‘He was being radicalised right in front of me’: How the manosphere changed my boyfriend

Leanne Yau is a polyamory educator, writer, speaker, certified sex and relationships educator, and trainee psychosexual therapist whose work is all about non-monogamy and sex positivity. She is known on social media as Poly Philia, which is the name of her blog.

I don’t know if my ex, David*, put on a front to come across as more left wing than he was when we first met, or whether he was radicalised out of nowhere by the manosphere, but in the last year of our relationship, he went from relatively left wing to discussing tactics to sleep with women, looksmaxxing, and black pill thinking.

We’d met at university four years before, through a mutual friend. At the time, I met most people on dating apps, so it was quite unusual — and exciting — to be introduced. I’m bisexual and I fall into the stereotype of being into feminine men and masculine women, so I’ve always been drawn to men who I perceive to have a sensitive side to them; who aren’t afraid to express themselves in more feminine ways. That was partly what I liked about David. He gave off a certain energy that I was attracted to and that I found safe. Also he was smart; we had a lot of really great intellectual conversations.

We started off as casual friends with benefits, and grew into a relationship organically over time. I’m polyamorous, so I was very clear from the start that I wanted to have multiple romantic partnerships and that I needed a partner who was fine with that. David always said to me that my sexual confidence was one of the first things that drew him to me, and it was a green flag that he didn’t feel threatened by the fact that I slept with other people, and especially other men. It showed me that he was secure enough in his masculinity to not feel some type of way about it. We had threesomes, foursomes, orgies; we dated other people separately too.

The big pivotal change related to his hair loss. Ever since I met David, he’d been balding, and it was always something he’d been very insecure about. He used to style his hair in a certain way and would use certain products, so he was able to ‘get away’ with it for a long time. But it got to the point where I said, ‘I think you would look better bald than balding’. And so, he shaved his head. That was a big step for him. I still loved him no matter what — his appearance changed nothing for me, and, besides, I still thought he was really hot! But what I didn’t realise was how this change would impact how other people saw him and how he saw himself.

Because here’s the thing: on dating apps, people judge you based on your appearance. The first thing they look at is your photo. Prior to shaving his head, David gave off a very feminine energy — he had a cheeky smile, he was quite lanky, a bit twinky. But once he shaved his head, I think he came across as more masculine. Suddenly, he was not only getting fewer matches, but when he was, he was attracting women who were expecting him to conform to a particular archetype of masculinity, which wasn’t what he was used to. I think that was a major blow to his self-image and self-esteem.

It was around this time that he started Googling representations of bald men and looking up hair treatments, watching content about how to get women and how to come across as charming, and trying to eat healthier and get more jacked. These are all very common manosphere pipelines. All of a sudden, a lot of our conversations became about tactics to get women or new regimens he’d read about online that would not only train his muscles but also make him better in bed, or the dopamine detox he was trying out. He started talking about women in a different way, too. These were all extremely subtle changes that I didn’t really notice at the time.

He also started talking about looksmaxxing, the ‘80/20’ rule of dating, and hypergamy. Back then, I didn’t know what these things were or their connection to the manosphere and incel communities. And he was following all these far-right creators, like Jordan Peterson, Matt Walsh, and Tim Pool, and spending time on 4chan. We’d often sit side-by-side scrolling on our phones, but there was a level of disconnect there that I didn’t know about — we were physically next to each other, both doing the same activity, but we were being exposed to completely different material. He was being radicalised right in front of me and I didn’t see it.

Eventually, he descended into black pill realm, which is where you’re convinced you should ‘lie down and rot’ because you are a failed, ‘bottom-tier’ man that no woman will ever want to sleep with; that you’re genetically inferior and that there’s nothing you can do to change that. Two weeks before we broke up, he was in a sort of death spiral and was telling me about how maybe he should give up, go to the woods, and become a ‘degenerate’. He also said some anti-trans stuff, accusing a friend of trying to ‘wokewash’ another friend by taking her to a trans rights protest, and telling me I was just looking for attention when I came out to him as non-binary.

I didn’t even know how to engage with it at that time. I was just like, ‘This is ridiculous, we’re not even operating on the same plane of reality’. It was more than just confusing and bizarre, it was also terrifying. I felt threatened by him in my own home. I distinctly remember looking at him and thinking, ‘I don’t recognise this person in front of me anymore’. The change was so gradual and so sudden at the same time. At that point, I think he was already too far gone. It wasn’t just this that led to our break-up — there were boundaries crossed on my part that we struggled to recover from — but it played a big role. He had become this ball of resentment, anger, and sadness, and I wasn’t able to have a conversation with him about any dissatisfaction because he’d just shut it down.

I’ll never know if, or when, I could have intervened to stop him going down this pit of despair. It wasn’t until afterwards that I learned what the manosphere was, but now I know it preys on men who feel insecure and lonely. It encourages a victim mindset. These men don’t want to take responsibility for themselves. It’s easier to blame everyone else and talk about what you’re owed and talk about the good old days because it means you don’t have to do anything. David was talking constantly about how he has no power and how he has to wait for things to be given to him and that he can’t get things himself. He was just so defeatist and catastrophising, and would blame me for everything.

I think he was trying to find a sense of community because he had few friends. Ultimately, he was deeply insecure. He treated sex as a conquest; a route towards validation. The more numbers he could rack up, the more he was filling this empty void; the more he felt it would affirm his worth and his masculinity, which had been affected by his balding and attracting fewer women. The real tragedy is that I would have supported him if he could have just talked to me in a more vulnerable way. But instead he was spouting all these nonsensical terms and far-right talking points that I didn’t have the capacity or language to understand. I was seeing what he was saying, but I wasn’t seeing the motivation behind the things he was saying.

As much as it sucked to leave, I knew it was a necessary step for both of us. I broke up with him to free us both. I hope it was a wake-up call for him. I hope he’s come to a sense of acceptance about it, moves on, and realises that he does have control over his life and that he does have power. I hope he works on himself and realises that this was never about hating women; it was about hating himself. I hope he learns to love himself.

*Name has been changed…Read more by Brit Dawson