My health club is like an outpatient psychiatric facility where patients attend daily group therapy sessions between med checks.
It’s a free-floating phantasm we all play a role in creating.
The list of characters that make up this world are as colorful as the disorders that drive them.
Here are my top 10:
1] …
[up next]
Mason [on the right] wears the mark of truth [Urban Dystrophy t-shirt].
He is also 1/3rd my age and already gets it.
Hopefully, the general narrative will serve he and others of his generation well.
~~~
I’m the first to admit – brag, frankly – that I don’t cavort with a politically sensitive crowd no matter what their ages happen to be.
Nobody places boundaries on free speech and/or expression.
If someone is offended by something someone says, they let them know it and just move on.
I find this refreshing.
Every human being, both old and young, knows what’s acceptable and what’s back from the time they were kids — not since the last political convention.
As a parent to animals, I don’t know much about raising human babies. But what I do know is that the way I was raised didn’t kill me, and, in fact, probably led to my avoidance of federal prison.
With this in mind, here are 10 lessons parents should hammer into their kids heads before it’s too late:
1] Corporal punishment is a good thing when kids act up. As long as you don’t put your kid in the hospital, beating them with belts, paddles and boxing gloves is the way to go.
2] Tell your kids the truth about everything. If he or she looks like a tramp – or complete idiot – let them know in no uncertain terms before they learn about it on the playground where wolves will be wolves.
3] Hammer into their heads that the most important thing in life is financial security followed by health…and then love.
4] Life is a food chain. Everything you say and do can and will be used against you in the court of popular opinion, including job applications.
5] Take care of your health using exercise, particularly weight lifting, to help mitigate your psychiatric problems.
6] Sex is good. More of it is better.
7] If you have sex with someone, just know that they now have leverage over you, so always keep #4 in mind.
8] People are rarely altruistic unless it benefits them, which may also benefit you. So there’s that.
9] When guys get older, they don’t necessarily get weaker. So keep that in mind when you decide to fuck with a guy 3 times your age.
10] Holding onto money is always tougher than earning it, so earn a lot so you can play the odds without ending up under a bridge.
🙂
Death or boredom?
I’ll get back to you on that.
The concept of retirement has been around a long time. But since it’s inception it’s evolved.
In days gone by [around the time the Stones started touring the U.S.], most people were happy to work pretty much anywhere and die pretty much anywhere, because working and dying soon thereafter was considered a normal part of the human experience.
The short time between the day one decided to leave work behind forever and the day his eulogy was read was no more than a few years, so it made sense to take a few last walks on a beach before lights out.
Now a 60-year-old man in good physical and financial health is like an adolescent all over again, and, as you may remember, keeping them quiet for 5 minutes was a pain in the ass.
You’d have to lock them in a room and bolt the doors and windows.
Fast-forward 40 years or so and they reemerge, this time around with bucket lists that include 1] climbing specific mountains, 2] getting new and improved wives, 3] starting new business ventures…and/or finding ways to keep doing what they’ve always done, but on their own time.
You can’t walk a beach forever when you’re in your 60’s or you’ll be walking for the next 30 years.
I only know one man who still does this, but he’s in his late 80’s and didn’t officially retire until about 5 years ago, mostly because he ran out of funds to keep playing the game.
So no. Retirement is a premature death sentence to most people of retirement age who still feel very much alive and well.
As I’ve said so many times before that I’m blue in the face, people don’t die off at 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 the way they used to.
In fact, some don’t seem to die at all as evidenced by the number of childbirths attributed to men in their 80’s with wives in their mid-20’s who’ve been known to add another 20 years to a man’s life.
Yea, I was there.
Thankfully, I lived to tell the tale.
The following is a true story and the world I describe is an accurate portrayal of addiction in motion.
~~~
While not a standalone DSM-5 disorder, exercise dependence is closely associated with individuals who struggle with eating disorders, for example.
Many use exercise as a way to compensate for binge eating (bulimia nervosa) by tacking on extra activity to compensate for all the empty calories. It’s not like they’re gorging themselves on chicken breasts and broccoli for God’s sake.
Those with anorexia [extreme caloric limitation] use exercise in a compulsive way to control their weight.
Medical complications from exercise dependence are legion: Cardiovascular events like heart attacks and strokes, absence of menstration, stress fractures, osteoporosis and other overuse injuries.
While some don’t suffering clinical eating disorders, they may still engage in compulsive exercise, spending excessive time engaged in physical activity in the name of health – or to ward off uncomfortable feelings – clinical depression high up on the list of usual suspects.
Typically, these individuals feel guilty when they miss a workout and experience signs of withdrawal, like irritability, anxiety, or depression when their exercise schedules are compromised.
In my world [successful middle-aged urban men], this is considered normal and healthy.
I’m joking of course.
The following are the most common signatures of exercise addiction among older men:
1] If I don’t work out all the time I’m going to fall apart like everyone else my age.
2] If I skip a day, I feel like crap…both physically and psychologically.
3] Though I’m in denial, existential pain is a bitch, and working out 5 hours a day is healthier than heroin.
4] I want people to be proud of me, respect me, give me something I can no longer find within myself, like youth.
5] My marriage is falling apart. What do you expect?
6] I may be gay after all…at 40 or 50 or 60 or 70…
7] When people ask me why I’m always at the gym, I tell them “what else do I have to do?” In addiction-speak: My world is devoid of balance.
Okay, you get the point.
So which exercises are most closely associated with addiction?
ANYTHING INVOLVING EXTREME ENDURANCE, LIKE LONG-DISTANCE RUNNING, SWIMMING AND CYCLING.
As everyone in their right mind knows, strength training in combination with flexibility work, cardiovascular conditioning for no more than an hour at a time, combined with a weekly recovery schedule is the healthy way forward for all aging athletes, not 10k runs in 90 degree heat…week after week after week.
And people wonder why most top athletes drop out of Hell Week of SEAL training – and these people are already top athletes in their early 20’s.
I know. Reality is a bitch.
~~~
I used to be one of those people, training 3 hours a day, 7 days a week, and nothing whatsoever to talk about but diet and exercise.
We tend to feed the addiction through camaraderie with other addicts.
In psych circles it’s known as codependency.
But whatever you call it, my little party was about to end.
One week after my 49th birthday, I awoke from a fitful night’s sleep with a raging fever of 102 with extreme inflammation from head to toe.
I knew right away that Tylenol wasn’t going to cut whatever this was, so I dragged myself to a nearby emergency room where I was diagnosed with Rhabdomyolysis [extreme muscle tissue breakdown that results in the release of a protein (myoglobin) into the blood], which can and will damage the kidneys if not contained.
Fortunately for me, I caught it just in time.
After I was stabilized, my personal physician and I had a heart to heart. he told me in no uncertain terms that I had to stay out of the gym for 30 days, get a personal trainer…and, if necessary, see a psychiatrist before it was too late.
I didn’t ask him to elaborate. I didn’t need to.
After a couple of weeks, the inflammation began to subside, but now depression took it’s place.
I felt like I was climbing out of my skin.
In drug addiction parlance, it’s referred to as the DT’s [drug withdrawal tremors].
While the actual symptoms are different, the downward spiral isn’t.
~~~
When I started with my trainer, the first lesson I had to learn was moderation.
This didn’t mean that my training wouldn’t be tough, but that it would take into account every aspect of what it means to be human.
1] I’m no longer 21.
2] Recovery is a critical component of performance.
3] A balanced life is a life well lived.
4] I will never be perfect, nor will anyone else.
5] Life gives and takes, but mostly takes when you don’t respect its boundaries.
~~~
How did this happen to me?
It happened to me the same way it happens to everyone else: Over time exercise becomes a reliable escape from existential pain.
You don’t have to take a pill or go to a therapist or even engage in discussions that lead to that rabbit hole of self awareness.
All you have to do is run, swim, bike, lift…crawl if you have to.
But nothing about extreme athletics is normal for anyone not involved in professional sports; particularly hitting the middle years and beyond.
After pulling through this nightmare myself, while at the same time losing close friends to exercise anorexia, I guess you could say I’m a bit resentful of the denial.
~~~
ARTICLES WORTH READING:
http://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/treatment-for-eating-disorders/special-issues/athletes/long-distance-runners-high-risk-to-develop-eating-disorder
http://breakingmuscle.com/endurance-sports/endurance-training-is-bad-for-your-heart
http://www.businessinsider.com/is-short-intensity-exercise-better-than-endurance-training-2015-1
I could go on and on and on and on.
But I’ve known junkies who’ve wanted to kill me over a conversation, so for many, this is an exercise in futility.
The reasons men of means have difficulty finding true love has everything to do with them, and nothing whatsoever to do with the relative health of their investment portfolios.
~~~
The following is a conversation between yours truly and one of these men.
By the time you’re half way through it, you’ll understand the dilemma.
“John” is a nom de plume.
JOHN
“I just met this woman who is perfect! Perfect body, nice skin, teeth…and she has a perfect ass. A little flat on top, but I can fix that.”
ME
“Where did you meet her?
JOHN
At a really nice steakhouse. She was at the bar having drinks with a girlfriend.
ME
Is she from here?
JOHN
I think so. She’s in school.
ME
How old is she?
JOHN
33
ME
So she’s getting a graduate degree or something?
JOHN
I don’t know all of that, but she is really into fitness and wants to workout with me at the club.
ME
I’m sure she does. What does she do for a living? Does she have a job?
JOHN
Yea, she’s in medical sales or something like that. She’s really smart.
ME
I bet.
~~~
So this is how it all starts.
There’s a checklist that runs in the blood.
You’ll notice the same list in 22-year-old men who don’t have resources and children that must withstand their poor life choices.
Such men can ebb and flow with the tides, relatively unscathed.
But when an older man of means gets caught up in what feels like a rip current, it can drag his entire life straight to hell before he has time to repair the damage.
The point is older men of means have a tendency to forget their age and financial station relative to the women they choose to date.
In their minds, they’re still at Stanford, and the women are on a field in front of them carrying lacrosse rackets.
This is the delusion that settles in like virus and hides out in their spinal columns for the duration of their lives.
It’s incurable, but it can be contained.
Unfortunately, containing it is akin to death to many, so it just does what the hell it wants until there’s nothing left to do.
I can’t tell an older man that his choices are ass-backwards. He doesn’t want to hear it.
What he wants to hear is that a beautiful young woman of unknown origin and lifestyle will love him for who he is.
He wants it to all the be same way things were 30 years ago.
This is the psychopathology.
This is also why these men rarely – if ever – find the “right” women.
They don’t exist anymore than the person they were 30 years ago exists.
Now they’re standing at a steakhouse bar in the middle of a massive metropolis, hallucinating.
And who takes advantage of their hallucinations?
You guessed it.
5 Bullet Points of Note
1] Never choose a woman based solely upon her appearance thinking you can fix the rest of it. In her mind, the rest is not broken. You are.
2] If a woman in a steakhouse says she’s in school at 33, she is in class where you’re standing.
3] Your fantasies are public knowledge, which means that the women you meet have your number.
4] Line items are fine, but not particularly practical.
5] Imagine your world without money and then place that template over the women in your sights.
“By encouraging people to find and negotiate an arrangement, we hope to create modern relationships based on open-mindedness, open communication, brutal honesty and transparent expectations.”
“This is the future of dating.” BW
http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/25/opinion/seeking-arrangement-ceo-on-love/
Ashley reminds me of someone I once dated, also an entrepreneur.
~~~
Now understand something here: The woman posing with Mr. Wade in the above photo would have no problem waltzing right over his dead body if he weren’t filthy rich.
I don’t mean this in any negative way, but Mr. Wade had to make himself valuable in order to earn visibility, which everyone understands and appreciates.
This revelation set him ablaze with passion to acquire the one asset that would act as a carbon credit for whatever he lacked elsewhere.
Next thing you know, he goes meteoric and declares “love is a concept created by the poor!” before heading off to CNN for an interview.
By the way, a rough translation of his statement is If you don’t have money, no one will love you, which is why poor people created it in the first place.
Okay. Whatever. I get it. We get it. Pretty much all of us, really.
Baby Boomers like myself suffer physical attrition after enough water’s under the bridge.
Fortunately, though, many of us are able to leverage money and power against the cost of aging and manage to stay square with the gods.
Now you know why seekingarrangement.com claims 1.9 million subscribers…and climbing.
On a general note, there is absolutely nothing novel about prostitution.
Whether you couch it as “Hey, I just need a little help with college,” or “Hey, want a blowjob?” you’re still hooking.
Having said this, everything these days is relative.
Just how relative depends on the price tag.
The more you spend, the more normal everything seems.
On a related note, most of the women my peers end up with are passed from one older man to the next within their own immediate peer group.
This is because the women in question are known commodities who’ve been properly vetted, and therefore, predictable within reason.
The downside is that there is often a limited supply of such women within certain demographics, which usually triggers bidding wars resulting in some of the best television fodder on the planet.
“…all older women hear (and thus believe) that older men are only looking for much younger women. OK, many of them are. But are they getting them? Not really, unless they’re wealthy and powerful. (And I have always believed that it’s good to identify those men and remove them from the 50-something dating pool ASAP; I’m not interested in men like that so move along, men, and good luck!”). Vicki Larson, journalist
I hate to tell you people this, but a simple fact can save you a lot of heartache:
Reasonably attractive, healthy and successful older men have lots of choices when it comes to choosing partners.
Too many, in most cases, which is why so many of them are single or serial monogamists, the emphasis on serial.
~~~
When it gets down to it, money and power are the great equalizers.
Conversely, youth and beauty are also commodities openly traded on the human stock exchange.
Whether you’re young or old, you have different assets to barter, but something is always for sale.
Most of the older successful guys I know have an exacting set of standards they apply to the acquired women in their lives.
These are the very same standards, by the way, they applied to their ex-wives before they divorced them 20 years later.
The fact is successful men prefer to date younger women is because THEY CAN.
Generally speaking, women over the age of 17 are not attracted to youth.
They’re attracted to confidence and power.
Therefore when a beautiful woman in her 20s or 30s meets a man who is in his 50s, with the world in the palm of his hands, it’s sexy and alluring to her.
His age becomes irrelevant.
Walk into any upscale restaurant or bar and what you will see are drop-dead gorgeous women accompanying successful older men.
These women were not forced at gunpoint, believe me.
To many men I know, it’s almost irrelevant whether these women are truly in love with them or merely out to make better lives for themselves.
It matters that they are in the company of a beautiful, intelligent and uncomplicated young woman.
The rest they leave to a suspension of disbelief.
She is everything their wives once were before time took its pound of flesh and soul.
No wonder so many middle aged women without much to leverage scream and yell about all of this.
But put them in the position to do what these young women are doing and you wouldn’t hear a peep.
The fact is average men and women receive average returns, and exceptional beauty and youth will always win out where successful older men are concerned.
Is it fair?
No.
But pretending that “real men” don’t want younger women is delusion. That they want an equal is naive at best, disastrous at worst.
According to one NYC matchmaker, this is the normal course of things:
“I recently had a 78-year-old client who wouldn’t even consider a woman older than 50. If you are 25 years old as you are reading this, let me put this in perspective: That would be like dating a 55-year-old.
That brings me to why I can’t take on women as clients; and no, misogyny has nothing to do with it. In this tough singles market, if a man pays top dollar for a matchmaker, he expects nothing less than a 29-year-old model. As a result, I cannot find a husband for a 47-year-old schoolteacher with two kids and three mortgages.”
So where do relatively pretty, average 40-plus women find men of means?
They don’t.
What they can and do find are men of equal value, which is not a particularly palatable prospect for most.
My recommendation to such women:
1] Join a book club.
2] Enroll in a continuing education class at a local college.
3] Attend art openings.
4] Get out of the house – maximize exposure.
5] Go back to therapy.
Nature is neither kind nor compassionate, but the good news is that there are exceptions to every rule.
Just not very many.
Alessandro Manfredini, Model
Ask most women to name an age when men start losing their sex appeal and most would say 39-40.
What would you pick?
The consensus from pop culture and social science seem to agree that 40 is the line in the sand when men start to become “invisible” to opposite-sex potential partners, and especially to younger ones.
But how young?
Most teens don’t look at men over the age of 25, so it’s all relative.
British Crown in Manchester, a hair transplantation clinic, paid for a study started all this crap.
It’s findings were that men 39 or older are more likely to be identified by women as a “father figure” than a “sex symbol.”
In my world, that’s considered advanced adolescence.
Needless to say, the clinic had an agenda in mind.
Since most men lose hair along with color, we need to book an appointment at our earliest possible convenience in order to avoid suicidal tendencies.
The web is littered with this ridiculous “study,” mostly because no one else has bothered to commission a legitimate one.
What I have found through personal experience is that women consider “ideal” and “perfectly acceptable” to be the same things.
Again, I’m not talking about teens. Their objectivity is palpable. But they can afford it, so there’s that.
For everyone else, here’s what women I know cite as critical to a man’s enduring sex appeal:
1] Maintaining Your Hair, no matter how much – or how little – of it you may have.
So, in other words, get a decent haircut and let the gray do its thing.
http://metro.co.uk/2015/02/17/10-reasons-grey-haired-men-are-hot-5065945/
The alternative is to shave your head, which many women like, but only if the head in question does not resemble an egg.
If it does, you’re screwed.
2] Stay Fit and Healthy
I don’t know anyone my age who doesn’t stay fit, no matter what their hair looks like.
3] Take Care of Your Teeth
Most men I know have straighter, whiter teeth than they did at 25, real or fake.
4] Chill & Stay Confident
The men my age who’ve done well in life tend to be confident.
Thus, successful men are attractive to women at pretty much any age.
~~~
SUMMARY
All of these “studies” are complete bullshit.
They play out in abstraction, not reality.
In reality, where the rest of us reside, young men attract women because they are physically flawless and ripe with potential.
Older men, on the other hand, attract women because of their level of success and the maturity and confidence that comes along with it.
People say a lot of things from a distance, but in the end, women see with their ears.
And yes, nice neighborhoods do sound pretty damn good to most of them.
Take a look at Mel Gibson in the above photo.
Notice the vascular character of his arms, veins running like ship rope over rock.
This look is not uncommon for men in their 20’s [with testosterone levels well north of 1000], but it is impossible for 60-year-old men with levels in the 300-400 range, which is pretty much all of us, plus or minus a few.
The only exceptions I have ever seen [and remember folks, I photographed national fitness magazine covers and editorials for 10 years of my career], are men who took steroids early on in their careers and built the framework for what we now see.
Without the drugs, there would be no “framework’ to speak of.
After a while, you can spot users a mile off.
But what’s really interesting about all of this is that taking testosterone is becoming so commonplace that I can envision supermarkets like Kroger offering weekly injections along with flu shots, because like the flu, aging sucks and in many cases leads to death.
~~~
Here’s the hook most commonly used to encourage testosterone use:
Anybody, regardless of occupation, can receive testosterone replacement therapy if he experiences symptoms of Low-T.
Please read the above statement carefully.
It says, “if he experiences symptoms of Low-T,” not “if he has Low-T.”
In other words, no blood test necessary.
There is a difference between feeling more fatigued at 60 than you did at 20. It’s called nature, which is more an annoyance than anything else, and therefore testosterone supplementation is a perfectly rational course of action…like recommending 30 minutes a day on a treadmill for diabetics.
I have many friends who self-administer weekly testosterone injections. Others opt for patches, pills and other delivery systems, but injections seem to be the most preferred method.
When asked what they “take” [because it’s so damn obvious], most claim to be “all natural.”
What this actually means is that they are taking “bio-identical” testosterone, manufactured in labs to mimic testosterone produced by the human body.
The interesting news is that because testosterone use has become so commonplace, most people just say “I’m taking 1cc a week of testosterone, so nothing really.”
I know that many of you don’t believe a word of this. Why would you?
You live in a world where people go to work, raise families, play golf and fade in ways designed by nature.
You accept the fact that you don’t look the way you did 30 years ago.
You try to eat right, exercise when you can and pray you don’t drop dead before your 60th birthday.
This is normal.
Most people don’t expect life to go on and on the way it used to…until now.
~~~
I have a good friend who is on an elaborate “supplement cocktail,” which has led to explosive mass and strength.
He knows the risks, but in his mind the rewards far outweigh them.
I don’t judge him. We all live our lives the way we choose, and as long as we treat one another with dignity and respect, I support him in any way I can.
If he were using heroin, I would do the same.
In the end, the litany of potential side-effects fade along with the side-effects from taking a daily aspirin.
The rationale is that life is dangerous, but that shouldn’t stop any of us from living it.
Using this rationale, testosterone use is relative, like getting out of bed.
~~~
Target Consumers of Testosterone Replacement Therapy:
1] People in law enforcement.
2] Affluent older men with the financial resources available to offset the cost of “aging gracefully.”
3] Young men and women in professional athletics.
4] Bullied young men who seek revenge against their tormentors.
5] People who have unnaturally low testosterone levels as measured by several blood tests.
Click the link below:
You really have to watch this…