Since this forum seems to be mostly younger guys, I thought my perspective might be useful to some of the older MRPers. If the mods think it should go on askmrp or somewhere else, or just want to spike it, that's okay too, but I felt like I owed something to MRP after mostly lurking for a couple years. Hope it's useful to at least one man.

About me: Divorced six months, marriage was on the rocks long before that. I'm 54, average height, fit and muscular, handsome enough; highly literate professional, multilingual; reasonably well dressed; a veteran of my original nation's finest fighting force. I am an expat in a big European city where my language skills don't do me a huge amount of good. Joint custody (week-on/week-off) of my two kids, 8 and 10. Ex-wife lives nearby. I've been unemployed for a year, and prospects for a good job here are poor, because of my age and mediocre local language skills. I could easily improve my prospects simply by moving to one of several cities overseas. But my mission, to the extent that I have one, is my kids, and I can't bear the idea of being so far away from them.

I lift, and actually went back to squats and deadlifts after a few decades away after some encouragement from MRP. I play sports. That said, I have to take it easier than I used to because injury is always around the corner. As you age, your body doesn't respond the same way to exercise and injury; recovery time increases, a lifetime of accumulated strains and injuries haunts your days and nights with pain. Think about your future self just a little when you next feel like “working through” an injury that might cause permanent damage.

I've read the sidebar. If you haven't yet, do so, there's a lot of wisdom accumulated there, collective and otherwise. I would give anything to go back five years ago and learn the MRP basics. It might have saved my marriage, my family; maybe it will save yours.

The most helpful things for me were Robert Glover's “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” Mark Manson's book “Models,” and pretty much everything Rollo Tomassi has written. Indeed, Rollo and Chumplady were instrumental in me grasping that I had to end it with my ex-wife. Still I think because Rollo and a lot of manosphere writers have not reached late middle age, they don't yet understand the sexuality of the 50-plus woman. For example: A lot of these older gals have their hands full with shagging men in their 40s and younger (the guys who swipe “like” for every woman on Tinder). SMV calculations therefore look rather different than you might have expected.

An aside on the “truth” of Red Pill logic: One of my economics professors at university told me long ago that the value of a theory comes solely in its predictive power; if you can make accurate predictions using the theoretical guidelines, then it is “true” for practical purposes. TRP passed that test for me, unfortunately.

I discovered MRP a few years ago, after my ex-wife began having an affair and refused to talk about it, even though it was obvious to me – even without a smoking gun – that it was happening. Trust your gut, as they say. I was the proverbial drunk captain, once more or less RP, but worn down by years of going-along-to-get-along and accepting a lot of really stupid bluepill dogma. I'm getting back to myself, but it's been a rough and rocky road, and it's going to take a while yet.

Here are a few thoughts:

SAVE YOUR MARRIAGE, if you can. A middle-aged man can fall a long way and may never get back on his feet. As you are no doubt aware, the risk of all kinds of bad things – heart attacks, downward spiral into alcoholism, suicide, etc. – increases sharply for older divorced men. You probably love your wife, and I know you love your kids. Do everything within reason to save it; that means going all out to be the man your wife wants to be married to.

KNOW WHEN TO GIVE UP. I couldn't believe my ex-wife would actually destroy her kids' security for the schmuck she was seeing, and I hung on for two soul-destroying years, sacrificing my job, my self-respect and the respect of a lot of other people (including orbiting women who could have become lovers). You MUST set boundaries early and ruthlessly enforce them. Every time she crosses your red lines without consequences you decline further in her eyes. Never, never, never, never trust what she says; only what she does. I often read here that you have to be “willing to walk away.” No, you have to walk away.

YOUR MISSION COMES FIRST. I sacrificed my career for her (my higher-paying career) four times. Yes, four times. I can see you shaking your heads. I now believe that the timer started ticking the second time I did it. That was absolutely a mistake. Don't be like me.

DOES SHE HAVE TO SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU? If you find yourself constantly saying things like, “I don't understand why she...,” and “I can't believe that she...” - It's already over bro. You are in a fog because her words and her actions don't match. You don't understand because you don't WANT to understand. In my case, it was her constantly saying “I'm committed to saving this marriage, this family,” while lying about what she was up to with other guys. Lawyer up and salvage your life – NOW! Count yourself lucky that you caught it before you lost all self-respect.

POST-DIVORCE LIFE, particularly for people with a strong support network, will almost certainly be better than the living hell of a scorpion-vs.-tarantula marriage with a pathological liar. But getting out is only the first step. Part two is rebuilding. I lost half of my friends, my retirement plans, my pets, 50% of my time with my kids; I'm far from home without a job and can't leave if I am to stand by my kids. Aching loneliness and self-doubt come with the territory. When you “zero out,” though, you're at rock bottom, meaning you've got a firm place to build your new foundation. Life is way too short to waste this time. Limit the computer games, the drugs, the drunkeness. Get out. Lift. Learn.

MY BIGGEST SHOCK: My ex-wife paid absolutely no social penalty. Not one of her “friends” took her aside and said, “Hey, what the fuck are you doing, destroying your kids security?” No, even people who'd been quite distant rallied to her side. Even women who knew the whole story were not bothered by any of the shit she did. Somehow I doubt that's how it would have worked if it had been me wrecking my family (and the other guy's).

ALCOHOL: JBP said in one of his talks that something like one-third of men end up ruined by alcohol. I see it every time I go out in the faces at the bar. I don't want to see it in the mirror. One of my friends for a New Year's 2017 resolution vowed to have more non-drinking days than drinking days; he did it, and I'm trying to emulate that example.

DATING: I've had mixed results so far. I'm a naturally flirtatious, sweetly teasing sort of person, but my confidence was in tatters and my bitter one-itis and indecision are blindingly apparent to everyone. I've had a few short relationships, but none that I wanted to continue. Maybe that's for the best; probably the last thing I need is to plunge into something heavy without working out how I fucked up my marriage.

DATING APPS have made it so that the woman you're hitting on at the bar might be simply killing time talking to you while she waits to see if her date with any of those chads she connected with on Tinder is going to happen. And it came as a shock that when I have matched on dating apps the woman showed up 100% DTF, like they don't have time or bandwidth for anything more. Just a quick screening to ensure that I'm not Jack the Ripper. Not at all emotionally satisfying, but trying to adapt.

Final thought: No little girl ever thought at six years old, “I want to be a crack ho when I grow up.” None of you, as a kid, dreamed of becoming a drunk loser on skid row. A ruined life results from either a glitch in your psychological software, about which you can do nothing except pray; or, more likely, from a series of bad decisions that piles up over the years and leads you to a place that you'd never imagined going. Use what you learn here to stop that process of disintegration.