In the past week, I have initiated some major life changes, 1) breaking up a 3 year LTR with a girl who was expecting us to move in and 2) achieving significant location independence via remote work agreement with my employer.
I would like to tell my story, as I think it can serve as a tale of caution and example of how you cannot avoid the red pill laws in life.
I want to provide fair warning that this story will be long - there is a TL;DR version at the bottom of the post. Aspects of it will probably be annoying to advanced guys on here, or guys who have never done a monogamous LTR - you may want to skip if that's the case.
I fully admit I acted beta, and I have mindset issues I need to continue to work on. But I did the right thing in the end, and I also know it’s going to help at least one other guy out there figure shit out and avoid a disastrous life decision.
3 years ago, I met this girl when she started working at my company. She was 23, I was 28. Long blonde hair, yet tan, with brown eyes owing to her polish, italian, and cherokee heritage. Petite, 5’1’’ 105 lbs with a tight firm yet round bubble-ass - pretty much my ideal of a feminine form. A killer smile and dimples that sucked you in like a vortex. Her look was on-point, yet what really stood out the more time I spent with her was her femininity. She had a goofy, girly sense of humor that just did it for me. She laughed at herself often, and was very vulnerable, even shy. She was the polar opposite of what I’ve experienced in the living in the DC-MD area my entire life.
She made it obvious she was interested in me, but played it cool, because I don’t fuck with chicks I work with for obvious reasons. But a couple weeks later I got a job offer at a new place, and since I was on my way out anyway, I figured why the hell not.
It was like a breath of fresh air to find a girl that fully embraced her femininity, and wasn’t pretending to be a man like the most girls I’d met up until that point. With the exception of a 1 year LTR, I was single from 18-27. I was never killing it, but I had a decent amount of lays and had certainly put my time in. I figured, I've worked hard. Time to slow down and enjoy the fruits of a relationship for a while with an attractive feminine girl. I thought “this is what I worked so for, to become the caliber of a man who can attract and keep a girl on this level.”
Unfortunately as many men here undoubtedly know, with femininity comes mood swings, and illogical behavior. There was a good amount of shit testing early on. I could have done better since I was going through the loss of my friends, but overall I felt I handled it and for the most part things were good for about 1.5 years.
Then after the 1.5 year mark, she gradually started acting more and more down and depressed, above and beyond typical female time of the month mood swings. A little more with each passing week.
At first most of her depression seemed to be derived from external sources- she always getting shitted on at her office job, and her shitty family - her Dad died from lung cancer when she was 14, Mom never remarried/recovered mentally, and her brother is a drug addict who constantly hits them up for money, etc.
I definitely broke poon commandments in terms of breaking frame and going too far out of my way to support her with these issues, even before things started sliding downhill. At the time, I rationalized that she had real problems, not manufactured drama like the rich NY-NJ bitches I most fucked with during and after college- “my dad cut me off from my allowance at 25, the world is ending!” type shit. She had legit life problems, and I was older than her and I could guide her. Mini Lesson: Never let a girls problems be your problems, no matter how much it tugs at your heart strings.
The next stage of the downfall was she started shit testing/pouting whenever I was “quiet”. Typical instances of this included me driving somewhere we had never been before and looking for the right exit - aka concentrating on driving us safely versus protecting her from the inconceivable punishment of momentary boredom.
I should have recognized that for what it was at the time and took immediate, decisive steps to address it. But I didn't want to deal with it. I was stressed out because I was trying to find a new place to live after my two roommates moved out of my place on short notice and I was having a hard time finding a new spot. I was also training for a BJJ tournament so a lot of mental energy was diverted there as well. I didn’t just lie down and take it and would call her out, but in retrospect I probably needed to take more decisive action at that point, or just ended it right there fully on my terms before it went any further.
But it just got even worse towards the end. “I don’t want to be that couple that is together just to be together” type of shit, and the final killer shit test, “I’ve been getting attention from other guys and I’m thinking about what it would be like to be single”, “we need to take space”.
At that point I had enough and just let her go, I said something along the lines of “i’m just not happy anymore, you need to go and figure shit out, good luck”. She would flip flop, going from agreeing with the idea of breaking up one day, to messaging how much she loved me the next day - without me even responding, or giving 1-2 word answers, and her writing multiple paragraphs. But at that point I was done - the “other guys” shit was the final straw for me. I deleted my Facebook, and blocked her number so she couldn’t text me any more bullshit so I could focus on moving forward with my life.
I still felt sad about how she basically checked out, that she lost the passion. But the thing that conflicted me was that I didn’t see the typical emotionless cunt behavior one might expect from other stories of American women. What I observed was someone who was deeply conflicted and crying. But the talking about other dudes/being single, that was the final straw my self respect could take.
I took stock of my situation - all my good friends were gone - there was nothing keeping me in Maryland. The girls and weather here are both shit. My career isn’t tied to the defense or government. Why am I in this shithole anyway? I started looking into jobs in LA, Phoenix, Austin, Miami, etc almost immediately. In retrospect this should have been a huge red flag to me that I was motivated to get out of Maryland as soon as we parted ways. Mini lesson: NEVER put your dreams on hold for a woman, especially prior to marriage and kids.
But around 5 weeks later, the “I miss you” emails (which I never responded to) increased in frequency. I finally responded, after zero contact for those 5 weeks, with two words: “show me”.
Then a long, long letter came where she just poured out feelings about how much she missed me, how nobody made her feel the way I did, please meet up with her and talk.
At the same time, a recruiter for a local company hit me up and I ended up getting a great job offer in Baltimore (where I was already living) for a 50% salary increase, and a great boss. Location considerations aside, this was about as close to a dream job I could have hoped for in terms of the projects I would be involved with.
I decided at the time I would “stick around and see what happens”. I rationalized that I didn’t want to “throw away an opportunity” both with the job, and with her. Yes she had fucked up and basically quit the relationship, but her desire for me seemed genuine, and there’s a side of me that has always held out faith in people, giving people a second chance. I’ve fucked up in the past and am thankful people gave me a chance to redeem myself. I remember having the specific thought “if I don’t give her a second chance, I’ll always wonder what might have been”.
At the time, I also figured that if I was a actually a “beta bux” to her, that it would inevitably show up in reduced sex, compliance, etc and she would start shit-testing again. So I was on the lookout for anything resembling that. But it just didn’t happen. She worked harder than ever to please me. There were zero shit tests and mood swings were nothing compared to what they were in the past. Great sex was back and in full force. She would clean my house whenever she came over, cooked for me. Always looked to my approval for what she was wearing. In short, she became a damn near perfect girlfriend the second time around and stayed that way.
But despite how well she treated me, and how happy I felt in the moment, there was this little voice. A little voice deep down that told me something was wrong. I didn’t want to admit it. I was very happy when I stayed in the present moment with her when we were just spending time together. But whenever I had solitude, I just had this bad feeling about the two of us. Deep down I just knew that everything was just not okay. I hoped with time it would pass. I repressed the voice.
My self-talk at the time was along the lines of ” I’ve got a hot, feminine girl 5 years younger that loves me and treats me like a king. What more could I want? I’m 30 years old. Time to just be happy and stop waiting out for the 19 year old virgin Heartiste says all men should hold out for. All this red pill shit is just to help reprogram guys who are on the opposite end of the spectrum. Real life is more complex.” Bullshit.
As time went on- and we were coming up on another year, instead of passing, the more the “something is wrong” feelings seemed to bubble up inside me more and more. We started going to weddings as her friends were all starting to get married off. Her girlfriends start throwing that shit on me “you guy’s are next! hahaha!”. Whenever I thought about that shit, I just had this feeling of dark anxiety. I knew there was something wrong that I had such a visceral reaction.
She started making noise about us moving in together. It made logical sense - she was commuting from far away, over an hour each way, every day. Living closer to the city would have made her life a lot easier, save money on rent, etc etc. But obviously with moving in, the next step is marriage which I knew was on her mind though she did not explicitly express the desire.
The thought marriage to her disturbed the hell out of me. Again - I knew there was something seriously wrong when I felt this type of reaction arising from deep in my psyche.
A couple months back, one of my boys moved back to Scottsdale, AZ after spending a few years overseas and was going back to ASU to try to finish his degree. I just knew I had to go out there and check it out because I didn’t hang out there when he first went to school. I also applied to some jobs and I ended up getting an interview. I wasn't really going through with some master plan that I knew I was going to move, it was like a curiosity more or less.
I flew out there and stayed with my friend for a few days. I didn’t have time to game much because of the interview, and my game needs some rehab after being in an LTR for so long. But the level of talent was invigorating to say the last. In any of the major malls in Maryland in my experience, you are lucky to see a hot girl every 2, 3, 4 hours or so. In Scottsdale mall, I was breaking my neck literally every 10 minutes with a certified bad bitch walking by. I could almost feel my testosterone level going up with the excitement of seeing an abundance of attractive women around.
On the plane to and from Phoenix, I read through Rational Male. I got to the section on break ups in the "Iron Rules", and these words burned into my soul when I read them on the plane:
I sat there and re-read it several times. At the same time I also remembered a tweet from MikeCF a while back, along the lines of “women love you when they believe you are the best man you can get, and fall out of love when that no longer is the case”.
Those two passages of wisdom, fused together, really helped me realize what was going on. I now understand why I felt the way I did, and what was going on with her as well.
There was no question my girl was fully back love with me. She acted like she was the luckiest girl in the world and was 100% loyal and devoted to making me happy. She truly acted that I was the best man she could get.
But the ugly truth was this - my girl had calculated I indeed was the best man she could get, by leaving me to go for some other guy and getting pumped and dumped.
I’ll spare the details, but through friends of friends, over time I was able to verify she started seeing some other guy she met at her gym immediately after we broke up that first time but that “didn’t work out”, and that’s the point she really made the effort to come back to me.
The reality I was never going to be okay with that. The reality was 30 years later, there would still be that one time.
The trip to AZ and solitude it offered helped me finally realize where I stood. Bottom line, it wasn’t fair to her or me, for me to continue on with this silent burden.
Right around the time I came to the final conclusion this relationship had to end, I got the call. I got the job offer in Phoenix, for the same salary I had in Maryland. With cost of living in AZ, it would be an improvement. Now that I knew I finally had an opportunity to get out west and start fresh, and get out of a pussy wasteland, there was no turning back.
There was a severe dread I had leading up to the point where I broke things off with her this past Thursday. I was terrified I would collapse, that I would backtrack that I would be overwhelmed with regret and emotion. I’m not gonna lie, Dagonet’s recent public struggles had me scared me shitless! I thought I was in for doom and gloom like nothing I had experienced.
But ironically, it was almost anticlimactic by how it all actually played out. When I had the breakup conversation and gave her stuff she had kept at my house (she basically lived with me thursday-sunday), all I got was a feeling of relief and being at peace. Like I had been living a lie and was finally coming clean, and being true to myself and her. That I doing what was right for both of us. I was calm and collected, I didn’t shed a tear, not even close. She was sobbing.
I told her straight up my reasons. That I realized I was never going to be okay with how she had left me for someone else and it didn’t work out so she came back. That I would never be okay with that’s what it took for her to “realize” that she loved me. No matter how much time passed. She gave me the whole “I wanted to love you forever”, “I would have moved with you to Arizona (even though she balked hard at any conversations we had related to moving up till now due to her family), “it’s not what you think with that other guy”.
But interestingly, it seemed like she also understood and accepted the reality that she fucked up. She admitted to dating the guy from her gym, basically immediately after we broke up, and came back after it fizzled out. She even asked me “did it make you feel like you were the safe choice?”. That was without any hinting or prodding on my part. I found that very telling.
The words spontaneously came out from me as I had not been expecting to say them, but I knew was the truth the moment I did: “I’m sorry, but I just do not love you anymore”. If anything I was holding onto a ghost of a feeling I used to have for her, and could resurrect the feeling if I just stayed focused in the present moment. But it was like reanimating a corpse. It was not enough to sustain a healthy LTR, let alone a marriage. Some wounds time does not heal.
I haven’t spoken with her since I moved the things she had in my house out last Friday, but people that have spoken with her sense have said she’s taking it extremely hard, that she says she still loves me in spite of everything and is utterly heartbroken.
So fellas, hard lesson learned: Never, ever, ever, take an LTR back if she leaves you, especially leaves you for another dude. Perhaps some guys can get over that shit. But not me. I knew deep down it would never be the same. As soon as I read that passage from Rational Male, it was like I finally could shed this feeling of guilt and anxiety. I was basically waiting, wondering if I would simply get over it with time and forget it over time while she kept being good to me. And I knew with absolute certainty the answer was no.
Final epilogue in this story- my current employer, in an effort to keep me, offered a remote work agreement to counter the Phoenix job offer. This is huge as it means location independence. In the beginning I will fly back to Maryland once a month to spend a few days on-site meetings, but that may reduce in frequency over time. My job is pretty much all virtual anyway - aside from my boss, all my meetings are with outsourced vendors, a lot of whom are on west coast time. So it’s almost stupid for me to be in the office anyway.
So as of now, in addition to an overdue break up with a LTR, I have largely achieved a large degree of location independence (still have to be available during east coast business hours). I’m still in a corporate job, which is still fragile fundamentally when compared to running own business, but now I have a better ability to make that happen by not needing to spend 1.5 hours driving to/from a cubicle farm every day.
I wouldn’t have had the guts to do this without the guys in the manosphere. Nobody in my circle- family, friends, etc - was on board with me. Every last one of them has been of the “time heals all wounds” mindset and have passively-aggressively questioned my actions every step of the way. But I’m 100% at peace.
I owe all the major manosphere authors, but I am especially indebted to MikeCF, Roosh, Rollo, Christian McQueen, and I can’t forget Dagonet - while my situation is very different, seeing him have the balls to go through intense pain for the sake of being true to himself, inspired me to be true to myself as well.
If not for the philosophy and worldview all you guys promote, I would have kept dismissing that “little voice” as some dark, childish, immature thought that I needed to repress and “man up”. I think there is a 99% probability I would have moved in with her, and maybe even ending up married. Either way it would have been a lot messier for me and her in the end. As much as I dreaded this going into it, for the first time in a long time, I feel totally at peace and in control of my life.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
TL;DR I started an LTR with a seemingly awesome hot girl 5 years my junior 3 years ago. 2 years in, she broke up with me to go after some other guy. After that apparently didn't work out, 5 weeks later she tried to get back with me and in a moment of severe betaness, I somehow rationalized giving her another chance. Amazingly, she stepped up and was an ideal girlfriend the second time around for an entire year, treating me like a king. I thought I would get over everything with time with her good behavior. But deep down I never felt right. I realized the cold reality was I was never going to get over the fact that it basically took her to get pumped and dumped to realize what she lost and become a good girlfriend to me. So she had to go.
I broke up with her last Friday, and have just negotiated a remote work agreement with my current employer. I am now largely location independent (need to stay available during east coast business hours) with a six figure-ish income. I don’t know for certain where I’m going next, but I’m getting the hell out of Maryland, that’s for sure. For the first time in a long time, I feel at peace and in control.
I would like to tell my story, as I think it can serve as a tale of caution and example of how you cannot avoid the red pill laws in life.
I want to provide fair warning that this story will be long - there is a TL;DR version at the bottom of the post. Aspects of it will probably be annoying to advanced guys on here, or guys who have never done a monogamous LTR - you may want to skip if that's the case.
I fully admit I acted beta, and I have mindset issues I need to continue to work on. But I did the right thing in the end, and I also know it’s going to help at least one other guy out there figure shit out and avoid a disastrous life decision.
3 years ago, I met this girl when she started working at my company. She was 23, I was 28. Long blonde hair, yet tan, with brown eyes owing to her polish, italian, and cherokee heritage. Petite, 5’1’’ 105 lbs with a tight firm yet round bubble-ass - pretty much my ideal of a feminine form. A killer smile and dimples that sucked you in like a vortex. Her look was on-point, yet what really stood out the more time I spent with her was her femininity. She had a goofy, girly sense of humor that just did it for me. She laughed at herself often, and was very vulnerable, even shy. She was the polar opposite of what I’ve experienced in the living in the DC-MD area my entire life.
She made it obvious she was interested in me, but played it cool, because I don’t fuck with chicks I work with for obvious reasons. But a couple weeks later I got a job offer at a new place, and since I was on my way out anyway, I figured why the hell not.
It was like a breath of fresh air to find a girl that fully embraced her femininity, and wasn’t pretending to be a man like the most girls I’d met up until that point. With the exception of a 1 year LTR, I was single from 18-27. I was never killing it, but I had a decent amount of lays and had certainly put my time in. I figured, I've worked hard. Time to slow down and enjoy the fruits of a relationship for a while with an attractive feminine girl. I thought “this is what I worked so for, to become the caliber of a man who can attract and keep a girl on this level.”
Unfortunately as many men here undoubtedly know, with femininity comes mood swings, and illogical behavior. There was a good amount of shit testing early on. I could have done better since I was going through the loss of my friends, but overall I felt I handled it and for the most part things were good for about 1.5 years.
Then after the 1.5 year mark, she gradually started acting more and more down and depressed, above and beyond typical female time of the month mood swings. A little more with each passing week.
At first most of her depression seemed to be derived from external sources- she always getting shitted on at her office job, and her shitty family - her Dad died from lung cancer when she was 14, Mom never remarried/recovered mentally, and her brother is a drug addict who constantly hits them up for money, etc.
I definitely broke poon commandments in terms of breaking frame and going too far out of my way to support her with these issues, even before things started sliding downhill. At the time, I rationalized that she had real problems, not manufactured drama like the rich NY-NJ bitches I most fucked with during and after college- “my dad cut me off from my allowance at 25, the world is ending!” type shit. She had legit life problems, and I was older than her and I could guide her. Mini Lesson: Never let a girls problems be your problems, no matter how much it tugs at your heart strings.
The next stage of the downfall was she started shit testing/pouting whenever I was “quiet”. Typical instances of this included me driving somewhere we had never been before and looking for the right exit - aka concentrating on driving us safely versus protecting her from the inconceivable punishment of momentary boredom.
I should have recognized that for what it was at the time and took immediate, decisive steps to address it. But I didn't want to deal with it. I was stressed out because I was trying to find a new place to live after my two roommates moved out of my place on short notice and I was having a hard time finding a new spot. I was also training for a BJJ tournament so a lot of mental energy was diverted there as well. I didn’t just lie down and take it and would call her out, but in retrospect I probably needed to take more decisive action at that point, or just ended it right there fully on my terms before it went any further.
But it just got even worse towards the end. “I don’t want to be that couple that is together just to be together” type of shit, and the final killer shit test, “I’ve been getting attention from other guys and I’m thinking about what it would be like to be single”, “we need to take space”.
At that point I had enough and just let her go, I said something along the lines of “i’m just not happy anymore, you need to go and figure shit out, good luck”. She would flip flop, going from agreeing with the idea of breaking up one day, to messaging how much she loved me the next day - without me even responding, or giving 1-2 word answers, and her writing multiple paragraphs. But at that point I was done - the “other guys” shit was the final straw for me. I deleted my Facebook, and blocked her number so she couldn’t text me any more bullshit so I could focus on moving forward with my life.
I still felt sad about how she basically checked out, that she lost the passion. But the thing that conflicted me was that I didn’t see the typical emotionless cunt behavior one might expect from other stories of American women. What I observed was someone who was deeply conflicted and crying. But the talking about other dudes/being single, that was the final straw my self respect could take.
I took stock of my situation - all my good friends were gone - there was nothing keeping me in Maryland. The girls and weather here are both shit. My career isn’t tied to the defense or government. Why am I in this shithole anyway? I started looking into jobs in LA, Phoenix, Austin, Miami, etc almost immediately. In retrospect this should have been a huge red flag to me that I was motivated to get out of Maryland as soon as we parted ways. Mini lesson: NEVER put your dreams on hold for a woman, especially prior to marriage and kids.
But around 5 weeks later, the “I miss you” emails (which I never responded to) increased in frequency. I finally responded, after zero contact for those 5 weeks, with two words: “show me”.
Then a long, long letter came where she just poured out feelings about how much she missed me, how nobody made her feel the way I did, please meet up with her and talk.
At the same time, a recruiter for a local company hit me up and I ended up getting a great job offer in Baltimore (where I was already living) for a 50% salary increase, and a great boss. Location considerations aside, this was about as close to a dream job I could have hoped for in terms of the projects I would be involved with.
I decided at the time I would “stick around and see what happens”. I rationalized that I didn’t want to “throw away an opportunity” both with the job, and with her. Yes she had fucked up and basically quit the relationship, but her desire for me seemed genuine, and there’s a side of me that has always held out faith in people, giving people a second chance. I’ve fucked up in the past and am thankful people gave me a chance to redeem myself. I remember having the specific thought “if I don’t give her a second chance, I’ll always wonder what might have been”.
At the time, I also figured that if I was a actually a “beta bux” to her, that it would inevitably show up in reduced sex, compliance, etc and she would start shit-testing again. So I was on the lookout for anything resembling that. But it just didn’t happen. She worked harder than ever to please me. There were zero shit tests and mood swings were nothing compared to what they were in the past. Great sex was back and in full force. She would clean my house whenever she came over, cooked for me. Always looked to my approval for what she was wearing. In short, she became a damn near perfect girlfriend the second time around and stayed that way.
But despite how well she treated me, and how happy I felt in the moment, there was this little voice. A little voice deep down that told me something was wrong. I didn’t want to admit it. I was very happy when I stayed in the present moment with her when we were just spending time together. But whenever I had solitude, I just had this bad feeling about the two of us. Deep down I just knew that everything was just not okay. I hoped with time it would pass. I repressed the voice.
My self-talk at the time was along the lines of ” I’ve got a hot, feminine girl 5 years younger that loves me and treats me like a king. What more could I want? I’m 30 years old. Time to just be happy and stop waiting out for the 19 year old virgin Heartiste says all men should hold out for. All this red pill shit is just to help reprogram guys who are on the opposite end of the spectrum. Real life is more complex.” Bullshit.
As time went on- and we were coming up on another year, instead of passing, the more the “something is wrong” feelings seemed to bubble up inside me more and more. We started going to weddings as her friends were all starting to get married off. Her girlfriends start throwing that shit on me “you guy’s are next! hahaha!”. Whenever I thought about that shit, I just had this feeling of dark anxiety. I knew there was something wrong that I had such a visceral reaction.
She started making noise about us moving in together. It made logical sense - she was commuting from far away, over an hour each way, every day. Living closer to the city would have made her life a lot easier, save money on rent, etc etc. But obviously with moving in, the next step is marriage which I knew was on her mind though she did not explicitly express the desire.
The thought marriage to her disturbed the hell out of me. Again - I knew there was something seriously wrong when I felt this type of reaction arising from deep in my psyche.
A couple months back, one of my boys moved back to Scottsdale, AZ after spending a few years overseas and was going back to ASU to try to finish his degree. I just knew I had to go out there and check it out because I didn’t hang out there when he first went to school. I also applied to some jobs and I ended up getting an interview. I wasn't really going through with some master plan that I knew I was going to move, it was like a curiosity more or less.
I flew out there and stayed with my friend for a few days. I didn’t have time to game much because of the interview, and my game needs some rehab after being in an LTR for so long. But the level of talent was invigorating to say the last. In any of the major malls in Maryland in my experience, you are lucky to see a hot girl every 2, 3, 4 hours or so. In Scottsdale mall, I was breaking my neck literally every 10 minutes with a certified bad bitch walking by. I could almost feel my testosterone level going up with the excitement of seeing an abundance of attractive women around.
On the plane to and from Phoenix, I read through Rational Male. I got to the section on break ups in the "Iron Rules", and these words burned into my soul when I read them on the plane:
Quote:Quote:
You or she may promise to never do something again, you may promise to “rebuild the trust”, you may promise to be someone else, but you cannot promise to accept that the issues leading to the breakup don’t have the potential to dissolve it again. The doubt is there. You may be married for 30 years, but there will always be that one time when you two broke up, or she fucked that other guy, and everything you think you’ve built with her over the years will always be compromised by that doubt of her desire.
I sat there and re-read it several times. At the same time I also remembered a tweet from MikeCF a while back, along the lines of “women love you when they believe you are the best man you can get, and fall out of love when that no longer is the case”.
Those two passages of wisdom, fused together, really helped me realize what was going on. I now understand why I felt the way I did, and what was going on with her as well.
There was no question my girl was fully back love with me. She acted like she was the luckiest girl in the world and was 100% loyal and devoted to making me happy. She truly acted that I was the best man she could get.
But the ugly truth was this - my girl had calculated I indeed was the best man she could get, by leaving me to go for some other guy and getting pumped and dumped.
I’ll spare the details, but through friends of friends, over time I was able to verify she started seeing some other guy she met at her gym immediately after we broke up that first time but that “didn’t work out”, and that’s the point she really made the effort to come back to me.
The reality I was never going to be okay with that. The reality was 30 years later, there would still be that one time.
The trip to AZ and solitude it offered helped me finally realize where I stood. Bottom line, it wasn’t fair to her or me, for me to continue on with this silent burden.
Right around the time I came to the final conclusion this relationship had to end, I got the call. I got the job offer in Phoenix, for the same salary I had in Maryland. With cost of living in AZ, it would be an improvement. Now that I knew I finally had an opportunity to get out west and start fresh, and get out of a pussy wasteland, there was no turning back.
There was a severe dread I had leading up to the point where I broke things off with her this past Thursday. I was terrified I would collapse, that I would backtrack that I would be overwhelmed with regret and emotion. I’m not gonna lie, Dagonet’s recent public struggles had me scared me shitless! I thought I was in for doom and gloom like nothing I had experienced.
But ironically, it was almost anticlimactic by how it all actually played out. When I had the breakup conversation and gave her stuff she had kept at my house (she basically lived with me thursday-sunday), all I got was a feeling of relief and being at peace. Like I had been living a lie and was finally coming clean, and being true to myself and her. That I doing what was right for both of us. I was calm and collected, I didn’t shed a tear, not even close. She was sobbing.
I told her straight up my reasons. That I realized I was never going to be okay with how she had left me for someone else and it didn’t work out so she came back. That I would never be okay with that’s what it took for her to “realize” that she loved me. No matter how much time passed. She gave me the whole “I wanted to love you forever”, “I would have moved with you to Arizona (even though she balked hard at any conversations we had related to moving up till now due to her family), “it’s not what you think with that other guy”.
But interestingly, it seemed like she also understood and accepted the reality that she fucked up. She admitted to dating the guy from her gym, basically immediately after we broke up, and came back after it fizzled out. She even asked me “did it make you feel like you were the safe choice?”. That was without any hinting or prodding on my part. I found that very telling.
The words spontaneously came out from me as I had not been expecting to say them, but I knew was the truth the moment I did: “I’m sorry, but I just do not love you anymore”. If anything I was holding onto a ghost of a feeling I used to have for her, and could resurrect the feeling if I just stayed focused in the present moment. But it was like reanimating a corpse. It was not enough to sustain a healthy LTR, let alone a marriage. Some wounds time does not heal.
I haven’t spoken with her since I moved the things she had in my house out last Friday, but people that have spoken with her sense have said she’s taking it extremely hard, that she says she still loves me in spite of everything and is utterly heartbroken.
So fellas, hard lesson learned: Never, ever, ever, take an LTR back if she leaves you, especially leaves you for another dude. Perhaps some guys can get over that shit. But not me. I knew deep down it would never be the same. As soon as I read that passage from Rational Male, it was like I finally could shed this feeling of guilt and anxiety. I was basically waiting, wondering if I would simply get over it with time and forget it over time while she kept being good to me. And I knew with absolute certainty the answer was no.
Final epilogue in this story- my current employer, in an effort to keep me, offered a remote work agreement to counter the Phoenix job offer. This is huge as it means location independence. In the beginning I will fly back to Maryland once a month to spend a few days on-site meetings, but that may reduce in frequency over time. My job is pretty much all virtual anyway - aside from my boss, all my meetings are with outsourced vendors, a lot of whom are on west coast time. So it’s almost stupid for me to be in the office anyway.
So as of now, in addition to an overdue break up with a LTR, I have largely achieved a large degree of location independence (still have to be available during east coast business hours). I’m still in a corporate job, which is still fragile fundamentally when compared to running own business, but now I have a better ability to make that happen by not needing to spend 1.5 hours driving to/from a cubicle farm every day.
I wouldn’t have had the guts to do this without the guys in the manosphere. Nobody in my circle- family, friends, etc - was on board with me. Every last one of them has been of the “time heals all wounds” mindset and have passively-aggressively questioned my actions every step of the way. But I’m 100% at peace.
I owe all the major manosphere authors, but I am especially indebted to MikeCF, Roosh, Rollo, Christian McQueen, and I can’t forget Dagonet - while my situation is very different, seeing him have the balls to go through intense pain for the sake of being true to himself, inspired me to be true to myself as well.
If not for the philosophy and worldview all you guys promote, I would have kept dismissing that “little voice” as some dark, childish, immature thought that I needed to repress and “man up”. I think there is a 99% probability I would have moved in with her, and maybe even ending up married. Either way it would have been a lot messier for me and her in the end. As much as I dreaded this going into it, for the first time in a long time, I feel totally at peace and in control of my life.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
TL;DR I started an LTR with a seemingly awesome hot girl 5 years my junior 3 years ago. 2 years in, she broke up with me to go after some other guy. After that apparently didn't work out, 5 weeks later she tried to get back with me and in a moment of severe betaness, I somehow rationalized giving her another chance. Amazingly, she stepped up and was an ideal girlfriend the second time around for an entire year, treating me like a king. I thought I would get over everything with time with her good behavior. But deep down I never felt right. I realized the cold reality was I was never going to get over the fact that it basically took her to get pumped and dumped to realize what she lost and become a good girlfriend to me. So she had to go.
I broke up with her last Friday, and have just negotiated a remote work agreement with my current employer. I am now largely location independent (need to stay available during east coast business hours) with a six figure-ish income. I don’t know for certain where I’m going next, but I’m getting the hell out of Maryland, that’s for sure. For the first time in a long time, I feel at peace and in control.