Growing up to say my family was dysfunctional would be an understatement, my parents are diametric opposites to each other and after a while it was clear the only reason they stayed together was for the sake of me and my 2 younger brothers.
My dad has an incredibly short fuse and tends to blow up on even the most trivial things, this makes it very easy for my mother to push his buttons. Not to mention he's basically a workaholic and will insist on working days when he doesn't have to with him getting a heart attack from overworking when i was younger and even trying to go to work during a massive blizzard, only stopping when he realized the snow was piled too high for him to even move his car. As if that wasn't enough he's terrible with money, not to the point where he will miss bill payments, but he will end up buying things he doesn't need such as multiple trucks, and while i have no way of confirming this i have been told that he has been spending a lot of his extra money helping out some college student.
Now don't get the wrong idea my mom is no saint either, and has a lot of very underhanded tendencies which is fitting considering she was born in the year of the snake. While i wouldn't call her a bad person, she is a master wordsmith and manipulator and always knew just what to say to get you to do what she wanted or verbally destroy you to the point where she can make even a grown man crumble into a wallowing mass of tears. Not to mention she can be very entitled acting like the world owes her something simply for existing, to the point where she would frequently sneak into my dads room and even went so far as to have a key forged to do it, most of all when it came time to pay bills she basically pilled all the responsibility onto dad while she kept all the money she made for herself, and only contributed when she had no other choice in the matter.
This is in large part why I've become so skeptical of relationships because it all feels so one sided. People give fathers who leave crap, but considering how much crap my mom puts my dad through a part of me often wondered why he didn't leave, why did he work himself to the point that he got a heart attack? Why did he insist on buying multiple cars, why would he go out of his way to help this random college student. All these questions were on my mind in correlation with why men are viewed as the breadwinners, the ambitious ones, and just general macho culture and this misguided desire to be "Manly"....and then it hit me and this is just my theory but maybe all this just comes from a subconscious desire to be valued and wanted.
Imagine being told that you are fundamentally worthless as a man, that you are expendable, easy to replace and the only thing that gives you value is how big your income is, or the number of women you slept with and if either of those are lacking then your only worth comes from digging up landmines. This is what it means to be a man in modern times. You're only considered a man if you run yourself ragged through work, Don't show emotions and risk your life for people you don't even know, all for the sake of obtaining some sort of value to your existence. This is why you get so many men willing to humiliate themselves just for the sake of a woman's approval and affection.
And the worst part of it is that so many women seem to be dismissive of men's issues because of this reality, that there is no shortage of men desperate for Validation and intimacy that they will put up with anything to get it. Getting caught cheating multiple times, Constant Mental and Emotional Abuse, Destruction of property all just to be told they are worth something beyond the amount in their bank account. Resulting in unrealistic expectations and the ridiculous pressure to perform,and to reject this is to be viewed as every bad thing in the book from incel to even rapist, resulting in said person being belittled, demonized and most of all alone.
The fact is, men have been told so much that they are less valuable then women despite being so called "Stronger" That many have just kind of accepted that reality thinking that by sacrificing their own well being and happiness that it gives them purpose in life, and is a society truly equal if one half of it can be just used and thrown away?
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