I remember when I was a kid and I finally got my mom to admit that Santa wasn't real. By that time I was pretty certain that he wasn't, but still finally hearing the truth left me strangely sad inside. I felt like a friend had died, and like the world was a much less magical place. This is how I feel having finally swallowed and digested the red pill. I always wanted the traditional Norman Rockwell happy family life and for the most part had achieved it for much of my 19 year marriage. But now my wife has shown me that AWALT. The shock and pain of the marriage coming to an end has run its course, but now I'm left with a profound feeling of sadness. It was all a lie and will never be again. Sure I'll have a great post marital life. I'll be free to be me, I have a lot going for me, great kids and so on, but still I can't unsee what I've seen. The world is a much uglier place. I see the world through different eyes now. I look at women, attractive women, friendly women, and all I see are burning dumpster fires full of red flags. I recently went on a rafting trip with several of my college buddies and their families (all of them on their second wives) and I could see the exasperated, tired, trapped look on their faces as their wives nagged and berated them over every possible little detail of the trip or their (mixed family mostly young) kids. Never again for me. I rowed down the river in my own raft with the help of my 2 mid teen aged children, while my buddies floundered behind getting getting yelled at by their wives because the kids were fighting, or crying, or tired. And I thought that as much as divorce sucks at least I am putting that behind me. But it's a shame really. I was raised believing that women were the glue that held a family together. The caring, nurturing ones that made sacrifices, yet everything I have seen lately shows me that exactly the opposite is true. I'm going to have to go it alone from here on out, grow old alone, die alone. What are the other options? Find another woman to love me for a few more years until suddenly she doesn't, and takes me for the other half of what's left. Or living out my life with a perimenopausal/menopausal/post menopausal harpy like the poor bastards struggling to row their rafts behind me. Sad, just sad.