So he’s got a couple thousand listens on Soundcloud and the response has given him an excessive amount of misplaced confidence. You have heard the “What’s going to happen to us when I make it big?”-speech a myriad of times in various facets of prose, and you may be thinking, “How long can I stomach all this before the reality of undeniable failure kicks in?” Your martyrdom is less a triumph of the will, and more a test of female complacency, a necessary attribute to maintaining a functional society.

Maybe he has verbally thwarted your credibility as being “part of the corporate malignancy.” But ever since Steve, his best friend from high school, moved back home, Saturdays have become a ritual of carousing that descend into howled “freestyle seshes.” And now the “trill beats” thumping from your basement are keeping you awake at night. You are backed into a corner, desperate and alone. Reason doesn’t work in the eyes of a born-again nihilist. If you speak with reservation, you will be dismissed as part of the “conditioned apathy that plagues modern Americans.” You may look at the man you once loved and feel nothing other than distaste for his new, post-collegiate pubestach and constant misuse of outdated ebonics. Your endurance may be slowly diminishing, but don’t lose hope. Here are some tips to help you through this murky time:

  • His momentary delusion is merely a response to the qualms he has with adulthood. He may have been surfing YouTube for some post-Pornhub humor and found the account of some twenty-year-old, making money just by filming trips of him and his friends to the beach with HD camera equipment. He may have paused to think about the life he could have had if he had been born at the right time of the digital age. Maybe his summer intern dealt him some primo Kush and he started Dark Money on Netflix at 3 AM. The supplemental urge to investigate led him down a rabbit hole of convoluted conspiracy. He may be one of the only willing men left to stop this Orwellian for-profit dictatorship and you have to accept his newly manifested destiny. This, in its entirety, is just a phase.
  • All he needs is a beacon of support. Not a logical, rational analysis of the financial risks and unlikeliness of reward.
  • You will have to accept momentary social isolation. His family, his dear friends, the other couples you go brunching with have all come to disrespect him, but you must hold on. You are the only bridge between his quarter-life crisis and sanity.
  • Acknowledge that as a man ages there will be several cycles of uncertainty. You may be his saving grace in these times of trouble, which also means you will have to stand by his many phases: the cannabis entrepreneurial phase; the furry phase; the “I accidentally did molly at the executive conference this weekend and felt the happiest I’ve ever felt” phase; the lumberjack DIY phase; the Napoleonic war modeling phase; the “I jerk-off to younger pictures of your sister” phase; the home brewery phase; the community paper columnist phase; the “I occasionally fantasize about the new hyper masculine 22-year-old recruit” phase; the drunken Facebook commenter phase; the paleo-cleanse phase; the “I discovered hedonism at Burning Man with my golfing buddies” phase; and, finally, the “I’m on my deathbed so I’ll finally tell you I think you’re an uptight c—” phase.

Right now you can only look at these phases with indulgence. The persistent struggle to rise above mediocrity is a part of navigating the confrontational reality of adulthood. Currently, it is rap music, but his hobbies and side projects will eventually lead to some nice accent pieces in your living room and maybe a lifetime supply of craft beer.

But don’t worry, you are not alone. If you look into the inner workings of societal institutionalism, you will see that America itself was structured to prop up dissatisfied men. Your quandaries will always have a listening ear whether it be your girlfriends, self-help blogs, Twitter hashtags, or simply an associative understanding among the entire female population. Subservience to anomic existentialism is just how modern life functions. Toxic masculinity isn’t the problem, it’s the clearest solution. Don’t resist it! Kick back, open a bottle of chardonnay, and enjoy the parade, because there’s literally no way out.