A few weeks back I noted that fellow men’s sphere blogger Adam Piggott’s wife caught the discontentment bug and declared their marriage to be over. Adam’s tagline is Gentleman Adventurer, and Pushing Rubber Downhill is the name of both his blog and one of his books. From the book’s description on his blog:
Always order a witchdoctor from the eastern part of Uganda if you want to get the best results, a predicament that Adam Piggott was not expecting to find himself in when he accepted a job as a rafting guide in deepest darkest Africa. But the unexpected becomes the new normal when he chucks away his life to ride across Australia on a motorbike chasing a girl, and in the process winds up in situations that he never imagined.
From the tropical rainforests of Northern Australia, to the mountain rivers of British Columbia, the mighty Ugandan White Nile, and finally the cultural wonderland of the Italian Alps, Pushing Rubber Downhill explores one young man’s desire to make something of his life by doing the unbelievable.
Intrigued by the description and wanting to do a brother blogger a solid during what has to be a difficult time, I decided to buy the book on Kindle.
I’m very glad I did.
I won’t give away any spoilers, but the book starts off with Adam on an adventure right out of the chute as he rides an aging motorcycle across the outback, camping along the way. There is a fairly subtle “red pill” message included in the book, as Adam learns the hard way that pursuing a woman is a prescription for disaster. At times it is also funny, especially a hilarious police chase in Uganda. But mainly the book is about the adventures young Adam throws himself into as he leaps before he looks. Adam is an excellent writer and the book held my attention the whole way through.
If Adam’s adventures sound interesting to you, you can buy the book on Amazon here.
Poor guy. It sounds like he did everything right, but it wasn’t enough.
Without too much detail I was able to gather from him a few red flags from his other half.
Point being you can do everything right but it only takes the other person to blow it up.
Definitely a bummer for him, and I hope comes out the other side OK.
I quickly looked through his blog though and its a little too “man uppish” for my taste. The 28 traits of modern man are too specific. There are plenty of men who would disagree with a large portion of those and are still good men.
For example, I shaved every day for 20 years on active duty (even on Sundays). My wife could not wait for me to leave the army so I could grow facial hair. If that means I am not a “modern man” he is a cartoon.
From the little info given here, I don’t understand the framing.
Adam sounds like a test case for the “man-uppish solution.” If it didn’t work for him, why should we expect it to work for men who haven’t done his adventures?
Perhaps we should look at the other side of the equation, as Dalrock and Earl imply. Some games can’t be played with reasonable odds of success even by experts. Some games are like Russian Roulette (one in six, not matter how skilled the operator) – not like poker (“play the other players, not the cards”). Perhaps “choosing which girl will make a good wife” is one of those.
This shouldn’t surprise us (although it has repeated surprised me during the past decade or so). For example, I’ve been looking at music videos that young women like. They’re excellent training for Girl’s Game, and probably mold them into terrible wives.
Perhaps we should look at the other side of the equation, as Dalrock and Earl imply. Some games can’t be played with reasonable odds of success even by experts. Some games are like Russian Roulette (one in six, not matter how skilled the operator) – not like poker (“play the other players, not the cards”). Perhaps “choosing which girl will make a good wife” is one of those.
Yes. “Marriage” as proscribed and practiced (or at least attempted) around here is functionally illegal, (even if you NEVER hit, yell at or whatever) as codified into all 50 states penal codes thanks to Duluth.
We are truly talking about a tiny minority of folks. People who have retained all their faculties of reason and rationality–not “sister wives” and other bizarre subjects of voyeuristic TV shows. We are doing something that places us way out on the margins of a society gone mad.
Adam Piggott’s very usage of the phrase modern man makes me cringe. It strikes me as a concession to political correctness to qualify man with modern.
While he may be a good writer, I am hardly surprised that a man who makes chasing a girl his life purpose would end up being divorced by her. Many a man has fallen to that snare.
OKR-
It reminds me of the end of the movie “Good Will Hunting” where he ditches a chance to be a truly great and important mathematician, jumps in his car and drives to Stanford to follow a girl who is on her way to graduate school.
I find that I simply can’t watch new TV programming, be it either from the networks or the streaming channels, because when I do it reminds me that society has indeed gone mad. The new Sabrina show is a good example of that. Having read the reviews I know better than to watch it, but this is supposed to be Netflix’s new hot show.
I broke out the old Bob Newhart Show DVD’s and watched a few episodes. No profanity and of course his great deadpan humor, but in watching it I could see the early blue pill wishiwashiness already starting, especially regarding divorce, as Howard Borden (their airline navigator neighbor) is divorced, though to be fair in one episode Bob, in a very subtle way, talks a man who is separated from his wife (and dating Carol) to reconcile with his wife of 8 years (much to Carol’s displeasure). That would NEVER happen in “current year: sitcom.
Well, the character was completely messed up, and IIRC it was at the behest of his therapist that he chased the girl.
It would have been fitting had there been an epilogue with him returning 2-3 month later, after she dumped him for a “better guy” at Stanford.
Frank-
I was thinking something similar. That is the most likely scenario. I was in graduate school in the bay area. The Matt Damon character, no matter how smart would not have lasted as the boyfriend for more than a few weeks. The super rich types who live in places like Palo Alto and Atherton would have demolished him.
I almost dropped out because I was not cream of the crop. I never actually fit in with that crowd.
OKRickety
You are making a connection that isn’t there. I don’t think his (eventual) wife is included in the book at all.
Everything I’ve read from Adam has been helpful. I take it with a grain of salt, like everything, but he’s been open about his life in a way few manosphere men have, and when it blew up he owned it and used it as an opportunity to learn.
I’ve got nothing but respect for the man, and hope to emulate his attitude.
It’s pretty much impossible to fit in with the rich, be they old or new money, if yo aren’t rich. As for the girl, I guess if she was hot enough they might have taken her in, even with her East Coast accent and mannerisms (I forget, was her character also upper class, it’s been a while since I saw the movie)
Minnie Driver has a British accent (and made no attempt to do something else for the film).
I don’t remember if they gave a lot about her background, but it was clear that she “belonged” in an ivy league school.
Imagine–guy from wrong side of tracks shows up at his girlfriends dorm room at Stanford a week or two after she starts school. No job. Beat up old car. Cost of living is the highest in the entire country. He’s just going to hang around with her and her friends while she finishes her PhD? Awkward.
I think the thing in “Good Will Hunting” is he could do whatever genius stuff he was going to do in either Boston or where the girl was. There was a good job in both places wasn’t there? He was only giving up Boston to follow her. He didn’t dump his entire mission to follow the chick.
This is the angle I’m most interested in. It SEEMS like filtering women and using game can help tip the balance and prevent divorces. But how much of a difference does it really make in the aggregate?
“genius stuff” roger that.
Your interpretation is entirely plausible. They just don’t come out and say that in the movie.
It’s probably both. While marrying a virgin gives you the lowest divorce odds…there is still some divorce risk there even with a virgin (hence the Russian roulette).
The poker part is finding out how many red/green flags she’s showing before you decide to bet or fold.
In trait #19 he mentions The Rational Male.
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Dalrock,
It was an assumption on my part (Isn’t that what would happen in a Hallmark movie?). Perhaps he learned better, but, in light of his current marriage situation, I have my doubts.
@OKRickety
That is pretty harsh. She got unhappy and blew up her marriage. It happens to better men than me. I see nothing to be smug about.
But yes, as I wrote in the OP, he learns the problem with pursuing a woman, and this is one of the “red pill” lessons he shares in the book.
Harsh? Or is he just looking for hope that the man just did something wrong and therefor if we can do it right, we actually have a chance at marriage.
But if the success of marriage lies with the fickleness of women, we’re all sunk and MGTOW is right.
Gary Eden-
That is the rub, isn’t it?
If the writing around these parts has given married men any insight at all, it is that yes, you too could be next. And the probability that it is because you egregiously violated one of a handful of “accepted” reasons for divorce (violence, cheating, heavy drinking/drug use, abusing your kids, etc) is VERY low.
Therefore, all you can do is be the best version of yourself as husband, father, man that you can figure out how to be.
But you are in danger of losing it all, no matter how well you play by the rules.
“But if the success of marriage lies with the fickleness of women, we’re all sunk and MGTOW is right.”
Rollo the other day said that MGTOW is right about the problem, but not the solution. I think he is right.
It is impossible for every man to mate guard his woman if she wants to stray. It is impossible for every man to be Alpha. In essence, there is no net, nothing to catch us if the bottom drops out.
Job’s righteousness didn’t make his wife any better, she still encouraged him to curse God and die. We are not superior to Job. At the end of the day, Christian men have to be faithful to God, and not expect everything to go well. We are not guaranteed anything except trouble, and God to be with us in our trouble as we turn to God for help.
Are we beginning to see why no-fault was a terrible idea.
If that’s true then God has some evening up of accounts to make with the men of our day (Proverbs 18:22, Ecc 9:9).
Guy from wrong side of tracks. Advantage – him.
Guy follows girl around to be near her. Advantage – her.
LP-
Good point, actually. Being part of that wrong side group actually served me well in my dating days. In fact, my ex-wife used to tell me it brought her great pleasure to know that her parents thought I was a bad boy from lower middle class stock.
No-fault a bad idea? I thought that went without saying.
There is a reason scripture NEVER gave women the right to divorce their husband. That authority lay solely with the man. At best if she leaves she must stay single or be reconciled; but even at that she was told not to leave.
Given women that option and they’ll destroy children’s lives, our entire civilization even, for no greater cause than simple boredom. They cannot, in the aggregate, handle that power.
Did it really serve you well though? Seems you eventually got caught on the wrong side of that rebellious streak.
Gary-
Correct. In the short run, it usually got me what I wanted.
But yes, in the long run, I was not “the one” and another guy got to come and be badder than me.
Eventually, long after the divorce, I learned that he went back to his wife and kids (I am sure that marriage has no problems now). And my ex did try to reconcile with me after I have moved on.
It is amazing how destructive unilateral, “irreconcilable differences” based divorce is. Its effects still ripple hard in my life even to this day, in the form of many odd remnants from having my “next of kin” just decide to end the arrangement.
It should…but the fact is it was a man (Reagan) that implemented it in California first. And it never stipulated that only the man could pull the divorce trigger.
Being from the wrong side of the tracks just helps you get chicks. It’s a thing that works without trying but it has a life span, sometimes short. It doesn’t necessarily help you hang on to chicks.
LP-
Right.
Wrong side of the tracks guy attracts the rebellious streak in women. So sure plenty of them go for that in the short term because it’s the FU to the evil patriarchy…but that ends when they find someone more rebellious or they tire of the guy.
And that is the 800 lb gorilla in the living room that pundits just can’t see for some reason when they write their “where have all the good men gone?” articles. Yet younger men seem to becoming more aware of this, though there are still plenty willing to roll the dice.
Or the guy tires of them. They call then alpha widows for a reason.
I didn’t need Dalrock’s writing to know that, it is plain as day in the destroyed lives of good men around me. What I need is some hope, some answers as to how to avoid it, something to tell my kids so that they’ll even consider trying.
Gary-
You and me both man. I so desperately want to be surrounded by my children, their spouses and my grandchildren around a Christmas table one day. I fear that may never come to pass, and I don’t blame them (especially the boys) if they avoid it altogether.
Dalrock,
Harsh? 🙂 I thought harsh was par for the course around here. Or is harshness restricted to a subset of people?
Anyway, Piggott himself states that he failed to do what he knew he should do:
If nothing else, I consider this strong evidence that Game is not the perfect solution to all marriage problems. The only solution I believe is possible is to have the marriage based on a full, absolute commitment to God and each other. Even then, there are no guarantees as Satan will make every effort to destroy any marriage that might show Christian beliefs to be important.
I have nothing to be smug about as I am a frivorced man. I simply saw him chasing her to be a bad portent for the future, and, unfortunately, his marriage appears to be confirming my suspicions.
“If nothing else, I consider this strong evidence that Game is not the perfect solution to all marriage problems.”
>Guy’s wife leaves
>He admits he lost frame
>”See? Game doesn’t work anon”
No one that I know thinks Game is the perfect solution. However, emulating the behaviour of high value men is undoubtedly better than the “just be yourself” plan.
Scott, if you can find a church that preaches headship and speaks out against divorce, maybe your sons can find girls from intact families there who want to be Godly wives and mothers.
Frank K, I had the same thoughts as you apparently did regarding the new Sabrina series. I guess it’s amusing if you think the spiritual realm is fiction.
@OKRickety
Of course it is. When someone like Jenny Erikcson brags about blowing up her family because she wanted to, I’m harsh. When someone like Adam shares that he was on the business end of such an event, I feel compassion.
But perhaps you are referring to pastors who teach awful theology, like the 8 examples I offered from Pastor Wilson that no one here was willing to try to defend. In those cases my focus is on refuting the bad theology. It is Wilson’s defenders who keep wanting to change the subject to Wilson as a man.
But what was Piggott’s crime? Why spike the football at his misfortune?
Ah, he took responsibility (something I disagreed with) for her sin*. Spike away then.
*See this post for his reconsideration of the issue.
Scott, if you can find a church that preaches headship and speaks out against divorce, maybe your sons can find girls from intact families there who want to be Godly wives and mothers.
I’ve written about this extensively elsewhere, but I have found Orthodoxy to be the church that approximates this most closely.
Results by priest my vary, but since Orthodoxy is a canonical/confessional faith tradition, the teachings never change–that unchanging structure is baked into the cake. If you read the homilies of the saints (their consensus is HUGE in Orthodoxy) headship teaching is hardcore.
Now, individual church leaders are about as weak as any other on this, but they are bound by the canons to speak the truth if directly asked. So, they rarely preach on it, because it is so uncomfortable.
If I go to my priest and say “I made a [unilateral] decision in my house about X and it failed” the priest is likely to discuss the ins and outs of what went wrong, but will never challenge my prerogative to make the decision.
This means I can rest assured that my position in the home is not in jeopardy when discussing these topics. Likewise, the church does not have a process for “divorce” (it simply doesn’t exist in the doctrinal sense) so if I hold the priests feet to the fire on those teachings, he will assent.
Its not perfect. I wish they were bolder. But these are the times in which we live.
Good luck with that. Such women are even rarer than virgins.
Even rarer still. One of the more frustrating aspects of this is many a church will mouth all the right platitudes and theologies. But they mean different things by those words. Or they don’t, but it all goes out the window anyway when a women will feel-bads comes on the scene.
Maybe if you find a church that preaches zero divorce (except by the man if a woman commits adultery) and teaches wifely submission is to be absolute obedience no exceptions you’ll have one willing to withstand the tide. That is a hard enough stance to more likely be genuine.
That’s your terminal weakness right there. If they’re not preaching because its uncomfortable, they won’t be enforcing it either. And it doesn’t matter how much the saints talk about headship when clergy and laity alike will redefine it to mean the opposite.
I suspect what you’re seeing is less a consequence of church structure/tradition and more one of the congregates being more recent immigrants from a more traditional in family culture. In other words, it is temporary and will pass in a generation unless you can find a way to buttress the truth.
Hi! Been a quiet reader for a while now. I feel that men in real life (around me), both christians and non-christians, don’t think the same way as men over here at manosphere blogs. Male friends around me have told me they like career-oriented, independent women. I see them going after girls who don’t even like them but keep them around for attention etc, yet they overlook girls who dress/behave in a feminine/ meek manner and show interest, in not too aggressive a manner of course. Therefore, sometimes I do wonder if modern men ought to also take some responsibility for not choosing well? I learnt around age 20 the way to dress/ look/ behave like a proper lady and to see my value realistically and not be hypergamous but men around me seem to fancy the sort of girls that manosphere blogs say to avoid. There was nothing happening for me even when I showed interest/ made efforts to look nice etc. It wasn’t until my mid-20s before an amazing christian man noticed me and I am so grateful and love him very much. I was the last amongst all my female friends and most female ex-school mates/ acquaintances! Always thought there must have been something wrong with me. But perhaps, the type of girls modern men like are different now then in the past?
Frank K: I find that I simply can’t watch new TV programming, be it either from the networks or the streaming channels, because when I do it reminds me that society has indeed gone mad. … I broke out the old Bob Newhart Show DVD’s and watched a few episodes.
I also increasingly take refuge in old shows and movies. I’m as much attracted by the show’s cultural milieu as by its story.
Lately, I’ve been watching episodes of Boris Karloff’s Thriller, which aired from 1960 to 1962.
In one episode, a man takes his financee home to meet his wealthy family. The old women in the family are shocked to learn that the fiancee had been living alone in Chicago, in her own apartment, going to college and working in an office. The old women thought the fiancee was a loose hussy because of her independent lifestyle.
But the rich young man took pride in his independent wife, and enjoyed upsetting the old biddies. Of course, his fiancee proved herself to be smart and reliable, and proved the old biddies were wrong for their old-fashioned suspicions.
So TV was celebrating Strong, Independent Wives as early as 1960.
Scott: Minnie Driver has a British accent (and made no attempt to do something else for the film).
I don’t understand why she’s a star. She has narrow, close-set eyes, offset by a very wide lower face. She’s a very unattractive “star.”
RPL-
There are a number of actors/actresses who’s continued casting always confounds me. Keanu Reeves sounds like Ted Logan in every thing he does. Jennifer Jason Leigh has the dynamic on screen presence of a hollowed out log. John Cusack. Nicholas Cage. The list is pretty extensive.
It’s really weird.
On the other hand, the dialogue between Deniro and Pacino when they stop for coffee in “Heat” was impossible not to get drawn into. Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush weave through the dialogue of “The Kings Speech” with such perfection its hard not to think you are actually a guest of the royal family brought back to pre-WWII England in a time machine.
I guess there’s no accounting for taste.
“Job’s righteousness didn’t make his wife any better, she still encouraged him to curse God and die.”
I think it was someone in our circle who once said, “Satan took everything away from Job – except his wife.”