I can attest that the loneliest I have ever been was in a 3000 square foot house with an entitled woman that had no ambition and her son who didn’t fall far from the tree. I lived in 50 square feet; they got the rest. It’s no wonder I became interested in tiny house living.

Phoenix is geographically a neighbor to Sonora Mexico, specifically Puerto Penasco, (Rocky Point). Many Arizonans purchase property here in the form of condos, others pull an RV to set up full or part time residence. After my sojourn through Baja I purchased a place as a base for both Arizona and Mexico. Retirement here wasn’t really part of the plan but fell into place eventually.

Being an expat can be exhilarating especially in a place where the first question you’re asked is, is it dangerous? New smells, sites, food, culture, customs. I have to confess I love my life, but it’s taken some adjusting. I had and still have to get rid of damaging things I’ve drug around for a lifetime.

Oddly there is an American Legion here. I have always steered clear in the US because as a private club, it was exempt from smoking restrictions. Old pseudo war heroes like to smoke a lot and drink cheap beer a lot. On any given day you can find the same guy on the same bar stool three sheets to the wind. Mexico has some pretty restrictive smoking policies, but not on being a stupid drunk.

“Sunrise, sunset. Sunrise, sunset. Swiftly flow the days”. (Fiddler on the roof).

My best laid plans were to retire and travel, but things like coronavirus got in the way. I’ve spent too much time watching YouTube vids of old simps in the Philippines, a place (I spent while in the NAVY) extolling the virtues of 30- and 40-year age gap relationships. YouTube becomes a possible business venture for them bringing added revenue to a social security check. There is no shortage of men looking for a way out of their situations not to mention lure of child brides and girlfriends. Ahh…if only you could leave your borderline personality disorder behind.

In a later piece I’ve been working on I’ll explore the dynamic of western men who are the low hanging fruit (deltas) searching out even lower hanging fruit by way of socially/financially challenged women with an average IQ of 81. Jordan Peterson, Glenn Loury and others have a clear perspective on the economic/social way out from the burden of a low IQ. There isn’t one. There is a strong reference to the book, The Bell Curve.

The vids have three themes. Old fools getting scammed by online girlfriend, old fools getting rid of everything in the US and moving to the Philippines and old fools moving back to their homes after a few years, many much poorer financially if that’s even possible and emotionally crushed.

Many of the videos discuss monthly budgets and it seems clear inflation is putting a damper on their expat experience particularly when they take on girls, girls’ kids, girls’ families and the neighborhood because western men are nothing more than ATMs there. A gentleman I will reference in a minute, at 70, has taken on a much younger woman and her child. He has discussed in videos that he has no expat insurance and decided to drop Medicare part B likely because he needs the extra $175.00 to send her bastard child to private school. Remember it is unlikely for a person to advance past the social/economic position they were born into or in other words, DNA is like water. It will find the lowest point. Nothing that simp Mike is going to do will change the future for his partner’s kid. That destiny was created by the merging of the parents DNA.

As a side note, one of the simps in a video discusses how he gave his online girlfriend he found on a dating site money simply because she treated him nice. No doubt there are Pavlovian responses from both. From my perspective Western men are in trouble. Read Men on Strike to see what the future holds.

What I have found interesting is how quickly a man’s house becomes our house. Our money. Our YouTube channel. Our business. The identity of the man has now disappeared. Many times, the girl changes, but the dynamic quickly returns with the new partner.

So why are men leaving what they earlier found to be paradise? Think of it like Amazon or anything addictive really, where dopamine reins. Open the app, ohhh exciting. Shop, ohhhh exciting. Purchase ahhhh. Anticipate delivery mmmm, Get the much-cherished item and very quickly all the positive emotions are gone, but not your need for dopamine so you do it again.

Laura Santos PhD discusses hedonic adaption in her Yale course, The Science of Well Being. Essentially a person will return to their baseline after good or bad events. The mind has a way of fooling us with miswanting that things have more impact than they really do.

It was calculated that the excitement of a romantic relationship reaches its peak in about two years, then starts to head back to base where you started from. If you were depressed and sick or lonely, you’re likely to head back to that place. Throw in the added afore mentioned dynamic of a child bride, her offspring and all the financial commitments you’ve made in a quest for miswanting happiness, your baseline is now much lower.

The same is true for the expat experience. After a point it becomes routine, no longer exciting. There is a suggestion that people who change things up are happier longer. What now? Go on a trip. Read a book. Create art. Listen to a podcast. Create a podcast. Learn how to edit videos. Do anything that helps you become the best version of yourself that you can be and you might find that is all you need.

Listen to understanding the challenge_1.wav by Crazy Old Gringo on #SoundCloud
https://on.soundcloud.com/75QDT