I’m not sure where to begin with this. My brother passed away recently, and there are so many lessons that his life and death have taught me. I need to share this with everyone—whether you are young, old, apart of MGTOW, or otherwise. Not all of this is going to pertain to GYOW, but most of it will. Thank you for taking your time to read this in advance.

I would like to preface this by saying my brother’s cause of death is an anomaly, but he himself was not. He was just a normal person, which makes his story much more important, in my opinion. My brother was a college graduate, a son, a father, and a big brother to me. He enjoyed volunteering when he had the time. He was rarely in any trouble, especially when he was younger, but trouble always seemed to find him. This trouble came in many forms—women, substance abuse, feelings of inadequacy, the “justice” system—all of these things would eventually crush him down to nothing. These things, in tandem, are why he is no longer breathing on this Earth, and why I will never see him again.

I’m writing this as a means of processing and remembering, but I also write this as a warning. I know it’s fun to joke & post memes in this sub, but after my brother passed, I’m realizing just how serious MGTOW and similar lifestyle choices are. If my brother chose MGTOW, he would probably still be here. Or, at least, his life would not have ended up the way it did.

I apologize if my thoughts are jumbled in this post, but I will try to lay everything out chronologically.

The first lesson I learned from my brother was about marriage. I was much younger than my brother, so I never had much of an opinion when it came to his relational decisions. I was only in high school when he got married, and I was still extremely blue-pilled during this time as well. Had I known about MGTOW during this time, I probably would have spoken up, but this wasn’t the case. I was actually happy that my brother was getting married, but that would all come crashing down in just a few years.

My family never formed a relationship with the woman he chose. Not in the 10+ years of knowing her did she ever seem to like my family, even though we tried so hard to get along with her. My brother supported her basically as a work-mule—bought a house, did the cooking, and slaved away for her as she was pursuing her own interests. She was always tired. Always something wrong that cause her to moan and complain. Whenever I came over to visit, she would hide in their room, and not even manage to come out to say hello to me.

After they were married it was clear she wanted my brother to herself, and wanted my family out of the picture. We rarely saw her, and they both began to withdraw from us. I was losing my brother from day one, and he had no say in anything. She wore the pants because he loved her unconditionally, for whatever reason that might be, and he did everything he could to please her. She took advantage of that. I don’t know if I can call her family toxic—I rarely saw them either—but I know they unjustifiably despised my family as well. And there is sub-lesson #1: when you marry, you are marrying into her whole family, and taking all that baggage with you. That alone should be enough to say no to a ring. It just complicates your life by a factor of ten.

Before I get into this next paragraph, I will say that my brother had his own faults within his marriage. He had issues with drinking, and I know that affected both of them negatively. I think he drank out of pure necessity, though. He couldn’t handle the weight of everything that he had spilled onto himself, which would eventually include a two children as well. So he drank. He got mad at her one evening. He yelled (nothing physical). She felt threatened and the cops were called. He was kicked out of his own home and forced to move back in with my parents, and that is when the divorce began. To make things short, it wasn’t a clean break. With two kids involved, it made everything a million times worse. Their house was sold, his wife was turning her back on him even though he wanted to make things work—everything he worked for was gone, just like that. She didn’t allow him any second chances or forgiveness. I imagine she holds her grudges to this day, even though he’s dead now. I know the divorce was the beginning of his descent, and he was never the same after that had happened.

The second lesson I learned from my brother was about having kids. I loved my nephews. I know my brother did as well. But the justice system doesn’t play nicely with dads, for some reason, and he rarely got to see his own sons because of this. He had to jump through legal hoops and shell out thousands of dollars just for the potential of getting some sort of custody. He wasn’t able to afford the legal costs, and after a while he just had to give up. He was so busy with working in order to pay child support (and by the way, the mother has the say for every monetary expense made in regards to a kid). She’d pick the most expensive daycares, and he would have to pay for it. Paying thousands of dollars a month, never being able to see your kid, being bombarded by the bullshit of life, work, etc. My brother was turning into a husk. To be quite honest, looking back at everything, I’m surprised he made it as far as he did. I don’t think many men would continue their lives if put in the same situation he was in. His heart was broken for sure. He went almost two years without seeing or talking to his kids because his ex was dead-set on him staying out of their lives.

In addition to this, when they were together, he wasn’t allowed to play with his sons like a normal dad. His wife was so overly protective, and even the most minor things would set her off. And as I learned tonight from talking with my parents about all of this, she once told him that, “you don’t know how to be a father.” My brother adored his sons, and you could see it every time they were just by themselves. With her, it was always misery and tension. No love, just selfish protection of her kids. It was so disheartening to see. And she used her sons to crush my brother even more. I know she just wanted him to give up, which he never fully did. There was hope, but he just couldn’t afford it at the time.

What I learned from this is that you can’t put yourself in the position where another person can control and manipulate you emotionally. You just should not do it. When you have kids, you are completely setting yourself up for that. If anything ever happens, and your wife/ex-wife wants retribution, she will use those kids a pawns. It happens every day, and now that I have experienced this through my brother, I see it more and more. It shouldn’t be this way, but it’s just how things are. No one will side with the father unless the mother has committed something terrible. You’ll be completely ruined, and he tried not to show it, but I know that being away from his kids just ate him alive.

The third lesson I learned from my brother was how much it takes to break someone. The culmination of everything, all of this, is why he made a poor decision out of desperation. He was penniless due to the child support. Completely at a loss as to what to do. He was so ashamed by everything that he couldn’t even turn to me, or my parents, for help. He was pinned against the wall financially and emotionally, and this just caused him to snap. He snapped, and he did something out of desperation, and it got him killed. I don’t want to get into specifics since this did make the news, but he paid for all of this in blood. My brother is dead, and I have to wake up to that fact every morning. I just think about every other option he could have taken, but there was no “good” option. His life was basically unsalvageable after the divorce.

He didn’t have enough money to pay his child support for that month, I know that for a fact. So what does that mean? It means he’d be serving time in prison. That means losing your job, and going even deeper into the hole. There was no possible way he could have continued this for another decade. No possible way. And as much as he loved his sons, and as much as he loved all of us, I know he would have ended it himself had he not died this way. My brother’s life was over, no matter which way you cut it. He was pinned into the corner by life and all of the people who put him there. Pinned by all of these decisions, which were his decisions, don’t get me wrong. But that doesn’t mean it’s right. Marriage shouldn’t end in heartbreak and financial ruin, but it does. A dad shouldn’t be kept away from his kids for years at a time, but it happens. A family shouldn’t have to lose a loved one from all of this, but we did. And there is no coming back from this. My brother is in a coffin six feet under the ground, and I had to watch with my family as he was lowered into the earth. This wouldn’t have happened if he just made the decision to not get married. It wouldn’t have happened if his ex-wife was just a little more sympathetic towards him. It wouldn’t have happened if he didn’t have kids. He would still be here if he has just circumvented all these complexities.

His ex-wife hasn’t even reached out to us since his passing, nor has any of her family. I probably will not be able to see my nephews until they are both 18, or unless she has a change of heart. There is just so much anger and bitterness that brews inside people, and I’m not sure I’ll ever understand why. My parents aren’t able to see their grandchildren either, so they can’t be proper grandparents. I think that’s what hurts me the most, because they loved them a lot. So even they lost more than just a son.

The fourth lesson I learned from my brother was that life doesn’t have to be this way. I think parts of life will always be shitty in their own special way, but you do not have to go through this—the desperation, the heartbreak, etc. Life does not have to be complex if you just avoid the complexities. Focus on your parents if you are blessed enough to have a relationship with them. Don’t spend your time and money on a woman, spend it on you. Build yourself up. Build your immediate family up. To think of all the money that was wasted in the last few years just pisses me off, to be honest. The legal fees, the child support, the house he lost. It was enough to help my parents retire, or help me get a head-start on my education, or help my brother re-start his own life. But it’s all twisted. Everything got so twisted up, and he made his life too complex, both emotionally and financially. Don’t get married, don’t have kids, work, and start a flourishing career, and you won’t have to deal with this. Life doesn’t have to end this way if you just GYOW. Avoid the bullshit. Enjoy your life.

It is a bittersweet thing to say, but if there is anything I am glad about, it’s that my brother has finally found peace. It is just unfortunate it had to be this way. I hope you can all take this to heart. And once more, I understand this is an anomaly. I’m not saying that getting married or having children is an automatic death sentence, but you just don’t know. It’s not like I would have imagined this happening ten years ago, and he himself said about a year ago that he just didn’t think his life end up the way it did.

Final Thoughts: I want to say thank you to everyone in this sub. I imagine r/MGTOW is going to be bulldozed soon because of all the SJW politics that are happening on Reddit currently. I hope that doesn’t happen, but if it does, I wish you all the best. Don’t let the world’s opinions of this lifestyle ever make you feel small, because only good things can come of it. There is nothing wrong with avoiding women, marriage, and children, especially in our current societal climate. Just be yourself, man. That’s all there is to it. If you don’t mind, I would kindly ask if you could take a moment of silence for my brother. I know you don’t know him, but just think of him for a bit.

Lastly: I am trying to come up with ways to help out my parents financially. I’m not going to post a direct link, but I published a few lifestyle/self-help books about four years ago (one of them is about minimalism, for example). If you are interested, just send me a PM. Any sales I make are going to help them recover from the funeral costs, which exceeded 10k. My mom is also taking off work for a couple of months. I did message the mods to ask if this is ok, but never received a response. If it isn’t, I have no problem editing the post or verifying information.

/u/gege33 /u/ss_camaro /u/Mojo_666 /u/ThatCard /u/PowerfulAudience let me know, and thank you.