Pulling a "Lester Burnham" for About-To-Be-Divorced Men

OK, this is getting

1. Sad
2. Too common

that I unfortunately have to address this.

I have received several comments and e-mails recently from married men who are not just unhappy, but essentially on the brink of divorce. They are miserable, the tone of their posts/e-mails is defeated, and they live in fear. They are so defeated they don't even ask what to do, they merely resign themselves to defeat and say, "I'm so screwed."

Enter in a personal anti-hero of mine, Lester Burnham.

Lester Burnham is a character from "American Beauty." It is a movie every man should watch and learn what early alpha game looked like circa 2000. Lester is a defeated man whose wife hates him, his daughter hates him, his boss abuses him and nobody respects. Lester essentially cracks, alpha-males up and the movie then continues on its original intent of showing what kind of backlash society would unleash on a man who "didn't know his place" and dared to refuse to be the subservient battery the rest of society lives off of.

In the end you not only cheer for Lester, but his wife inevitably falls for him once again, his daughter starts to respect him, and young chicks start to find him physically attractive. More importantly, Lester starts to become happy again.

Without going into a long and sordid psycho-analysis of the movie because I am tired and I need to go to bed, the short moral of the story is the PRECISE EXACT SAME moral that the real-world defeated, on-the-cusp-of-divorce men who write me MUST learn today.

Women (and society) respect real, powerful, and self-respecting men. Not the sad, accommodating, understanding sensitive 90's, patsy sap of a man you are.

I can't much blame you because society has "told" you to be a sensitive, caring, reliable guy. I was once that guy and pretty much every man I know was once that guy too. However, look where that got you.

Ergo, since you have nothing left to lose, you might as well pull a George Castanza and do the OPPOSITE of what you think you should do. What's the worst case? She divorces you? She's going to take the kids and get alimony and child support?

Guess what pal, that's already going to happen unless you change.

So it's time for you to Lester Burnham-up. What does that mean?

Well, sadly, you have to now grow a spine to do what your natural, visceral guy feeling tells you to do. And these things are VERY taboo for today's society.

For example nagging.

If your wife (who is going to divorce you anyway) comes in and starts lecturing you about some petty or trivial matter or another, put your hand up, walk to the kitchen, grab a beer and say, "Shut up and take care of it yourself." Proceed to sit down on the couch and turn on the TV.

The natural reaction she will have is shock (as most women reading this now do have). However, it is not shock about what you said, as much as it will be that you actually stood up for yourself as well as a fake indignation you dared to tell a female to "shut up." Any intellectually honest woman who does actually care about her husband will admit that nagging is a PURPOSEFUL and FABRICATED tactic to test you and (if you fail) gain control over you. It sounds counter-intuitive, and I TRUTHFULLY don't like telling ANY woman to "shut up," AND you will hear HOWLS AND SCREAMS for daring to tell her to "shut up," but (since you have nothing to lose anyway) you only stand to gain, which (in a psychology even I don't fully understand yet) you are statistically likely to do because you didn't pansy out and say tepidly "yessss dear."

You manned up. You held your ground. You had self-respect. You told her no. She may huff and puff, but deep down inside, she liked that.

In short, be a freaking man because (despite what they say) women like MEN. Do not accommodate. Stop trying to please. Set the tone. Lay down the law. Open up a can of Steve McQueen and become a man.

For the most part, women deep down inside respect that and are physically attracted to that. You need to be a man, no matter how childish or totalitarian they may be. Because if you're not, they're going to go looking for a guy that is. This is why you won't see your wife cheating on you with "Poindexter from the IT Department," but "Biff, in the in and out of work construction worker with a criminal record who rides a motorcycle and dates three other gals."

I could go longer, but frankly, just watch the movie. And I genuinely do hope you don't get divorced.