21st September, 2024, 8:23am, Blackpool, England 39, Male, Caucasian - Bedroom. Alone.
Status:
Mind: Impending Imminent psychotic mental breakdown, suicidal ideation; Possible Diagnosis - Chronic fatigue, potentially fatal stress, depression, anxiety, crippling loneliness.
Body: 5’11 (1.8m), 108.1kg (17+ Stone / 238lbs), 31.9% Body Fat, XXL clothes, Officially Obese, High blood pressure, 10x10cm Giant Esophageal Leiomyoma Tumour (Current status: Benign)
Money: Completely Skint.
She doesn’t mean it… Dolly threatens this all the time… She’ll definitely come back…. Surely you don’t just throw away a treasure trove of memories from the best years of your life with someone because “you’re unhappy”. Twelve years has to be worth something… right? The life experiences, the adventures, the joys, the sadness, getting lost and finding each other again, the vulnerability, the change, the work, the extra glass of wine, the physical explorations, the emotional reincarnations, the setbacks, the promotions, the chickens, the learnings, the ‘I can’t breathe’ fits of laughter, the losses, the chase, the psilocybin wonders, the projects, the grief, the passion, the sex marathons, the goals, the dreams - all of it - what a ride, to build this deep a connection with another human who becomes your committed partner as you navigate this majestic life together - beyond words.
You thank God that two enmeshed white-hot flames found each other, perfectly interlocking jigsaw pieces out of a sea of 8 billion potentials. Dancing the tango to the music of life, not sure where the next solo will take you, but with a promise to hold each other throughout the endless unfolding of the human experience. It’s fucking beautiful man. To share such a core, evolving, deep bond with someone feels truly divine.
But not today. Today it feels like the very fabric of my petrol drenched, flammable soul has been torched with a flamethrower. Fair play we were never officially “married”, but short of a lavish £20,000 wedding day, platinum rings, a massive cake, elaborate OTT party and a pissed-up best man's speech at a manor house in the secluded forests of rural Cheshire, we were basically man and wife.
But things have really shifted recently, you know when the air goes gooey and thick just before a massive storm hits. She’s completely disconnected from me, from us, and I see a sad defeat in her eyes which until only recently, burned like neon emeralds as the passcode to my heart. She’s changed her hair colour for the first time in forever, like a snake shedding its skin ready for a new coat. I guess that makes me the old snake-skin boot, discarded to flake and warp in the mid-afternoon blazing desert sun while she slips a brand new pair of Nikes.
It’s been gruelling living under the same roof for the six months since she dropped the emotional nuclear bomb and told me she was leaving me. One day you’re smacking her arse in passing while she’s bent over the kitchen sink, the next, complete silence, tangible resentment and endless stonewalling. Every syllable spoken between us has the potential to ignite an apocalyptic interplanetary war between galaxies, so you keep your mouth shut. A poisonous purgatory of suspended nothingness while she’s busy untethering her life from mine. I’m awaiting the gallows, like silent cowboys and indians where the Sheriff and the Chief stay as far apart as the six and one on a dice. There’s a face-off in the air, but nobody dares speak its existence. There's safety in silence.
I don’t blame her, she’s her own sovereign spirit, blessed with the human all-you-can-eat buffet of choice of where she goes, what she does and who she does it with… as we all do. Love is a choice. I think it was Sting who said if you love someone, set them free. You can’t stop someone from following their heart or deciding they want to pack their emotional luggage into an old leather suitcase and head off in a totally different direction than where you’ve both been heading for your entire thirties.
Not to sound arrogant, but I don’t think she’ll find someone with my heart, my humour, someone who gets her like I do, supports her dreams and aspirations with the same vigour that she chases them. The ultimate pom-pom waving cheerleader for whatever my woman desires, what a team. But maybe, I only get who she was and not who she is now, maybe she’s gorged on mint choc-chip for twelve years, got to the bottom of the tub and now fancies a go on pistachio.
We could talk this out. We could initiate one of our 8 hour long peace talks which we’ve entered into at least 20 times in the last few years. The NATO of relationships… RATO. Basically, I fuck up, she tells me how much I fucked up, I spend hours apologising and ripping my heart out and shit talking myself for not being enough of what she needs, she reluctantly and begrudgingly forgives me (or she says she does), we get on with our lives, something happens, we go back to the round table again. But it feels different this time. I’ve watched her change right in front of my very eyes, and dammit, I didn’t follow, I didn’t enquire or check in to see what was really going on inside of her. I guess I was scared to hear the real truth. It feels like in the current version of ourselves, this writing has been on the wall for some time.
When their woman is in mid-meltdown (for something as seemingly spurious as her Amazon delivery being late), real men stand up, wrap their arms around her with full presence, make her feel safe and protected as she runs out of steam and snaps out of her bad mood because she feels like her man has her, in full certainty, in all of his masculine wisdom and warrior strength. Yeah, I’m not that guy, my SAM turret of choice is my words, I try and talk my way out of it, that’s probably what I’ve been doing wrong, she’s speaking in Chinese (Emotion) and I’m speaking French (Logic) - Penny Drop. She’s in a bad mood and it’s easier to leave her be (not face the wrath) than wade through the waist-deep emotional sludge and quick-sand I’ve sunk in before. Maybe she just lost feelings and fancies a different experience, maybe she’s outgrown me? There’s just so much emotional baggage and years of unresolved issues. Can slates ever truly be wiped clean?
The biggest feeling of helplessness you will ever feel as a parent is the heart-breaking process of telling your gorgeous, innocent children “Life’s never gonna be the same again sweetie, Mummy and Daddy aren’t in love anymore and we’re going to live in separate houses…. But we still love you both very much”... Watching their entire world crumble behind those sweet baby blues, unable to catch a clean breath through their involuntary convulsing chests and cascading blood-shot tears, hugging their knees as if their only barrier of safety from this newly uncovered devastating truth, retreating into a ball to escape a newly realised cruel world of confusion, disorientation and uncertainty. Every safe structure in their lives, demolished, every sense of strength they rely on, rubble, completely and utterly, helpless. Nothing humbles and quiets your ego more than emotionally scarring your children like that, whether it was your choice to make or not. This is the ultimate in powerlessness to the very people in your life that it is your spiritual oath to protect. For them, it’s the ultimate betrayal.
I was hoping within the six months of agony existing under the same roof while she was finalising her exit plans, she’d change her mind. I should have fought for her, but she told me she didn’t want me to, and I believed her, so… I didn’t… There’s a good boy - I didn’t want to upset her and go against her wishes, enraging the flames of indifference even more, so I just STFU and internalised. Disney tells us a gentleman's role is to respect the woman and not kiss her unless she asks for it, unless you’re snow white of course. To dance to her tune and play by her rules, that is the law of the jungle for the Nice Guy.
It seems more and more in today’s society that the female is the one in the cockpit while the Bro’s sit in Row 17, eating peanuts, browsing through the in-flight call-of-duty movies and looking at the clouds through the window, completely oblivious to the storm raging inside their women. This is certainly true amongst my circles of married friends anyway, don’t make a scene now boys, she’s fine, she’s not going anywhere, kids, work, money, aging parents, there are too many chips on the table, she’ll never leave - the flight cruising at an altitude of silent desperation and contempt.
She’s taken the wheel, not by choice, but out of necessity of being taken for granted for years. By the time she’s priming the ejector seat and pulling the ripcord because she’s asked you to change fourteen thousand times and you haven’t, and now she’s ready to take action on how disconnected you truly are, you realise there aren’t enough parachutes on board for both of you to survive, and someone, definitely not her, is going to be incinerated. They call this “Walk away wife syndrome”, a terrible name, but the point stands true.
She’s been ruminating on it for a while and she knows all of the safety procedures, emergency exits and safe landing zones. It’s an unspoken social dynamic that secretly I think some women thrive on and some men submit to silently accepting. We just don’t talk about it and pretend that passing nodes of resentment are a normal thing between modern day couples. Maybe men give up the ghost because all they really want is a life of feeling respected and desired, yet the cosmic irony is that they can only unlock this level once they truly handle and tame the cyclone of emotions, power and fire that is femininity, which most men rarely do. Having been on both sides of Occam’s Razor, I see a very clear reason why separation and divorce rates are so high today.
In my case, she definitely did love me at some point… I fished her poo out of the birthing pool while she was pushing out our second born, that’s love, isn’t it? Dr Gottman says that’s an “Act Of Service” in the field of love languages, which ironically, was one of Dolly’s. Bobbing for nuggets is true, roll your sleeves up and get involved manly dedication. The midwives just sat back and watched with a rye smile on their chops.
I really did love her though. I proposed to her by getting down on one knee by a stunning little bridge overlooking a quaint picturesque canal in Milan. Treating her to a picture perfect Italian meal, sipping ice crystal cocktails, looking out over the most breathtaking scene even Picasso would struggle to recreate, before seeing Eric Clapton live (her favourite) and that night, newly engaged, making love under the Italian night sky! That should’ve banked Brownie points for the rest of my life, or so I thought. It cost me a small fortune and I got annihilated by mosquitoes, but that night will remain with me until the day I die. It was forever. She definitely loved me then, in her weird, unorthodox almost comic book way.
Eighteen months later, she’s scorching the Earth and moving on like it never happened. What changed? Was her love conditional? I definitely got addicted to the pick me up and put me down see-saw of egg-shell walking. The cortisol roulette wheel. Will she see me as a good boy or a naughty boy today? Will I get that bright smile which fills my heart and completes my world, or will I have to go Sherlock Holmes mode and approach from every angle to unlock the secrets of why I’ve upset her, again. Did I not take the bins out last night…? That’s it isn’t it, I didn’t do the bins… Idiot…. “You Alright?” - “Yeah, You?”. Fully trauma bonded like a nuclear reactor, spark welded and locked tight, suffocatingly tight. But then, have I been trained to think this way, are these actually my thoughts or the result of years of coercive psycho-analysis and unrelenting sabotage from a master manipulator? Am I currently sabotaging myself? I’m Fucked up man, maybe she’s right, maybe I do need therapy.
Years of cultural programming hasn’t helped this imbalance between men and women either, positioning the family man as a useless boob who is always asking for the forgiveness and approval of his wife (think The Simpsons, Mrs Doubtfire, Ross Geller and every Sitcom/RomCom ever), the inter-sexual pedestalization of the Godess before eventually the woman gets tired, bored and wants to find a ‘high value man’ or a bad boy who (treats her like shit) makes her feel more significant and alive than her perfectly trained circus monkeyboy manchild at home. For the record, I 100% fit snuggly and effortlessly into this modality right now, I am the king of the boobs… What an image.
Add onto this complex emerging puzzle the alarming pattern of social media vindictively convincing women of all ages that modern feminism is the ultimate socio-sexual power and that any creature with a cock and bollocks is a toxic narcissist mindlessly serving a patriarchally constructed masculine world. This seems to be the genesis for the uprising of a dark form of black magic femininity.
Listen, I’m not bashing women here, it’s absolutely not the point of why I’m writing this, I love them, in all of their chaotic, slender, gorgeous, seductive, caring, attractive, creative, maternal beauty. Women owning their importance in our social construct is of course a wonderful thing, it goes without saying and forgive me for stating the obvious, but our species would be obsolete without the two genders blending symbiotically. We need each other. The problem comes when these impressionable, deluded women begin demanding that they are ‘the ultimate prize’ and are deserving of a guy in finance, trust fund, 6’5, blue eyes, when in reality, they come from a Doncaster council estate, have 3 teeth in their gums and haven’t showered since 2003. It’s a radically counter productive mentality considering the hierarchical structure of our value based society that has worked pretty magnificently well for thousands of years.
Unfortunately for the ‘babez’ out there in bite-sized-attention-drenched consumption land, because of the eternal rhetoric of the ‘You-Go-Girl’ crew, a lot of women rate themselves as super-model-esque on the emotional, spiritual and physical ‘marks out of ten’ mating scale because of how in-tact and repeated this female collective power narrative is. In reality, to most men, with their ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane’ caveman Pornhub spectacles on, the same woman result much lower on the scale, except for the lubricated bias induced after afew pints of Guinness of course. The truth is somewhere in the middle of the 2 scores. The ‘Whatever Podcast’ demonstrates this delusional social conditioning majestically over and over again as women who instinctively rate themselves a 9/10, demanding a tall dark and handsome six figure earner, slowly turn down the cooker to 5/10 and acceptance of a regular Joe upon logical cross-examination.
I recently saw countless examples on Instagram of women actively mocking men who approach them on dating apps who they arrogantly suggest are way below their (self-anointed) standards. In reality and in a lot of cases, it’s the woman’s over-inflated rose-tinted view of herself which results in her disappointment of not being able to snare these high-value men. Of course think highly of yourself and be the best version of you babe, but don’t pretend that you’re Jennifer Aniston (2001 era) when you’re more Vicky Pollard (2003 era). These unfortunately ridiculed pond scum men are mostly good guys, supportive providers, work hard, pay for dinner on a first date (equality) and respect her feminine energy enough to put her on a pedestal and idolise her. Compared to the Frat-Chad Fuck Boi’s whose entire philosophy is screw em’ and ditch em’... Furthering the narrative that all men are anti-feminist, misogynist good for nothing pigs. The cycle continues.
These good, ‘regular’ men are a catch in the general guise of what is deemed desirable i.e. a ‘good, solid man’, but instead, they are looked down upon because TikTok has taught her that she deserves a man with Elon Musk’s wallet, Jordan Peterson’s intellect, Batman’s stoicism, Brad Pitt’s stomach (Fight Club era) and Jim Carrey’s humour, and she can’t possibly be given that from your average Joe. There’re shocking statistics emerging of younger men stating their desire to remain single due to this very imbalance in our culture. “The juice isn’t worth the squeeze” they say. The ultimate bonfire of icks all ignited at once into a huge flaming inferno of disdain and contempt toward the opposite sex.
If you are a man and you haven’t been served up this delightful rabbit hole of social media, I guarantee your woman has, and the general advice to her from her digital sisterhood is simple…. “If your man has ever displayed {Insert particular personality trait}, Run and never look back girl!”.
This might all sound bitter and resentful, and that’s because right now, I am. I’m hurting, and there is zero doubt in my mind that my twelve year relationship fell down at least in some part due to this hook and bait from social media, empowering women to walk away and experience the greener grass over there, rather than working on relationships and putting in the graft to make your promises and memories grow back stronger, while healing and growing together in a symbiotic, respectful, connected relationship. I know my grandparents hated each other at one point, but they came back stronger. Today it’s so easy to give up and walk away, with a thousand Spice girls fans cheering you on while you do it.
I want to grab Dolly’s shoulders and shake her, connect into her soul and speak with every ounce of God in me that this is a mistake, we’ve both made mistakes, our communication is graffiti stained and tarnished by years of our inability to handle our emotions and show up securely for one another… We can level up together, we love each other… Well, at least that’s true for me. Life is short and we’ve stood at the temple of our sacred connection for years, especially when one of us is not feeling this whole life thing too well. To hear you, to understand you, to be there with open hands and an open heart for one another no matter how high the crashing waves rise over our puny human heads. I can change, you can change, we can change, we can do this together, in our own vision of the relationship we want… People can change, can’t they?
I keep hearing this nagging high pitched droning somewhere in my skull like I’ve just been whacked over the head with a cricket bat continuously for 17 days. I taste acid at the back of my throat…. It dawns on me that this separation is a really big deal. This isn’t like England going out of the World Cup big, this is ‘end of your life as you know it’ big. She was my best mate, my confidant, my sexual-explorer, my heart, my home and my side-kick-badass-queen bitch for over a decade… And now she’s not… She’s my ex now - God, that word cuts through the air like a samurai sword - I saw a guy on TikTok say that ‘Your ex always comes back’. Fuck, I hope he’s right. This changes everything about my world.
[–]regertsrus 0 points1 point2 points (0 children) | Copy Link