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?
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.”