Transcription
All right, what's good y'all? Welcome back to the Onyx Report. Black masculine news for the day. Like, share, subscribe, join, donate, hit the hype, support the show so we can continue to bring you these independent blackmail thoughts.
So, today I want to talk a little bit about gray divorces. This is something I've been hearing a lot about lately more and more and uh decided, you know, we need to have a conversation about it because there's some things going on with how it's being framed that I I kind of take issue with, right? But fundamentally, all they are are divorces that are taking place uh with people who are in at the middle stage of life, right? That's that's pretty much what it is. and the media is really starting to weigh in on what's going on.
Now, let me say just out the gate that one of the things that's going on with this is that both people, men and women, have been promised something by the larger society. We were promised that we would find contentment, if not happiness, joy through marriage and love and reproduction. There's a kind of low-key promise in that. And uh women are finding that they're not excited about it because it there was a little more that went to that. Feminism joined in and started making promises for women that basically uh that they would be uh on once they found the love of their life, the person that they were to marry that they would have endless thrills and excitement and they would be hopelessly in love forever. I think I heard it best uh years ago in a movie. Uh it's not that they didn't want to be in love, but they wanted to be in love in a movie. It's essentially what it is. And it and it was supposed to last forever.
Well, people are living longer than they did centuries ago. Um, you know, many of our uh needs have been met by technology in ways that we take for granted. You know, so life is very different than it was, you know, uh generations ago. And so the expectations have adapted and and increased as well. And the degree to which women are finding themselves unhappy as it relates to what society promised. They they they they were told they could have it all and feminism weighed in on this and doubled down on it. You could be a career w woman and a six-f figureure to millionaire earner and have kids and a loving husband that surprises you and takes you on trips and dinners and dances and always keeps things thrilling and challenging and Yeah.
And while this is all going on in the female mind, men were promised respect. They were promised that once they sacrificed and gave up their independence and had kids and bought a house and paid for a family's well-being that they would be met with love and respect only to find that not only is that not the case, but far too many men observed women by the time they hit middle age and the kids left for college or whatever it may be that she's talking about leaving. Now, there's a couple other things that happen in that dynamic, too. you know, many of these women are meeting uh menopause, they're meeting, you know, these kind of different stages that end things. So, in as much as they're unsatisfied with their dream of marriage not being met, their bodies are going through changes. And what this means for men is too often we find ourselves in relationships with women who have basically stopped. They've reiged on their end of the contract without telling us. There's often no notice. she just stops. Intimacy, sex, whatever it is, whatever is it is that you've learned to value that you you had an agreement on, everything stops emotionally, you know, kinetically, sexually, just stops.
Now, here's the trap. If you fall for it and you cheat on her, she now has the uh means to damage you reputationally, right? she's got the justification to look like the the the the wrong the agrieved victim even though much of the time nobody wants to talk about the fact that she created this situation and you and and some men have gone through this. I know I did when I was married. You might actually go through years of not being touched in your own marriage and you kind of feel like divorce is too extreme a response. You don't want to see your kids every other weekend. And then eventually you have somebody that just shows you or reminds you what it's like to be treated well. And by the time you step out, your wife, if she finds out about it, is quick to use it as a justification to the public why she gets to leave. So, there's all kinds of dynamics going on with this whole gray marriage thing. We're going to delve into a little bit of it. Let's start off with this fair use uh from CBS Mornings. Let's check it out.
"The growing trend of women divorcing later in life. Across the US, divorce rates are actually down, except among people older than 50. Divorce rates in that group have doubled and in some cases tripled since the 1990s. Many divorces are being initiated by women. Lisa Link has more."
"When Ansley Hudson married her husband more than three decades ago, she thought it would last forever. You were 24. See what I mean? It would last forever."
"Years old when you got married. What did you think your role would become?"
"I believe I imagined a mostly traditional role. What I don't think I expected was to not have a voice. After 32 years of marriage, Hudson decided to initiate a divorce from her husband. She was in her 50s. Ultimately, I ran out of options and the toll became too high. We're trying to figure out how to write that response."
"After her divorce, Hudson became a certified divorce coach. What does that entail?"
"Getting clear on priorities is one of the most important things. I help people a lot with their communications and that is how do I talk to my ex-spouse in a way that I don't lose my power."
"While in recent years, divorce rates have declined among younger generations, it has surged among adults over 50. It's part of a trend being called gray divorce. Does it surprise you that the numbers of women initiating divorce over 50 has been growing?"
"It doesn't surprise me because I do think that women have a sense, a growing sense of wanting to realize their authentic potential. and that if that has felt limited by their relationship that they are willing to do it."
"You want to get it? Okay. Ready? Good job."
"This gray divorce trend often happens when kids are grown up and have left home. But that doesn't make it easier."
"Unfortunately, women who divorce at an older age are more likely to be disadvantaged financially."
"But for Hudson, it was because of her three daughters she felt she had to leave. I would have felt like such a failure to them."
"You know, part of the reason that that older women have a hard time uh economically after a divorce is because the society is not built for people to be single, most particularly women, right? And the older you get, the more they begin to draw on institutions. And the higher the number of women doing so, it begins to drain in ways that you don't really get with men. But, you know, this is partially what's happening. the society is not built for single women to, you know, to kind of continue to function into old age because women do live longer and that just puts a drain on everything. But that being said, the marital unit is usually how people transition into elder age. But now you have this kind of dynamic where women want to be these independent uh superhero, you know, superheroic, you know, kind of beings. It's that's actually quite ridiculous. But anyway,"
"If I hadn't shown them that you can make different choices as an adult."
"She's shown me that it is never too late to change your situation if you're not happy with it."
"Two of Hudson's daughters shared with us they've been inspired by their mom. Your mom says that in her marriage she had lost her voice and now she has found it. What do you think of this new voice?"
"I love the new voice. I really do. I think you're going to find it incredibly moving what we're going to do tonight and to help others find their voice."
"You ever notice the low-key suggestion? It's not stated aloud, but the low-key suggestion is that the husband has been instrumental in somehow taking her voice from her. Now, what the hell this voice is, I'm really interested to know. But there's there's kind of a low-key blame, and it's it's that's part of a larger framework that I'll get to in a minute. But notice how even the kids don't even mention their father, right? And I think this is happening more and more in how these stories are being told where these women are seeking their authentic selves and their authentic voices and they're having divorces in their 50s, 60s, and 70s to go find themselves and somehow the the the the husband is responsible and the kids follow the mother. This is kind of what we have going. Nobody talks about the father."
"Hudson now runs a divorce support group free of charge. The Herext chapter support group meets twice a month and one night they might have a financial adviser, one night a lawyer, but tonight they're breaking bowls. It is a breaking apart."
"Maria Kern is the family therapist. Once you've broken it, you can take the pieces back out leading."
"It's amazing to me how much society infantilizes women. This I mean this is essentially like a grown ass preschool. You you're literally breaking bowls. I mean this is this is arts and crafts for children. But this is how much we infantilize women in society. This idea that breaking your family apart is somehow, you know, just par for the course for some illusory kind of sense of self that somehow can't exist within the context of a family. You have to destroy your family to find your authentic voice. This is what the feminist narrative is at this point. And yet somehow the man is responsible in some fashion for for taking your voice away from you. No mention of his sacrifices, no mention of his losses, no mention of where he is in this dynamic. It's not dealt with equitably. It's dealt with strictly in terms of her emotional narrative and her her emotionally influenced worldview. And that's taken as the truth. That was the larger framework I said I'd get at later. And I didn't plan to do it now, but [ __ ] it. That's where we are. That's what's behind a lot of this gray divorce narrative. It's about how she feels and what she sees in relation to what she feels. We're we're strictly looking at this phenomenon from her vantage point as if men are these oppressive beings that jack up her life. She has to liberate herself from them to be free. I've been hearing this narrative since I was a child, especially in the black community cuz what white women are doing is decades behind black women, you know, but it's all the the rails are greased when it comes to family court policy because if they can benefit upon divorcing you, all the more reason to sit up in here and break bowls and talk about how the breaking up the family is the means by which you find your voice. this [ __ ] as the rails have been greased to support this notion because she can walk away with half of his [ __ ] after 30 years. And then his own children will look at him like he was instrumental in taking her voice in some fashion. Right. Here we go."
"This week's exercise. Why do you put the wall back together?"
"So, one of my metaphors that I use is that you're still a family and all the pieces of the family are still there. They're just going to look different. that has to be restructured."
"So, I broke mine, ironically, into three and I have three kids. So, I felt like that was a sign."
"Having a support group helps other women know that despite the challenges, they too can get through divorce for women who are starting this process of divorce. What kind of hope can you offer them for how they can come out of this?"
"I always reassure women that it is a season. It is not your life. and that many people ahead of you have done that and will be there to greet you and say this is what the next part of life looks like and it can be really awesome."
"For CBS Mornings, I'm Lisa Ling in Lake Norman, North Carolina."
"I think it's so good to focus on the awesome part cuz divorce is painful. I don't care who you are or when you're going through it."
"Nicely done, Lisa. This is like preschool all over again. It's amazing to me. It really is. I I'm I'm just astounded at how childish this whole dynamic is and somehow this is acceptable. I don't know. I I'm I'm astounded. But that aside, the one of the other issues with these kinds of reports is that they're they follow around middle to upper middle class white women. And the subtext is that all women can go through this process and be as well off. I mean, look at her sandled, sipping coffee, you know, in a nice big house, divorced, free of this oppressive patriarchal husband, finding her voice, comfortable. You know what I mean? Look at her just comfortable, right? You don't see her in a rundown one-bedroom apartment. Cuz mind you, when you start talking about people over 55, 60 years old, elders, you people are living on fixed incomes and struggling, particularly in this economy, right? Where we have inflation going through the roof. But the imagery of leaving your husband, breaking up the family, and trying to survive by yourself, you know, nobody wants to talk about how the reason she can do that is she got the house and much more in the divorce. A divorce that nine times out of 10 a lot of men aren't even expecting, right? That's part of her solution. Part of her finding herself is a narrative they don't want to include because it would make her look bad. So, they make it all about flowers and and breaking bowls and symbolism and finding her voice. They don't want to tell you about all the rude and cold [ __ ] she did to secure her financial future. But they also don't want to tell you that the majority of women can't live like this. Don't live like this. They didn't live like this when they were married. So you're talking about a population of people who are going to suffer the more they follow this. And it's not the men who are really going to look at it who are going to suffer from this in that way. It's actually going to be the women because when amongst employed people, men still earn more. Men still work more hours. When you start talking about people who are retired on top of that, living on fixed incomes, you're about to slash that income in in half. Even though you might walk away with a lot of the resources in the marriage, that generally doesn't last long. And it's even worse if you don't come from a dynamic where you have all of those resources available to you. Right? But this is how these things kind of get passed along. All right?
So, we're going to look at um sorry about that. We're going to look at this. This is the California Post. All right. And there's an article here uh called the rise of gray divorce and why so many boomers are splitting uh late in life. Splitting up late in life. This is June 24th of this year, right? And uh let me see something not trying to see if there's no they don't have it on this page. All right. So, it reads, "Americans aed 50 and older are getting divorced more than ever, with almost half of all broken marriages in recent years coming from aging Gen Xers and baby boomers. Nearly 40% of all divorces nationwide are among couples 50 years and older, separations known as gray divorces. The alarming rate has held steady since the pandemic, but followed about four decades of increases. Gray divorces doubled between 1990 and 2010 until they compro uh they comprised about one in four of all divorces nationally and then climbed to today's 4 in 10 rate. Right? And though divorce has been dropping in most age groups across America, it has not among people 50 years and older. Experts have given a variety of explanations for this phenomenon, including longer lifespans. True. People marrying older. Yeah. And especially if this is their second or third marriage, we know that around 70% of divorces are initiated by women, especially, you know, when you talk about the first marriages, but the second and third marriages, the divorce rate goes even higher. Uh, in terms of in terms of that, right? So, excuse me, those are two different stats. The divorce uh rate is about uh 50% for the first marriage and it goes higher for the second and third. women initiate around 70% of divorces, period. So, there's a there's a number of different things going on at the same time. But the point I'm getting at here is that when you start counting uh second and third and fourth and fifth marriages, it's yeah, of course, the debate the divorce rates go up. They also read about empty neester syndrome. Definitely, when you got two people who've been raising kids, you you kind of sacrifice your individuality to some extent. I went through this since co, you know, my son left for college right after CO and I had been, you know, father, cooking meals, getting clothes ready, you know, signing, you know, permission slips and paying bills. And by the time your child is gone, whether it's college or whatever, if they move out of the house to go work on something, to get certified for something, your whole world changes because you've been parent for so long. You got to remember who you are. It took me a good couple years just to rem remember what my hobbies were before. I mean, I'd literally been taking care of somebody for over 25 years, you know, between wife and son. So, I didn't remember who I was. And there's a lot of people who go through that. But when you're married and in a couple and your kids leave, you both have kind of forgotten who you are, not only to yourselves, but to each other. So, it's not a surprise that divorce goes up there as well. And then the sentence ends with and even wives being less tolerant of insensitive spouses after menopause. Now here's the thing. I'm glad they mentioned menopause cuz most articles like to pretend like this doesn't happen and it doesn't have a dramatic impact on a relationship. It does. It's not just women that suffer from this. They suffer from it directly, right? In terms of the internal impact it has on their bodies, their psycho their, you know, psychological state of mind. But it does in many instances, you know, irreparable damage to relationships, her hormonal shifts, all of that. And I'm not making light of it. I'm not making fun of it because we have hormonal shifts, too, as men, but those are different. Like, we talk about the loss of testosterone and the impact that has. You lose your motivation, you lose your drive, you lose your sex drive, you want to sleep all the time. There's all kinds of things, side effects that affect you psychologically and physically and are many in many ways hormonal. So men and women, you know, definitely grapple with their issues as it relates to age. But in these reports, we don't generally talk about women's. We tend to talk about men's. And you can see even in how that last sentence was framed, even wives being less tolerant of insensitive spouses. So they still low-key make it his fault that the mar the great divorce is happening. It's his fault because he's insensitive. You know what insensitive really means in that context? It means they've been getting along one way for years. And when her worldview shifted and his didn't adapt to whatever the hell it became, that's what insensitive means. That's what it means. Her her shifted most of the time he don't even know what the hell is going on, but he's responsible for her emotional state of being and therefore insensitive because he didn't anticipate and figure out how to address it. something that she herself usually can't articulate, but if he doesn't figure it out, he's he's insensitive, which is really code for he's uh it's justifiable to leave him because he's at fault. That's what that really is.
Now, we're going to continue, but what I want you to pay attention to is how they frame these stories in relation to whose fault these great divorces are. So, it continues. The thing about people who are over 50 is that they they're getting cognizant that the fuel gauge is starting to go down to empty. And there's one thing money can't buy, which is time. People finally realize that if they starting if if they're starting to drain the second half of the tank, if they have a bucket list of items or a wish list or whatever, they don't want to spend the limited time they may have investing in something that they feel will not give them an appropriate rate of return. Right. Stuntman said the 40% rate felt higher than what he's personally seen, but acknowledged that the trend line uh for our practice of seeing the age of our clients increasing is definitely a thing. One woman, 58-year-old Ruchi, said she decided uh to leave her husband after he completely forgot her 50th birthday. Right? You've put all these things aside because you're a mom and you're taking care of a family, she said. Then you think, is that all I'm good for? when did I stop being a person? So, she's on here talking about he forgot her birthday. And this somehow becomes the foundation, right? The the trigger point for ending the marriage. Okay. And it sounds pretty bad when you hear it like that. You know, you've been together for years. You forgot she he forgot your birthday. Now, this is her telling her story. You know, notice they don't sit down with him. How often do you guys see a major article about uh middle-aged folks marriages ending where they actually interview a bunch of men about what the hell they've endured from their wives, various types of disrespect that they've experienced. And I'm not saying that, you know, all married wives do this. I'm simply saying that there is a human story when it comes to what men experience in these great divorces that they're not going to tell. This is strictly being told from a woman's point of view. Now to suggest that the the end of your marriage should be predicated on something like that is kind of asinine in a certain respect because you mean to tell me you ain't forgot something important to him. This happens every day in a marriage. Every day. But anyway, Ruchi also said she's become much less tolerant of her of her forgetful husband. So first we're insensitive and now is we're forgetful. See right after menopause which is well doc which is a well doumented phenomenon. I actually thought I was crazy because I was irritated at everything. Another possible motivator could be a societal shift toward getting married later. Now, now notice they mentioned menopause twice. All right, they mentioned it twice. Uh where is it? Yeah, they mentioned menopause right here. And then you you go forward a few paragraphs, a few sentences, they mention it again here. Any deep dive into this? Any suggestion that that at all that husbands may be experiencing some undue uh tension and frustration because of menopause? Any mention that maybe there needs to be a way that husbands can actually get some relief. Maybe there needs to be not only therapy, but there needs to be a doctor intervention, a medical intervention in regard to hormonal therapy that that might operate to actually help the husband adapt to her transformation because it's not just her that it's affecting, but there's no mention of the husband because to mention the husband means that you're centering the man. And we can't have that in the mainstream today. She has to be the center. So, how she feels about how he didn't do whatever she wanted him to do, meaning he was insensitive or forgetful. But we're not going to talk about how her menopause might have been pushing him away long before her birthday. Maybe the reason he forgot about it is because the distance he's had to put between them, and she may have put between them as well, simply because she's acting a fool. But see, we can't criticize women. And so this article mentions menopause twice and quickly quickly changes the subject to oh well people are getting married later. That's part of the problem. So let's we're going to skip over this menopause thing because women can't be held accountable. It has to be men's fault. Let's continue. People are increasingly getting hitched in their 30s and 40s instead of the old normal marriage in their 20s which Stman said would naturally affect the age people are are if their marriages fell apart. Over the last 20 years, the age of people getting into their first marriage has expanded and has been elongating. So, if you believe there's some inherent process that goes on in a marriage that leads people to end it after their children are in college or if there's a 15 to 20 year old lifetime, their first marriages are 20 years old by the time they're 50 as opposed to uh when it would have been maybe 40. But the great divorce rates don't mean romance is over for the silverhaired. Now, you got to have the promise here for women. See, you got to have the promise. It can't you you can't end the story. And there's a lot of AI stories on YouTube that do this. Um, but they're male- centered, so they're not going to talk about those here. You can't end this kind of story with, well, she got divorc divorced. She's broke. She works part-time at Walmart. She can't get another job. Her fixed income is really low. She did get some things out of the divorce, but they didn't stretch as far as she thought they would, and she wasn't able to get a villa in France somewhere the way she had hoped. So, she's living in a one-bedroom apartment on the other side of town, struggling. You know, the kids once they found out about both sides of the situations began to withdraw from her because they saw her as extremely selfish. And then she founds out finds out that her uh ex-husband is now dating someone much younger and it didn't very take very long for him to meet her and he they're actually doing well. He might have even remarried. See there that story exists. That story actually exists with men. And on top of that, those men can tell you that she's been, you know, absolutely dreadful to live with for years. No matter how he hard she tried to please her, nothing was ever good enough. Everything was always his fault. Then she went around telling everybody they got divorced because he forgot her birthday. But there's no mention of all the things he did, all the sacrifices he made, all the ways he tried to make her happy for decades because the story is strictly about how she feels and not about what he experienced or what the marriage actually went through. See, they don't want to tell that story. So, they end or at least uh they're moving toward ending the story, but they have to leave hope because you can't be critical of women and you can't you can't paint uh a negative portrayal of what may happen after an arbitrary divorce that may be whimsical in nature and completely unnecessary. You can't tell those women they made mistakes. See, cuz women don't make mistakes. So, you have to you have to justify the decisions they make in the mainstream so that they can feel good. And men can bear the responsibility of for being at fault. And that's the end of the story. So, it continues about 14% of Americans in their 60s have hit up the dating apps according to the 2023 uh Pew Research Center survey and 12% of Americans 70 years and older have also used dating apps. The Times reported divorce rates are on the whole uh divorce rates on the whole have been steadily dropping since 1980 with the Pew Research Center showing 14.4 divorces per thousand marriages as of 2023 compared to the 22.6 6 divorces per thousand marriages nearly 50 years ago. Right? Those reduced rates were largely driven by an increase in the number of people with higher levels of education getting married and a degree and a decrease in those with lower levels. Marriage rates have also declined in recent decades. 69% of adults have been married uh had been married as of 1970 compared to 50% in 2021. Right? So, they throw a few stats toward the ends, but they don't actually want to tell you a story about women that might make them look bad. See, we can't have that. And one of the reasons we can't really have that is because there is also an underlying idea in the gender dynamic that weighs in on how the mainstream even views these situations. Not only is it gyocentric, not only does it eliminate and ignore the man's experience, there is a power dynamic at play in terms of the mainstream. And part of the reason for this power dynamic is feminization. Because if you look at Helen Andrews' work, one of the areas that she talks about women taking over is journalism. What are we doing? We're reading articles that we're we're finding online about marriages. Even when they're written by men, they have to be written from a female perspective. The way you do this is to actually change the percentage of the people of the room who are female so that the narrative shifts in these institutions. Not only are the institutions trying to sell to women, right, because we know since the 1970s, women have been their own, you know, economic block, especially when they started working at higher numbers in the 70s, right? markets started to, you know, try and cater to them, which is understandable. That's capitalism. That's how it's going to go. But on top of that, you have women taking over industries that are already trying to cater to women who are more likely to spend more money on products and goods and so on and so forth in relation to what's being sold in media. So now you have a doubling down on women. So it's not an accident or a surprise how women's narratives become the dominant narratives. But underlying that is a notion of really a low-key superiority complex that women are better, smarter, and deserve to be in a position of authority, and men are inherently by birth less capable. Check it out. This is not something that I'm imagining.
"I've said it once before, and I will always say it to the day I die. Women are always supposed to be the dominant force on this planet. It is embedded in our DNA. It is quite literally coded in us because of the eggs that we possess. I don't know if you know this or not, but the egg is the single largest cell in the human body. The egg decides which sperm gets to procreate. The egg decides it all. Domination starts with us. Domination as a woman is the is the true natural order in this world. So when patriarchy was I guess introduced into society a lot of women what happened unfortunately they followed suit and that's why we have all of this imbalance in the world that we have today because of patriarchy. I am so happy that I keep coming across creators on here who are finally waking up to the fact that women have and always will be sovereign. We are the true natural leaders. We are the true natural dominant women features of this entire organization we call planet earth. Male domination is not natural. It never has been and never will be. That's why they had to force it on us. That's why they had to create laws. That's why they had to create religions to put women in their perceived places because they don't like being put in a position that is of submission. For some reason, men forgot that that is their natural position. They forgot that that is the natural order of things."
Yeah. Yeah. That there is what underlies um underlines and and lies under um a lot of the mainstream's perspective, a lot of the feminist perspective. And it's been so deeply embedded. You have plenty of people, male and female, that buy into this on one level or another, even if they've never stated it aloud. Sometimes there's just a fundamental belief that uh women are superior being beings. And of course, it's been coded in media and it's been taught in the last few generations, you know, to the point where as my son said at 13, 14 years, no 13 years old, I've never seen a boy beat a girl at anything in media. that that's one of the ways you get to this kind of ludicrous uh standpoint. Even though you're talking about a demographic of folks who, you know, live off of the sacrifices of men, the infrastructure that men build and every society around the world, but this is the perspective they walk away with. And it doesn't have to be spoken aloud. It's very subtle, but nonetheless something people deeply invest in. And we're hearing more and more of it in much more brazen fashion because social media social media is brazen. This perspective isn't new, but it is expanding. It is advancing. You have more and more people investing in it because social media is helping it spread. As unrealistic and and irrational as it is, it is nonetheless the belief that certain people carry about the inherent good of men and women. Really, the inherent good of women, the inherent bad of men. Now, there are some women and men who are far more grounded and have different responses to it. Um, let me show you an example. You know, unfortunately, these voices are not, especially amongst women, are not as frequent as we'd like to hear, but they're there. Here we go.
"Many years from now, there is going to be a quiet crisis. Loneliness in women especially. Not because women failed, not because they weren't capable or intelligent, but because they were handed a script or a blueprint that left out the consequences. Be self-sufficient. Put your career first. You don't need a man. So they followed it. They pushed love down the line. They delayed the family. They treated commitment like something that could always wait until it didn't. Fast forward a few years later. You're older. No partner, no children, no legacy, just some noise to fill that silence. Meanwhile, your grandmothers had way fewer choices, but way stronger direction. They built families. They built the roots. They built something bigger than themselves. And this generation swapped it all for convenience. legacy for pleasure, meaning for freedom without structure. And here's the part that nobody likes to talk about. The men that they overlooked in their 20s, they didn't just vanish. They were building, filling, learning, becoming discipline, and becoming men. Men don't peak early. They compound with time. Value grows with time and skill and responsibility."
Absolutely. So, you do see there are those that understand the dynamics are not as clear-cut and fantastical as uh various lines of feminism would have you believe, but the ones that have been deeply internalized in the mainstream push this narrative. And I like how she put it, a narrative without consequences to the point where often the consequences aren't really even thought about until one is deep into them. You know, I've had I've had many stories about from men where they talk about women leaving them to go live their best life and then a few months later calling back asking if they can come back. Right? I've heard stories from men where she's left for another man thinking she's going to live a fantasy just to come knocking on his door asking if they can rekindle what they had because the fantasy didn't work out the way she thought it would.
Now, the last thing I want to show is actually a clip from tonight's conversation. And uh you know, you run across a lot of these clips in social media, but this one I found interesting because this is one of the first times that I saw um in a number of the brothers on the panel really push back cuz much of the time, you know, they're catering to women because you can tell looking in the audience, women are their primary base. You don't want to piss them off to too great a degree. But here, Ace and Trill actually go in in a way that uh I haven't seen, but that's because I don't really watch a lot of this. So maybe it's more common than I think. I mean, I will admit when I started hearing clips from Trill, I got to give him points. He, you know, he he would he would come with some stuff that I didn't expect. But in this particular piece, he and Ace actually dropped some wisdom. And uh you can tell and this is what we're really going to look for in this piece. Women's responses I find extremely interesting especially in this conversation about what underlies great divorces and that superiority complex and most particularly that solopsism right where the world can only be perceived from her vantage point uh in order for it to make sense to her. Anything beyond that doesn't exist. Check this out.
"Why is it that we can build up a man? We can stick with that [ __ ] when he ain't got [ __ ] or we deal with his emotionally unavailable ass, you know, and then when you finally get it together, y'all go to the NEXT WOMAN. WE BUILD Y'ALL UP FOR THE NEXT WOMAN."
"First of all, YOU NEED TO READ THE QUESTION THAT'S ON YOUR [ __ ] CARD. READ THE QUESTION THAT'S ON YOUR CARD THOUGH."
"ANSWER MY QUESTION, LIZ."
"But see, hold on."
"Oh, and by the way, I love you. I'm a fan. But answer the question."
"No, but that wasn't my reality. So, are we are we talking about Eva or are we talking about my my wife?"
"I'M TALKING ABOUT BOTH. I said I don't know if that was the case cuz I wasn't in you and you know evil relationship but I'm saying that"
"say she's stuck beside you through your growing and your healing stage or whatever y'all want to call it."
"So"
"but why you didn't give her this built and heal man?"
"All right, let's let Lance talk."
"So it it was it was a it was a thing of timing. I met my wife when I had just got out of my relationship with Eva. I didn't want to I mean because when I met her there was a spark there. So I didn't want to pass up on that. I'm not I ain't stupid."
"I knew I wasn't ready and I I communicated that to her. I told her I had"
"no"
"you communicated."
"So she No, let me explain which I think she's coming."
"Oh, she talking about Eva. She's saying"
"I'm talking about you and Eva and I'm talking about"
"So So I got it. Hold on. I got it. I got it. I GOT IT. BREAK IT. HOLD ON. HOLD ON. HOLD ON. HOLD ON. HOLD ON. HOLD ON."
"SO SO Eva Eva didn't build me up. I had my own money. I I was already doing house."
"We're not talking about monetary my black."
"All right, let me hold on. Hold on. Now hold on. Let me moderate."
"We're not talking about"
"All right, let me moderate. So in a more general sense, because I understand the spirit of your question, but to take the nuance out of it, in a general sense, there are a lot of women and right now, especially black women, feel that we build up men. We endure the the growth pains of men only for them to give what we have always asked in return. Absolutely."
"To the next person. Trio, do what do you think is valid or what? Yes. But I also think that some women are the stepping stool for us to get to a better woman."
"I do. I do. I think"
"I didn't."
"She asked."
"Let him cook."
"She asked. We going We going to walk down this road."
"Let him cook."
"We going to walk down this road. So because what we what we are not thinking about is the fact of you said I had him when he was broke down and he was emotionally unavailable and he was a terrible person and he wasn't open to D. You got to ask yourself why was that type of man having access to you to begin with. You're not as healed as you think you are. You're not as good as you think you are. Y'all are actually equal. Goddamn. The the law of attraction states it. And I think that's the issue. A lot of times we be over estimating our value or overestimate."
"He is killing it right now. He's absolutely right. It's never crossed their mind that they may be at the same level of the man they're criti they're criticizing. Right? They're talking about him like he's an underling. See, this is why when I talk about female superiority, this is a good example of it, right? It's not always some fantastical, you know, idea out there where this woman is saying that, you know, women are better than men. Like the video I just played that that's a rarity. But really, female superiority takes place much more like it does in this conversation. And I'm saying the reason I'm playing this in this in this particular broadcast is I'm saying this also underlines gray divorces where women believe they're fundamentally better than their men and they have to go live a different life because their men just can't figure out what they deserve. But getting to what Trill is talking about, he's revealing to her that she is no better than the man she's placed herself above. They are at the same level. And that never crosses their mind because the the fundamental idea of female superiority is so deeply embedded into the mainstream with capitalist entities blowing women's heads up in order to profit. you know, it it they don't see this as a as an as an enterprise or economic strategy as it relates to corporations who are trying to profit, especially in media. They don't see it that way. They see it as their own inherent superiority, and media is just figuring it out. See, they look at it the reverse of the way it's been happening. Media has been promoting female superiority to profit from it. Women see female superiority as something media is just catching up to. But anyway, I'll let him continue. making the point that we are in our life. We done read a couple books. We done took a couple therapist goddamn uh uh classes and we feel like we're holier than thou. No, y'all two was on the same level if if we going to be honest. And then he learned what he needed to learn from you and moved on to a woman that actually deserved that healed version of him."
"So to say that woman wasn't deserving or healed or anything cuz again you wasn't I wasn't so let's talk about a real situation now. Have you been through it?"
"Real real situation is this. I hope everybody involved here understands that when we separate and we move forward, that's exactly what we're doing. A lot of times we'll be on the outside looking in at other people's relationships, but we ain't on the day in day out and the fine and the fight and the grind and the pain that cause two people to separate. Oftentimes we're so quick, especially when these people are public figures, to try to villainize it was this person or that person when really it just wasn't the right fit. And here's the thing, when you are healed to a point, it's not about my success and my growth with my next person isn't an indictment on the person I was with. And their success and growth with the next person is not an indictment on me. Too often we want to be the [ __ ] karma police. You looking back at your ex like, "How the [ __ ] is she now happy?" or "How is he happy?" Cuz he or she moved the [ __ ] on. And here's the thing,"
"it doesn't mean that that next woman is better than you. It just mean it was a better fit for him"
"and vice versa."
"Yep."
"And so who who are we? And this is going back to the first question. We be trying to be the [ __ ] growth police."
"Like like now a man ain't supposed to grow, learn, and evolve. And that's what the relationships are for. And when you say stepping st I I did this at first but but let me tell you why I believe that to be uh be true is because those relationships will teach you lessons about yourself and there's a lesson in every relationship that we had and you got to take that you got to extract that you got to make those improvements because I'm"
I'm going to tell you something that's a [ __ ] report card. And let me tell you this, ladies, and I'm going to be real with you. It's a hard conversation, and I promise, I'm going to get done talking after this.
There are so many men and women, but right now, I'm talking to a large audience of women, that it's always the other person's fault. The relationship didn't work because this [ __ ] did that. Yep. And when it's always the other person's fault, you're not looking at your report card and how you could improve. And so now you start repeating those cycles.
Kira, what's up? Now, I'm speaking in general. I'm not speaking to the specific situation because, again, we don't know their business, right? But a lot of times, what happens is when a man has you go through those trials with him, all of that pain and anguish with him, when he grows and to become a better person, you constantly remind him of who he used to be. And he's not going to know how to come back and love you correctly because he has to face himself through the wounds he left you with. I have a poem where I say, "Women shouldn't have to be casualties to the growth."
Now, notice how she immediately took it back to him being at fault after what was just stated, what he just broke down, right? That it doesn't have to be an indictment on a woman, particularly her ego, if a man moves on and is happy. It just means it was a better fit elsewhere. Women understand that when it comes to them moving on, when it comes to men moving on, it's a problem because there is no moving on. Just as he started to say, you know, men are not supposed to grow past. He was asking a question, men aren't supposed to grow. No, technically you're not. You're not supposed to grow in the sense that you're supposed to stay where she says you're supposed to stay until she releases you. That's what's supposed to happen. But this woman gets up and right after what was just broken down, she immediately begins to make it his fault again.
And this is one of the reasons I wanted y'all to watch this particular clip because when you look at the female worldview, right? It's, and it was just explained, it has to be his fault. It's an imperative. And too many men have been raised under this dynamic where they accept the responsibility of constantly being a woman's problem. And once you see the world as a man strictly from the vantage point of being a woman's problem, you yourself don't ever find a solution to the inherent shame and frustration that you've learned to feel in response to what you've been taught about who you must be as a man. Right? We're taught to carry this responsibility, that these, you know, these um, this accountability because it makes her feel better for us to do it. She's not teaching that to us, you know, I'm talking about mothers and aunties and grandmothers and so on, big sisters even. We're not taught to carry this load for our benefit. They don't talk to us about how to interpret any of this at all. It's strictly for their benefit.
I remember when my mother used to tell me things like that. These are things you need to do so that the woman can feel secure. Meaning I had to carry her buckets of water, as it were. And I'm not talking about any woman in particular. I'm talking about any relationship I had. This is what I learned as a child from the women in my family. That this was the load I was supposed to carry, including that I'm always wrong. That I'm always the problem. I am the living embodiment of the bane of women's existence simply because I'm a man. Right? These are the narratives we're given. And it reinforces the idea that women are never at fault. So she immediately creates a narrative in this conversation that returns him to the point of being the problem despite all that was just said. Let's continue.
Men, cuz after all them years getting used, y'all look for love and comfort in the same arms that you left beaten down and emotionally bruised. Y'all change us so [ __ ] much that by the time, by the time that we have changed into this woman who now has trust issues, this woman now has insecurities, this woman now has bitterness, we are left with all these bruises and all of this baggage that we have transformed into through years of going through that [ __ ] with you. You can't even look at us no more. So it's like, I've changed and I'm sorry for what I did, but you remind me of that season of my life and I am done here. So instead of being.
So she's, she's actually framing male growth as an escape from accountability, right? That's, that's what she's doing. The, the really, the only way men can grow is if they just walk away from the pain they caused other people. And I've had these conversations with exes before, and it's always hilarious to me because when I actually begin to give them an account of the things they've contributed to the relationship, there's like a deer in headlights look on their face because the story they've told themselves and the story they've rehearsed to other people never includes what they've done. And, and most of us can talk about just some horrible [ __ ] that exes have done to us. But here's the other thing. In as much as men are figuring out and have been for the last 10 to 15 years really, especially with a platform where they've been able to exchange notes and actually dialogue with one another on a wide scale for the very first time in human history around the world, men are able to compare notes and have conversations and pass on game, pass on experiences. Men are starting to realize that this is not just something they were experiencing by themselves. And this is something that's being reinforced in the mainstream. It's being reinforced by policy. It's being reinforced by some of the key institutions that we all live by. And they're starting to understand that it is more and more not worth it to have these conversations.
So I don't, I don't show you these clips and have this conversation because I'm telling you that you can outdebate her or debate her back into some sense of reason that you can make a relationship work. If you can do that individually, that's great. Collectively, I think men have figured out it doesn't work. So again, what are they doing? They are checking out. This conversation is an excellent example of that. Right? These two men just broke down how women's imagination keeps them from their own sense of accountability, something that would actually help them grow and advance. In the very first opportunity there's a chance to talk, she reverses the narrative back to the comfortable narrative of men being the sole problem.
And what was the response of the woman who asked the question initially? As soon as this woman with the mic that's on screen started talking, she looked like she was in church. And the reason she looked like she was in church is because she got the narrative that she lives by. See, the men were giving her a narrative that was forcing her to look introspectively at herself, and she didn't like it. This woman is giving her the narrative that she's already lived by. This is a narrative we've seen popularized since the 1980s. In fact, much of the conversation men are having now is in response to this onslaught of this mono narrative that has come out of this feminist, you know, kind of framework that excludes men's humanity, right? And only gives you a solipsistic narrative of women's worldview. I'm going to let it continue, but I just kind of wanted to put some of this in context.
Responsible for for going through this healing journey with you for what I put you through. I'mma move on to this woman that doesn't have to heal from me because she ain't have to experience that version of me.
Okay, one more thing. One more thing. One more thing.
Or. Sometimes he go. The reason I was able to grow, I had to stop it because that was so key. Or there was never an "or" in her imagination. There was never an "or" in the audience, and there wasn't an "or" in the woman who asked the question. There wasn't an "or." There was one narrative. He abused her. He left her. Didn't take accountability. She was an innocent bystander that was just done wrong by a horrible man or did not exist.
So, I actually like the way he said it and left it there for a second. Or that's a statement unto itself coming from men to suggest that maybe the one way you're looking at this, this narrative you've created, maybe it's not actually speaking truth. Maybe it's not. Maybe there's an "or" in this because you haven't considered it. I'm going to let him continue. I don't remember what he says after this, but just the fact that he dropped an "or" is critically important. Here we go. I'll rewind it a little bit. Let's see.
Okay, one more thing. One more thing. One more thing.
Or. Or. Sometimes he go. The reason I was able to grow after you is because I couldn't grow with you. And sometimes some women refuse to believe that you were the cause of my stunted growth. Uh. Oh. We always assume that this woman was supportive, kind, believed in you, was a healing, was a teaching, and all these different things, but sometimes that's not what was happening in these relationships. Lance, do you want a final thought or we good?
Tomato, tomato. We good.
All right. Cool.
All right. Thank you for your question. Just a pure dismissal. Tomato, tomato. But I'm bringing all of this up in the context of this conversation about great divorces because part of what leads to it is this sense that women deserve better. Women are better. Women can create better. And the only thing hampering them from creating this incredible reality is men. So when they leave men, whether they are 65 years old or whether they are 30, when they finally divorce the man and leave him, the one that's been causing her all her problems, her whole situation will evolve and advance. And it's interesting because I've heard women talk about their lives that way, sleeping on their friends' couches, not because they left a marriage with nowhere to go, but because they left a marriage with a house and lost it. You know what I mean? Like I've, there's so many different stories that I've ran across, but the fundamental idea is that many of these great divorces are happening because you have an embedded sense of female superiority. You have an embedded sense of of this kind of female solipsism, as if nobody else exists in the framework but you or her, I should say, because women are not my target audience, but you know, this is how we experience this. And so when I read these articles that are coming out from mainstream news outlets or whatever it is, this whole conversation about everything from marriage to great divorce, all relationships, it's only talked about from the female standpoint, as if men have no contribution to this and as if women have no negative contribution to this.
So when we get to this point of great divorce, we're really talking about a fundamental rupture between what men and women were promised by society in terms of what would happen if you participate. If you marry, you have children, you do what you're supposed to do as a good citizen and advance family so that the society has a healthy birth rate. When men did this, they found that not only was there no reward, but society helped women, punish men, helped women push men to a point where they paid for what the state would normally have to pay for. This is what child support does. It's become part of the state budget in many respects. So, put the onus on men to pay for it, whether they're right or wrong, so the state doesn't have to. These are all things that are happening at the same time. And men are tired of it. Men are withdrawing from it in a lot of different creative ways. And the one thing they have in common, whether these men are having temporary relationships, whether they're seeing women abroad, whether they're going monk, is that each form of relationship they create cannot be held accountable in a court of law because that's not worked in our favor. Right?
But even though these great divorces are only framed around what women experience, men have a great deal to say about great divorces. They have a great deal to lend to us in a conversation because they go through it. They experience it. And I want men to talk about in the comment section today, if you will, what the male, particularly the black male experience is in the context of a gray divorce. Now, any divorce really, I don't mind, but I'm very interested in this conversation. What are the kinds of things that have gone on for those of you who have actually ever experienced a great divorce or know someone who has? What is the man's story that doesn't get told in the media about a great divorce? I want you to sound off in the comments section so men themselves can put each other up on game. I want young men to hear these stories from older men so you don't have to repeat the same cycle. I want that to kind of permeate in the discussion because there's nowhere else that we're going to find an in-depth conversation about gray divorces amongst men. Nowhere else but, you know, in these spaces on social media spaces that are centered around men by men. They're not going to do it in the mainstream. They're not going to do it in the college classroom. They're not going to do it in these other spaces, even spaces we pay for with our own tax resources. They're not going to do it. So men need to do it and we need to have these conversations so other men don't walk into the same wood chipper just to get torn apart.
So let her have her stories. Let her tell the world that all of this was your fault. This is like, I mean, it sounds like a child, you know, telling a story and the same one over and over again from woman to woman. They had no culpability in what happened. It sounds so superficial. It, it, you can't help but look at it as childish in a particular way. So I want men to share their story so we can actually see through this childish narrative and get to the reality of it, which in turn will only justify what men are already doing. Finding their peace on stable ground and not following these trends that leave them in a situation where there's only accountability for him and nothing for her. Sound off in the comments section. I'll holler at y'all later. Peace.