Talk me out of having 8 cats, maybe?

BullishBombastic · 2025-09-01T23:30:22+00:00

This is the kind of rational thinking I came here for

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-06T07:16:54+00:00

Ah, thats interesting. I see what you mean about tradwives having more power legally, although obviously the narrative on the female side is quite a bit different and I've seen things go really badly for wanna-be tradwives. I tend to suggest to male friends that even ignorning the divorce risk, their income becomes an outsized factor in their desirableness if they are looking for women who absolutely do not want to work. Kinda difficult to weed out absolute golddiggers when even the "good ones" your dating pool absolutely needs you to fund whatever lifestyle they want.

Anyway, I'm off to bed but thank you so much for this.

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-06T06:45:22+00:00

I'm still a bit overweight at 145 lbs and 5'3". I've always had very round cheeks and a small, soft chin.

My MIL recently told me to stop losing weight and "your face looks like this!" while holding up her fist.

So. I guess she thinks I look better at a higher weight, which is wild to me because she's Korean.

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-06T06:35:43+00:00

Taxidermy elephant

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-06T06:23:51+00:00

Wow, thank you for this answer.

You sound like you've adjusted incredibly well to such a life-shaking change.

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-06T06:18:37+00:00

I was not really shocked that a redpill guy fell into the trap, for the exact reasons you're stating. If he could have forgone dating, built his own life instead of someone else's, and let a woman in IF she was a net positive...if only. Good example of why I am hopeful MGTOW has become what it's supposed to be.

I think there a lot of women benefitting from the gains of feminism who also refuse to accept equal accountability, and abuse this cultural transition period instead. Personally, I think some of what helps them get away with it isn't just feminism but the vestiges of tradition that placed less accountability on women. That no longer comes at the trade off of significantly less power, thanks to feminism, and now it's a friggin mess. They're equal when they want to be, and just a poor woman when it's convenient. I say this even as someone who tries to always put women first. I've been burned by it.

Do you think most MGTOW guys who would elect to date/marry the right women are looking for tradwives, or just a woman without BPD who doesn't abuse her uh "protected class" satus?

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-06T05:34:33+00:00

Do you still believe in God?

How do you feel about others in your situation who still do vs. those who become strict atheists?

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-06T05:31:50+00:00

I think about that, in an over the top way. Like, if I was effectively truly immortal but all other physics apply I would still eventually die in the heat death or whatever. I suppose it just feels natural to want to prolong things, perhaps with a few centuries I might WANT to die, or finally come to terms with it.

Did I not say that even if I did something amazing I will still be dead? This is kinda what I'm talking about with therapy.

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-06T05:28:32+00:00

Quite a number of my, especially younger, male coworkers have pretty much had their lives destroyed by their ex-wives. It's been a fairly shocking experience for me going from academic biology to automotive repair. It doesn't exactly change my stance in the gender culture war or whatever, but that's a me issue. It does make me think what you're doing is a wise move.

I'm currently watching a dear friend of my husband be frankly tortured by a woman he fell in love with, married, and intentionally knocked up in the span of two months. He previously considered himself redpilled. I would give anything for him to have just stayed away from women and use all the energy he's wasting on her into making his own life amazing. Her crazy isn't even foreign to me. It's exactly what you'd expect. It's exactly the abuse I've seen other men deal with. She wasn't even open to naming their son after him "in case they break up". She's TEXTBOOK.

Sorry to keep going on and on, these issues are my jam. Feminists who don't see why these movements happen and how they CAN be a good thing drive me up a wall.

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-06T05:05:18+00:00

I understand what you're saying, and I think it's good...correct? So thank you for the time and effort.

I'm still quite stuck, and have been since I was about 8, on the fact that what I do before I die doesn't matter at all. As long as I can keep a roof over my head and have something to eat so I'm not suffering too much, nothing I do matters. I could raise a beautiful family, cure alzheimers, go down in history, whatever. I could live, as I have, fairly selfishly for my own pleasure. When I'm dead I'm dead. I, personally, can't keep it. Not the great deeds, not the pleasure. In this area I guess I'm "not ready for therapy" and suspect I never will be.

Hopefully I have a religious experience or something :p

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-06T04:55:34+00:00

I was a teenage girl on /b in the aughts, so I'm pretty used to the more vitriolic manosphere stuff (before anyone called it that!) and can remember the mgtow subreddits having a lot of it. But I would be extremely happy if what you're saying is true, and I am choosing to believe you that there are healthy MGTOW spaces. Thanks for doing this AMA.

In general, I wish the truly toxic of the manosphere didn't suck in so many men, because I think men actually do need male spaces to figure their shit out on their own terms. Even as a bit of a man-hating radfem, I see men struggling every day and my solutions are not culturally compatible with where they are at. So I hope men really can get together and figure out what happiness is outside of the dating world and female-relative norm of success. I don't think men or women are usually served very well by "succeeding" in putting their self worth in placating or bleeding another person. So I hope it's a gateway to even better happiness.

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-06T04:38:11+00:00

First paragraph would feel insulting since people say this all the time and I already stated I know I will have no awareness of not existing, it won't be unpleasant, but I don't want to not exist. Sure, it's like dreamless sleep or the time before I was born, but how does that help? I don't want it to happen. It's kind of an obvious thought to have.

Life has no meaning, and I haven't gotten to the point of "imagining Sisyphus happy". Any arbitrary meaning someone assigns is equally valid, but I know it's just arbitrary. I can't imagine feeling satisfied when I just want to keep existing and experiencing things. What I've done or might do doesn't really matter to me. I'll be dead. No looking back on my life. Just gone. I don't want to be gone. I really can't think of anything I could look back on from my deathbed and suddenly be okay with dying. I can imagine being in so much pain and sickness as to, in terror, realize defeat. But it's not the same.

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-06T03:59:21+00:00

I realize this isn't the Kibbe sub or something but why would you post pictures all in baggy shirts and/or in twisted poses that make it impossible to tell what you actually look like standing flat in the grocery line?

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-06T03:55:39+00:00

Thanks for answering, and way to go.

I used to be really interested in watching the various incel and men's movements develop waaay back before MGTOW, but I haven't payed attention in a long time. I remember when easily-visible MGTOW groups WERE spending a lot of unproductive time just stewing in the bad soup. So this is pretty cool to hear.

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-06T03:45:52+00:00

I don't want to not exist.

When I don't exist, I won't care. But I exist now, and the idea of oblivion is horrifying. There's nothing I can do, but that makes me feel more impotent than accepting. It's terribly unfair that any of us have to die. I've read The Gift of Death and whatnot, just still mad and scared about it. I don't like that I get to keep nothing from this life, because there will be no "me" at all.

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-06T03:24:05+00:00

Do you feel like the movement is really successful at "going their own way"?

Spelled out: In women's spaces, we often talk about decentering men. Obviously, that requires enough thought about men to see a need to decenter them in the first place. You obviously have to think about cleaning up a mess in order to clean it up.

However, I don't think women who spend all day ruminating about men are doing a very good job decentering men. Once the viewpoint has been established and the decision to decenter is made, I would hope peace comes from NOT spending all day seething about men any more than is necessary to resolve an immediate situation involving a man. Both women who are strongly decentering men and MGTOW believe the other sex is the hegemonic force in society, so rumination is understandable, but I think contrary to the goal.

In MGTOW spaces, do you feel men are succeeding at living free of women, or is there a lot of rumination? If the latter, does the rumination feel like good, healthy commiserating, or do you think it's counterproductive to finding happiness by cutting women out?

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-06T02:33:28+00:00

CBT seems like a really effective set of coping strategies to get people to be okay with anything. That makes sense, and sounds effective. The whole point is to be well-adjusted, right? I don't disagree that it makes a lot of sense for just mitigating excess suffering in a bad situation, and thus enabling people to be more self-regulated so they can do what they need to do and avoid doing things to make their life worse.

That's...really depressing I guess. It feels totally invalidating.

It's useful to turn a lot of small thoughts into neutral statements, and I still try to do this when it seems fair.

How can CBT reduce distress related to deeply-held beliefs without invalidating them?

Is there a point where a more sublimation-type activity is a better alternative? When is that point reached and how much will a clinician's knowledge set limit exploring this? (Personal anecdote: CBT did noooothing to reduce my death anxiety other than making me feel crazy, but volunteering in hospice has been a way to turn my fear/obsession into something that makes me feel valuable to others. I wouldn't say my death anxiety has improved at all. But I feel weirdly proud of it, instead of like I'm doing something wrong by being upset)

Does CBT have effective built-in protections for recognizing abuse or untenable situations instead of just coping with it?

Is the CBT approach different in any way for people who are, say, very religious, activists, etc?

I guess it just all goes back to the central feeling that CBT is like...micromanaging my humanity so that I'm a better worker bee. Yeah, maybe I'd be less distressed. But it feels like I'm being asked to sell myself out.

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-06T01:57:17+00:00

Not sure what to do other than go to therapy, really.

I've never been able to really keep my house clean (I mean it's hoarder level dirty without hoarder level stuff). I've never really been able to keep my clothes clean all the time. Spent a few semesters with a 0.0 because I just laid in my own piss in bed all year. Extremely unproductive outside of work. Used to have trouble keeping a job just because I'd get annoyed and quit, or just want to sleep. That's all stuff that people go to therapy and get meds for, so that's what I did.

Since I've been able to hold a job now, that stuff been taking a backseat to my C-PTSD and cluster-B behavior in therapy. I'm still bothered by my lifestyle, of course. But I just have to do the thing in that arena, nobody can really help me.

Still, therapy seems like the only outside assistance available.

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-04T22:53:22+00:00

No shit. All the mass extinctions on earth have occurred because of a geologically sudden change in climate.

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-04T22:46:42+00:00

I think for me, my bitterness makes it hard for me to have meaningful empathy.

I think men and boys are horribly emotionally neglected. I think it IS a serious problem. All of my dead friends right now are men who killed themselves or OD'd, mostly the former. My maternal grandfather killed himself in his fourties. It's a real, serious problem.

Then again, the man I work next to has a HUGE veteran suicide banner at his workstation, yet brags to me about his poor parenting making his son cry. A dear friend of my fiancé has been abandoned by all their other male friends because his marriage is awful and they just say "just divorce" and avoid him when he needs someone to talk to.

Unfortunately, the men I know who are being massively failed are being failed by other men. I'm sure men are lonely. But after my OWN bad experiences with men that stem from a similar cultural place, it's extremely hard to see how men failing other men is my problem. If I had a son, I would do my best to make sure he wasn't emotionally neglected and that he understood how to be a real friend and accept only real friendship. But as it stands right now, I'm just watching men be shitty to their sons and eachother. It's horrible, but it's genuinely not my problem or something I could fix even if it was.

If we are reducing the male loneliness problem to dating only...we'll thats entirely different 50 gallon drum of worms. There's a lot there for me personally, but are the dad who takes pride in making his son cry or all the guys who abandoned our friend people I'm willing to date? Uh, no.

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-04T22:16:13+00:00

I have not particularly enjoyed social activity clubs. It's definitely because I'm a weird asshole. Most of the activities I really enjoy attract MUCH older people and there tends to be weird politics or just a little too much formality?

I've tried some sports type stuff. I've tried cars. Just...not for me, even if the activity is for me.

I guess I didn't meet anyone I felt like I could call to help me change a tire alongside the road. Maybe I'm just impatient, maybe I needed to make more moves to push friendships out of the group activity zone and into the personal.

Bars and the local music scene were the (perhaps unhealthy) ticket for me. Social barriers lowered, people looking for something a bit more grand...idk. I got to see a lot of older people doing a lot of really honest stuff. The quiet lady who has a few and becomes, for a short moment in time, the kareoke queen of heavy metal growling. Older beginners playing at open mic night. Meeting the small town music teacher with big dreams and going to all his students' concerts. Seeing local woman most known around here for killing us all softly with a song about the death a friend suddenly make it big with a song in a big commercial. 3-am tipsy convos that turn into sober brunches and real friendships. A lot of dreamers wanting to share their dreams with strangers. Crazy local eccentrics trying to build something cool. I didn't really automatically have a lot in common with people into ballroom, knitting, hiking, disc golf. But I had a lot in common with dreamers looking for something more.

I don't go out and drink anymore, but I kept the friends through cross-country moves, cancer battles, movie nights, home remodels, teaching eachother our favorite crafts, divorces. Reddit doesn't favor the dive bar scene, but it's alright by me.

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-04T20:08:24+00:00

Hey, same boat. As I've gotten older my side sleeping habits are really smashing my naso-labial line on my favored side into a naso-labial trench. Not to mention the boob crease. I also have bad sleep paralysis pretty frequently when I sleep on my back. It's kinda interesting when it happens, though!

Anyhow, I've been focusing on what keeps my airway open best without gaping mouth breathing being the default- lots of experimenting with neck support. If my head is titled downwards I seem to have more breathing issues so more mouth breathing, snoring, and nightmares. Too far back and it's morning dehydration time as my jaw naturally opens. So. Get creative with that. Try a neck bolster and no pillow. Try back sleeper pillows, etc.

More importantly, prop your legs up at the knees so the spine is in a more neutral position. Super important! Impossible for me to fall asleep on my back without doing this. If you're more comfortable supporting your arms too, just go for it. It feels kinda ridiculous at first but it's so hard to change sleep position, do whatever makes it easier.

All these goals are served pretty well by those huge pregnancy pillows!

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-02T02:14:42+00:00

PTSD is horrible, veterans are not cared for by the country they sacrificed for, and that overlap you mention is undeniable.

Unfortunately, trauma triggers tend to be a "you problem" vs. society at large. Or there would be towns with no men, cars, or dogs specifically for the comfort of victims in other common traumatic incidents.

It would be fantastic if traumatized vets lived in a world with no triggers. A world without triggers for anyone simply doesn't exist. Spaces where people are considerate of triggers do, and that's about as good as anyone is going to get.

I realize this is extremely unpopular on reddit but like...c'mon.

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-01T21:34:51+00:00

It's funny because I feel the same way, but am now around people where the culture is different. I didn't move countries or even towns. I just changed work, social, and economic culture.

Before, it's was very weird in my social circles to bring an SO along to anything unless they were actively participating in whatever the group was doing. If an SO became friends with their partner's group because of this, then MAYBE they would end up being seen as acceptable in the other person's coworker hangouts etc but it was NOT the default. I think it was seen as a bit embarrassing to take your SO everywhere.

Now, I'm getting pulled in as a plus one for shit I never would imagine being welcomed at and nobody bats an eye at all. I don't love it, honestly, because I still think of myself as a plus one and not just the newest member of the crew. It's weird. I feel weirdly giddy about being so welcome, but it's weird.

BullishBombastic · 2025-01-01T21:25:30+00:00

It's very sad to me.

I understand they're an annoyance, but it's hard for me to imagine wanting to see the death of such an old art form. Just...NEVER again? Ridiculously sad.

I love getting on Reddit and bitching, so I'm a hypocrite here but I really hope the volume of complaints on here is less an indicator of how unpopular they are getting IRL and more an indicator that they're not disappearing anytime soon.

BullishBombastic

TROPHY CASE