This past weekend I took the opportunity to attend The 21 Convention in Orlando, FL. If you are not familiar with The 21 Convention, it’s billed at “A Panorama Event for Life on Earth as a Man”. Quite a bold claim to be sure. I had come across the 21 Studios and The 21 Convention over the last year, and while interested in the content on YouTube, I never took attending seriously. Most of the content from previous years was focused on being better with women, and while that is a topic that is of interest to me attending really was not. Yet there I was in Orlando, FL. To understand why let’s go back a bit…

“We have major problems…”

I had managed to get her alone in the family mini van after she had been awkwardly and deliberately avoiding me for the past two days. I had never seen her like this and there, driving to pick up take out for her friends, I begged her to tell me what was going on. Those words, spoken by my wife of almost 9 years were the beginning of the end. In the days and weeks after I felt like my feet had been kicked out from under me as I heard – from the person that pledged her life to me – that “We should never have gotten married,” “I feel like I sold myself short,” and, “I never loved you.” WHAT. THE. FUCK.

There is nothing quite like having all your deepest issues and insecurities exposed by having the person you counted on for “unconditional love” completely disavow you. Don’t get me wrong, I had my issues in the marriage, to be sure. In an attempt to get myself help (and perhaps save my marriage) I visited a local psychologist, but was frustrated when the she used the term “ADHD” to label some of what I was describing to her. I didn’t need labels, I needed actual help to move forward. I reached out to a “life coach” I barely knew and told him I was having issues and asked if he thought he could help me. I’ll never forget that first phone call, after dark, pacing up and down the street outside my house nervous, scared, and at times fighting back tears. He is a solid coach and it was a good move to work with him.

Not long into working with my coach I learned that the idea of “you complete me” is bullshit. I was introduced to books like David Deida’s The Way of The Superior Man and Robert Glover’s No More Mr. Nive Guy. I still recall the panicked feeling I had reading Deida as he proclaimed a woman should never be the focus of a man’s life, only an accent to it. Somehow I had made her the focus of my emotional world and now that world was crumbling. I know. #epicfail.

Not long after she put us on a break my (now ex)wife literally told me to “get a girlfriend” as she would no longer be having sex with me. For me, this opened an entirely new can of worms as I had come from a Fundamentalist Christian background, was a virgin when I got married, and had never dated any girl before my wife. (We had been introduced though a church connection and had married just over a year later.) I did some web searches on meeting women and ended up with a sponsored Facebook post from a pickup artist in my news feed. Curious, I continued my research on YouTube. It was through this consumption of information that I came across 21 Studios and The 21 Convention.

Knowing is Half the Battle

Something about me ABSOLUTELY HATES making mistakes due to incorrect information. For some men, they hate loosing, and I am quite competitive, but even more so I HATE it when I make mistakes that could have been avoided though knowledge. Applied knowledge is power, so ignorance is weakness. I am driven to know, so naturally I research. During this time I had picked up a few books on Amazon on manhood and dating, titles like What Women Really Want, and Mark Manson’s Models, among others. I took something away from each of these titles, but all of them seemed to focus on the what of women and dating, but not really the why. On Amazon I had seen a book titled, The Rational Male by Rollo Tomassi in the “customers also bought” list. The nondescript red cover didn’t really attract my attention. Glossily printed to look like a bound book, it had no flashy picture on the front and no glowing accolades on the back. After seeing it a few times I figured “why not” and tossed it into my cart to add to my growing stack of books. I know, I know, book by its cover.

About that time my wife had moved out and we were nearing the end of the divorce process. There was nothing I could do to change the course of the marriage which ended in divorce… The house was eerie, and unnerving. I was alone. My children were gone with their mother due to the rotating parenting schedule we had created. Oh, right… I forgot to mention the kids. All under 10. I was feeling pretty heavy.

It was in this dark and empty house I first opened The Rational Male. I was in the middle of reading another book and had originally intended to skim through the pages of the book before going to bed to satisfy my curiosity on this new title. As I flipped through the book a chapter caught my eye: The Myth of the Lonely Old Man. It began:

“Is loneliness a disease that necessitates a cure? If men could be made to believe so, think of the potential profit to be made from, and the potential for manipulation of, men. The real test for a man is how he lives with himself, alone.”

Holy shit.

This was definitely not just a pickup book. I read that chapter and immediately flipped over to chapter one to find out what the author meant by AFC and LTR, etc. I believe I finished the book in less than a week. Unplugging, Plate Theory, Game, Hypergamy. My mind was blown. Finally I had found an explanation of much of the why behind what I had read in other books and more importantly much of the why behind how my marriage had come to (what I thought was) a screeching halt out of nowhere. I’ve described it as learning how the sausage is made. I discovered the book was an edited collection of blog posts from the author of therationalmale.com and that there was a second book The Rational Male: Preventive Medicine that went even deeper into the why. I purchased and I devoured that as well.

And Unplugging is right. These two books completely changed the way I viewed (what I came to know as) intersexual dynamics. It just made perfect sense.

The 21 Convention

Now a regular reader of the The Rational Male blog I learned that Rollo was putting together a new book that would focus on Red Pill Parenting and what he called “Positive Masculinity”. The topic of Red Pill parenting was of great interest and I eagerly awaited the publishing of the third book. One day I opened TRM to see The 21 Convention logo as the title graphic for the most recent post. I was unaware there was any connection between The 21 Convention and Rollo Tommasi. He was announcing he would be making a rare personal appearance to speak at The 21 Convention and that Positive Masculinity was going to be a big theme. The appearance would coincide with the publishing of the third book. I immediately registered, not wanting to pass up the chance to meet Rollo Tommasi and hear him speak. At the outset this was my primary reason for attending as I didn’t know much about many of the then-announced speakers.

Due to a technical glitch with my registration I had the chance to speak with Anthony Johnson, Founder of The 21 Convention. Rather than just fix the glitch and get me off the phone Andrew spent a few minutes chatting with me on my life. He told me the event would blow my mind (or something along that lines) and that the real value was interacting with the speakers and other attendees. Anthony had started The 21 Convention mostly to help him get better with women, and it was becoming something a lot more. I was excited to be sure, but also skeptical that that I could get that much out of it.

One of my primary goals for attending was to gain clarity on parenting as a divorced Red Pill aware dad. Most of the divorced-dad advice out there is coming from a Blue Pill perspective and no one I knew of in the Manosphere hits this specific genre. I was lost in the tactical aspects of applying Red Pill parenting and looking for answers. (Remember, for me, applied knowledge is power and ignorance is weakness.) While I had already been aware of the need for a man to have a purpose, maintain frame, and have clarity about his life I struggled with how this related to my specific situation.

While at the Convention I sat down with speaker Richard Cooper of Entrepreneurs in Cars and stumbled through explaining my parenting question to him looking for direction. Richard is an excellent coach and he quickly bottom lined my question and steered me back to having a purpose for my life and pointed out that in constantly working toward that purpose I can serve as an example to my kids as they grow up and make applying Red Pill awareness much more effective. (Simple I know, but sometimes a small rope is all a drowning man needs.)

Though parenting was a primary theme there were additional things I wanted to learn. Other speakers gave me their time and attention to provide lessons in those areas in profound and unexpected ways. Lessons that changed me immediately. (If you are reading this, you men know who you are. ) The convention is far more than it has been in the past and the theme of Positive Masculinity was present with much of the speakers. I will be touching on many of the themes covered in future posts.

The 21 Convention helped me gain clarity on parenting as a divorced dad, further solidify my purpose, and become the next greatest version of myself. I have already put down money for a ticket to next year’s convention.



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*Resintegration

Definition: to break into parts and re-form in a unexpected way; to change

Synonyms: more than meets the eye

Usage: “My understanding of the world is resintegrating.”

Etymology: Calvin Tallmen made it up. It’s my blog, I can do what I want.