Hi all,
I’m relatively new to the “manosphere,” and I never heard the term “MGTOW” up until a few months ago. I’ve been living my own way since the 1980s, and I understand what it’s like to be a man in these times. However, I must admit that a lot of the terminology and acronyms throw me a bit. I’m not sure that I fall into any particular category or not. I’m just an ordinary man trying to make sense of the world.
I’m not sure if there’s any defining “red pill” moment I can pinpoint. It probably came early in life. My parents were divorced in 1970, when I was six. My father was an engineer and provided a good home for us, while my mother went back to college to get her master’s degree. Apparently, while she was there, she had an affair and ended the marriage. My mother was also strongly influenced by feminism (although back then, they called it “women’s liberation”), and much of my early education in this area was in growing up and listening to my mother’s self-serving BS. She also had a problem with drugs and alcohol, which was a blessing in disguise, since I eventually ended up living with my father.
My father was raised in the Midwest in a small town, from a staunchly conservative background, although his overall demeanor was gentle and mild-mannered. His background was from farm country, where wives and husbands had specific duties and everyone had to work. Slacking was just not allowed. My mother was raised in California, as her father was a successful salesman for a chemical company who made good money and was actually pretty indulgent with his daughters. They had him wrapped around their little finger, always demanding and yelling if they didn’t get their way. So, what my father was expecting in a wife – and what he actually got – were completely different things.
Ironically, my mother’s main complaint about my father was that he was “weak.” Of course, she wasn’t one to talk, since she was no tower of strength herself. I don’t think he was weak, but he just wasn’t prepared for certain aspects of the culture which he hadn’t been initiated to. He was no doubt strongly pressured by the culture to get married, have kids, and live a “normal” life as a productive citizen and a pillar of the community. He did his best, yet somehow, that wasn’t enough. My mother was still unhappy, and she remained unhappy for the rest of her life. She died alone, bitter, and broke.
All during the 1970s, there was all this “battle of the sexes” stuff. The issue was popular on all the TV shows, movies, as well as in the news and discussed in the schools I attended. It was a strange time growing up. My father eventually remarried, although my step-mother was even more of a basket case than my birth mother. My father really knew how to pick ’em. My step-mother had three kids of her own, and I think my father was starting to develop Delusions of Brady Bunch at that point.
The worst of it was, I realized I was also developing a poor taste in women. My father seemed to not understand women very well – or he couldn’t really size them up with any real accuracy. So, he was kind of a poor role model for me in that department.
I did fall in love once, back in the early 1980s. It was an unrequited love and was quite difficult for me. I actually sought out a counselor to discuss some of the issues, and he told me that I had gotten involved with a “spider woman,” as he put it. I learned the necessity of protecting myself. I wasn’t exactly a monk and there were still women coming around. Even the “spider woman” came back into my life for a short time. But I found that I just didn’t want to have that kind of emotional turmoil in my life. I also felt similar pressures from family and friends to get married, have kids, etc., but after seeing what my father went through (along with similar situations I became aware of).
I wasn’t quite ready to sign my life away just because of feelings of lust I might have for someone. I tend to think ahead, years down the road, whereas the culture tends to socialize us to not think that far ahead, that we should just “live for the moment” and not think too much. Given the sorry state of affairs in our country today, I can’t see why “thinking too much” should be considered a vice, but I’ve been criticized for that.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for the forum.
Eyeswideopen 4 years, 7 months ago.
