MJ calls what happened to her in Zion national park “small ‘T’ trauma”. She knows women have experienced worse from their partners. But she still feels the anger of being left behind on a hike by her now ex. “It brings up stuff in my body that maybe I have not cleared out yet,” she said.
Five years ago, MJ and a new partner – he was not exactly her boyfriend, and the pair were not exclusive – traveled from Los Angeles to Utah for an adventure getaway. MJ, who is 38 and works in PR, was looking forward to exploring Zion’s striking scenery; its vast sandstone canyon and pristine wading trails were on the list. But on the morning of their big hike, MJ was not feeling well. She could not shake the feeling that something was “off”; indeed, MJ would learn on this trip that her partner was seeing other women.
As they made their way up Angel’s Landing, MJ’s partner started walking faster than her. “I could tell it was getting on his nerves that I was slow,” she said. “I was like, ‘Fuck it, just go ahead of me.’” He did without hesitation.
When she caught up at the top of the mountain, they took a picture together. Then her partner hiked down the mountain with a woman he had met on the way up, leaving MJ to finish by herself. They broke up shortly after that trip. (MJ asked to be referred to by her initials for the sake of speaking openly about a past relationship.)
Last month, MJ opened TikTok and heard the phrase “alpine divorce”, a label she now attaches to her experience in Zion.
Some of these comments are absolutely disgusting, many of you guys desperately need to talk to a therapist. If you read a story like this and feel the need to defend your gender identity, you have some deep-seated insecurity which you should take seriously before it starts harming your relationships with others. I am saying this as a man who had deep-seated insecurity which took a heavy toll on my relationships before seeking years of therapy. It’s not as expensive as it sounds, I promise, and it could totally change your life for the better.
what if my therapist helped me identify that it was my unreliable girlfriends who were the problem in the relationship, and not myself, and helped me stop dating people who were seeking to exploit me through emotional manipulation and victim-framing narratives rather than taking accountability for their own choices?
and after that my life improved immensely and my family and other relationships grew?
Two people, can just not be right for eachother. It’s okay to date someone and not have it not work out.
Totally. But that’s not often how people see things when they are emotionally charged or the relationship was fraught from the start. And a lot of people engage in self-fulling prophecies or self-destructive behaviors. Many people only pursue relationships they know are going to fail, for example.
You also can try to break up with someone and have them physically attack you and stalk you for weeks later and they don’t back off until you threaten them with legal/police action. You never know how people are going to react.
I’m really glad to hear that therapy helped you, thank you for sharing that - I hope that helps other men who have similar struggles as you to take the plunge and get the help they need.
On a personal note, though, I just had a quick look at your comments and honestly, it feels like you still have a lot of unresolved issues here that you’d benefit from getting off your chest in a safe environment, so I’d suggest more therapy. I’m sorry that people have hurt you, and that isn’t your fault, but if you continue to let it dominate your life, it will hurt you in ways that you’ll never really understand.
Much love & solidarity.
Right, because you are clearly a therapist and my comments that you find disagreeable clearly mean I have unresolved issues… because if I was ‘healthy’ I’d be in full agreement with you, right? It can’t be there are multiple legitimate viewpoints and people have difference experiences. Nope.
You piss and moan about men, but I doubt you self-reflect enough to ask yourself why it is you have to shame and belittle others if you are such a ‘secure’ individual. Probably because you are still massively insecure and intolerant of anyone who doesn’t share your views on gender and you are projecting your ‘redemption narrative’ onto everyone else.
To me your post reads like someone who is desperately virtue signaling they are ‘one of the good guys!’ I’m sure plenty of your exes would disagree.
And the irony of my experience is that your reply, is ALWAYS the one I get for sharing my experiences. ‘oh no if women hurt you you clearly are forever in need of therapy forever because you can’t ever move on if you mention it’. As it isn’t a massive the issue with men isn’t that they are constantly and endlessly shamed and dehumanized the second they express negative experiences with women. It’s always their fault and their burden to never be publicly expressed.
Apparently I’m only ‘healed’ if I only ever talk about women as as victims of male abuse… never the fact that many women are awful people, because women are just people like men and both men and women are objects and subjects of abusive behaviors.
I’m not shaming or belittling you, I applaud you for seeking out therapy and I encourage you to continue to do so.
Can I ask what made you consider therapy in the first place?
Some of these comments are absolutely disgusting, many of you guys desperately need to talk to a therapist. If you read a story like this and feel the need to defend your gender identity, you have some deep-seated insecurity which you should take seriously before it starts harming your relationships with others
No, you are shaming and belittling men.
And now you are trying to cast aspirtions that my ‘therapy’ is fake and false because it didn’t lead to the same conclusion as yours. Just like the idiots I meet who tell me if I am not in life-long therapy I must be emotionally damaged… which always comes from people who have spent their life in therapy never resolving their own issues. Project, project, project.
Post-edit reply: I’m not saying anything disparaging about your theraputic journey - again I applaud you for doing it, and I encourage you to continue. I think that’s really healthy. But you have to realize, that what you’re doing here, is you are taking something I wrote, which wasn’t aimed at you, personally - that’s a classic sign of an insecure person, right? Again, no shame there, I want to help you become the best version of yourself that you can be.
Nah I’m calling you out on your sexist commentary that men need therapy if they doubt some bullshit rage bait article that is trying to claim all men are plotting to abandon their girlfriends on the tops of mountains, based on one lady’s teary eyed tiktok vid.
The entire thing is absurd and manufactured to illicit outrage based on forced gender generalizations, and lots of folks here and eating it up. All you have to do is make the story a gay couple, or a non-romantic relationship, and the entire thing would collapse.
Do you think it would be as equally as ‘outrageous’ if it was a gay couple?
I know this isn’t really the same, but the article struck a chord with me and the experiences I have with my fiance. She convinced me to buy and play Arc Raiders. (It’s an extraction shooter.) This isn’t the type of game I normally play. I am not good. She made a run for an extraction point, and didn’t wait for me to be in the elevator before pressing the button to extract, leaving me stranded with the enemy everywhere. (She’s run way ahead of me in game before and I’ve taken issue with it and explained I feel abandoned when she runs way ahead without me.) The last time we played, I happened to make it to the elevator before her, and I made a point to say, “are you in the elevator,” before pressing the god damned button.
Obviously, I wasn’t in real danger, but those experiences have made me wary of depending on her.
As you said no danger in your situation but it seems like your fiancee had the same mindset as the hikers (inpatience and disregard for other persons wellbeing).
Lots of people have that mindset. Regardless of the relationship. And lots of hikers have total disdain for anyone who is slower or less experienced than them. I had one hiking date where the woman was pissed off at me that I was not as fatigued as her, because she was more experienced, but I was fitter than she was, and she kept warning and lecturing me about how I better not fall behind her. She also lectured me on my poor gear choices.
Then afterwards she changed her tune about how ‘impressed’ she was that I was as good at hiking as she was. Least to say I stopped seeing her shortly thereafter because of her need to constantly condescend about everything. She was French, so maybe it was just a cultural thing.
This is so fucking sexist.
Hey everyone, women are just as capable of surviving in the mountains as men!
There’s some safety and ethical rules in the mountains. You don’t leave your hiking/climbing partner unless you both agree it’s fine. Gender of this partner doesn’t matter. Guy leaving another guy is equally bad as guy leaving a woman. Women are not inherently more prone to dying in the mountains than men. The fact that everyone treats this as someone abandoning a helpless person is infuriating. It’s shitty behavior but it would be equally shitty if this guy left his male friend or if she left him. It’s 2026, this is fairly progressive space and still everyone looks at with “women need protecting” mindset. It’s mind boggling.
When I see women in the mountains I don’t think to myself “oh my god, they are here without supervision? hope they will be fine!”. Am I the only one?
The difference being, it’s your fucking partner, and it’s guys doing it. No sexism here, just men being shitty partners. Shame them and move on instead of deflecting.
Yes, shitty men are shitty partners. Why is being shitty in the mountains different than being shitty anywhere else? All this is assuming that when a couple goes into the mountains men is responsible for women. Which is sexist. Both are adults, both can take care of themselves.
because cultural sexism. that’s why. innocent women must be protected from evil horrible men at all costs!
i bet if this story was about a gay couple you’d have a wildly different set of comments on here. and it would also be different about a lesbian couple.
but since it’s hetereosexual you have everyone projecting their sexism and relationship violence fears and generalizing it into some epidemic.
shitty people are shitty to each other, no matter the relationship. it has little to do with the sex of the people involved.
the truth of the story is probably far more complex and nuanced than is being told, but that would get in the way of the simplified narrative of an innocent woman being abused and neglected by a horrible man, onto which people can morally condemn and project how they’d never do that.
You’re overlooking that men tend to be attracted to this sort of activity more and may have greater experience. When they invite their inexperienced girlfriend, they have a duty of care towards them. You’re right, sex doesn’t matter and this could be reversed, but you need to ask yourself where the statistic lie.
This is not sexist. You’ve found the wrong conclusion.
Yes but the story of MJ doesn’t talk about experience. It’s just talks about gender.
because it’s rage bait. It’s not about hiking, it’s about men being awful to women and fanning the flames of gender war rage.
Yes, it is ethically wrong to leave anyone behind in the wilderness.
What has surfaced in the news more often recently is men doing this to women. Was that not clear from the article?
Popularity in the news doesn’t equate to reality, any more than everyone saying “5 emails” makes it correct to do so. It just means it’s popular in the news because it sells more ad time.
Popularity in the news doesn’t equate to reality
That’s probably true.
But it makes it weird when a story about women being effectively abandoned in the wilderness elicits responses from (I’m guessing) men who feel targeted without any connection to these events.
It’s bait.
It’s a story designed to maximize rage engagement… and create gender war rage. and it is incredibly successful. look at the comments in this thread and how many of them are people flaming about how men are evil.
and now dumb people will read this and think there is some CRISIS of all men abandoning women malaciously and broadcast it all over social media or add ‘their stories’ to try and capitalize on the trendiness of it.
and around it goes, until next week everyone forgets about it and moves on to the next rage-bait story.
if you do wilderness first aid training, they do in fact tell you to leave people behind, especially in circumstances where it would get them aid faster or in which you staying would further hasten their demise.
but that has no bearing on this story.
I’m just gonna say it, if you want to break up with your girlfriend don’t be a dick about it.
“Don’t go on a hike with someone you don’t trust.” All you little boys in here victim blaming need to be checked.
Got back into the dating world recently and was pretty surprised to learn that respectfully communicating your feelings about things afterwards is apparently rare. People need to grow up.
Ever since social media took over, dating and relationship rates have plummeted.
the pair were not exclusive
…
MJ would learn on this trip that her partner was seeing other women
…isn’t that was “not exclusive” means?
yes, but people are emotional and they don’t abide by their own terms
every casual relationship i ever had was never actually casual. it was just full on monogamy with a ‘get out of jail if someone better comes along’ card built in.
Valid, but far from universal. Poly people do exist.
poly people have rules.
Women need to stop putting their faith in shitty men.
shitty men are more attractive than not shitty men, because shitty men are willing to do whatever it takes to get the girl, and then dump her on a mountain top.
shitty men are also really good at hiding how shitty they are, until they stop hiding it… and what a more perfect place to stop hiding it, than in the middle of no where with few witnesses.
so are shitty women.
most shitty people aren’t going to be shitty in public, they wait until you are in a vulnerable moment.
most shitty people aren’t going to be shitty in public, they wait until you are in a vulnerable moment.
Yeah they do. Ive known abuse from a few different, expierences, and it is always covert abuse. Kind people in front of others, mean/cruel behind closed doors. That how it can go on for so long and people can get trapped in these kinds of relationships. Sucks.
Yes, and it’s how you get gaslit. Because everyone else thinks they are so wonderful, so if you think there is an issue, it must be you that is problematic one…
people focus way way too much on superficial bullshit. I had a few friends who fell into that trap and had super abusive partners, and I myself fell into it, thankfully not as badly though. And the abusers frame the entire think as your fault. If only you’d listen to them and make them happy, then they wouldn’t’ have to hit you…
Astounding that there are men in here defending these dickbags left right and centre. And presumably other men just like yep good point bro, technically correct. Please dump me and run off a fucking cliff you spineless turdweasels
Lemmy is better than Reddit but there are still terrible trolls and awful people here.
I’m willing to accept that it’s better in ways not relevant to this discussion, but tbh the ubiquitous casual misogyny is far more inescapable here imo
yes, I feel like Lemmy has a misogyny problem :-(
being critical of a news article isn’t misogyny…
Nothing is behind it. It’s another dramatized thing that people are using for social media clout to score points, and people lap it up. This is manufactured rage bait.
We are also only getting one side of the story. I know for a fact a few of my breakups where the other party completely warped the story to make me into a villain. I had one incident where I was teaching my gf to snowboard and she broke her wrist on the bunny slope, a super common injury. I spent all day with her in the hospital etc. We broke up 6 months later and started telling people I had shoved her to the ground and broke her wrist on purpose because I was jealous of her success as a pianist or something and was trying to sabotage her life . It was insane and her story got worse as time went on post-breakup.
90% of these are probably just unhappy people on a bad day who are re-writing the story into some elaborate narrative of evil and abuse because they know it will do well on social media. And a lot of tiktok/social media people are very unhappy people. And unhappy people do a lot of lying and exaggerating for attention. well-adjusted people aren’t making teary faced videos on tiktok about their breakups.
One of the main drivers behind this story (i should say, i think one of the main drivers) is the more recent one where a man abandoned his girlfriend in the austrian alps at night and left her for dead, and it turned out he’d (allegedly) performed that same stunt before with a different ex girlfriend (who survived).
I’m sure your personal situation might be “he said she said,” but some of these people are comparably wild
People do stupid shit all the time. I live near the White Mountains where there are multiple fatalities a year now due to idiots going climbing unprepared, many of whom claim to be experienced.
It’s one thing for people to die hiking due to negligence or stupidity, it’s another to claim ‘SHOCKING NEW TREND: MEN ARE ABANDONING WOMEN ON HIKING CLIMBS TO DUMP THEM’
Do you have proof of any of that or is it simply your opinion?
i have as much proof as the woman in the article has about her story.
which is none at all. it’s all hearsay. social media is all hearsay. this article is about social media stories.
there is no burden of proof here. anymore than there was for dudes going on about spermjacking women 10 years ago. I remember that viral panic.
