So last night, as I slept fitfully in my fortress of bachelor solitude, in my dreams, my father came to me and he said:

“Son, I understand all this MGTOW and MRA stuff you’re doing right now, and I’m not gonna say that you’re wrong in any of your points, but my point to you is ‘What’s worse than dying alone?'”

I woke up to this, and had some deep shower thoughts about it. Ultimately, I decided that becoming my father is worse than dying alone.

Now, you gotta understand, my father’s a moderately successful man. Made good money, married well, lives on an island, in an ivory tower. We’d all be lucky to be doing as well as he has, and many of us, sadly, won’t. But he’s stated publicly, many times, that if he weren’t married, he’d give it all up, live on the swamp, in a trailer, and just go fishing all the time.

And if you had a decent career, made six figures for 20 or 30 years, that’s entirely possible. With all the principle and equity you have in 401k’s and real estate, at age 70+ you’ve probably got a million dollars, which isn’t really that much these days, but still, you could invest that smartly, and expect at least $50,000/yr interest income, live in the swamp, hunt alligators, or do an Indian motorcycle hostel tour of Europe, like you wanted to when you were young but couldn’t, because unlike the rich kids, you went to Vietnam. Or you could even put that money into a good nursing home, where they would keep you strung out on fentanyl until you died. Fentanyl is good shit, man.

But that’s not enough to keep the missus happy, so you don’t do that kinda fun stuff. Instead, you keep working, well into your 70’s, just so you can uphold a standard of living insisted upon by an old bag, who doesn’t do much for you any more. And no, I’m not referring to my mother. My mother’s a saint my father left behind, for the sake of status symbols, in the go-go Reagan 80’s. But let’s not embarrass dear old Dad and Gangy anymore than we already have…

Let’s generalize the scenario, and apply it to our own generation, which is different from the Boomers’ in key ways. Me, for instance: I just turned 36. I’m a college graduate, with ten years professional experience in the software industry. Even at the foothills of middle age, I feel that I have a bright future to anticipate. I don’t look bad, either. A girl could do a lot worse.

At my age, they say ‘all the good ones are taken’. And for the most part, they’re right… Single women my age, best case scenario, are the victims of male sexual entitlement, having been ‘alpha-widowed’, which is to say, left behind by some high-status male like my old man, who wanted a newer trophy. I honestly believe that this scenario is more rare in my generation, because in my generation, men have more social conscience, and women, for the most part, have less. In other words, the key difference between GenX/Y and Boomers is that, due to 3rd-wave feminist empowerment, men are actually more likely to be ‘alpha-widowered’ than women. Which is exactly what has given rise to the whole modern MRA/MGTOW movement!

So here I am, 36 years old, and hormones don’t control my behavior anymore. Don’t get me wrong, when I see, through the window of a nightclub, a young, hot, 21-year-old girl dancing, as I’m walking by, on the way to the folk-music pub where everyone knows my name, I’m tempted to go in there and throw some of my disposable income at her. But I know from experience that I would be admonished as a ‘dirty old man’ for doing so, probably upset the delicate social eco-system of all the not-as-well-established guys her own age who want to fuck her (or perhaps already have), and she wouldn’t end up taking me seriously, anyway. Even if I did make it into the VIP section of her little personal club, she’d eventually rationalize pump-and-dumping me, because at their age, they’re all probably either sluts or teases. Or both, relative to different people, as the situation entices.

So I’m told to stick with women my own age. But they aren’t attractive to me. Especially the ones who’ve been left in the ‘single’ pile for awhile, often with good cause. What am I, supposed to feel sorry for them? That’s kinda difficult, seeing how I was there when, 10 or 15 years ago, they were the slutty teases dancing in clubs. And I watched them abandon many good men for superficial reasons, which they then rationalized to their friends, thus poisoning those men’s reputations with other women, in addition to breaking his heart, all to make themselves look and feel better about getting bored and wanting more varied sexual experience with that poor guy’s friends and relatives.

And if that broken-hearted guy reacted to this in any way but a good-natured ‘Thank you, sir, may I have another?’, then not only did their exes turn the community’s women against him, but they turned the males against him as well. Because when young women of primitive social ethics insist ‘he bad man’, other men eventually form a crude posse, complete with with pointy sticks and rocks, and chase the ‘bad man’ away, just so they can impress the opposite sex. We call those ‘white knights’, in my generation, and there are plenty of them. Their stock is replenished progressively in the next generation, even as it is depleted by experience-based disillusionment in the current generation. As those who peddle and exploit optimistic idealism know, there’s a sucker born every minute.

And most single women, at my age, have some bullshit like that in their background. Meanwhile, I had my head down, was graduating college and starting a career. And enduring years-long periods of social alienation that most women, with their expectations of social privilege, quite frankly, probably couldn’t survive. But now, I’m supposed to grovel for their approval, like a true southern gentleman, knowing full well how decadent, socially over-privileged, and non-committal they used to be, with their current acquiescence to ‘family values’ surely the product of some desperate survival instinct. These are known as ‘hamsters’ who have ‘hit the wall’.

And as black as their pasts may be, their futures seem to be even worse. They say the true test of love is to add fifty years or fifty pounds to the subject of your affection, and see if you still love them. Also, add to that a net financial loss from her low income that doesn’t cover her expansive tastes, frequent sabbaticals, and failed pottery studios. The hotter she is, or was, the higher maintenance, and hence, more hemorrhaging money, putting your Indian motorcycle retirement even more in jeopardy.

So, what’s worse than dying alone?

Being a slave to depreciating assets, man.