Relationship Advice

The anti-intellectualism, conspiracy prone tendency, and dependence upon self-published stuff that can’t make real arguments suggests to me that he’s not a very smart guy, and I’ll bet, deep down, he knows that. And that can be true even if he’s wildly intelligent in one area.

My guess is that he wants to feel in control and in the know, and masks his fear that he’s not with crap like this. It’s been bubbling for a while, but it got nastier because of his divorce, so he’s reaching for anything that makes it not his fault permanently.

No fact, argument, or intervention is going to hit home, both because this is emotion based and because it’s been going on for years. If you walk out of a good session with him and think you’ve made a dent, he’ll soothe his angry and confused mind by falling right back into his unhealthy habits, because they make him feel better.

The most you can do isn’t to oppose, but to provide alternatives. He’s listening to these things in his car and getting mad all the time? Find some audiobooks on safe topics he likes and let him borrow them, and ask him follow up questions to engage him. He always reads some drivel right when he gets home from work? Tell him that you’ve started doing a fitness challenge and you want to see which of the two of you can walk more steps in a month. If he brings up a topic that’s going to be a problem, sigh or make a face and change the subject; ask about his kids. Talk up therapy and introduce it as a normal, healthy thing that has helped you or others out. The goal is to help him find peace and happiness and connection outside of his obsessions so he starts to rely on them less until he no longer needs to hate others in order to be happy as he is.

The biggest issue is commitment and time. It can take far, far more effort to deprogram someone than for they to get hooked, and ideally it’d be a family or community aid sort of thing, because it’s a huge undertaking for one person.

If you really want to help this person I’d suggest being a friend to him. Don’t talk about the stuff you disagree on. Every time he mentions it, be very clear that you emphatically disagree and that the positions that he holds cause you harm. Do not get drawn into a debate, just states how it negatively affects you and end the conversation. If he can accept that boundary then you can build a friendship, and that friendship will eventually provide you with the sufficient mutual respect to potentially begin to change minds with open and vulnerable conversation. It has to be a real friendship though, you can’t be faking it.

That’s all a lot of energy and effort, but it’s the kind of sustained relational support that can effectively promulgate change.

Wait… Rush is right wing? Like… the prog rock band? I never knew their music was super political to begin with.

Edit: it wasn’t the rock band. It was something worse :c

Anyway! As a guy who has seen some friends fall down that rabbit hole, unfortunately you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. A lot of the time those extreme and radical positions are a reaction to a skewed perception of reality. Perhaps he feels his wife wronged him and is projecting that pain onto other people (women in this case), or perhaps the reason his wife divorced him is because he’s so committed to his misogynist beliefs, he would rather let his marriage go down the drain.

In any case, he probably feels the need to always reaffirm his worldview because the alternative (that he can improve as a person and that his personal shortcomings can only be blamed on himself) is probably too painful to face.

Very frequently, these people probably need to build a safety net, a support group, and go to therapy, but they’re so off the deep end, it’s too hard to take any of those steps, so it becomes a vicious circle of blaming others because they’re alone, and staying alone because they always blame others.

The best thing that can happen to any of these people is an experience that fundamentally shakes their reality. Getting into Buddhism, or moving to a different country, or going back to college, basically anything that changes their status quo, because their status quo has been inherently built and curated around their own beliefs and worldview. They can’t leave it now.

If you want to help him, you have to find a way to disrupt his status quo and perhaps hope that leads him down a more positive path, but unfortunately, once someone has started buying into heavy incel theory, they feel more comfortable staying there than looking beyond their own noses. I’m not sure you could do much for him. I’m sure deep inside he knows blaming women for his own faults is stupid, but he also refuses to blame himself, so… someone like that won’t be likely to improve. Ever.

If, and this is a big if, you want to help, understanding is the best course of action.

You mention a (from your perspective) "mildly messy" divorce. Leaving aside the fact that I don't know what value you assign to those words, it suggests an early dismissal of a, probably traumatic event.

Construed like this, a lack of desire for understanding might be implicit. People don't just wake one day hating about 4 billion sentient beings just for shit and giggles.

You have to understand that, as you wish to be seen, understood and treated as a person and to people to act accordingly, this man, this family of yours also wishes to be seen, understood save treated as a person and for people to act accordingly to it too.

Do you best

Sounds like he is not well, messy divorce can push someone over that line of hate.

Question is what happened? No one just wakes up and starts hating women. That would count their mother, grandmother, sister, friends, colleagues... something happend (probably in the same order) and he ended up over the limit.

Therapy helps a lot. I don't think you can fight irrational fear with with any kind of rational proofs.

💀

He’s a lost cause. Cut the loss and don’t waste your time. This is your life. He’s not your responsibility.