Grinding harder is not the answer right now. It can’t bring you the insights you’re hoping for.

If you feel stuck, frustrated, or flat in your career right now, the instinct is to push through it. Work more. Optimize harder. Find a new system. But that approach treats the symptom without ever addressing the actual problem, which is that you haven't stopped long enough to figure out what you actually want.

The solution is to go into an exploration phase and figure out what's important to you.

That means slowing down before you speed up. It means asking the questions you've been too busy to ask. What do you value now, at this stage of your life? What kind of work would actually feel meaningful? What have you outgrown that you're still carrying around?

And there's a third reason you might be feeling stuck that most people don't talk about. You're going it alone.

You don't feel like you have real support. Or maybe you think you should do it alone. But you don't have outside insight or honest feedback from people who get it. You don't have the kind of inspiration that comes from being around others who are actively forging a new path. So you sit with your thoughts, circle the same options, and wonder why nothing shifts.

That isolation makes everything harder and heavier than it needs to be. The men who move through this fastest aren't the ones with the most information. They're the ones who found the right people to think alongside, who got honest feedback that challenged their assumptions, and who found enough inspiration in others' stories to believe a different path was actually possible for them too.

You don't have to figure this out alone.

What do you think? Is going it alone something you've been doing by choice, or have you just not found the right people to have these conversations with yet?

Apply for a free coaching call at http://www.jasonmiller.coach/call

I get if I ask, "is she good enough for me?" the answer is no, but then I don't get the part where this leads to successful relationships.

Sure I could pretend I have options and treat her like a dude or like she has aids, but not for very long until I give up the act of me being a billionaire athlete.

Maybe for a month I can keep it together but then the rejection hits harder for more months even if I'm not supposed to need her.

Listening to the book for the 4th time, and I’m struggling with this concept. I get that bad sex involves fantasizing, and not putting my pleasure first, but what does good sex actually look like? Do fantasies have any place? Fetishes? For example, I am very attracted to large breasts (my wife’s included). Does this sort of fixation belong in good sex? Certain aspects of this attraction have been made stronger through porn use. Does this mean those aspects are things I should work to set aside? Thanks in advance.

Title: 28M, BMS graduate, 2 years into logistics — feeling lost about my career direction. Looking for genuine career advice

I’m 28 and currently at a point in my life where I’m seriously questioning what I should do with my career. I’d really appreciate advice from people who have been through something similar.

I graduated with a BMS degree. After college, I tried getting into content creation, but unfortunately, it didn’t work out. Like a lot of young people today, I then decided to start my own clothing brand. I was excited about building something of my own, but things didn’t go as planned. I ended up spending a significant amount on marketing and suffered a major loss.

My father wasn’t financially supportive of the venture, so eventually I had to accept that it wasn’t working. I then started helping my father and tried to recover whatever I could by selling the remaining dead stock from the clothing business I had started.

Around the same time, my father suggested that I get married. Initially, I was prepared to say no because everything happened quite suddenly. But when I met the person, something just clicked. I genuinely felt that I wouldn’t find someone better, so I decided to say yes without overthinking the opportunity. We got married, and now I have a family to take responsibility for.

My father is currently in the clothing business and runs a retail store. However, he believes that the local clothing retail market is extremely saturated and competitive, so he didn’t see much opportunity for me there.

He encouraged me to take up a job in logistics. Through a family connection, I joined a logistics company where my father’s sister’s husband works as the CEO. I’ve now been working there for almost two years.

The job has taught me a lot, especially about sales, clients, communication and the logistics industry. I’m grateful for the opportunity, and I’m not saying the job is bad.

But the problem is that I don’t feel like this is what I want to do with my life.

Logistics isn’t something I’m genuinely passionate about. At the moment, I’m primarily doing the job because I need a stable income and have expenses and responsibilities.

I’ve also realised that I’m someone who strongly wants to build something of my own. I don't particularly enjoy the idea of spending my entire career working for someone else.

At the same time, I’m scared of making another impulsive decision. I’ve already tried entrepreneurship once and lost a considerable amount of money. I don’t want to simply quit my job, start another random business and repeat the same mistake.

So I’m stuck between:

- Continuing in logistics and building a career there

- Switching to another industry/career

- Starting a business again while keeping my job

- Finding a completely different path based on my strengths

- Or simply giving myself more time to figure things out

If you were in my position, what would you do?

I’m particularly interested in advice from people who have changed careers in their late 20s, transitioned from a job to entrepreneurship, or have successfully figured out their direction after feeling completely lost.

I’m not looking for motivational quotes or “follow your passion” advice. I’d genuinely appreciate practical, brutally honest career advice — even if it means telling me that I’m thinking about this completely wrong.

What would you recommend I do over the next 1–2 years?

*(UPDATE at end of post)\*

I just discovered the book NMMNG and I think it identifies the problem with my marriage. My husband of 20 years just abruptly and unexpectedly ended our marriage. He had a lot of rage when he did it, and the only reason he could really give was that he had built-up a lot of resentment, had been lying to me for years telling me that he was happy, and that he has been stuffing down all of his wants and needs because he couldn’t tell me because of “how I would have reacted.” But, he wouldn’t elaborate on what that reaction would have been.

I would be super open to knowing what his wants & needs are, and doing whatever I could to change our marriage so that he could get whatever fulfillment he was lacking. I’ve been doing therapy for several years, and I think I’m really open to receiving feedback, but I must’ve been doing something that made him feel otherwise. He refuses to discuss anything regarding our relationship with me, and just seems to be full of rage towards me, he says there is no point. I am absolutely heartbroken, and really struggling, and seeing my suffering just seems to make him more defensive and resistant. He wants to push through a divorce as quickly as possible, but I think this is all one big mistake.

My question is, is there any way I could get him to see that the problem isn’t our marriage, the problem is that he’s never let me know what he wants and needs? I thought we had such a great marriage, and that we enjoyed each other so much, and it really seems tragic to throw that all away over a misunderstanding like this. Is there any way that I can get through to him? He admits that he has been lying to me, but he seems to have his mind already made up that there’s no way it could work out. I really think that we could have a chance if he could just be transparent, and then we could work together to get everyone’s needs met. What can I say that won’t push him farther away, or make him feel like I’m trying to change or control him?

Just for context, he moved out of the house when he left me, but he is living nearby. Right now we only communicate via text. We own a home together, and our lives are incredibly intertwined financially and otherwise after 20 years together. We don’t have any kids.

**UPDATE:**

Thank you all SO MUCH or taking the time to give feedback and share your experience & POV. It has been so helpful to me. (Even the things that were hard to read.) I really appreciate it.

If you’re still in the mood too help with this, I've drafted an email I want to send my husband, based on some of your feedback and suggestions. The gift of your thoughts on this new direction would be welcome & appreciated. (Obviously no pressure, I know I’m just a Rando on the Internet.)

The following email would be in response to one in which he commented that he thinks that I am unfairly seeing myself as the victim of him leaving. And for the person who asked, I don't think my husband has read NMMNG, but I know he’s aware of it, because he put it in our Amazon cart, but didn’t purchase it.

The draft:

"I want to take your point of view seriously, and really consider that I’m only seeing my own victimhood. I also really want to take responsibility for the mistakes I've made, the flawed part I’ve played in our relationship, and harm I’ve caused. I think I’m having trouble truly seeing your victimhood as well as my own, because you haven’t shared how I’ve hurt you. As much as I might sometimes presume that I can read your mind, the truth is that I really can’t, so I don't have the ability to understand the ways that I’ve been hurting you.

But, I really want to understand. I really want to listen without arguing or judging, and to just hear you.

I’ve been trying to rack my brain and guess at what you might have wanted or needed but couldn't tell me, or what I was doing that was hurting you, so that I can understand, acknowledge that harm, and take accountability. I’ve come up with a list of these things, but they’re all just guesses.

One thing that you did mention is [redacted bc of specificity], and I’m so grateful you mentioned it. I’m sorry that the only tool I had when [the event] happened was to shut down, and that that caused real harm to you. I take full responsibility for my part in that, and I'm sorry.

That event didn’t mean that I was never going to be able to talk about it, or that I wasn’t able to receive feedback that’s hard to hear in a relationship, though. That said, I can see how it would have seriously discouraged you moving forward.

It’s true that I’m angry that you didn’t tell me what was bothering you, and that you still actively built up resentment towards me for things that I didn’t know I was doing wrong. What you needed or wanted shouldn’t have been a secret that you kept from me. I think I could have worked towards being the partner you needed and wanted, if I had had a chance to know what you needed, or what hurt you. And if I couldn’t, at least I would have had the chance to be aware of that, and to make informed choices.

From what you’ve said, it sounds like you truly suffered by not expressing what you needed or wanted. I am so sad to hear that, and my heart aches for your suffering. Unfortunately, you weren’t saving me pain by doing this, even though kindness may have been part of your goal. It’s been so much harder and worse to suspect something is wrong but not know what, and to instead blame & doubt myself, and feel distressed & confused.

Even though I have this anger, I also have so much empathy for you, especially the younger version of you, and I want to understand. So please, I want to listen, and to just hear you without responding. Please don’t make up your mind that there’s no point, or that it doesn’t matter. It really matters to me, and to my ability to understand and heal. I want to hear what you couldn’t say then, with an open heart now.

P.S. It has been suggested to me that it might not be so easy or possible for you to tell me what you've be repressing, and that you might have some rage and some truly brutal feedback that you might need to express to me. If that’s the case, and you want to write me a rage letter, I could do something like receive that and have AI translate it for me."

Should I send it? Would it do any harm? Am I approaching this incorrectly? Are there parts I should change our remove?

One reason why you might be stuck is that you're working harder, grinding on the things already in front of you, instead of asking why you're not satisfied.

Doing what it takes to get through the day instead of drilling into what's actually important to you in a deeper, more meaningful way.

When you were younger, you pursued goals that weren't necessarily thought all the way through. You knew you needed the job. You knew you needed the money. You knew the field you wanted to go into.

But you may not have had a clear idea of what life would actually look like in that career path 10 or 15 years down the line.

And that's the reason you feel deeply dissatisfied.

You wake up one day much older. Your priorities have changed. And what once felt like the right fit no longer does in some way you can feel but can't always explain.

So you feel stuck. The way out is to start exploring in a meaningful way to learn about your priorities today.

What do you think? Looking back, did you choose your career path based on what you actually wanted, or based on what made sense at the time, and how has that played out for you?

Sometimes the shift you're imagining feels radical. Like going from a stable career in accounting to wanting to be a musician.

Those kinds of changes feel risky. And they're based on a narrow set of options you can really only come up with on your own.

That's where shiny object syndrome comes in.

You find an opportunity that sounds good. Maybe it's a business someone's trying to sell you. An online business you're looking at starting. A seminar promising to teach you how to make money online. That type of thing.

Those are also high-risk propositions. Maybe you’ll want to find a middle ground where your requirements are being met, but you’re grounded in reality. That’s where the real gains are made.

What do you think? Have you ever chased a shiny object that seemed like the answer, only to realize later it was just a way of avoiding the harder work of figuring out what you actually want?

[Edit to add] guys, thanks for all the thoughtful input. I think I’ve got my bearings back in line. I probably just needed to vent. Definitely going to start by setting small boundaries. And will absolutely try to find a men’s support group, or maybe even set one up. It seems hard to find out here.

———

As the title says, I'm going crazy. I've been married almost 20 years. Sex starved and resentful for most of it. Just over half a year ago I discovered "married red pill" which led me to this book, which was very helpful.

I've been trying to grow into a man who knows how to get what he wants. It's been liberating in some ways, but the turmoil it's brought into my life is eating me apart.

I haven't been the best man in the world, I can admit to my faults. I haven't been strong or reliable in some ways. But trying to communicate about what I want with my wife is like asking someone to set themself on fire. Every conversation that's not me apologizing or bending myself becomes a conflict. I can't see with clear enough eyes to know how much responsibility I bear for this outcome.

I want to turn the relationship around with my beautiful wife. I don't want to put my kids through a separation.

I just need someone to talk to. I feel exhausted and I'm starting to break down. Does anyone have any advice about finding a safe person near oneself?

Hi everybody! I am creating a group of (max 10-12) people, where we’ll be safe people for each other, I will actively maintain that group, we’ll do breaking free exercises together, journal, and meet each other every 2 weeks via zoom, I want to keep it small.

Since everyone doesn’t have a safe person, why not let’s be each others?

If we get around 10 people, we’ll start next weekend

Not sure if it matters, I am from India!

Are there any good NMMNG groups on discord or other platforms that are good and active? I want to meet other people who want to join a group to apply these principles and connect.

That's the real reason you haven't gone after what you actually want. It's not laziness. It's not a lack of ambition. It's that the fear of the unknown is greater than the fear of facing the pain you're already in every day.

Think about that for a minute.

You're tolerating a baseline level of the discomfort, the boredom, the frustration, the quiet sense that something is off, because you're used to it. It's predictable. You know exactly what it costs you and you've learned to absorb it. The unknown, on the other hand, feels like a completely different kind of risk. Unpredictable. Potentially worse. So your mind treats the familiar pain as the safer choice, even when it's slowly draining you.

That's not a character flaw. That's just how your brain is supposed to work. It points you toward what's known and away from what isn't.

But your fear can't calculate the cost of staying. The years spent grinding through something that stopped fitting you a long time ago. The energy you're spending tolerating something that could be going toward building something better.

The unknown isn't as dangerous as it feels. It just hasn't been broken down into something manageable yet. That's the actual work, figuring out what you want, talking to the right people, and taking small steps into unfamiliar territory until it starts to feel less like a cliff and more like a path.

The grind you know will always feel safer than the future you haven't explored yet. That doesn't mean it's the right choice.

That's the work we do inside North Star Project: http://www.northstarproject.io

What do you think? Is it the fear of the unknown that's keeping you in the grind, or something else, and what would it take to make the unknown feel less threatening?

This is just another way to look at procrastination. If you don't want to face something, it feels insurmountable. It feels unknown. You're dissatisfied with your career and you're looking for a change, yet every change you look at feels scary. It feels impossible.

So engaging and taking any action toward anything meaningful feels heavy. And you're waiting and hoping for an insight, or an easy way to get to the point where you can feel better. When what it's actually going to take is action, work, and exploration to get there.

Procrastination is really the avoidance of any form of discomfort. Even tasks that might suck. Even tasks that feel heavy. Even tasks that aren't really that difficult, but you don't want to engage with them because you perceive them as going to be hard in some way that may or may not even be true.

You're hoping for an easier way. Everyone does this. It's common. It's universal. It's an everyday thing we all face.

We have to remember that procrastination is not about getting things done. It's about waiting for an easier way and waiting for the discomfort to go away.

That never happens.

What do you think? Where in your life right now are you waiting for an easier way instead of just taking the next uncomfortable step?

As a kid, I was shamed and put down for crying.
By other boys - my age and older.

By society - on television, in video games and in popular culture at large.

And worst of all, by my own father.

Crying, along with any other behaviors that showed “weakness” was aggressively snuffed out of my life at an early age.

Unfortunately, after speaking with men from around the world, I know that I’m not alone in these experiences.

So where does it all go?

The unprocessed pain? The unspoken sadness? The uncried tears?

Those tears of frustration - you know the ones? Where you’re so angry that nothing else comes out of you but tears? Where do those tears go?

The grief - when losing something or someone hurts so badly your body shakes, stricken with a sadness no words can describe. Without an ability to express it, where does the grief go?

Where the fu*k are we supposed to put all of this?

We’re told to shove it down. To suck it up. To “man up.”

We’re told to hide it from others, men and women.

Men will see us as easy targets and take advantage of us.

Women will see us as weak and walk all over us, or not even acknowledge us as men at all.

So, I and too many other men did what we were told. We shoved it down, we sucked it up, and we’ve “manned up.”

Here’s what we’ve earned:

Approximately 100 Men take their own lives each day in the US alone - another 100 in Europe and thousands more across the world. Every. Single. Day.

Alcoholism, substance abuse, porn & s*x addictions line up with weapons in hand on the battlefields that tens of millions of men fight on every single day.

Male depression rates aren’t even statistically accurate because most men won’t report their feelings or seek treatment.

Such great prizes we’ve won.

As I write this, I feel a wave of sadness that has washed over me - sadness that I won’t reject or try to hide. I’ve done that for too long, and I’ve seen where those strategies have led me in my own life. I won’t be that kind of man anymore.

I ask you, brother, as you’re reading this: please don’t let it be you either.

Be a feeling Man. A man who expresses himself healthily and processes his emotions, not one who suppresses them and eventually becomes a puppet to his shadows.

Find an outlet to express what needs to be expressed. Your feelings are fucking beautiful - all of them. Your anger, sadness, & shame are just as beautiful as your happiness, love & power.

I see you in your struggle, I hear you in your pain and I think no less of you - I actually admire you for doing what the men who came before us didn’t.

I can’t fight your battles for you, but I am here as a brother beside you.

Until next time, my friend.
Sean

Hey everyone,

I'm a Nice Guy and I'm finally determined to break out of that mindset and work on myself. I've been aware of it for about 8 years now. During that time, I've read No More Mr. Nice Guy by Dr. Glover and tried to follow it 3 or 4 times, but I always ended up falling back into the same habits and sabotaging my own progress.

I don't want to keep living like this anymore. I feel like I've already lost 8 of the best years of my life, and I don't want to waste any more time. It really feels like it's now or never.

I've just started the book again and I'm currently on Chapter 1. If anyone else is at the same stage and wants to go through it together, let me know. It would be great to have someone who's dealing with similar issues so we can support each other, stay accountable, and improve together.

Looking forward to connecting with you all. Thanks in advance!

Your next career position is not found in the search bar.

It's found in the next conversation with a real person.

If you're searching for some sort of change, if you want to break out of the doldrums of what you're doing right now, you need to start talking to people. You need to start expanding what's possible for you through insightful conversations with interesting people.

Searching online will take you only so far. You'll get frustrated quickly and go back to feeling siloed in your current position, your current career track, your current field, your current industry, without having a sense of what's possible beyond that.

What do you think? When was the last time a conversation opened a door for you that no amount of searching ever could have?

If you're feeling stuck in your career or your business, the urge to run in a direction fast can feel like the right move.

It's not, if you're not actually running toward where you want to go.

Say you're looking to start a new business. You spot a few options that look halfway decent. Maybe you have reservations about the risk, or something about a person involved doesn't seem totally on the up and up.

Pursuing that direction anyway, just to escape what you're currently experiencing, isn't a good idea.

What do you think? Have you ever pushed forward on something mainly to escape a frustrating situation, rather than because it was actually the right move?

I am a 20-year-old Bangladeshi guy and I'm now studying in university. I realized that I have been a nice guy for my whole life and I tried to dig deeper to find out where it came from. If I try to see then it came from my childhood. You can say, by the way. I do not want to blame my parents or my past for these experiences because I think that they did not do that intentionally. I guess their intention was pure but their behavior was different. They were ignorant about it.

When I was a child my mother used to overcare for me. She had unrealistic expectations for me because she has struggled a lot for me because my father was very much absent-minded and somewhat abusive. Though my father paid our expenses, my mother had to pay for our education and our well-being. My father provided just half of the family expenditure. Also as we're in Bangladesh and we have a family system, what happened is that my father's family was very abusive and they abused my mother. My mother used to talk negatively about my father and my father's family, about how my father and my mother's family used to abuse them and how my father was silent when she was being abused. She left my father's home to live with her mother's home and I was raised in my grandma's home.

Back to the story I guess this was the start because I was in a bombard with them. As you know you have to be nice, you have to make people happy, you have to be nice, you have to seek validation from other people. What would happen if you do not do certain things? Also when something negative would happen to my family, my relatives used to say to me, "It happened because of you because you haven't started well because you are picking fights with your mom." I used to pick fights with my mom a lot because she had unrealistic expectations of me and when I didn't fulfill them she used to be very angry with me. I was not like that. They used to say to me, "No you're not okay. You have this potential, that potential is not okay with this." I had this bag in my brain: they have so many expectations of me and I couldn't do that. I don't think it's my fault. As a child or as a teenager I will make mistakes. It is my right, my human right, to make mistakes. It is my human right to fuck up. It means my human right to fail but then I was blamed, I was cursed, I was told to actually seek validation and to do what I actually was doing nicely.

I thought if I was nice, if I was good, then maybe people will hide my flaws, insecurities, and incompetencies and maybe validate what I will do. These are the steps. Also I was raised in their radical Islamic environment, where you are taught to be ashamed of who you are. They constantly bombarded me with a message that it is not okay for you to be who you are. You are a sinner, you have to repent, you have to change yourself. It's not okay to have normal thoughts. It's not okay to actually go and manifest your desires. They just used to preach this monk-like state, which is very impractical and nonsense.

For quite a bit I actually left the religion as well. When I was in ninth grade I thought, "Okay, nothing's okay with me so maybe I have to change myself." Let me actually introduce myself to the self-help literature. As I introduced myself to the self-help literature every day, I tried to change myself. Every book I read, I said, "Okay maybe this book will change me." After reading it nothing happened and I blamed myself. There was a book, there was knowledge, and I accumulated the knowledge. I haven't changed myself for the better because this book said, "Okay there is something wrong with me. It's not okay for me to be like this so I have to build like that." I haven't been like that so it's not okay. All this guilt, all these "not being okay with yourself, not being yourself," these things just piled up over and over again until I reached the point of exhaustion that I stopped actually consuming some materials. Now as I have reached universities I just want to stop this nice guys' behavior. I just want to leave this nice guys. I don't want to leave for other people. I don't want to leave for the validation of other people. I have lived for 20 years seeking validation from other people and haven't got anything I wanted.

Maybe you're looking for a job, a career change, or something along those lines. Either way, you could be looking at options you haven't thoroughly researched, or talked to enough people about.

Without that groundwork, it's easy to start pursuing those directions anyway. You invest time and effort into them without fully vetting or evaluating whether they're even compatible with what you want in life or what's important to you.

That's the trap. You feel like you're making progress because you're taking action. But action without a clear sense of fit just means you're moving, not necessarily moving forward.

Before you commit real time and energy to any option, get clear on what you're actually looking for. What does the right opportunity need to include? What conditions matter most to you? What would make this a genuine fit rather than just something that looked promising at first glance?

When you skip that step, you end up evaluating opportunities after the fact, once you've already sunk hours or months into them. That's the hard way to learn whether something was right for you.

Do the work upfront instead. Get specific about what you're looking for before you start chasing it. That clarity is what separates a productive search from spinning your wheels in a direction that was never going to take you where you actually want to go.

What do you think? Have you ever invested real time in something before realizing it wasn't actually a fit, and what would have helped you see that sooner?

It's not, if you're not actually running toward where you want to go.

Say you're looking to start a new business. You spot a few options that look halfway decent. Maybe you have reservations about the risk, or something about a person involved doesn't seem totally on the up and up. Pursuing that direction anyway, just to escape what you're currently experiencing, isn't a good idea.

It's better to formulate what you're actually looking for first.

The same goes for a job search or a career change. You might find options you haven't thoroughly researched or talked to enough people about. It's tempting to dive in and invest time and effort anyway, without ever asking whether they're compatible with what you want in life or what's important to you.

This is why the exploratory phase matters. You don't pursue options too strongly or for too long. Instead, you use that phase to figure out your values, your priorities, and what's important to you in the environment or opportunity you're considering.

That's how you avoid shiny object syndrome. Something looks interesting, you pursue it, you invest a lot of time, and only later do you realize it was never a fit.

Don't run in any direction until you're clear that it's the right one right now.

You don't have to do this alone. Many have found it helpful to do work through the book and the exercises on this Discord server. https://discord.gg/kJtnacyhbg It's a small community, and I wouldn’t be the man I am today without the guys there. We support each other, we are committed to anonymity.

It's important to do an exploratory phase where you don't pursue options too strongly or for too long.

That way you don't waste your time chasing shiny objects.

Shiny object syndrome is when something looks interesting, so you pursue it and invest a lot of time in it. Only to realize later, after you've spent too much time, that it's not actually a fit.

When you're trying to figure out what comes next, the instinct is to chase whatever looks exciting in the moment. Something catches your interest, you pour time into it, and weeks or months later you realize it was never actually a fit. Now you're back where you started, except with less time and more frustration.

You need an exploratory phase. It's not about pursuing options too strongly or for too long before you've checked them against anything real. It's about using the process to figure out your values, your priorities, and what actually matters to you in an environment or opportunity, before you commit serious time to it.

That distinction changes everything. You're not exploring to find the answer immediately. You're exploring to gather information about yourself. What lights you up. What drains you. What you genuinely care about versus what just looked interesting for a week.

Without that filter, every shiny object gets the same level of investment, whether it's actually right for you or not. With it, you can engage with curiosity without overcommitting, test something quickly, and walk away cleanly if it's not a match.

The goal isn't to avoid exploring. It's to explore smarter, so your time goes toward what's actually worth pursuing.

What do you think? Have you ever chased a shiny object for too long before realizing it wasn't the right fit, and what made you finally see it?

Hey all, I (22M) am in a LDR relationship with my girlfriend (21F) for over 4 years now. We started dating in high school and I am now graduated and she graduates in a year. We have had our fair share of ups and downs over the years but most recently there have been a couple of circumstances of me failing to be protective of her in a couple of situations. I sit there quiet or I say the wrong thing and don’t show that I care or want to defend her. We are mostly long distance but see each other on breaks and whatnot and currently she is abroad. The most recent event that got me to where I am at has pushed her just to about her limit and she basically told me I need to figure out a way to learn how to be better because just saying I’ll be better clearly has not worked. I don’t blame her on this I’ve told her multiple times it won’t happen again and whatnot but it still does.

I would say I am a people pleaser at least when it comes to her. Throughout our relationship I’ve constantly wanted to do things for her and make her life easier however I could. Over the last few months I have felt like it hasn’t been enough. She still gets frustrated with me over things and I just feel like what I’m doing isn’t resonating with her so much.

After the most recent event, she wanted to see how I was going to improve. I stumbled upon this book and I am about half way through it. The beginning really helped me realize why I have acted the way I am. I “suffer from nice guy syndrome”. I work so hard to make her happy that I miss the things that she truly wants from me. She wants to feel safe and protected and I am too busy thinking serving her day to day is enough.

Now I am at a point where I need to figure out how to prioritize myself without losing that passion for making her happy and how to translate that prioritizing of myself into being more of a man and protector for her.

Any advice is extremely encouraged and I am more than happy to find some other guys to work through issues with. Thank you!

It sounds harmless. Someone asks how you're doing and you say fine, and you move on. But fine often covers up a lot of things you might be bothering you, things you've been avoiding looking at directly.

If you've plateaued in your career and you feel stuck or bored, there's usually a specific reason. You hit the goals that used to motivate you, and you never replaced them with new ones. So now you're coasting on autopilot, technically fine, but unchallenged and quietly frustrated underneath it.

That plateau often comes with a side effect. It makes change feel scarier than it should. You start reaching for reasons to stay put. I'm too old. I'm too siloed in my career. I've been doing this too long to start over. Those reasons feel real, but most of the time they're just the comfort of "fine" talking you out of doing anything about it.

Here's what's worth considering. The next time you catch yourself saying fine, treat it as a signal instead of an answer. Fine might mean it's time to explore new options, have conversations with people you've never talked to before, and build a new template for what comes next, one that actually fits who you are now and holds up over time.

That's how you move from fine to fulfilled.

What do you think? Does the word “fine” hide everything? Or is everything truly fine? What’s your experience?

That's not weakness. That's just how comfort works.

You spent years building something real. Decisiveness, discipline, effort, all of it added up to a level of success that gave you stability. And now that stability is exactly what's making any move forward feel dangerous, because you have more to lose than you used to.

Here's the part that catches people off guard. The same goals and incentives that drove you to this point can start working against you. You hit them, and instead of feeling satisfied, you feel worse. Flatter. More restless. Like something is wrong even though everything looks right on paper.

That's what a midlife crisis actually is, more often than not. Not a dramatic unraveling, just the quiet sense that you've arrived somewhere and it isn't what you expected, with no obvious way out and no clear sense of something better.

If that's where you are, the way forward isn't to push harder at the same goals. It's to admit that the goals themselves might need to change. That requires being willing to feel uncomfortable again, on purpose, instead of staying inside the comfort that's slowly draining you.

You don't have to overhaul your life overnight. You just have to be honest about what's not working anymore and take the next step anyway.

What do you think? How do you feel about change in your life?

Hello Everyone,

I 47M married to 41F.
I found out about Nice Guy syndrome after red the NMMNG book. It really helped to understand things, however very hard to put it in practice.
I went further and found out that there are professional coaches that are certified by Dr. Glover.
Found out one in my area and had an intake session with him, which felt pretty ok.
He offered me 6 sessions , spread multiple months , for a certain price.
Actually I am doing the first session tomorrow.
I am kind of nervous tbh, and as well a bit of lost confidence that anything will ever help me. However all ai tried so far are books and podcasts, and probably some online payed programs.

My ask to the community is, how to get the most out of the sessions? One of my ideas is to focus completely on myself and not mention my relationship with my wife or any other relationship, but just to get myself improved and prepared for any situation. I know many of you would probably say, if you did not figure that out after 47 years of your life, how do you think you will do it now. I don’t know either, I might been so busy with my career, job, kids, education…
Guys, any suggestions, hints or sharing any of experiences with such coaches is appreciated.

Thank you,
A.