@Andrewgen_Receptors, I don’t understand why you need to determine which side is to blame. There is no side here. There are bad men preying on stupid women, which costs the taxpayers money. There are stupid men hooking up with stupid women, with again costly results. There are bad women using abortion as birth control, sometimes without telling a man who would want to raise the child or put it up for adoption.
Then there are the separations that occur after a child is born to an intact couple. Bad men wander away or get caught up in things that destroy them. Bad women - same. My mother needed “to find herself.” This happens regularly. Men have affairs and lose interest in family #1. Women bring shitty men into their single mother homes. I deal with people every day who grew up with one parent or the other. Shitty stepparents. Some people had both parents but wish a parent had left or been kicked out.
Both of the above groups (born to a single parent or started off with two) can be divided into financially capable of raising a child well or not capable. Not all single moms are broke ass. Not all separated dads are deadbeats. Are you unaware that this is the case? It boggles my mind that you’ve such a block in this arena, that you can’t see anything but a caricature.
I am the thread’s representative single mother. Have you not made that connection? The state did not have to support me. My ex-husband was a good earner for a long time and sold a business for a nice chunk of money, I was in the workplace and earning, and I had money that came to me when my father died. I left for many reasons, but one of them was that my ex couldn’t stop burning through money (many, many impulsive behaviors over the years) and my single father drilled it into me growing up that you live on less than you earn so you can save, save, save.
I was the one to say “uncle.” Literally - my marriage ended one morning when it was all I could come up with. I didn’t have any more solutions or rants or pleading left. Just uncle. I can’t. I give up. We did have a conversation later, when I inevitably questioned that we should keep trying, during which he acknowledged that “I just want to be left alone.” He wrote a nice email at some point taking the blame for his inability to appreciate things, but whatever. What does it really matter whose fault it is? It was impossible to maintain, and why should I have? Why should I have let my world narrow into his anger and depression?
So he is left alone - has not had a relationship last more than 6 months -and I am in a marriage with a man who likes saving and doing things and sex and playing games with the kids. My stepdaughter and granddaughter are benefited, I believe, that I am in their lives, as are my crew wrt my husband, whom they love (one son when asked if he was okay with my now-husband: “God’s honest truth, I like him better than Dad”). I will hear lovely things from his daughter next weekend, I imagine. She loves and values her mother - who is very nice to me - but her mom is kind of a barfly. She is not the one sharing books with our bookish, dorky granddaughter. While my husband was paying her child support, she chose not to work.
I think we both made the right decision, and it doesn’t really matter about good guys and bad guys. I’m sure all four of us were both the good guy and the bad guy at some points along the way.
In this thread you’ve had two-three posters echoing you about the feminist agenda and that the men are fucked and that the women are cum dumpsters. And then you’ve had probably close to a dozen disagree with your frame despite your best efforts to convince them. Look at the quality of the posters. Who do you think are the more thoughtful? The better informed? The happiest married? Why are you not moved by their different experiences?
I have ranted against one of the TRT regulars occasionally because he is perhaps the most prolific advice-giver on the boards, but in 2018 posted this:
I should note that he seems to have gotten his shit together, but the above did not stop him advising others as to best practice for years. Anyway, @Andrewgen_Receptors, I see you bypassing the advice of people who are fit and healthy in the arena in question - marriage, relationships, child-rearing - in favor of train wreck advisors. Why?