I recently received the following article request:

I was wondering if you can write about insecurities (…). What are the top common insecurities among men aside from being short and how can men overcome these insecurities. I get the impression that some men will never be able to overcome their personal insecurities, thus will find a coping mechanism in in their life. Are insecurities tied to female validation?

I think that for very obvious, evolutionary reasons, male insecurities center around looks, money, and status. This should not surprise anyone. Deep down, we are a competitive species and while you could feel pretty good about yourself if you were an adult in the 1960s or 1970s, had a house paid off within a couple of years, and lived the American dream, young to middle aged men of today are not nearly as lucky. Thanks to the Internet, they can easily end up wanting to compare themselves with the rest of the world. This is much more of a problem for Instagram thots, but there are also plenty of men out there who have fallen for success porn on Youtube and LinkedIn.

The top male insecurities include:
– aging, and signs of aging
– height
– physique (too fat, to scrawny, not muscular enough)
– race
– money
– professional success
– educational success
– popularity
– quantity and quality of sexual partners

You could argue that all these insecurities are ultimately tied to female validation. This even applies to guys who subscribe to the bachelor lifestyle, yet still want to maximize their success in life. After all, evolutionary pressures are why we are a competitive species. Because your predecessors competed over access to women, society advanced. This drive is still in you even if you substitute its ultimate end and, instead of wanting to compete over women, you just want to live the best life possible for yourself.

I think that insecurities change as you age. During your teenage years, you may be concerned about popularity if you follow the alpha-male blueprint, but if you are a “sigma male”, you don’t pay much attention to that, yet still enjoy popularity among women. As you get older, though, you realize that all this popularity was nothing but bullshit as your high school friends amount for more or less nothing later in life. It is probably rare that guys keep even just one friend from their high school days around, assuming we are not talking about people they happen to share a close connection with, for instance because they have known each other since kindergarten. After high school, you are off to the races and busy converting your diploma into a decent career. You will compete against others at university and later on at work. Perhaps you occasionally look up former college peers on LinkedIn, to see how they have been doing.

Looks-related insecurities run in parallel to status-oriented ones. Some guys supposedly overcompensate their lack of looks by pushing themselves really hard at work whereas guys who have enjoyed great luck in the genetic lottery may take life a little bit too easy. The idea of taking AP Calculus when you have a handful of sluts lined up ready to suck your dick is probably not too appealing to such Chads. Thus, those guys, even the smarter ones, may pursue careers where their looks are more relevant than their intelligence. Thus, they end up in fields like Sales or Marketing as opposed to Engineering. As you can make excellent money in those fields, sometimes more than someone with a solid career in Engineering, I am not sure whether those people feel particularly insecure about themselves. Perhaps ironically, it seems that the smarter guys feel more insecure about their supposed intelligence. This may be because they built an identity around it.

While genetics play a role with regards to your level of success in life, you can make up for bad looks to some extent. Of course, you cannot really overcome them, but if you take your frustrations and use it as fuel for your career, you will probably end up in a pretty decent spot. Of course, some guys have health issues, which keep them from working a harder than the next guy, but if you do not have to deal with such constraints, you can somewhat compensate for looks, albeit you will likely never have Chad-like sexual experiences. However, you can use some of your money and also improve your looks. For an extreme and also well-known example, look up what Elon Musk used to look like! This guy came across as a little dysgenic weasel but as he managed to make billions, he essentially got himself a new face. He supposedly has a dozen kids, and you can bet that if he had not used some of his money on improving his looks he would have had a pretty hard time convincing any woman to let him impregnate her. This is not an exaggeration as there are a few well-known billionaires who look like total dorks. Tim Sweeney, the guy behind Unreal Engine and Fortnite, for instance, is worth billions but he is probably either gay or an incel. With a bit of cosmetic surgery, this guy could line up bitches like Elon Musk.

The most controversial statement to make in the context of insecurities is that race is also a major factor. A lot of non-whites have deeply held insecurities. Just look up how much blacks but also Asians spend on whitening cremes. White women are, next to petite and fair-skinned Asian women, at the very top of the totem pole of female attractiveness. Some people are even very outspoken about this, such as blacks who managed to make a lot of money. They refuse to date black women. I recall some black rapper or athlete boast that he “only fucks white women”. In contrast, no white man would boast about banging only Indian women, or only black women. In the PUA days of yore, for instance, a very large fraction of people who spent thousands on bootcamps were Indians working in IT in the US. They had the money but all those white “bobs and vagene” were completely out of reach for them. They did not feel good about reality having nothing in common with little Dinesh’s porn-induced fantasies of banging a string of white women.

Insecurities are probably there for a good reason. If you think that something is holding you back then chances are that there is at least a modicum of truth to it, and Mother Nature is telling you to work on it. You feel insufficient for being short because this is also how women see you. Probably the best way of dealing with this is to accept anything you cannot change, work hard on what you can change, and put in the effort to achieve your professional and sexual or evolutionary goals. As in any aspect in life, put in your best effort because then you will have no justification for getting hung-up over not having given your best shot, and any insecurity you cannot shake off you can perhaps use as motivation for working harder in some other regard. It is a lofty ideal to indefinitely stay hungry and always strive for improving oneself further. In reality, once you have hit some of your personal or professional goals, you will also find it easier to accept yourself the way you are. This may not apply to you, but it seems to apply to a lot of men. This may also make some of your insecurities fade away.