"Confidence" is a completely meaningless bullshit term. Anyone can use it to justify their actions after the fact. She gives the guy an attitude; she thinks she's confident. You say she should have listened; you think you're confident.

You're both full of it. Besides, confidence is as irrelevant in women as it is in men.

Confidence means doing, saying and thinking (within reason) what you want and not worrying about what other people think about it.

Despite all of Bush's faults, the man is damn confident.

i agree with allah.

The problem with the world is there are too many "confident" people. A little less confidence and a little more introspection and you'd see a lot of jackassery start to clear up.

"You're both full of it. Besides, confidence is as irrelevant in women as it is in men."

What a Beta thing to say! ;)

Anyhow, that woman sounds fucking psycho. If a girlfriend flat-out says she had zero interest in my opinion, I'm done with her.

"You're both full of it. Besides, confidence is as irrelevant in women as it is in men."

What a Beta thing to say! ;)

It's because I accept my beta status that I can say it. Most suckas go through life pretending they're not the transparent chumps that they are. They fool no one.

I'm not in denial about my chumpiness; I revel in it.

Allah,

I completely agree with your 6:25 comment, but I think there is a big difference people that are "confident" and people that are confident.

"Confident" people put on a condescending facade and think they are better than everyone else.

This is usually due to insecurity and a sometimes repressed inferiority complex towards the rest of the world.

Confident people are oblivious to the petty demands of those around them and are intelligent and mature enough to be happy with who they are without striving to be (impossibly) perfect.

This was interesting, and I liked the part about accepting criticism...I agree with Allah about needing more introspection.

I disagree with Allah. Confidence is not irrelevant in a woman. But confidence and bitchiness are not the same thing. If this is the way "Kara" and her fiance talk to each other I give 'em two years, tops. A relationship like that is just an unending power struggle, and will get old. He can put up with it for a little while, but Karol is right on target with "Of course, when he leaves her for his secretary who doesn't unnecessarily battle with him..."

I thought parts of the article were good, but this example is just stupid. If she thinks he's too far into her space she could just as easily have said "I always dress this way for meetings, and it's never been a problem. It'll be OK." Confident, but not confrontational.

The part about the guy not wanting to be solely responsible for his wife's happiness is sooooo true, at least in my case. I don't want to be daddy #2.

Confident people are oblivious to the petty demands of those around them and are intelligent and mature enough to be happy with who they are without striving to be (impossibly) perfect.

So "confidence" is learning to accept one's own mediocrity?

In fact, confidence is like "compassion," "intelligence," "sense of humor," or any other desirable trait you can think of. Everyone believes they have it because everyone wants to believe they have it. It's self-delusion at the most childish level.

Here's my question for my fellow beta male sucka-asses out there: what do you have to feel so confident about? You make shit money, have a shitty middle-management job, and date mediocre women. Is the confidence thing a facade? Or is this just a case of loooow standards?

I disagree with Allah. Confidence is not irrelevant in a woman.

Not completely irrelevant, no. Neither is compassion, intelligence, sense of humor, etc etc etc. Any minimally functional human being should possess at least a trace of these attributes. But depending upon what she looks like, that's all that's needed. A trace.

Most extremely attractive women are head cases, yet the demand for them is off the charts. Why? Because no matter how insecure they are -- they still gots dat ass.

God save man from "confident" women. My first spouse was one, a 70s womens's libber (yes, I'm an old bastard} whose idea of independence had us fighting 24/7 over everything." I finally said, in effect, "You win dear; I'm leaving the ring and getting a divorce."

Best move I ever made.

"You make shit money, have a shitty middle-management job, and date mediocre women."

OK, now I know you're not talking about me. I make good money, don't manage anyone and fuck some women that are downright atrocious.

I find it sad, though, to reduce a man's value to how much money he makes and what caliber pussy he gets.

Guys with those values are the dudes I feel bad for, not the ones living a "boring" white-picket-fence suburban existence.

Can't help noticing Red hand has backed up his opinion with a personal anecdote, which, agreeing with him, I could do as well, also with one of those "starter" marriages.

I doubt the other side can do the same.

Karol, thanks for the mention. To use the language of those a generation younger than me, you rock SO hard. :)

I am completely confident that my family loves me. I'm confident that I can't wait to have kids. I'm confident that I'm a good friend

That's like saying, "I'm confident I can jog down to the end of the block. I'm confident that I can go grocery shopping. I'm confident that I can get a bus pass."

How low are we going to set the bar here?

I'm not taking sides in any way, as I believe this entire debate is as subjective as trying to determine exactly how awesome Clay Aiken is, I mean it's enough to say Clay is awesome and leave it there.

But...

That's like saying, "I'm confident I can jog down to the end of the block. I'm confident that I can go grocery shopping. I'm confident that I can get a bus pass." How low are we going to set the bar here?

that right there is funny as hell.

I can be absolutely confident when walking up to any girl, or doing anything, because I have confidence that my family, is just as smart and beautiful as this girl is

Family is just about the worst source of confidence I can think of, because any family worth its salt will love its members unconditionally. What you're saying reminds me of an ugly girl crying on her mother's shoulder because she hasn't been asked to prom, sobbing, "But YOU always said I was pretty!"

You'd rather have confidence from pulling a million dollar deal?

To be clear: I don't believe in "confidence" as that term is used in the dating context. I believe in status. That's the evolutionary baseline from which women operate, but I think it makes them uncomfortable to acknowledge that so they claim instead to value the chief byproduct of status: namely, confidence. It'd be like me watching a girl in a tight skirt walk by and saying, "It's not that I like the shape of her ass. I like shape of the material on her ass." Weak.

Dawn's on my side. She hates herself for it, but she is.

I'm confident I'm a good driver. Yeahhh. I'm confident that Wapner is on at seven. Yeahhh. I'm confident that there are 820 matches in this box of matches, yeahhhh.

I agree with Fisch. I'm confident because I've got amazing friends and family and so I don't really care what anyone else thinks of me. Don't like me? Don't care. It gives me room to make good choices. I'm never desperate for companionship or affection, it helps me choose partners (and friends) wisely.

But anyway, this argument began over whether confidence is important and I say it is. Confidence has little to do with status or money. I've known rich people with no confidence and poor people who think they're big willie. Being happy in your life, and confident in who you are is attractive. End of story.

Don't like me? Don't care. It gives me room to make good choices.

And now we come full circle. The woman in your article pretty much says this very thing to her man -- don't like my outfit? Don't care.
Yet coming from her it sparks a whole post about how all women but you have no clue about men. Double standard, much?

No, that's exactly my point. Because I am confident, I am able to accept criticism. However, if someone just doesn't like me (like, say, I don't like you), it's no skin off my back because I already have awesome people around me. And I listen to and respect their criticisms. I assume the person I'm dating has my best interests so I would listen to their opinion on my clothing and make-up.

Plenty of women have a clue about men. Just not that woman.

It all comes down to using your intellect. To decide as part of a "blanketing" exercise that no criticism is worth a response, is just as baseless as to decide that all of it is, and must result in just as empty & hollow of a result. I'm sure just about everyone on both sides of the debate would agree that the best approach to such things, is to respond to the criticism constructively, making whatever changes would seem to be logical, after filtering it through a little bit of old-fashioned common sense. Take what you like, and leave the rest.

Karol's point seems to be, simply, that "Kara" has resolved not to do this. Because it came from her man. Anything from that fountainhead, must be automatically thrown out -- she wants him to propose, after all. This is pretty deplorable, because if the bum knocking on Kara's door at three in the morning to take a dump on her living room carpet, said, as an aside in mid-squat, "by the way lady that pant suit doesn't look so good" she would probably take it somewhat seriously.

Because Kara's man happens to be Kara's man, he doesn't get that minimal level of respect. Nor can he, ever. He's earned that "special place in her heart."

In the 1830's, when the English Queen Caroline was living in France and having one infidelity after another, the English nobility who wanted her divorced and displaced said to her defenders "God Save the Queen, and may all your wives be like her." That's pretty much my reply to people who are defending Kara, the woman whose boyfriend's opinions mean absolutely nothing. May all your girlfriends be just like her.

I draw my confidence from the fact that in any average setting, I have more guns and mad ninja skillz than the rest of the cats trying to pick up a hot chick.

That and my laptop with the HUGE hard drive. So if I get shot down, I'll always have my porn to carry me through.

Ninja/gunslinger/geek confidence: It's fantastic!

Allah -

You are confusing/equating hubris and aggression with "confidence."

Confidence, of the "I am at ease and say and do things with conviction," is INCREDIBLY attractive to women. Whether men care about whether a woman is confident or not is more variable, I'd say, but it's often a plus.

Aggression and hubris - often as a compensation for self-perceived deficiencies - is not attractive, most of the time.

The woman in your article pretty much says this very thing to her man -- don't like my outfit? Don't care. Yet coming from her it sparks a whole post about how all women but you have no clue about men. Double standard, much?

Right. "Confidence" in the dating/mating context is totally different from this pansy "I have awesome friends"/warm glow definition that Karol's giving us. It's like "jihad" in that sense: she's the equivalent of the person who tells you jihad means peaceful inner struggle blah blah, and I'm the equivalent of the guy who's telling you we all know goddamned well what jihad is and it's emphatically interpersonal.

Look to the most desired members of each gender to find out what people really want. The hottest girls can have any man they like -- the pick of the "confidence" litter. But who do they invariably end up with? Rich guys, of course. Guys with status. Flip side: the rich guys can have anyone they like, but how many of them date the girls with "awesome friends"? None. Because no one gives a wet shit about how awesome someone's friends are. It is, in fact, all about dat ass.

Has it really come to this? Is confidence so cheap and easily attained that merely liking your own friends is sufficient to attain it?

Yeah, yeah... and James Bond is still the secret envy of every Beta male. It's not his status so much as it is his assumptions. He assumes the girl will have him; here, now. Sure, she believes him to be all that, but oh! his foregone conclusion about his power over her? That'll make her weak in the knees. You may as well tell a man not to like sex as to berate a woman for liking power... confidence.

Bill Gates has plenty of status but girls aren't gettin' moist thinking about him. About his money? Csheah! But about him? Survey says... nuh-uh.

Halley's Comment totally summed up this argument back in 2003:
http://halleyscomment.blogspot.com/2003_01_19_halleyscomment_archive.html#90233115

Bill pretty much summed up what I would have said if I weren't a ninja with Guns & Porn.

Seriously nailed what I think is the difference between what Allah considers confidence, and what the fundamental meaning of the word is as it applies to the average joe.

The contrast between my futile attempts at picking up girls when I was in high school, and the absolutely hot chicks I could get with when I was working a crappy retail job was startling. This was pre-ninja, guns & porn confidence too... just plain old, run of the mill comfortable in my own skin confidence.

For a confident guy, a confident gal is a serious turn-on. A confidant guy doesn't need or want subservience or bitchiness. (He accepts a certain amount of bitchiness, knowing that everyone has bad days.) A confidant guy likes a gal that is a partner, not a project. And from my discussions with confident chicks, this applies both ways.

I think it doesn't do the debate any justice to use only terms of sexual relationships.

After all, it's just as true that lots of guys like to hang out with a confident male friend.

People didn't vote for Kerry in large part because he lacked confidence in his stories, and it showed. He was playing at being confident, but he couldn't really pull it off. Sure, he appealed to a lot of other Betas, as the left is full of the post-modern man with feelings and, well, vaginas.

But he couldn't appeal to a majority of us who actually care that a leader is comfortable enough with his convictions that he will ignore the myriad setbacks and our fickle temperaments and follow through with the getting things done.

In the end, one's results in one's goals tends to be a good indicator if the confidence was real, or of the lesser variety.

Allah has plenty to be confident about, and it shows, even if he denies it. Getting slapped down, losing a web site (for whatever reason, I never figured it out), getting back up and running a kick-ass site with Michelle Malkin is nothing to sniff at.

And real confidence grows with (ethical) accomplishment.

Actually I do know why you think that. Maybe you couldn't get a hot girl and figured, it can't be because of me, it must be my status. So you apply that to all people. WRONG. It was probably you.

You know, I was just thinking, "This conversation is proceeding way too objectively. What we need to do is get crazy with the bad-faith assumptions and start questioning each other's motives." And then I click over and here you are, Fisch, living the dream.

Okay, my turn. I think your lowest-common-denominator "mommy loves me" definition of confidence is a pathetic attempt to console yourself over the fact that you secretly consider your life a purposeless failure. Or, perhaps, you're just a closet homo. So now you'll say "nuh uh" and then I'll say "uh huh!" and we'll go in circles like two little scat-tossing monkeys. Is that the game you want to play? Do we really have anything more to say to each other besides mutual expressions of contempt and pity?

As far as your questioning whether physically attractive women tend to value status in men, I concede that I'm probably the only one here who thinks that. If you exclude everyone else here but you, that is.

Believe it or not, I do think betas can get hot girls. But they have to get them at a discount. That means either when they're on the rebound or, as is most often the case, when the hottie in question is a few years into her thirties and she can't pull alphas like she used to and the clock is starting to tick tick tick. In those circumstances, yeah, a beta-male consolation prize will suffice.

My guess here is Allah is right. And recall that Status has many variations.

An indie Rocker or semi-pro Athlete or musician have status just like the investment banker.

Even the Indie Rocker has a chance of making it REAL big. A guy like Steve Tyler if he had been a 7-11 clerk would have had zero luck with the ladies. Because he's Steve Tyler of Aerosmith he bangs supermodels.

We see this all the time, in real life, and it's Darwinian. Natural selection should not make this even an issue, unless you believe the evolution fairy somehow does not apply to humans alone of living things. Physical attributes (fit bodies, symetrical faces and height) indicate reproductive fitness (for both sexes).

In addition, when women want a long term mate (instead of a mere reproductive partner) they select for attributes (status which equals income) that enhance their ability to produce succesful offspring. Because kids require resources.

Jeremy McGrath may not be Bill Gates, but his balance of wealth and genes makes him (along with guys like Nick Lachey) the preferred choice over Mr. Nice Guy.

No matter how much confidence Mr. Nice Guy has.

Of course look at the reverse end of the spectrum. Terry Hatcher was reduced, in her forties, to dating ... David SPADE. Briefly. Who she would not have given the time of day to in her thirties let alone twenties. Rich, famous, beautiful she's often dateless.

The pool of available and higher status men in her circle is small, and she's past childbearing age with a kid already. This is her reality and she understands it and has spoken about it.

[In the nineties, Hatcher was the most downloaded gal on the internet for a bit]

Status isn't exclusive to money, or the potential proffit of money.

If you are a "renowned" anything, you are one hot motherfucker, to the hot women who have all the intellectual, moralistic, and general complexity of a proto-plankton.

Bukowski, a lowlife, retard who MUST have lied, about virtually everything, or he wouldn't be alive, was nailing hot broads, because of the trendy underground rags that published his SHIT! and by shit, I mean the stuff that even living creatures can't tolerate to digest no matter how much effort it takes.

Here is how sexuality works.

Guys? Like who they like, it isn't just hot chicks, I mean on a date. Even guys who don't exactly like the physical aspects of a woman would say to himself "but she's cool" and hit that anyways. As Joe said: "don't manage anyone and fuck some women that are downright atrocious." and he's right, and he prolly doesn't care, he can still tell stories about her being an interesting broad.

Broads? Good luck during your girl talk, when you say that you F'd Bill Gates, BEFORE he was worth billions.

Guys talking about chicks? Find a way to define that woman they banged as attractive. "HUGE TITS," "GREAT ASS!" "Abs you can bounce your cemen off of on it's way to her face" "hair so long it tickled my balls" We are MUCH MUCH more crude, but we also say during honest moments with those who can read through the bravado things like "Dark eyes that I couldn't stop falling into" or "a voice so pleasant, that it couldn't keep me awake if she was singing a dead kennedies song" or "I fell asleep next to Nina Hartley, and woke up next to donna reid"

Men are not so shallow, and women REALLY need to wake up to that shit.

I want a woman to tell me of her last "reminiscent" one night stand? or tell me about the good points of the guy she slept with after only a month?

Women, in general can't do it. So I think that defining those women as "bitches" is correct, but I don't think it's how you get or keep a man. sorry, quick correction a Man, rather than some pussified servant of the lipstick lesbian who just wants to convince herself she's straight for as long as she can mistreat men.

This is a sore subject for some of you. Fisch, did you really just threaten Allah over a dating discussion?

Here's my own $.02. I dated and married a woman who can, in the words of an ex-roommate, "take a punch."

Confidence, how ever you want to define it, is only part of the equation (and note that the confidence has to be real, not fake, not false bravado, no frontin'). I love my wife because she's her own person, with her own life/career (makes more money than I do), and an educational/intellectual achievement that surpasses my own. She's a friend, and a partner, and secure enough in herself to tell me to p*ss up a rope if I really get out of line.

I also think "bitch" is ill-defined, though that may be the perjurious term that the insecure throw at "confident," take-no-sh*t professional women. As long as a person is basically reasonable, I think it's a highly attractive and admirable quality to be able to return fire. I'm not talking about being gratuitously bitchy or argumentative, I'm talking appropriately assertive, with just the right amount of poke-in-the-chest. I'm a doctoral professional, and capable of dealing out a pretty fair verbal/rhetorical beatdown (having endured many myself along the way). However, I have no desire to dominate anyone else, so there would have been no point in marrying a wet-noodle, I'm-so-sorry-for-whatever-I-did doormat. I wanted a partner, a peer, a match... someone whom I could not only respect, but draw on when my own expertise proved insufficient for the task (as is inevitably the case for everyone).

Strength of mind, strength of character, and a certain "bitchiness" are NOT bad things. That strength of character/mind is what gives one to the ability not only to "take a punch," but to punch back... That is attractive.

And for the record, I'm sure as hell no Brad Pitt, so it's not all about looks.

Fisch: You lose. Not just your cool, but the argument. Thanks for playing.

I was flattered to see Morgan K. Freeberg's comment on my "personal annecdote." Now for the flip side, with an intentional hat tip to Karol's Russian heritage.

I did get married again, this time to a Russian. What a magnificent woman she is! Modest and unassuming, but extremely intelligent and perceptive, she's absolutely able to put me in my place when it's necessary, but doesn't go out of her way to do so.

In one sense, it's irrelevant how much my wife's attitude is cultural vs. personal, but I thank the Good Lord -- dare I say, "The Man Upstairs" -- that my wife is like she is. What I most love about her is how utterly comfortable she is simply being female. Implicit in this is a recognition that being physically different from the so-called "dominant gender" doesn't mean being inferior.

As a result, she commands my respect and devotion naturally, without any of the competitive BS that ruined an entire generation of American women in the late-60s and early-70s. It's so simple, ya know. If a woman respects her man, he will respect her in return.

Unhappily, the anti-male antagonism of antique "feminism" still infects "progressive" young U.S. women today. See e.g. Feministe, where you can instantly read dreck like: "no woman, since the dawn of the patriarchal co-option of human sexuality, has ever actually enjoyed this submissive sexbot drudgery."

What man in his right mind would willingly spend five seconds with a woman who thinks his body makes him an adversary? Ah, no thanks girls. Save it for your support group, or when you really grow up, OK?

Well, I think for the most part Allah has the straight of it. Being rich, cute, and/or having power makes EVERYTHING from dating to getting speeding tickets fixed easier so it should not be a big surprise that people who have one or more of those attributes get a prime cut.

And I think the big A is probably right on the balance that people who're used to having a prime cut gravitate to other people who are used to having the same. If you're used to staying at the Four Seasons, you probably don't have a lot in common with the Travelodge crowd. If you're used to having heads turn when you walk into a room, you don't hang out at a dead-end tavern where anything that still has all its limbs is considered an 8 or a 9 - you want that validation that you're not just good enough for the average guy, but that you're good enough to make the top of the heap accept you as one of them.

So I think Allah has a lot of it pinned. Looks, cash, and influence are tickets to the upper class and of the three, looks is the one with the expiration date. If you don't get the boost from it early, you're back with the unwashed by middle age (maybe at the top rank of hoi polloi, but polloi nonetheless).

But that's a generality and as with all generalities there's room for exceptions. I don't doubt there's a fraction - 10%, 15%, 20% - of alpha listers who never paid attention to those things, have decided those things don't matter or who've come to the conclusion that a big percentage of their fellow a-listers are jerks. Those people have to look downward just because there's no place else to look.

Sometimes you get lucky and find one of them.

"confidence" is jumping out of a plane believing your training and gear are probably going to get you to the ground alive.

Being an asshat has nothing to do with confidence.

If I giggle any harder, I'm going to fall off the couch onto my dog.

I have utter confidence that she will not bite me.

Dating is dating, and confidence comes from good outcomes. The most gorgeous woman I know is also the least confident, due to the series of disasters she's had. Not, of course, that you would know it to look at her.

Do confident people fall for lines, or figure out lines? No. Do confident people need to put other people down? No.

But I've turned down dates with rich, confident, good looking guys because they didn't interest me.

As for Beta males? From what I'm told, they make much better husbands and fathers. Certainly, they're better company.

Just wanted to note that "hoi polloi" means "the common masses," not "the elite," from the Greek "hoi" meaning "the" and "polloi" meaning "many."

Not saying this makes me an Alpha Male. Just saw it on a Just Shoot Me repeat.

God you're a loser ace.

Had I read that post right, I might have seen that the writer did use "hoi polloi" correctly, making my correction not only pedantic but unnecessary.

Loser, indeed.

But enough of about me. Let's get back to Allah and fisch calling each other homos.

a "you so homo" fight could get fun... fisch's site has some sweet quotes just begging to be ellipsed (if that's not a word, I'm coining it now.)

"I need to have it in my fingers, to my mouth... without it, sadly, I feel incomplete."

And Allah, well c'mon... everyone knows, right?

Fisch's worthless brothers (I assume; it doesn't make sense, otherwise, to bring them up) marrying super hot women can be explained by market inefficiency, without troubling Allah's theory. Confidence, like sexy, doesn't actually mean anything, but there's a phenomena which status doesn't quite describe. Women are like baseball scouts. They like guys who've already produced, and are tied down to high dollar, multi-year contracts. But there's a sporting interest in prospects that they think can make it to the big leagues, too. Women also tend to believe that they have mystical powers which can fix slacker men with potential. So, pure status doesn't quite do it, but it's all status derivative.

I haven't read the entirety of these comments, but what I've read reminds me of something Zarathustra learned in the course of "his life" in Nietzsche's story. The point can be summarized as, "Even the small man is necessary." I think Zarathustra and his author, Nietzsche, were resigning themselves to what they saw as small in themselves. And that, I think, is almost everything.

It might be worth mentioning here in particular that Nietzsche fell in love with a woman and mistook her for a soulmate. She wasn't at all, and if I understand correctly, she published humiliating words about Nietzsche after parting with him. Nietzsche had been wrong about her, something I guess a philosopher must view as a failure on his own terms. He understood so much, but in one of the prime cases of his own, direct engagement with human affairs, his hopes blinded him. And a woman by no means his equal cast aspersion on what was most valuable in him.

- - - - -

Allah, the Pundit, lives and works on at least two levels. What is or might be valuable about him to most women as women isn't valuable to his readers, considered as people who try to think seriously about politics. Were Allah ever so hot, rich, and high-status, we, including his female readers, would largely discount his hotness, wealth, and status as irrelevant to our higher work. Conversely, what we know is valuable about him politically, his insight and his capacity for comic destruction, must be discounted by a woman as a woman. A woman as a woman, even if she takes Ortho Tricyclen and has Plan B in her purse, is naturally seeking in men the signs that would predict the success of her own family. Her nature aims at successful babies, even if she doesn't, so political insight and comic power, as such, don't get her wet.

But the higher man loves beautiful women, too, because his nature aims at successful babies, even if he has a condom in his pocket. A man with comic power especially may put himself through nine kinds of hell over a failure to own what he loves. If I were a rich man, I would know exactly how to relieve the mind of the higher man, insha'Allah. Since I'm not, all I can do is point to the higher man's love of the beautiful, and say to the rich among my readers, "You, also, know what to do."

I read stuff like the above and think to myself: thank God I'm not dating any more. I'm thrilled to be married to a beautiful and intelligent woman, and extra-thrilled not to have to put up with the dating world.

Amen, Patterico... preach it, brother.

As one of those very happily-married types (annoyingly so, even) you couldn't pay me enough to go back to the dating scene, and single-guy-dom.

Not only no, but hell no.

I got a question.

If you guys know so much about women, how come you're here at like the Gas 'n' Sip on a Saturday night completely alone drinking beers with no women anywhere?

Ladies, please. You'll frighten the pigeons.

I get Allah's cynical worldview, I really do. I just don't want any part of it in my life. Yes, people make choices based on the worst and least meaningful criteria. But that doesn't make them attracted to confidence, necessarily. Money, security, the ability to get in any door, sure. But real confidence?

Labelling a family's love as a lowest common denominator kinda thing is pretty sad in my book. Ask someone who doesn't have it what they'd give up to be part of a loving family. I've dated beautiful girls and lived the rock and roll lifestyle, and now I'm a husband and a father. There's just no comparison.

Not that I would have known it back then. Some things you have to experience to understand.

I meant to say earlier, but didn't, that many of the rock stars and hyper rich people I've run into were among the most insecure people I've ever met. They can turn on the confidence ray at will, but it's not necessarily something they feel internally. For some of them, the truth is exactly opposite: their seeming confidence is a disguise.

Now the few big-time athletes I've met did exude a genuine confidence, but they had proven themselves in their particular fields. You're never going to convince Lance Armstrong he's not the baddest man to ride a bicycle, because it's not up for debate.

sometimes I'm watching a movie or listening to a song like 'Cat's in the Cradle' and I tear up and I have to pretend that I have to sneeze or that something got in my eye.

Because I am the baddest man to ever ride a bicycle and Eddie Mercx would laugh at me if he caught me crying over something as stupid as a song or a movie.

I wish I had the confidence to look Eddie in the eye and say 'Fuck you, Eddie, I enjoy a good cry every once in a while', but, alas, I can't.

~ sigh ~

Livestrong.

Lance.

As Darwin said in a different context, "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge".