---
title: Episode 176 The Broken Man
episode_number: 176
era: late
source_file: Episode 176 The Broken Man.mp3
audio_size_mb: 55.5
duration_sec: 1818.4
duration_min: 30.3
language: en
provider: deepgram
model: nova-3
diarized: true
confidence: 0.995
transcribed_at: 2026-05-27T17:08:43Z---

# Episode 176 The Broken Man

**Speaker 0:** Gentlemen, hello. This is Tom Torero podcast episode a 176 called the broken man. Hello, you fellow sneaky black sheep bastards from London, great British London. Here I am for Christmas to see my family, perhaps for the new year and this Saturday to record something extra sneaky. It's my new dirty tricks daygame seminar, which is sold out, but I plan to record it and deliver it like the baby Jesus arriving, not on Christmas day, but sometime in January. It's extra filthy. It's extra dirty. There's some summaries from my daygame blueprint contribution and my date against the machine and girlfriend sequence stuff. That'll be condensed quickly. And then on to the juicy new stuff. So filthy, all out again that you will need to go to confession afterwards. This is certainly not for good Christian clean living boys. Anyway, today's podcast, something different to the Saturday seminar. The Saturday seminar is pure out again. Do this, say this, stand like this, try this. Stuff that's been infield tested. Pure, practical, actionable daygame. This podcast is on something at the opposite end of the spectrum. A guy living his life, coming up against challenges, coming up against situations, zooming out and thinking what the fuck is going on. Where the fuck am I? How the fuck did I get here? And the idea for this podcast was a Skype call I did last week with a guy who didn't wanna talk about daygame or texting or dating or, buying a van or all the usual flow mad stuff. He just wanted to talk about his life situation. And I'm always a bit wary when a guy Skypes me for this because I'm not a doctor, I'm not a counsellor, I'm not an angel. I don't have all of this down, but a listening ear, the guy already perhaps knowing the answers but just needing to communicate them and to get confirmation about what he's doing. So I've done a few of these this year and they seem to revolve around themes. So as I was thinking about this podcast, The Broken Man, a guy why would a guy call me and be at the end of his tether, perhaps not suicidal but often quite serious. Maybe after a divorce, after a breakup, after coming out of a weird experience in school or university, not knowing anything about cold approach, losing his job, whatever. The themes of those calls seem to fit around the focus for today's podcast. A guy in a broken situation, and I've summarized the themes into five points, which we shall go through today conveniently in this podcast. And yes, of course, they do affect your day game and your hustling. Not that you can't hustle when you are feeling shit inside, of course you can. Sometimes it's therapy. Day game, as I've said, is cognitive behavioral therapy, but sometimes you got to be careful with it. It can make things worse if you're really ignoring everything else going on in your life. I've seen situations where students using daygame as a tool can make things worse. So it is worth zooming out and in the December 2018, it's a good time for me to zoom out, for you to zoom out and to think, what the fuck are we doing? You know, what what is going on in terms of everything else that surrounds surrounds our our daygame life. And to summarize, as I summarize really at the beginning and at the end of all these Skype calls, I say to the guy, this pain that you're feeling, this pain that I feel is when our romantic ideals crash head first a 100 miles an hour into real world truths, into biological truths. So I might lash out, you might lash out, the guy on Skype might lash out and think, well it's those fucking women or it was my boss or it was my mom or it was my job or it was this or it was that. When really, he's got to take a good look in the mirror. I've got to take a good look in the mirror and think, was it the romantic ideals I had that have caused this pain or was it actually who I'm blaming, what I'm blaming? And that's hard truths. That's tough love. It's not nice to hear when you think, fuck, I caused this. I started this. But the good news, the big but, like a big juicy Brazilian butt, as I've said in other podcasts, if you accept that you're the problem, then you also realize that you're the solution. However cheesy and self helpy that sounds, we can talk about practically how to unfuck yourself in this podcast with harsh truths that you can kick and scream and moan against. But, it's like I don't know if you remember Patrice O'Neil, the late great comedian Patrice O'Neil who used to spit out tough love, cold hard truths in his comedy sets and people on one hand would despise it. They'd hate it because it was so prickly. But on the other hand, at the heart of good comedy is of course truth. And he said it like it is. So that's the aim of this podcast. Hopefully it achieves that on a micro level. Okay. The big themes and how many of these apply to you? How many of these apply to me. I'm certainly not saying that I have cracked all of these, that I am the living embodiment of mental perfection, certainly not. Daygame, for most of the time is my cognitive behavioural therapy. It sorts me out, it gets me out of my head into my body but a lot of times it can, it can make things worse temporarily for an odd week or two, for a month or two. So I've got to think about these themes as well. Number one, the guy speaking to me on Skype is not the center of his focus. He's not his gravitational point. He's not the captain of his ship, I e he doesn't have frame. And this can be in so many different areas and instinctively, what does the nice guy say? But that sounds selfish. Of course, you don't wanna make you the center of the universe. You wanna think about your grandmother and your boss and the sweet girl that you're trying to get and your dog and your neighbor and, la dee da dee da. But just like they say on the airplane and like I've said on the podcast before, you fit your oxygen mask before helping somebody else next to you. You unfuck yourself before trying to save somebody else. You stop yourself drowning before you can save somebody else. I'm coming back to how I found freedom in an Unfree World. Do you remember the podcast about that book? How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Brown. Exactly. The benefits of being selfish first. Un fucking yourself first. And most of the calls is where the guy hasn't put himself first. So perhaps he's in a relationship or he was in a relationship where he's lost the frame. And I nag you consistently constantly about frame control. So this guy has given the frame to his girlfriend, to his wife, to his ex wife, even to his kids, to his mom. He's under the thumb. His balls have been cut off. Perhaps he was a player. And now he's sitting there. His balls have been cut off. He's certainly not the captain anymore. He's being bossed around. He resents it. And more more interestingly, the girl resents it. Even though she chopped the balls off and snatched the frame off him, she's now resenting sitting there holding the frame. She's thinking, why isn't he taking it back? Why isn't he taking it back? Why isn't he taking control and leading? So that's a big one. Saying to the guy, do you have frame? On a micro level in your daygame and texting and dating, whatever, but in a macro level, in your life situation, in your job, in in your income, where you're living, what you're doing, your plans, etcetera. And many times, especially if the guy is new to pickup, he's completely made his focus, not his life, not his situation, but he's making his focus the girl. One particular girl. How do I get Sarah at work? How do I get Jenny in the gym? How do I get this one beautiful swedish girl I met during daygame? I've been chasing her for months. I've been texting her for months even though she's not texting me back. He is pedestalizing. He is worshipping. Why? You should know this by now. He doesn't have abundance. So when you don't have options in abundance, what does that make you automatically? Mister needy. One is too close to none, I always say. Mister needy. And when you get into pickup, I get it. It's a catch 22 because you don't have many options. You have to act like. You have to pretend like you're a man with many options, and you do want the girl. The paradox, as I said last week of seduction and escalating is you want her, but you have to seem like you don't. It's a very difficult balance, particularly for the guy who's just come out of a divorce. He's in scarcity. He's just got into daygame. He's met his first date. He's drooling at the mouth. And he's made the whole thing about one girl, and I'm always I'm always dreading that Skype call when the guy says, just wanna talk about Mary. I know Mary for four years. I'm in the friend zone. How do I get her? And it's, it's tough love when you tell the guy you don't. You go out and you do 10 approaches, three times a week, 30 minimum, maybe up to 50 if you chuck in 20 at the weekend. You go away, you go on a mission, you do a 100 approaches, a thousand over a year. You go on 52 dates. You get abundance. It's not what the guy wants to hear. It's probably what you don't wanna hear right now. But you give me another solution for neediness. For the average guy, we're not talking about celebrity or money game here. Anyway, other themes in this one bracket of not being the center of his own focus, not having the frame. He's got into a marriage. He's got into a relationship. Often this is players, former players thinking that it's some kind of shelter from the storms of the sexual marketplace, having to put in the work, having to work on his brand I e himself, having to sell himself I e cold approach pickup, having to maintain everything. He thinks, look, if I can just get one girl, if I can just get a girlfriend, if I can just get married, finally, put my feet up, job done, get fat, get slobby, get lazy, lose the frame, who cares? Because got a ring on her finger, you know. She's not gonna run run away shortly. And then reality hits him in the face, more than a 100 miles an hour. And that is fucking painful. And then you've been out of the game for two, three, four years, maybe a decade and then you call me up again. And it's tough to hear. It's tragic to hear. Especially if the guy says, used to be in to pickup when I was 21, 22, and then I married the third girl I ever slept with. And now I've been in a ten year relationship and I'm just getting started again in his mid thirties. It's gonna be it's gonna be hard to undo all the damage. You can do it. That's why the message of this podcast is not to to just make you aware of these things but obviously at the same time you're thinking, fucking hell. I can change some of these things. If I caused it, I can change it at the heart of cognitive behavioral therapy. Also in this bracket of losing the frame is that the guy reacts to things rather than making things happen. So he's constantly fighting fires, you know, with, somebody name calling him or trying to shame him. So he's fighting back, he's justifying himself, he's apologizing, he's proving himself, he's, he's reacting to gossip, to pettiness. He's constantly at the wrong end of things rather than saying, right. I'm gonna do this. I'm going out now to do 10 approaches. I'm booking a flight to Barcelona. I'm gonna do this. Do you know what? I'm gonna start selling this online. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna go and buy a different fucking jacket. I'm going to make this happen because I look like this so I can change it. Alright? I'm responsible for this. He's at the wrong end of it. Again, lack of focus, lack of frame. And you'll see this as the the biggest part of this bracket, it manifests itself as the mister nice guy, the people pleaser. Where the guy doesn't have frame or he thinks that by giving the frame away, people will like him, the world will reward him. Classic mistake of parents, overly nice parents. Classic mistake of the new teacher. And of course, the mistake that daygamers make in their first year, second year, year, and even beyond. The nice guy on the street, the nice guy on text, trying to solve their problems, the nice guy on the date, doing dating in lovey dovey boyfriend mode before he's even banged her and even in the relationship. Worse when he's in the relationship thinking that she's the focus, let's make her happy, let's not have any drama, let's allow her to lead. And guys are shocked when girls are not happy with this stuff. They'll point the finger at girls not realizing that they gave away the power. They allowed this misbehavior. It's like getting angry with a class of kids when you've been a crap teacher. Or you getting angry with the dog that you've had since she was a puppy and you've just trained it badly. And then you point the finger at all dogs and say, they're fucking out of control. I can't believe these fucking dogs. Well, why didn't you why didn't you learn some basic dog training? Which actually, I think when Mystery was writing the Mystery Method, he referred to dog training manuals. So take from that what you will. Second point. I spent too long on the first point, but that was a big theme. So do you have frame in your life? Number two. The guy has no mission. And I've said a long time ago on Twitter, a man without a mission is as good as dead. And I saw this in my own family, a member of my own family that was completely absorbed in a good way in their job and then through circumstances when that job had to end and there was early retirement, this dear member of my family had nothing to do, had no mission. He was male, Males need missions and projects. And sitting at home doing nothing, having no focus, lets everything rapidly slide and obviously all your little addictions become big addictions and not a happy ending if you've seen it first hand, if you know it from yourself. And ironically, the guy is dreaming of putting his feet up. Sixty five, 67, early retirement. I just wanna do all this internet stuff. I just wanna get a bit of day game skills so I can put my feet up. I can stop approaching. I can stop having to do stuff, earn money, go out. Oh, I'll just sit at home. It's gonna be fantastic. Well, if you're like me, if you tried sitting on a beach for more than a couple of days or you're sitting doing nothing for days, for weeks, it is extremely dangerous. And then that affects number one. Everything slides. The first thing to go is frame. Yep. Tied into this, often on Skype is the guy who has an idea for a mission. He's a dreamer but lots of guys that contact me are procrastinators. They have loads of ideas but they don't execute. Not kill people, but they don't put their plans into action. They spend far too long planning, dreaming, writing things down, but they don't actually go outside and start doing it. And if there's one message from these podcasts and my channel, it's that for good and for bad, I often just say fuck it and start. I have no idea what I'm doing like the van project this year. No experience with vans or van conversions or driving vans or really banging gills in vans apart from the Canada thing. No idea what I'm doing. But the planning was what? A day or two? Less than a day. Scribbled down in the notebooks then fuck it. Let's just go and see some vans. Fuck it. I don't know how to get a van to France, but let's just see. It'll work out. Fuck it. I don't know what regulations you need in this part of Europe. Let's just do it. Let's just see. Learn by doing. Sometimes that gets me into trouble because I don't read the instructions when putting something together but often times it gets you out of your head, gets the ball rolling and what do you know? You feel less broken. That procrastination goes away. You feel tied in with being on some kind of mission. Number three, we shall we shall speed up because I've got to get all five done. Number three, the guy on Skype, on these calls is clearly angry and that's fine, that's why he's calling. He's angry and you know why he's angry because of the divorce, because of the loss of money, because of the situation with his kids, because of years of not being able to get girls, because of shit results on Tinder, Whatever, whatever, whatever, the guy is angry. But tied in with anger, how that anger manifests itself is bitterness, jealousy, rage. And these days, where does a guy rage? Where does a guy show his bitterness, his jealousy? Online. So this guy might be pretty bloody salty. Is that what the youth say today? Salty. Salty tears in his troll comments, in hating other people that are doing well. I've, I've become immune to my inbox and, comments and emails and stuff all over my content where guys just log on and hate. Log on and hate. There's so many that in the beginning when you put out content, when I first did the daygame blueprint 2011 or date against the machine, we'd read every comment and we'd flinch and we'd go, oh my god, he said my hair was funny or my teeth are funny or call me this, me that and you'd react. But just like with girls, just like with shit tests, just like with rejections, just like with flakes, after two, three, four years, you don't feel it and then if you keep going, you kind of feel sorry. You you don't only laugh at the girls for flaking, but you feel sorry for their situation, and you feel sorry for the guy who's sitting alone in his room, and he's got that amount of time to try and shame other guys. Maybe he's writing hit pieces, maybe he's trying to smear your name, he's on his moral high horse, he's got so much time that he's just raging and all that bitterness, all that anger is coming out online. He's living far more online than he is actually in the real world. He's stuck in his head. And when this guy's on Skype and he's ranting and he's raging, he might even be raging at me going through why pickup's wrong and it's filthy and it's dirty it's sneaky, and traveling to pick up women, that's wrong, and casual sex is wrong. He's got to just let it all out, because if he doesn't say it to you, he's he's either gonna leave it in comment sections or he's gonna bring this up, God forbid, with girls, you know, or it's gonna come out in all sorts of ways. So feeling angry when you discover the truth of all this stuff, that's a phase that you go through. Like when I read, The Selfish Gene just before going to university, the book by Richard Dawkins, it made me extremely angry, understanding harsh truths of the world. And that links on to the next point. Being so angry with girls that you are pointing the finger, you are trying to change biology rather than trying to change yourself. Let me explain. You're playing the victim. You're anthropomorphizing, I think that's the word. Your anthropomorphising genetics. So like the title of that book, The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins said he wished he'd never called it The Selfish Gene because it implies consciousness where there's some evil conspiracy with your genes and making you do all these things and it's wicked and it's wrong and it's terrible and it's immoral. Whereas biology is what it is. Gravity is what it is. A dog is a dog. A parrot is a parrot. A microbe is a microbe. A girl is a girl. So rather than taking responsibility for all these things and understanding that, this is the way a woman's sexual strategy works, this is the way a man's sexual strategy works, it's as old as time, it won't change, That you can use it as a loophole. Use this information that's in these podcasts, in my books, on the channel, in biological textbooks. You can use that information to get girls, to get hot girls. Instead, the guy will say, right, fuck this. I'm gonna a, blame, the opposite sex and b, I'm gonna just blame my biology. I'm gonna whine, I'm gonna bitch, I am gonna moan. And he's taking genetics, he's taking biological principles and exactly he's anthropomorphising them. He's putting consciousness into a biological process and this makes him extremely angry. So again, linking to point three, he's angry online but even worse. Here's a guy that might be trying daygame. He's sending text messages. He's going on a few dates but with this anger. I'm gonna get this bitch, you know. She she she played this game, she played me fucking hell. She she gave me a shit test. She did this to me on the street. I can't believe she did this. Fuck them all. And again, it's rage. And the reason the guy is speaking to me on Skype is to let all this rage out. It's not a phase I went through. It's not a phase I actually went through. Perhaps I got it out of my system, at university, Oxford, studying biological sciences when I felt all that anger and rage reading about genetics and evolutionary theory. Then I felt pissed off, but getting into game, I never felt that. But I understand it's a phase you go through, but some guys don't come out the other end. Self destructive, clearly a broken man. And, is that guy gonna progress on the street over text on dates? Is he gonna have a harem of girls? No. If anything, it's gonna go backwards, it's gonna self destruct and pickup's gonna make make him hate himself and the world and and and girls and biology even more. So that was the caveat at the beginning of the podcast. Beware. If this is you, beware. And number five. Number five. The guy is calling me up because he's stuck in his head. He's overthinking things. He reads a lot online. He spends all his day on Twitter. He's really into petty drama. He's really into politics. Like I said, spends more time online than offline. So he's convinced that the whole world operates just like the bubble that he's stuck in on the internet. He doesn't realize that the the niggles, the complaints that he's phoning up about are really not a big deal. He's gonna die. I'm gonna die. The world will end. He's zoomed in. He's not zoomed out. He's making far too big a deal of a situation. You know, why that girl looked at him in a strange way in a shop, or why that one particular girl flaked, or why he, lost one particular girl on his bed this year. He's ranting and he's raging. Again, it's my job to listen. I'm not complaining that these guys call up and speak to me. I'm just saying that these are general themes. And do they apply to you? Do they apply to me? Yeah. A lot of the times you walk around, you're stuck in your head just going over and over and over and over one situation. And, you gotta think, does this matter this year, this decade, for half of my life, for the whole of your life? Are you zoomed out? I've said before, are you looking up into the sky? You don't have to be spiritual. You don't have to be religious. Be You have to have that feeling of awe, that feeling of mysticism. I've made a video from Iceland called awe and wonder, where it's good just to stare into space or go into a forest or go into the desert or go surfing and think of big questions. What does this all mean? We were spinning around in this ball in space. Those are things to think about when you're really stuck in your head thinking about this one particular politician or this one particular thing or this one particular girl. So those are the big five points to summarize. Are you lacking frame? Do you have no mission? Are you getting bitter and jealous? Are you angry at biology? And are you stuck in your head? Of course, they're all related. And of course, having doing all those five things will lead to feeling like or being a broken man. But as the cheesy quotes goes, there is nothing stronger than a broken man rebuilding himself. I e, unfucking yourself. And what would that look like? Again, I'm not describing me. This is a two d ideal on paper, something to aim for. Is a man like this all the time throughout his life? No. But what is the opposite of those five points that I've gone through? What are the things we talk about practically on Skype with guys that are in this broken phase, in this broken haze? Well, first, you come first. Literally, metaphorically, you hold the frame. Be selfish for a while if you've just gone through a breakup, a divorce, you sort yourself out, you unfuck yourself first. Alright? Don't start saving other people if you're drowning. Save yourself first. Linked to that, you say, it's my way or the highway. Yep. That's frame. It's my way or the highway. You stop conceding, you stop apologizing, you stop justifying yourself. You don't give people an inch like that. They'll walk all over you. Again, that comes down to frame. Same with being a leader. You lead, you act, you don't react. You don't whine like a little bitch. You get on with things. That kills the procrastination. Yeah? Which hopefully taking action will lead to abundance. That might be temporary for a week. That might be for half of the year. That might be for the whole year. You build up a little harem. You've got abundance. That makes you less needy. That sorts out lots of your game niggles. You have a mission. And for a time, for the last ten years, my mission has been daygame. So they've been intertwined and that's been absolutely fine. You can have a different mission. And it's not a one off project. Like, I'm gonna write this book or I'm gonna do this seminar on Saturday. The mission is gonna last ten years, twenty years, thirty years. Half of your life is a long term thing. Yep. Like the black sheep bandit theme for me. You understand biological truths with calm acceptance. So rather than the ranting and raging, you take advantage of these truths. You accept them, you breathe in, you use them as loopholes, and you channel all that anger that perhaps you're calling up to me about, you channel it into action. And that's the dream. If a guy can call me up, we talk through all these points and then I hear from him in a few months down the line and he says he's taken action. He's channeled all that rage into this project or getting this girl or doing this whatever. There you go. That's the aim of it. Surprise, surprise that makes you out of your head. So he's spending less time ranting and raging on his blog or on his Twitter, but he's, he's out of his head. He's walking around 10 kilometers a day game session, maybe 15. Fresh air. He's going ice skating with girls. He's going into nature with girls. Oh, thank fuck for that. He's logged off. And the last point is that if you keep trying to do all those things, you'll become that man of amused mastery. Zero fucks given with a smile on your face. Life is too short. Who gives a fuck? The opposite of a broken man is that man with a glint in his eye, the cheeky smirk, seen it all before. Watch my video on Amused Mastery. I made it in Japan last year. That's the aim for me. That's the aim for you, I hope, to unfuck yourself. And this podcast hasn't been, I hope, about self development mind wank. This is unfucking yourself through learning game. If you're listening to this podcast, watching my videos, daygame as I said, can be the tool to do all this. You're out in field, the fields will teach you, iron sharpens iron, so it can toughen you up. But And the caveat is just check that over time it's not making you worse. If so, there are other ways to unfuck yourself, go through these points in in a different manner. But for me and hopefully for you because you're listening to this podcast, daygame is a brilliant way to do it. We'll finish with the quote that I've used before from Batman when Alfred says to Batman, why do we fall, master Wayne, so that we can learn to pick ourselves up. That was podcast a 176. A little bit rambly, but, had to be said. Had to be said. And I hope there was some useful stuff in it. Until next week. Will I do one next week? Maybe. Well, Christmas is upon us, so maybe it would be after the festive period, a bit of downtime with my family. But look after yourselves, stay horny, goodbye.