Also didn’t think he was encouraging others to move to Thailand with no research, it seems like he acknowledged it was a rash decision.
Many of them flame out in tragic (or tragicomic) fashion, some succeed and settle down, others move on to the next thing with some more life experience under their belt, like the author did.
His path is a typical one among young Westerners who move to Thailand. “Normal” is all relative.
The epiphany happens when you realize it's probably not the place or the people who are making you unhappy, but yourself and your beliefs.
That's what "wherever you go, there you are" means. It means you can't escape your self and you have to confront who you are no matter where you physically are.
This person is avoidant. That means when his wife did things rather than having an "us vs the problem" mindset, he is looking for the door. That means the woman over time will come to understand that she's not good enough, or there's an expiration on their time together. This raises the stakes for even small disagreements and creates a self fulfilling prophecy that ends the relationship.
So he hurt her by not being attached, and she acted in ways that made him unhappy as a result.
It was him ultimately that created his own unhappiness.
> Before psychedelics, I was intensely commitment-phobic, and assumed that either I wouldn’t settle down with anyone, or that I’d be in an open relationship for the rest of my life. I thought this was a philosophical position, based on principled arguments about the drawbacks of monogamy, rather than an emotional defense.
> This didn’t, like, permanently cure my loneliness and alienation, but it did make me appreciate how difficult it is to be a person, for me and for everyone. I felt less alone, certainly.