My son’s father was extremely abusive to me. He broke my ribs, and I almost died. When I finally left him, I vowed to raise my son to be the antithesis of his father. I wanted him to respect and care for women, to never succumb to the destructive grip of alcoholism that had plagued his father. For a long time, it seemed my efforts were bearing fruit. He even called himself a feminist. He was incredibly sweet and attentive to his then-wife, and I swelled with pride, believing I had succeeded in shaping him into the man I had envisioned. Then, his ex-wife cheated on him, and his entire world shattered. A profound bitterness began to fester within him, and he started harboring hateful feelings towards women. When I tried to offer comfort and reason, to explain that not all women are the same, he distanced himself from me. He then spiraled down the rabbit hole of the red pill ideology. These online communities validated his pain and resentment, whispering insidious narratives that echoed his wounded feelings. They told him that every woman is inherently a cheater and morally corrupt. We still talked, but he refused to listen to my perspective, now poisoned by the red pill rhetoric.
…………………………………………..
👇 [ CONTINUE READING ] 👇
…………………………………………..
Now, he is married to a genuinely kind woman, six years his junior, who is completely devoted to him. Despite her unwavering love and commitment, he cheats on her and subjects her to emotional abuse.
She is currently six months pregnant, and I recently went to visit them. During my visit, one of his mistresses contacted his wife and revealed his infidelity. Understandably, she confronted him, and his reaction was utterly appalling: he blamed her. He claimed her pregnancy had been stressful for him, justifying his actions as a mere acting out.
My poor daughter-in-law, after dissolving into tears, bravely composed herself and made us breakfast. I tried to reprimand him, to make him see the gravity of his actions, but he simply shrugged me off with dismissive indifference. I warned him that he was on the verge of losing a truly good woman. In a chillingly callous response, he questioned whether that was even a threat, implying that her departure would free him to pursue younger, “prettier” women, as if that was some sort of desirable outcome. [“He Asked Me If Losing Her Would Be A Punishment!”].
I can’t help but blame myself for this tragic turn of events. I was so focused on teaching him to respect women that I failed to adequately prepare him for the complexities of human nature, the capacity for bad behavior that exists in both genders. I was so consumed with ensuring he didn’t become his father that I painted an unrealistically rosy picture of women, and when his ex-wife shattered that idealized image, he lost faith in me. He then went in the complete opposite direction of everything I tried to teach him. In my own trauma, I failed to provide him with a more nuanced and balanced worldview, and now he is getting his skewed perspective from these toxic online communities. He is transforming into the very monster I desperately tried to protect him from, and there seems to be nothing I can do to stop it. I guess the only positive thing is that he never drinks. He witnessed his father’s behavior while intoxicated and it instilled in him a deep disgust. Even now, he refuses to drink, stating that he never wants to lose control.
