Tag: divorce

Marriage

Rob Says8 Comments
couple engagement hands human
It’s a nice thought.

Let’s talk about marriage…

Before I get into the “meat of the matter,” let me start off with a couple of things:

I’m not against marriage as a whole.

I have been married and I was the one who initiated the divorce when it was time for that to happen.

My ex-wife did not take me to the cleaners in the divorce. If anything, I came out of it in a pretty good position. I wasn’t set back financially for decades because of the divorce.

We did not have children.

Now that I’ve put those things out there, let us continue…

I’ve seen a lot of guys, especially young guys, on Twitter in the recent past talking about wanting to get married. All I can think when I see their talks, yearnings, and longings, is:

Why? Why would you WANT to get married?

Why would you want to get married in today’s day and age? Do you not understand that when you get a state sanctioned license to get married, you are not only married to the person that you wanted to get married to, but you are also now married to the State? Ask me how I know.

You may be the “bread winner.” You may be the “head of the household.” You may be the “man in charge.” You may be the “patriarch.” You may be whatever you think you are, until you are not.

In today’s world of no-fault divorce, either party can end the marriage for any reason, or for no reason whatsoever. When that happens, you are done. I don’t care that you think you are the bread winner, the man, the patriarch, or whatever you think you are. You are none of those things if and when she decides to end the marriage.

Enter the State.

The true Patriarch of the household in the West is also the One True God, and that is the State. We as a society have deemed this so. Which also means that the State is the one that we have allowed to use force to enforce agreements, contracts, and disputes. You either file or she files for divorce, the State now gets involved. Especially if you have children. Even if you don’t get married, but you have children together, and one or both of you decide to split up, the State gets involved on behalf of your children.

Any religion that is a part of the West bends the knee to the State. If a particular denomination of a particular flavor of faith tries to intervene in a legal proceeding, which a divorce is, that church, ward, denomination, etc. can lose their tax exempt status because it was the State that granted them that status to begin with. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. No religion, at least in the West, is going to jeapordize that. So religion isn’t going to “save your marriage.”

Many years ago, there was a stigma for having children out of wedlock. The children were referred to as “bastards.” That stigma is all but gone in today’s modern world. Marriage used to mean that a man had some type of authority, at least in his own home. Today men have no authority, only responsibility. Again, I ask:

Why would you want to get married?

If women are the gatekeepers to sex and men are the gatekeepers to commitment, why do you (I’m assuming that you are a man reading this) want to rush into commitment and potentially ruin yourselves financially, emotionally, mentally, etc. when you can have everything that a marriage offers, without having to actually get married? Why do you want to give up the only real authority and agency that you have?

You want to live together? You can do that without getting married. You want to offer insurance and other types of benefits to her? You can do that now without getting married. You want to have children? You can do that without getting married. The only thing that you can’t have without a marriage is a divorce.

The only “positive” that I can think of that you can only get from being married is certain tax breaks. Even those don’t add up to a lot. Not in the long run at least.

When I got married, the marriage license cost me $50.00 We had a simple ceremony in my house where we only invited close family and friends. I don’t remember what I paid for the justice of the peace to come out and preside over the ceremony, but it wasn’t more than a hundred bucks at the most.

When I filed for divorce, that filing alone cost me almost $400.00 Getting married is cheap and easy, getting divorce takes time and is expensive.

Like I said at the very beginning of this article, I’m not against the institution of marriage itself, but I am against it in its current incarnation.

You want to “make marriage great again?” You need to start at the State level and with the laws. If men are expected to be the providers of food, a house, safety, and security, what are the women supposed to bring to the table? Let’s make whatever that is legally enforceable.

I was 37 years old when I got married. I have no regrets about my marriage and I certainly have no regrets about my divorce. I was also in no hurry to get married. Young men, especially one’s in their twenties need to slow down and take your time to figure out who you are and what you want out of life before considering getting married, especially in today’s day and age. The risks are too high in many cases and the cost usually isn’t worth the price that you could end up paying.

You want to have an LTR? Fine, do that. You want to live together? Okay, maybe not your best option, but go for it. But get married? I would have to say don’t do it. Not unless you don’t have a problem with getting into bed with the State.

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Confession To The World

Rob Says1 Comment

Have you ever done something that if the people around you found out you did it, it would change how they look at you, what they think of you? That it would literally change their worlds, and yours, forever?

I have. And I did.

You see, a little over four years ago, I committed a crime. I did something that could get me locked up for the rest of my life. In some areas of the world, it could get me executed.

I have committed Murder in the First Degree.

It was premeditated. I did it in cold blood. I did it without remorse as to the suffering of the individual that I killed. And I would do it again given a chance and if I had to do it again.

Who did I murder, you ask?

Just this guy I knew. I knew him my whole life and he was one miserable, unhappy son of a bitch. In all honesty, what I did to him shouldn’t be classified as murder, if anything, I should get a medal for what I did. If anything, I should be considered a hero. I don’t consider killing him as an act of brutality so much as an act of mercy. I put that motherfucker out of his misery.

I grew up with this guy and I watched him grow and do his thing. He wasn’t a bad looking guy, but he couldn’t see it. I tried telling him time and time again that he was good enough, but he wouldn’t hear it. I watched him hurt himself with drinking, the occasional drugs, and the shit food that he ate. I heard him talk of dying on and off throughout his life. If anyone wanted to die at one point or another, it was this friend of mine.

He was a good guy, don’t get me wrong, but god he could be a doormat sometimes. It was pathetic really. It was sad to watch him settle for less when he could have had so much more. If only he could have seen what I saw. You can’t make someone see the truth though, they will only see it when they are ready to see it.

That’s why I don’t try and “fix things.” People are going to do what they are going to do, and you can tell them all the reasons that they should or shouldn’t do something, but until they have crashed and burned enough times, whatever you tell them will fall on deaf ears.

There’s a meme that does the rounds on the internet and has done those rounds for several years. It goes something like this:

“What advice would you give your younger self?”

And of course people throw all sorts of nonsense out there about what they would tell their younger selves, about how if their younger self listened to their older self, their lives would be better somehow.

It’s all bullshit of course. What advice would I tell my younger self? Not a goddamn thing. Why not? Because my younger self had it all figured out and had all the answers and wouldn’t listen to guy an older guy like me, not even when it was me. It’s truly awesome being a late teen/early twenty something and you know it all.

Same thing could be said about my friend that I ended up killing. He had all the answers too, and you couldn’t tell him anything. Since he had all the answers and his life was such shit, I figured that all he wanted to do was die, so I obliged him.

One night I snuck into his house, creeped up to his bed, and woke him up when I put the barrel of a gun against his forehead.

It was so quick that he didn’t have time to say anything. But his eyes. Oh his eyes said all sorts of things. Mostly pleading with me not to kill him. But kill him I did. He needed it. He had it coming. And I’m glad I did it. Like I said earlier, I would do it again. The only thing I would do differently is I would have killed him sooner than I did.

The day after I killed my friend I told my now ex-wife that I wanted a divorce.

I won’t bore you with the details of that set of conversations and dramas, suffice it to say that ultimately here we are.

One of the things that I did say to my ex-wife though was this:

“Don’t consider this a divorce. Consider it a funeral. The Man you knew and loved and fell in love with is dead. I killed him. The Man standing before you looks just like him, so much so it could be his identical twin, but I’m not that Man that you married.”

Yes I killed him. Guilty as charged. And I would do it again in a heartbeat.

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Scorched Earth

Rob Says4 Comments

ash blaze burn burning

Something I read yesterday really struck a chord with me. It talked about Scorched Earth. Now this one was related to war, but in the end of a marriage, in the end of a relationship, aren’t they not wars too?

Too many men are afraid of pissing off their women. Too many men are afraid of “losing half.”

If your wants and needs are second to her’s because society brainwashed you into thinking that is the way it is supposed to be, and you don’t get your needs met, what’s the point of sticking it out? What’s the point of continuing? Doing it “for the kids?” You’ll teach them that is what a healthy relationship looks like. Then they will go out and seek that same type of relationship, or they will create it if they can’t find it.

Staying together because of the kids is a bad idea.

If the relationship is ending, kill it. Let it end. Be done with it. Even if it means “losing half.” You have the ability as a man to go out and make or create more wealth, more money. You’ll be able to go out and have your needs met by someone willing and able to meet your needs. Trust me, they are out there. There are women out there right now ready and willing to meet your needs. Go and find them.

Stop worrying about “losing half.” The courts are stacked against you? You knew that already and you married her anyway.

If your going to get divorced and she is the one who filed and she is the one who wants out, go scorched earth. Burn it all. Worried that she is going to be “entitled” to half your wealth? Half of nothing is nothing. Spend every last cent you have. Spend it fighting her if you want. Spend it on wine, women, and song. Go have adventures. Do something with your money before she gets it. You’ll always be able to make more down the road.

She’ll be a single mother looking for a chump to finance her lifestyle. Remember, half of nothing is nothing.

We as men could fare better in life if we took the scorched earth policy to many things. I’ve found there is nothing so powerful as saying, “Fuck it, let’s see what happens.” Or “fuck it, let’s see what you got. Bring it on.”

Most men and women today don’t have the stomach or the balls to go scorched earth. You’ll find out what you are capable of and it can free you if you do. It did for me.

When I was first getting divorced, I played nice with my ex-wife. I didn’t want to rock the boat. I wanted that waiting period to go smoothly, quickly, and as painlessly as possible.

It didn’t go that way for some of it. All the time I was answering the phone, listening to her blame me for everything. All the time it was her sob story about “poor her,” and how I left her in poverty even though she was the one who chose to move across the country to start over.

It was not enough that I gave her money and a car and let her take whatever she wanted out of the house to go with her. She would call and cry and commiserate about how hard it was, and then she would hit me up for more money.

She would probably being doing that to this day if I had allowed it to carry on. But I didn’t. You see, one day, she did me a huge favor. Probably the biggest favor of all, now that I look back on it.

She called up one day and she was nice and civil at first. That’s how all the phone calls started. But then she mentioned the magic word…

Alimony.

She started saying that she had talked to some legal outfit about how she could be entitled to alimony even though we had both agreed in the divorce filing that no alimony would be claimed by either party. She never said that she was going for alimony, but she insinuated it. She hinted at it.

That was it for me. I told her if that was what she wanted, bring it on. I would spend every last cent that I had fighting her. And when that money ran out, I would beg, borrow, or steal whatever money I needed to continue that fight. Why? Because fuck her, that’s why.

That’s scorched earth.

I said I would do it and I meant it. It was the most liberating feeling I have ever experienced. Then I ended the call with her and contacted an attorney to find out what rights I had and what rights she had. I needed to know what to prepare for in case she actually wanted to follow through on her not so veiled threat.

Turns out that if she wanted to fight, she would ultimately have to come back to where I live to do it. Since the divorce was filed here and she was a resident here at the time, she would have to come back and have her day in court. All on her own dime.

That didn’t happen.

You really can’t lose when you have nothing to lose.

It’s not about, do better, or be better. Sometimes it’s about Fuck It. Let the shit fall where it may and let’s see what happens.

If she is the one holding the match, you can be the one holding the gasoline.

 

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