Today we address Seven Mark Manson (formerly PostMasculine) Avoidance Strategies that only make the problem bigger.
Did you notice that Mark Manson (formerly Postmasculine) had to run away again and change his identity and URL because he won’t face the issue directly? That he had his girlfriend Brazilian Fernanda Neute make her page non-public because he’s terrified of a 110-pound woman being in the same city with him? This passes for courage in this world … this passes for “expert” self-development advice … really it’s shocking …
Please bear in mind that the intention of this article is the healing of the relationship between Mark Manson (formerly PostMasculine) and PostFeminine. Avoidance blocks healing. If you missed the back story about why I am writing this series of articles about my ex Mark PostMasculine, you can catch up on the background here.
In a previous article that generated a lot of commentary, I explained 12 Reasons Why Avoidance (Just Getting Over It and Moving On) Is A Stupid Thing To Do (you can read that article here).
Before we begin today, it’s important to understand that avoidance of healing and the avoidance of God are the same thing. As long as we remain in ego consciousness, the masculine and the feminine will be painfully separate from each other (and this is true even if there is the “appearance of union” through a “special relationship” (which is discussed in more detail below). When we return to God, we get healed. When we are scared of healing, we find ways not to return to God. Unfortunately, these avoidance strategies not only do not solve the problem, they actually make the problem bigger.
1. PostMasculine Avoidance Strategy #1 – Foreign Travel
We discussed the foreign travel avoidance strategy at length in the original article here. Life doesn’t feel satisfying in America for Mark Manson (formerly PostMasculine)? No problem, move halfway around the world. Keep changing your name and your URL in a feeble attempt to run away from issues you should be facing. The problem with this is that it doesn’t solve anything. Wherever you go, there you are. So all the problems you tried to leave behind, including the ex PostFeminine with whom you still have not made things right, go with you. Problems either get faced directly, exactly where they are right now, or they don’t get solved at all. Foreign travel doesn’t solve anything, and eventually the problems come and bite you in the butt.
2. PostMasculine Avoidance Strategy #2 – Avoidance of Meditation and God
PostMasculine recently wrote on his blog about how he fell off the meditation wagon a few years ago. And apparently he is no longer spiritual. Funny, I never made any secret of my profound spirituality. In fact, my original blog (which is how PostMasculine and I met) was full of spiritual articles, and Mark PostMasculine was a regular commentator on my blog. PostMasculine experienced my energy healing when we were together in Los Angeles and wrote on his blog about how it worked. When he wanted to have sex with me and get my emotional investment, PostMasculine went out of his way to communicate to me how spiritual he was. PostMasculine also has a very spiritual tattoo with all of the chakras on his entire upper arm. And now suddenly he is not spiritual?
Bullshit. This is pure denial. I will offer a plausible explanation for this strange disconnect. When we don’t have a clear conscience, sometimes we avoid God. Because when we meditate, it is impossible to avoid our real issues. So given that PostMasculine‘s conscience is not clear, since he still has not made things right with me, it makes sense that he would avoid meditation and connection with God. This avoidance does not solve the problem. It makes the problem bigger.
I highly recommend meditation every day as a way of connecting with your intuition, facing your problems, and getting your problems solved. I meditate with headphones about eight hours every night while I sleep. It has been one of the most life-changing choices I have ever made.
3. PostMasculine Avoidance Strategy #3 – Escapism
We all have our ways of escaping. People use all kinds of strategies like sex, television, staying overly busy, getting drunk, and generally refusing to open up the space in our lives to connect quietly with the Divine. When we face our problems, they get solved. When we have a lingering problem that has still not been resolved after more than three years, we know we have been avoiding through escapism.
No more avoidance. I prefer to resolve this issue with Mark PostMasculine directly. At the same time, I have grown very weary of waiting for justice and a fair outcome. So I will do whatever it takes to bring God’s justice to this situation by the fastest means possible.
4. PostMasculine Avoidance Strategy #4 – Denial and Minimizing of Promises that Were Made
If you know anything about contract law, you know that a person need not use the words “I promise” in order to create a contract. I don’t give any legal advice, so please just read this as a metaphor. In general, it is not okay to lead someone to believe you are going to give them something in exchange for their investment unless you actually follow through and give them what you offered.
PostMasculine has for over three years now been minimizing the representations he made to me in order to get sex and emotional investment from me, and I’m not going to put up with this bullshit. It was obvious not only to me but also to many observers that I invested in him emotionally and had sex with him because he was offering me a long-term partnership. Many of the things PostMasculine said to me are in writing and cannot be denied. His conscience is not clear and he has been avoiding for three years because he knows in his heart that he still needs to make this right with me. And I will be standing for justice until justice is delivered.
When you sign up for a mortgage, for example, pretending that you don’t owe the money isn’t going to get you out of the debt. A lot of the people who end up in foreclosure are the ones who were in denial. They put the bills in a drawer and refused to look at them. The payments are still due and owing, and if they continue to deny reality, they have a much bigger problem on their hand and may even lose their home. Putting our head in the sand doesn’t solve anything. Problems must be faced to be solved.
5. PostMasculine Avoidance Strategy #5 – Non-Communication
PostMasculine used this avoidance strategy of non-communication for three years, and it is pretty obvious from the results that non-communication did not work to solve the problem. Non-communication is extremely disrespectful and just makes the problem bigger. Fortunately over the past couple of weeks, we are seeing some respectful communication again. With a commitment to mutually respectful communication, any problem can be happily resolved.
6. PostMasculine Avoidance Strategy #6 – Hide Out in A “Special Relationship”
People often avoid their problems by entering into a monogamous special relationship. This is another way to avoid God and truth and justice. This is just another excuse that does not hold any water. Maybe it looks like a solution for a while, but it is not a solution and does not solve the original problem.
7. PostMasculine Avoidance Strategy #7 – Not Taking Responsibility and Making Things Right
There is only one solution to this problem, PostMasculine. The solution is to make things right with PostFeminine. Pretending there is nothing to make right is not going to work. Avoidance is not going to work. Denial is not going to work. The answer is very, very simple. Stop avoiding, stop minimizing, stop running away, stop interposing obstacles. Deliver on the expectations that you created three and a half years ago. Do the right thing.
I will be standing for justice until justice is delivered. I ask Archangel Michael to bring swift justice to this situation.
PostScript June 2013:
Amazingly, even as we stand here today, Mark Manson (formerly PostMasculine) still has done nothing to remedy this massive ethical breach. He still thinks it’s perfectly okay to lead on a celibate woman for six months and then bail because he’s “not responsible for someone else’s feelings.” At the moral extreme, you can see how this argument is totally bankrupt. After all, Hitler could argue the same thing, and nobody wants to live in a world where people go around acting in unethical ways and claiming they have no responsibility for it. Beware if you have any dealings with this man. He has no ethics and thinks it’s perfectly okay to do things he knows will hurt other people. If you’d like to read another article on this troubling topic, go to:
Love,
Erika Awakening, High Priestess of Miracles at TAPsmarter
I think you suffer from the female version of “entitlement”.
I came across a very insightful article once on a random Internet search. I’ll link it here: http://thinkerspodium.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/a-short-civics-of-sexual-envy/.
(Not by a self-help “expert”, mind you, just a normal everyday person who had thought a bit about life.)
Here he describes the kind of men who don’t have much of a sex life, and who suffer pangs of jealousy whenever they see women who they are attracted to having sx with other men, or when they see other happy couples enjoying eachother.
These men perceive themselves as “victims”, when in fact, they are victims of their own entitlement complex.
They believe they are entitled to sex, by mere virtue of existing. They don’t comprehend that sex is a gift, to be shared between two willing parties, based mutual love and respect.
No one “deserves” sex or is “entitled” to sex, no matter how nice, well-mannered, charming, funny, etc. they might be.
The way this mentality works in women is a feeling of being entitled to a long-term relationship, marriage, committment, etc.
Women think that if they find a man they like, spend a lot of time with him, sleep with him, that they are then entitled to all the rest. They don’t realize that committment, like sex, must be earned. It’s not an entitlement or a right (such as, say, the right of the accused to a fair trial).
It’s a response, just like sex, to the value one person perceives in another. A response like this, for it to be genuine, necessitates a cause. The cause is the virtues a person has cultivated.
It was painful for me to read this article and realize that the neurosis it described applied to me. But I can’t rebel against the plain facts. I’m trying to improve myself and get over my entitlement complex.
I am entitled to miracles. God’s Will for me is perfect happiness. And … I need do nothing. :)
Well it’s sad that you fill your head with mystical nonsense, but I can understand that some people would rather bury their head in the sand than face the truth.
Lol … you’re right, it IS sad … that people accept so little and think they are still asking for too much. 99.99% of the planet is “settling” … and won’t even be honest about it. That ain’t gonna be me.
“You do not ask too much from life but far too little.” – A Course in Miracles
Thanks for commenting :)
and actually you just inspired my next video :)
Wow, scary stuff. Break ups, if you two were ever together, are a part of life. It’s kinda sick to see you copy his website and stalk him like this. Let him go and if he’s ever interested to talk to you, he knows full well how to find you
A perfect opportunity for me to share this quotation from A Course in Miracles, which I’ve been applying to myself as well.
Only the self-accused condemn. As you prepare to make a choice that will result in different outcomes, there is first one thing that must be overlearned. It must become a habit of response so typical of everything you do that it becomes your first response to all temptation, and to every situation that occurs. Learn this, and learn it well, for it is here delay of happiness is shortened by a span of time you cannot realize. You never hate your brother for his sins, but only for your own. Whatever form his sins appear to take, it but obscures the fact that you believe them to be yours, and therefore meriting a “just” attack.
– A Course in Miracles
In that case, I hope you receive your miracle. I do think it is horrible to deny someone else’s reality because we all experience things differently and at different intensities, but at the same time we need to do whats best for ourselves (in the form of safety and security). Everyone deserves to have defense mechanisms to protect ourselves cognitively and emotionally from any invaders who do not put us ahead of themselves. It just appears as though he has already told you and you don’t want to listen, but that is from an outsider perspective. I hope you receive your miracle whenever and the form it presents itself. As the saying goes “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one, which has been opened for us.” – Helen Keller
“If I defend myself I am attacked.” – A Course in Miracles
I think he has communicated in the only way he knows how. Everyone has their limitations…emotionally, physically, and mentally. He has made promises and realized it was not going to work out and told you. Why cant you accept that? I was seeing someone awhile back and dealt with the same issues. I was blamed and told that I held back communication. I left. I felt in my heart that I communicated the whole time. I felt like I was always honest. Things change. What was I supposed to say? Several years later I entered an abusive relationship with a man and my perspective changed and I was able to see things a little more clearer. The first guy entered my life again and I was able to communicate a few things, but my last comment to him was “How many different ways can I tell you the same thing?” He dropped everything. I think you need to show some compassion and let it go. In addition, it pains me to see some of your blog posts displaying this “relationship” and putting this individual on blast in a public arena. It is downright disrespectful and hurtful.
Many of us were conditioned to accept shabby treatment and just rationalize that “that’s just the way it is.” I don’t play that learned helplessness game anymore.
This situation was grievously unfair to me, being a total bait and switch of enormous proportions. Which means it was driven by unforgiving beliefs.
Beyond this situation is a miracle to which I am entitled, and I don’t really care what it takes. I’m going to have the miracle.
Let me also point out that Mark Postmasculine can escape from any ‘hurt’ at any time by doing the right thing. And anyone who thinks I’ll be settling for less than that doesn’t know me very well. If he wanted to do what he’s doing, he could have told me that from the get-go in which case I would not have invested in him emotionally or had sex with him. At this point, only perfect justice and fulfillment of the representations he made to me is going to resolve this.
You had sex with him a couple of times almost five years ago. You need to move on with your life. As long as you don’t then you’re waiting for something that will never come.
“Moving on” has never in the entire history of the illusion of time and space, EVER solved any problem. Ever. See previous article:
https://erikaawakening.com/twelve-reasons-why-avoidance-just-getting-over-it-and-moving-on-is-a-stupid-thing-to-do
Sorry Sean, if you wish to comment here, you will need to keep it respectful. Cheers.
This is what I don’t get, Erika. On the one hand, you claim that you were sexually “defrauded” by Mark; i.e., he made false promises to you about love, your future, etc. in order to sleep with you. On the other hand, you rely on those very same promises to support the notion that the two of you were in a genuine “relationship.” Which is it? Were the promises sincere, or were they fraudulent?
You can be sincere at the beginning and still commit fraud by not fulfilling the expectations that were created. Not going to get into technicalities. This is not a legal discussion, this is about the justice we know is right in our hearts. And I promise you, Mark knows just as well as I do that justice needs to be done in this situation by fulfilling the expectations he created. He would not have manifested this situation if that were not the case.
Erika, I’m friends with Mark. Reality check: you were NEVER his ex. He never considered himself in a relationship with you. He’s embarrassed he even hooked up with you. I know how you made Mickey cry and all that. Fact is: you’re PROJECTING an imaginary relationship.
Dear Someone who knows Mark,
I’m going to give Mark the benefit of the doubt and assume he never said any of that. If, however, he were to say such a thing publicly, fortunately I still have my old iPhone and the nearly six months’ worth of correspondence between us in which he set all these expectations and talked about love and our future. Fortunately, we will be able to debunk this bullshit once and for all, if it ever becomes necessary to do so.
Sorry Jake, if you want to comment here, you will need to keep it respectful. I don’t tolerate haters, and I don’t tolerate bitter men projecting their crap on to me. Take responsibility for yourself and your own issues, or don’t comment here. Just because you accept so little for yourself in life doesn’t mean I will do the same. Take care.
If what you want from Mark is between you and him why do you feel the need to semi copy his website and write tons of blog articles about him? Your behavior does not seem to me to be based on love.
Erika, what do you want from Mark? What would “make things right”? It seems pretty obvious that he’s not interested in a relationship and never will be. An apology might be more reasonable, assuming he has not apologized to you already. But I am still not entirely sure, based on what you’ve disclosed publicly, what he would be apologizing for. You characterize him as “defrauding” you, but I am somehow skeptical that there is an email from him saying something to the effect of, “Erika, if you have sex with me, I will commit to a relationship with you and marry you and combine businesses etc.” And even if he did, the fact remains that people change their minds. You love legal metaphors; try this: relationships are like at-will employment agreements. Either party can terminate them at any time for any reason. And yeah, it can be extremely painful for the other party, but nearly everyone experiences that pain at some point in their lives and eventually moves on.
What do you want from Mark?
Thanks for commenting. Nobody who is truly honest would want to have relationships be like at-will employment agreements. That metaphor is only even possible for you to say out loud because of how pathetic our society is when it comes to relationships. It is only because our society views callousness and despair and total alienation as “normal” that anyone settles for so little in our relationships. That’s not a world I choose to live in. I choose to live in a world where people can trust each other and rely on each other’s word.
What I want from Mark specifically, for now, is between me and him. I may share when the time is right.
The at-will metaphor is overstated. I agree that people should strive to be as honest as possible with one another about their expectations and that they should be able to expect the same level of honestly from the other person. But feelings are also ephemeral and unpredictable, so there is a limit on how much one can or should rely on the other person’s word.
Thanks for acknowledging that. I also would not want to live in a world where people base relationships on ephemeral “feelings.” Our word is our bond. It is the basis for trust in all of our relationships. We must learn how to address feelings in a new way so that our word is not subject to whim. This is very possible and results in the most magnificent and wonderful changes in our lives. Trust me :)
I’m not sure what you mean. Are you saying that relationships should not be based on feelings?
Feelings are just guideposts for looking at deeper issues in our belief systems. Many people don’t understand how to use their feelings in a constructive way. All too often, the statement “I just don’t ‘feel it’ for him/her” anymore is bullshitting ourselves. It usually means one of our own issues got triggered and we are trying to avoid it or don’t know how to address it and clear it. People need to begin clearing these issues together instead of using them as excuses for separation.
Erika, let’s say Mark did get back with you and delivered on his promises. Would that not feel somehow fake? Like he’s just honouring the contract without any real feeling. I wouldn’t like to be in a relationship with someone if they didn’t really care about me.