MGTOWer: “Women are like a bitter medicine that you force yourself to swallow because you believe it is doing you good.”
Like women, cats are sneaky creatures, up to no good.
So over on MGTOWforums, the regulars are pondering the age-old question – should these committed women-avoiders deal with their continued desire to stick their penises in the women they’re allegedly avoiding by resorting to prostitutes?
In the midst of a lively discussion on the advantages of “going pro” over trying to pick up a “bar hog,” one regular by the nom de internet Xtc sets forth some thoughts that, for a moment at least, seem to transcend the usual MGTOW crudity and bitterness.
“I don’t think it’s really about sex,” he writes. “I think what a lot of people are looking for is love, respect, and intimacy – which you can’t buy.”
Why, that almost seems like an insight!
Alas, in his very next sentence he spoils the moment by returning to the standard MGTOW narrative of female perfidy:
I think what put me off women altogether was the realisation that you’ll NEVER get [love, respect, and intimacy] for real. It’s sad and sobering, but that’s the way it is.
Thinking that the attention of women validates you as a person collapses once you realise they are attracted to the worst qualities in the worst men.
Thinking that the attention of women equals affection, intimacy, or love – collapses once you realise they will leave you in a second if they sense any weakness or if a BBD [bigger better deal] comes along. Then you’ll realise that the meter was running all the time, whether this was clear at the time or not.
Women are like a bitter medicine that you force yourself to swallow because you believe it is doing you good. Once you realise it’s a quack remedy, and the whole thing is a scam, you’re free to spit it out and never partake again.
That leaves you with sex alone, which is really rather easy to come by.
If women really and truly are “attracted to the worst qualities of the worst men,” why aren’t they lining up at these dudes’ front doors?
Posted on November 28, 2012, in $MONEY$, alpha males, evil women, hypergamy, men who should not ever be with women ever, MGTOW, MGTOW paradox, misogyny, sex and tagged mgtow, misogyny. Bookmark the permalink. 1,159 Comments.
oh my gord, Bob.
(first-timer here, hi Boobzlanders! I think you all are pretty terrific)
(maybe TW)
story for you: I fell for this guy, let’s call him Kenny! on a study tour I was on, and we got serious really quickly, I moved to a whole new city to be nearer to him, everything was really intense, we talked about marriage, he bought me a gigantic diamond, and we were engaged, and I loved him, and then I started to feel uneasy but I thought it was just nerves and maybe homesickness, so I didn’t say anything. then I saw how his dad treated his family (and me) and how Kenny thought that was perfectly normal and it freaked me out, but I figured getting married would fix that because “our family” would be different. I wanted to keep my commitment, because I still really loved Kenny, and really *wanted* to love Kenny, but the longer we were together the more I realized how incompatible we were and how much of an emotional abuser he was, but I still was sure that if we just got married then everything would be good and okay. and then I started fantasizing about driving my car off a bridge EVERY SINGLE DAY because I didn’t want to get married, didn’t want to be in my relationship anymore, and I was so scared because I didn’t know how to get out of it and I was scared of my fiance.
in a twist, Kenny was the one who broke off our engagement (a month before the wedding) and then tried to sue me for the ring and various other damages, so I don’t know what you want to do with that. but you know what? I don’t think he was faking loving me the whole time or faking wanting a future with me, any more than I was with him. for me I just found out that what I thought I wanted (a traditional marriage with man as head of house and all that) wasn’t even close to what I really did, and for him I think he was fed up with not being able to tell me what to do.
I’m not telling you this because I think you’re a Kenny. but I think you’re being really unfair in painting people as either “100% committed and enthusiastic” or “lying liars who lie”. there really are other options besides “head over heels for me” and “with me out of pity and no desire for me at all”. truly! I wanted to still love Kenny and to still be as excited as I used to be about our relationship, but nothing I did, nothing I tried, did anything except fill me with more dread and cause more and more fights between us where he told me how difficult I was to love and how I didn’t get any say in how many kids we had. it doesn’t mean either of us was faking or lying or promising things just for shits and giggles at the beginning, it just means that the more we got to know each other (and for me, the more I got to know myself) the more obvious it became that we weren’t right for each other.
OK, Bob, reign in the drama…like with this bit:
“..but you want to paint her as having the heart of a Lion?”
And you keep saying you accepted her decision. Read your own posts. You did not accept her decision…at all.
Please answer the following without dragging a horde of strawmen into the conversation: What do you want from us?
“And you keep saying you accepted her decision. Read your own posts. You did not accept her decision…at all.”
I physically accepted her decision. Did she have to deal with me putting on a full-court press trying to win her back? No, she did not. I let her go.
No, you’re the selfish asshole because you’re demanding that other people, not in your relationship, behave a certain way because you believe that you’d be better off if your lady had behaved that way. You’re the selfish asshole because you’ve taken your experience with one woman and used it to condemn most or all women. You’re the selfish asshole because you’re showing yourself capable of handling normal human behavior, like a change of heart, with scorn and bitterness. You’re the selfish asshole because you came here, and made a dishonest argument, then spun it into Bob’s Free Therapy Hour. What do you even want here?
Fuck, man. You’re a selfish asshole because you refuse to see anything you might have contributed to the end of this relationship with a woman who told you she never had long-term relationships and wanted the apocalypse to come. You’re a selfish asshole because instead of attempting to see what underlying personal issues your ex might have had that led to her choices (and, incidentally, I can see several, and I haven’t even heard her pov), you’ve decided that she left you because she’s flighty and wanted to trade up for someone better and blah blah blah Eat Pray Love and reality shows. You’re a selfish asshole because instead of grieving the loss of this relationship in anything resembling a healthy way, you’re trolling a feminist anti-misogyny board with your own deeply personal problems. You’re a selfish asshole because you started this whole conversation here with the proposition that we should go back to the good old days, when women didn’t have any choices other than starve or marry, because you think if that happened your fiancee would have had no choice but to marry you.
Trust me. You’re a selfish asshole.
Yes! Exactly, you “physically accept her decision.” But no emotionally or mentally. And I’m sorry, but you don’t get the Nobel Peace Prize for not physically forcing her to do something she didn’t want to do.
Geeze, sorry about the typos. I meant “accepted” and “not.”
Bob, you’re a selfish asshole for all of the above reasons, plus you come here and go on and on, with shifting goalposts and changing “arguments”, as if we fucking asked you to unload. Protip: we didn’t.
It’s obvious from everything you’ve written that you did not accept her decision. Instead, you decided to hold women and feminism responsible for your own hurt feelings, because having too many damned choices in life meant your fiance didn’t have to be stuck with you if she didn’t want to. So you formulated this theory that women are primarily responsible for breakups — not exactly a sign of acceptance.
You are selfish asshole because you extrapolate your relationship experience to every relationship in existence, and ignore the experiences of other people, including women. You are a selfish asshole because you characterize yourself as a paragon of virtue and do not admit the slightest possibility that you may in at least some way be responsible for the break-up.
Are you seriously saying that women are not vilified enough by society? Are you fucking kidding me? Every time there is a report of rape, the FIRST thing the general public does is question what the woman has done wrong and how she’s responsible for it. When a bunch of dudes in Texas were arrested for repeatedly gang-raping an eleven-year-old girl, the FIRST news missives out of the cannon were about what poor unfortunate “kids” these rapists are, and how hard and unfair their life is going to be because of the accusation, and how the child isn’t really a victim because she was ambitious and wore eye-liner. Every time some nutjob murders a bunch of women, the media is awash in tearful reports of what a swell guy everyone thought he was. Every time a man murders his wife or girlfriend, and children besides, the media wonders what could have driven such a nice man to do something so “desperate”, with the not-so-thin implication that the bitch made him do it. Every time a male public figure is caught with his pants down, the general consensus is that he should have our understanding because his wife isn’t 25 years-old and 20 lbs underweight anymore, and anyway, it’s all the fault of that bitch of a seductress, his mistress. (Amirite?) Women are routinely vilified for staying with their abusers, and simultaneously, for leaving their relationships “and not trying to work it out”. Women are vilified for not being sufficiently clairvoyant judges of character and, simultaneously, for not giving men who communicate the wrong vibes “a chance”. Women are vilified for aging and simultaneously, mocked for obsessively dieting or getting plastic surgery. Really, should I go on?
Women get a pass on bad behavior? Get the fuck out. Ending a relationship is not “bad behavior”. Regardless of the gender of the person who does it.
He’s STILL here? And arguing that his really rather unique experience with the woman who was awaiting the rapture is how relationships in general often go these days?
Another piece of dating advice – if you encounter a person who is awaiting the Rapture, they may not be the best choice in terms of a potential spouse, unless you’re expecting to be raptured along with them. If nothing else because someone who fully expects you to burn in the fires of judgement and who is eagerly looking forward to this event may not be as fond of you as they say they are.
Bob: Really? You could argue “Hey, she pulled the plug before she hurt you even worse,” but you want to paint her as having the heart of a Lion?
Nope. Never said that. All I said was she did the right thing.
You have been (for pages) telling us what a horrible person she was. That’s being, “spiteful”. It might even be hateful.
Which is why I am saying you are a selfish asshole; because right here, right now, you are being a selfish asshole (and a liar).
Look at yourself. You are saying, “yes it’s better we didn’t get married, but she is evil because she didn’t marry me”. Why do you say that? Because apparently you think she lied to you when she said yes.
That’s the only way your story leads to you being treated badly. The only way what she did was, “leading you on”. If she didn’t know she was later going to realise it wouldn’t work, she was completely honest; and fair with you.
And you are being petulant about that. Three year olds act like that, not adults.
I asked you a question: answer it.
Nope!
Please stop making up strawmen to yell at. I do not care about the gender of anyone in your little story, and I really doubt anyone else here does, either. I do not think guys who think they want to marry someone, realize they don’t, and break it off are “pieces of shit.” Please deal with your obvious anger at your ex and your massive projection issues. Being dumped sucks, but emotionally stable, non-horrifically-entitled adults do not believe that breaking up with a partner makes you a “piece of shit.”
Also, Rapture-Lady wasn’t able to make a commitment and therefore PUAs are right about women? Seriously, dude, do you hear yourself?
To answer the bit that Polliwog quoted – no, if you’d been the Left Behind fan who decided that actually you didn’t want to get married after all, nobody here would think you were evil or cowardly. We might think you were a bit weird, but that would be because of the Rapture part rather than the breaking up with your fiance part. I can’t think of any situation in which someone breaking off an engagement would make me call them evil, because that’s a ridiculous level of hyperbole.
“Thanks for answering my questions in that sentence there. Unfortunately, i cannot answer the questions you’ve asked that follow. I don’t know why any of those things happened between you and your GF. I recommend discussing this with a professional who can help you come to terms with this personal tragedy that you have suffered. You clearly are very hurt and wounded and you don’t know what happened. You can only move past it through careful introspection and/or help from a person good at guiding that process.”
“Please answer the following without dragging a horde of strawmen into the conversation: What do you want from us?”
Okay, you know what I want? I can’t get my ex back. Deep down I know that I shouldn’t want her back, because even if she did come back, it would be hard to have confidence in the future of our relationship knowing she could bail at any time and I wouldn’t necessarily have an inkling.
What I want is for guys to stop being the only ones that are labeled as immature and not ready to grow up. How do you think I feel that I was ready to move forward and take on the adult responsibilities of marrying somebody I loved and raise children together. I was “all in” and it ended and I don’t really know why. And then in the aftermath of this tragedy, I look in the culture and it is men that are being blamed for not being ready to take on their adult responsibilities. You have preachers like Mark Driscolll advising men to “man up” and put down the xbox controller and start getting married, and that there are hordes of great women out there waiting for men to show up when they have nothing but man-boys in adult bodies to choose from in the dating market. Well, that’s certainly not my experience. I don’t even own a video game console. Mark Driscoll needs to shut the fuck up:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/why-men-need-marriage/2012/01/11/gIQALubyqP_blog.html
Here you have the irony of a woman who by her own admission turned away a great man because “something was missing” and “she wasn’t ready to settle down” and yet she writes a sprawling essay about how there is a paucity of great men out there ready to take on roles as husbands and fathers. I think Kate Bolick needs to shut the fuck up:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/all-the-single-ladies/308654/
I really do detest the way PUAs only see women as objects for sexual release and not as people. I detest the way MRAs refuse to take responsibility for their happiness and think women are entirely to blame for their problems. I can’t get behind MGOTW’s admission to ignore my biological hardwiring for emotional and physical companionship with women and try to forge a life without them. But they are right about this crap that is being slung at men in the mainstream media.
Mark Driscoll writes:
“She was smart, funny, interesting, successful, attractive, kind, in her 40s, and still single.
After my wife Grace and I spent some time with the woman from our church, we could not fathom why no one had married her.”
BECAUSE SHE DOESN’T WANT TO BE MARRIED, YOU STUPID FUCK. If she’s as great as you say she is, Mark, then at some point in time she had a suitor who very much wanted to get married. And for whatever reason she decided not to accept his proposal. And yet it is men that are being blamed for smart, funny, interesting, successful, attractive, kind, yet still single Grace and I’m tired of it.
Bob: then you need to take your wants up with those authors, because we can’t do nothin’ for ya, man.
I don’t know Bolick, but Driscoll is a grade-A cretin. Why listen to him?
WHY ARE YOU HERE?
This is sounding more and more like it would be better discussed on a board full of people who lean very Christian and very fundamentalist. This is not that board. Not everyone here is an atheist, but overall we sure do lean that way, and the Christians who do comment here are very distinctly not of the Driscoll-fan variety.
Once again – most of the people here don’t care whether or not people get married. We really don’t. We are not the droids you are looking for.
Bob. This is your shit. It doesn’t have anything to do with us.
Dude, this is not a thing that happens.
Not the “men are labeled as immature” part. That happens. The “ONLY men are labeled as immature” part. You found a stupid op-ed arguing that men should be more responsible. Congrats. I’ve seen stupid op-eds arguing that women are too picky, too shallow, too generally terrible. We just had a stupid article discussed here a matter of days ago about how women ruin marriages by viciously having jobs and stuff. Breaking news: the world is full of stupid, opinionated people, eager to share pretty much every stupid opinion you can imagine with all and sundry. The only reason the particular stupid opinions that you are frothing with rage about seem so much more prevalent to you than all the other stupid opinions out there is that you are so busy stewing in your own bitterness that you are blind to everything else. For your own sake, please seriously consider dealing with said bitterness and trying to make the world a better place instead of just trying to add to the chorus of stupid opinions.
Hell, women are labelled as immature if they have orgasms the “wrong” way.
Bob, this time I’m being kind and not snarky – get away from the MRM. The ideas that they are feeding you will only hurt you in the long run. Exposure to those ideas is taking a pain that you were already feeling and ensuring that that pain will never heal. If you ever want to move on and have a happy life, you need to get away from those people, because they will take your pain and use it to manipulate you.
Bob: Why is marriage such a big deal to you? (and why can’t you answer my question)?
People break up. The person who gets dumped usually thinks it’s awful. Sometimes it is. Of the breakups I’ve had, three of them devastated me, because I didn’t want to end it. One was devastating because while I didn’t want to end it, I couldn’t continue with it, since she was engaging in behaviors which threatened other relationships I was in, and made it impossible for me to trust her.
I had, previously, said I was planning to be involved with her for years to come; ideally our entire lives. According to you I’m a shitty person for leading her on, because that changed.
But you… you seem to think she owed you something. That she was obliged to “work it out”. Why? Because you didn’t think it was over.
That’s what makes you a selfish asshole.
OK, you gave us some emotional honesty here:
“Okay, you know what I want? I can’t get my ex back. Deep down I know that I shouldn’t want her back, because even if she did come back, it would be hard to have confidence in the future of our relationship knowing she could bail at any time and I wouldn’t necessarily have an inkling.”
Cool.
Then you explained your rage over the cliche of the man-child meme, and rage over some women not wanting to get married — because they must of had a suitor who wanted to marry them at some point and — baaaah!!! She refused to get married anyway.
I dunno, if you’re mad that your culture is circulating sexist images of men, that’s fine….that’s what feminists mean when we say, “Patriarchy hurts men too.” So, believe it or not, you argee with us on that point. But otherwise, I’m not sure what else you’re trying to say. If you asked “Grace” from the article you linked above, about marriage, she might tell you she’s never been interested in getting married. The author assumes all women want marriage all the time — that’s a sexist cliche, like thinking all men are immature. You get that right? I never felt like getting married, by the way, I love being single. It has nothing to do with what some men out there allegedly wanted for me.
“I don’t know Bolick, but Driscoll is a grade-A cretin. Why listen to him?”
I am angry that he gets a platform in the Washington Post. If he were just another dipshit ranting on a street corner, I wouldn’t care. Mainstream platforms eventually lead to mainstream acceptance of certain ideas.
I CAN’T BELIEVE I READ THE WHOLE THING.
Okay, Bob, here’s the deal.
1. Getting dumped sucks. It hurts. It is entirely okay to feel bad, to be angry at your ex, to lick your wounds for a while.
2. It is not, however, okay to extrapolate that all people of your ex’s gender are morally deficient subhumans.
3. Nor is it okay to demand that your girlfriend marry you unless she can provide an airtight case for not marrying. Don’t be Mr. Collins. “I don’t want to marry you” is a perfectly valid reason, and she doesn’t need to elaborate.
4. Do you really want her to elaborate? Think long and hard about this. Thus far she has given you the kind, feelings-sparing breakup speech, the classic “it’s not you, it’s me.” If you push for a further explanation, she is not going to realize she was wrong and marry you. She is going to bring out the less kind breakup speech. You don’t want that speech. Take the speech you’ve been given and move on.
5. People jumped on you for cutting gay people out of your assessment of relationship dynamics because it seemed weirdly exclusionary. But I understand why you did it. You did it because if you included gay relationships, it would become painfully obvious that your problems are not a Men Vs. Women thing. They’re a People thing. You think gay guys don’t get dumped?
6. You keep dodging the question of how you actually want relationships to work. I think it’s because you know what you want isn’t possible. You want to be able to demand that a woman commit to the relationship you want for as long as you want it, but you want it all to be non-coercive. That’s not possible. Sorry. You know who wants to be able to magically make women fall in love with him forever? Jafar from “Aladdin.” You’re better than Jafar.
7. From what you’ve said, it sounds like your ex’s decision to break up with you stemmed from specific issues (troubled background, current family crises, a history of being commitment-phobic, possible depression) that are not remotely representative of women in general. I’m not your ex. No one here is.
8. I find it very unlikely that your ex knew all along that she was going to leave you, and she was lying just to be a big meanie. She changed her mind. It happens.
9. Seriously, at this point, just be glad she did the halfway responsible thing and broke up with you before the marriage.
Too late.
True story (I know, I’ve got a million of ‘em) my favorite uncle -our relationship is more like siblings- had to call off a wedding because his fiance was cheating on him and got pregnant with another man’s child. Church booked, deposits down. Called it off. My mother was furious and had all kinds of choice words about the woman who’d done this to her baby brother. We were all shocked; my uncle’s a catch.
Three years later, he was married. My aunt is fantastic. Their marriage is awesome. She’s throwing him a multi-day, multi-party, 50th birthday extravaganza. I’ve never seen him so happy and he’s, generally, a pretty happy guy. I shudder to think of what would’ve become of him if he’d allowed his pain to fester in this fashion.
That isn’t our fault, Bob. I don’t think anyone here edits the Washington Post. If your confirmation bias causes you to overlook all the mainstream articles castigating modern women as shallow whores responsible for the breakdown of modern society, I don’t know what to tell you.
But, again, this is your shit. We aren’t Mark Driscoll. And I’ve never even read Eat Pray Love.
This is turning out to be quite comical. Anti-feminist religious conservative tells men in his church to grow up and marry all of the ladies because all of the ladies need husbands – board full of left-wing feminists held responsible for his comments.
What?
“But you… you seem to think she owed you something. That she was obliged to “work it out”. Why? Because you didn’t think it was over.
That’s what makes you a selfish asshole.”
What was I contributing to the relationship’s demise? Do you not think I have ruminated endlessly and lost many a sleepless night wondering how a woman goes from “You’re the best I’ve ever had” to swift emotional cutoff, with almost nothing in between, wondering what I could have done differently? Do you think I haven’t spend anytime at all trying to figure out what was my part and what was my role, and I’ve never been able to satisfactorially answer that question? Do you think I haven’t spent any time at all endlessly replaying the relationship trying to figure out “Okay, maybe if I had done A, she might have stayed? Or maybe if I hadn’t done B, we’d still be together?” Do you think I haven’t beaten myself up mercilessly and torn my psyche to shreds wanting to know where I fucked up and how I failed and what I wouldn’t have given to try and work things out with somebody I loved deeply? That I couldn’t understand that after everything we shared together, our relationship and me was treated as something that never existed? I see other couples go through ups and downs and make an effort to try and work things out. How was it that ours was overall a pretty good deal, and then one day the axe fell without warning?
And don’t you think I wanted nothing more than the opportunity to know what is was about our relationship and me that was no longer desirable? I totally get “Hey, I want kids, you don’t want kids, we should probably go our separate ways.” Or “I’m an atheist, you’re a Christian, we probably wouldn’t agree on lifestyle choices and how to raise kids together. We should go our separate ways.” What am I supposed to do with “You’re everything I’ve ever wanted in a man, but I can’t get married?” Does that statement make a lick of sense to you? Do you think I was this emotionally crushed when my ex-ex and I parted ways over well-understood issues of vocational geography?
I’s not marriage that is that important, one of the things I said in the letter I wrote was “I ultimately don’t care about a piece of paper, I just want to be with you.The rest is just details.”
Cassandra: It’s because we, “deny the truth”. All Women Are Like THAT!
Yeah, it gets tiresome…people reacting to feminism for what they assume it to be, instead of what it really is.
“What am I supposed to do with “You’re everything I’ve ever wanted in a man, but I can’t get married?” Does that statement make a lick of sense to you? ”
Maybe you were, but then later you weren’t.
Dude: That’s selfish. She didn’t want to be with you. That’s a pretty big detail.
“You’re everything I’ve ever wanted in a man, but I can’t get married?” Does that statement make a lick of sense to you?
You aren’t going to like this.
Yes. Guess what… I’ve heard exactly that. It sucked. We were supposed to get married. It’s the way it goes sometimes. Now, four years later, I can tell you some of what caused it. It still sucks. It’s also not changeable. What was, is no longer. And maybe, if she’d “wanted it more” we could have worked it out.
Maybe not. But, for whatever reasons, she decided the pain wasn’t worth it. So she broke it off. That’s what your former-fiancé did.
You don’t seem to be able to get past that.
It’s selfish. And it’s self-defeating. People are ends, in and of themselves. In the Game of Life there are no NPCs.
Also, since when do feelings make sense?
And Bob… I don’t deserve a cookie for coping with my breakup. You don’t deserve cookies for “physically accepting it” (which, in English means you didn’t stalk her. That’s not praiseworthy, it’s baseline).
Bob: “I am angry that he gets a platform in the Washington Post. If he were just another dipshit ranting on a street corner, I wouldn’t care. Mainstream platforms eventually lead to mainstream acceptance of certain ideas.”
I AM CONSTANTLY MAD ABOUT SO MANY THINGS IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA DO YOU KNOW WHERE I DO __NOT___ POST MY 40000 WORD SCREEDS ABOUT MY RAGE???
In a blog where most people agree with me!
“You don’t seem to be able to get past that.”
My head knows that not all women will wreck this kind of havoc, but my heart is not so sure. And the dating experiences I’ve had trying to get back out there have overall not been positive. If anything they have reinforced my fears that a significant percentage of women are not to be trusted. I bear some responsibility for that, because like attracts like when you are grieving and feeling emotionally disturbed. I turned down one opportunity to enter into a monogamous arrangement because I did not feel ready.
Yeah, that’s the “Nice Guy” (TM) part. “I didn’t beat you or kill bunnies — you should go out with me because I’m so nice, god damn it!!!”
Seriously Bob there are a lot of problematic things with the stuff you’ve posted but I’ll just say this, it really does seem like you’re in huge emotional pain about your ex and you need to talk to someone who can help you work through that. The MRM is not the place, but probably neither is here. But i’ll tell you what, if you you are sick of anyone blaming one gender for always doing one thing? You need more feminism. We hate that shit too.
Wow. Have people really spent over a page trying to reassure this guy?
I am so perplexed.
My head knows that not all women will wreck this kind of havoc, but my heart is not so sure.
As a man, I then recommend you take the time to deal with it and let it go. Dating people when you feel you can’t trust them is a disaster waiting to happen.
Bob, seriously, do you think that spending hours arguing about how actually women are like that on a blog that exists to make fun of misogyny is a productive use of your time? Do you think this is going to help you to move on? Because it seems to me that you’ve set yourself up a situation in which you’re willingly accepting negative input (from the MRM), and then making sure that a lot of women scold you (coming here and insisting that women are fickle and need to change and so on), thus reinforcing your current paranoia.
As to the idea that women aren’t taken to task… The War on Men.
“My head knows that not all women will wreck this kind of havoc, but my heart is not so sure. And the dating experiences I’ve had trying to get back out there have overall not been positive. If anything they have reinforced my fears that a significant percentage of women are not to be trusted. I bear some responsibility for that, because like attracts like when you are grieving and feeling emotionally disturbed. I turned down one opportunity to enter into a monogamous arrangement because I did not feel ready.”
OK.
That “…reinforced my fears that a signifigant percentage of women are not to be trusted,” is generally a shitty thing to say. But like you said, like attracts like. You think women are untrustworthy and somehow that kind of woman is allegedly flocking to you.
Bob: shit happens. Accept that and move on. But before moving on to other women, get right with shit happening, or you and them will be very fucking miserable.
And you really need to think about what Cassandra just wrote:
“…you’ve set yourself up a situation in which you’re willingly accepting negative input (from the MRM), and then making sure that a lot of women scold you (coming here and insisting that women are fickle and need to change and so on), thus reinforcing your current paranoia.”
Also, if you honestly believe that a significant percentage of women are not to be trusted, then you shouldn’t be dating right now. Not just to protect yourself, but also because that attitude is prejudiced and with it in place you may well end up hurting someone else. Would you want to date someone who considered you inherently untrustworthy?
@LBT, I think that part of the reason that people are engaging Bob may be because they see a little tiny glimmer of hope there.
He’s saying this stuff because he hurts, and the wound is still there and it’s not healed and scarred over. It seems like he sort of understands that he’s coming to these opinions from a wounded place, and while the truths here are harsh, you can see that they’ve been softening over the past few pages.
There’s a possibility that this stuff is reaching him.
RE: Inu
Meh, I was here for most of the whole Al saga. He is still looking for stuff in a really bizarre place. It’d be like if I went to an MRA site raging about being raped by a man and therefore all men are suspect. I mean, if he gets something out of it, fine… but don’t they have like, actual advice sites for that?
Well yeah. I just think it’s why we don’t have ban consensus like we achieved for ole Joe in the other thread.
Hi KittySnide! Thanks for your story.
I have a relationship story kind of like that. I think nearly everyone does. Breakups suck, even when they’re for the best, and they suck even more when you don’t see them coming. Sometimes you could even use therapy after an especially bad one. Bob? Are you still here? We are not your therapists, but maybe you could use one. A real one, not a thread on the internet.
Captain Awkward is always relevant, but sometimes she is extra, extra relevant, with a cherry on top.
Thanks ClaireDammit!
it took me a while to even get to anger because for the first bit I was just so relieved. but I *did* end up going to therapy for a bit because I wanted to make sure I dealt with all the shit I’d internalized during our relationship.
but (and Bob, if you’re still here, take note) when the wounds were still fresh I didn’t seek out a group of strangers and make them listen to all my woes, and I didn’t make huge sweeping generalizations about all men as a result of Kenny’s assholery.
Bob, no one is Mr. Burnsing their hands in glee at your misery or saying “GOOD! IT’S GOOD YOU ARE SAD BECAUSE YOU ARE A BAD BAD MAN.” no one thinks it’s a good thing you were hurt or that you deserve it. what’s frustrating is that you seem to be dealing with your pain in ways that aren’t going to help you heal anytime soon, and you seem to think that because your ex made a choice to end your relationship that that means your entire relationship and connection was false. Those ideas aren’t going to help you heal either.
“Closure” is a myth. As long as you keep thinking that if you could only know “why”, or just have a final “goodbye” conversation, or whatever it is you think you need to move on (whether that means you are single for a while, or you look for another relationship), it’s going to be difficult for you. You’re the only one who can decide to close that chapter in your life and go on to see what’s next for you.
RE: KittySnyde
Pretty tangential, but I kinda shudder whenever I hear closure. There are a good few folks I ran from, and I know they feel bad. Sometimes I feel bad, because they will never, ever understand why I’m gone. Even if I did come back and have a sit down and an explanation (which in at least one case I did, more than once), they won’t understand. All they know is that I’m gone, and that makes them sad.
Thing is though, the whole reason I ran was because the situation was so bad. The idea that someone should feel obligated to return to one, just to soothe the feelings of someone THEY HAVE ALREADY LEFT… it bothers me.
Sometimes people ditch you, and you don’t get to know why. That’s sad, but that’s life.
oh noes! blockquote fail! I am a true boobzer at last
“Thing is though, the whole reason I ran was because the situation was so bad. The idea that someone should feel obligated to return to one, just to soothe the feelings of someone THEY HAVE ALREADY LEFT… it bothers me.”
Thing is, just speaking to my own unique situation, it was not “so bad.” No, I’m not a mind-reader, and I’ve been in other relationships. But I know she would not have stayed as long as she did and gotten as serious as she did if it was “so bad.”
Now of course, it doesn’t matter how well I treated her or tried to be the best possible boyfriend/fiance. If she wanted to leave, and I somehow had the power to make her stay even though she didn’t want to, that’s a prison. That’s control and not love.
People asked me on this thread what I want: to be able to feel secure and comfortable in romantic relationships again. I didn’t say complacent, but secure and comfortable. I know relationships end and nobody can predict the future, but it will never work if you are wracked with paranoia and insecurity. If all relationships such as my last one were that fragile and unpredictable, I’m not so sure I would ever want to be in one again.
Fact not in evidence.
“what’s frustrating is that you seem to be dealing with your pain in ways that aren’t going to help you heal anytime soon, and you seem to think that because your ex made a choice to end your relationship that that means your entire relationship and connection was false. Those ideas aren’t going to help you heal either.”
Relationships in general are legitimately frightening to me now.
Then don’t. Womanity will not weep for your exit from the dating pool.
You can start dating again whenever you feel like it.
re: LBT:
I can understand why “closure” is so important to some people, because in their heads they truly think that the final conversation or explanation or email is going to say exactly what they need to hear to get on with their lives. But I think they’re mistaken for the most part. When I compare my breakup with Kenny to a previous one, in which both of us actively sought closure for MONTHS… I prefer the Kenny “closure” (read: none from him). It was up to me to decide how to work through my hurts and thoughts and up to me to “say goodbye” in a way that meant something *to me* and would help *me* heal, since fuck Kenny, that dude was a jackass.
and you’re right: people leave, people ditch, people get distant, and sometimes you never know why they did. but the worst thing (well, one of the worst things I guess) we can do when that happens is cling to threads of the relationship and say we’ll let go when the person in question does X for us.
Belated welcomes to topaz_grrl and KittySnide! :)
Bob is not anywhere near being emotionally healthy enough to be in a relationship. Sorry for the internet diagnosis, but sometimes it’s just so clear. Bob, what you need is therapy. Find yourself one that you like.
And what the rest of us need is more cat gifs.
Has this turned into the persuade Bob to date again thread? Because no, I’m not doing that. Not only does he not seem remotely ready, we are not his therapy group and seriously why does this keep happening? Why do men come here, take over threads to talk about their personal problems, and not realize how not OK that is?
Screwed that up. MORE CAT GIFS!
Bob: you need therapy, not the MRM or this place. It’s not fun, and it’s not necessarily comfortable, but a good therapist can really help you.
*coughpatriarchycough*
seconded.
Unlike that arsehole preacher, we don’t believe there is something wrong with someone if they don’t get married, or stay completely single. In fact we are all for people ignoring societal pressure and doing what makes them happy, as long as they aren’t abusing others to.
Seriously dude, we are the good guys in this situation. Why you’re blaming us for your woes, I have no idea.
We’re nicer than we get credit for, and they have huge, swollen egos. They think all women are just dying to help them out.
Maybe we need to, not ban them, but banish those discussions to the Forums? I don’t know, sometimes it’s not crystal clear to begin with that’s what’s going on. Like Bob started up with just some garden variety “it was better in the old days (when women were property)” and it was quite a while before his “friend’s” relationship came up, and even longer before he admitted that he was his friend, or his friend was him, or whatever.
And now it’s just sad.