Once you reach a certain age, you have to come face-to-face with some hard realisations – that your life has not panned out quite the way you wanted it; that half of it is over, and you might not have anything to show for it; and that, despite your best efforts, you may not end up achieving even a tenth of what you thought you would when you were a young man.

That age, these days, is about 40 years old.

Most men, upon reaching it, realise they are at an inflection point in their lives. If they have not achieved what they set out for themselves in their 20s and especially their 30s, they find themselves burdened by the oppressive realisation that their time is rapidly running down, and that they are entering the middle part of their lives. A sudden sense of urgency grabs a hold of them, as they realise that their time on this withered Earth is finite, and that there is a very real and clear end that awaits them, with a terrible finality that cannot be put easily into words.

If those men have not, by this point in their lives, figured out what their true purpose in life is, and have not found faith in God and Christ, the prospect of the vast, yawning, silent emptiness of the grave, terrifies them.

And, for those men who have not yet started families, and who long to do so, they come to realise that their time for finding a wife seems to be nearly over. They are unable to relate to the young women of today, who are shallow, grasping, greedy, foolish, and thoroughly unpleasant.

Such men find themselves caught in a bind. They have grown comfortable in routines and patterns that they have established for themselves, which work well for them. They enjoy their own company, or at most the company of close friends who share their interests and hobbies. They are not interested in staying out late in noisy places, or taking glamorous trips to prove a point – they prefer solitude and simplicity to expense and extravagance.

Yet they now feel the ticking of the clock, louder than ever. For the fatalistic (or pagan) among them, they feel the fingers of the Norns weaving their fates into the web of life, and they know that their saga will eventually come to an end.

When you think in those terms, it is not difficult to understand why ancient warrior cultures talked so readily and frequently about a good death. The Vikings, for instance, thought that dying old and alone in your bed was a great dishonour, and that the greatest glory was to die screaming in battle, covered in blood, taking your enemies with you.

And then, there is the accumulated weight of mistakes. All of us have made them, and many of us have made mistakes that are so serious as to be irreversible. The burden imposed by those mistakes makes men leery of risk, unwilling and unable to take on things that push them outside of their comfort zones.

All this entered my mind recently when I watched a video by a man who has hit the age of 40, and now realises that he frittered away his 20s and 30s on things that do not matter – thereby proving the old adage that youth is wasted on the young:

This man’s story is important. It is the story of far too many young men today. It speaks of the great tragedy of modern Western society, which hates men and elevates women – thereby throwing the entire relationship between the sexes completely out of whack. His story of loss, heartbreak, betrayal, and failure, is one that contains lessons for us all.

The most important of those lessons is the imperative to be extraordinarily careful about whom we choose to bring into our lives. This applies especially to women.

This week’s Monday poast apparently struck a chord with quite a few readers, who commented on its main theme about marriage and divorce, and told stories of their own experiences. In the modern era, being a Christian is not sufficient to ensure a happy marriage. Far too many of you can tell stories of finding a “Good Christian Woman”, only to discover 10, 20, or even 30 years later that she decided to pull the pin on the marriage, because reasons.

The resulting pain and suffering is unbelievable – as it should be. There is a reason why His Hugeness talks about a marriage being a union of two individuals becoming one flesh. If you were to tear apart a single entity back into two pieces, of course that would be excruciatingly painful – for both halves.

Here is the thing, though:

Men almost always end up better in the long run after getting divorced.

This is not universally true, as that chap’s video above shows. There are times when the man gets absolutely shafted, and it might take him years or even decades to recover. But, on balance, men handle the heartbreak, trauma, and misery of divorce far better than women do – because men are problem-solvers, oriented toward fixing and building things.

Men save and give. Women consume and take. This is how it should be. This also means that women almost always end up lonely and miserable after divorcing and leaving a good man.

The chap in the video above abandoned his Christian faith – or at least, “modern Christianity”, which is a blatant heresy of the True Faith of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. That does not mean the rest of us should do so. It simply means that we should acknowledge the risks associated with marriage and family – and proceed accordingly.

There are many men who will read this, and who will refuse to get married, preferring solitude and simplicity over the craziness and complications of having to deal with women. That is a legitimate choice – provided those same men are willing to take risks with relationships in the first place. There is no such thing as a riskless life, and any man who thinks there is, merely deludes himself.

There are other men who will read this poast, and who will conclude that marriage is still worthwhile. I have nothing but respect for such men. They will achieve far more for society than I ever will. Some of my readers got married young, are happily married, and have had multiple children. They will leave a lasting legacy behind – which I will not, at least not anytime soon.

The future belongs to those men and their posterity. It does not belong to me. And that is a sobering realisation for any man who has hit 40, and sees the path of life unfolding before him as a product of his choices – and his failures.

Life does not begin at 40. That is merely the inflection point at which you realise and understand that the strength and vitality of your youth is ebbing away; that you have hard choices to make; and that happiness and tranquillity depend on those choices.

Choose well, then. If you are in your 20s and 30s, make sure you have a long-term objective and plan in place. And if that includes marriage and family, then pursue those ends single-mindedly, with the kind of risk assessment approach that you would take when evaluating a business to buy. Your life will literally depend on it.

If you choose to stay single and happy, well, I wish you all the best. That is not my choice, but I do not particularly criticise men who make it. I only single out for criticism the incels, Omegas, and woman-hating MGTOW types who have never actually taken a risk for a woman, never tried to change or improve themselves, and have allowed themselves to be scared off by the horror stories told by others.

Yes, the world is a cruel, cold, and dark place in many ways. It is also one of wonders and beauty. Women are a fundamental part of both the good, and the bad, that inhabits the world. A man who rejects women because of the bad, without ever even trying to find the good, is not a complete man.

Choose ye, then, and choose well. The rest of your life literally depends on your choices.

And for those who choose marriage and family, know this:

You have my utmost respect. The future is yours, not mine, because you and your wife chose to show up for it.