I tried to sum this up as much as possible, but I ended up with a wall of text.

Blue Pill Backstory:

I grew up close to poverty as my parents struggled to start a business, we lived off of what could scrape together. I even started working in the family business as a kid. When I was in high-school, the business took off and got purchased by a bigger company. My parents were financially smart and set up a trust fund for me with some of the earnings. I drew about 40k a year from it.

I got married (at 20 years old) in 2005 to my 19 year old bride. We ended up having two kids and I thought we were happy. She liked her job and decided that she would like to work during the day at her professional job and I would work at night doing some repairs and building computers for a local computer shop. In our 20s, that seemed like good money. She made about 75k at an engineering firm, and between the trust fund and the side job, I made about 55k.

The problem was she ALWAYS came home angry. She talked about her coworkers' huge houses and how they had BMWs and how her boss's wife bought a new car every two years and they were always top-of-the-line. I asked if she maybe wanted to stay at home and I would get a higher-paying job, but she had too many friends at work, and she didn't want to leave it.

It got to the point she would come home and just start being pissed off at me for no reason. She was always on her phone, calling this guy from work, texting that guy from work. I was too stupid to see what was going on. I thought maybe she was stressed, so I decided to splurge on a vacation. She had to plan it because she wanted to get the best deal. She bought a two week family cruise.

A few weeks before the cruise (and after the latest cancellation date on the tickets) she suddenly had a deadline she couldn't miss and all the stars lined up for her to be unable to do anything about it, but rather than waste the money, she felt I should just take the kids on the cruise. The day of the cruise she drops me, an infant, and a toddler off at the airport and says goodbye. She doesn't answer the phone again for the next several days and when she does, she tells me she wants a divorce. I'm gonna keep it brief here, but that's when I knew she was fucking someone else.

Rock bottom:

I wanted to take her back so bad, but she was too busy trying to leave me. I wanted to make it work. She wouldn't tell me who she was sleeping with, but she made no attempts to hide it. The day we got back from the vacation, she came home later than usual in clothes that were not something she would wear to work. I knew she had not been home for weeks. Later, I would find out my 24 year old wife was banging a coworker in his early 50s.

She filed for divorce and we both met with lawyers. This is when she realized the mistake she made. In our state, the trust fund was 100% off limits, the money I made at work was 100% off limits, we hadn't been married long enough for her to get alimony, and the state tends to look down on someone who planned a trip and only bought three tickets (meaning she planned the affair almost six months in advance).

Around this time, she said she wanted to try to work things out and that she realized the mistakes she made and how she truly loved me. I was so blue pilled that I believed her. I actually spent another six months trying to make it work, until one day I decided to check up on her email. I found an email going back almost EXACTLY to the day she said she wanted to make it work. I remembered that day because at the time I would have told you it was the greatest day of my life. It was the day that she and her coworker had an exchange in which he told her that she couldn't move in with him, and that he enjoyed their time together, but that he didn't see a future in it. She told him he ruined her life. Six months later, I paid her about $5000 for half of the equity of the house and walked away with primary custody.

Red Pill Introduction (Four Years Post-Divorce):

In the years since the divorce, I had moved to a professional electrical engineering job a tech-startup. This was around 2014 or so when the economy was recovering. Since I had the trust fund, I was taking 22% of my salary as private stock in the company and they were giving me a 15% match, which was absolutely crazy at the time. It meant my take-home was only about 50k, but I was getting 24k per year in company . I lived in a lower income state, so I was right below the median household income just with my take-home, not including trust fund and company stock. I didn't advertise it and having the kids most days meant I didn't socialize much.

In 2014, I finished my master's in electrical engineering and switched to a new company that offered me a ridiculous compensation package. The old company required that I move my stocks, but since they were smaller, they had to mail me a check to roll into the new company's 401k. That meant a check for just under 100k.

My neighbor, Alison (and ex-wife's favorite friend) knew of the divorce and loved to come over and tell me all about my ex-wife and all the guys she was dating and how great she was doing. Her husband and I remained pretty good friends, but he and I could never talk because his wife wouldn't allow it as I was now the enemy. The only time I ever saw Alison was when she would bring her kids over to "socialize" just so she could rub some tidbit about my ex-wife in my face. I tried to avoid her, but she had a knack for meeting me outside then trying to get the kids together to play. It was hard to tell my kids no to having their friends play with them, so I ended up out there making general small talk with Alison a few times a week.

As it so happens, the day the check came, I opened it at the mailbox because it was such a big check, just in time to see Alison coming out her front door, kids in tow. I flipped the check over to hide it and made some minor small talk while the kids were playing. At some point, I got distracted by one of the kids and disengaged from the conversation. When I looked back at Alison, her face was transfixed on my mail. To my horror, the attached stub said something along the lines of employee distribution -- $100,000.00 in huge letters. I hid it as quickly as possible and went to bring the kids inside, awkwardly hoping she didn't see it.

A few hours later I get text from her asking about setting up a play-date. She couldn't even make it a full day. Suddenly, I was her Facebook friend, getting texted about every person who showed up at my house, what a neighbor said, and of course, how terrible my ex-wife was and how Alison never liked her. She offered to babysit and tried several times to come over to my house when her husband was at work. More than once, when Luke was out of town, she suggested we set up sleepovers so the kids could hang out because her husband thought they were too young to do sleepovers and a couple of times she came over with beer and wine just to talk and be friends. She had shown me the way it really works.

Red Pill Field Report (10 Years Post-Divorce):

Two weekends ago, I am down in Florida at a trade show. I don't work a booth, but I do like to stop by my company's booth to see what the marketing department puts together and what we are putting as our featured products in the given market sector. I have lifted weights at least 4 days a week, continued my career path, and am the best shape of my life, financially, physically, and mentally. I stop by a competitor's booth where I run into a former employee of mine. He's a great guy and we go back several years, so we are catching up. He introduces me to a couple of people there, including his mid 20s coworker, Kayla, and the orbitor who clearly has no chance and the VP of the division. She knows me because we have been a few shows before and she and I exchange jabs about the problems with each other's companies and products. The orbitor tries to land a few insults, but the VP cuts him off about it. After I leave that booth, I invite them to stop by ours and we can go over some of the technical details. A few minutes later, Kayla comes over and she and I agree to meet up after the trade show for drinks at the hotel bar.

Kayla changes into a dress before she comes to the bar, and she and I order our drinks. I look around and see a booth with a couple sitting there, so I introduce myself and ask if they mind if we sit with them. They agree and we all start chatting and having a great time. The girl across from me, Marsha, is a cute blonde with her scraggly-headed boyfriend. Both of them just turned 21 and are out at this trade show because they are students who got paid to check badges at the door. She points out this is the fanciest place she's ever drank. The boyfriend orders himself another round as they try to decide whether they have enough cash for a third. I spend most of the time joking about how lame trade shows are and that they are just excuses to get drunk and fuck strangers while billing the company. This whole time, I planned to fuck Kayla, and she is clearly onboard. Kayla gets up to go to the bathroom, Scraggly decides he needs another beer and gets up to order it. I sit there with Marsha for about three seconds when she just comes out and says "Your girlfriend is cute as hell." I have had threesomes before, but usually they are somewhat planned. I told Marsha that Kayla would probably be down for something like that. Of course, she pulls the "That's not what I meant" bullshit, but it was already over at that point. As soon as Kayla gets back, I ask if either of them want another drink, I'll buy this round for everyone (I'd already been buying mine and Kayla's). Kayla says that will be her third, and she doesn't want to be too drunk. Marsha says the same, but convinces her boyfriend to get one more since I am buying, and they can take an Uber home. She says she'll split a Long Island with Kayla. Not one hour and two beers later, Marsha's boyfriend is calling an Uber because he's too drunk, while she says she wants to stay and dance with her new friend, Kayla.

It was like looking back in time ten years. That poor bastard probably thinks she stayed out and danced and drank too much and had to sleep in Kayla's hotel room.