I’m an ex incel myself, but I’ve been seeing a few users here exhibiting the tell tale signs. “I’m not attractive enough”, “I don’t socialize correctly”, “I’ll never find a woman” - all extremely unhealthy attitudes.
Personally I burned through many friendships and ruined a lot of chances with women because I was in the incel community. The community warped my view of women so much that I made it even harder to meet women, I became my own worst enemy. I lost friends because all I could think of was how horrible it was that they had girlfriends.
I have a friend who helped me out of it. She was the one who started calling out my bad behavior for what it was, and I started on the long uphill path out of it. I’m now married and stable for well over a decade, but I still think back to those days, and it depresses me seeing other people causing this themselves and not being aware of it.
So, Lemmy, for those who have clawed out of it, what’s your story?
First, I just wanted to say I am very proud of you. This is all tough to admit, and I really hope you share your story more. The fact you got yourself out is huge, and could really change things for others suffering from incel-dom.
Second, “You are not the things you like, the things you like are part of what makes you you. You change, your tastes change, you grow up, don’t think current you is too precious to change.” is a pretty great line.
Thanks. I can’t even say that my life was shit back then, I always had a comfortable lower middle class environment, but due to a number of less than ideal family interactions and lack of self awareness (or maybe, just a lack of general maturity), I ended up in that hole. Calling women bitches and every other type of misogynistic name felt like a relief, that I was getting back at who wronged me. Again, when you’re in that kind of deluded mindset, it makes sense. I got a girlfriend around 3 years after leaving those groups and I told her about this dark time I had, and I’m grateful that she could see from my actions that I wasn’t that piece of shit anymore, she barely even believed that I ever got there.
I understand that not everyone will get out by themselves, some people will need external help, but anyone that feels like that something doesn’t feel quite right in one specific post or another, there’s hope they might get out of that. Like I said, the main thing that drove me away was that their general, ass-sourced toxicity turned against me because I was a stinky commie, but there were other stinky commies that ate that up and preferred to keep seeing women as inferior.
On that line, the last part is what I felt a lot about myself, I often feared that I would “change too much” or that I “wouldn’t be myself” anymore, completely ignoring that I was already different from whatever I was 4 years before that, which was also different from 4 years prior, and so on. Small epiphanies that helped me make sense of myself.
Hey I just wanted to say I think this is a beautiful post, and I’m sorry I somehow checked it off without seeing it. Thank you so much for sharing this, I hope it helps someone going through what you were.