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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

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but I really hope you and others reading this don’t sacrifice your happiness on the alter of weird twitter dating discourse.

Please don't minimize like this. I didn't report the comment because I believe in addressing things like this head on instead of running to the Mods.

This isn't "weird Twitter dating discourse" this is, as the kids say, "lived experience."

I spent part of my 20s trying to find Mrs. Tollbooth in order to settle down. I kept an "open mind" the way mainstream culture told me to and didn't care about past promiscuity, political incompatibility, their status as a child of divorce and/or poor relationship with father.

Each one of these relationships failed catastrophically for what I recognize now as very significant character and personality failures. I'll admit that I probably didn't do enough to highlight and try to correct bad behavior (again, I was trying to be accepting) and, in at least one case, sort of gave up but kept having sex because sex is fun (I view this now as personal weakness. I wonder what your average sex positive person would say).

So correlation is not causation, right? That these women had "questionable" backgrounds doesn't mean that those background caused these bad situations, right? Bullshit. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. These women had failed to demonstrate a high-trust and durable relationship with any man in their life up to that point (one was even openly, frequently, and hostile-y critical of her very mild mannered and milquetoast brother). Why in the hell would I take all of the available data and throw it out because "don't believe what you read on Twitter"

I should've been fishing in other streams. I realize that now and that's what I do now. I've also cleaned my own act up over the course of several years. My fear is that what @2rafa said in another comment somewhere in this thread is true - I missed the boat on good pair-bonding in my 20s and now will have to "settle" for a woman who did the same in her 20s, but likely has the same view as I do now. Is that really settling and will I quietly resent her for life? Probably not, that's stupid. The fear remains.

But @faceh isn't being some sort of Twitter edgelord when he crunches them numbers and comes up with "welp, blackpill might be on the menu." He's reflecting the reality of thousands of younger unmarried men. And that reality is now manifesting in meaningful ways

Yep. I fell for a few girls who had classic red flags (grew up without father. Claimed to be molested when younger. And/or were on various psych meds, for instance) and I BENT OVER BACKWARDS to be accommodating.

My efforts were not recognized or appreciated or reciprocated, and ultimately the relationships failed in EXACTLY the way you would expect given the stereotypes. The lady blows it up with some irrational, out-of-pocket behavior which completely ignores the actual history of the relationship. Total waste of time and effort to achieve a predictable result.

Eventually you get sick of ignoring your gut and taking chances on the hope that you found a diamond in the rough.

As far as I know, the ex who dumped me prior to our wedding hasn't found another long term partner in the 3 years since.

Suggests it wasn't a me problem.

Yep. I fell for a few girls who had classic red flags (grew up without father. Claimed to be molested when younger. And/or were on various psych meds, for instance) and I BENT OVER BACKWARDS to be accommodating

This whole thing started with talk of "gynosupremacy", which I'd maintain is a twitter thing. If we're talking about a child of divorce on psych meds , it doesn't matter if she's larping as a tradwife - run!