Dear SSM:

I discovered your YouTube channels a few months ago, and have now watched many of your entertaining and informative videos. Thank you for the valuable service you provide to all men, especially to the younger ones, who need it most.

I’m writing to share my own long-term story and life experiences that illustrate how so many of the maxims you espouse hold true in real life, and have done for decades, at least. But, I have a somewhat different perspective than you, and provide my story in the hope that others may learn from my mistakes, and successes, and perhaps to provide a little hope to others about how nice guys don’t always finish last. My story illustrates that the problems you focus on were not created by the internet, but were definitely made worse by it. Ultimately, this is a love story, but not necessarily the kind of love story we commonly think of. And, I promise that it has a happy ending. I call it: “Nice Guys Don’t Always Finish Last,” but if you choose to share it, you can call it whatever you want.

CHAPTER ONE: SEDUCTION AND BABY-TRAP WEDDING:

Once upon a time, in the early 1980s, I was in my early 20s. It was June. I had just finished my Sophomore year of college at a university in a medium-size city within an hour’s drive from the small town where I had grown up, and I was back home working the same summer job I’d had since high school. I was a lifeguard at a small country resort that catered to people from the city who were looking for a place to get away from the heat and bustle and relax in a country setting. Best job I ever had in terms of side benefits, if you know what I mean, but it didn’t pay all that well.

One day during my shift, she showed up at the pool. We’ll call her Angela. She immediately passed the visual inspection so, as was my custom when I spotted a promising prospect, during one of my breaks, I casually wandered over to the area where she was sunbathing and introduced myself; and, after learning that she lived in the city and was staying at the resort for a few days with her family, I asked her if she had plans for that evening. When she indicated that she was free, I asked if she’d like to go golfing with me in the late afternoon/early evening, and then maybe grab a bite to eat afterward. She responded in the affirmative, although she’d only ever played miniature golf before, and we agreed on a time and place for me to pick her up. It has always been my philosophy to do activity-type dates, at least in the beginning. Some fun activity that promotes conversation and gives us a chance to get to know each other a little.

We met at the pre-arranged time and place and enjoyed a late afternoon/early evening round of golf together, with me hitting all of the tee, fairway, and approach shots, and then dropping a ball for her next to mine as soon as I was on the green. All my shots counted, but we only started counting Angela’s after dropping a ball for her. Although I’m not a great golfer, I still ended up winning. Maybe she let me win, but she seemed to be trying. After, we went and grabbed some burgers at a little place I knew, and we sat and talked outside for hours, until it was entirely too late and I knew that I had to go home and get some sleep so I’d be fit to work my shift the next day. I dropped her back at the resort, went home and hit the sack.

The next day as I was working my shift, Angela came out to the pool again to see me while sunbathing. If I thought she looked good in the one-piece suit she wore the day before, this day she was an absolute knockout in a bikini. She spent the afternoon sunbathing in a somewhat secluded spot, but where I could still keep an eye on her, and she on me, so I spent my breaks talking to her. When she mentioned that she’d gotten in trouble with her parents for being out so late the night before, and that she was kind of hiding from them as they would not approve of her being out there in the bikini, I should have seen this as a red flag, but I was too busy looking at other things. I was a bit surprised by what she’d said and asked how old she was. She responded, “I’m 17,” which clearly caused me to raise an eyebrow. When she saw that, she quickly followed with, “but my birthday is next month,” which made me feel a lot better, as I’m sure she knew it would. As our conversations continued, I asked when I would be able to see her again. (It’s called a “presumptive close” for those who know a little about sales techniques, but I didn’t know it at the time.) She responded that she needed to stay in with her family that evening, but that she’d find a way to be available the following evening, which would be their last one at the resort. So, we arranged for me to pick her up at the same place the next evening,

The next evening, after grabbing a bite to eat, we went to a local look-out spot I knew where we could sit and talk without much interruption. This night, we did a bit more than just talk, and I remember thinking to myself, “this girl is really into me!” I didn’t keep her out that night nearly as late as the time before, and, after exchanging home phone numbers (remember, this was before cell phones), I dropped her back at the resort and went home.

A bit more about me: The small town I grew up in, and the nearby city where I attended college, are in the U.S. heartland in an area where, due to historical circumstances, a majority, but by no means all, of the people belonged to the same Christian church denomination that my family and I did. I am one of the older siblings from a very large, and therefore somewhat poor, religious family, and I knew from very early in my life that I wanted a family of my own someday. Yes, I’m what you call a “relationship guy,” or at least I was for most of my life. Growing up, I was taught that women are naturally virtuous, kind and loving, and that S E X is meant only to be shared between a husband and wife; and that, in addition to being how babies are made, it is part of the glue that holds marriages and families together. I knew that I wanted that kind of pair bonding for my marriage and family. If a woman, of any age, ever engaged in S E X outside of marriage, it was probably because she had been seduced by a man who was only looking to indulge his own pleasure. And, if a marriage ended in divorce, which very few marriages I was aware of did, it was almost certainly because the husband had cheated on her, beat her, was habitually drunk, gambled away all their money, and/or did one of the other small handful of things we were taught that if we avoided would virtually ensure that we would remain happily married. These things rang true to me as they certainly appeared to be true of every girl or woman I knew very well; all 5 of my sisters, my mother, my grandmother, and all of my friends’ mothers. Yes, guys, there really are women like that in the world, but you have to know where to look for them. Although I knew that there were also bad women in the world, I didn’t personally know of any. They were just semi-fictitious characters out of the Bible or in movies. With this background, I was resolved to trying to make sure that I only ever engaged in S E X with one woman in my life, she who would be my wife, and the mother of my children. I also knew that if I ever got a girl pregnant the only honorable thing to do at that point would be to marry her, and do it quickly. This last point came from my grandmother, who was truly a remarkable woman, with a strong sense of right and wrong. She had earned a master’s degree in a time when most women didn’t even attend college, and spent an entire career teaching in public schools, where she was exposed to much more reality than most women of her day.

This is not to say that I was some kind of a prude, or a monk sworn to celibacy, but pretty much everything I knew about the female anatomy to that point I had learned from the pages of the girly magazines that my friends and I somehow managed to get our hands on, which were not very detailed or graphic, and pretty much everything that I knew about love and relationships came from movies, and the lyrics of rock and roll songs, which I found to be more positive and optimistic than country music, which is probably more realistic about life’s challenges.

Yup, I was the quintessential blue-pilled “nice guy,” but with a twist. I had a pretty well-developed sense of propriety, and by the time I was a senior in high school had gained something of a reputation as a brawler, willing to square up, even against substantially larger opponents, when the situation seemed to call for it, on behalf of myself or one of my friends. I didn’t always win, and had my nose broken at least once, but I never backed down, or even went down. I was lucky, but my friends knew that I had their backs, at least as long as they were in the right. If one of them started a fight, which almost never happened, I was much more likely to try to defuse the situation than finish it for them. If there was anything about me that might cause a young woman to pass me over, it was that I was on the shorter side, but I always seemed to hold my own in that regard thanks to a certain amount of boyish good looks, innate intelligence and natural athleticism. While in high school, and so far in college, I had dated several attractive young women, had rounded first base and been standing squarely on second, with more opportunities, and indeed invitations, than I even recognized at the time, to continue around third and slide home, but so far I had somehow managed to resist doing so. I wasn’t just looking for a good time, I was looking for a young woman who I could build a strong successful family with – to borrow phrase from you.

Now, back to the story. For the rest of that summer, Angela arranged to come out to see me several times, until she crashed her car into a parked car while coming home late one night after being “out with friends,” and I went into the city to see her a few times after that. As we continued getting to know each other better, I learned that she was not very happy in her parents’ home. Big red flag! Her parents didn’t really have a great marriage. Another big red flag. Her father, while nice, was always rather superficial and aloof, and her mother spent a lot of her time working on her projects alone, even leaving Angela to play by herself unsupervised in a nearby park for hours at a time when she was younger so she wouldn’t be underfoot. Yeah, I know, but it was another time and place in the world where things were safer than they are today, so this was more a case of child neglect than of child endangerment. But, still, another red flag I failed to fully recognize and appreciate. Angela’s oldest sister was already married, divorced, and remarried, with a young son from her first marriage. Yup, another red flag. When I asked what caused the divorce, I was told that her sister’s first husband was a physically-abusive substance abuser, who had seriously injured their son. That seemed like good cause to me at the time, but didn’t explain her sister’s poor judgment in getting hooked up with a guy like that in the first place. Her next oldest sister had died from cancer while in high school, which was very traumatic for Angela and her family. Another older sister had a very bad temper, and sometimes got physically violent; and she also had a younger brother who she found to be a bit awkward and “funny,” Then there was her sister who was only a couple of years older than Angela, who she said was the best of all of them, and who she was closest to. But, when I jokingly suggested that maybe I should be dating that sister instead, it went over like a lead balloon. Oh no, she wasn’t my type at all, and, besides, she already had a serious boyfriend. Perhaps yet another red flag, but I was too young and naïve to recognize many of them, much less how significant they actually were. Bad things happened to other people, not to me.

During our third, or maybe fourth date, Angela said “I love you” while passionately kissing me, yet another big red flag that I didn’t properly recognize, and she acted surprised and disappointed when I responded with “thank you.” I then explained that I only ever intended to allow myself to fall in love one time in my life, and that I didn’t yet know her well enough to decide if it would be with her. She asked, “what else do you need to know?” I responded, “for example, I don’t even know if you belong to the [locally predominant] church,” to which she responded, “Well my parents do, so I’ve gone there pretty much all my life.” Yup, another red flag that I didn’t properly recognize. Yes, she’d attended, but either she wasn’t sure where I stood on the issue, so she didn’t want to tip her hand for fear of going the wrong way on it, or she didn’t exactly believe what she’d been taught. Then I told her that I belonged to the [locally predominant] church.

So, the challenge had been set. By then, she knew exactly who I was, what I was about, and what I was looking for. And, she set about proving to me that she fit the bill perfectly. By the end of the Summer, she had succeeded. I had fallen for her, and she had convinced me that my heart was safe with her, so I told her that I loved her. GREAT BIG SMACK TO ME! I had just given her certainty in our relationship. Before long, she brought up the topic of marriage, saying that one of her girlfriends, who was a bit older than her, was already engaged to be married the next June right after they graduated from high school, and confided that she thought they were already doing the deed because her friend was on the pill. Red Flag! It was then that she finally spilled the beans about her true age, saying that she wouldn’t be able to get married until after her birthday in July of the next year. I responded, “but in June you told me that you would be turning 18 on your next birthday,” which would have been in the July that had just past. Oh, I must have misunderstood, but the truth was that she had just turned 17, and wouldn’t be 18 until the next July. Huge Red Flag! That’s when I should have walked away, but by then I was hooked, and wasn’t going anywhere, and I told her that would wait for her to turn 18. So, we started making tentative plans about getting married before the end of the next Summer. Yup, another great big red flag, and another GREAT BIG SMACK TO ME!