Clickable link: https://archive.is/HhGan

Firstly, I know there are a lot of MGTOW guys on here. I am not one of them. I'm single in my late 20s and I've met some wonderfully empathetic women who outshine the assholes and the well-meaning women who they've misled. The amazing woman who may well have been my soulmate passed away last year, and it was my connecting to widowers and single fathers during my grief that led to me renouncing feminism and to focus on men who were hurting like or more than me. My friend and I each had our varying personal battles, and listening to other hurting men since her death has only reiterated to me just how much the world isn't widely willing to listen to the struggles of men and take them seriously. Men are expected to have it all together, and there are a lot of men for whom the burden on their shoulders becomes too much.

Anyway. The linked article was written by a 36 year old divorced father named Matt who titled his piece "She divorced me because I left dishes by the sink". It's deliberately misleading, though: his essay goes on to confess that his habit of leaving dirty drinking glasses by the sink (instead of putting them in the dishwasher) cuts deeply because he was ignoring something that meant a lot to his wife. I don't meant this mockingly or scathingly, but I couldn't help thinking that it's a bit like a microaggression against his wife (my words, not his). Look at how quickly this escalates:

"The wife doesn’t want to divorce her husband because he leaves used drinking glasses by the sink.

She wants to divorce him because she feels like he doesn’t respect or appreciate her, which suggests he doesn’t love her, and she can’t count on him to be her lifelong partner.

She can’t trust him.

She can’t be safe with him."

The article has gone viral and been read 2.3 million times since being written on January 14, and it is being widely praised particularly by women saying “Yes, this! You GET it!” A year ago, I would have considered the article to be really insightful and commended the author for his honesty and empathy. Honestly, in some ways I still do. But something still isn't sitting right with me. Events of the last year have caused me to take a step back and change my perspective on some things. I can see now that articles like this only paint part of a picture, and for a lot of people it's the only part that they want or are willing to see. The tone of the article feels like all the onus is on the husband to make a marriage happy, and that her happiness is his responsibility. It feels like another voice saying that a husband's opinions and feelings are either irrelevant or secondary to his wife's. It is being held aloft as another justification that the husband is at fault and the wife is blameless. It espouses and enables this childish "happy wife, happy life" mindset that I've loathed even since pre-pubescence. ("Happy spouse, happy house" all the way.) It preaches empathy on only one side of the two-way street.

With 2.3 million views and 2,360 widely varying comments on his website alone, the author has since written a justification piece explaining his position. He says in bold that "I only write for husbands and about being a husband because that’s what I know." That by itself is fair enough, but this one viewpoint is being widely held as the only one. Men are being blamed, then not being given a look-in. Even in his rebuttal post, her flaws are his fault: "But there can be no question that if you’re married to [a domineering tyrant], it’s because you allowed it to happen AND failed to demonstrate competence—either in the life areas which she now must control, or in the preservation of your self-respect or enforcement of your boundaries." Ironically, there are so, so many comments by women praising the author's ability to articulate a woman's feelings and not ignore them, but then criticise men's comments on the article and tell the author to "ignore the haters". I find it troubling that so many people are saying "Yes, this! You GET it!” without stopping to realise that this is only one part of a very complex picture. I've spent the last year really listening to the heartaches of hurting and grieving men, and I guess the reaction to this blog post typifies my sombreness at the empathy gap between men and women.

I could post much more, but I don't want to make this too long. I want to make very clear that I am not refuting what the author has written. I commend him for his open honesty and empathy, but it seems like everyone is so willing to praise and share only part of a complex picture and only a few are honest enough to acknowledge that there are others. Am I over-reacting? Am I missing something? If you're not a MGTOW, what do you think of the article(s)? (If you are MGTOW, all the best to you, but can we please not flood the comments with those comments? I really want to hear from anyone married, once-married, or hoping to marry.)

Edit: added the link at the top so that it's clickable. Thanks, thrway_1000 bot.