-emptively. He checks in. He asks how she's feeling approximately four hundred times a week. And he cannot understand why she seems vaguely irritated by his relentless availability, why the attraction has gone flat, why she looks through him like a window when she used to look at him like a door.

One imposes. One appeases. But watch closely — both have made her the whole point. Neither one has anywhere else to be.

The imposer looks like he's making it about himself, but he isn't. His dominance only exists in relation to her. Take her away and the performance collapses — he needs someone to impose on. She's still the axis. The nice guy is more obvious about it, built entirely around her reactions, her approval, her temperature on any given day. Neither man has a self that would survive her absence intact.

She can feel that. And she cannot relax into it.

A woman cannot fully soften with a man who is fundamentally unsteady. She picks up the slack. She manages. She leads from behind, because someone has to. It isn't what she wanted. It's what was left.

Now consider the man who isn't performing either of those roles.

He has a direction. Not a rigid agenda — a direction. He knows what he values. He can disappoint her without apologising for existing. He can be moved by her without being destabilised by her. He holds his ground not because he's trying to win an argument, but because his ground is actually his.

And yes — she wants to feel that. A degree of dominance in a man isn't something women have been conditioned to tolerate. It's something they're wired to respond to. The issue was never the dominance. It was the source. Dominance that comes from insecurity, from fear of losing her, from needing to control the outcome — she feels that too, and it repels her. Dominance that comes from a man who simply knows who he is? That's a different thing entirely. That's what she's been looking for on both sides of those scales and not finding.

Something happens around that man.

She softens. Not because he's demanded it, not because he's manoeuvred her into it — but because she no longer has to be braced. The tension she carries as a matter of habit begins to release. She doesn't have to mother him. She doesn't have to manage his ego or tiptoe around his insecurity. She can be warm because the environment is safe. She can be playful because he won't mistake it for weakness. She can be vulnerable because he won't use it against her.

The more of a man you are, the more of a woman she will become.

It isn't a transaction. It isn't technique. It isn't something you do to her.

It's something that happens when you walk in your own centre. When you arrive whole.

Decaying

 

Where do I start? It’s always a difficult issue.

I am a Straight White Man in my 50s.

I’m not a perfect person, I have done sketchy things in my life.

But I am sick of this Men are abusive. White men are even more abusive. And its ALL men.

And if you ever try to argue then you get vilified. How dare you say its not ALL men.

I don’t tell people what I do, I’m not after glory, it’s just me doing the right things.

Have I raced across town in the early hours to pluck young girls who are standing on the side of the road, lost and not knowing what to do? More than once.

Have I talked people who were thinking maybe it was time to end their marriage into staying? Yup. Have I talked them into leaving when I could see it was poisoning them? Yup.

Have I opened up my home to women who were literally homeless with nowhere else? Plenty of times.

Talked women out of suicide a few times (that scares me most but I’ll still do it)

I now face my own issues. My body is failing. My organs are failing. It’s getting to my brain now. I’m losing function. I can hide it for now. But soon I won’t be able to.

And I’m so alone.

Men are tough, when we finally ask for help, it’s expected of us to be tough. So we are tough alone.

I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I don’t think I have a real point to this.

Rantings of a lonely old man I guess.

Straight White men. The new acceptable target.

 

The Vanishing Majority: Are Straight White Men the World's Most Acceptable Target?

I want to talk about something that a lot of men feel but have learned not to say out loud — because the moment you do, you get accused of the very thing you're trying to discuss.

So let me start with some numbers. Because numbers don't have an agenda.

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The Demographics Nobody Wants to Discuss

Straight white men are a global minority. Not metaphorically. Literally.

White people make up somewhere between 13 and 16 percent of the world's population. Half of those are male. And of those males, roughly 88 to 92 percent identify as heterosexual — a figure that drops further in younger generations. When you do the actual maths, straight white men represent somewhere around 6 to 7 percent of all humans on earth.

That's not a majority. That hasn't been a majority for a very long time. It just didn't used to be talked about in those terms.

Within Western nations the picture is shifting just as dramatically. In the United States, the non-Hispanic white population has declined by over 2 million people since the 2020 Census — the first time in American history the white population has recorded an absolute decline. LGBTQ+ identification has more than doubled since 2012, now sitting at around 9 percent of US adults, with over 23 percent of Gen Z identifying as something other than heterosexual.

Here in New Zealand, 67.8 percent of the population identified as white in the 2023 Census. That number is falling. Maori, Pasifika, and Asian populations are all growing at significantly faster rates.

The point is not to make anyone feel under siege. The point is that the demographic reality has shifted — and that shift has cultural consequences that almost nobody is being honest about.

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What Happens When a Majority Becomes a Minority

History gives us a fairly reliable pattern here.

When a previously dominant group transitions to minority status — or even just from a dominant majority to a shrinking plurality — two things tend to happen simultaneously. The group that is losing ground becomes a more socially acceptable target for resentment from groups that previously lacked the power to express it. And the shrinking group experiences increasing anxiety and identity defensiveness.

This isn't unique to white men. You can observe the same dynamic in post-colonial transitions, in ethnic majority shifts in rapidly diversifying nations, in religious group dynamics. It's a human pattern, not a white one.

The correction of historic imbalances is legitimate and necessary. But corrections rarely land precisely. They tend to overshoot. And the overshoot is where we currently appear to be living.

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The Social Licence to Demean

Let me be direct about what I'm observing.

There is a now well-established social licence in Western culture to make sweeping derogatory statements about straight white men that would be considered utterly unacceptable — career-ending, in fact — if directed at virtually any other demographic group.

The example closest to home for New Zealanders is Marama Davidson, who as the sitting Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence stated publicly in March 2023: "I know who causes violence in the world. It is white cis men who cause violence in the world."

When pressed in Parliament — repeatedly — on whether she would apologise, she said, in her own words: "I am not going to apologise to cis men." The only apology offered was a private one to the Prime Minister — not to the public, and not to the group she had generalised about.

Substitute any other demographic into that original sentence. Any of them. And ask yourself honestly how that press conference ends differently.

It ends with a resignation. That's the point.

This is not an isolated New Zealand incident. It is a pattern visible across Western media, academia, social media platforms, corporate diversity frameworks, and political rhetoric. Advertising routinely portrays white men as the incompetent foil while other demographics are presented as capable and admirable. University funding and job postings explicitly exclude white male applicants in ways that would be legally actionable if applied to any other group. Social media platforms permit explicit "I hate white men" content while removing far milder generalisations about other groups.

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The "Not All Men" Trap

Here is where it gets particularly dishonest.

If you are a man who objects to being included in a broad generalisation about male behaviour — if you say "not all men" — you are not engaging in a reasonable factual correction. You are, according to the dominant cultural logic, revealing yourself as part of the problem.

The rhetorical structure works like this: a sweeping generalisation is stated as fact. You object to it. Your objection is immediately reframed as evidence of your guilt, or as a deliberate attempt to derail a conversation about something more important than your feelings.

What that structure actually is, stripped of its political framing, is an unfalsifiable claim. A belief system that cannot be questioned without the questioner being condemned is not a progressive framework for justice. It is dogma. And it deserves to be named as such.

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The Privilege Argument and Where It Goes Wrong

The concept of privilege, as originally developed in sociology, was a legitimate analytical tool. It was intended to describe statistical patterns across populations — not a moral indictment of individuals.

Somewhere between the sociology department and social media, it mutated into something else entirely.

A working-class man in provincial New Zealand — who has lost a partner, raised a child alone, struggled with his health, worked physically demanding jobs, and had no institutional safety net — shares a demographic label with a Harvard-educated senator or a multinational CEO. The argument that they share anything meaningful beyond that label, that they have somehow benefited from the same "privilege," requires you to ignore everything actual and specific about a human life in favour of a demographic abstraction.

That is not analysis. It is a different kind of prejudice — one that happens to be currently socially acceptable.

Nothing is handed to most men simply because of who they are. What is handed to some men, by virtue of wealth and connection and institutional access, is real. But those men are not the men having this conversation. They are rarely the ones being accused.

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What This Is Actually Doing to Men

The downstream consequences of this cultural environment are not abstract.

Men — particularly younger men — are disengaging from education, from institutions, from political participation through conventional channels, and increasingly from the social mainstream. The male suicide rate in New Zealand sits at approximately three times the female rate. Boys are now underperforming girls at every level of the education system. Men comprise around 93 percent of workplace fatalities and approximately 70 percent of the homeless population.

These are not the statistics of a protected and privileged class. These are the statistics of a group under significant strain — whose strain is being systematically dismissed because acknowledging it is seen as undermining other legitimate conversations about inequality.

You can hold both things at once. Women face real discrimination. So do Maori. So do people in poverty. None of that requires you to pretend that men — particularly working-class men in communities that have been economically hollowed out — are doing fine and have nothing legitimate to say about their circumstances.

The refusal to hold both things at once is not solidarity. It is tribalism with better branding.

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The Backlash Nobody Wants to Talk About

History is fairly consistent on what happens when a group — any group — comes to believe that the dominant culture views them as inherently guilty, inherently suspect, and inherently unworthy of acknowledgment or sympathy.

They do not become more moderate. They become more extreme.

The rapid swing of young men toward hard-right politics across the United States, Europe, and increasingly New Zealand is not happening in a vacuum. It is happening in a cultural environment where those young men have been told, repeatedly and from multiple directions, that their identity makes their grievances illegitimate — and that the appropriate response to this message is to sit quietly and accept it.

That is not working. And the people most loudly insisting on that approach appear to be the last to notice.

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What I'm Actually Asking For

Not special treatment. Not the restoration of any imagined past. Not permission to ignore the legitimate grievances of others.

Just the same basic standard applied consistently.

If a generalisation would be considered unacceptable when directed at any other group, it should be considered unacceptable when directed at this one. If individual experience matters when assessing the circumstances of one demographic, it should matter when assessing the circumstances of another.

That is not a radical position. It is the minimum requirement for intellectual consistency. And the fact that stating it plainly has become controversial tells you more about the current cultural climate than it does about the man saying it.

Straight white men are not asking to be put back on top. Most of them were never there in the first place.

They are asking to be seen as human beings rather than demographic abstractions. That ought to be a reasonable request.

fuck this place

I loathe being alive. 

I hate living every fucking moment in pain that I can't escape from.

I hate trying to push along a dying body with organs slowly shutting down. 

I hate being forced into a subsistence living on welfare. With shitty people commenting how people like us are a drain on society. 

I hate living in a shitty house that's falling to pieces but I'm poor so I can't fix it.

I hate the Drs who knowingly killed my wife and didn't give a shit. 

I hated the night I sat with my dog as he looked at me and silently pleaded for help. To fix him. And there was nothing I could do but watch him die.

And right now I hate my car even more. My last piece of freedom. My last occasional escape. I spent the last squeak of my savings on it. And now it's fucked. Its drained every thing I have and it's still demanding more money, a lot more money. I'll probably have to sell it and lose, really lose and buy a shit box that might get me into town. Either that or start taking busses for groceries and live out the last years of my shit life trapped in a decaying house in a decaying body. 

If you want some good advice. Walk away from me. Better yet, fucking run. There's nothing good can come from me.

New cars and bad times

 So, my old car was dying, I didn’t have the money to fix it. When my company closed down I used the last of my money to buy another car. Then I sold my car so I had a small buffer in case of emergency.

The new car turned out to have even more issues than my old car. My life savings are down to $500 and on Thursday it goes in while they try to trace an elusive fault that’s costs thousands and has only gotten worse.
The dealer has refused to pay for any more repairs, they offered to refund the car and take it back, but that would have me out of pocket for the thousands of my own money I spent on it.

Story of my life. Fucked up shit. Backed into a corner, no matter what way I turn with this car I’m going to lose.

 

Raising a daughter

 This one's for the dads raising a daughter on your own. Maybe even co-parenting.

Some things, you suck it up and figure out.

My daughter needed swimwear — a particular type. Out of my depth, I took her to the store anyway. We looked and couldn't find it. I asked the saleswoman, who rolled her eyes and said, "Where is her mother? She should be here doing this."

I loved looking right at her and saying: "Her mother is dead. I'm doing the best I can."

No regrets. Not for that. Not for taking her to buy a dress either.

But know when to step back.

If she has her period, things are difficult, and she has questions — don't try to solve it or answer it. Grab your phone and call any woman you know. Doesn't matter who. Every single one will turn into a member of the sisterhood. Hand the phone to your daughter and let them talk.

I'll buy period products. I don't give a shit. But those conversations are between women.

 

He loaded the dishwasher.

You told him he did it wrong.

So he didn't do it anymore.

.

He bought you flowers.

They weren't the right ones, you said —

and besides, a waste of money.

So he didn't buy them anymore.

.

He needed a weekend with his mates.

You got mad that he was leaving you alone.

So he didn't go anymore.

.

You noticed something had changed.

He didn't seem to care.

So when he reached for you in bed,

you turned away.

.

He sat alone at night.

Drank beer. Watched television.

Didn't help around the house

unless you pushed him into it.

.

And you wondered what happened

to the man you fell in love with.

A mess

 I wandered up the back of my place. Its an overgrown mess. I don't have it in me to sort it. Came back inside. 

I'm in a lot of pain today

The weaponization of loneliness

NOBODY WANTS TO TALK ABOUT THIS HONESTLY

Men are struggling. The people who should care are busy using it as ammunition.

—

There is a real thing happening to men. Call it an epidemic of loneliness, a crisis of purpose, a collapse of male social infrastructure — the label matters less than the reality underneath it. Men are increasingly isolated, increasingly purposeless, and increasingly invisible in any conversation that is supposed to be about them.

And almost nobody is talking about it honestly.

Instead, what we get is a tug-of-war over the territory. On one side, grifters and ideologues who have decided that isolated, struggling men are a market — a recruitment pool for whatever brand of bitterness they are selling. On the other side, critics who have decided that any acknowledgment of male suffering is either a right-wing dog whistle or something men simply deserve.

Both sides are doing damage. And the men caught in the middle — ordinary men, struggling in ordinary ways — are being left to drown.

THE NUMBERS ARE NOT A CULTURE WAR TALKING POINT

Fifteen percent of men report having no close friends at all. Twenty percent of single men have zero people they would call on in a crisis. Men are nearly four times more likely than women to die by suicide. These are not figures from a men's rights pamphlet — they come from standard longitudinal social research, and they have been climbing steadily for decades.

This is not about men failing to adapt to a changing world, though that narrative is convenient for people who don't want to look closer. It is about the dismantling of the social structures that historically gave men connection — trade communities, civic organisations, religious institutions, local sports leagues, stable workplaces where you knew people for years. Those structures have largely collapsed, and nothing has replaced them.

Women lost some of those structures too. But women, broadly speaking, maintained stronger friendship networks, sought help more readily, and were surrounded by a culture that actively encouraged them to talk about what they were feeling. Men were not, and still largely are not.

"The core need is not radical. Men want to feel capable, purposeful, desired, and connected. That is not an ideology. That is just being human."

WHAT GOOD MOVEMENTS LOOK LIKE BEFORE THEY GET HIJACKED

It is worth understanding how we got here, because the pattern keeps repeating.

Men Going Their Own Way — MGTOW — began with a defensible premise. Men who had been hurt by bad divorces, unfair custody outcomes, or chronically one-sided relationships needed a framework that said: you do not have to keep playing a game that is set against you. Step back. Build something for yourself. That is not misogyny. That is self-preservation.

Then the bitterness took over. The self-determination angle got buried under an ideology that classified all women as subhuman parasites and declared civilisation beyond saving. The men who genuinely needed a reset got mixed in with men who wanted philosophical cover for their hatred. The loudest voices won, as they usually do online, and the whole thing curdled.

The men's rights movement went the same way. Legitimate issues — custody law bias, the silence around male suicide, the absence of support services for male victims of domestic violence — got overtaken by bad actors, and now those legitimate issues are almost impossible to raise without the conversation immediately derailing.

The male loneliness epidemic, as a cultural conversation, is on the same trajectory. The underlying reality is genuine. The exploitation of it is turning it into recruitment material. Which makes it harder for anyone trying to address it honestly, because they are working in a space that has been poisoned by association.

THE BAD FAITH COMES FROM BOTH DIRECTIONS

This needs to be said plainly, because half the time only one direction gets named.

Yes — figures like Andrew Tate have built empires by funnelling isolated young men toward a worldview that is ultimately about resentment and control. They found a genuine wound and decided to infect it rather than treat it. The damage this does — to the men themselves, and to the women around them — is real and serious.

But the response from parts of mainstream culture has not been better. Men who raise these issues get categorised before they finish their sentence. Talk about male loneliness and you are an incel apologist. Talk about men needing purpose and you are one step from Tate. Mention that men are struggling in relationships and suddenly you are defending abuse. The vocabulary has been so thoroughly colonised by the worst actors that a man trying to have a genuine conversation about his own life has almost nowhere to stand.

The dismissal takes different forms depending on who is doing it. Sometimes it is overt — "men deserve to be lonely," a sentiment that circulates with more regularity than anyone should be comfortable with. Sometimes it is subtler — the insistence that any male suffering is simply the consequence of male privilege, and therefore not worthy of serious attention. Sometimes it is just the reflex of treating every man who mentions his struggles as a suspect rather than a person.

None of this helps anybody. It does not protect women. It does not challenge toxic masculinity. It just abandons men who were already on the edge to whoever will talk to them — which, right now, is often the people doing the most harm.

"The manosphere fills a vacuum that more grounded voices have largely abandoned — partly out of fear of the association."

WHAT MEN ACTUALLY NEED

Strip away the politics and the performance and the grievance industry, and what you find underneath is remarkably ordinary.

Men want to feel like they matter. They want to be good at something. They want to be desired by someone who genuinely wants them, not tolerates them. They want friendships that go deeper than silence in front of a screen. They want to feel like they are moving toward something rather than slowly disappearing.

None of that is radical. None of that is threatening. It is just human beings wanting their lives to mean something.

The problem is that men have been given two options for how to talk about these needs. Option one: suppress them entirely, perform stoicism, ask for nothing, and quietly deteriorate. Option two: adopt the language of the grievance pipeline, frame every unmet need as someone else's fault, and marinate in bitterness until connection becomes impossible.

There is a third option, but it requires something harder than either of those: honesty about what is actually going on, without the performance and without the blame.

WHAT WOMEN CAN DO WITH THIS

If you have read this far and you are a woman, you may be wondering where you fit in this conversation. The answer is: more centrally than the culture war framing suggests.

The men struggling with loneliness and purposelessness are mostly not your enemies. They are your partners, your brothers, your fathers, your sons, the men sitting across from you on public transport who have not spoken to a close friend in three years. The ones who got recruited into bitterness were often recruited precisely because nobody treated their pain as real before someone exploitative did.

That does not mean women are responsible for fixing men's social lives. They are not. But it does mean that reflexively dismissing any discussion of male struggle as a bad-faith manoeuvre is both inaccurate and counterproductive. Men who feel seen and heard do not, as a rule, end up radicalised. Men who feel invisible and mocked tend not to do as well.

The loudest voices on this topic — on all sides — have an interest in keeping men and women furious at each other. That is the product. That is what gets clicks and followers and donations. The actual men and women trying to navigate real relationships and real lives get very little from that arrangement.

THE HARDER CONVERSATION

Acknowledging that men are struggling does not mean excusing bad behaviour. It does not mean pretending that power imbalances do not exist. It does not mean that every man who is lonely and angry is a victim of an unjust system with no responsibility for his own choices.

What it means is that there are real human beings inside the statistics, and that leaving them to the wolves — whether those wolves are the grifters selling them resentment, or the critics telling them they deserve what they get — is not a strategy. It is an abdication.

Men need better options for how to be men. Not the performing-at-all-times stoic. Not the Tate disciple. Not the endlessly self-flagellating man who apologises for existing. Something more honest than all of those — a version of masculinity that is grounded, accountable, warm, and genuinely capable of connection.

That conversation is possible. It is not happening nearly enough. And every time it gets hijacked by someone with an agenda — on any side — the men who actually needed it lose something they were not sure they could ask for in the first place.

Miss sassy

 

She stood before him, her tiny frame dwarfed by his imposing height. But she didn't flinch, not even when he towered over her, radiating an aura of authority that made her knees tremble with a mix of fear and excitement.

"I'm not afraid of you," she said bravely, trying to sound confident despite the quiver in her voice. "You're just a big, scary dom who thinks size matters."

She rolled her eyes, trying for sarcasm but failing miserably under his piercing gaze. Why did he have to be so good at seeing right through her? She felt like a tiny mouse facing a lioness, and yet...and yet...she couldn't help but want him more.

"Besides," she continued, taking another deep breath, "I've been dominated by bigger, meaner men than you. I think I can handle one little guy like you."

She batted her lashes up at him, trying to appear confident and sassy, but inside, her heart was racing with anticipation. This wasn't just about sex; it was about proving something to herself – that she wasn't afraid of anyone, especially not a big, strong dom like him.

She took another step forward, her eyes locked onto his, daring him to back down. "So come on, big guy," she taunted, her voice husky with desire. "Show me what you've got."

Stopping

 

I was never fast. Shit at running, shit at sports. But what I could do was work for long periods. I would start slow and go all day.
My parents ran training courses. One of them they build a commercial hot house. It took my father and 5 trainees all day to ram the poles for one side. They were big and heavy, the circumference of a power pole and about 10 ft long.

They went home at 4pm. My father and I got stuck in and did the other side together. It was hard work just the 2 of us. But we had it done by 6:30pm.
I learned to walk distances, fast. At school if the class had to walk fairly far and they were short on time the teacher would put me in front and told the rest of the class to keep up.
I learned to work 10 hour days.

Then I got sick, I had to slow down. But I never stopped. I kept pushing and pushing.

People knew I was bad. I never told them how bad.

But the more I pushed the sicker I got.

The more I had to slow down.

Until my body started to give out.

I mean really give out. It’s failing and I had to stop working.

But, how? I don’t know how to stop.

It’s killing me.

But I can’t stop.

What makes a man a good man?

What makes a man a good man? 

Gentle, yes. Kind, yes. 

But tell me, if it came down to it. If he had to, if there was no choice, could he do terrible things? Could he lower his morals? His ethics? 

You see, sometimes a man must fight, he has to do things. 

He must protect. 

And that, that makes the good man. The one who can do bad things to protect those closest to him. The one who carries the weight of those things — and doesn't pretend they were easy.

We need to make a distinction that gets lost in most conversations about masculinity and virtue. The distinction between being harmless and being good.

A harmless man poses no threat because he lacks the capacity. He is gentle because he does not know how to be otherwise. He is kind because he has never been forced toward cruelty.

A good man is different. A good man poses no threat because he chooses not to. The capacity is there, banked like a fire — controlled, directed, quiet. But present. Real. And when it must come out, it comes out in service of something beyond himself. Not ego. Not anger. Not pride. Something worth protecting.

That is the modern gentleman.

Not the absence of strength. Strength, disciplined. Not the absence of fire. Fire, contained. Not a man without edges — a man who knows exactly where his edges are, and protects others with them.

Gentle, yes. Kind, yes. But capable of doing bad things for good reasons.

Don't be the overly nice guy in a relationship

 

When a man senses his partner pulling away sexually, his instinct is to compensate.

He does more around the house. He stops initiating to avoid rejection. He plans dates. He listens harder. He bites his tongue. He waits. He shrinks. He becomes, in every way he knows how, the nice guy.

And it will make things worse.

Attraction isn't built on niceness. It's built on tension.

When you become relentlessly accommodating, you remove the one thing that quietly sustains desire — polarity. The sense that you are a distinct, self-directed person with your own needs, standards, and edge. The moment you dissolve yourself into helpfulness, you stop being someone she can desire and start being someone she manages.

She asked for more help. You gave it. She said she felt unheard. You started listening more. So why does it feel like you're losing her?

Because what she said she needed and what her body responds to are not always the same thing.

She can feel the difference between presence and performance.

When you're doing more to get something, she feels it — not always consciously, but in her body. It registers as neediness. As desperation. As a man who has lost his own centre and is orbiting her approval.

Neediness is the single greatest desire-killer in a long-term relationship. It doesn't make her feel wanted. It makes her feel responsible for you. She doesn't want to mother you. She wants a man.

The more you try, the more pressure she feels. The more pressure she feels, the further she retreats. You interpret her retreat as a signal to try harder. The cycle tightens.

Every grand gesture comes with an invisible invoice.

Planned dates, increased affection, more effort — all of it quietly says: I am doing this so that you will want me again. And that's not wrong. Wanting to be wanted by your woman is one of the most human things there is. But she can feel the desperation underneath it. And desperation, however understandable, is not attractive.

What you're actually communicating

A man who abandons his own needs, opinions, and standards to keep the peace is sending a message he doesn't intend: I don't trust myself. I need your approval to feel okay.

That is not the energy of someone she wants to surrender to.

Desire — especially for women — requires trust in your strength. Not force. Not pressure. A quiet, grounded confidence. A sense that you know who you are and don't need her to confirm it. That you have a life, a perspective, a backbone.

The nice guy gives all of that up in exchange for peace.

And then wonders why she stopped wanting him in bed.

This isn't a licence to do less.

Withdrawing effort, going cold, or becoming indifferent is not the antidote. That's not strength — it's avoidance dressed up as confidence. She'll feel that too, and it will kill desire just as fast.

The goal is not to care less. It's to care from a place of security rather than desperation. To do things because you mean them, not because you're hoping they'll work. To stay present and engaged — but as yourself, not as a man auditioning for her approval.

There's a world of difference between a man who is attentive because he wants to be, and a man who is attentive because he's afraid of what happens if he isn't. She lives in that difference every day.

 

Your body

 

Your body is begging to be mapped by my hands, every curve and crevice calling out to be explored. I'll start slow, tracing the gentle swell of your ass, cupping your breasts in my palms. My fingers dance across your skin, sending shivers coursing through you as we build towards a crescendo. As desire reaches its peak, I'll claim you hard, thrusting deep inside your wetness. You'll gasp beneath me, legs spreading wide to accommodate me, inviting me deeper still. And when the fire finally subsides and we're spent, exhausted but sated, I'll wrap myself around you, shielding you from the world outside. Tonight you are mine; nobody else gets past my protective arms.

Awakening the Dom

 

He'd never considered himself as a dom —it just wasn't who he was. He could be strong when needed, protective even, but mostly he was gentle.

Until her.

She was formidable in her own right: loud, opinionated, unafraid to take up space. But she had a tender side too, one that drew him in.

He couldn't explain how she did it, but something shifted when they were alone together. In the bedroom, she surrendered completely—and he discovered something primal in himself he didn't know existed. A raw power, an almost desperate hunger to take control. She never had to say what she needed. She submitted wordlessly, and he understood: harder, deeper, more.

It was a dance neither of them had planned, but both instinctively knew the steps.

New Years 2025

 

Well, there it is. The ass end of 2025.

I can say that this has been in the top 3 worst years of my life.

I’m now declared disabled, forced to subsist on welfare and the current government is trying hard to make even that life terrible.

My business is dead and gone (apart from the taxes still to be paid)

My health is still very unstable, touch an go a bit on will I survive. If I cannot get the stress under control I won’t survive, but terrible things keep happening. Some days it feels like the world is out to get me.

My dog is dead. That hurt.

Being a child means when the really bad things go down someone comes and helps take it away. Being an adult is when you look for that help and you realize, there is no one. You are on your own.

I don’t know. I’m sick, I’m tired, and everything is going to shit.

May 2026 be a better year for all of us.

Hello? Are You There? It's me. A human.

Hello? Are You There?

 

It's me.

A human.

Drowning in a sea of people

who keep moving forward

while I sink beneath the surface.

 

My wife died.

I sat in that hospital

and watched them fail her,

watched the people whose one job was to save her

choose not to.

There was nothing I could do.

I have never trusted a hospital since.

 

My dog stayed beside me

through every hour of the falling apart

that came after.

He didn't leave.

Not once.

And then I watched him die too —

watched him beg me to save him

the way I once wanted them

to save her.

There was nothing I could do.

Now he's gone as well.

 

My body is breaking down piece by piece.

Compression fractures in my spine—

pain that never relents,

not for a breath,

not for a single moment of peace.

I pushed through chronic fatigue syndrome

trying to keep my business from collapsing,

pushed until my blood pressure climbed so high

it became a loaded gun at my temple.

And I'm allergic to the medications

that might save me from it.

My kidneys are failing.

My liver is worse.

 

Now I'm called "disabled"—

a blow to the ego of a once proud man

who stayed strong through it all.

 

The welfare system calls this "support"—

a lifetime sentence of subsistence,

of calculating what I can't afford,

which turns out to be everything.

There's no money

for anything at all.

 

Mental health services?

A cruel joke.

Check a box on their form.

Breathe deeply, they say.

Have you tried gratitude?

 

I stay alive for my daughter.

That's the only reason.

Not because of hope.

Not because healing feels possible.

Not because I want to be here.

Because she already watched her mother die

and I won't let her lose me too.

 

So I drown slowly
in my own shit

in grief that never left,

in pain that never sleeps,

in poverty that strips away dignity,

in the crushing weight of staying

when everything inside me

is begging to stop.

 

But I stay.

For her.

Only for her.

 

And some days

that reason isn't enough

to make this feel like living.

 

But it's enough

to keep my lungs moving.

To keep my heart beating.

 

Barely.