Common Wisdom said:

The happiest a man could be is to have many different women, and in our age, no children, because that would make the man poor and vulnerable to the marriage/divorce industry. To be out having fun and not making babies is what would really make a man happy.

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‘Fun’ is often counterproductive to happiness.

I know how strange that must read so indulge me and let me talk about myself briefly.

I came to this site for the same reason most other men did: because I suck with women. The one basic message that this site champions and I very much agree with is that self-improvement is what anyone who has trouble with women needs. For the most part I think the better posts are realistic about it, because self-improvement is hard work

In the years since I started my own self-improvement I've changed my mind on a good deal of things. When I think of happiness I think of it the way some wisdom traditions do, I think of happiness as 'human flourishing' or a 'good flow of life'.

What that means is to be happy is to fulfill your own nature, first as a human and then as a man and finally as an individual.

If you meet a man who has had sex with many beautiful women, he may tell you he had 'fun' with them. If you meet that man on another day when he is spending a few hours playing with his child, he may also say he had 'fun.'

Now go to that man and tell him that today is the last day of his life. Then tell him he may either spend it having sex with any woman he chooses, or that he may spend it with his child. He can't choose to split the day; it's one or the other. Any parent who is not filled with venom and bile will chose to spend that last day with their child.

A child is a fulfillment of our nature, as humans, as men and as individuals. Of course there are other things to being human and to being men. Those other things aren’t the point, at least not this time, and having a child isn’t the point either. The point is that happiness will only be achieved by becoming who you were born to be, by fulfilling your own nature.

The brutal truth is that 'fun' often distracts us from that which will bring us happiness. The 'fun' of sleeping around, or of drug use or obsessive video game playing etc., is at best besides-the-point and at worst a denial of reality because ‘fun’ convinces people that these things are important when in fact they are not. They are not important because they do not contribute to fulfilling our natures and thus bringing us closer to happiness.

As far as women go, one wise and faithful Penelope is worth more than a hundred chaotic Pandora’s because one Penelope helps her man build a 'good flow of life'.

If we were all just spirits floating around without bodies, we could define our own happiness. But we're not floating spirits, we are meat. Just as natural selection gave us thumbs it also gave us our brains and all that which derives from it.

Mother Nature is holding all of our leashes, we can either follow her or we can be dragged by her. If you want happiness, follow Nature... if you want 'fun' ... well ... go hang out with some feminists ...

Awesome post, I totally agree with all of it. The problem is feminism is taking men (and even women) away from what's ideally natural. t just makes it harder for a man to find and acquire his happiness from a natural way.

I really don’t see what feminism has to do with any of this. I’m happy, very happy all the time, even when I’m sad. I love my life and those in it, my children, my friends, my lovers, the trees, the birds, my art, who I am, everything. Some days I feel so good, so happy that I feel as if I’m going to explode. People are always making comments about how I seem to be having fun no matter what I’m doing. Maybe I am.

Feminist too, are drawn to me, to feed off of the happiness that I emote.