My story in a nutshell...

 

Greetings.

 

I am an Australian man in my more mature years who is a founding Principal Participant of the RiverOfLife Foundation. I am also the relationship specialist who provides the teaching, training, mentoring and coaching here.

 

I come to faith later in life than most, but like many, I get to the point of no return before I break enough to see through the fog and realise that God exists, that I do not have what it takes to master my own life without Him, and that it is foolishness to reject the gospel message.

 

You may find that I make some bold claims at times concerning good men who love women, but who struggle in the relationships space because although they are great at relating to children, to animals, to unavailable women and to women they do not find attractive in the romantic sense, they feel stuck, confused and demoralised about why it seems so hard to spark attraction in the ones they like.

 

You might hear me say for example, that I teach a process of transformation for good men that leads to the replacement of shyness, social anxiety and awkwardness in the dating and relationships space, with genuine masculine confidence and relationship know-how - and that it always works, no ifs, buts, or maybes as long as you follow the process.

 

I do not expect anyone to believe what I say as a matter of blind faith, so let me tell you a little bit about my story to provide you with something to hang your hat on.

 

On a dark evening back when I am 22 years old, I am sitting in my car outside the house of girl I like. I am fit, well-groomed, slightly older and have some worldly runs on the board, which, on the surface of it at least, could reasonably be interpreted as counting towards desirability as a potential mate.

 

I am there to go over, knock on the girl's door and ask her out. But I am nauseous with anxiety, my hands are shaking, and I am on the verge of passing out from the overload of nervous energy in my body. I sit there on the point of quitting and going home for around 15 minutes before I force myself to get out of the car, go over, and knock on her door.

 

She answers and hears my invitation but does not hesitate to say "No" without a second thought and make it clear that I need not speak to her again.

 

I go home and do not function in any meaningful way for the next 3 months because I descend into a pit of the blackest depression imaginable and cannot claw my way out no matter what I do.

 

"But girls reject guys all the time so why such an extreme reaction?" you might ask

 

In my case, the girl's unequivocal rejection is the just latest devastating confirmation among many, of everything that the constant chatter of the condemning voices I have in my head keep telling me - which is that I am a totally unlovable, irredeemably defective, pathetic, worthless excuse for a man who is such a loser that he gives women the "ick" from a distance.

 

The pain of living with that kind of self-concept (which I do not wish to believe is true, but which the universe keeps confirming in the most soul-destroying ways possible), plus the despair that overwhelms me at not being able to see an end to it, has me fantasising about death and lying in the ground where it is peaceful, quiet, and free from anguish.

 

I am like this because as a small child I become totally convinced by word, by deed and by violence - that I am broken, inferior, and unworthy by nature, that I have no significance or value whatsoever and that if I were to suddenly disappear, the world would quietly breathe a sigh of relief and go up a notch in terms of wellbeing.

 

A relentless pattern of traumatic experiences in early childhood, adds up on me until I crack. Just before my sixth birthday, I have a terrible mental and emotional breakdown wherein my already poor self-esteem is catastrophically shattered to the point where I become so ashamed of who I am, that I instinctively develop a false persona to hide behind.

 

I become convinced that exposure of my true self is worse than death and so I make my false self permanent and vow to never, ever let anyone see who I believe I really am.

 

This cuts me off from the human race and the ability to have authentic relationships of any kind, for how is it possible to have an open, honest, genuine relationship with someone who compulsively lives a lie?

 

This is impossible by definition and so I am now psychologically isolated to the point where my personality stops developing normally. As a result, I become a socially dysfunctional loner whose life lurches from one crisis to the next.

 

Next, I find out the hard way that maintaining a false self is mentally and emotionally expensive - for when I am in my thirties, my reserves of the necessary energy run dry and I have a second, massive breakdown. I become unable to eat or sleep and my nervous system short-circuits to the point where I am breaking down emotionally every day at random. I also lose my short-term memory such that I cannot remember what I say or do from one moment to the next.

 

I lose my job plus just about everything I have. I end up desperately ill, broke, homeless and living in my vehicle. When I look into the future I can only see more of the same and so I become acutely suicidal.

 

I give up and lose the will to try anymore. Mentally, I am done. Emotionally, I am a trainwreck, and physically, my body has become so malnourished, toxic, and degraded that I can feel my life-force flickering out.

 

Therefore, like the African elephants which go to their sacred buriel ground to die when they sense that death is near, I drag myself out into a wilderness area where I intend to find a place to hide and let nature takes it course.

 

But something happens out there which changes everything.

 

As I am lying down under the trees scrolling through the events of my troubled life, a long forgotten memory which comes from a time just before I have that terrible breakdown as a five-year-old, intrudes like a short video clip.

 

I am in grade 1 at school and am walking home while holding hands and chatting with a little girl I am friendly with. I do not know anything about the birds and the bees back then, but perhaps the little girl does because she pulls me up, locks her pretty eyes into mine and says, "Richard, do you think you and I will be getting married one day?"

 

I am seriously unnerved by this unexpected recollection and sit with it for what feels like hours, as I re-live it and chew on it over and over.

 

What grips me, is the awareness that this very natural, very authentic little girl has no hidden agendas. She is simply responding to her normal female instincts to want to bond with a guy she likes and trusts.

 

I conclude that she sees something worthwhile in me back then that I desperately need to see in myself - but cannot. I realise that she sees my true self and likes what she sees enough to ask about getting married.

 

This realisation causes me to start challenging those incessant voices in my head which never give up telling me how inherently pathetic and worthless I am.

 

Her acknowledgement of me some thirty years prior, injects a sliver of hope into my life that I am fascinated by, and afraid of at the same time.

 

There is no way I can countenance the idea of going back for more of what I have already endured, but I also know that I would cut off my right arm for just a moment of feeling like a normal human being - and so the little bit of hope I have just been gifted with, enlivens me.

 

I go back and forth over what to do for a long time, but in the end, I choose to believe the little girl and accept that I was once OK and therefore cannot be a worthless loser by nature.

 

I know that I cannot go back without a plan to do something very different to what I have already been doing about my issues, for that is unthinkable to me. Therefore, I concentrate like I have never concentrated before, and eventually, I work out what that different thing is.

 

I do not know if I will survive my health crisis, but I have a plan and so I walk out of that wilderness just a little bit taller and in a little bit less pain, because I now have a mission. I am going to get my right mind back and fix my insecurity problems with women I like, or perish in the process of trying.

 

What follows is hard, raw, messy, and at one point nearly fatal, but I bite the bullet and build a new way forward for myself based on obsessive mind-science studies plus constant informed and fine-tuned practice in the real world.

 

I break the inner vow I make as a child to never expose my true self to anyone.

I process and discharge the enormous backlog of toxic emotion that I internalise over the course of a troubled life.

I excavate every false belief I carry about myself and about women.

I analyse them ruthlessly and rewrite them according to reality.

I use these re-written beliefs to build and practice transformative mental routines.

I study and implement adaptive practices in the realm of male/female dynamics.

I mentally rehearse multiple variations of boy-meets-girl relationship scenarios every day, and I purposefully seek out the most intimidating women I can find, to interact with in the real world.

 

My demons eventually give up on me such that today, their condemning voices have gone quiet. I am now married to a quality woman and am in the kind of stable, loving relationship I once believed was impossible for me.

 

My depression and despair have gone.

My death wish has gone.

My false persona has gone.

My addictions to binge-drinking, pornography, and reckless danger have gone.

 

My disowned masculinity has been recovered and rebuilt, and through it all, I have taken on a very fine-grained and detailed appreciation of what it takes to build a strong, positive and capable masculine identity from a starting position well below zero.

 

I know exactly what is required when standard training in social skills and ordinary approaches to coaching in the dating and relationships space, fail to shift what has been messed with under the surface of your consciousness.

 

That is why I am here and that is why you may wish to learn from me.