Men Living Lives of Quiet Desperation
The epidemic we all know is there, but won't talk about. Typical men.
I’m sure I’m not the first to point it out publicly, but let me grab the bull by the horns for a sec here and Thoreauly elaborate on the issue. No, it’s not the Male Loneliness Epidemic, although it’s related. It’s the Modern Husbandry issue.
To set the table here, I want to point out that I was raised a sensitive young man. My very trad boomer mom told me that if I was kind and respectful to women, got a decent paying job, and generally stayed out of trouble, and especially paid extra attention to my (Catholic) girlfriend and was expressive about my feelings, that she would recognize my marriage material as a husband and a father - or at least a good woman would - and that guaranteed everything would work out in my personal life for landing a steady marriage and plenty of children. Honestly, that was all I ever wanted. Teachers ask “what do you want to be when you grow up?” Fuck astronauts and nuclear physicists, or even famous actors, I wanted to be a father and a good husband. Especially knowing all my dad did was come home, eat dinner, and fall asleep on the couch to baseball, I figured the bar was low on both fronts, husbandry and fatherhood, and I could nail this gig with flying colors, clearly I had more enthusiasm for the job than he did.
Of course, by my college years in the early 00’s, when I submitted — and was featured in — an article for The RoMANtic Newsletter, I was rewarded by having my then-crush lambast me over LiveJournal for being such a misogynist for suggesting that being a loving, expressive husband was actually a noble goal to aspire to. What a chauvinistic Nazi, amirite? (For the record, my article is still on there, but I won’t dare link it and doxx myself.)
Well that bitch among many others like her, definitely drove me straight into the PUA world. Of course, she became that sort of bitch in response to the “patriarchy” that preceded me, so I suppose fair’s fair. Right?
Well here’s the thing. Next month is my 13th wedding anniversary to my sweet, darling, over-empathic wife, and as I’ve muttered off-hand before, it hasn’t always been sunshine and roses. Of course, even the best marriages have their hard times. But today, it’s becoming apparent to me that most marriages are not just not-perfect… but follow a specific form of struggle that echoes in almost the same way each time.
The Convergence Is Real
What I find very odd about this story is that it isn’t just trad-cons that deal with this shit, it’s everybody, out to normie libs and “male feminists,” even. I feel like every married dude, especially the fathers of younger children, are all in my exact same predicament, and — like most men — don’t want to talk about it, even privately, much less publicly. Actually that’s not true, if you put a drink in him, he can’t wait to vent about it privately. But he’s always convinced he’s the only one. He’s not.
Here’s the scenario. I’m going to blend my own experience with the experience of around 5-6 dudes I know going through the same thing. The hilarious part is that some of these details explicitly are inaccurate to my relationship with my wife, in order to anonymize the story, and yet if my wife ever discovered that I divulged this, she would flip her shit over how “accurate” this generalized, sterile version is, even integrating details from others that didn’t apply to us. But gentlemen, just let me know if this scenario sounds familiar.
We met. We hit it off, after missing a few beats, but we got together, and the relationship went well. I tested her, to make sure she had the traits I wanted, had similar life goals, was truthful with me, and most importantly, could deal with me as I really was, at my worst. This was me being honest with her about what a mixed bag I was, the best and worst parts of me. She accepted it, and she seemed to have what it took for me to live out my dreams with her. So I proposed to her, and we got married.
Pretty soon after, we had kids. And between the wedding night and being pregnant, somewhere a switch flipped. She was not the person I proposed to. Despite all our long talks about religion and politics in the dating phase, and all of that seeming to line up close enough, now that she’s pregnant, I’m a “dedicated soldier of the patriarchy,” just salivating for my chance to stick the bonnet on her and make her the Handmaid’s Tale surrogate I always secretly wanted. In her mind, I could never change enough diapers, do enough dishes, clean enough toilets, or even cook enough meals to make up for the fact that as a straight white male, I was just using her. Forget about how many hours a week I worked, while she may or may not have, the fact that she might have to breast feed at 1am is too much. In fact, she’ll pump breastmilk in advance to make sure that it’s ME who has to bottle feed the baby at 3am, despite having to wake up at 6am to bring the older kids to school on time. Not sure why she needs the full night’s rest to wake up to a long day of not sweeping, not mopping, not doing dishes, nor going grocery shopping, nor cooking… Most of her day is to be spent napping (because I guess the full night’s rest before wasn’t enough, in her post-partum era?), and if the baby shits the diaper at 5:15pm, well, let her sit in it just a bit because daddy will be home at 5:30 to change it, and mommy “just can’t today.” It’s okay if dinner is a few minutes late because daddy had to change that diaper, he can get started cooking dinner after the baby’s changed. Also, he’s such an asshole for expecting that mom would just change every diaper as soon as it’s shat. What kind of chauvinist, eh?
The thing is husband, my anxiety.
The thing is, my mom couldn’t even get a credit card in 1970.
The thing is, women were treated like chattel.
The thing is, the patriarchy and the workplace.
But the wage gap. (As if that mattered while you were supposed to be a SAHM.)
No, woman. Being the sensitive young man that I was, and wanting my marriage to work out, and my children to have a happy and stable childhood, I just took on more work. On top of the 40 hours a week I worked, and the weekends I spent on yardwork and home repairs, I
Learned how to cook
Did the dishes
Cleaned the toilets
Bottle fed at night
Took older kids to school
Ran the laundry
Bathed all kids at night
Took out the trash
Swept the floors
Vacuumed
Cleaned the kids’ rooms
Helped older kids with homework
And whenever I got the slightest chance, enjoyed a fucking drink. Beer, wine, liquor, whatever, just something to take the edge off. And if you’re gonna bitch to me about the patriarchy while I’m trying to chill out after doing all your jobs in addition to mine, then I’m going to have another.
And slowly but surely, it wasn’t good to have my male friend over, because you guys had too much fun after a drink. Not that guy either, too loud. Not your brother either, you exclude me. Don’t go out, you come home too “drunk” when you do, I don’t want you getting a DUI.
Oh also I need a date night every week. Where we’ll do something you’re not that interested in, but I really appreciate it when you supplicate to my needs. (Which, being the married man that I am, doesn’t register as “cuck” or “simp,” because generally I do have access to sex, that’s how we got these kids in the first place, but… maybe I’m one of the lucky few — other men out there aren’t so lucky.)
But in the long run, the trend becomes, husband doing more and more and more housework and parenting, while the wife never quits complaining about how “easy men have it,” or how “little” attention she’s getting. And in a direct correlation, the amount of alcohol he consumes to be able to endure her bullshit goes up at the same rate. Then she complains about that too.
Sound like you?
You’re Not Alone.
Yes, I changed some of those details from my own situation. But it’s pretty close.
The thing is, my brother’s marriage has worked almost the same. Marginally better. 17 years in, and he’s drinking almost every night, but all the chores are done and the kids are happy, and the wife is stable enough that the fights are rare. Most of them are over his drinking.
My old groomsman’s marriage has worked out almost the same. He’s completely cucked over, at least she can cook, but he is taking up the lion’s share of other tasks, and sold out all of his friends to make sure she feels 100% catered to. Which he can pull off, as long as he’s up after she goes to bed and has a few drinks alone. They’re also both way more liberal than I am, which is funny, because the arguments about gender roles are identical in kind, just each side shifted to the left.
My best friend had a similar situation, and despite him bending over backward to pick up more slack and make more date nights for her, she left him anyway. Their situation is slightly more unique in that they were high school sweethearts who got married early into college, so she never got a chance to “sow her wild oats.” She, mind you. SHE, never got the chance. He never really had that regret, but I guess it’s time for him to train up and hit the field, for the first time, in his 40s.
An anon who confided in me tonight has a very similar situation. He sent me a video he secretly recorded of his wife going on such a lecture with him, about his drinking at home (the emphasis to point out, once or IF he’d gotten blitzed, he wasn’t even driving home, just shuffling a few feet to bed or maybe the couch), to escape her mentally, while he did all the chores, but y’know, the patriarchy. All this despite her being basically center-left, but rooted enough to notice that the Democrat party and American culture in general went two or three times off the deep end so far that she actually voted for Trump! I felt like I knew him my whole life, felt like he was me, the scene was too familiar. Watching her lecture him, curled over his space at the stove where he was trying to make dinner for the family, droning on in a loud, angry yet smooth, condescending tone about “how hard she’s working for this family,” while the baby in her arms cries in unison with the toddler in the high chair behind them, and the 5-year-old in the back cries a harmony. (UPDATE: Shout out to Dudley Newright who reposted this X gem of a Roseanne clip, that happens to be exactly the scene we’re talking about here, maybe this situation is older than we thought! Was so on Dan’s side here.)
He calmly tells her to tend the children while he watches the stove, or just chill out and save the lecture for after they’ve gone to bed, you’re upsetting them. No. No, her anxiety is flaring right now while he’s cooking, the kids can wait, because her feelings are PARAMOUNT. She needs him to understand how awful of a husband he was for drinking alone last night and playing Call of Duty on mute after everyone else went to bed. I had that same lecture every other weekend for years. Sometimes they went on for hours. Because I said I’d be home from my best friend’s house at 8pm, and here it was 9:30, and my breath smelled like beer, but I wasn’t even drunk. She had to give the kids baths all by herself. :(
I reassured him, we are all going through this, bro. Especially when your kids are that age. Thank God it has gotten better for me, but not gone away. I still keep my sanity with that extra hour or two I stay up past her with Jack Daniels, and she’s more or less resigned to that being the routine, at least there’s peace in the house.
Just today, I learned that my first “girlfriend” from middle school, who I’ve kept in touch with over the decades since we pretty much grew up together, left her husband of 10 years, totally ghosted, just disappeared, because… I dunno, he didn’t do enough for her? Even after he learned to cook for her useless ass, and stopped inviting other friends over to their house for dinner parties because somehow that was not giving her enough attention? Did he forget to Like an Instagram post of hers?
I dare you to call me a misogynist.
The raw entitlement of these women, and the complete lack of appreciation for their men, disgusts me. There was a time when I would get comments in some of my posts, calling me a chauvinist and what not, and how dare I criticize my wife publicly for X, Y, Z.
Tough shit, cunts. I am calling you out. Because none of you will admit that there is an entire generation of sensitive young men being short-changed by you. We were raised to respect women, to know that women were our equals, in dignity and in school, in workplace and in pay, in voting rights and reproductive rights and custody rights. We treated you as such. We bent over backwards to go to couples therapy with you, and made compromises, and swapped gendered household tasks, and picked up your slack.
Yes, #notAllMen are that great. I personally know a handful of douchebags who are pretty sleazy and would make awful husbands and fathers, and I’ve distanced myself from them since becoming both. I really only hung out with them because they played the same video games I liked in the first place. I know every single girl out there has been sexually threatened (if not worse) by a guy like that at some point, but that’s 13% committing 50%+ of the crimes. Every, SINGLE, guy friend I have (ok not the one “childfree” selfish faggot, he has a perfect Disney adult life) is in this situation: Being both parents, and drinking away the stress, while his wife complains about his isolated escapism. And you wonder why we vote for Trump. Sometimes, it’s literally just to spite you harpies.
The fact of the matter is, all these men are EASILY putting in 3 times or more of the effort your father spent on being connected to your mother, or to your children, cut us some slack. We love our foids and wifejaks. And we especially love our children. We’ll even put in the extra work, and extra humility and patience to try to communicate with you, to keep it all together, with no appreciation for it. Meanwhile, you’re distracted by all the unrealistic, incoherent entitlement that feminism promised you. And yet, you are still lucky, because generally, all we do is keep quiet, drink more, and vote harder for Donald Trump. Rather than slap your bitch ass the way your granddaddy would have his wife. Actually maybe he wouldn’t have, because your grandma couldn’t vote, so he rarely felt the need to beat her down any further. Weird how those line up.
We’re not looking for explicit praise, mind you, nor even to be crowned as “the boss.” We just want to grill. We just want some time for pure being once in a while, preferably with other men, away from the women. But of course, girls can be Boy Scouts, but boys can’t be Girl Scouts, we are not allowed a space unto ourselves, that would be “sexist.”
Obviously I’m not speaking to all the women out there, I’m subscribed to several based women’s Substacks. And I’m sure some happy marriages exist, but… I just want to point out that it is sickening to me how many good dudes I know out there are withering away in their marriages, working so hard for them without much recognition, and drowning their suffering in alcohol alone, they all look like captive orcas with their limp dorsal fins. If you suspect your husband is quiet, isolated, and notice he drinks “too much,” by your count anyway… I encourage you to take some time for introspection. Maybe, re-route your motives more toward ensuring the success of your whole family, rather than being so “anxious” about your own stake in the household, much less society. Maybe, put the marriage ahead of yourself and your husband, as its own cause and entity. Maybe when you’re going through post-partum depression, don’t WebMD yourself. I swear to God, ever since Reddit was invented and girls got on the internet, all the chicks are talking each other into it and playing it up, then expecting sympathy for being psychotic. No, just, no. Bring back stigma for seeing a therapist, for God’s sake.
I couldn’t ever find the words to get this through to women who aren’t already based. So I’m not going to try, in fact this message isn’t even directed toward women.
Instead, I’m just addressing the men: You are not alone. Somewhere out there, I’m enjoying a nightcap with you. In fact, I’m a high-functioning alcoholic and an insomniac in the eastern time zone of the US, and if you find yourself isolated and tipsy in just such a situation, feel free to drop me a DM over SS because it’s very likely I’m available to mansplain your life to you and pour one for you, my homie! In the meantime, be good to your foid. And especially your children.
But… doesn’t that make you a cuck? Caving to womyn like that, and just taking the hits from the ol’ ball ‘n chain?
Sure, but remember, we mistakenly gave them the right to vote, the right to decide when they’re fertile, and the right to have men’s jobs. I mean fuck, what’s more fem-coded than Agile Project Management? So despite being us being right, their opinion legally matters as much as ours. If you rise up against the girlbosses, they’ll J6 you, fuck that. Need to get on undermining this whole Progressive apparatus and forcibly getting everyone on to the same page as far as brass tacks survival of the species requirements goes. While that’s cooking, conceal your power level, bros. Long game.