One man’s perspective on dating, relationships and MGTOW
You may have heard of MGTOW. It stands for Men Going Their Own Way. The idea behind it is that men have realised that finding a woman to get married to is just not worth it and that it’s better to just “go your own way” and live your life however you want to.
On the surface, it doesn’t sound that unreasonable at all. Many women say that they’re realising the same thing about men. That having a long term partnership with one man isn’t worth it and they’re better off being single. They may or may not right be right, I don’t know. I don’t think that there’s a right or wrong answer to it and I think it’s a personal decision.
However, from what I’ve seen (from looking at a now-banned subreddit called r/MGTOW) men who identify as MGTOW actually spend a lot of time thinking about how much they resent women. It wasn’t all bad, some of them posted pictures of hikes they had been on while focusing on themselves, which is great. But there was a LOT of misogyny on it, essentially saying that women are gold diggers and that as a man, you’re better off without a wife or girlfriend.
I will say that there are certain women’s subs that aren’t much better (r/femaledatingstrategy for example) but that’s another whole conversation. Some subreddits (and areas of “the dark web”) are frankly cesspools. I think that these spaces exist because the internet allows people with fringe views to congregate with other socially isolated people who also share similar views.
30 years ago, that sort of thing just didn’t really exist. If you started spouting weird shit like that in public, you would probably be told to pull your head in. And it was harder to find people who agreed with you.
So yeah, MGTOW is one of those things that, taken at face value, sounds reasonable but in reality, isn’t what it seems. But let’s assume that it literally does mean just that. Going your own way. If that’s what you want to do, great. Same goes for women who want to do the same thing.
Is it for me though? To be honest, I’m 34, I’m a straight autistic male and I’ve never had a partner. It would be very easy for me to decide “screw relationships, if women don’t want me then I’m just going to forget about dating women and focus on myself”. And part of me honestly feels that way. But I would be lying to myself if I said that I didn’t want to experience a real loving relationship. I still do but I need to be prepared for the possibility that it may not happen.
I have said before that I will just focus on myself and just go about my life and if it happens then it happens and if it doesn’t then it doesn’t. So that isn’t MGTOW as such, that’s something else. I don’t know what you call it… focusing on yourself, I guess. Self improvement, maybe. Except that self improvement is a very broad term and can mean many things.
I believe in working on yourself but being a self help junkie for its own sake can get quite boring. I believe in finding things that interests you and focusing on those things. And as a man, “dating advice” tips would include things like work on your career, have a stable job, work on your health and fitness, dress well, be well groomed, find interesting things to talk about actually interest on you, know what you want, work on your body language and know how to read other people’s body language. Stuff like that. For women, I guess it would be different but have some similarities.
So, I understand the above but I still can’t guarantee that I will meet someone. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. It’s all a learning process.
One last thing I have to say about MGTOW and the manosphere is that men who blame women for the fact that women don’t want them, they seem to miss the fact that if ALL women don’t want you then it’s probably not women that are the problem. And generally speaking, you can’t do anything to change other people (at least you can’t force other people to change) but you can always work on yourself. Of course what you do with that information is up to you.
Edit (15/4/22): If you want to go down the MGTOW rabbit hole, people who are serious about the MGTOW philosophy believe that our society is fundamentally biased towards women and they believe in not only eschewing relationships with women but in paying as few taxes as possible so that the government can’t use those taxes to support single mothers and women in general. They believe that if men stopped paying taxes then women would be screwed.
Apparently Level 1 MGTOW is to eschew long term relationships with women. Level 2 is to eschew short-term relationships. Level 3 is what I just described in the last paragraph. Don’t earn more than you need to because the more you earn, the more tax you have to pay. Level 4 MGTOW is apparently to drop out of society altogether, whatever that even means.
Yeah, it’s pretty messed up. As I said, MGTOW is not a philosophy I want to subscribe to. The only part of MGTOW I do agree with it is that a man should not define his worth by whether or not he has a wife or girlfriend (which can be hard when society constantly reminds us that it’s something we need to have). And yeah, my take is not actively eschew romantic relationships but not to dedicate all my efforts towards achieving that goal but just work on myself and “if it happens, it happens and if doesn’t then it doesn’t”.
