Quote: (01-29-2017 09:10 AM)Phoenix Wrote:
How the hell did we all even get here when everyone has such stringent requirements for having kids?
You have to be more than 20 years past puberty (so all that time it's purely "recreational sex").
You have to have a big income and assets (what percentage of the population can boast that?).
The woman has to be a virgin hottie (after all that recreational sex).
The woman will "eventually come along" by magic, after you're already 20+ years past puberty and it hasn't "just happened" yet ("it will just happen" ).
You have to be "ready" (so at 18 you're ready to vote and go to war, but you need another 18 years before you can feed and wash a rug rat ).
You have to wait "just a few more years".
Every guy who's had them says wait longer.
That retarded SMV graph implies you should wait until 37 to even get married because that's ( 37 ) your prime time.
What the eff?
Perhaps we do need religion after all, just to force people to fuck for real on a reasonable time schedule.
I get the feeling a quite a few men are going to die alone and sad.
Phoenix this is a great post, some of which I agree with, some that I don't. So I kind of did what you described here. I knocked up my gf when I was 26. I was in my last year of professional school so it most certainly wasn't the right time for me that's for sure. I was for sure in shock and really scared but I really liked the chick i was with and I was planning on getting married to her anyway so ok, sometimes things don't go in the order they're supposed to. We got married and i eventually had 3 more kids with her.
We were married for 20 years before we got divorced last year. It. Was. Not. Easy, those 20 years that is for sure. It was a major league sacrifice. I cannot possibly overstate that. Doing the things you need to do to raise well adjusted children and trying to keep your modern day wife happy at the same time is a gargantuan task. The financial sacrifices are enormous. If I had remained single, I would easily be living a baller, travel the world, work only when I want to lifestyle now. The emotional sacrifices of family life are not for the weak. I haven't even touched on dealing with extended family and in laws either, many of whom are conspiring behind your back to destroy your family. Mostly out of jealousy.
The modern culture of the west is not in any way conducive to raising healthy families. For many years, I felt as if I was trying to swim up Niagara Falls while trying to minimize the effects of outside cultural forces. Remember, I got started 20 years ago when things were supposedly a little better culturally. It was hard then. Today with the way the culture has degenerated, oh man I see so many younger men and women with kids that I talk to really struggling to keep their kids under control.
So Phoenix is right that at some point in time you just have to take the plunge as conditions will never be perfect and you'll end up waiting for ever if you expect perfection. At the same time though, due to the state of affairs in the culture today, I believe that much more planning is required to avoid serious problems. You don't have the luxury of living in a society where strong family life is encouraged and supported and you will feel like your swimming against a very strong and destructive current. As such, you don't have the luxury of winging it like you could have in a stronger, more religious environment. There is no cultural safety net anymore.
There were many times I felt utterly alone in my family life, like it was me against the world. Now I kept fighting for many years and even though I am now divorced, my kids are almost all adults now and they love and respect what I did and are starting to understand what I was up against. In the end, given everything I went through, I have no regrets and wouldn't trade my experience because now that I'm almost done, I live my life with a great sense of accomplishment, wisdom and fearlessness. The young chicks I meet these days are dying to be led by men with these qualities (feminism ain't doing it for them). I think one has to know thyself first (you need to know if a family is even what you want), plan as best as possible, find the best chick you can find to do this with and understand that it will be the most rewarding but most difficult thing you will do in your life.