Some stories, in no particular order

He was my stepson.

I met his mother when he was a teenager.  Since no teenaged male wants to deal with his mother having sex, he and I didn't get along very well.  He'd had a couple of girlfriends before he shipped off to the Marine Corps.  

At some point, I don't remember exactly where in this timeline, he married the cute one.

During my brief presence on Facebook, I would see her posts.  For some reason, he was away at that time.  I think he was out of the Corps by then, so it must have been a job he was on or something.

Anyway, she was posting about how much she missed him.  Such a sweet young lady.  I remember how my heart ached that someone, somewhere (<cough> like this young man's mother) would feel that way about me.

That was the kind of love that my heart desired.  A woman who actually desires you, and wants to be with you!  I had never, ever experienced that, and it was "a hole in my heart," as the line in a song I can't remember said.

Fast forward a decade or two.  My son has stayed in contact with his half-brother, and reports that the kid they had is a spoiled brat, and this cute, sweet woman my stepson married has turned into an SJW bitch.  I think he even used the term "succubus" once.  She had made his life so miserable that he actually moved out of the house for a while.

So much for "true love."

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It was an innocent encounter in a city park that changed my life.  I never saw her again.

I had taken my child to go play in the playground.  She was there for the same reason.  As the kids played, we started talking.

It was a low point in my life, and I must have said something self-deprecating.  I don't remember that part; all I remember is that she began affirming me.  Making me believe that I was worth something; a Good Man.  Something I wasn't getting at home.  

I went home with a renewed self-confidence I hadn't felt in quite a while, the confidence that I could do anything I set my mind to... and realized I had fallen in love with a woman who was not my wife.

I was deeply religious and the feelings that I couldn't deny were tearing me apart:  this was A SIN!  I wasn't allowed to have those feelings!  And yet, my thirst for validation was stronger than my religion.  I wanted her in my life.

Shortly after that, I fell ill with what was probably a bad flu.  My head hurt, my whole body hurt, and I couldn't even move my head without nausea.  It was the worst flu I'd had at that point in my life.

And one day my wife stood over me as I lay on the couch, telling me that I wasn't really sick, I was just lazy and didn't want to work.

I remember turning away from her as I tried to find a position on the pillow for my head that didn't hurt as much as the others.  "When I get well, I'm getting rid of you," I said in my mind.

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We met through a personal ad, probably on Craig's List but I don't remember.  She was a full-on hippie.

I had left the hippie lifestyle decades earlier, but at least I understood her.  But she didn't understand me, and we only lasted for a few months or so.

She had, if I remember correctly, four or five kids, most of them grown up by then, from four different fathers.  I met all of the exes except the last one, and liked + got along with all of them.  Man number 1 was a doctor.  A hippie doctor.  Cool guy and I enjoyed his company.

One day, I asked her the burning question in my mind:  "Why did you ever leave him?"  

Her answer floored me.  "I thought I could do better..."

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She was the Love of my Life.  She was everything I desired, which mostly had to do with sex.  I shan't go into details, this isn't a porn site.  I loved her more than I have ever loved anyone, or ever will love anyone again.  I had finally found The One, and we would be together as long as we both were alive.

I remember one time we were in the mountains (our favorite place in the whole world) and we saw an elderly couple coming out from a trail with bags of huckleberries they had been picking.  "That's us when we're seventy years old," she said.  I believed it.

Some years after the divorce, I was talking with a man I knew, telling some story or other about that relationship.  He said something that my autistic brain had never even considered.

"I would never marry a woman that didn't love me," he said.

Uh, what?  It had never occurred to me that she didn't love me.  

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My marriage was ending, and I was seeking the answer to the question of how I had become attracted to someone who was so obviously wrong for me.  It would be decades before I finally found that answer, but there was a conversation with a newly-single woman who had had three men, all of whom abused her.

That looked like a pattern to me.  Among all of my guy friends + acquaintances, I had never known a man who would do such a thing.  So it's not as if those are the only men out there:  for some reason she was attracted to the type (I found out that answer later too, from the same book I found the other answer).  I said to her, "doesn't it make you wonder about yourself, how you are somehow attracted to those types of men?"

I knew that after three, I would have been asking it.  Hell, I was starting to ask it after only one!

She looked me straight in the eye, shook her head coyly and said, "No."

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I blame the marijuana.

She had been one of the "ugly girls" in high school, so much so that the boys teased her, and teased other boys about her.  Seeing her in a city park in the Big City years later, she still wasn't very good looking. 

But we were from the same little town, we recognized each other, and she had marijuana to sell.  So we talked.  And talked.  Somehow, she ended up at my house, and somehow, we ended up having sex.  Must have been some pretty good marijuana because I wasn't attracted to her in the least.

She left the next morning and I never saw her again.  But something magical happened at work.  I had a different attitude.

I was the kid in the factory.  All the other men, including the boss of course, had many many years on me.  I was lowest on the totem pole.  The one that all the other totems piss on.  But that day, I felt equal to all of them.  Because I had gotten laid the night before!  I remember being gathered with them in a rough circle - I don't remember why, we must have been picking up a heavy piece of equipment or something - and feeling like I was just as much a Man as any of them.  Hell, my dick could almost touch the floor!

That is what sex does for a man.  Women will never understand this.

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I don't remember why we were friends.  I think he was one of my customers when I was in the refrigeration business.  He was also a businessman.  His office was attached to his house.

His wife was not someone you'd give a second look to.  They were middle-aged, had adult kids, and were both overweight, as was I.  But one day, while I was in his office... oh, my gawd.

She came in and started kissing and loving all over him.  She admired him!  Thought he was a king.  Or at least treated him that way.

As I headed out the door to my next call, I realized that I had just seen the luckiest man in the world.  How many women treat their husbands that way, after that many years?  Yeah.  I already knew the answer.

No wonder he was so successful in his profession.

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Another story about my life as a refrigeration man in a small town.  I got along with my competitors.  But there was one who was flat-out incompetent.

One day, I was at the UPS depot in our town waiting for the truck from the Big City to unload.  I didn't want to wait half a day for the driver to get to my door.  One of my competitors was also there, as was the wife of the incompetent competitor.

He and I started talking shop, and he began relating a job that the other man had screwed up.  And started ranting a little bit about the guy.  I pulled him into another room, and said "Do you know that woman who was standing in front of us?  That's his WIFE."

My friend turned nine shades of deep red.

Trying to patch things up a bit, I apologized to her when we were alone.  Her response astounded me:  she was completely defensive of him.  Completely.  The sun and moon rose and set on his shoulders, and he could do no wrong.

The guy did everything wrong.  But she believed in him.  

I learned something about women that day.  The man may have been a total turd - I, for one, had no respect for him - but his wife LOVED him.  

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We were in marriage counseling.  I loved her deeply, and wanted to save that marriage.  The counselor had asked each of us what was annoying us about the other.

"He doesn't listen to me," she stated matter-of-factly.  Okay, typical complaint from women.  But then, out it came:  "And by 'listen,' I mean doing what I want, when I want it."

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Found on Quora:

Why is it hard for women to understand men?

We have a hard time understanding men because we are too self absorbed to get out of our heads where we hold them to our value system and our worldview instead of theirs. Especially where we get confused and detailed with this idea of “toxic masculinity”. A man in naturally predisposed to be more callous and less agreeable than women due to the nature of being the family protector. Men are also genetically predisposed to require some sort of leadership or at least referee and counsel to their family. Men want to feel like they are worthwhile, that they have a meaningful role in the family's path and future, and they need to feel loved, wanted, respected and needed by their family units. Emasculating, denigrating, and humiliating men is so damaging much like it is to women, however men are more likely to not seek out help and counseling and end up resorting to suicide or addiction before seeking help. I recommend stopping and thinking about any man you seek to understand by setting aside your values thoughts and feelings, and with open mind and judgement free heart, try to imagine how and what you would feel if you were in their position. It just might change your relationship with them, I know it will change your relationship with yourself.

Verbatim quote, including the lack of paragraph breaks.

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More later...