Link to Part 4

Over the years my imposter syndrome only got worse. It’s still awful, in fact.

Between 2018 and 2024 – with a couple-year break thanks to Covid – I attended a local writing meetup, and much like the aforementioned polyamory meetup I had a lot of fun writing in a social setting. I enjoyed the small community of leftist intellectuals I found there, and I always felt welcomed and accepted with no compulsion to prove myself to those in attendance. In fact, the default respect I received from my fellow attendees usually felt misguided or even flat-out wrong.

I didn’t spend every minute of the entire two-and-a-half-hour meetup writing; there were days when I just couldn’t make the words happen. There were days when I was preoccupied with something else and figured since no one could see my screen it didn’t matter if I spent the whole session focused on whatever it was. And I’m sure there were days when I spent much of the meetup sexting women, back when women found me hot and felt compelled to say so. But at least 80% of those meetups were spent being very productive.

That said, to some extent I still never felt like I was truly a part of the group. Many of the attendees were published authors, and those who weren’t were almost certainly better writers than I. I’ve never read any of their work and I have nothing on which to base that assessment, but certainly their writing is way better than my own. I mean, just look at them, in their business-casual attire, sipping their lattes carrying their top-of-the-line laptops and tablets in designer bags. They’ve clearly got it together so much better than I do. I’m sure these people weren’t asked to give up their identities, their lives, their dreams! Or if they were, I’m guessing they had sufficient feelings of self-worth to be like “Nah.”

Okay, that’s obviously disingenuous. I think I’m a decent writer. I’m sure all of the people who attended the meetup are too, but it’s certainly possible that any one of them might read something I wrote and tell me it’s fantastic. Perhaps they’d have constructive criticism to offer. But I doubt any of them would read a piece of my writing and condemn it as irredeemable dreck. Even if they were inclined to lie in order to spare my feelings, I doubt they’d even think it’s irredeemable dreck. Still, it’s hard for me to put my work out there, to offer it up for scrutiny. Perhaps it’s my drive for perfectionism that inhibits me. Perhaps it’s Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria; I’m told those two things go hand in hand.

I am certainly a perfectionist. And I definitely exhibit signs of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, also known as RSD. But I can think of another possible reason why I seldom let others read or otherwise consume my work. To fully explore it, we’ve got to go way the hell back to the 1980s.

As a child, I had a vivid imagination. Accordingly, I was obsessed with creative pursuits. I wrote short stories. I drew pictures and even very basic comics. I sculpted figurines. I drew rudimentary cartoons on the edges of notepad pages and animated them by flipping through the pages with my hand. I can’t say that I was especially talented with regard to any of these activities, but more than one of my teachers used adjectives like “industrious”, “inventive”, and “clever” to describe my talents. Of my very primitive attempts at animation, my very impressed sixth grade teacher told me I could be the next Walt Disney. Eleven-year-old Jack thought that was very sweet of her to say, but didn’t believe it for a minute. I mean, that’s nice and all, but get real. I knew I didn’t have what it took to create anywhere near that level, much less on it.

But what if I’d just accepted the compliment? What if I’d taken heed of the fact that she saw something in me, even if it was just the tenacity to keep trying? If there had been more people in my life who truly encouraged these frivolous pursuits I enjoyed, maybe I could have believed in my talents enough to do something with them. Maybe something I created – a novel, a painting, a low-budget film – would matter to someone somewhere. Maybe they’d remember my name as the guy who made that thing they like. I didn’t necessarily want to be rich and famous, though I’ll admit that living in financial comfort sounds really good right now. I just wanted to make a difference. I wanted to have something to show for my existence.

My parents were generally supportive, but no matter what creative activity I got excited about, they always said the same thing: “You’ll need something to fall back on.” Bear in mind that I wasn’t in my twenties at the time. I wasn’t even in my late teens. There was no impending danger that I was going to squander my adult years making Tijuana Bibles or engage in some other dumbass flight of fancy. No, I was a child, an adolescent, and a young teenager when this advice was doled out.

In the 1980s it was considerably more difficult to produce and distribute media. If you wanted to shoot a movie, you had to get a real movie camera and pay for film or, theoretically, buy or borrow a Camcorder, shoot the movie on videotape, and accept that it wouldn’t look like a “real movie”. You couldn’t edit your movie on a phone – such a suggestion would have made no sense circa 1987 – and rather than uploading it to YouTube, the closest the typical amateur filmmaker came to distribution back then might have been inviting friends over to watch it projected on a wall screen, or perhaps on the family VCR.

Writing was probably the easiest of the aforementioned creative pursuits to share with an audience, but back then even that was more difficult than it is now. One could certainly write or type something on paper – a novella, a comic, a magazine – and then make copies and give them away or even sell them. But the distribution channels available in 2025 were difficult if not impossible to imagine when I was a kid. Today one might publish their writing on a blog, or produce a digital work and make it available for free or for pay, either as a downloadable .pdf or through an e-reader app.

Given the limitations of the era in which I grew up, as well as the competitive and potentially unstable nature of such pursuits, I understand why my parents cautioned me against trying to pursue a career in a creative field. I know that it was intended to benefit me in the long-term; I certainly could have tried to write comics or make short animated features, and it’s possible that I could have succeeded. But if I was also a banker, a certified public accountant, or an attorney I’d have had financial security either way. It’s good advice, honestly. But back then what I heard was “You’re never going to make a living that way”, “You’re not good enough to be successful doing that”, or “We will not support you”. Eventually it pretty much killed my passion.

Decades later, it is abundantly clear that when a young child develops an interest, their parent does not need to warn them that said interest may someday preclude them from paying their rent. You don’t need to tell a five-year-old that collecting rocks doesn’t look good on a resume or a college application. You don’t need to tell an eight-year-old about the long-term financial implications of being super into taekwondo. You don’t need to tell an eleven-year-old that hula hooping isn’t a career. Of course it’s not a fucking career.

Perhaps those examples are bad ones. Taekwondo, hula hooping, and rock collecting are certainly fun activities for kids – perhaps less so in the era of Minecraft, media on demand, and instant gratification than they were thirty years ago – but I don’t see them as creative pursuits along the lines of art, music, or dance. I might be wrong about that, but either way the point is still valid: Don’t give a young child – or an older child, or an adult, for that matter – a reason not to do the things they enjoy. When my daughter expressed at age five an interest in ballet and tap, we didn’t say “Okay, but it’s a very competitive field and we’d hate for you to be disappointed if you don’t become an international superstar.” When she expressed an interest in softball and soccer, we didn’t say “Okay, but there’s no way in hell we are going to drive you to tournaments all over the state if you’re still doing this as a teenager.” We just filled out the forms, paid the fees, and let her be a kid.

I wish my parents had approached it the same way.

Up next: The Circle of Life, wherein I find myself at a crossroads. Not the crossroads I’m currently at. A different one.

Link to Part 3

I didn’t realize it at the time, but being a stay-at-home Dad gave me imposter syndrome, or perhaps awakened from dormancy the imposter syndrome I already had. For all their flaws, my parents raised me to understand the importance of a hard day’s work. Unfortunately in doing so, they inadvertently conditioned me to equate my self-worth with my income. For a person with such a belief to find himself in a position where he is unable to earn to the extent he’s accustomed to earning, and thereby unable to provide for his family as much as he believes he is supposed to, is to lose much of his sense of self-worth.

Over the years, I met a lot of people as a direct result of being a parent: Parents of my daughter’s classmates and friends. Parents of her soccer and softball teammates. Fellow theater parents. Teachers. Coaches. Assistant coaches. Dance instructors. I accompanied her to birthday parties, mingled at many a post-season barbecue, and chaperoned her school field trips. The people I met were all people I could have conceivably connected with as friends if I felt like I had the slightest speck of worthwhile life experience to share. But virtually every first conversation I had with one of these people included the question I always dreaded: “What do you do?”

This obviously furthered the notion that my value as a person was tied intrinsically to my financial worth. Hey, before I begin a conversation with you and perhaps get emotionally invested in you as a human being, I want to know what social benefits interacting with you will provide my family and I. Given the circumstances it’s understandable that I might withdraw into my introversion, or at the very least try to avoid mindless conversation. And when I did find myself fielding such a query, I always replied that I was self-employed, and volunteered the nature of my business if asked. Even if I told them that I was a stay-at-home parent, I always led with the occupation that made me money.

I found it increasingly difficult to believe I belonged anywhere. I even found hanging out with longtime friends somewhat awkward because I had little else to talk about other than my kid and experiences I had because of her. Had I seen any new movies? Of course not. Was I watching such-and-such TV series? No, just Dora the Explorer. Did I go anywhere fun lately? Yeah, the park so she could run around. I pushed her on the swings for like twenty minutes. Do you want to hear more about this?

The smart thing would have been to join some sort of support group for stay-at-home Dads, but at the time I knew of no such thing. They may have existed in the area where I was living, but they weren’t on Meetup and none of the relatives who tried finding such a thing for me to attend ever did. There were Mommy and Me groups, and perhaps they allowed stay-at-home Dads to join. But I wasn’t about to inflict my presence on a group of women who might conceivably want to whip out a titty and feed their babies.

Even when we opened our marriage and got involved with other people, the self-esteem boost I derived from my adventures didn’t always last. Extramarital sex, group sex, play parties – on some level these things were a stopgap measure. A Band-Aid. A dose of MDMA to take my mind off of how disappointed I was in myself and the course my life had taken. Sure, I enjoyed being a stay-at-home Dad, but I missed the home and the life I gave up to be one. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I regret none of the relationships I forged nor the sex I had during this time, and I’d like to do it all again, please and thank you. But my point stands.

I suppose that it didn’t help that the things I probably put the most effort into – my bountiful sex life with my wife, as well as the many extramarital relationships I had after we opened up – aren’t things I can talk about with most people. Blame society and its repressiveness when it comes to sex, I guess, but when I was at my in-laws’ annual block party and a neighbor asked what was new in my life, I couldn’t tell them that I’d just gotten back from a weekend hotel stay with one of my long-term partners. And that’s on the tame side! Imagine if I’d instead told them, for example, that said partner and I had done alkyl nitrites and fucked in front of an appreciative crowd at an out-of-town sex club. Not necessarily saying that I did this or anything.

Hell, forget about things I’ve done with women who aren’t my wife. Let’s take non-monogamy all the way out of the conversation. What if I told this hypothetical neighbor that I’d given my wife a facial the night before? Or found her G-spot right before we left for the party? Fucked her until she almost passed out? I’d certainly have been proud of myself if I’d done any of those things. But noooooo, polite society only wants to hear about our accomplishments if they don’t involve sex. That’s bullshit! Some of us don’t have anything PG-rated to boast about.

But Jack, you might be saying, why not just make friends with local kinky/non-monogamous people with whom you can share such filth? For various reasons, paramount among them my wife’s need for discretion, we were never really able to do this. Maybe it was a cop-out, I don’t know. But this is why most of my partners over the last decade or so have been a plane flight – or a long road trip – away. It’s also why, throughout our non-monogamous adventure, I’ve usually been unable to date locally.

Circa 2019, I attended a polyamory meetup. I liked the thought of building a local social circle of like-minded kinksters or similar, but even if I didn’t manage that I thought it would do me some good to be around people with whom I could talk about the highs and lows of loving multiple people at once. I enjoyed the meetup, and I found it very freeing to tell others about my experience and hear about theirs. I’d shared such details of my life on this blog for years, but that’s not the same as sitting on comfortable furniture in a well-lit and very inviting room among people who seemed to be deriving as much validation from the experience as I was.

I made friends among the attendees, and even hung out with some of them outside of the meetup. However, I didn’t attend for long, and eventually I let go of those friends, a couple of whom were by then more than just friends. There are a couple reasons why I gave up on it: For one, I didn’t think my wife liked that I was attending a regular event related to non-monogamy. Sure, we were open, and both she and I had other relationships. And sure, I would have much rather attended the meetup with her, but schedules didn’t allow for it – or maybe she just didn’t want to attend – and since it was something I had sought out because I was interested in it, I opted to go alone. She seemed to disapprove, and I stopped.

But a more pressing reason was imposter syndrome.

Up next: Something to Fall Back On, wherein I discuss the proper way to encourage childhood dreams to flourish.

Link to Part 2

The shock of losing the life I worked hard for quickly pushed my feelings of inadequacy into the realm of depression and self-loathing. Fortunately, this period of intense, awful feelings didn’t last. In fact, it may have been my reflexive distaste over how society seemed to perceive stay-at-home Dads that made me increasingly at ease with the situation. Where I once answered the “Daddy’s day with the baby” question by just saying yes, or “Something like that, yeah” – anything to terminate communication and get the hell out of the store – it wasn’t long before I began rolling my eyes at such thoughtless dipshittery.

Simply put, I got used to being a stay-at-home Dad. While I am not one to regularly express self-confidence outside the kitchen and the bedroom, I realized I was doing a really good job. Where I once felt too self-conscious to leave the house with the baby lest some rando criticize some aspect of my parenting – which is something that did happen – I eventually reached a point where I had no problem taking her on multiple necessary errands, or even elective outings to the park, the library, or anywhere that crossed my mind.

Yes, things would happen while on these outings, but I knew I could handle it without my daughter suffering permanent damage. There would be explosive diaper blowouts. Hourslong crying jags (hers, not mine). I’d forget necessities at home. She’d drop her pacifier into the gutter two minutes into a walk. She’d spit up in the worst possible places. In fact, I’m reminded of the time I cleaned up such an eruption at a restaurant. Trying to hide my mortification as we left, I told the employee at the counter, “Sorry about the mess.” In my mind I was Han Solo leaving the Mos Eisley Cantina, but I’m sure to the staff I was just some asshole whose baby puked like a tiny Mr. Creosote.

Furthermore, I didn’t worry about the local equivalent of Mrs. Kravitz from Bewitched – or Marie Barone, if you need a reference from this century – sticking her nose where it didn’t belong, because by this point I knew I was nailing it and if anyone felt compelled to tell me I was doing it wrong, I had the confidence to know otherwise.

That’s not to say that I wasn’t open to outside input, at least in theory. Nor is it to say that I knew everything there was to know about raising a child, or even taking care of a baby. But just a few months into the gig, I could handle routine operations as though I’d had the job for years. At the time, my social anxiety wasn’t as bad as it would become five or six years into stay-at-home-fatherhood; I had no trouble walking her to my favorite by-the-slice pizza joint. I’d wheel her in, detach her carrier from the stroller, fold up the stroller and leave it in an empty corner of the lobby, then order myself a slice of whatever struck my fancy that day and take a seat at an unoccupied table.

While I waited for my pizza, I’d make her a bottle if she didn’t already have one. She’d sit in her carrier and drink while I ate my lunch. One day as I ate I got props from another Dad, who told me that when his kids were babies he could never achieve the state of calm he apparently saw in me. And for that matter, his kids were never quite as chill in their carriers as mine was.

I appreciated the encounter. It bolstered my confidence and further inflated my ego. Today I suppose the insidious voice in my head would tell me that if the guy really knew me, he’d know what a fraud I was, but back then I sure as hell didn’t see myself that way. I was enjoying my new role, and I still had a thriving business that I didn’t even have to manage on a day-to-day basis. My friends had yet to distance themselves from me, so as isolated as I felt, I still enjoyed regular social interaction. I had a loving relationship with my hot wife, made even closer by the new addition to our family. Why wouldn’t I feel like I had life by the balls?

Up next: I Don’t Belong (Anyw)here, wherein my imposter syndrome makes its presence known.

In November, my wife asked me to move out.

It was a surprise – an unwelcome one, for sure – but maybe it shouldn’t have been. Our relationship had been on unstable ground for several years. For now I’ll spare you the deep dive into the many factors leading up to this development. I won’t even talk about who’s responsible for it. (Spoiler: We both are, perhaps equally.) For now I’ll give you the absolute basics, with the promise of future posts that will examine the path my life has taken, the various factors that have led me to this point, and what exactly “this point” is.

You’ve read the title of this post. Perhaps you are aware that The Obsolete Man is a 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone starring Burgess Meredith and Fritz Weaver. One of several effective exposes of fascism broadcast during the show’s five-year run, the episode depicts a totalitarian society whose members are executed when the state determines they no longer serve a purpose.

At the risk of coming across as melodramatic or emotionally manipulative, lately “obsolete” describes my feelings about myself. Or, more accurately, it describes the way I believe I am perceived by others, specifically those who know me well. In the long stretch between moments of clarity, it feels as though I was discarded once my purpose was fulfilled. Like Burgess Meredith’s librarian in a society that has outlawed books, I was deemed obsolete. And I may not have been sentenced to death, but there are times when it feels like I might as well have been. Again, I’m not trying to be melodramatic here.

However, sometimes I feel this way during moments of clarity, and that’s really unsettling. To be clear, I do believe I still have value, though I can’t begin to imagine what that value actually is; for years, the only tangible purpose I feel I’ve had has been to be a husband to my wife and a father to my daughter. That’s it. (This will be expounded upon in an upcoming post.)

I’m sure I can still serve a purpose, though I don’t believe I am serving much of one at the moment. I will gloss over the fact that no human being should feel obligated to identify their purpose to another human being or otherwise justify their existence; my difficulty in accepting that I am allowed to simply exist without self-recrimination is something I’ll probably address in the future as well.

My life isn’t great at the moment. In fact, this is probably the worst it’s ever been, and while I’d love to say with confidence that it won’t get any worse than this, I can’t do that. But I’ve got hope.

For now, I’m going to leave it at this. But there’s more to come.

-Jack

We first participated in Sinful Sunday on January 8, 2012 with a cheeky photo of Jill getting into the shower. We weren’t new to the practice of sharing sexy pictures on the internet, or even on our blog; however, that initial post was a significant one for us. We’d been blogging for several years at that point, but it really wasn’t until we started publishing Sinful Sunday posts regularly that we finally felt like we were part of a community.

Over the years, we shared 226 Sinful Sunday posts. Sometimes it was me showing off. Sometimes it was Jill. Other times it was both of us. There were tasteful nudes and semi-nudes, and once in awhile more explicit shots. We appreciate everyone who’s taken the time to take a look at what we’ve shared over the years, and we will always be grateful to Molly not only for the opportunity, but for the introduction to this community.

See who else is being sinful at Molly’s Daily Kiss!

Tomorrow is Christmas. I can clearly picture the Christmas mornings of my childhood, when I would get out of bed and creep down the hallway toward the living room. I’d take one look at what had been left under our Christmas tree, my heart aflutter with excitement over the revelation that Santa Claus had been there. That I had been sufficiently well-behaved to make the “nice” list, and that in an hour or less I would know which of my hoped-for gifts he had given me. Then I’d run to my parents’ bedroom and make such noise that they couldn’t possibly sleep any longer and we’d soon be opening presents. But somehow, the excitement of unwrapping my present at age forty-seven eclipses even my youthful anticipation. I wonder why.

See who else is being sinful at Molly’s Daily Kiss!

[Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.]

It can be hard to admit that someone we thought we knew well had concealed their true nature and fooled us. Though I understand that being deceitful is something in which most abusers are highly skilled and I shouldn’t take it personally, I tend to blame myself for acting counter to my instincts and letting Glenn in, so to speak. He was somebody I trusted, whose character I considered above reproach. I’d barbcued with this man. I’d cooked for him and his family. I’d been vulnerable in his presence. As I said in an earlier post, his balls touched mine on occasion. This isn’t a privilege I would grant just anybody; at the time I had determined that he wasn’t a threat, and I had been wrong. At this point it’s impossible for me to not view Glenn as a narcissist or even a sociopath.

Maybe he’s still relatively progressive in his values. Maybe he’s still got the socialist leanings he had when we were friends. Maybe he’s not a racist or a homophobe. And with a non-binary child I’m certain he doesn’t oppose trans rights. But regardless of how he might treat other women including his current partner, the way he treated his wife means he’s a misogynist. That he is capable of inflicting the harm that he has inflicted negates all else. My focus on the good things I experienced through his friendship, and his expert ability to hide the person that he really was undoubtedly clouded my vision and that’s at least partially on me.

Maybe my physical desire for Alexandra, and my genuine want of a relationship with her, put Jill in a bad position with Glenn. Maybe I risked my wife’s emotions. Maybe I even risked physical harm befalling her. (Though in the beginning, when things between Jill and Glenn were good, she didn’t have any complaints and in fact encouraged our initial meeting and the extramarital relationship I subsequently formed.) Was I truly blind to his faults? I don’t know, but I do know that I tend to see the good in people before I see the bad. For someone as introverted and antisocial as I am capable of being, maybe that says something good about me.

Between his liberal politics, geeky tendencies, and sexy wife, I had ample reason to not see who Glenn really was. To the extent that he was displaying red flags, perhaps on a subconscious level I made the choice not to see. While I have no tangible evidence that he’s a sociopath nor the qualifications to make a diagnosis, his behavior – according to Alexandra’s account – does line up with some of the common traits of one. Another reason why I couldn’t see who he really was is that he was very good at being deceitful. Sociopaths lie.

So where does that leave me? Honestly I’m not sure. Though the revelations about my former friend and metamour were nothing short of cataclysmic, I don’t think much if anything has changed with regard to how I perceive men as potential friends. Since at this point in my life I don’t easily connect with men, the shock of finding out what kind of a person Glenn really was probably didn’t make it worse. However, I’m relatively certain that it didn’t help, either.

That being said, this past weekend while at a friend’s birthday party Jill and I struck up a conversation with another couple. The guy – the boyfriend? Husband? I have no idea – was especially loquacious and outgoing, and over the course of the afternoon it occurred to me that he reminded me a bit of Glenn in his extroversion, personality, and mannerisms. Though he was at least a head shorter, the party guest even bore a passing resemblance to him in his build and facial features. We had sociopolitical views in common, too.

Overall, I enjoyed the conversation, as well as the possibility of running into this guy and his – wife? Girlfriend? I have no idea – at a future party. And even though part of my brain kept reminding me that Glenn impressed me similarly when we first met only to disappoint years later, I had to remind myself that this guy probably isn’t a predatory, abusive monster. I hope I’m right.