I’m new to this forum but not entirely new to the “club”, for want of a better word. I’m a 40 year old man in the mid-west United States. I joined the Marine Corps right out of high school. When I left I was dating this girl I went to school with who was a year younger than I was. We knew each other for awhile but only recently started dating. This was about as serious of a relationship as I had been in my all of 18 years. We decided to try to stay together despite my career choice, which I knew would be difficult for both of us. Well on one of my visits home, she got pregnant. She was supposedly on the pill, but you know how that goes. Now I knew she wanted to have kids at some point and I wasn’t really sure about it, but I damn sure didn’t want to have any at 19. I was not about to be the “bad guy” and try to talk her into an abortion or adoption though.
We had planned to get married at some point, but once there was a kid in the picture I put the brakes on that. The military is not a good place for someone who is married and has kids. She was not happy about it and the stress of being in a long distance relationship took it’s toll. We broke up and got back together a few times over my four years in the military. When I got out and came back home I started doing the whole visitation thing with my son. We ended up getting back together and moving in together. She still wanted to get married and I guess I figured well why not. We already had a kid and lived together so what difference does a piece of paper make.
Well after awhile married life sucked. We worked opposite shifts because we couldn’t afford day care. We hardly saw each other, and when we did we argued over stupid s~~~. Sex life went from fun and adventurous to boring to just too much trouble with a kid knocking on the door all the time. Everyone was miserable. After about 8 years of this we gave up. She took the kid and moved in with her parents and I got my own apartment in the city. Neither of us were perfect and I made my share of mistakes no question about it. Married life wasn’t for me. I just couldn’t deal with her constant insecurity and accusations. Every time I tried to do anything she would complain about not being involved, and then when I would try to involve her, she would decline. We actually got along better after we split up to be honest because we weren’t in each others face all the time. After a few years living apart though it was getting to be obvious that staying in contact with her wasn’t good for either of us, especially her. My son was now in his teens and it really didn’t even make sense to have him come and visit me and his grandparents when he would probably rather be out with his friends. After the divorce was final and all the paperwork signed, we just all stopped talking. Now my ex-wife could have dropped the hammer on me for child support but she didn’t, she never stopped me form seeing my kid, and as far as I know never dragged him into our problems. For that I’ll at least give her some credit because I’ve seen what some women are capable of. I’ve had some other situations with women that have been completely catastrophic, but I’ll leave that for other posts.
Once I was single again I made a few decisions about my life. No more marriage, no more kids, no more live-in girlfriends, and no more giving the government any more control over my life than they already have. Now I had heard the term MGTOW here and there, but didn’t really know much about it. I have a long standing hated of modern feminism, which I won’t go into the reasons why since I’d just be preaching to the choir here. The last thing I wanted was to join the male version of some dumb s~~~ like that. I don’t really like movements, causes, or campaigns either so I figured this was just one of those. Once I actually read more about it and started listening to some men talk about it, I realized this was something I had been living already anyway. I figured if I could help some people avoid the mistakes I made, then it would be worth sharing some of my stories.
Anonymous 4 years, 9 months ago.
