I’ve been thinking about loneliness. Not the sad, weep-into-your-pillow kind, but the structural kind. The kind that is the necessary tax you pay for Freedom.
See, freedom is selfish. By definition. It’s the ability to wake up and say, “I’m going to Hawaii,” or “I’m going to Vietnam,” without having to run it by a committee. It’s the ability to be the singular “I” instead of the plural “We.”
And I have guarded that freedom like a junkyard dog.
I’m not lonely because I’m unlovable. I’m not lonely because I lack options. I’m lonely because I have spent years deliberately chewing on low-hanging fruit.
I do it for control. I admit it. I date the retail workers, the Pink Jeep drivers, the social workers making $30k a year trying to save the world one “at-risk youth” at a time. I date the women with no savings, no plans, and a chaotic history of bad decisions.
Why? Because when you are the Captain, and the passenger is just happy to be on the boat, you get to steer. You get to decide when the ride is over. You get to keep your bags packed by the door.
I had a chance at the other life. The equal. A woman making $400,000 a year. We connected. We were a power couple. But then… the script started. She wanted the Country Club. She wanted the Caribbean cruise. She wanted the shared life.
And I looked at that golden cage, and I ran. I ran right back to the gutter, because the gutter has no expectations.
But here’s the rub. Here’s the dark, ugly truth that’s starting to make my slip show.
It is fucking depressing.
It is depressing to be the smartest, richest, most capable person in the room every single goddamn night. It drains you. You go on a date, and you’re looking across the table at a woman who is 50 years old, has eleven kids (or might as well), can’t pay her light bill, and is complaining about “the system.” And you’re sitting there, a man who conquered the world with nothing but grit, thinking, “What cesspool am I swimming in?”
I’m not dating; I’m performing charity work with a happy ending.
I’m dating women whose husbands just died, women who are “finding themselves” three decades too late, women who are bitter about a game they never bothered to learn how to play.
And it’s dragging me down. It’s deflating my energy. It’s making me look in the mirror with disgust. Why am I putting myself through these stages? Why am I wading through this swamp of mediocrity just to feel the warmth of a human body?
It’s not just loneliness. It’s boredom. It’s the profound boredom of a man who is tired of being the only adult in the relationship.
So, the Vietnam plan. The 60-day countdown.
People say, “Oh, you’re going for a Vietnamese wife. They’re submissive.”
Bullshit. I’m not going for a wife. I’m going for a clean slate.
I am hoping, praying to whatever god looks after drunk project managers, that when I get out of this American environment—out of this culture of entitlement, victimhood, and high-fructose corn syrup—my depression will fade.
I don’t want an equal. I don’t want a CEO. I don’t want a “partner” to challenge me.
I want a Cheerleader.
I want a woman who smiles when I walk in the room. I want a woman who is forgiving. I want a woman who doesn’t try to “fix” me, because there is nothing wrong with me other than I’m tired of carrying the weight of the world. I want someone to stand on the sidelines and tell me I’m great, so I can go out and conquer the goddamn world again.
That’s how most of these bitter American women started out in their twenties. But now? Now they’re just tired, broke, and delusional. They claim to have “traditional values,” but they’re divorced, chaotic, and can’t balance a checkbook.
And that’s the final insult. That’s the thing that drives me crazy.
How can you not make money in America?
How, in the greatest economic engine the world has ever seen, can you be 50 years old and broke? It’s not the economy. It’s not the patriarchy. It’s you. It’s a reflection of every bad decision you’ve ever made.
And I’m tired of dating those decisions.
I’m ready to leave. I’m ready to stop looking at the rust on the surface of this society. I’m ready to find a place where a man can be a man, and a cheerleader can be a cheerleader, and nobody has to pretend that being a “victim” is a career path.
Sixty days.
And then, the Captain is scuttling the ship and swimming for a new shore.
