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One reason is that most women can get a new man interested in them without really trying. Men on the other hand are still required to perform, by saying and doing all the right things, and have the right job, possess the right bank account and have chiseled features to meet the high standards set by women. What's the meme, six foot, six figures and six-pack?
When I got divorced I ended up with the clothes on my back and custody of my daughter. He even got the stuff I had prior to the forced marriage. He was ordered to pay a whopping $32/week child support and they didn't enforce it. He was making a lot of money and the judge refused to base the amount of support on his earnings. I was blamed for the permanent injuries I sustained prior to escaping the home. I made him angry they said. I was shunned in the community. I was told when I was trying to get a restraining order at one point that I needed to go home to my husband and pray for help to be a better wife. The community included the hospital and doctors. So, I was denied medical care after diagnosis and left to live with a traumatic brain injury. Yep, I had it made.
Sorry to hear how you got royally screwed.
However, I'm not referring to the exception to the rule. Men regularly getting shafted in divorce is the rule.
I dunno, my Ex would say a lot of the things that you have said.
And he would conveniently be leaving out the parts where he made our household feel like a hostage situation.
He says he felt blindsided when it ended. This is so odd because I was telling him in plain language all of the ways and reasons I was so unhappy and even that once the kids were grown, I'd honestly have to reevaluate if this relationship was right to stay in or not. But I was not screeching and throwing stuff at his head, so I guess it was...woo, subtle hints. Women say all these words, what could they mean?
Well, I see nothing subtle about telling him he’s history just as soon as the kids are grown, and you don’t have to worry about raising them alone. That seems rather clear. But if this was such a dreadful environment, akin to a hostage situation, you and the kids might have been better off not waiting. Toxic environments are even more harmful to the children, and they are totally innocent victims among such adult misadventures.
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Originally Posted by Sonic_Spork
He'd agree about the monkey branching. After all, he was the one I used to drive off the guy before him. And I broke up with him by telling him I had feelings for someone else. But the fact is, he and the man before him were going to hold on like barnacles and did not care what I said, thought, felt or wanted. Only what they wanted and needed and demanded to hold onto. A woman's word that it was over meant "fight harder to change her mind!" Only another man's presence in the equation could actually make them stop and understand, no really, it is OVER. The one I used to end my disaster of a first marriage, I didn't even actually have feelings for or want...I just needed a crowbar. I picked a user, a loser, a weasel who had a come-uppance coming to him, because if the husband got all wrathy about it, well...at least a good man need not be harmed. He believes to this day that I left him for strange D. Just as you say. But I didn't. I left because it was no longer a tenable situation for me or the kids. Because the threats and violence had escalated, and he refused to get help for his insanity and addictions.
There is so much to unpack here, it could send Sigmund Freud straight to his own sofa LOL. You weren’t monkey branching, you reinvented and honed it to industrial strength levels. And I can’t imagine how any of these men, regardless of their own contributions, could feel they were anything other than a means to an end, and therefore acted accordingly toward you, maybe?
Barnacles? Holding on like barnacles? Wow! Crowbars and barnacles …. sounds like you’ve been mistaking men for hammers and nails … ok buddy, it’s your turn to be the hammer, but don’t you worry, you’ll get your chance to be a nail, I promise?
I’m not passing judgement, or attacking you, but there seems to be a reoccurring pattern of extreme dysfunction going on here, and you’re the common denominator. And there does seem to be a distinct presence of callousness in the way you objectify these men as tools for achieving an objective, and once their purpose had been fulfilled, it was on to the next one. They all may have been terrible partners, but they certainly weren’t able to rely on you to set an example to follow.
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Originally Posted by Sonic_Spork
Funny thing is, even then I was not willing to commit physical, sexual infidelity. I constructed an "emotional affair" to get the trigger pulled. Only months later after the ex and I had both dated and slept with others and knew about it and all, did I eventually give the weasel a go in a weird YOLO moment that turned out to be regrettable.
Well, at least you didn’t leave anything on the table. LOL. And besides which, I understand what tough work it is to clean barnacles, so the dude did deserve a little something something, even if he was a “weasel”. Weasels need love too.
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Originally Posted by Sonic_Spork
Thing is...my first husband didn't even have to be the kind of guy who made me happy, or an outstanding provider... So long as he didn't make me miserable or fill the house with constant stress, I would have stuck with him. "I loved him until I didn't"...well in my case, I never stopped. Despite everything I still love him, in a way. Like a family member you'd rather not see on Thanksgiving, at least I wish him well. Most women I've known who left bad marriages, hung in there a hell of a lot longer than they should have.
I believe that was my general point made earlier … this is the first error … while it’s nobody’s job but you to make you happy, other people sure can make your job harder. That’s why it’s important, and also our personal responsibility to choose the right people to be in our lives that contribute to our happiness. You seem to have been making a lot of choices in this area for the wrong reasons, which contributed to your unhappiness. But those were your choices, right? Maybe, it would make your job to be happy easier, if you consciously chose a partner that you felt could do that, rather than choosing who you thought could be the best barnacle remover?
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Originally Posted by Sonic_Spork
tl;dr - The men I've heard talk like this the most are the ones who very seriously effed up, and there were choices they could have made differently but they will never admit it. It's a need to be the hero in their own story, and women the villains. But hey. Whatever helps a person sleep at night, I guess.
Look, I appreciate your honesty here, and I am in no position to pass judgement. Not my job, and not my place. But you have provided enough evidence here for any man who is even thinking about marriage or even shacking up, to think again, long and hard.
It seems like it is happening to everyone. Women have accepted they are not going to get a loving relationship because all men want is sex and then do not want to get married.
I think there has to be a reckoning. The relationship model we have doesn't work right anymore and we need to come up with something new.
For 500 + years women couldn't work and needed to be cared for. So men were bribed to marry them. They got a woman to have their children and a person to have sex with, but, they had to care for their wives for life and there was no divorce.
Once women could work and once divorce was around, things went belly up. Women simply don't have the desire for sex like men do and they aren't going to put up with it because they no longer get a big reward for it.
I agree we are on a dangerous path.
Maybe the women in the bar aren't there to find a boyfriend. It's only an assumption that women who frequent bars are fair game. Women and their BFFs like to go for a girl's night out too.
Women do have a desire for sex more than men think but are more likely to be cautious and deny themselves the pleasure because it's risky. They could become a single mother.. It's just dangerous to go off with a guy they just met minutes or hours before. In a bar, people tend to lose their inhibitions and make poor choices. That's why bars are not the best places to meet women for a lasting relationship. It's good place to get a one night stand if you don't want a relationship.
In social situations, I thought the guy is the one to make the first move? Of course, there is no written rule about that. Who knows if I am just being old-fashioned. Yes there is the possibility a guy will get rejected and it's not comfortable. If a woman approaches men, they soon get a rap for being a ****. I am sure you have heard that, seen that, for yourself.
One reason is that most women can get a new man interested in them without really trying. Men on the other hand are still required to perform, by saying and doing all the right things, and have the right job, possess the right bank account and have chiseled features to meet the high standards set by women. What's the meme, six foot, six figures and six-pack?
I read an article the other day that really shed the spotlight on a humongous issue. Men were tested using a set of photos and profiles like an online dating app, to pick the women they found attractive and viewed as potential partners. The men identified 60+% of the women as attractive, and potential mates. Then, women were given the same exercise, and the results astounded the researchers. The women identified only 20% of the men, eliminating 80% as not being attractive and no potential as a mate.
The math is real bad here for the guys, unless they happen to be members of the 20% club, in which case, the world is literally their oyster.
If this doesn’t spell out the problem, nothing can. And it absolutely confirmed my suspicions that the vast majority of women are overvaluing their sexual market value, big time. And it’s due to some very complex psychological issues. Some of it I think stems from the fact that by those numbers, we have 60% of the women believing they qualify for the top 20% of males, because at some point, one or more of those men may have slept with them, because that’s what guys do … and because the men identified 60% of the woman as attractive in that test, you can assume they would.
But therein lies the double edged sword … if those 20%ers can virtually pick and choose from the entire buffet of women who have otherwise eliminated the 80% of the competition, they have no incentive to settle down with any of them, other than the very top women … see the problem?
Why would these guys who have their pick all of the women, settle for any of them other than the most desirable and most attractive ? The answer is, they won’t. They might sleep with the others once or twice, because they can, but they won’t be faithful to any of them, unless she’s at the top of the choices available to them.
So, boys, that’s how we have gained the collective reputation of being no good dogs who only want sex, and use these poor innocent women as sex objects. Hahaha, when 80% aren’t even allowed in the game.
The 80% are saying wait … wait just a dog gone minute here … I’m not a dog, I’m a nice guy who just wants a nice woman! The women, without realizing it, are saying, we don’t want you … we want the dogs.
Maybe the women in the bar aren't there to find a boyfriend. It's only an assumption that women who frequent bars are fair game. Women and their BFFs like to go for a girl's night out too.
Women do have a desire for sex more than men think but are more likely to be cautious and deny themselves the pleasure because it's risky. They could become a single mother.. It's just dangerous to go off with a guy they just met minutes or hours before. In a bar, people tend to lose their inhibitions and make poor choices. That's why bars are not the best places to meet women for a lasting relationship. It's good place to get a one night stand if you don't want a relationship.
In social situations, I thought the guy is the one to make the first move? Of course, there is no written rule about that. Who knows if I am just being old-fashioned. Yes there is the possibility a guy will get rejected and it's not comfortable. If a woman approaches men, they soon get a rap for being a ****. I am sure you have heard that, seen that, for yourself.
I detect a bit of drinking one’s own Kool Aide here. Honestly, women who are currently in an exclusive relationship, or married, have no business going to bars with their girlfriends. Not acceptable. Any guy that puts up with that crap is by definition, a Simp.
Over the years, there have been many cliche’s addressing such behavior … like “just because I’m on a diet, doesn’t mean I can’t look at the menu”, among others, as if women can be trusted to pass on the desert tray.
Wanna have some girl time, go freaking shopping, or have a picnic in the park. Wanna go out with the girls and get hammered at nightclubs or bars, pack your suitcase and take it with you.
Given the sentiment about women expressed by many men in this thread, I can’t say I would disagree with any woman who just gave up on men in general. They hate you if you do, they hate if you don’t, so why even bother.
I think the best answer to this is that it will be the same as it ever has been for most men. For the crummy men with dismal attitudes and the personality of a potato, women's lib was probably the worst (and best) thing that could have happened to them. They lost the control factor over women, who were once heavily reliant on them to survive in this world and help support their children together. Now that women can easily survive on their own, these men need to learn new ways to compete for their affection. That's hard if the aforementioned traits are true for you.
All things considered, it serves as an opportunity to those men for enlightenment and improvement. It might just help motivate them to be better partners, and better people in general. But I agree, some will still flounder and become more and more reclusive. Those who don't isolate to their basement chambers and seek comfort in online incel communities may wander off to the Philippines for a mail-order bride. Others may take a more divergent path to a darker side (hate communities, self-harm, violence, etc.).
Well, I see nothing subtle about telling him he’s history just as soon as the kids are grown, and you don’t have to worry about raising them alone. That seems rather clear. But if this was such a dreadful environment, akin to a hostage situation, you and the kids might have been better off not waiting. Toxic environments are even more harmful to the children, and they are totally innocent victims among such adult misadventures.
I agree, and often wish I'd left him a lot sooner. But I was of the impression that it would be evil and selfish of me to break up my family and take the kids away from their father unless it was REALLY bad. So long as it was merely not good...and I was only "not genuinely happy"...so long as I could focus on the kids and slap a smile on my face... I did that. I also believed in a future for us and felt that if I only worked hard enough, one day he would be happy and then we could be happy together. That was not to be. But the hostage situation only began when he came home from Iraq and escalated after he got out of the Army. Initially I saw it as "he is a mentally ill family member and I need to help him." But you can't help someone who refuses to get help.
I hung in there until that relationship hit rock bottom because lots of voices...his mostly, but also all of these "women are just bad people" judgments meant to tar us no matter what we do...made me feel that I had to set aside my happiness and prove that I could be good. I wish my kids had never had to experience the last year of it all, though. They had a pretty good life up to that point.
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There is so much to unpack here, it could send Sigmund Freud straight to his own sofa LOL. You weren’t monkey branching, you reinvented and honed it to industrial strength levels. And I can’t imagine how any of these men, regardless of their own contributions, could feel they were anything other than a means to an end, and therefore acted accordingly toward you, maybe?
Barnacles? Holding on like barnacles? Wow! Crowbars and barnacles …. sounds like you’ve been mistaking men for hammers and nails … ok buddy, it’s your turn to be the hammer, but don’t you worry, you’ll get your chance to be a nail, I promise?
I did not give full context because it's a whole mess of a story I've told a hundred times around the forums, to a point I feel that anyone familiar with me is probably sick of hearing about it by now. Of course that may not be true. But it feels that way. Maybe I'm sick of thinking/talking about it, years later, too? Whatever.
I was 18, and a guy in his mid 20s moved into my apartment and wouldn't leave. I wanted to break up because he quit his job and was mooching off me, and I didn't work enough hours to support us both. I kept telling him it was over and he kept saying, "oh you don't mean that." When I met the guy who would become my first husband, he was the sort who was thrilled to growl and snarl and chase off another man. A real Capt. Save-a-ho...ly moly am I calling myself that? Hey maybe, I did get around in my younger days. I'm not ashamed, because yanno, the casual stuff never harmed me. It was these older fellas who viewed me as a possession to be owned that did. So there I was with Mr. Patchouli Hippie Mooch boyfriend tossed on his ear with his stinky futon to follow and this other, also older (29 to my 18) year old man moving on in. He was even more tenacious.
The problem, I guess, is that at 18 I didn't realize that you just apparently can't do casual stuff with these kinds of men. Yes, they make barnacles of themselves. So this new one went behind my back and threatened and beat up friends of mine and made them stay away from me. I had no idea why suddenly the only friends who wanted to hang out were HIS friends. I did not see so, so many red flags that in hindsight...well. Are 18 year olds smart? No. I was not.
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I’m not passing judgement,
LOL, you are...but it's fine.
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or attacking you, but there seems to be a reoccurring pattern of extreme dysfunction going on here, and you’re the common denominator.
My 18 year old self was. The common factor was I wanted less serious relationships, not being ready to be a wife and mother, and these older guys did not care what I wanted, only that I was cute and they wanted to keep me. Permanently.
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And there does seem to be a distinct presence of callousness in the way you objectify these men as tools for achieving an objective, and once their purpose had been fulfilled, it was on to the next one. They all may have been terrible partners, but they certainly weren’t able to rely on you to set an example to follow.
Not sure why I at 18 was supposed to be setting an example for men of age 24 and 29. But ok.
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Well, at least you didn’t leave anything on the table. LOL. And besides which, I understand what tough work it is to clean barnacles, so the dude did deserve a little something something, even if he was a “weasel”. Weasels need love too.
...no comment lol.
But yeah, my point is that if men don't want women to "monkey branch" maybe frickin' LISTEN to a woman when she tells you it's over. Neither of these two men did that. They did not respect even the concept that a woman could simply leave of her own accord...after all, your car doesn't steal itself out of the garage, right? No, a man, an actual PERSON had to come along and be part of it. I did try to leave both of them without doing that. Neither one was having it.
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I believe that was my general point made earlier … this is the first error … while it’s nobody’s job but you to make you happy, other people sure can make your job harder. That’s why it’s important, and also our personal responsibility to choose the right people to be in our lives that contribute to our happiness. You seem to have been making a lot of choices in this area for the wrong reasons, which contributed to your unhappiness.
At age 18, yes I did.
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But those were your choices, right? Maybe, it would make your job to be happy easier, if you consciously chose a partner that you felt could do that, rather than choosing who you thought could be the best barnacle remover?
I often hope that today's young people with all the stuff on the internet explaining narcissism and toxicity and red flag behavior, are smarter than I was but I didn't have those resources back then.
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Look, I appreciate your honesty here, and I am in no position to pass judgement. Not my job, and not my place. But you have provided enough evidence here for any man who is even thinking about marriage or even shacking up, to think again, long and hard.
Seriously.
No worries, I am very happily remarried! This time for companionship and not under duress or in questionable survival situations of precarious youth, and this time taking things a lot slower before milestones like commitment, cohabitation, marriage, etc. We just celebrated 2 years married and coming up on 7 together in all. I honestly didn't expect to ever remarry, but over time both of us realized how great we are for one another.
Really one of the biggest mistakes I see people making is just acting too fast, too impulsively. And a lot of these theories men come up with about how "women" (as though we are all static and never change throughout our lives, and are all identical) behave, I think are born of the confusion you guys have over what women do when we are young and naive versus a little older and wiser. But that's alright, as I said before, whatever lets you sleep at night.
Last edited by Sonic_Spork; 08-04-2022 at 02:58 PM..
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