Incels to MGTOW: The 5 Stages of Grief (Intro)

Lately, I have heard a lot of talk about 'incels', people (typically young men) who are involuntarily celibate, meaning that they want to be in romantic relationships but aren't for a variety of reasons.  Most of these men are likely physically unattractive, lower economic status, lower education, socially awkward, or (more likely) some combination of these.  Because, despite what feminists might argue, we do not live in a patriarchal society, women are the ones who choose mates.  And due to a variety of social factors that have changed over the past few decades, women can be much more selective in who they choose, which means that there will be some men who are just left out.  These are the incels.

One of my counseling specialties is working with adolescent and adult men.  After reading up on incels, I realized that many of my clients could be categorized as incels.  So, the purpose of this series of blog articles is to give some insight to incels and those inclined to help them in order to become happier.

In my estimation, the main problem for those who are involuntarily celibate isn't the 'celibate', its the 'involuntary'.  These are people who want something that they believe is going to make them happy, but are unable to get it, and they often don't know why or don't know what to change, assuming they are even able to, in order to get it.  The two primary ingredients for depression is a feeling of hopelessness and helplessness.  For incels, they feel helpless to change their situation and feel hopeless that the world around them will change for them.  These feelings are exacerbated by a society who feels no empathy towards them and will readily mock or dismiss them, causing their depression to worsen.  This leads to a variety of other issues for the incel including substance abuse, health problems, and suicide. 

When working with clients, I tend to focus on my client's strengths rather than their weaknesses and their competencies rather than their deficiencies.  One component of this is that I try to use an intervention called 'transfer of competency', which is a fancy way of saying that I find something that my client is good at (and we are all good at something) and try to figure out a way to take that competency and get it to work in other areas of their life.  By focusing on what is working in their life, I can help clients develop the areas of their life that isn't working.  I think this approach is the first inclination one has when trying to help incels.  But, I think this is misguided.

You see, an even more important factor in counseling to consider is focusing on what a client has control over rather than what they don't have control over.  This comes up quite a bit.  For instance, a client will be unhappy at work and constantly trying to figure out how they can get their co-workers to act a certain way or change the systems in their workplace, expecting that this will make them happier.  But, because they can't control how others will act, they will be continually unhappy and frustrated.  Instead the client should focus on the things that they can change about their thoughts and behaviors which will lead them to being happier at work.  Because the client is working on himself, he doesn't have to wait for someone else to come along and fix it for him.  His happiness isn't dependent on the actions of other people.

This is the trouble when dealing with relationships.  We can give the incel all of the tools they need to get a mate.  We can give them a make over, teach them social skills, and buy them a pile of nice clothes, but someone else still has to choose them as a mate.  We can't make that happen, someone else gets to decide.  So, I believe that trying to give incels advice on how to change themselves so they won't be celibate anymore is not only unproductive, but counterproductive.  (This is especially true considering that many incels have already tried this approach and already know this information.) 

I think it is more productive to teach them how to change their attitudes and beliefs towards women, relationships, and sex, so that their celibacy doesn't feel like something that is being done to them, but it is a choice that they are making in order to focus on other areas of life.  This is the essence of what it means to be one of the Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW).

In these series of blog articles, I am going to use the Five Stages of Grief, a model of how people deal with losses in their life, as a model for how incels can move through these stages and end up in a happier place.  For them, the most productive way to improve their happiness is to stop expecting that some woman is going to give it to them and to start working on themselves in order to create their own happiness.  And, if that means that a woman enters their lives at some future date, then so be it.  But, it will be on the on the incel's terms and no one else.