Moral Injury in the Patriarchy: How Can This Keep Continuing?

Every day I wake up and ask the same question:

How can this still be continuing?

I walk around, I create, I build — I am brilliant. I sacrificed everything to raise my children, to care for my family, to do the work I was told mattered. And yet here I am, living in a tent.

My husband stole everything I built. Tens of millions of dollars that were mine. He lives in the house I created — the mansion, the car, the life — while I have nothing.

No security.

No protection.

No home.

No car.

And the worst part?

No one cares.

Not institutions. Not authorities. Not platforms. Not even the people who are supposed to notice.

It is agony. Absolute agony. I watch people live their “normal” lives while this atrocity happens to me — and to countless other mothers.

And it just continues.

Every day.

Marriage was not what society promised. It was not what my parents’ marriage showed me.

Being married to Ben was not kindness, not partnership, not care. He mostly ignored me. He never wanted to touch me. I don’t think he ever tried to get to know me. He just wanted me to do what he wanted. That’s it.

We were in marriage therapy for three years — and still, he didn’t bother. He simply didn’t care.

When divorce came up, he said things like, “Who’s going to want you? You’re fat now with two kids.”

It didn’t matter who wanted me. By that point, I didn’t want a relationship with a man at all.

What I understand now — viscerally — is why marriage is so dangerous in the world we live in.

Why it is a structural trap.

Living with someone who doesn’t care about you, who is embarrassed when you speak, who resents your presence in community, who hates what you love, who never touches you, and who can steal your entire life without consequence — why would anyone submit themselves to that?

Women in my generation — Gen X and Millennials — were lied to. We were told the best thing we could do was devote ourselves to our families, our children, our husbands, and that we would be protected by 50–50 marriage laws.

Those laws were fraud.

They never protected me. And they never protected countless other women.

I was lured into marriage by the promise of legal partnership. When disaster struck, the protections never came. This has permanently destroyed my belief in law, in order, and in justice — and most of all, in love.

I don’t believe in love anymore.

I am living in a tent in a stranger’s backyard. No running water. No cooking. Nothing.

I recently saw a TikTok where men mocked women in their 40s and 50s for warning younger women not to marry. Hundreds — maybe thousands — of us responded.

Because we’re on the other side, desperately trying to save their lives.

Marriage, as it currently exists, is not good for women. Marriage and children, under this system, are dangerous. We are trying to make sure the message gets out:

Do not fall for this.

This is moral injury. It is not bitterness or sadness. It is the experience of witnessing a clear, devastating wrong continue indefinitely while the world behaves as if it’s nothing — when it is everything.

I am discarded. My life is invisible. My value, my creativity, my sacrifice, my children, my love — none of it mattered.

The system protects the predator. It protects the man who stole everything. And it leaves women to suffer.

This is structural.

Women in their 40s and 50s are waking up to what younger women are beginning to see: we could not afford to have children under this system. Not financially. Not legally. Not socially.

The cost is astronomical. The protection is zero. And when disaster strikes, the loss lands squarely on our shoulders.

I loved my children. I adored them. They were my everything.

But love is not enough.

The math is brutal. The system is brutal. Life under patriarchy is a woman‑killing machine.

I know I am valuable — even if no one else seems to.

Motherhood, under patriarchy, is high‑risk, high‑demand, low‑protection, and zero‑reward. It is all sunk cost. One life spent in service. Your own dreams permanently deferred.

I had so many dreams. I thought that once my kids were older, I would finally be able to fly on my own terms. And for a brief moment, I did. It was exhilarating. Alive. Beautiful.

And then I was shot down.

Not metaphorically.

Structurally.

Legally.

Financially.

Spiritually.

Reputationally.

Criminally.

Physically and sexually tortured.

Enslaved.

Erased.

Completely. Utterly. Destroyed.

When law, institutions, and culture fail, women are left exposed — and the world looks away.

And the question that obsesses me — the question that obsesses every woman who sees this — is why.

Why is perpetuating this atrocity how men are choosing to live their one life?

That question has consumed me. I’ve written hundreds of essays. Several books. Trying to understand this madness.

This is why marriage is collapsing.

This is why birth rates are plummeting.

Not because women don’t love — but because now we see the asymmetry. We see the risk. We see the cost. We see the hidden violence. We see how disposable we are to those we sacrificed for.

It is insane.

We say that over and over, everywhere, every day — because it is insane.

But we have to see it, because we live it.

We have to make rational, heartbreaking choices. And we have to teach our daughters how to do the same.

Marriage is over. Women having children with men is over. Women having anything to do with men is over. Because we are rational. That’s why. This is the consequences of men’s actions. That’s why.

This new reality will play out enormously in the coming decades.

If you think men are lonely now, just wait. All women need is a little bit of sperm to build our families, and there’s plenty of that around.

So I’ll say it again:

How can this keep continuing?

How can it be so obvious — and yet no one cares?

That question lives in my bones — in my waking, my sleeping, my breathing.

I crawl off the broken couch I sleep on and into my freezing tent. Me — who built three houses. Me.

How can this be happening?

Am I going to die here? In this tent? Will the owner eventually kick me off the property? Then where do I go? Will I die of exposure, alone, after everything I gave?

Nothing ever came back.

The world walks around pretending normalcy. Pretending fairness. Pretending everything is fine.

But it isn’t.

And it never was.