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.
Hm, maybe I’m just not in the same places, but I usually see less here than Reddit, but that’s possibly perception bias on my end. I just call shit out when I see it, and this post just looked like it was misogyny because of the… Well, most of it looked pretty misogynistic, but I suppose I was giving the writer some undue benefit of the doubt. That’s on me, actually, I should’ve checked.
I dunno, I guess I just feel sad for people that believe that shit. They are just so fundamentally unhappy with themselves and they don’t know how to fix it.
There’s more social pressure on Reddit that pushes those opinions down. Since there’s less users here and there’s way more men than women, the casual sexism is thriving here. Thanks for calling it out when you see it.