MGTOW since MGTOW Wasn't Cool

A lot of us on this board came to MGTOW after a personal catastrophe - a cheating wife, a DV accusal, a nasty divorce where "your little kitten" turned into a vicious bitch-jaguar and tore your world apart. A red-pill enema administered with a fire-hose. You've had it with that life, you're Going Your Own Way and you sure as hell aren't going back.

Well ... my story is completely different. I'm here because I grew up "going a different way;" you might say that I've lived in MGTOW-space all of my life, from growing up in the Fifties and Sixties as the only son of a single mother ... to being an adult in the Seventies, who spent the Sexual Revolution "interned as an enemy alien," to basing my life and my choices on what I saw as ethically correct and proper rather than on following the herd.

I grew up in a decent neighborhood in the suburbs of Washington, DC, with my mother, her sister, and their mother as materfamilias. It wasn't conducive to growing up a boy; I had very little example from male role-models, and I got used to cat-fights between my Mom and my Dear Auntie on a regular basis. I learned to slink through my home, and through life, like a mouse slinking along the baseboards. I tended to absorb what life was serving up to me, though, rather than to rebel and swing out fighting it ... I was fat and nearsighted and out-of-shape, and you can guess that I was left out of the good times when puberty rolled around. And I left high school with no money for college, no hopes of a scholarship and no direction to follow, while 95% of my senior class went straight on to college.

Oh, did I mention that I didn't even have the solace of sharing a religion with my peers? They were Christian for the most part, or Jewish. I'd grown up a Scientologist, and when my friends went off to their colleges and universities, I went to the Academy of Scientology in downtown DC and learned to become an "auditor," a spiritual counselor. I spent two years there, living at home, until Dear Aune kicked us out of my boyhood home ... Mom and I took an apartment nearby, and I left the Academy to find myself a job.

This was the early 1970s, so one didn't need a college degree to find decent work. I had taken a couple of years of drafting in high school, and it was enough to get me in as a GS-2 "technical aide" in the Federal government. I learned the rudiments of mapmaking in twelve weeks of training, and took my place as a cartographic aide, learning map-drafting and photo mosaics and photo-rectification and darkroom work. It was pretty cool to me, and I got involved with photography outside the office, too.

Then, in the beginning of 1980, I got bit by the flying bug. I'd had a couple of nice romances after I got into the Map Factory, but nothing serious; I'd never gotten enough pussy to get addicted to it, and I felt responsible for my mother's well-being, so I accepted life in the friend-zone. Not having to spend my money on "Cupcake" meant that I could spend it on flying lessons ... and being a DoD civilian gave me access to the Andrews AFB flying club. And once I got my pilot's license, my mother was an enthusiastic co-pilot. By then, the early Eighties, Mom was ready to retire - and in 1985, after she got a nice bit of inheritance from a cousin of my by-then-deceased grandmother. We took her down payment and my ability to pay a monthly mortgage, and bought a house
together.

We had left Scientology by then ... after the Church tried to get us to spend Mom's inheritance on more "advanced" courses, rather than spending it our way. After a couple of years, Mom learned about a new program called the Avatar Course, and it basically left Scientology in the dust ... You might be forming the idea that I was just going along with Mom, as a married man would "just go along with Cupcake." Not exactly ... I found the "different-drummer" spiritual path more fulfilling than I'd found those dismal samples I'd tasted of the "herd path" of Western society.

I had a couple more "romances" in the following years, but gave up on the game in 1986 ... I went on living with Mom, traveling with her, taking her on cruise-ship vacations after her 80th birthday ... then, in early 2000, she was found to have colon cancer. She went through surgery, and it looked like they'd gotten it all - till her oncologist found, in early 2002, that it had spread to her liver and lungs. She died August 28, 2002, after 86 good years and a few bad months. I was 48 years old, and an orphan. (I agree, it is ludicrous for a man who is 48
years old to regard himself as an 'orphan.' But ... I was alone in my house, for the first time since I was born. I learned to deal with it, right away.)

I've spent the past twelve years (2002-2014) alone, Going My Own Way in the truest classical sense. Our house became MY house when Mom let go of her last breath ... I worked a few more years, and retired the day after I was eligible ... and a few years after THAT, I learned about the Manosphere (via The Spearhead and AVFM) and found my way to the forum that most immediately and accurately expressed the way I've lived my life, since the start: MGTOW Forums.

And when THAT blew up, I migrated to MGTOW HQ - the forum set up by the mods of MGTOW Forums - and to MGTOW.Forumotion.com, the site set-up by Jagrmeister of MGTOW Forums. I've signed on as a moderator on Jagrmeister's site, GoingYourOwnWay.com ... because he asked me, and most obviously needs me, to help him out. MGTOW HQ is the home of most of the moderators from MGTOW Forums, and they know what they're doing. GoingYourOwnWay.com needs my help, and I'm honored to help.

But this is the point I want to emphasize ... Men have been Going Their (Our) Own Way since way before MGTOW Forums ... since before ProBoards ... since before DARPA-Net, before Henry David Thoreau, since before Walden Pond, since fergawdssake before Odysseus and Gautama Siddhartha and the Rig-Veda.

There have ALWAYS been a certain number of Men who have Gone Their Own Way.

And I was MGTOW when MGTOW wasn't cool.

Thank you!

Your story was fascinating.

Agreed about the "different drummer" choise.
I don't know much about Scientology, but I know about Christianity and I see there are as many christianities as there are christians. So I didn't mind going my own way spiritually.

I grew up in a decent neighborhood in the suburbs of Washington, DC, with my mother, her sister, and their mother as materfamilias. It wasn't conducive to growing up a boy; I had very little example from male role-models, and I got used to cat-fights between my Mom and my Dear Auntie on a regular basis. I learned to slink through my home, and through life, like a mouse slinking along the baseboards. I tended to absorb what life was serving up to me, though, rather than to rebel and swing out fighting it ... I wrote:

I recognize myself in this description, being raised by a single mom. So much of a young boys wishes, toughts and feelings being suppressed it's amazing its even survivable. I wanted to tell you that you did well! Thanks again for sharing so that other single mom survivors might find acknowledgement!

Some men have always gone their own way. And think about the all the men who silently went their own way and never said a word about it. Let alone wrote about it. Even if their going was not more than a venture of the mind. Cheers to the silent dissenter. To the Man Ghosting Their Own Way.

Find the others!

Thanks for sharing.

Before my last relationshackle, I thought my years of experience in Game prepared me for the challenge of managing a woman. In hindsight, that moment was like the pre-flight briefing before Operation Eagle Claw.

After my personal life blew up like those C-130s in the Iranian desert, I went back to Square One and did some homework. I started reading books and realized i'd been fed "Bad Intel" by everyone id known in society, including the PUA guys to an extent. That's when I decided to go my own way, although at the time it was called "survival". The forum stuff came later, and im glad for it.