I have a group of friends that I’ve known since we were college freshman. We try to get together at least a few times every year and each time we do we have a great time catching up on each other’s lives and reminiscing about the past. Our get togethers are bittersweet though because our dear friend Jake, who died several years ago, can’t be with us.

Jake is the guy who would have been voted most likely to succeed from our group. He was competitive, outgoing, good looking, athletic, a natural leader and stellar student and the ladies loved him. Jake was our de facto leader. We all looked up to him because he was the guy who made things happen in our group.

After my second year in college I took a break for a semester to work and save money, I came back the next spring and discovered that Jake had a new girlfriend, a cute, petite brunette named Dawn. I knew Jake was pretty serious about this relationship because it was the first time I had ever seen him completely focused on just one girl. Dawn treated Jake well and he seemed happy, so we supported our brother and wished him well in his relationship. Jake and Dawn were together constantly and Jake would often tell us how he thought that Dawn might be “the one”.

We got to senior year and while they were still together, we could tell things weren’t the same between Jake and his girl. They were arguing more and from time to time we would hear rumors about how Dawn was cheating on Jake. The rumors got to the point that a few of the guys in our group thought about mentioning them to Jake, but we knew that would be complicated because Jake was a proud guy. We figured he wouldn’t react well and he would definitely deny that his girl would ever betray him.

As we headed to our last semester, Jake surprised us with some news: he had been accepted into an Ivy League law school and would propose to Dawn so they could get married and be together while he was in law school. My heart sank when I heard this because I knew, deep down, that Jake was making a big mistake.

Our group got together and made a fateful decision that would forever change our lives. We made a plan to intervene and warn Jake about what he was getting into. I knew one of the guys who was rumored to be banging Dawn, so I would talk to him to find out if it was true. Dave, the guy in our group who knew Dawn the best, would talk to her. After Dave and I were done, we would all have a talk with our brother Jake.

The plan was a disaster. The guy I talked to got defensive and threatened me, but he never denied banging Dawn. Dave talked to Dawn. She got hostile, denied everything and vowed to get back at us for coming between Jake and her. And Jake was livid. We set up the meeting with him in my apartment. I still remember his expression as he stormed into my place; the look of anger and anguish on his face at that moment haunts me to this day. There was a lot of shouting in the meeting and Jake and I came to blows after he accused me of lying about his girl. He walked out, slammed the door and that was the last time I ever saw my dear friend.

After all of this went down, the roommate of the guy I confronted about his affair with Dawn sought me out because he heard what happened and wanted to set the record straight. He confirmed that Dawn had been banging his roommate for almost a year and was likely fucking other guys too.

Fast forward to a few years after our college graduation and our greatest fears were realized. I was able to keep tabs on Jake through mutual friends and found out that Jake and Dawn got married and had a daughter while he was in law school. By the time Jake graduated, he and Dawn were separated and within one year of Jake’s graduation, they were divorced. Dawn apparently had cheated with a co-worker and also with one of Jake’s law school classmates. Dawn got custody, moved halfway across the country and prevented Jake from seeing his beloved baby girl.

By this time, Jake was a broken man. He spiraled into a deep depression, lost his job, gained a bunch of weight and stopped taking care of himself. Several years ago he died of a massive heart attack while living alone in a ratty room on the south side of Chicago.

The point of this story is not to provide another example of AWALT. There are plenty of those on this sub. I wanted to explore the question of how a guy like Jake could fall so hard because of a woman.

Jake wasn’t a BetaBux, he was an Alpha. Other guys wanted to be him and women definitely wanted to fuck him. He wasn’t weak, nor was he naïve. Jake was a player and he knew the game.

Jake’s problem was his pride. Jake couldn’t allow himself to accept that a petite woman half his size could play and beat him at a game that he thought he had mastered. His ego wouldn’t allow him to concede defeat so he could cut his losses and move on. Pride goeth before a fall. Unlike Jake, none of us should ever believe that we are immune to AWALT.

Another painful lesson learned from this is no matter how hard you try, some guys just don’t get it and won’t hear you when you try to help them. I had to lose a good friend to learn this lesson.