Something I realized very quickly after discovering the red pill was that myself and most women (and men) born in after the late 1960s in America have basically been raised to fail in life and love.

Now I am not saying it was intentional. I really do think at least some people thought changing the social contract between men and women was going to be a step forward. Progress. Better. Utopia, even.

Of course others involved in the movement did so because for whatever reason the old social contract wasn’t working for them. Maybe they were trapped in a bad marriage. Maybe they had been abused. Maybe they were not attracted to or interested in men. But something all these women who started the feminist movement had in common is they were not happily and successfully relating with men, and so were they really in the best position to advise women how to fix that?

Pretty much all the advice I got growing up from multiple sources about how to be a happy, strong, successful woman turned out to have done more harm than good in my life and relationships. And as I look around at the other “modern” women I know, they too are experiencing the same. Relationships not working. Priorities out of wack. Lack of balance. Workaholism. Unhappiness. Frazzled. Families falling apart. Dysfunction. Depression. Anxiety. Confusion. Etc.

My theory is that this is the blue pill version for females. Men were sold the “Be nicer. Be more sensitive. Be more like a woman,” line at the same time women were being told, “Be tough, be outspoken, be more like a man.”

Simultaneously, women were also being warned that men were the enemy, that they couldn’t be trusted, that they needed to always be financially independent of men because of that, and that they always needed to be on guard against them.

It wasn’t until I saw my babysitter living a truly traditional life that I actually saw how the old social contract worked, and worked pretty well. (You can read about her in more detail here.)

She’s always happy. She loves her life. She loves her husband. Her husband loves her. Their kids are happy and well behaved. She’s gracious and feminine and mild. And rather than treat her like a doormat, he cherishes her for it. She oversees the home and children sphere, he brings home the bacon. Of all the marriages I have seen, theirs has the least amount of discord or unhappiness of all. It works. It works really well, actually.

It’s something to ponder for sure, whether these social changes of the past 40 years have actually made life better for women. And men. And children. Or are things worse?

What do you think?