I find that a lot of men end up feeling wrecked and anxious both during relationships to women and after breakups and don’t understand why they feel that way.

In many ways, dating a woman in any compacity could be analogous to various levels of residency or home ownership in the context of willful or subconscious investment.

This analogy serves to explain why men should manage their expectations and investments more appropriately to find happiness and peace in their dealings with women. So read up and follow along.

Cheaters: the lowest tier of investment*

At the absolute lowest and least invested rung of the Residency Ladder in this analogy would be the functional equivalent of letting a woman cheat with you while she is already in another pre-existing official relationship.

Be it a boyfriend, engaged, or married, this would be akin to breaking into someone else’s house or walking through an unlocked door and smashing the place with reckless abandon and taking what you want without remorse or consideration for their property.

Obviously, if the house is a shit shack you probably don’t care much – but if you’re breaking into a metaphorical mansion, you might be much more invested or drawn to the appealing aspects of it*, metaphorically speaking. Just know that if you can break into it, so can everyone else with enough craft or dumb luck. (By the way, I don't recommend this in the first place)

At its core, the disrespect is inherently less invested but not always. When you finally get kicked out of the house, the locks get tightened, or the house falls apart you will probably move on because it was never YOURS.

The Brief Stay: the lowest tier of analogous “renting”

The next stage of investment would be staying at a motel or an Airbnb for a night or two which would be the functional equivalent of a brief fuckbuddy or casual hookup . You don’t own it or stay for long, but for a short while you have the ability to have residency and investment on mutual terms.

You have some incentive to keep the place clean enough and not break anything in case you want to stay again at a later date. Regardless, many people don’t care much for the condition they leave the place in because it is a fleeting, circumstantial experience.

If you get banned or never returned you probably wouldn’t care. Maybe it’s a good Airbnb and it inspires you to invest in a place like that in the future for yourself – but for the most part, the level of investment you make is still and should be a weak temporary investment unless it was a truly remarkable experience.

Renting: the temporary investment

Renting in this analogy would be the functional equivalent of a FWB or early non-exclusive dating relationship with a woman. You might have to share the space with other people but it’s not too serious to rent.

You still usually have a responsibility to be a good renter, seeing as it is a primary form of proverbial living arrangement. Even if you are staying elsewhere half the time you would should probably care about some level of maintenance of your primary living space, especially with the costs and efforts it takes to manage them – unless they’re a dump.

Unless the place is a rent-to-own arrangement (early dating with more potential) and you’re not solo-renting the entire place (exclusivity) you’re probably not going to be too invested nor should you be if it is already mutually agree or determined by at least one party that you will never own that house after leasing.

If you’re sharing it with other housemates (non-exclusivity), you would likewise also hate it if they were messing it up for you and you would probably leave if it became too much of a hassle. Like most people renting, you’d probably struggle to leave it if you are otherwise quite comfortable despite the problems or if you have nowhere else to go for the time being.

Depending on how nice the house is you would probably be quite disappointed it comes to an end and think about how much you invested in it – but depending on the arrangement and terms you agreed to in the first place, it was always going to come to an end eventually and you just have to move on when your time expires. Life isn’t always fair, yet it marches on regardless.

Homeowner: serious long-term investment

While the lesser levels of metaphorical residency may be intuitive, a homeowner level of investment is what fucks up most men in a lot of different ways, because it is the functional equivalent of a serious and exclusive relationship and generally long term.

Like buying a house, it is a serious decision. Like a mortgage, it costs more (effort) than renting in most cases and requires substantial investment and maintenance. Unlike renting, in which maintenance is someone else’s responsibility, you have to maintain every aspect of the house inside and out or it starts to deteriorate. Further, every time you fail to maintain it in a timely manner, the eventual repair costs will be far higher than had you managed those problems earlier and everyone starts to notice.

Like most people who buy a home, this is rarely ever an impulse buy and even if it’s just a starter home, you probably – or at least SHOULD HAVE – carefully picked and vetted the house: the home's previous ownership history, its damage history (past and current), its location (environment and influence), how much it really costs, whether it has shit neighbors (her associates), and whether you can actually afford it among other things.

Picking a bad house or a decent house in a horrible location can lead to years of pain and misery and take a serious toll on someone, especially if they have put a lot of time and care into maintaining it. It is also a major hassle to move houses, especially if your home has depreciated in value over time and you have to move on from it at a loss of time, value and wasted effort that you could have avoided early on.

And that’s if you leave the house and sell it voluntarily…

What messes men up about their (relationship) investments

What messes most men up here is when their serious investment goes WRONG.

Imagine having a house you deeply cared about and invested in – sometimes for years – and suddenly you lose it to something you didn’t expect. Maybe a fire blazed through your yard and home, and you didn’t have a backup option (the ability to get other women) or an insurance plan (a solid prenup). Maybe it is the water pipe leak that slowly racks up unrecoverable water damage over time unbeknownst to your knowledge. Maybe the house gets foreclosed (breakup/divorce) because you couldn’t manage it well enough.

Or worse? What if you are the guy whose door was left unlocked or his house gets smashed into and ransacked (cheated on). Even if your house is still standing after that, you will have forever had the sanctity and peace of your home taken from you and you will always know that’s a bad area with a lot of vulnerabilities.

Or leaving town for a week and come back to squatters (affair partners) that you can’t evict (she won't stop) or you rent out part of the house (trusting the wrong friend) who screws you over and he squats in your home. Or having your home foreclosed and seeing a month later happier more successful owners are now in the home you had so many memories in (she upgrades after you).

Resilience

This are the things that really mess guys up, to know the time and care that put into their investment has absolutely gone to hell for factors somewhat or entirely out of their control due to upkeep, tragedy, or malice. The pain of having thrown away months or years of serious investment because they didn’t take the right steps or the right judgements outside of pure happenstance. The pain of knowing you picked the wrong house (woman) after years of devotion.

It can be a lot to start over from a major investment, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible or that you can’t do better the second time around. People are often happier after downsizing their unreasonable expectations and finding investments that suit all of their needs within their means.

Sometimes building your own investment from the ground up is a lot more satisfying than one that has already been heavily pre-owned. Don’t lose hope if you have lost your investments (women), you can start anew and better than previous times you may not have had them work out, just like residency.

Come to your own conclusions about your investments in women and do so accordingly and with clarity, even if you lost everything already. You can always rebuild and move forward with greater happiness than you had lost before.

~Vermillion