Hey ExRedPill,

It's bad news, I'm afraid. I think I'm fucked up. I don't really know where to begin.

I've been surfing more /mgtow/ than /redpill/, if I'm being honest, and the "teachings" those subreddits give out have influenced me. I'll be the first to admit that it's hard not to fall for what they preach.

I come from a background where my parents never had stable marriages (both had previous marriages, and have almost divorced multiple times. They're also abusive to each other, and consequently, to my brother and me) and my own relationships never go too far in terms of time. I think it's been easy for redpill and MGTOW to seduce me with their perspectives.

Now, in some cases, I'm not totally unhappy with what they've shown. I'm of the belief that there are very few things in the world that are 100% evil and 100% good. You can find the silver lining in almost every bad thing, and a bad thing in almost every good thing. I'm thankful that those subreddits have highlighted that marriage is pretty absurd if you think about it and some of the methods that women use to get the attention of men. Some of it makes sense, but it's not much.

What I'm trying to get at here is like, I feel like I'm being weaponised in a way. If you adopt the horseshoe theory, you can see it on the lefty/feminist side too. Women of that following are brought up to say, 'all men are trash' and to bleed guys dry because, 'it's our time', meanwhile on this side, you have guys who're being told that women will, 'divorce rape' you and call you a rapist if you step out of line.

Then you have people on social media from both sides just endlessly arguing, just throwing shit and mire at each other. You get retweets and posts and likes of people being oh so witty about one-upping or roasting the other gender. So you step away, go outside. Then you see it on billboards, on adverts, in movies, on TV. This endless fucking, 'put down to get the leg up' mentality. It's driving me crazy.

I find it hard to trust people at the best of times, but over this past two years or so, it's just spiralled. I never know when someone I meet will come out with some regurgitated slogan from some needless political cause, or when someone will live up to what redpill or MGTOW has said would happen (a broken clock and all), or when my trust will get tested because people are, in my experience, selfish. I don't mean that in a 15-year-old-Hawthorne-Heights-Are-So-Right-About-Everything way, I mean it in a, we all just want the best and easiest life we can get and most of the time, we will put ourselves first.

I'm at a point where I can't date. I just can't. My head tells me it's, 'illogical' and we don't have time, or we don't have the money, or whatever and my heart says it cant be hurt again after previous relationships ending in cheating or other types of emotional abuse. I think that's where MGTOW crept in, and where redpill was the initial crowbar in to my psyche.

What I'm asking, and I'm not demanding, no one has to give me anything, but I was wondering if anyone out there has felt the same, or been in a similar boat and then got out of it. I don't really want to be told, 'just leave yourself vulnerable, bro' because I can't. I can't drop my guard entirely, I just want to know how I can lower this shield just a little bit.

I know my choices are limited:

  • Either stay like this, harbour suspicion (just like the Elvis song), remain single, keep people at arms length, be 'content' but ultimately unfulfilled but at least my own problems are my own and it's less stress (so say).

Or

  • Become vulnerable, waste my time with people who don't really care about me, who may cheat, who may hurt, who may do other evil things to me that've happened before but still have a shot at finding something that'll actually help my soul.

It's that sweet middle-ground I want, but it seems to me like I can't have both.

I just find myself, every day, not caring more and more. I don't care about sex, I don't care about relationships, I don't care about commitment, I don't care about it all because those two subreddits have preached that I shouldn't but I know that it's going to eventually corrupt my emotions.

I'm going to wrap this ramble up now. Thank you for reading it, if you have. I'm not hoping or praying for a saviour to come, but any gems of advice you have, any methods that've worked for you, anything that'll help me, please pass it my way, if you can.

To the mods, I'm sorry if this text post was the wrong place to put this, I just needed to get it off my chest.