Over the last few years, I have received an unusual amount of questions about relationships, especially from young men. At first I thought these must just be mostly unfortunate men that perhaps didn’t have a lot of game, or maybe just were not very attractive or accomplished, and as a last ditch attempt thought to reach out.
I received enough such emails and other messages over the last few years that I was finally pushed to produce Caveman Theory (only available in digital format as I doubt Amazon would let that book stand as is). I had resisted the impulse to write that book for at least 20 years, because frankly, human relationships are so complex, unique, subtle, intense, varied and so on that in my slightly autistic take on the world, any work that discussed that topic would forever be incomplete. That said, I believe I now have reached a marriage that will last until the end of our days, we have (almost) four children between us and a couple more from previous relationships, and therefore, after now 8 years together, and the impending sixth child now only a few weeks away, I figure, ok, I probably know enough about this stuff to put down a few thoughts.
Nevertheless, the amount of requests for advice did not relent. In fact they increased. And then, as I took more time with each request, I started to notice that my initial assumption was in error. The men that were asking for this advice were not the Quasimodos of life, struck with unfortunate genes, poverty, and a low IQ. Quite the contrary, these were well groomed, educated, intelligent young men, most were well above average in looks and some also practiced a sport semi-regularly. In fact, about the only pattern I noticed was that these guys were mostly a really good catch for any woman of their age. The other slight trend is that most of them did not practice a sport regularly, but that is not to say they were unfit, just that they often were not familiar with regular attendance at say martial arts classes, or some other sport.
In general too, they listen and applied the advice I gave and overall had really positive results in most cases. This in itself was perhaps the most shocking feature. Usually human beings that come whining to you with an issue just want to bitch and moan, and even when you give them a ready made solution they ignore it.
This factor is usually multiplied by a few thousand times when applied to relationship advice. And yet, here I was seeing the exact opposite. Young men paying attention and following through with my advice, and generally speaking (say about 80% or so of the time) getting better results than they had up until that point. Sometimes with a specific woman they were interested in, other times in general in their approach to finding a partner.
The other common factor, was that each of these men was looking for a wife. They had either already got over the whole hook-up culture, or were never interested in it to begin with. That too was surprising, because as I said, most of these guys would have no problem getting together with a string of women just for sex if that is what they focussed on. I assumed (wrongly again) this was probably because I blog about being a zealot Catholic in the style of the Crusaders from 1095. But then their questions and general attitudes made me reflect on a bunch of things, including my own life, and reaching back through the decades, I remembered that I too, was never originally intending on being the kind of man-whore I eventually become and indulged in for some years after my relationships failed in increasing frequency.
My original plan was to just find one woman, the right one and spend the rest of my life with her. The fact that the right woman was rather elusive to find and/or evolve from the raw material I had available seems to reflect the same difficulty these young man have today in finding the right woman too. And then it became clear (which should have been obvious from the start, and would have been if I had had a simpler life) that in fact, most men do NOT actually want to bang their way around the world with random women. Most men, in fact, actually would prefer to find the right woman and settle down and have children. Raise them and live happily together until old age and eventually death. It is not for lack of men wanting this that it seems so rare. There really has ben a huge effort from the usual nefarious entities, to ensure that the very idea, never mind the reality of the nuclear family is destroyed.
My own path has gone full circle, and I went from a relationship of 13 years to a marriage of 4, then a couple of shorter relationship before I gave up and just decided to next a woman as soon as they irritated me. After a while I got bored of that too and had another marriage that lasted barely over 2 years before it crashed and burned in spectacular fashion. After that I had essentially given up on even thinking about long-term relationships. Not because I didn’t want one, but because clearly, I was not fitting in with how the world apparently expected me to be, and I sure as hell wasn’t about to compromise on who I was either, since, to my mind then —and to my mind now too— it was not me that was in error, but rather, the world. I know that sounds spectacularly arrogant, but as it turns out, it really is not arrogance, merely objective fact. Nor is this a unique occurrence. The world is generally wrong about most things.
I had no interest in playing games, I was never much of a small-talk kind of guy, I never saw the point of it, and in fact, pretty much every relationship I had up to then had started to be sexual usually with 24 hours of meeting. Nor was I interested in ever entertaining any of the nonsensical feminist idiocy that so much of the human population has been infected with, and the same went for things like the illogical ideologies of any other kind, be they communism, counter-factual things like “equality” and so on. My Asperger’s brain simply saw things as they are, and I could no more say there were 5 lights than Picard could .
So, a kind of limbo of existence, relationship-wise, was pretty much all I figured I could have. I would spend time with a woman but not be committed to really much of anything beyond that temporary companionship. Because ultimately, I did not engage with, nor care to acknowledge, any of the preconceived ideas about the nonsensical stuff they might have had in their mind. It was really more of an existing life rather than actually living. And I recognise in these young men, if from different lives and situations, a similar malaise. Absent my years of hard experience, they might not be able to see the whole picture yet, or how to navigate life in that respect, but they can sense all is not well. And they sense too the danger they might be in if they make a wrong step. Marry the wrong woman, or get the wrong one pregnant, and in some instances, just perhaps make an off-colour joke.
And so, I try to reply to their emails and requests for advice. Caveman Theory has helped several already, but not everyone that probably needs to has read it, and some might have more unique situations that need a specific issue that is not addressed in a book that ultimately cannot address the details, but that does at least present the overall problem in all its constituent parts and gives you a map of how to sail around the rocky shores of it.
It has come to the point that I am thinking of having some subscribers only posts, where I will anonymously post the requests or questions asked on this blog, and provide the answers as a subscribers only content, (removing any identifying information a reader might include). If you want to receive such advice, in order to make it both more useful for others as well as providing me a small compensation for my time, just put Kurgan Agony Column in the subject heading and send it to [email protected]. I will then post your email on this substack (after making sure anything that might identify you or anyone else is removed or censored to the best of my ability) and provide a reply.
That way people who subscribe get the benefit of the reply too, I get some of that income, and everyone learns a bit more. You don’t need to be a subscriber yourself to ask the questions, I will send you a copy of the reply too.
I did sometimes wonder why these young men might come to me to ask their questions, after all, I am on marriage number three (though this one is indeed for life) and I have been through a rather undignified number of women previous to that. But then, the question answers itself. Who would you ask advice about combat in a war from? Some pristine general with a spotless uniform that never saw a trench in his life (this is the general approach Vox Day suggests, as he has repeatedly stated one should not ask for marital or relationship advice from a divorced man), or a guy that has survived every trench, frontal assault, special ops, parachuting at night behind enemy lines that he has been in?
I know who I’d ask. And sure, there may be some good advice from the pristine general that did all the right moves to be an officer and never get down in the trenches, but most guys who write in are already either in a trench already, or about to be sent out to the front, metaphorically speaking. Besides which, there are as many different constitutions and types of men as there are women, and those who might have a few more passions burning, a few more neurons ticking over, a bit more thirst for the zest of life, and so on, might just not be suited for the pristine life of an officer.
Which is not to say everyone should aim to be a scar-covered, special ops soldier of fortune either, most people fall in the middle of those two extremes after all.
So, sure, obviously, try to make the right choices from the start, but if it were that easy, who would ever go wrong? No one intentionally makes bad choices.
Besides, it’s just the law of averages that some guys will marry their high school sweetheart and never divorce, but thinking that guy has achieved that lasting marriage solely as a result of his preternatural wisdom is obviously a flawed conclusion. Nor is it necessary to work your way through the supposed Sigma grindset of a revolving door retinue of women in order to become sufficiently wise in picking out the right woman to marry.
Both extremes have plenty of dangers and opportunities for massive and lasting life-long damage. A good friend of mine reflects the almost polar opposite of myself, he was with the same woman for something like 25-30 years, had two kids with her, and then she blew up his life, took a bunch of life-changing money from him and left on a whim. Nor is he the only one I know that has happened to. And the devastation of that story is something very hard to deal with. On the other hand, there are guys who get lost in the pussy-hunting phase and end up jaded, cynical, and either alone or unhappily married to someone they don’t respect.
My journey is not advisable, most guys that go through things I have been through do NOT come out well on the other side of it, but then I do not advocate for you to do as I did. Quite the contrary, I point out all the dangers you are likely to encounter in life with respect to relationships and how to pre-emptively try to avoid getting hit by those hidden roadside IEDs that society has currently scattered all around the entire field of dating, relationships, and marriage.
And apparently, so far, the advice I give tends to produce good results. So… feel free to spill your tender hearts out to the kind mercies of your Uncle Kurgan, who will do his best to teach you how to stay out of jail, divorce-rape court, and lead a happy life with a nuclear family.
Of course, as always, I take ZERO responsibility for anything you may decide to do or not do as a result of taking or ignoring any advice I may give. Remember the golden rule above all others:
Know (for) Yourself.
Anyway… the lines are now open. Write in with your heart-tugging, feelz-filled, romantic issues laden, emails.
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All this just goes to show… you really never know what life might throw at you. I certainly never imagined I might become an agony uncle online, but here we are.
This post was originally published on my Substack. Link here
