Calendar on Mac and iPhone won't sync

I followed all the many many steps on the support page and now I've got some events about 3-4 times on my iMac, and some of them have disappeared, and none of them have moved over to my iPhone. I know the problem is with iCloud, which i don't want to use because it seems to have caused all the problems I am having, but I'll happily use it if it will work!