Also, understanding that marriage is nothing to do with the government is also valuable, you can avoid marriage licences rather than getting tied into the system like most of us are.
Yeah, I actually got to that point
before understanding PM. After the SCOTUS legalized homosexual unions in Obergefell, I got really disillusioned (maybe even mad?) and started questioning the participation of the state in marriage. My pastor did a series on marriage shortly after Obergefell, and he still supports getting a state license, to avoid sinful casual hookups (based on marriage being a covenant -- yes I've seen some of the threads here about that...). I realize that this is a false dichotomy (between state marriage and casual hookups), since the state's covenant is not Godly, and is so dissoluble as to barely even be a covenant in the first place. I haven't spoken with him about this yet, but I'm sure it would be an easier sell than PM.
what prompted you to study it out???
This might get a bit long... I certainly wasn't looking for it when I started. (I guess the TL;DR answer is: indirectly, as a result of a bad date)
As background: growing up I'd never really been interested at all in marriage or dating, though I figured I'd eventually get around to it some day. I was homeschooled through high school (for which I'm very thankful), was too shy and clueless to show any interest towards anyone (or even to know how, if I'd wanted to), and during college I lived at home, and was singly-focused on grades, followed by career (I'm a software engineer). Sometime after 30, I decided if I were to ever start a family, it was probably getting close to being sorta late. So I figured "How hard could it be? Everyone does this." I signed up for a few online dating sites, put up a profile, started looking around, and hoped someone would take the initiative to contact me first, which of course didn't happen. I actually did reach out to one girl, almost a year ago now, and after some emails, we dated 3 times -- which are so far the only times I've ever been on a date. I thought she seemed extremely compatible: we were both homeschooled, had similar personalities, and both liked classical music (our first date was at the symphony). But after the third date (which I thought I was being kind, by letting her choose) she said she didn't feel a connection, and broke up. That's when I really started to realize just how lacking I was in knowledge of relationships.
It seems like sexuality and gender roles -- masculinity and femininity -- are the kind of things that, when they do come up in Christian circles, usually get talked about very generically and hypothetically, through much circumlocution, and even a layer of shame. Or maybe everyone just assumes you know what they mean already. But, while I knew the standard Bible passages, I knew I had a huge hole in my knowledge that had to be patched. And I had an intuitive sense that if traditional popular Christian teachings alone could patch it, I would not have had the hole to begin with. It felt like there were pieces missing. I've never been one to shy away from ideas just because they aren't the mainstream or traditional view, so I started researching online. Eventually I came across terms like "manosphere" and "redpill" and "MRA"; some of it from a Christian perspective, but most of it not. Heavy doses of discernment were needed, but even in the non-Christian sites, though clearly tainted by sinful desires, and only giving a partial view, there were some observations of reality where I could recognize some kernel of principles I knew from the Bible, and yet, which went against cultural norms. This might sound bad, but in a way, reading about how these principles played out away from a Christian facade actually made them seem all the more real. But there were also a handful of Christian sites that were explicitly making these kinds of connections.
As an example: one of the fundamental observations on redpill sites is that women are frequently (often subconsciously) giving "fitness tests" to men to evaluate their confidence/leadership/independence. Once I became aware of that concept (and after the disbelief, anger, and confusion faded), it was plain to see that this was a practical and natural result of Genesis, where the woman's desire is for a man "to rule over her" -- a passage that had never really made sense to me before, and honestly, seemed a bit... sexist, I guess. Comparing that to my own brief experience, I realized that on one of our dates, I had somehow let her talk me out of paying a tip at a buffet where I
knew from past experience that a tip was expected, and I had barely even let it phase me. That memory still haunts me.
At any rate, it was a bitter pill, but I gradually came to realize that I had somehow
subconsciously bought into the idea that men and women were essentially the same, at least mentally. This was subtly undermining the Biblical teaching on the topic by making the Bible seem unfair, and I hadn't even realized it. Once I started to consciously embrace and internalize the idea that God deliberately designed us differently, everything really seemed to start clicking.
That's a long and roundabout way to get to the point. Somewhere along the way, one of the earlier Christian redpill sites I read (even before I had learned that term) happened to make the statement, tangentially, that God created man with a capacity for polygyny. I simultaneously knew that this statement had to be wrong because it went against the obvious fact that polygamy was wrong, and knew that it had to be right because I was vaguely aware of the law of Levirate marriage. As you can see, this cognitive dissonance was only one of many that was underlying and driving my research. But it was a concept that I couldn't shake, and kept coming back to throughout the year, a little deeper each time. In the full context of things, it didn't even seem all that crazy.
Most of us are surprised we ended up here...you're not alone.
let me say that I too had to develop my masculine and confidence metrics over time. But don't fear, there is a woman (women) out there for you if God wills. But don't get too hung up in some of these sites proclaiming to promote "masculinity". I realize wake up calls like these are needed (especially in the body of Christ) because the radical feminists have turned every male attribute into assaults on women...even in the Church. Even in very fundamental churches I've known, "husbands, love your wives" gets entire sermons, while "wives submit" gets a few passing remarks in apologetic, explanatory terms.