I feel it's always slightly cheesy whenever in a movie, book, show, or real life a group of men are referred to as "brothers" (outside of the military and fraternity brothers). But I feel in the this specific case of an outside threat against an aspect of one's self, I think we can all agree it's warranted to some degree.

I had intended to be much farther along in my journey before posting in the main sub, a point when I had something of value to add to the endless posts that illuminated the fact that as a man you must add value to yourself. I don't have my own business, a wealth of life experience, a roster of women (or a long term commitment to a quality girl); But it seems fate dealt a different hand than what we were expecting.

So in a maybe desperate, maybe naive bid, I thought why not have a centralized location all the men of this sub can post. Post the stories of how this sub quantitatively, undeniably improved the lives of all the lost souls who found their way here. An extra piece of evidence that the admins can look at of hundreds (dare I hope for thousands?) of stories of the good this sub has brought about, maybe we can avoid the ban hammer.

In all walks of life, bigots justify their hate and their intolerance by imagining their hated group as an idea, a mass at which they can justifiably dismiss everything about them (I'm fully expecting this sentence to be taken out of context and ironically copied). The stories we post here could act as a counter balance to that, humanizing us and showing we are real people who have had our quality of life improved by this sub. My story:

At the beginning of this year, I had my heart torn out of my chest and shredded worse than a pomeranian thrown into Michael Vick's doghouse. I had never felt the way I did with this woman about anyone else, we hadn't been dating long and I knew this girl was the one I wanted to put a ring on, and she enthusiastically felt the same way. Until one day she disappeared, blocked on every form of contact with a final message later about how she's not in the right place, how I should move on, how she's not what I want or deserve. I won't speculate on why she did it because it ultimately serves no purpose, nor is this the thread to do it in, but the fact is it happened. Since coming to this sub for real (I had lurked before), I've lost 30ish pounds, eaten better, and started meal prepping. I've picked up an instrument I've always loved but for some reason never took the leap to play, started volunteering around my city, about to start taking martial arts classes, not to mention how I feel so much more relaxed and confident. Social situations and groups I've improved by how much my sense of humor has improved (due to said confidence?). I can take jokes and criticism better, by my overall demeanor being more calm and less rattled, and how remaining calm and taking their criticism in stride, their opinion improves just that little bit. Like I said, I can't point to any girl in a bar and get her interested in me, nor do I have the trappings of wealth, but damn if my life and motivation hasn't drastically improved the past 10 months, more than most men feel motivated to improve in their entire lives. I used to easily spend 20+ hours per week playing video games, now in the past month or two I've barely topped 10 hours.

Just like the tumblr sexists and extremist reddit users who proclaim all problems are created by men and all men deserve to be caged don't represent twoXChromosomes, so too do the incels who come here and declare all women are property and offer no benefit other than their bodies not represent TRP. Our mods deserve free pitchers for life for the thankless jobs they do of running one of the tightest ships to ensure incels and trolls don't flood the sub with posts violating reddit's rules or just hate filled word vomits.

I know I've seen dozens of posts in all threads today with men detailing in multiple sentences how their lives have improved since coming here, with only a few words in each on how their relationships with women have improved. So why not put them all in one place where anybody can see the positive in a sub many view as all negative. To the neckbeards who comes here once to post inane disjointed shit and gets slivers of knowledge on how to improve his life through the mods (whether he takes to it, comes to it after time, or never gets it) or the masses like myself who are at various points in their journey. To the men at the top like /u/heathcliff-- with his engaging stories with lessons /u/OmLaLa with his parables, or the man I wish was my mentor, /u/VasiliyZaitzev. We all have stories.

Let's hear your tales brothers, make today's workout full of gritty determination.