Advice after 26 years with a borderline 901 upvotes | November 29, 2017 | by adam142857 ------------------------- Reposted after having been taken down for not having a flair. Some addenda at the top. TL;DR 53 yo successful white male from UK offers advice on spotting a woman with BPD (borderline personality disorder) or similar symptoms. Avoid these women. Mate selection: women change; expect bad features to worsen with age. Bad post-natal depression is a sign of far worse to come at menopause. A peri-menopausal borderline is a monster who will try to destroy you. Child-rearing: keep it simple. In gynocentric Western culture, you're probably a better influence on your children if separated from their mother by the time they're about 13. Love: don't be fooled, it's just chemicals. Women can be good or bad, try figuring them out instead, and if you're looking for an LTR, pick a good one. Never get married. Divorce is stacked so heavily against men, it's not worth the risk. BUT, divorce--if you're resourceful and as cunning as she will undoubtedly be--may be the best thing that ever happens to you. Women stick together no matter what, never ask them for relationship advice. TRP/MGTOW/alpha-beta is a workable and useful guide in contemporary Western culture. Uncultivated alphas are not men but animals, and women love them. Which tells you yet more about women, if you needed to know. The West is in a poor state, and it's up to men to solve it, by starting with themselves. With or without a spiritual teaching, it is possible for a man to make his life meaningful and profound. I may respond to the odd comment, but basically, readers should view the following as take-it-or-leave-it advice. Here goes: I have been familiarising myself with TRP/MGTOW/alpha-beta theory over the past year, four years after ending a 26-year relationship with a borderline wife. I am older and more experienced than most of the contributors here, so I hope readers can benefit. About me: I’m a 53 yo white man from the UK. I have three amazing children aged 16, 19 and 22. I travel all over the world with and without my children for three months per year, and ski for three months-plus per year. I am in great physical shape, run a half-marathon every week outside the ski season, and lift three times per week. I’ve been in a spiritual teaching for nearly 20 years. I have a high six-figure net worth measured in US dollars, and own a profitable business that only requires me to work two days a week. Not seriously wealthy, but good SMV/MMV. I don’t want to boast, but I do want readers to understand that this is not a post from some bitter loser. Although the story of my relationship with my ex could easily fill a novel-sized memoir, here’s some bullet point guidance that resulted from my experiences. Spotting a borderline. Well documented online, but worth repeating: If she exhibits emotional lability, mimicking you in clothing and mannerisms, has fraught interpersonal relationships, psychological crises, cooks up friction and arguments out of nothing, constantly changes her mind etc., end it immediately. Close off all contact. The first “tell” for my ex was a series of mysterious but minor ailments that no doctor could ever diagnose, followed by a series of psychological crises. To her mind, I was always somehow the cause of all of them. Why did I stay with her? Borderlines are good in bed. They’re also interesting and exciting to be around, especially when, as a young man, I had narcissistic tendencies. The borderline-narcissist couple is also well documented. As it turned out, she proved to be a good colleague, and then, a good mother. By the time her issues were impairing our lives, I had learned to bear the downside, and we had children. With the benefit of hindsight, I see that although it was extremely difficult and fraught for me, staying with her until our youngest child was 13 was the right thing to do. I now look back with pride at what I withstood and achieved for my children in the face of adversity. Selecting a life partner. I overheard someone say this once and it has stuck with me “if a man is a prick at 20, he will be the same prick at 60.” In other words, with men, you know what you’re buying. Women, however, change. The personality of my ex-wife changed completely every seven years or so. This is partly a borderline feature, but not so unusual. Astonishingly, my ex always thought her chameleon nature was attractive, fascinating. I hated it, and was constantly in dread of her next incarnation. Just one of her metamorphoses occurred from 2010, when she was a Stepford wife (I liked that one), to the present, when she is a radical feminist, who organises various ‘anti-patriarchy’ and other misandrist events. Women are not creatures of principle, and do not aspire to virtues such as truth and honour. Their hormones control their moods, their moods control their actions, and they change, radically. By the time they hit the menopause, borderlines are monsters. BTW a good predictor of a bad menopause is bad postnatal depression. If your partner has bad postnatal depression, I’d advise you to leave her before she hits the menopause. Her hormones will make her hate you. She may well try to destroy you. Be on the safe side and assume that the vivacious, bubbly and beautiful girl you met at 20 will have transformed into Susie Greene from Curb your Enthusiasm by 45. Bringing up children. As a father, I would recommend having very few rules but applying them firmly. I had two: no arguing in my earshot, and do your homework as soon as you get in from school. Academically and socially, my children are top performers. They are extremely close, maintaining daily contact with each other, and with me. Undoubtedly, the fact that they are smart is also partly due to the fact that both my ex and I are high IQ. If you’re cohabiting with your children’s mother, I would advise living in separate homes by the time the children reach about age 13. You’ll be a far better influence on them without her diluting, distorting and contradicting the guidance you give them. Never, ever get married. I emerged very well from my divorce by studying the law so closely that I knew it better than my own lawyer, and my ex’s. But it was still a tortuous, four-year process that took every ounce of my skill, knowledge, strategic and tactical nous, duplicity and cunning. When it comes to separation and divorce, a woman can and will act and lie, and the authorities and courts will immediately believe her and back her all the way. Anything and everything you say to counsellors (male or female), therapists, lawyers and judges will be summarily discounted, dismissed and invalidated. If you’re wealthy, do not make the mistake of believing your prenup will protect you. Your wife will hire a good lawyer and go “forum shopping.” This will mean she takes up residency in the country that gives women the best divorce deals, and divorce you there. In recent years, this has been the UK, where there has been an influx of high net worth Russian wives. The UK courts will throw out your prenup, reach its divorce judgement—which will be heavily stacked against you—and this will capture ALL your global assets and income. There is no get-out. Not only that, but here in the UK, marriage means financial responsibility for your wife for the rest of your life. It does not stop when you divorce, or when you retire. Only when you die. Love. Love is chemicals in your brain, nothing more. Beautiful, wonderful, magical chemicals at times, but they are NOT your friend. Your love for a woman is an expression of the will of nature, a force far stronger than you can resist. Nature wants us to reproduce, then die. That is all. You may believe you want to have children—in fact you may actually want to—but the force that makes you reproduce is out of your control. In the past, marriage was a good idea, generating stability and balance, which are important for producing psychologically healthy children. But if you want living proof that long-term marriage is now bad for men, next time you’re at your local shopping mall, or even walking in the park, observe closely the body language of the husband in the older couples you see. Study his face. In almost every instance, you will see careworn, melancholy impotence. He will be bowed, his spine gone. Often shuffling obediently a few paces behind his nagging wife, who is in total control, and exploiting it to the max. He is a tired servant, a spent force, a lap dog. A husk. Again from Curb your Enthusiasm, Larry David: “Most of the happy men I know are single, most of the happy women are married.” Divorce=freedom. The best three things that have happened in my life so far are my children, encountering a living teaching, and getting divorced. I have been doing what I want, pursuing my goals, for the past four years. I go to sleep every night with a smile on my face, and it’s still there when I wake up in the morning. In the last 13 years of my marriage I was permanently irritable, anxious and stressed. I currently spend no time pursuing women. Socially, I get on fine with them—I’m confident, funny and even charming, but for someone in my position, the cost-benefit of an LTR is highly questionable. For a marriage, it’s a piece of shit, unless she’s richer than me. The risk-benefit is even worse. If I did meet someone and we were making each other happier, then if she insisted on marriage, I hope that I would have the strength to walk away. After divorce. One of the most astounding phenomena for me after divorce has been my married female friends, who with precious few exceptions, defended my ex’s heinous acts during our marriage, and now appear to believe that I am hiding some secret desperation to remarry. They go out of their way to introduce me to overweight, unattractive divorcees, usually with two or three children in tow. They appear to expect me to instantly fall in love, and believe that I desire nothing other than to spend the next 20 years being nagged to emasculation by a fat, ugly woman who spends all my income and enrols me in bringing up someone else’s children. I have learned to suppress my astonishment and laughter, and now put a practised polite smile and nod in their place. TRP/MGTOW/alpha-beta theory etc. Having sampled various philosophies, and having been in a living teaching, I would rate the sum total of TRP/MGTOW/alpha-beta etc. as a coherent approach. There is, unfortunately and inevitably, a negative, angry element. And also in-fighting. But the central thrust—of reasserting men’s rights and promoting men’s advancement—is a good and timely cause. I would make the following observations. All models of human nature are maps rather than territory. Do not confuse the one for the other. I notice many posters taking a dogmatic view of TRP, going monk and so on. This is inevitable, but if you notice it in yourself, it is time to refrain and take stock. Our situations are individual, and the forces that govern our lives are constantly changing and largely out of our control. If you want to get laid, TRP will improve your chances. But it is a mating strategy, it is confined to our animal urges. Human beings also possess other qualities and are capable of commanding higher faculties. Conversely, if you want to reclaim yourself, MGTOW will help, but remain MGTOW/monk and you will take yourself out of the gene pool, a derogation of evolutionary duty. On alphas, I remember one early truth bomb when I was aged about 16. I was in love with a girl who I judged to possess a rare and delicate beauty. I was bucking up the courage to ask her on a date, when to my horror, I discovered that she was fucking a local guy who was the worst kind of violent—his hobby was picking fights with weaker guys and quite literally kicking their heads in. It wasn’t so much that I was scared of him, although I was a little, it was that I was disgusted by her consorting with him. Left unchecked by a coherent culture that controls and directs our urges, these are the “men” who will get (or perhaps more likely impregnate and dump) the desirable women. Women have been genetically programmed to be unable to distinguish between high-testosterone behaviour and the more cultured qualities necessary for caring for them, and fathering and bringing up valuable contributors to society. In short, women (with a sprinkling of exceptions who we should be thankful for) are not as smart as men. Nor are they principled. Moreover, Western society has lost its way in providing them with the necessary tools, controls and guidance in this respect, and until there is a change, I think applying TRP/MGTOW/alpha-beta etc. in aggregate is a workable, serviceable approach for young men. In the Western world, whose culture is dominated by advertising and consumption, gratification has replaced the search for happiness. Women, who are easily swayed, are more at the mercy of these forces than men. But for men too, our lives have become a matter of getting what we want, of satisfying our appetites (TRP is actually an example of this). We have lost touch with some of the finer faculties available to us: fortitude, forgiveness, abiding, persisting, sacrificing and giving, qualities that enable us to set our aim higher. Finally, my life experience, faith and hope tell me this: Do not check out permanently. Do not give up. Look deeper, and ever deeper, within yourself. You come from somewhere sacred, and hold something sacred. Pursue your goals. If you’re young, take the risk and leave your bad job. Dump your bad gf. Travel the world—you will discover that it is inordinately beautiful, as indeed is the overwhelming majority of humanity. Start a business, and if you’re young, go for it like hell. Get educated: generally, the harder the degree, the more it is worth. Do work you love, work you are called to, or at least, work that serves your aims. Be courageous and move to a better place, if necessary, perhaps a country with better conditions and potential partners. An essential gratitude for the gift of existence still permeates the culture of many Asian countries. And their women are feminine. Cultivate your pursuit of virtues like honour, truth and beauty. Grow your mental, spiritual and physical strength. Peace. ------------------------- Archived from https://theredarchive.com/post/47439