Introducing myself

Hello everyone,

I am new to this forum and thought that I would introduce myself. I first encountered the CoAlpha forum from a link on caamib's blog. For a while, I was a lurker on CoAlpha and a number of incel blogs. However, recent events have made me appreciate my personal stake in resisting modern culture and creating a society with healthy relations between men and women. I originally planned to get involved in the CoAlpha forum, but it appears that the CoAlpha forum is no longer active and that Mikraite is the closest thing to its successor. I have some misgivings about the religious focus of Mikraite, but I have decided that I will try it out anyway, especially since the religious component seems geared towards rules for personal behavior instead of requiring a specific faith.

I am 23 years old and graduated from college in 2014. I am currently working in the tech industry, but my true passion is playing and writing classical music, and I am currently debating between staying in the tech world or going to graduate school for music theory. For the time being, I shall refrain from saying more about myself, for the sake of remaining anonymous.

I have always struggled with forming romantic relationships with women. I actually managed to find a girlfriend shortly before I turned 21. She was intelligent, kind, and affectionate, and the relationship went surprisingly well. However, she broke up with me a year later when we graduated from college, as she was leaving our college town and did not want to pursue a long-distance relationship. For the next year and a half, I intensively tried to find another girlfriend without any success. I asked out a few of my female friends and was rejected each time. I also tried online dating, messaging hundreds of women and going on about twenty dates, but was also rejected each time. I even tried going to bars, but that was an entirely futile experience, and was not worth the effort since bars are generally an unpleasant place to be.

It was during this period of frustration that I encountered incel blogs and started to read them more frequently. Previously, I had tended to blame my lack of romantic success on my social awkwardness, or often more broadly on my conceptions that I was a "loser." However, I started to realize that not only do women with the same level of social awkwardness as me rarely have trouble finding a romantic partner, but that men with far worse faults than my own, such as being violent or manipulative, rarely have trouble finding a romantic partner. I came to realize that any society in which such violent or manipulative people are valued above myself is an unhealthy society, and that this society, and not my own personal faults, was to blame for my lack of success. Furthermore, I realized that the sexual revolution and hookup culture was to blame, not only because it means that the majority of hookups go to a minority of men, but because it means that men with "omega" characteristics are chosen for hookups over kind, responsible men. Finally, I realized that not only feminism, but the materialism and superficiality of modern culture are to blame for creating such an unhealthy society.

Recently, it seemed as though my romantic misfortunes might change. I had a friend back in my college town who was very intelligent and very attractive, and at the time seemed to be a particularly kind, compassionate and thoughtful person who valued me for my positive qualities and was also somewhat disdainful of hookup culture and modern culture. I left my old college town last summer to start a new job, and subsequently, I found out from her that she might have been interested in a romantic relationship with me if I had stayed. I regretted my decision to move, and was determined to stay in touch with her until we could possibly be together in the future. I visited her in person for a weekend, applied to a few jobs back in my old college town, and encouraged her to move to my new city of residence. A few months later, she said that she had gotten an interview for a job in my new city of residence, and she visited me for the interview. She later said that she got the job, but that it would be part-time at first and therefore she could not afford to move. I offered to pay her rent unless she was able to afford it on her own. At that point, we officially became a boyfriend and girlfriend and it seemed that my greatest hopes had come true.

However, things quickly took a negative turn from there. My new girlfriend visited me again for a few weeks to look for apartments. She had previously been kind and outgoing toward me, and we had many long, deep conversations. However, once we officially became a romantic couple, she became withdrawn and barely seemed interested in interacting with me. Furthermore, she stopped being kind to me, and frequently got impatient with me for small things such as having trouble finding a certain item when we went to the grocery store. And while she previously did not care about my social awkwardness or my other quirks, she started to frequently comment on my quirks and criticize me for them. Also, she was extremely unaffectionate toward me, and would rarely even let me hug or kiss her (we kissed for a total of about three minutes during the entirety of our relationship). Of course, I would be perfectly happy if she did not want to have sex, but I believe that at least a minimum amount of affection is important even in the early stages of a relationship. Finally, she was careless with my money (I say "my money" because she never paid for anything). She would not consider any apartment that was not sufficiently large and in a nice area, and the apartment that we finally settled on was significantly more expensive than my own apartment. Of course, I have no qualms about being a provider, but I feel that it would have been more appropriate for her to consider my own financial well-being in addition to her own material comfort.

At this point, I already had serious concerns about our relationship and was thinking about breaking up with her. However, another thing came up which made things worse. I found that that she job offer that she claimed she had did not exist, and that she fabricated the whole thing. Of course, she did not admit to having made it up, but when I asked her for the name of the company that she would be working for, she delayed telling me for almost a week, and then gave me the name of a company that sounded totally different from what she previously described. I said that if she was not going to be honest with me, then we should break up. We broke up for a while, but later she texted me and said that she would be interested in staying together but having a long-distance relationship instead of moving to where I live. I accepted and we got back together, mostly because I was starting to get despondent about being single again and knew that I did not have any other romantic options. She has continued to be distant from me, and I am planning to end the relationship soon.

So why do I feel like I have a personal stake in creating a society with healthy relations between men and women? Why should I not just believe that I had the misfortune to enter a bad relationship, move on, and try to find another girlfriend? The first reason is that she was the only women that was romantically interested in me. I would probably not be able to find another girlfriend, at least not in America, and if I managed to find another girlfriend, it would probably be another similar experience where the woman was only going out with me to manipulate me. Furthermore, I have heard countless other stories on MGTOW forums and elsewhere on the internet of men who entered relationships and often marriages that sound very similar to my relationship. Therefore it is clear that my experience is not unique and is part of a larger problem.

In fact, my relationship is similar in many ways to the marriages of "beta" men who cannot attract women in their 20s, but often manage to find women who will marry them out of convenience in their 30s after they can no longer attract "omega" men. The crucial difference is that my girlfriend had no intention of getting married anytime soon, and that she was still young and very attractive. Most girls of her age and attractiveness level either focus on attracting a very wealthy man or hooking up with a lot of attractive men. I think the reason that she acted differently is because she has little interest in sex, money, or starting a family, and as far as I can tell, her greatest ambition is to not have to work and to have no responsibilities. In other words, she has the same attitudes about men as most women, but her priorities are different. But I suppose that all of these thoughts are irrelevant to the mission of this forum, so I shall not discuss this matter any further.

Anyway, as I previously said, I have a personal stake in creating a society with healthy relations between men and women because I do not want to live in a society where the only romantic options for me are with women who will manipulate me and will be unaffectionate toward me. The thing that makes me the most angry is the knowledge that in a different world, one without feminism or modern culture, my girlfriend would have been kind and affectionate towards me and the relationship would have been unenjoyable. I remember my first relationship, which I now know was probably a fluke, and want to have another relationship and eventually a marriage like that. Of course, I know that I could easily go abroad and find a wife that way. However, I know that this would not solve the broader structural problem. Not only would it contribute to a shortage of women to marry in some non-feminist country, but since feminism and more broadly Western ideology is spreading across the globe, if I have any sons then they would likely have difficulty finding a suitable partner even in another country. Therefore I believe that is necessary to either change society or focus on creating a new society.

I am aware of many other movements in the "manosphere," and CoAlpha by far provides the best solution to my problems. Most of the incel blogs only focus on expressing anger and frustration, and do not even attempt to look for solutions. MGTOW does not provide a real solution, as even though it helps one potentially avoid a toxic relationship, most people would definitely prefer to have a healthy relationship over no relationships at all. PUA provides a solution, but a bad solution, as it encourages men to behave in an immoral way. CoAlpha provides a very practical solution, which is to seek marriages with women from non-feminist countries instead of pursuing relations with women who value the wrong things in men. Happier Abroad is similar to CoAlpha in this regard, but Happier Abroad is far inferior to CoAlpha because it encourages men to adopt PUA-like goals in foreign countries.

Finally, the CoAlpha ideology has been essential for my emotional well-being recently. For a long time, I have had feelings of guilt and inadequacy for many reasons. I have better self-esteem now than I did in the past, but I still occasionally fall into a rut where I feel like I am a loser. Most of the incel and PUA blogs operate under the notion that the men who have the most sex are the greatest people, and the men who have the least sex are losers. Therefore, reading these blogs only reinforced my negative feelings about myself. However, ultimately I agree with the sentiment expressed in the CoAlpha forum that in our depraved modern society, the men who have the most sex are the real losers, and reading the CoAlpha forum helped me banish my negative feelings about myself.

I am posting on Mikraite now because it seems to be the closest thing to a successor of CoAlpha. I have browsed the Mikraite forum and like many of the things that I have read. However, I am somewhat uneasy with the focus on religion in Mikraite. I am not religious, am too skeptical to believe in a god, and am too honest to fake a belief in a god that I do not possess. However, I used to go to church with my family when I was a child, and I still find the moral teachings of Christianity to be meaningful. Therefore, I could see myself becoming active in Mikraite, operating under a "secular humanist" perspective. I have mixed feelings about the importance of keeping the Sabbath, as I like the idea of setting aside time for rest and contemplation, but do not see the importance of setting aside the same time every week. I am also hesitant to "make the declaration," as it seems to involve professing belief in a god that I do not believe in. Perhaps Franklin or someone else can respond to my concerns and give me more insight as to how an atheist or agnostic can operate in Mikraite. I also recall that Franklin believe that CoAlpha did not work because religion is needed to get people to cooperate, so I would be curious to hear Franklin's thoughts on what level of cooperation has been achieved or will be achieved in Mikraite that was not achieved in CoAlpha.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to hear your thoughts!

Welcome, I think you will like the Mikraite concept.  I will try to answer your questions here, but I encourage you to visit one of our Online Bible Readings where you can talk to us directly.

I started CoAlpha because I wanted men to get together to work on an alternative to feminist culture.  The idea just didn't work.  I organized Skype meetings and almost no one came.  People in the private forum proved unreliable.  There was little discussion of concrete action.  So I decided that I had to study history to see what worked in the past.  And the answer is religion.  All sound cultures in history were based on a sound religion.

Why is this?  I think because religion is really a package of the components needed to make a group work.  Let's start with rituals, like keeping the Sabbath.  One of the points of such a ritual is to show who is really committed to taking action for the group.  If you ask someone who kees a religion's rituals to do something for that religion, you can assume he will do it.  And conversely, someone who doesn't keep the rituals generally can't be counted on to do anything for the group.  This is specifically discussed in the Old Testament where the Sabbath is described as being a sign of commitment.  But rituals are more than a sign, they are also training exercises.  If a person becomes accustomed to doing something on behalf of religion regularly (weekly), they are actually training themselves to follow the rules of the group in general.  And this makes it mentally easier for them to do other things for the group and generally makes them more committed to the group.

Another obvious benefit of religion is weekly meetings.

Religion is also very important for women.  Women are naturally conformist, so a good religion provides a good group to conform to.

Our Mikraite group is not Christian.  We follow the Old Testament.  One reason for this is that Christianity and the New Testament require certain beliefs, but the Old Testament doesn't.  The Old Testament only regulates actions.  So there is no requirement for you to believe in the existence of God.  You can read more about my views on God in God for Atheists.

To see how effective religion can be, you can read my Mennonite trip report.  Since it is very difficult to start a successful religion, our Mikraite plan is to leverage an existing religion like the traditional Mennonites and convince them to allow us to associate with them without us having to become Christians.  This gives us most of the benefits of their culture without having to accept their beliefs.  So if you find a wife abroad, having her join us at traditional Mennonite services and having her associate with Mennonite women would have strongly anti-feminist influence on her without her having to hold their beliefs.

I hope I have answered some of your questions.  Let me know if I missed anything, and I will try to answer it.

Hi Franklin, thank you for the response! I definitely understand your conviction that religion is important in order to make a group more cohesive so that it can actually accomplish something meaningful. However, I believe that even so, it is important for a religion to have ritual that exist for a good reason and are not arbitrary or in existence for a bad reason. For example, consider the focus on human sacrifice in the ancient Aztec religion, which was done out of a belief that it was the only thing that would prevent the sun from going out. This is clearly an example of a bad ritual that was done because of a faulty belief and without a good reason. I think I shall respond to the threads elsewhere in this forum outlining the core tenets of Mikraite, as that would be more efficient than having the entire discussion on this thread.

I looked at your post about your visit to the Mennonite churches and did some research on the Mennonites on my own. They definitely have a fascinating history, and their belief system appeals to me not only because of their more traditional sexual mores, but because of their emphasis on pacifism and living a simple lifestyle. Of course, it also appears that there is a wide variation in Mennonite churches, so I'm not sure which sects are the best ones to become involved with. Unfortunately, I'm on the East Coast, so I can't visit any of the churches that you mentioned, but I might do some research on Mennonite churches or similar groups in my area.