Seriously, what do you want in life? Where do you want to go?

I hope this thread here is fine, as it concerns me personally on the one hand, but on the other hand it probably concerns everyone here in the forum too.

What do you want in life? What path in life do you want to take? When I was in my twenties, I hardly ever thought about it, but now at 33 I do all the time. Especially things like, should I settle down with a girl and then start a family at some point are some of the most important decisions in life for everyone.
Perhaps I'm taking too one-sided a view. But at the moment I think there are only three options for men who have the opportunity to do so:

1. Settle down and start a family
2. Settle down and no children (some friends of mine think this way)
3. Player lifestyle, travel the world, you know what I mean
+ have a great life beyond that!

Especially with the third one, I think to myself "What are you going to do when you're 50, 60, 70?" If you consider the first and second options: How much time do you think a man has to settle down with a suitable woman?

I would just like to hear from you where you see yourselves? It doesn't just have to be about women in general. It would be particularly interesting to hear from a few over 30 men, I think this is a tipping point in life.

I'm still pretty young so I don't know the full answer to this.

What I do know is, I won't do game/approaching forever. I'll get good enough, have some casual sex and fun, and eventually turn one of my plates into a long term gf. I don't intend to live that player lifestyle forever. I eventually want a girlfriend. Children, I'm not sure about.

With regards to other things in life, I want to build a business. But for now I've put most of my focus into my sex life because once that's out of the way I can spend more time focusing on other things.

Interesting, I just had this discussion with my men's group last week. All of us are around the 30yo mark and I had the opportunity to spend some time with @Zug previously who is 40, which had me thinking about my 40's.

We have 5 guys in our men's group right now. All of them gave pretty similar answers: monogamous or semi-monogamous relationship, have kids, have a house or piece of land, be well of in their careers/business. No surprise as this is the standard template.

Then it came time for me to answer. I've already had the high status career, owned a home, had rental income, had a marriage, tried out businesses, and stopped short of having children. Been there, done that, don't want it.

What I find funny is you slotted the options into seemingly black or white buckets that people usually do. Instead, you have to do the hard work of answering what you want in life, even if the "bucket" does not exist.

So what do I want?

- Poly; 2-3 LTR's with the freedom for the occasional ONS when the tension is there with a girl I meet, possibly having one of those LTR's be live in, but most likely not.
- No kids
- Own a piece of land in a sunny state, build a tiny home, and still have the camper van
- Pursuing my PhD and building my non-profit
- Being active in my community, volunteering and participating in politics
- Being active and well known in the kink scene of that area

What will I do when I'm older? Well considering I still have a great relationship with my ex-wife now, I think I'll still have great relationships with past partners or those 2-3 LTR's. I'm not exactly built for monogamy but I'm not exactly built for being a player forever either. So I think I could build really solid LTR's with 2-3 girls if I decide to actually plant my feet somewhere. My van travels started as wandering; now they are for finding where I want to plant my feet and testing out cities.

I'm abnormal. I know that.

But don't shortchange yourself because you think you have to do it some way. Don't be scared to make your own templates for life. It can be hard but remember, nobody has life figured out. We're all just doing our best to figure it out as we go.

I'm 30 and find myself in the same place.

To answer your question I think a man can settle whenever he pleases. However, I'd personally like to have kids anywhere between 40 and 45 yo. This is actually quite late even by western societies standards, but what matters imo is that you're still full of energy when your kids grow up so you can play and travel with them. If I do that, I'd be in my sixties when they're in their twenties. I expect to be still in good health, especially with medical improvements we could have by then.

As for why I'm thinking that way : In my twenties I was still learning and building my character. I wasn't having much sex, and oftentimes I was fucking girls I could, not girls I wanted (thankfully with some exceptions). I've been way more successful in the past couple of years, and I feel like a new life has just started for me as I got more confident, finally got to know myself more, improved physically and mentally. I think it would be a shame to settle right when this new life kicks in. Besides there is so much I want to do before settling. I want to travel the world on my own, start my own business... A lot of projects that would all be much more complicated with a partner, and I don't want to deal with compromises just yet.

So who knows, maybe in 5 years from now I'm tired of that lifestyle and change my mind, but this is how I see it now. Just my 2 cents, but I know everyone's journey is different so in the end of the day try to follow your gut and feel what's right for you now. Don't settle because of peer pressure or society standards, but don't feel like you have to do all those other things you mentioned just because it sounds cool or because it's trendy on social media.

• Increase total world utility to the greatest amount possible. Do as much good as I can while I'm alive and give away every cent to effective charities before/when I die.
• Master every skill I can.
• Give back what I've learned.
• Live in community. This will likely involve starting a commune with 20-200 of my close friends where we can govern ourselves outside of the confides of rapidly deteriorating modern society due to advancing technology.

Never been in a relationship and don't plan on starting anytime soon. This also likely means I won't have children of my own.

become this guy who has 4 wives (3 of whom he lives with), 3 gfs, and 2 kids (that he is the father of, also pretty sure they'll be having even more kids). all in basically total transparency.

(and they are all looking for more wives!)

So having recently turned 27 I've been thinking about this quite a bit and my life thus far up to this point, there are many details regarding my life thus far on my progress log, perhaps too much,, anyway, first things first, I want to do all the things most of my peers got to do already through their 20s that I haven't done yet, raves, concerts, solo travel, backpacking, hostels etc.

I want to build up a sex life, ideally with young women in the 18-25 range, if some of those women are hot and outside that range that's fine too. I think more than that though, I just want to experience the freedom and independence that comes for people during this time in my life, your 20s is where you try all sorts of things and find out who you are, I haven't really been able to do that or find a crowd that works for me, it feels like I've just been silo'ed off from normal people my age my entire life more or less, like there's all these fun things going on but I don't know where they are, how to get invited, or even how to find out about them or meet and befriend the kinds of people who go to these kinds of events and I want to turn it around. If that means I spend some time in my early 30s behaving like a 21 year old, so be it.

I do think though I will want to try and shift towards LTRs conventional or unconventional once I have a better idea of what works for me with an aim to be married by the age of 40 to a hot early 20s gal.

To summarize this, I want to prove to myself more than anyone that I can build for myself a truly enviable life/lifestyle and settle down with an amazing partner and build an awesome family and make sure my hypothetical future kids have a better childhood and youth than mine was.

Self Actualisation. 3 core areas:

(1) Human Connection & Happiness: Create a healthy, happy, well-functioning family unit, with a monogomous partner, and raise healthy, self-actualised humans who add to the world. Live a life that supports the overall competence and development of the human animal, by advocating for personal responsibility, self-improvement, and development of competence and ability to have impact within our circle of influence.

(2) Health & Healing: To raise myself to the highest level of physical, emotional, and spiritual health and integrity possible to attain in this lifetime.

(3) Financial Abundance: Live a life of service, and solve problems at their root, to empower others to achieve their earthly mission by embodying performance principles and applying my ideas across biological base building, systems, and inner world development. Contribute joyful productivity to the world.

In sum:

-Get jacked and raise SMV
-Improve myself and take massive action in social skills and game, find a quality partner
-Develop a deep and positive relationship, that leads into child rearing
-Build an incredible business, have a team, dream big, and have a large impact
-Make a contribution to the art of human self improvement & successful goal achievement through joyful performance and consistency

This will be enough to take me around the world, become better, and raise as many other humans up as I personally can along the way.

-MAC

I want $10 million. I can figure other shit out after that.

Vamos said:

What do you want in life?

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I recently totally switched everything in my life in this regard - will post about it eventualy but my life is changing pretty quickly currently.

#1 is Freedom

Everything else comes out of that.
3 categories that I find interesting and complex enough to devote my life to them are:
1 Social - girls - friends - fam.
2 Making money/Work
3 Working out - living healthy lifestyle

Learning game/Social stuff =
Freedom to :
choose my partner and have a big pool to pick from. Social freedom also.
not rely on opinions of others that are not influecing my life/not making it better.
to know how to operate in relationship and create healthy enviroment within it - for my kids.

Making money/Work/Doing stuff on my own eventually =
Freedom to:
work on stuff I choose to work on.
help others with my skills/money.
scale things as much as I want.
talk to people I want to talk to.
stay at places I want to stay.
work as hard as I want on stuff without being limited/unmotivated by hard paycheck limit.
say/do whatever I want without fearing repercussion from my employers.

Having enough money is basically about having freedom to say fuck you to things you dont want to do. And say yes to things that make sense to you at that moment.

Working out/being healthy =
Freedom to:
stay healthy for as long as possible so I am not limited by my own body.
be mentally sharp so I can perform tasks that are important for me.
perform physical stuff when needed - lifting heavy things, running.

Important note is that those 3 categories are tied together and are influencing each other in a positive way.
Also all of those categories fall under Inifite Games - the point of those games is to keep playing them forever and enjoy the process.
Same as listening to music. You are enjoying the song all the way through. Not the fact that you arrived at the end and the song ended.

colgate / bulldog said:

become this guy who has 4 wives (3 of whom he lives with), 3 gfs, and 2 kids (that he is the father of, also pretty sure they'll be having even more kids). all in basically total transparency.

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This idea is mostly nonsense. It just doesn't work for so many reasons that aren't sexy at all. There's virtually no place you want to live where you can make this happen. Even then, you can't be part of polite society, and so many mandatory social services and institutions cannot integrate you. You can't take your multiple wives to a company dinner, or flawlessly get them insurance and be proper beneficiaries. The legal status of the wives and kids after the first is always in limbo. Hell, you can't even get family passes to Disneyworld and the like to work.

Its not literally impossible to do, but if you go this route, you're semi-permanently cutting yourself off from polite society and will be living in a heavy level of isolation. There are some upsides to that too, but being part of any community that will accept you that you actually want to join probably isn't one of them. Furthermore, you're going to need to be a deca/centi millionaire for this to be viable without a host of financial issues.

I'm saying this as someone who seriously considered it. I *think* you could probably raise kids with multiple wives without damaging the kids if the social situation was stable, but thats a BIG LIFT. Even if you accomplish that though, there are just so many pitfalls with live in poly situations in regards to social roles and status for the women that this only works with the perfect candidates and no outside problems of any kind, and even then its unlikely.

If I was in my early 30s I might try this for the adventure, but I just don't think its viable.

Might be hard to phrase this as what I want instead of what I dont want so bear with me

I'm planning to keep myself "single" with several casual partners. I'm voluntarily sterile and looking for childfree women. I want to still have a living space all to myself, a sanctuary where I can go home after work and be human. After that I want to grow my income and transition to self employment so I can decide who I want in my life and make purchases without stressing about getting the most bang for my buck. Also I want to race cars at some point but that's physically demanding so I'll have to find a way to pay for that while I'm still somewhat young. But priority number 1 has to be dating because I lost focus in every other area the last time I took a break from it. No idea what to expect fomr dating when I"m older but marriage is out of the question.

colgate / bulldog said:

become this guy who has 4 wives (3 of whom he lives with), 3 gfs, and 2 kids (that he is the father of, also pretty sure they'll be having even more kids). all in basically total transparency.

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Zug said:

This idea is mostly nonsense.

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I see that exactly like you @Zug
First of all, it's not realistic on a human level, or socially anyway. Even in Muslim countries (the Koran allows four wives) this is the absolute exception. And honestly, who wants all the stress? Who has time for something like that with a full-time job and a reasonably active life? Besides, hardly any really desirable woman will take part in it, that's an absolute illusion.

phoenix999 said:

I'm planning to keep myself "single" with several casual partners. I'm voluntarily sterile and looking for childfree women.

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Absolutely respectable decision! Everything has advantages and disadvantages in life. Do you think you'll be happy with your decision not to get kids when you're 50+? It can be, but it doesn't have to be.

I've known for 20 years that I don't want kids and I'm older than my parents were when they had me. But when I look 50+ I probably won't be happy at all (every previous partner I had cared how I looked to some extent, even if I didn't care what they looked like.) Also, most parents look either miserable or checked out, I'm not sure why anyone would want to end up like them without being coerced into it.

phoenix999 said:

I've known for 20 years that I don't want kids and I'm older than my parents were when they had me. But when I look 50+ I probably won't be happy at all (every previous partner I had cared how I looked to some extent, even if I didn't care what they looked like.) Also, most parents look either miserable or checked out, I'm not sure why anyone would want to end up like them without being coerced into it.

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There are people/couples who are unhappy with children and those who are happy without children, none of which guarantees a great life.
But people definitely need a different purpose in life if they decide against family.

phoenix999 said:

I've known for 20 years that I don't want kids and I'm older than my parents were when they had me. But when I look 50+ I probably won't be happy at all (every previous partner I had cared how I looked to some extent, even if I didn't care what they looked like.) Also, most parents look either miserable or checked out, I'm not sure why anyone would want to end up like them without being coerced into it.

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I straight up agree with virtually all of the reasons people use to argue against children and/or monogamy. They're all almost entirely legitimate. The thing no one talks about is all the alternatives are worse. While I am an optimist, people need to embrace some fucking pessimism when offered untested solutions. All of our social institutions were just experiments that happened to work and stood the test of time. Being an old playboy or an old whore is AWFUL. Its almost as bad as being an old incel.

Traveling and eating new food is fun, but its not a life purpose. Im all for both, but they provide minimal meaning to life. We are designed to struggle and suffer and push against something that is hard to push. When we live lives of pure hedonism we slowly, and then rapidly destroy ourselves in ways that are very hard to recover from.

For all the misery, work, suffering, and burden children are, they provide meaning and purpose. That's a GOOD FUCKING TRADE. You can find meaning and purpose elsewhere, its not impossible, but it is INCREDIBLY difficult thing to find. IMO, you do not get to "decide" what your meaning and purpose are. They pick you, and you can either ignore their call, or submit to them, but you don't get to dominate your mind into believing trivial shit is providing you meaning and purpose.

Zug said:

Traveling and eating new food is fun, but its not a life purpose. Im all for both, but they provide minimal meaning to life. We are designed to struggle and suffer and push against something that is hard to push. When we live lives of pure hedonism we slowly, and then rapidly destroy ourselves in ways that are very hard to recover from.

For all the misery, work, suffering, and burden children are, they provide meaning and purpose. That's a GOOD FUCKING TRADE. You can find meaning and purpose elsewhere, its not impossible, but it is INCREDIBLY difficult thing to find.

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As always, wise words.
We should not forget, that we can also lead a very interesting life a wife and 2 children. It should just be a woman with interests and not a soulless and boring girl (of which there are sadly many).

A couple who wants a great life with adventures AND has the necessary financial base (+ doesn't in the most expensive region) can also have a lot of fun with a small family, travelling and everything. If there is also family support, aka the kids can spend 2 weeks with their grandparents or siblings of the parents, you have many options.

In the end, there are two key points:

1. Who you commit to and whether this person has any desire for an exciting life

2. Solid finances

One thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is that if most people don't choose to have children, then this whole human experiment will cease to exist.

Almost like it's a responsibility most of us need to take on just to ensure humanity continues existing.

To me it feels so foundational it's almost like it's the meaning of life (or at least it feels like it needs to be the meaning of life for most of us).

Manly Cockfellow said:

One thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is that if most people don't choose to have children, then this whole human experiment will cease to exist.

Almost like it's a responsibility most of us need to take on just to ensure humanity continues existing.

To me it feels so foundational it's almost like it's the meaning of life (or at least it feels like it needs to be the meaning of life for most of us).

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I dont want to take over the entire thread but how many do you have (or are planning to have?)

phoenix999 said:

I dont want to take over the entire thread but how many do you have (or are planning to have?)

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None yet, but plan to start trying in September

And right now we're just focused on having the first one, so can't say how many in total