I have known people throughout my years of playing where maybe they had a gig, but then lost the gig because they didn't really move forward with them.
The real question is, Why do you feel as though that's emasculating? A man can't have a conflict? When you try to do art, it's how it lands on people, and hopefully some people will see it the way that I saw it, which is all of these awful choices come from the place of a man who's damaged.