Be The Man.
Part 1. The Destruction Of A Kingdom.
“What are we going to do Philip?”
The truth was, I had no idea. Yesterday our business phone had started ringing non stop. Clients cancelling. Our agenda, fully booked for the summer, was now empty.
“What the hell is going on?” my girlfriend Patricia was screaming. “How are we going to pay the bills now?”
“We’re going to lose our home, what about the kids? Where are we going to live?”
The frightened and desperate look on her face turned my stomach cold. She was depending on me for answers, I had none.
We had just entered lockdown. March 2020.
We had been living on the tropical island of Tenerife for the last 16 years and between the two of us, in 4 years, we had built up a thriving dog hotel.
Four years of hard work, sweat and tears as a couple was just being flushed away. I felt powerless to stop it.
I sat there, head in my hands, the light shining in through the window, usually with a comforting warmth, now felt like the burning fires of hellish inquisition, and the truth was I had no idea what we were going to do.
“Did you not learn from everything I taught you?” The quiet voice inside my head spoke. It wasn’t accusatory, it never was, just a calm question.
For the second time in my life, I was stuck.
But this time it was worse. This time I had ignored wisdom. The first time I was stupid, but didn’t know any better. This time I knew, but had failed to apply the wisdom.
Life has a habit of making you repeat lessons that you fail to learn. This time the lesson was much bigger. I thought I had learned from the first time.
It would appear not.
But for that story, we are going to have to go backwards in time six years.
SIX YEARS EARLIER.
I sat, alone, in my apartment in a run down area of Tenerife. It was all I could afford. As I sat, slouched on the couch, beer in one hand, joint in the other, watching the cockroaches climb the wall, I asked my self the question:
“How had I ended up here?”
I had just left my marriage of nine years. What started as a passionate and blissful dream had turned into an abusive nightmare.
And here I was, contemplating my failure as a man.
All I had ever wanted in life was to be happily married and have children. I didn’t want this, I had fought tooth and nail to keep my marriage, but, no matter how hard I worked at it, there was no saving it.
I sat there asking myself, how I had let myself get into this position? I mean, I wasn’t a bad husband, right?
I worked hard, I came home straight after work. I worshipped at my wifes feet. I never denied her anything she wanted. I treated her like a princess, what every woman wants, right? Yet she never seemed to be happy.
In fact, quite the opposite. She was abusive, controlling and, yes, violent.
The reason I was alone now was because she had pulled a knife on me. We were in the kitchen, arguing, as usual, when she turned, opened the drawer, pulled out a meat knife and lunged towards me.
I ran.
I hid in our 3 year old sons’ bedroom, cowering like a mouse.
Sure, I wasn’t perfect. I was comfortable in the marriage, you could say. I did just enough to not be called lazy, but really, you couldn’t say I aspired to be much more.
I never cheated, never lied.
I tried starting online businesses, to try and bring in more money than the low wage I earned as a waiter. She was a doctor and constantly rubbed in my face how she was more of a man than I was.
But even still, I would leave the businesses half started, never actually finishing a project.
Most of the decisions were made by her, she had the majority of the power in the relationship, and I was happy like that. It was less stress on me. But, in my defence, I did my fair share of cleaning, cooking and looking after our son.
“Good riddance. You are a mouse, not a man. Now you are gone I can find myself a REAL man.” were the words that accompanied my departure.
And here I sat, alone, pondering on those words. Was I a man? What is a man really?
In fact, who the fuck am I? Who am I?
Those questions, little did I realise at the time, would start in me a desperate search to uncover truths that I was very unprepared to hear. They would be the beginning of a two year, steep learning curve on what it actually means to be a man and why so many men, including myself feel unfulfilled in life.
I would discover more about myself, the meaning of life and what masculinity is, in those two years, than I had learnt in the previous 38.
I started down a deep, dark rabbit hole into my very soul, encountering the quiet voice we all have inside us. The voice that some call God, but I call “My True Self”, revealed to me secrets about who I really am and what it meant for me to be a man and my purpose here on this planet.
I discovered a sinister plan, that started just over 100 years ago to systematically rip power from the hands of men and transfer it to women, that leaves men feeling confused, alone and powerless in society.
This same plan, to sedate men, is designed to leave us bewildered about our exact role in life, marriage and community and has us feeling dejected, lifeless and anaesthetised.
It explains why 70 percent of marriages fail as traditional gender roles have been reversed. It explains why men hide themselves in video games, alcohol, drugs and pornography. It explains why men become depressed, commit suicode and are ill equipped to deal with situations like the current pandemic.
It has left women thinking they have more power now, to treat their men as mere objects, but in reality has them just as confused about what their role is in society.
But, despite all I learned, I never put any of it into practice. So here I sat, in Tenerife, head in hands, powerless.
Again.
Because, if I was honest, the majority of the business had been built by my girlfriend. She was the impulse behind it, I was just the hired hand. She controlled the money, she made the decisions.
Once again, I had fallen into the comfortable role. I hadn’t put into practice anything of that which I had learned after my divorce.
Life was teaching me a lesson again, facing me with a dilemma that was going to challenge me as a man like nothing had ever done before.
How the fuck were we going to get out of this one?
It was time to Be The Man.
