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Absolutely seeing this trend. It's happened to me and many of my male friends and acquaintances. Best friend's wife of 15 years left out of the blue, zero reasons given aside from a comment of "you're too negative". Another friend's wife decided she was a lesbian, having been married to a him for 10+ years. I was engaged to be married and the woman decided she wasn't attracted to me, after being together for years.
Fundamentally, I think there is a "Netflix" mindset going on. Like how you turn on Netflix, scroll through the shows and maybe something catches your eye for a minute so you watch the intro. But then the actors or soundtrack kind of annoys you or whatever, so you just go back to scrolling for another show. This has permeated the culture. We are all about quick dopamine reward. Our media consumption is short form, endlessly scrolling, outrageous by necessity. Women feel this in particular as massive consumers of social media, and they are also fed vastly different content on these platforms than men. They're validated endlessly and gassed up. They are told, and they know, they can get a man at any moment, and so they seek the neurochemical hit and then discard quickly as soon as it becomes real, in search of the next hit.
It's fundamentally broken. I'm a 36 year old man, have been in several long term relationships, most recent one ended a while back after she became physically abusive to me. I started dating earlier this year and it's been disgusting. I used to want a wife and a family but I have given up on that dream.
Therein lies the paradox of commitment.
By committing, a man is signaling that she is the best that he can do, in which case she may be subconsciously wondering if she can do better. This is especially pertinent now more than ever, when she can easily get attention from better looking or (perceived to be) higher status men on social media and/or OLD—if she doesn't already have such men giving her likes on social media and sliding into her DMs.
When she perceives that she's his only option, she may start to lose attraction for him and start getting the ick. In contrast—prior to commitment—there are tailwinds from female mate-choice copying in tingle induction, when he's still seeing other women or she's under the impression that he might be. As one chick put it, "im glad he doesn’t have hoes but why does he not have hoes??? am i fighting for a spot no one wants??!!"
You can have a family without a wife, even without spraying and praying. Egg donor + surrogacy costs only a few tens of thousands to a couple hundred thousand USD, depending on your location and your willingness to use a foreign surrogate. If you're white-collar-coded, people might seethe at you for cheating at life by having a child or children without getting gatekept by the step of marrying a woman, but haters gonna hate.
I am skeptical about the thought of raising a child without a mother in the home.
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