Advice is Useless

A long time ago, in an Internet far, far away, I used to be a moderator on the Tucker Max Message Board.  The best part of the TMMB was, by far, the Advice Board.

Imagine Dear Abby without the delusions.  It was the sort of place where people of all walks of life converged, and offered a spoonful of wisdom to the younger folk entering into this world.  It was glorious!  There’s an old saying which dictates that the only way to truly understand something is to teach it – if that’s the case, then thank you to all the young men and women who wrote in for help making sense of life.  Examining your lives made me re-examine my own.

And the best part of all?  Most of the little bastards listened.  I wasn’t speaking into a vacuum.  My thoughts, and efforts in those days – they actually mattered…

Cue the present day:

Of the two-dozen-odd people in my life, only two of them are living in a healthy relationship – ironically enough the double-XX member refuses to marry, convinced that the wedding band enslaves the female sex – meanwhile she cooks brownies once a week, and makes sure that her hard-working tradesman ‘boyfriend’ has a warm meal waiting for him, every night.  Three wonderful children have resulted from this union – and I admire them for succeeding in a culture which tries so hard to encourage failure.

But they’re the exception.

One friend is in a relationship with an emotionally abusive relationship with a woman who once phoned the cops on him, accusing him of drug dealing.  She also stole $50 out of my wallet.  But he’s ‘in love’ with her.

One got chased out of the house by his wife last weekend, only to return to a bolted door, and a pair of police officers.  After a masterful incidence of speaking politely, they helped him recover his property, and then ejected him from the apartment he pays for.  Currently he’s staying with his relatives, and wondering when he’ll be able to see his daughter again.

Yet another got himself involved with a single-mom, who refused to pluck her unibrow.  Despite her horrible nature he did not break up with her.  He took a month-long vacation in Australia – finally met a girl he has been infatuated with for 5 years – and did not sleep with her, because he was seeing someone.  Three days after returning he dumped the controlling bitch.

I’d prefer to be equal-gender-opportunistic when it comes to all this; but the facts just don’t bear that up.  I do have one female friend, true, who married a loser who offered her no end of grief – but compared to a man in a similar situation she’s getting off relatively easily.

Not to mention – to put it bluntly – that she came from bad parents, while all the men I listed were relatively civilized, and just trying to do the right thing.

This society just plain hates marriage – it loves the income generated by the two-parent family (ergo spousal support), but it hates the father.  Every pressure in the world exists to dissolve a marriage, while the only thing holding it together is the husbands ability to make her gina tingle.

How the hell do you convince people of this?  Only an insane society would support such a poisonous divorce process – and yet that is the society we now live in.

Earlier today I sat my buddy down (over MSN) and gave him a long ass lecture about what to expect:

-His finances will be fucked

-His wife will abuse every legal exception possible to hurt him, in the most cynical of manners

-Her selfishness will hurt his daughter, and the courts are schizophrenic; he will do the best he can as a Father and a Man, but it might not be enough.  If so, this is not his fault.

On the other hand…

-In twenty years he will be dating a nubile and sweet blonde girl, glad that he dodged this bullet

-She will be old, saggy, and bitchy – she will be dating no-one

It was bound to happen sooner or later.  If anything, better that it happen now; he has the prime of his life in front of him still, while hers is long behind her.  Better still, though, if he’d sniffed out this poisonous serpent before it’d struck.

And thus the point of my article – what good is advice?

For those seeking it, it’s invaluable – but for those committed to their own delusions, it’s pointless.

The situation with relationships is just the tip of the iceberg, and perhaps that part most understandable to men in the modern world, slowly realizing the crock of lies they’ve been sold… but the implications go deeper.  Religion, politics, science…

Nobody fucking listens.