Over the last year, I've been doing a lot of self-improvement and self-reflection. It has been a hard process that is not done, but there's one thing I wanted to state as openly as I stated my hatred:

I was wrong about women in almost every way it matters.

Women aren't evil.
Women aren't the devil.
Women aren't crazy.
Women aren't b*tches (well...not all)

So what are women? Different. And that's OK.

Now, to hear "different" might trigger a "well duh" response, but this was a revelation to me, seeing as I was raised with the refrain of men and women being equal, as in everything (mental, emotional, etc). But this is not true. Women aren't men and they don't respond in the same way or hold certain things in high esteem like men might. But this does not make it bad. It, again, is different.

But it is extremely frustrating as a man to have women, society at large, and the media tell you that "nice guys" win in the end when they clearly do not. I was set up for repeated failure and the more I failed, the more I cleaved to what I was taught, in that all I needed to do was be "nice" and just "be yourself" and a woman would fall in love with me. I was lied to and it hurt. So, when faced on one side with women and society telling me to be "nice" and blow after blow on the other, I could only deduce that women were the ones in the wrong. I was doing everything I was supposed to do, or so I thought. I carried that anger for a long time.

Last year, I finally grew tired of being a fat f*ck and got a personal trainer. I hated thinking that I was wasting my life away playing videogames and accomplishing nothing of value. So then my change began. As the pounds went down, my self-esteem went up. After months of training, I finally started getting compliments and females actually started paying attention to me and a couple of hits. Some people even said I was an inspiration. But my mental was still poor.

I started reading and reading many books. The three books that have helped me the most are "No More Mr. Nice Guy" by Robert Palmer, "Models" by Mark Manson and "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. But I've read many more books than that. The more I read, the more powerful I become. Knowledge is power. Having your views challenged is important for growth. If your viewpoint can't stand up to scrutiny, maybe you shouldn't have that viewpoint. And a lot of my old views crumbled.

Somehow along the way, I became entitled. I thought that all of this was something I deserved without putting in effort myself. Since I've started, I've talked to many people, flirted with a lot of women and have had some real success out there.

The key to it is you. You are the captain of your ship in life. You have to have the plans. Focus on yourself first. Everything and everyone else is secondary. You must have your own goals and drive. You ARE the prize. If you hit on some chick and she won't give you the time of day? So what? There's 3 billion others out there. And most look better than her, anyway. You should thank her for not wasting your time. You can't live your life trying to make some chick's life better like a slave. By the way, doing everything a woman asks you to do is unattractive as f*ck.

So that's it. Stream of conscious type thing. I don't hate women anymore, but I understand them more than I ever have. And I'm focused on my sh*t. I let the rest of that bullsh*t blow in the breeze.

I am glad that you have come to this conclusion, and I'm happy to see all the improvements in your life (or at least hear and read about them!). Often times, our entitlement is built up from the people that care about us the most. They don't want to hurt your feelings, so they tell you things that help you feel better (supposedly), and kind of make you feel blameless or that it's always the other person's fault. It takes a lot of self-evaluation and searching for answers. Rejection and failure are good parts of life, too, even if they have negative connotations. They teach you the things success never could.

I enjoyed this post. Very good reflection, and helps me remember to think and reflect on myself, too.

It was a journey for you, Ix, that required mistakes in thinking or some other kind of bump in the road along the way, just as it was for me (although for my personal journey a few years ago God was changing my thinking in an entirely different area, of course). Well, good for you, man. You worked on self-improvement, and admirably so, rather than focusing on being bitter against someone else or another group of people for the fault of just a few in that group. That takes maturity, man. I applaud you.

Glad. It's not a good way to be, to be super negative. I was there once, too.

Thanks for the replies, people. I figured if I was man enough to post what I did in the past, I could be man enough to admit fault publicly.