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Check Out “The Red Pill Room”

February 17, 2012 By 6 Comments
If you’re a long time reader, you know that I rarely link out to a new blog. So when I say go check a new blog out, you really should go check it out.
Ian Ironwood is a regular commenter here, and he’s done some good posting at The Red Pill Room, but today’s was exceptional. Go read Alpha Move Give Her Chocolate The Right Way
…I won’t steal his thunder, but it’s exactly what I’m talking about in Chapter 11 of the Primer.
Filed Under: The Male Action Plan (MAP)

Reader Story: MMSL For The Win

February 16, 2012 By 66 Comments
Reader story, not much else to add!
Hi Athol,
Just finished your 2011 primer. I found out about your blog through TAM, then found your book via your blog. Man, you nailed it with this one! Let me give you a quick run down on the last 10 years of my life…. and how things have changed!
We married 16 years ago, after a few years, children incoming…. 4 of them, so you can imagine that was a busy 10 years (and yep, we are DONE) talk about changing your life. The wife and I used to have sex EVERY night, except for those few “nasty” days each month. Bring on the kiddos, and the frequency didn’t drop, it PLUMMETED. once a week was a feast, and sometimes it would literally be months between. After the youngest moved to her own bedroom, and we had our alone time again, I full expected things to pick up, and to be fair, occasionally they did… but most often, the schedule was like this- menses ends, sex begins… 3 nights of raw monkey sex, then a night or two off because she was tired, or a kid would get sick, or something would screw things up…. a couple nights of no sex, then another night or two of sex…. then several nights of no sex…… then after I whined and complained enough, or we got in a big enough fight about it, a night of “get on, get off, then get OFF” sex….. by that time we were usually into the PMS ramp up, and it was hands off for a week and a half until the cycle began again.
This went on for years my friend…. many. long. years….
Oh,I still got some great sex in there. We went from ONLY missionary, barely any touching, when we first were married, to fantastic, energetic, multi position, blow jobs and everything else…. when SHE was feeling horny, which was for the first few days after her cycle started again. What stumped me was that when she SHOULD have been most interested, during her ovulation time, we usually did NOT have sex. Red flag there. Now, I’m pretty savvy on biology and such, and just did not understand why it all did not add up. A few months ago, after some big blowouts, one of which I told her I was no longer sure our Marriage was worth the effort, I decided I was done. I started being very frank with her, and open about my feelings, and my expectations. I knew something was wrong, and the only thing it could be was that she had become bored in our relationship. I have been with her for 20 years, and there is no way she was having an physical affair, and I was 90% sure the same was true on an emotional affair. She just had shut down sexually towards me because I had BECOME HER HOUSE BITCH. Yep, I tanked MY own sex life by becoming too Beta!
After selling our business, and me starting to work from home at the age of 35, I took over as the primary house keeper, cook, etc. It just made sense, since I was home, and she was working, that I not make her deal with extra stuff, right? Nothing sexier than a man that turns down help and says “no hon, you had a long day, just relax, and I will get the homework with the kids, dinner done, served, cleaned updisheswashedkidsbathedbedroomspickedpupteethbrushedbackpacksreadyfortomorrowkidsinbedhousepickedup…. all while you sit and play on facebook, or watch tv….. Sexy, eh?
Well, you know exactly what happened, I figured it out a couple of months ago, and changed it. Reading your book was confirmation. I lost the Alpha. I became the beta housebitch. It was a matter of time, and my hot, wonderful wife would have been having fantastic monkey sex with some other dude… it’s not like she would never have a chance. She started a new job in Athletics, and is around jock type guys constantly, sometimes late at night. (yes, I’m 100% sure it never happened, I gave myself ulcers checking) I know it would have, believe me, so that’s why I changed. I am proud to say, I started changing before I read your book. I hope you take that as additional validation that you put in print what some guys know instinctively, and others NEED to know to keep their marriage!
So what is it like now? well, last month was the first time we have had that much sex in many years….. many, many years. Probably since we started having kids. Hot, mind blowing sex, body fluids all over sex, right up to the end of her cycle. So, I figure, “well, after it’s been like this, I can handle almost a week without it” as you probably know, I didn’t have to (insert big, shit eating grin here) to put it in your terms, I got “laid like tile” right on through! Neither of us are into vag during her cycle, and the first couple days she feels horrible bloated and her breasts are extremely tender, but after that…. WOW…. we were lying in bed, spooning, ( just undies on, another side bennie! she used to always sleep in heavy clothes) and I was very aroused… it had been three days after all! She could feel me pressing against her, and she would push back against me and move slightly, just to tease me. It was driving me crazy, so I reached around and started playing with the goodies up top, I gave a nipple a what I thought was a bit too hard of a pinch, and she came unglued! I have never realized she liked it a bit edgy and rough, but she started really reacting to what I was doing, and I figured it would get those hormones racing my way, so why not. I was totally willing to suffer a few days until her cycle was done and we could ravage each other. To my surprise, and FOR THE FIRST TIME IN OUR MARRIAGE, she turned over, kissed me, then started south…. Never would that have happened when she was in “her time of the month”. Well, my friend, it didn’t end there, but lets just say she let me know that there were other depths to plunge, and I was one very satisfied husband that night. The next night, after several teasing blow jobs, I took your advice, and covered her tits…. She was disappointed! It was so messy that I had covered the head and her tit with one hand so it stopped flying everywhere. She told me afterward that she wanted to see me do it. 45 minutes later, she goes down on me again, and this time she got her show.
Well, that last paragraph is pretty graphic, but I had to put things in perspective. At any time over the last several years, action like that would have only occurred in this house if it was on a porn video. Upping my game with my wife, being more Alpha with her, and working out has changed things so much. I go on the TAM website, as a lurker, and want to bitch slap some of these guys, as I wished I had been bitch slapped years ago! Finding your book showed me that I had started on the right path, and gave me more concrete avenues to approach in changing myself. I’m happy to say that the results have been very worth it. I gave my wife the book to read, I’m confident enough now that I don’t care if she knows she has been gamed. I think she might enjoy it a bit. Last night after a bout of body fluid tsunami sex, we collapsed into sleep (she gets up very early for her work). At 3 am, we were awake again, and rocking the headboard against the wall- several positions, started with spooning, then her on top, then finished doggy style (this was NOT a wife-letting-the-husband-get-his-rocks-off-so-he-will-leave-her-alone bout of sex!). Another huge orgasm for her, then back to sleep for a bit before she had to get up for work. As she was leaving for work, I got a text with a nice tit picture.
Yep, I think I can handle this new life.
Athol, Men MUST read this book!
Athol:  Thanks!
Sometimes the blog just writes itself!
Filed Under: Humor and Everything Else, Nice Guys and Betaization, The Male Action Plan (MAP)

Happy Valentines Lay

February 15, 2012 By 33 Comments
Texting…
Athol:  Happy valentines day!
Jennifer:  Lol happy valentines day. Love you so much
Athol:  Want anything romantic giftage?
Athol:  Whats for dinner?
Jennifer:  No desire for romantic giftage really. It’s Valentines day for us every day ;-)
Jennifer:  Dinner is mac and cheese and the bottle of wine I’m going to buy later.
Athol:  I’ll bring my penis.
Jennifer:  Lmao cool.
Valentine’s Day for married couples is kind of like a final exam for her interest level in you. If you’ve done the whole Alpha Beta thing all semester, the exam is easy and you barely break a sweat passing it. If you’ve been falling asleep in class all year, even a monstrously huge effort right before the test may not be enough to pass.
We did a little acknowledgment of today being Valentine’s Day, but really any of the days at work we get off together is more important romantically than Valentine’s Day.
Anyway, Jennifer’s having a long hot bath and two glasses of red wine. Expect the unexpected…
Jennifer:  Grrrroooowl….
Filed Under: Instigate Isolate and Escalate

Functional, Productive and Happy

February 14, 2012 By 13 Comments
Occasionally I get a “Rubik’s Cube” email. A Rubik’s Cube email is an impossibly long rambling email about so many potential relationship issues that I want to set up an Excel file to track everything and sort it all out. Half the time there isn’t even a clear question, just a “so what do you think?” 
The answer to a Rubik’s Cube is always to go back to basics and start solving the puzzle. If it’s all a total jumble, everyone can figure out how to get one side of Rubik’s Cube solved. Usually people already know exactly what it is they need to do, they just need to do it. After that they can come back for help with the tricky bits.
Hi Janet,
The purpose of marriage is to have a functional, productive and happy life… not to save another person.
To have a functional, productive and happy marriage, you need two functional, productive and happy people. I’m not saying two perfect people, just two people that are standard issue adults that can hold up their end of the marriage.
My advice is for you to figure out what the functional, productive and happy version of you looks like, and start heading yourself toward that end. As you head toward that end, he’ll either (1) start calibrating himself to you and start becoming more functional, productive and happy, or (2) get worse.
If he starts calibrating to you and sorts himself out, then great! That’s a win.
If he gets worse, you can move on as a functional, productive and happy person, and be in a much better place to find a new man that is also functional, productive and happy, and have a wonderful functional, productive and happy marriage together.
At the end of the day, no matter how much you love another person, the only person you can really control is you. You can’t make them change, you can only make you be the sort of person that makes them want to change.
Hope that helps.
Filed Under: The Male Action Plan (MAP)

My Second Book Is Done And I’m Ready For Your Money

February 12, 2012 By 39 Comments
My second book is done! Available in print ($13.99) and Kindle ($5.99).

EDIT:  The Paperback page on Amazon is getting synced to the Kindle one and is semi-AWOL. Find the paperback on Amazon here.

In retrospect writing the 2011 Primer was a little bit nutty. I had a bunch of great ideas, I could write, but I had this idea that I could just round up a bunch of the blog posts into some semblance of order, and push print and the book would be done. Turns out I was wrong. Writing a book is hard.

To be sure some of the original posts made it into the Primer partially intact, but there was a huge amount of rewriting to do. Plus it turns out that formatting a book is harder than it looks, and formatting a Kindle version of a book requires a ”Merlin” level of skill while I was still struggling as “Sorcerers Apprentice.” And 344 pages of book was idiotic for a first attempt as any mistake required far too much repairing.
But in the end it was done, and pushed out the door. Despite my technical shortcomings the 2011 Primer has sold very well, primarily based on it’s strength of content and the loyalty of my fanbase spreading the word. If you’d asked me two years ago what having a fanbase would feel like, I would have told you it would feel awesome and egoistical. The reality is having a fanbase is a precious and rare thing. Most books don’t sell at all, mine does and I’m grateful for that. Truly.
So to the second book…
This one really is a bunch of posts rounded up and put into book form. It’s 101 of my best posts from Jan 2010 through October 2011. It’s a mix of stuff that was too personal, too funny, too off topic or too whatever and didn’t fit right for the Primer. Plus it’s some of my most important posts that to me really matter in a historical sense. You see I have to write to think, and sometimes when I write I have mental breakthroughs where I discover my best thoughts.
Also this time around I got the formatting down much better, and finally got the Kindle stuff sorted out much better. Actually reading the book you probably aren’t going to notice much of a difference, but I can assure you I got  5-10 times faster with setting things up between the Primer and the Pants book.
Plus it has a much nicer cover…
So now to the sales hype…
Important stuff this book tells you that you simply have to know:
The two types of men that women ping pong between. Page 9.
How to answer “Do these pants make my ass look fat?” and get laid like tile. Page 11.
Why the wedding vows aren’t the actual marriage agreement. Page 16.
Seventeen ways women reveal they are attracted to you. Page 25.
How to tell if a SAHM is going to be great, or spend half the day on Facebook. Page 27.
How to beat approach anxiety. Page 31.
What to do when your wife won’t have sex with you. Page 35.
How to lead your wife so that she wants to follow you. Page 40.
Why monogamy works best for most men. Page 50.
How the wrong college degree can ruin your sex life. Page 59.
How to spot when your wife is testing you. Page 69.
What it means when your wife says she’s bored. Page 71.
What she’s really saying when she says, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you.” Page 76.
Why you should never ask for marriage advice from your close friends. Page 79.
How submission really works for women. Page 85.
When you should rescue her and when you should let natural consequences just play out. Page 91.
Why everyone gets the male mid-life crisis wrong and what is really happening. Page 92.
What makes up the female mid-life crisis. Page 94.
How to hit her sexual “Big Red Easy Button.” Page 106.
What happens when you have sex at 87.3% of maximum roughness and why it drives her wild. Page 108.
What you should never do if she asks you to move out. Page 110.
The “Second Date Rule”. Page 116.
Why her gaining fifteen pounds means she’s into you. Page 117.
Why it’s not your job to cure their sexual dysfunction. Page 123.
What the female arm slap means. Page 125.
Learn what acts like Kryptonite to women. Page 131.
Why being an asshole secretly pleases women. Page 137.
Why being a White Knight is a bad idea, and being a Horny Knight is a great one. Page 150.
Why catering to women makes them like you less. Page 152.
How to get her to try something kinky. Page 154.
Why SAHM’s need to be SAHM’s “Plus Something.” Page 160.
How helping a friend out can accidentally make your wife attracted to him. Page 169.
What to say after she cooks dinner that will make her melt. Page 172.
How to tell the difference between your marriage sucking, and your life sucking. Page 176.
How a hot bedroom fantasy can turn into your wife cheating on you and refusing to stop. Page 178.
How polyamory  and swinging really works. Page 180.
Why being playfully mean to girls turns them on. Page 182.
How female logic works when it comes to men. Page 196.
What to do if she offers you sex, but says she doesn’t want an orgasm. Page 197.
The best revenge possible to take against a cheating girlfriend. Page 201.
How to handle a drama queen. Page 204.
Why women should have long hair and ignore their friends telling them to go short. Page 208.
The #1 thing men crave women to do in the bedroom (It’s not a blowjob!) Page 213.
What to do when your friend starts trying to steal your girl. Page 217.
Learn just how many women fantasize about being used for sex. Page 224.
Assuming she’s into it, why you should only spank your wife when she’s being good. Page 228.
How to fall out of love as quickly as possible. Page 234.
Why a wife going on a Girl’s Night Out drives her husband batshit crazy. Page 240.
The only way to build self-esteem that works. Page 244.
Why the main complaint about monogamy is that it works. Page 254.
How to know if she is worth marrying. Page 264.
What people really mean when they tell you to “Just be yourself.” Page 267.
And…
“A collection of brilliant and hilariously true essays that everyone interested in love, sex and marriage needs to read. A fearless intellect coupled with a compassionate spirit, Athol ruthlessly tosses out the politically correct bath water but keeps the babies safe. At times controversial, at times wickedly funny, but always a powerful voice for love, marriage and hope.”
Which I hope means you can give it as a gift and read it in public lol. It’s only available as Kindle as an ebook because I’m seeing how the Kindle lending library works out and you can’t offer it on competing ebook formats. The free Kindle download for the PC is pretty easy though and overall better than reading a PDF on a PC.
And for those waiting for the 2012 Primer. It’s going to be late March when it’s available.
If other bloggers/reviewers want copies for review, you’re more than welcome to email me and I’ll send you an Amazon gift card for a Kindle version which allows you to post a review on Amazon itself. Though if I have a choice between getting a Primer 2012 review or a Pants Book review on your blog, the Primer one is more important. I have a 40 copy budget, so be in to win.
Jennifer: YAY!  BOOK!  I mean…yes, I’m very proud of my author husband and it’s a fabulous thing to see another book available after a lot of hard work.
Filed Under: Humor and Everything Else

Turkish Pasha: Challenge Accepted

February 11, 2012 By 3 Comments
A random comment caught my eye…
mgwk:  I don’t think Athol would be very successful in advising somebody from another culture with different ideas about what marriage should be. Say, a Turkish pasha trying to figure out how to keep his #3 concubine from expressing jealousy towards his #1 wife.
Athol:  Well I’m not quite sure what a Turkish Pasha is, but I would instruct the #1 Wife that it is up to her discretion how she keeps the concubines in order. As a suggestion, if concubine #3 is unhappy and would prefer to be a wife herself, perhaps she would be happier if she was married off to a pig farmer somewhere nice and quiet… and remote.
An actual harem isn’t juggled by the male. You put a woman in charge and these things practically run themselves. First Officer for the win.
In any case, sexual biology is the same all over and all through history. There may be some unexpected quirks in certain time periods and cultures, but generally everything carries over pretty well.  Women like strong men with money, men like perky tits and a 0.7 waist to hip ratio.
Anyway that’s about it for today. I’ve had a lot of cold medicine recently. Time for a lie down.
Filed Under: Humor and Everything Else

Seperate Schedules, Next To No Sex

February 10, 2012 By 30 Comments
Reader:  My wife works 3pm-11pm.  I work 8am-5pm.  She’s been on this schedule for several years now, and it’s unlikely to change anytime soon.
Her days off are “rotating”.  In other words she’s off say Saturday and Sunday.  Then she works Mon-Thurs and she’s off Friday.  Then she works Sat-Mon, then she’s off Tues-Wed and works daylight hours on Thursday.  Then she works Fri-Sun and she’s off Monday. Works Tuesday-Friday then she’s off that Sat and Sun, and then it all repeats again.
I know the biggest part of this is me, but I can’t remember the last time we had sex on a night she worked.  She doesn’t get home and go right to sleep.  She actually stays up awhile, she talks about she can’t just “go to sleep” as soon as she gets home because she’s wound up from work.
I’m going to approach her about sex tonight (she’s working). But what’s your take on this?
Focus on the days off mainly?  I guess this is a rather stupid question…but after dealing with on average once a month sex (yeah, I know. But trust me it was WORSE than that years ago when she went through a bout of depression after the birth of our son) I’d be thrilled with sex on most of her days off…but other things can get in the way of course. (Not all her either).
So what’s your take?  How should I approach her? Nonchalant, gaming it up, or straight forward…mentioning how our sex revolves around her days off?  Thanks.
Athol:  Well the easy answer is to agree to make time to have sex with each other on a bit of a schedule. One late night a week, one early morning a week, and on the days she’s off. But obviously sitting down and talking about it isn’t going to actually work because she just isn’t into you all that much, which you’ve already figured out. Doing ”The Talk” now will get you one or two extra sessions, and then everything will revert to baseline again.
So… I have several thoughts here.
(1)  The once a month sex is probably around the time she’s ovulating. Basically 14-15 days after the start of her period.
(2)  I get the feeling that the entire point of her working these shift patterns is to be sexually avoidant of you. Sexually motivated people do all kinds of crazy things to get to their person of interest and get it on. On days she works she’s, “too wound up from work” and on days she isn’t working she still does nothing. (Apart from once a month.)  She could no doubt find a new job / shift pattern if she really wanted to be home with you every evening having sex.
(3)  I would approach / game her more on the days she is off work, and not worry about it on days she does work. Don’t try too hard to make it happen. Make random passes at her and don’t apologize if they fail, just smile and keep going on with your day.
(4)   On nights she is working, be in bed and heading off to sleep by the time she is home. Don’t wait up for her like a puppy. If you have an exercise routine, it may work best to do it in the early morning before you go to work. The purpose being that you are starting to be unaffected by her avoidance of you. Work on the whole self-improvement / MAP process.  The pattern of interaction is that she avoids you, and you chase her. If you stop chasing her, her avoidance routines become pointless, so she is likely to reduce doing them.
(5)  On the Saturdays and Sundays you both have off together, plan something fun to do together. Ask her to come, if she does great, if she doesn’t… then go anyway. Just go have fun. Come back a little later than you say you would be back. Come home in a good mood.
(6)  Keep up the Beta stuff related to housework, cooking, child care. Be polite, sociable and fun with when she is with you and paying attention to you. Just start marching to the beat of your own drum more. This isn’t giving her “The Silent Treatment.” It’s “I’m going to entertain myself and be in motion, wanna come?”
(7)  Get in the habit of having playful flirting interactions with women in a general sense. Just play, you aren’t looking for a sexual close here. You just want to have the general buzz of having fun with other women in your vibe. Your wife will pick up on it eventually.
(8)  Anything else that is going to make you feel stronger, happier and more attractive to women in general.
(9)  As you progress further down this route, as she starts sensing you are making changes that are sticking, you can try some direct approaches. For nights she’s working, a very simple and direct request of, “I need you for five minutes.” and essentially pumping and dumping her… if only dumping her back in the living room, may start working. Also making direct requests for specific sex acts on her days off could start getting better results. Don’t just ask for “Sex?”, tell her you want to “Doggystyle”, “69 for a bit and then missionary”, “Cum on your tits”, “Tie you up and lick whipped cream off your nipples”, or for the brave, “Let’s do the thing with the jumper cables and the butter.”  (If you do the last one, make sure you have an ice pack handy and several towels)
I wouldn’t bother talking with her about all this for the moment. Speak with your actions.
Also as an aside, you mentioned postpartum depression. Is she still on anti-depressants? That may be a factor in killing her libido as well.
Jennifer:  Athol and I work opposite shifts several times in the first half of our marriage. We did lots of quickies and pretty much always found a way to stay connected. It doesn’t have to be the traditional make love at bedtime thing…maybe she needs to be reminded of that.  Does she shower when she gets home?  Could that be an opportunity?
Filed Under: The Male Action Plan (MAP)

Unconditional Love And Being Taken Advantage Of

February 9, 2012 By 119 Comments
We have a newish reader at MMSL and her comments have been long (and good) so rather than quoting them all at length, I’ll more selectively quote than usual and summarize her story and situation.
She’s been married for 40 years, and I believe married at age 20, so she’s 60. Recently her husband unleashed apparently out of the blue, an ultimatum that she loses the fat and trims down – or the marriage is over. The weight appears to have been gained from when she was 20 to 40, and stayed stable but high from 40 to 60.
She complied with the ultimatum, did manage to lose the weight, he’s happier with her appearance and more into her, but she is so hurt by the ultimatum that she’s no longer in love with him. She appears to be staying for the history of the relationship and not much else. Or put another way, she has all these sunk costs in him, so leaving now is hard.
The additional information is that through the marriage she cared from him “unconditionally” through two bouts of alcohol addiction and one of prescription pill addiction. He also lost a job through his own fault at some point, and then later quit his job and never returned to work. She’s also had to increase her earnings to ensure they stay solvent, and his ability to earn an income is in her opinion lacking except at the very beginning of the marriage.
So… as I see it, our friend has two critical errors in her understanding of how marriage and male sexuality works, that have driven her to this point. Essentially she done the female version of the exact same things that a Nice Guy / Betaized Male does wrong. 
The first mistake is not understanding what creates attraction (Alpha Traits) in the opposite sex, and wrongly believing that creating relationship comfort (Beta Traits), creates attraction. So for her, all that effort doing housework, caring for him, earning money, making dinner, raising the children etc, only create relationship comfort. Instead to her horror, she discovers what creates attraction in her husband for her, is simply her looking sexy.
Some quotes…
“I dressed well, wore appropriate makeup and my hair was professionally styled. I received compliments on my appearance frequently.”
“Well, he had me. He didn’t want ME, he wanted something that would satisfy his visual needs. He got that. He can (and now does) feel passionate about me because I am thin, not because I am a good person, a loving wife and the mother of his children.”
 ”Athol, ironically, I came to your site as a result of the ultimatum. I wanted to learn more about what my husband had said to me and figure out why he was so totally unhappy. I found the link here as a result of reading on TAM.
I get the man’s need for a visually hot wife. This was not something that I had any idea about prior to the ultimatum. I knew all men looked at other women, even to the point of the head snap and that overly long gaze bestowed on the young sales girl at Sears. I just did not realize that at 60 I was supposed to look that way, too. This was not covered in our premarital counseling 41 years ago. Just wasn’t.”
Believing female friends that you are attractive is a mistake, when it’s the men that decide if you are attractive. You can see once the weight was lost, he did become attracted to her again. The way she looks is creating Alpha, and she gets no attraction points for being a good person.
That being said, she’s obviously starting to get it, and trying to come to terms with having “done it all wrong for so long.” Which is an extremely common experience for men who get the “I Love You But I’m Not In Love With You” speech from their bored wives. After forty years of marriage, it’s got to be a bitter pill to swallow to accept that.
The second mistake is that just like a Nice Guy playing the White Knight savior to an entitlement princess, she’s been playing a forty year game of Wendy taking care of Peter Pan and desperately hoping he grows up. He never does, and frankly the ultimatum of weight loss kinda seems like a husbandly tantrum from that perspective.
She has repeatedly allowed him to take serious advantage of her multiple times over the course of the marriage. Alcoholism twice, prescription pills once, a self-destructive job loss, and a flat-out refusal to work in the recent past until present day. Any one of these things could have been cause to bring things to a head in the marriage, but she’s “unconditionally” just coped with them.
So from his perspective, it would be fairly rational to think, “She’s put up with every other outrageous demand and bullshit I’ve put her through, so why shouldn’t she just put up with the demand she lose a ton of weight?” So in a real sense, she has helped train him to treat her badly. She has trained him not to respect her. There would have been a fairly good chance that if she made a serious stink about the first major issue happening, that the others would never have happened.
Having a belief that unconditional love for another person is a requirement of marriage, can be a major factor in creating a horrible marriage. Unconditional love demands that you tolerate the intolerable.
If you actually love someone else, you don’t demand unconditional love from them. You love them, so you would actively seek not to place intolerable demands on them.
Some quotes…
“He can go Beta all over my axx but bushels of roses and tons of words of affirmation won’t erase my memory of what he said and how I was treated. My vision of marriage, the meaning of my marriage and the love and admiration I had for my husband were forever changed as a result of the ultimatum.”
“I am or was guilty of believing in unconditional love. I took my marriage vows seriously. I took care of my husband through two bouts of alcohol addiction and one of prescription pill addiction. I stayed with him when he lost his job through his fault and when he quit his job and never returned to work. I stepped up my earnings to ensure our financial solvency. (Bear in mind financial security is very high on my list of emotional needs and he has never met that need except at the very beginning of our marriage. Kind of like the thin girl who gets married and then gets fat, thereby failing to meet the attractive spouse need of her new husband.) At any rate, I did not EVER threaten to end our marriage during any of these difficulties. I made sure he had the best care possible. That was my responsibility as a wife. It was easier to do because I truly was in love with him. It never occurred to me that it would be OK to use a threat of divorce to get him to sober up or to get a job or to stop spending money we did not have.

Perhaps I am disappointed in myself. I wasted many years taking my marriage seriously, doing the best I could for us and our family. And the whole thing boils down to I am not thin enough to suit his taste. It is more than unsettling to realize that giving unconditional love does not result in receiving unconditional love from your spouse and that my marriage was conditional all along.
I wish I had the feelings back that I had before the ultimatum. They are not gone because he hurt my feelings. They are gone because I am looking at marriage the way he does now, as a conditional contract. Setting love aside, he is not currently meeting and has not met my needs in quite a few years. The fact that I could be justified in issuing marriage ending ultimatums based on my unmet needs is something I am trying to process intellectually and emotionally.”
I think you’re confusing realising you have a “conditional” relationship with the end of your in love feelings. The veil may have lifted and you see the true picture, and it’s the not liking what you see anymore that’s killed your in love feelings off. Jennifer and I for example have a conditional relationship and are still in love with each other.
I’m sure you could imagine me reading Jennifer the riot act if she turned into an alcoholic. I’m sure you could imagine Jennifer trying to shove me out an airlock if I just quit my job to play computer games. Discovering the other cheating wouldn’t be just tolerated either. Violence to each other or the children would be instantly addressed as well. We have conditions for each other, and we have respect for each other. Our marriage agreement is the agreement to met the conditions of marriage.
And there’s a world of difference between caring for a spouse who is the victim of circumstance, instead of being the architect of circumstance. Jennifer would see me being injured in the process of being robbed as quite different than me being injured in a bar fight I started. I would see Jennifer having pneumonia differently than her having Chlamydia.
Furthermore, your actual marriage agreement is defined by your state’s marriage law. Most states allow no fault divorce, so your actual agreement is “Until someone doesn’t want to be married anymore.” Which really isn’t much of a promise to do anything, but there we go. I just report the news, I don’t make it.
So from here….
I think you have a lot of reading and processing to do before deciding to do anything major. Meanwhile I think you can stop catering to him quite so much. Start doing the things that you like to do. Keep your appearance up, and I do mean your attractive to men appearance up. Shameless plug – buy the book. Chapters 10, 11, 12, 16 and 25 would seem to apply fairly well to you.
Hang in there. Welcome to the Red Pill club.

Filed Under: Alpha and Beta Male Traits, Girl Game and Sexy Wives, Nice Guys and Betaization, The Male Action Plan (MAP)

Attention Ladies…

February 8, 2012 By 50 Comments
Don’t confuse “looking good” with “being attractive to the opposite sex.”
1 Male checking you out = 100 Female friends telling you look great.
In fact women will tell you how good you look, when you aren’t being attractive to the opposite sex. There’s always a sexy pecking order, if you drop down a few places because of what you just did to your hair, “OMG I just love what you did with your hair!”
Filed Under: Girl Game and Sexy Wives

Winning The Ultimatum, But Losing Anyway

February 8, 2012 By 87 Comments
Reader:  My wife used to be very touchy feely with me, but has stopped. If I touch her she’ll move away after a moment. If I ask her for sex, 90% of the time she’ll say yes, but she’s stopped having orgasms. Not sure what to do.
She was overweight for a while, and I told her that I wasn’t all that attracted to her and would leave her if she didn’t lose the weight. I put up with her being fat for years and it was long enough. She cried and yelled at me for two days and after I held my ground, she started dieting and working out. She lost 40 pounds and is maybe 10 pounds away from what she weighed when we got married. She looks great. She started dressing better, wearing makeup, changed her hair. We still had sex while she was losing the weight, but she wasn’t into it anymore. She’d say lets just have a quicky since you aren’t really attracted to me. Well now I am very attracted to her and she’s still not having an orgasm during sex and not interested in trying to have an orgasm with me. She does use her vibrator in the shower sometimes.
I’m not sure what to do next. The MAP and ultimatum worked to get her to lose weight, but she’s basically giving me duty sex. She’s not cold exactly. She’s polite and distant and won’t tell me what she’s thinking. I can’t find any evidence of an affair, but I bet if I asked her about her feelings she’d say that she loved me, but isn’t in love with me.
Athol:  Sometimes you can win a battle, but lose the war.
Having given her an ultimatum, and stuck to your guns that you’re willing to actually end the relationship, you’ve given her a massive shock to her system. She’s been wandering along through life believing all the Blue Pill rules about unconditional love and so on, and you shoved the Red Pill down her throat and held her nose until she swallowed it.
So she complied with your request, but she’s still in shock and has near zero relationship comfort anymore. I think you might have it backwards on the “in love and love” front. She’s probably in love with you, but determined not to love you. You’ve got an oversupply of Alpha and an empty tank on the Beta stuff.
The lack of orgasms, and the lack of desire to be touched, is very likely her Body Agenda being determined not to continue bonding to you, and not to continue to trust you. She complies with sex because she thinks without giving you sex, you’ll just leave her. She likely thinks you don’t love her and will probably just ditch her anyway. She may also think you were cheating on her around the time of the ultimatum, or at least had a backup woman to jump to if she didn’t comply with the weight loss.
At this point you need to turn the Beta up, way up and quickly. Do whatever it is that she most likes as comfort building things. Flowers, cards, love notes, acts of service…. whatever it is that speaks to her best.
My advice is to do a combination of apologizing and reframing. The apology is for making the issue solely her weight. I’m completely serious that you should apologize for that. The reframing though is that you thought that her losing the weight was going to get you what you really wanted, and what you really wanted, was things to be how they were when you first got married. You wanted to feel passionate about her again, you wanted the energy between you both to be there again.
But now that she flinches when you touch her, and doesn’t orgasm and obviously isn’t into it anymore, you’re even further away from what you really wanted than you were before. The weight loss has been a good thing and you’re proud of her for doing it, but what you wanted was her. Express to her your grief for what you’ve lost. You don’t want to feel passionate about anyone else, you want to feel it about her.
Apologize for making it “Me vs. You” when you really should have been trying to make it about “Us.”
See what happens.
As a very serious note: The ultimatum is the tool of last resort and by giving an ultimatum you have to accept that the relationship may fail as a result; I offer no promises it will work. That being said, I’ve tended to express the results of ultimatums as resolving into “success” or “failure” outcomes, it’s been somewhat of an oversight of mine to omit the “limping on together” outcome. In a sense though, you’re still stuck in the matrix of the ultimatum and waiting to have it resolved one way of the other. The ultimatium itself is a massively powerful Alpha move, her compliance needs to be rewarded with a solid dose of Beta.
Filed Under: Alpha and Beta Male Traits, The Male Action Plan (MAP)
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