My Story
I've been single, lonely & felt
dead empty for 27 years....Here's my story.
Let me tell you about a 10-year-old boy.
He's sitting behind a tree.
No one can see him there. That's the point. He's dug a little hole in the dirt with his finger — and he's writing one word in Hindi, over and over.
मा. मा. मा.
Ma. Ma. Ma. — Mother.
And he's crying. Quietly. The way kids cry when they've learned that crying loudly gets you in trouble.
That boy was me.
There was a drop of tears rolling through my cheeks and falling onto the carved letter 'MAA'.
It was painful because I was missing my home and mom a lot.
But I never told anyone.
That's when I learned:
Swallow the pain, perform the role, make them proud.
You see…
My parents had dropped me off at a boarding school in Tilaya Dam — a coaching centre for kids preparing for Sainik School (Military School) entrance exams. They had a dream for me. They wanted me to become an armed officer. A uniform. A military career. A future.
And I had a question I didn't know how to ask:
"Did I do something wrong?
Why are you leaving me here?"
I never asked it. Not then. Not for the next fifteen years.
Because somewhere between that tree and everything that came after — I learned the only
answer that seemed to work:
Perform. And they'll love you.
Here's the thing nobody tells you about growing up in a system like that.
It doesn't break you. That's what makes it so dangerous.
It builds you. It makes you disciplined. Focused. Resilient. You wake up at 5am. You shine your shoes. You stand in line and you deliver.
By the time I got into Sainik School (Military School) in 9th grade, I had already become something. Not a boy who cried behind trees. A machine.
I gave speeches in Assembly. I became House Captain. I scored good grades. I stopped playing games.
We won the Cock House trophy — best house in academics, sports, everything.
On paper, I was thriving.
Internally?
Emotion se door door tak rishta nahi tha.
I had no relationship with my emotions — not even from a distance.
And you know what? I was bullied by my own classmate.
There was a senior in my hostel — a guy named Ankit. He used to make the 8th graders call him 'Bhaiya' (Big Brother). We used to do his homework without being asked.
I learned: don't raise your voice against authority. Don't ask for more than what's given. Stay in line and you'll be safe.
There was a teacher who used to make me stand in front of class because I couldn't answer
biology questions. I felt humiliated. So I went home and studied biology until
I could answer anything he threw at me.
I didn't know this was a pattern.
I thought it was strength.
After school came Kota… Factory…
(A place where engineers are manufactured)
IIT JEE. One of the hardest entrance exams in the world.
My father had borrowed money from my Mama ji (maternal uncle) to send me. One lakh rupees (approximately $1,200).
₹1,00,000
Borrowed · Sat On My Chest Every Day
I knew three routes in that city: Allen Coaching, my rented room, and the mess (canteen) where I ate. That's it. No friends. No movies. No girls. The schedule was my whole life.
And the worst part…
I couldn't clear the exam after doing all this hard work.
105 marks in JEE Mains. Not enough for anything good.
Disappointment. Shame. Try harder next time.
Now finally… Bangalore.
At the end… I took admission in a Private Engineering College in Bangalore by taking an Education loan (which I am still repaying).
During this time… I didn't study engineering. I did something called NETWORK MARKETING (MLM).
I went to strangers in malls, in other colleges, in parks.
"Excuse me, can I have 2 minutes? I can show you
how to make money while you're still in college."
Nobody believed in me. No one supported me. All of them thought I am doing fraud.
As a result… I didn't have any real friends. My friends used to run away from me. Literally. I could see them change direction when they spotted me on campus (afraid that this guy will talk about MLM only).
I kept going. Because I had learned:
Feelings are a weakness. Rejection is fuel. Keep moving.
Keep performing.
I didn't make real friends in college. I was too busy trying to become
something to just be somewhere.
And then copywriting happened.
(My freelancing career)
During covid, when everyone was at home. I was wondering what I will do with my career.
I already quit network marketing and I had zero desire to work in corporates for the next 40 years.
And during this time…
I found a mentor. Invested $3,000 — money I didn't have — and told him:
"I'll pay you the rest once I make money from this."
(just I had paid the first installment of $550)
I made money.
September 2021. First six figures. ₹1,00,000 (approximately $1,200) in a month. I remember exactly how it felt.
Not joy, exactly. More like… relief. Like I had finally justified my existence for the month.
I kept going. Built an email marketing agency. Got 50+ clients.
₹4,00,000
Per Month · At My Peak
And I spent every rupee doing what I'd been trained to do since I was 10.
I cleared my family's debt. Helped my brother launch his photography career. Paid for my sister's education. Got my parents what they needed.
The elder son. The provider. The one who holds
everything together.
From the outside, it looked like success.
From the inside —
kuch nahi tha bhai.
there was nothing there, brother.
There was nothing there.
I was functioning. I was not feeling.
What We Stand For
We reject three things.
We believe in three things.
Around 2023, I went looking for something else to prove.
I was in Mumbai, met a friend who knew 'the Game' — the art of approaching women, attracting them, seducing them. He'd gotten his girlfriend through cold approach.
I wanted that. Not the girl, exactly. I wanted the proof.
"I am a man. I can do this."
So I went out. Every weekend. Church Street in Bangalore. Koramangala. Thousands of approaches. I studied attraction the same way I had studied biology when I was humiliated in class.
I did get better. I got dates. I got close.
And every single time — after every encounter — there was this feeling I could not explain.
Empty.
Like I'd done the thing and the thing had given me nothing.
I'm going to be honest with you here,
because this is where the story gets real.
I had never been able to fully be with a woman.
There were physical issues. Patterns in my body that I'd built since I was a teenager in that hostel — ways of releasing tension fast aka masturbation, getting to sleep, being alone with sensation in a place where emotional expression was not allowed.
My body had learned: get it over with.
Don't be vulnerable. Don't stay.
I tried everything to fix it. YouTube tutorials. Courses. Breathing techniques. Nothing worked.
Because I was trying to fix a symptom. The real problem was somewhere else entirely.
2025 is when everything collapsed.
Not dramatically. Not all at once.
Just — the machine broke down.
I was in Bangalore. Not getting agency clients. Not getting coaching clients. Not attracting anyone.
And then one day, sitting at my desk, my head started spinning.
I already quit network marketing and I had zero desire to work in corporates for the next 40 years.
Literally. Involuntarily turning, left and right, without my control.
It kept happening. For weeks. It would hit after lunch, after a trigger, seemingly at random.
I would shout. I would scream. I would cry — and I'm not talking about a few tears. I mean full-body crying, the kind that comes when something very old finally breaks open.
I came home to my parents. Wrapped my arms around my mother and cried for hours.
Doctors thought I was having a breakdown. They ran MRIs. Blood tests. Everything came back normal.
Because it wasn't a medical problem. It was fifteen years of suppressed emotion finally demanding to be felt.
Everything I had pushed down since I was 10 years old — every moment I had cried quietly and then stopped crying — every humiliation I had converted into fuel — every feeling I had skipped in order to perform — it was all still in there.
And my body had finally stopped pretending otherwise.
This is where I found shadow work.
And I want to be careful about how I say this — because I'm not a guru, and this isn't a story about becoming enlightened.
It's simpler and stranger than that.
I started looking at the patterns. Really looking. Not with judgment — just with honesty.
Why did I push so hard?
Not discipline. Not ambition. Not because I love hard work.
Because somewhere inside me was a 10-year-old boy who learned that performing was the price of being loved. That if you stop achieving, you stop mattering. That emotions are dangerous — that they make you small, and small gets you hurt.
I had built my entire life on top of that belief. The agency. The money. The elder-son identity. The approach game. The search for approval disguised as success.
The emptiness didn't start when the success stopped. The emptiness had been there all along. Success was just loud enough to drown it out.
This was not a comfortable realization.
But it was the first true thing I had felt in years.
I stopped everything.
The agency.
The hustle.
The performing.
And the strangest thing happened.
When I stopped trying to control everything — clients started coming.
When I stopped chasing women to prove something — I ended up in my first real relationship.
When I stopped running — I finally arrived somewhere.
Not at a destination.
At myself.
There's a name for what I had been doing my whole life. It's called operating from performance. Doing everything not because you want to — but because you're afraid of what happens if you don't. Because rest feels like falling. Because slowing down feels like dying.
And there's another way to operate. Not softer. Not weaker. Actually sharper, steadier, more powerful.
From presence.
That's what I'm here to teach.
I founded The Liberated Men because I know this man.
The guy who has built something real. Who works harder than anyone in the room. Who looks fine. Who is fine — by every metric that matters to everyone else.
And who gets into bed at night and feels… nothing.
Or worse — feels everything, and has no idea what to do with it.
I know him because I was him.
For 27 years.
And I know that no productivity system, no morning routine, no cold plunge,
no high-performance coaching program is going to touch what's actually going on.
Because what's actually going on isn't a strategy problem.
It's a signal problem. Your system learned to suppress the signal. And now the signal is gone.
I'm not here to fix you. I don't believe you're broken.
I believe you learned exactly what you needed to learn to survive — and now that survival strategy is running your life, your relationships, your health, and your sleep without your permission.
My work is to help you see it. Clearly. Without shame. And then — slowly, steadily, on your own terms — to reclaim the parts of yourself that got buried in the performance.
This is what I do.
And if anything in this story felt like something you've lived — even a little
—then you're probably already in the right place.
Welcome home, brother.
— Aariv
Founder, The Liberated Men