Being good at disagreement

[Zues126]

Suppose our nation is living in a big house with two rooms.

The first room is almost unbearably hot. It is very uncomfortable. People are sweating. People are thirsty. People are continuously distracted and have a hard time taking their minds off the heat. People get irritable, short tempered, and just aren't enjoying themselves.

But the second room isn't completed. It's exposed to the elements, and it's freezing cold outside. Truly freezing. Like a survival situation. People are huddling together to protect themselves from the cold, but it is nothing short of an emergency. Some people are able to find areas out of the wind, and by grouping up and burning newspapers there are a number that survive. But unfortunately there are a number that don't.

Well, word gets around, and before long, the first room is the place to be. Even though it's hot, at least you can survive. Some people get so hot they look to the other room and it can be appealing at times because cool air sounds like a break, but they all know people that have frozen to death, and they know better. Soon society starts adapting attitudes and sayings about handling the heat, and eventually it becomes indoctrinated into religion, family values, and social outlook. "Deal with the heat, don't freeze in the cold!"

Then one day construction on the second room is finished. It is no longer freezing cold. In fact, it is pretty nice and cool. People are no longer dying. They are actually thriving. It might be a bit cool, and people have pangs of longing for a few moments of warmth, but they see all the people in the hot room still so uncomfortable and miserable and they say "no thanks, I'd rather just be chill".

People are hesitant to move to the cool room. They've heard all the horror stories about things that happened in the past. But inevitably, as people send messages back from the cool room, it gets around that these days people are doing quite well there.

That's when the migration begins. More and more people say 'enough of the heat' and move to the cool room. It becomes a destination of choice. And as the masses start going that way, the culture changes. The warnings of the cool room are forgotten, society no longer blames people for going that route, even religion says things like "I know we said the warm room was holy, but if you need to cool down, we get it...just don't leave our church, because there'd be no church left with just the warm roomers!"

Marriage is obviously the hot room, and being single or dating new people is the cool room. For many years people needed marriage for survival. It wasn't out of love. It wasn't out of romance. It wasn't to achieve some transcendent relationship between two mature adults that overcame their destructive tendencies through mutual growth and formed some mutually satisfying Utopian co-existence. No, they stuck together because there were millions of families immigrating to the US that didn't speak English, didn't understand the world around them, had no phones or internet and struggled to adapt to the customs, and so they kept their families together and worked long and hard to try to find a way to keep a roof over their heads. Even though things were difficult, they were better than where they came from (in most cases), and they had hope for a brighter future for their children. But they absolutely had to keep clumped together to have a shot of survival.

After WWII the economy improved. As did technology. Communication. Social progress, equal rights. And as women entered the work force in higher numbers and at increasing pay, suddently people didn't need to pair up to survive. They could do it on their own.

In the 60s, people looked around at the world and said 'why are we all doing it this way? This is stupid!' Because it was, now that the great depression, wars, and industrial revolution was behind us. It didn't make sense to remain in difficult and uncomfortable situations when you could just hitchhike across the country smoking joints with strangers and celebrating free love.

My parents were of this generation. My dad and mom were hippies. My dad has been divorced three times, my mom divorced twice. I have half brothers and sisters all over the country. The traditions have broken down, they don't serve us anymore. Everyone has their own life, and they get to choose to do whatever they want with it. Whatever brings happiness. And if at any point they have the option of restructuring their life to avoid discomfort or step up their lifestyle, hey, this is America, and that's what we do.

So why do people leave marriages? When you look at an individual, it is easy to point fingers and lay blame. Poor values, lack of commitment, immaturity, family of origin, etc. But when you look at the macro level, is it really any wonder that people are going to gravitate to the room where it is more comfortable? Cultural opinion, laws, religions, values, none of these things lead our people...they SERVE our people. And as our society decides it wants something different, they evolve, just like popular usage adds slang to the dictionary. You can't expect the world to continue to live uncomfortably when comfort is available, any more than you can expect water not to flow downhill.

In my mind I have always viewed XW as a murderer. She killed my wife and destroyed my family. But at the same time, she is also just one of millions of people that decided they wanted to be more comfortable. Everyone is doing it, and it's even considered ok these days.

I don't agree with this direction. I think something profoundly important has been lost. But I am just one voice. And it's clear that the majority is against me. Who am I to cast blame at the others, just because they don't agree with me? If the majority wants to allow breaking up marriages and normalize broken families and affairs, well, I don't have to agree, but I can't change that. And if I could, they would be equally upset that they feel pressured to remain in oppressive marriages that deny them the opportunity to pursue their happiness and be their 'best selves'.

Bottom line J, I feel what has happened in our culture is unavoidable. That marriage is so difficult, the only way it could work is if divorce was prohibitively worse. And for good or bad, those days are over. There may be people like you and me out there, but we are like the Amish, the rest of the world thinks we're goofy for denying ourselves the comforts of the modern world.

The rest of the world isn't hypocritical, they are just redefining our values. XW and society will probably never change their opinions or feelings on this. And looking at it from that angle, much of my anger has gone out of me. I get the migration. I get the decisions. I don't agree, I don't like it, and I never will. But I have let much of it go.

The hell of it is, I like the cool room. I never would've chose to be here, but it is more laid back. I don't have to deal with the bs and hurt and rejection and neglect and disrespect I did in my marriage. And I'm not alone, most survivors testify that their marriages were terrible and they are happier now. I still believe it could've been worked out for the better, but that's not in the cards these days.

Do I want to partner with anyone that follows these new beliefs? No.

Do people exist that feel the way we do? Absolutely.

Do I want to try to date and find one? I'm not sure. Odds are that the next relationship will fail, or at best will be miserable. Because I, too, am part of this entitled and high expectation culture. If best case scenario is that I end up stuck in a miserable unfulfilling marriage, and worst case is that my future partner abandons me because they aren't willing to...why would I ever want to run that again?

Bottom line J, your H isn't a bad guy or a hypocrite. He's just an average US citizen. This is the new normal. And as for future R's, I think they're mostly doomed, so it's your call if you want to partner up for a while and enjoy 1-2 years of butterflies during the honeymoon phase and some hope that you're involved in something more endurable, or if you want to sit it out and avoid the whole mess.

I hesitate to post because this seems really cynical and I don't want to discourage newbies from standing by their M. They should. It's what I believe is the right thing to do. And many people are able to save their marriages, and all walk away stronger and able to sleep at night. There are many posters on these forums that saved their M. M is still possible.

I am only sharing my personal thoughts about how it got where it is, and how I'm processing the loss of what I had, what we all had as a society, and what I won't have in the future because I have taken the red pill and see how it works and that no path leads to the permanent marriage I had wanted in this life.

But it's also possible I'm dead wrong, and that these happy mature fulfilled new age marriages do exist, and that if we just do our part to become our best selves and screen like crazy to find someone that won't leave us, maybe that is possible. Shoot, there are people married, so it isn't impossible. It just looks that way to me now. But that can change.

We'll see J, the future is unknown. I am just doing my thing one day at a time and going with the flow. Hang in and do the same.