I’m Loser Guy, a male member who got some bad news from one of my backup girls and went into a bit of a panic, wondering, “Should I just focus on my ace girl after all?” and “Or should I keep all four of my Four Emperors?”
Paper Airplane, your heartfelt writing is really something.
It brought the melody of AKB48’s classic “365 Nichi no Kamihikōki” to mind:
Life is a paper airplane~♪
*I especially like Sayaka Yamamoto’s solo version.*
I see—so this is the background behind your usual answers. A lot suddenly makes sense, and somehow (though I do understand it) I’m filled with an overwhelming sense of defeat. I’ve lost again.
In my case, I wandered into the club because I was looking for “a woman who would always be on my side.”
The wording is different, but I realized that being “needed” is really just the flip side of the same thing.
The reason I favor my ace girl so overwhelmingly is that she needs me—and she’s always on my side. She relies on me more than she does on her parents or friends.
Whenever I ask her things like:
“Wouldn’t it be better to talk to your friends?”
“Have you talked to your parents?”
she looks straight into my eyes and says, “I want to hear your advice, Loser Guy…” We’ve overcome so many things together.
She relies on me for all sorts of things besides money, too.
“I’m needed by this girl.”
The feeling is so incredibly gratifying that, even though she has never once asked me to increase her allowance, I suddenly realized that it had gone over 100,000 yen a month. And we only see each other about twice a month.
Wait, am I just being played? Well, whatever. Better than being the one doing the playing＾＾；
From Loser Guy, who has a feeling this fall may become the season when he says goodbye to his backup girls after receiving that bad news.
I’m a male member, Paper Airplane.
If you don’t want to read a long post, just read the last four lines.
Today, as soon as I got out of the car at the neighborhood sushi restaurant, my wife and daughter both started in on me: “Why are you wearing shoes like that…?” Then they piled on with, “You can’t go into town wearing those.” On the way home, I went through the McDonald’s drive-thru with them, and my wife even shared some of the frappé she was drinking when she asked, “Want some?” When I asked my daughter, “Can I have this macaron?” she replied, “If you’re going to eat it like that, I’m not giving you any,” and both she and my wife corrected the way I was asking for treats. Somehow, I managed to get them to share two macarons with me.
Yesterday, when I was about to go out, my wife said, “That’s summer clothing. How embarrassing!”
Another time, as I was getting ready to leave, she said, “Don’t wear clothes like that when you’re walking around with me.”
So, every outfit I wear when I go out on dates has been chosen and bought by my wife.
Thanks to her, a woman in her thirties who works at a salon and whom I recently met outside the club complimented me by saying, “You have great taste in clothes.” My longtime girlfriend checks the logos on my clothes almost every time and asks, “Where did you buy that?” She gets jealous and competitive. Even now, she’s apparently on a waiting list to have me return to her—perhaps for remarriage?
Since there’s no point in writing only about trivial things, I’ll briefly explain how I ended up in my current situation.
Since my second marriage, I’ve never been the one to break up with a woman, nor have I been dumped. Even after divorce or separation, my relationships with those women have continued. The events that set the stage for that were these:
During my first divorce, I was dumped spectacularly. It came completely out of nowhere—a hard punch.
When it comes to divorce, one person can’t consult the other until they’ve made the final decision. So the person being told is hit by it completely unexpectedly.
What I learned from that divorce was that, of course, you shouldn’t do things the other person dislikes, but there was more to it.
The divorce happened during a major earthquake disaster.
My wife wasn’t in the disaster area at the time, so I had her stay on longer at the hotel where she was traveling, keeping her in a safe place for about two months. After gas, water, and electricity had been restored in March, she returned home after staying with her parents and elsewhere.
That was when she told me she wanted a divorce.
I was shocked. I never imagined she really meant it.
From my perspective, I had protected her by keeping her somewhere safe, while I spent three months working frantically on the region’s recovery with the tension of being on a battlefield.
But what I felt most strongly was that being together—being needed—was more important than anything else.
Since then, whether in marriage or at work, I’ve come to believe that it’s important to make women and the people I work with feel that they are needed and valued. Words and money matter, but they aren’t everything.
If that major earthquake had never happened, I might have married my first wife after meeting her at work and remained a salaried employee all my life.
In a situation where I thought, “I don’t know if I’ll be alive tomorrow,” I took action to keep my wife somewhere safe, telling her to stay there because it was safer. But to her, it must have felt like she wasn’t needed—that it didn’t matter whether she was there or not. I think that rapidly accelerated the path toward divorce. During that time, I had even created a situation where her husband wasn’t by her side.
Afterward, the experience of the disaster made me realize for the first time that you never know what will happen or when you’ll die. That led me to shift toward living a life without regrets, and it’s how I became the person I am today rather than remaining a salaried employee.
At the same time, experiencing two shocking events I couldn’t control—the major earthquake and my divorce—ultimately led me to where I am now.
I’ve strayed quite far from the original question, so I’ll return to the subject of my wife.
She’s an ordinary housewife, the kind of woman people would simply describe as reasonably pretty. As I mentioned above, she has good taste in clothes, likes things clean, is good at keeping things organized, never complains, doesn’t act spoiled, and works hard.
When we first got married, her cooking wasn’t very good, but these days I increasingly find it genuinely delicious. Even now, she’ll sometimes say, “Something’s wrong with the flavor. Fix it.” When I do, she replies, “Wow, that works! It’s delicious! As expected of you.”
Looking back at the wives I’ve had, my current wife seems to have the strength and ability to move forward on her own.
She doesn’t focus too much on me, make unreasonable demands, or insist on getting her own way. She also doesn’t rely on me too much. The burden she places on me is nicely balanced, so at least my feelings for her never seem to diminish. (I think I’m the one who loves her too much and puts too much of a burden on her, so I need to be careful not to end up divorced in our later years…)
When two completely different people live together, even the smallest things can pile up until living together becomes impossible.
The woman I divorced but still remain involved with is simply someone I can’t continue living with. When we meet occasionally, though, we get along well as a man and woman.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to reflect on my wife and our relationship.
In closing, I hope you’ll remember just this main point:
Whether it’s someone from the club or elsewhere, whether it’s a papa (a male supporter) who needs someone or a papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan) woman, when a person feels that they are needed—that the other person truly needs them—the papa will probably work harder, and the woman will probably come to cherish him more.
P.S.
To Makeotoko:
I can feel the passionate energy you pour into both your papa-katsu and your work.
Wanting the people around you to be happy—and acting on that desire—also requires an even greater energy that comes from being fulfilled yourself. I can almost picture the expression on your face when you feel happy.
I think a sense of accomplishment and happiness can be found anywhere, anytime, if you look for it. It would be wonderful if more people could act in the present with that kind of simple outlook.
