The desire to want a family
08-22-2013, 04:52 PM
tl;dr don't get married without a very solid game plan.
I wanted to write a post about this very topic. I don't mean to hijack the thread or turn the spotlight on myself. Hopefully in my post we can find some common ground and reach some conclusions.
As I've mentioned a few times in various posts, my maternal grandpa just died. It's had a lot of repercussions in my family.
I went to his house to see my uncles and aunt. I hadn't seen them since my mom's death about 5 years ago. It was bittersweet because what, we only see each other when someone dies? We did pick up right where we left off and my uncles are cool as shit. We had a blast, smoking weed in the backyard, talking shit and telling jokes. I felt like I was hanging out with the 19 year old versions of my uncles. (One of them grows pot and the other one was cruising around on his Harley all day)
It was incredibly sad though, because all of us realized we'd never go to that house again. That house has incredible history; my mom, her sister, and two brothers all grew up there. When I was too sick to go to school I'd go there and my grandparents would take care of me. We held every holiday there. My grandpa was a figurehead in the town when he first moved in; a big community man. There are so many chapters of history there and now we'll never go back to that house once it's sold. My uncles were showing me some great pictures; all the cars they'd worked on, their vacation camper they built, my grandpa's bronze 1970 El Dorado with white top and white interior, and the 1974 hydrant red version he traded it in for.
I wanted to be a part of it, and not just hear all these great stories. I missed out on an era, for sure, but also missed out on having that kind of upbringing. I grew up in a single parent household with a half sister I didn't get along with.
At the end of the day I drove back to L.A., thinking, "I've got to stop reminiscing about something I didn't even experience. This nostalgia is ridiculous. The reality is that my grandpa is gone, that house is gone, all those memories are ancient history. There's nothing to recapture. There's only more stories to create."
And against my better judgement, I decided right then and there: I want that. I want all of it. I want kids, like 3 of them. I want boys to carry on my name. As far as I know, I'm the last of my line. Fuck that shit.
The big variable in all of this, of course, is finding the woman. I talked to my gf about it. She wants kids, but said not out of wedlock. I told her I don't give a shit about marriage, that it's just a piece of paper to sign as long as I've got an ironclad prenup where she doesn't get shit. She was taken aback and I laid on the red pill pretty thick, telling her I wish marriage was this pure and romantic institution still but that modern women had fucked it all up, and now we had to talk about incentives and duties as if it were a contract. By the end of it she agreed to all of it, said she didn't even care about an engagement ring.
I need to get a few good "love tours" out of the way but I see this future coming up for me pretty soon fellas. I'd refer to you guys to the story of Knulp by Herman Hesse, which essentially portrays men of different walks; those with wanderlust who feel most true to themselves not bound by any person or thing in this world, and those who feel satisfaction is settling down with a home to call their own. If I'm really true to myself and being honest, I find myself leaning towards the latter (although with strong elements of the former). I can trace my feelings to my own lackluster upbringing, of feeling like I'd missed out on something, of not having a real family, and the way to fill that void is by creating it on my own.
Having been engaged, been "in love", been in several LTRs, many gfs, dating, you name it, I've come to these conclusions:
1. I don't believe in love, not in the American sense. I don't believe in soulmates. I believe in commonality between individuals that has nothing to do with "the one". We all find people we get along with and that's no different between lovers. I believe what people call "love", where you're obsessive, is an adverse condition resulting from lust mixed with emotional issues.
2. For LTRs, gfs, or god forbid, wives, go foreign. This should be self explanatory. If they've lived in the U.S. for more than a couple years, you will need to keep gaming them and enforcing patriarchal values, but they still have that foundation of nurturing and enhancing a man's life, not detracting or decreasing the quality of his life.
3. Set rules and expectations early on. Cooking, cleaning, sex, how she presents herself, her exercise regimen. I'm involved with all of these things and enforce them on a weekly basis. If there are any objections, present the alternative of her hitting the trail. Find a girl from a country whose cuisine you really enjoy. Seriously. Sex is sex, some of it's better than others but it's still just sex. Those little perks like a Vietnamese or Filipino girl cooking her national dishes take relationships to a whole other level.
4. Be willing to walk away from anything within 5 seconds.
5. Establish clear incentives. She is with you because you provide a solid future for her. She will be comfortable and taken care of, and so will your kids. She does NOT have any right to your assets though. YOU are in control of all assets and how those assets are spent. YOU are in the relationship because SHE is a responsible, thoughtful, and nurturing wife and mother. You both gain something from it. But at the end, it's understood that SHE is the one with a more time-sensitive shelf life and it is only to HER detriment that the relationship should end.
I haven't been married yet, but these are my ground rules going into it. I'm still a few years off but I'm going in packed with fucking nukes. I was just thinking about that old rhetoric I've heard about marriage and kids, "Well, you're never quite READY for it, you just decided on it or it happens and you dive in."
Fuck that, I'm way more ready for it now than I was even a year ago.
"...so I gave her an STD, and she STILL wanted to bang me."
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