From the age of 17-21, I had sex with 12 different women. From 21-27... ZERO.

I grew up in an old coal-mining village in the Scottish countryside. Typically working class, quite insular, old-fashioned, you know the kind. For any Americans reading, just think of 'Hicksville'.

As much as I like to think I was some kind of suffering intellectual in a village full of backwards idiots (cliche, I know), I was basically one of them. I couldn't help but be; I was raised by them, and so picked up their habits.

When it came to women, as with most things, I was naturally aggressive, naturally selfish. It was all unconscious, I just thought that was the way things were meant to be. I could recount some stories that to this day still surprise me, especially given where I ended up in the years to follow.

Eventually I decided to get my shit together and get out of Hicksville; went to university, moved to the big city, all that jazz.

But because of how I viewed the world, I thought I was leaving behind a lower calibre of person, and entering into this refined world of serious people, educated people, people of culture; the kind of people I saw represented in trendy left-wing newspapers.

And so, I thought I had to change myself in order to be accepted in this world.

This wasn't exactly clear to me at the time, it was more of an unconscious process - but upon reflection I think I was trying to adhere to the image of the modern man that had been drummed into me through years of mindlessly consuming our culture.

I became... nice.

It didn't help that I had good justification for pushing away from my family background in general, but one of the side-effects was that I threw the baby out with the bathwater. I let go of EVERYTHING I had learned there, and in doing so lost some of the basic foundations of my character.

I became a fucking mouse. I became a beta. And I did it because I thought I was being... a good person.

I've actually been in what might be known as Monk-Mode for the last few years. I educated myself to such a level that I would be unrecognisable to those who knew me before. Not just taking in blocks of information, but actually learning skills. Forcing myself to grow. Putting myself in situations that I know will scare me. Viewing my shit job as a test of my fortitude. All the while being a recluse.

But even through all of that I was still acting like a woman when it came to women. In fact, a lot of the stuff i read here about typical female behaviour is stuff that I can see in myself at the worst of times. I used to tell myself my withdrawal from the world was for noble reasons, but now I realise that I just didn't understand the game, and so refused to play.

This is coming from a person who used to just stick the lips on women in nightclubs and dare them to refuse. I've had mother-daughter interactions (seperately, and of legal age), I've had sisters, I've messed around with a distant cousin, I've had to bat off the advances of my mother's friends, I've had various nationalities and body types. I've never EVER worn a condom, and rarely pulled out. But all of that happened in the four year window between 17-21. Nothing since.

Anyway, in the last year I've made some big changes, and come to some major realisations. I only discovered TRP a few months ago, and it chimes perfectly with a lot of the stuff I've been reading and thinking about lately.

Now, I'm getting back in the game. In fact, my world has completely changed in the last year. It would take a seperate post to describe all the ways I've fixed myself up, but you can be sure that exercise and nutrition was involved.

This post got more rambly than I intended, but I think it stands as a good example of how cultural programming can interfere with an already functioning subject.