Why Was Her Affair Partner Worse Than Me?

by 62 Comments

If your wife cheats on you and her affair partner is clearly a highly attractive guy, it’s stomach churning, but at least it makes some kind of logical sense. She traded up and everyone likes getting a better deal.

But there are also plenty of times when the affair partner is frankly not all that impressive. The husband is the king of awesome and the wife has an affair with “some loser who has a kid in the same class as one of my kids.” The loser has a smaller house, a beat up car, a mundane job, is divorced yada yada yada. On paper it makes no sense. Why him?

The missing piece of the puzzle is that people tend to get into affairs based on getting what their current relationship lacks. The lower Sex Rank affair partner may only need to supply that one element that the higher Sex Rank marriage partner lacks. Thus…

If you’re broke, it’s a guy with a good income that’s the threat.

If you’re fat, it’s the in shape guy that’s the threat.

If you’re ignoring her, it’s the guy that can emotionally connect and hold a conversation that’s the threat.

If you’re boring, it’s the guy that’s fun that’s the threat.

If your penis is non-functional, it’s the guy with a working dick that’s the threat.

If you’re [insert weak point], it’s the guy [strong at your weak point] that’s the threat.

It’s also a factor that the affair partner doesn’t need to supply the entire relationship. Our king of awesome above, let’s say he’s got a great income, houses, fancy cars, vs. the loser with his small house and moderate standard of living. The wife in question doesn’t lack for finances because the husband supplies it, so the lower income of the loser isn’t that much of a point against him. If the loser however can provide a lot of emotional connection and conversation, and the husband is essentially so busy being the king of awesome he ignores her, suddenly the loser has something of value she craves. She can get one need met from the husband and the other need meet from the loser.

Or put more plainly, the husband is almost always unwittingly providing support for the Other Man to seduce the wife. The husband is typically supplying most of the wife’s needs, meaning the Other Man only has to supply the remainder of her needs to have an in.

This is incidentally why you blow an affair up and demand an all in or all out decision. When the husband threatens to end the relationship unless the wife punts the Other Man out of the picture, it puts the Other Man into a position where if he wants to continue the relationship with the wife, he now has to be able to supply the entire relationship, which he may simply not want to do, nor be capable of.

Or put another way, if all the Other Man has to do is provide a listening ear, a bunch of text messages and a hotel room once in a while, that’s not that difficult. If he has to provide an income, medical insurance, a place to stay, break up his own family and live with your wife 24/7, that’s a lot more difficult. He may not be willing to do that, or even be able to if he wanted to. Typically the come-to-Jesus-moment-of-horror for the cheating wife is that in the middle of her husband blowing the affair open, the Other Man denies her request for a complete relationship. Sorry honey, you’re just a piece on the side, not the main dish, go away.

Immediately upon realizing she just went from two men in her life to potentially zero men, she heads to the nearest bathroom and throws up.

Or alternatively, she realizes that the Other Man compared to the husband is a loser, and she has no desire at all for a complete relationship with him. Thus when ultimatumed, she dumps the Other Man.

Just bear in mind that even if she comes back home and tearfully and genuinely wants to work on things, there’s still the initial background issue of whatever that weakness in the husband was. At some point, he’s got to address that, or eventually all this plays out again.

And as always, prevention is the best medicine. If you have a glaring weakness in your marriage, that’s your top priority to fix.

Is Monogamy Making You Unhaaaaappy?

by 19 Comments

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-sad-man-thinking-image6749199I periodically get asked if monogamy is natural. Usually the asker is bored in their marriage, looking for the loophole justifying cheating and nothing I seem to say pleases them.

If I say it is natural they refuse to let me exit the conversation until I admit there is a volume of evidence suggesting it’s not natural.

If I say it’s not natural, they seem to think that I’m a charlatan for writing in a way that is pro-monogamy.

If I say it’s a mixture of the two, they start insisting that an adaptive strategy like swinging mixing the two is the way to go.

If I’m tired and grumpy and say they just want me to grant them permission to cheat, they tend to get offended.

So…

Rather than by starting with debating whether or not monogamy is natural, let’s start with stating what is natural.

What is natural is the creation of long-term pair bonds between two people. It’s very natural that couples seek each other out, find each other acceptable as mates, start building a nest together, pop out some kids and raise them. It takes a long time to get a baby human to adulthood and pair-bonded parents generally speaking are the default setting for human history. This is, if you like, the Beta Strategy.

However what is also natural is seeking out opportunistic sex with those not pair-bonded to you. In the opportunistic sex method, men seek out as many partners as possible to maximize spreading their genes into the next generation. Women seek out the best possible partner for opportunistic sex, to thereby get the best possible genes added to theirs to spread them into the next generation. This would be the Alpha Strategy.

These two natural strategies lie in a dynamic tension with each other. It’s a gross simplification, but a lot of what I’ve written over the years is a way to play the Beta Strategy, by consciously augmenting it with elements of the Alpha one. I.e., being someone your pair bonded partner would also desire to have opportunistic sex with if they weren’t your partner.

Now while that’s all natural, monogamy isn’t.

Monogamy is an agreement that everyone needs to play nice and do the Beta Strategy. That agreement can be as mild as a social contract of manners and expectations, or it can be enforceable by the death penalty. It’s a sort of collective sexual strategy that makes a lot of good sense on a societal level, but can for more opportunistically motivated people, seem to be rather stifling.

If you’re playing the Alpha Strategy heavily, you tend to expend a lot of effort to get sex. It’s high risk as well. It may work out amazing, or it may turn into a Jerry Springer episode of fist-fights and paternity testing drama. It takes up a lot of resources to play Alpha all the time.

If you’re playing the Beta Strategy, you tend to expend more effort on non-sexual things, like amassing wealth and maximizing your investment into the kids.

If you’re in a position of power in your country, getting as many people as possible playing the Beta Strategy is a fantastic idea. It helps create a stable population who do all kinds of productive, functional work to develop your country. The Beta Strategy people go to work in the morning even when they feel shitty and they don’t clog up the jails. The Alpha Strategy people though, they’re a pain in the ass.

Let’s be honest here, you want to live in a country where everyone else plays by the Beta Strategy rules. It’s pretty darn awesome. Safe, secure, non-violent, productive and… and… and…

But there’s one small, itsy, bitsy, teeny, weenie problem.

Monogamy as a social contract, does exactly what it intends to do. It works exactly as advertised. You’re getting what you signed up for.

Seriously now, go check the fine print.

All that was promised was a functional, stable, family unit and a day job. You’re imagining the clause about cock exploding into vagina while two bodies writhe together like they are being Tasered. If you both want that, you have to Alpha up. You have to develop the side of you that would do well in the opportunistic sexual market place.

In that sense, what I write about is a mixed strategy, trying to take what you can from the best of both strategies. Which I guess is getting to the place where the swingers want to chime in, so let’s do it. In terms of whether something is natural or not, purposely allowing another person to have sex with someone you’re pair bonded to, is about the least natural thing in the world. The most natural thing in the world is to try and kill them. It requires a huge degree of socialization to be a swinger, so let’s not pretend that it’s all wondrous and natural. There may well have been Sex at Dawn, but there would also have been Killing at Dusk too.

So no, monogamy is not natural. But that doesn’t mean it’s without value. Jennifer and I often talk about how peaceful and relaxed our family life is compared to many others we know. No step-kids, no ex-husbands or ex-wives, no 3rd or 4th set of grandparents, no stepping around how Christmas works because five different families have to be involved. It’s quite lovely. It’s also time and energy efficient and I couldn’t have written MMSL without that as a structural factor in my life. I’d just have been too busy with family stuff.

The core of the issue is that we’re just not perfectly adapted for a modern civilization. We do all kinds of things that aren’t natural but we still think they are a good idea and worth tempering our natural instincts. Some non-natural things that spring to mind…

Flushing Toilets.

The Rule of Law.

The Internet.

Birth Control.

Private Property.

Electric Power.

Powered Flight.

International Soccer Matches.

I could go on and on, but you get the picture.

So let me flip the question around on you a little. If we assume your partner isn’t in some way broken or objectively defective, they love you and are a generally willing sexual partner, is it possible that the problem isn’t monogamy, or you being married, but simply that you aren’t being as Alpha as you want to think you are. Which is to say, maybe you’re boring. If you’re bored with yourself, your partner is probably bored with you too.

One of the things that people I coach keep telling me in moments of self-realization is that, “The MAP really isn’t about sex is it? It’s really about just being a better person, about doing what you want to do with your life. That’s what’s attractive!” It’s usually right after this revelation that they find themselves having the best sex of their lives.

It’s a big world. I’m pretty sure there are still some achievements left for you to unlock.

Dread Game vs. Reality Game

by 11 Comments

 @Isthereastar:   So something I have been wondering about is whether there is a form of dread that women can use on men when they are in tough spot in their relationship (AKA lazy bear husbands/long term boyfriends) Clearly dread works on women, but can it go the other way?

Athol: Well lets define Dread Game first.

Dread Game: To purposely set out to create an appearance that you would or could cheat on and/or dump your partner, unless they comply with your demands. You underline the replaceability of your partner. Some examples of this are creating dating profiles, going out without your partner to bars and clubs, sending flowers to yourself “from an admirer”, purposely seeking to pull Indicators of Interest from the opposite sex in front of your partner and so on. Basically anything you purposely do to make your partner feel a sinking sensation in the pit of their stomach that the relationship is heading to a very bad place, very soon, unless they comply with your demands.

So to answer your question… women using dread on men is about as equally effective and ineffective as it is when men use it on women.

It’s unquestionably an attention getter. It creates a huge impulse for your partner to behave the way you want them to. However, it’s a very risky move. What it does is sacrifice a lot of Relationship Comfort (Beta), in order to create an impression of you having a much Higher Value (Alpha) than they do. Which is fine if you were running a standard Nice Guy / Nice Girl, low Alpha and high Beta frame. Dread Game can create a quick correction of that. However, if your partner ever figures out your Dread Game moves are simply designed to purposely panic them / are in any way deceptively created / you don’t have the guts to follow through on them anyway, then you lose all the Alpha credit the Dread Game created and you’ve also lost a great deal of Relationship Comfort for nothing.

In other words, Dread Game can be effective and it can also blow up in your face leaving you with a disgusted partner who thinks you’re playing games with them.

Ultimately my biggest concern with Dread Game is that it’s a shortcut and I suspect at some point, you’re going to have that catch up with you somehow. This is especially true for a marriage situation. It’s much easier to snow a short-term girlfriend or boyfriend, than the husband or wife you’ve had for 15+ years.

It’s also very easily a negative approach in that it can gain a “well fuck you for ignoring me” element and it’s a very short pathway to getting off on the infliction of pain on your partner. Purposely inflicting Dread on a partner is a stock-in-trade move of Borderline Personality Disorder, or Narcissistic Personality Disorder spouses for example. Dread Game and Emotional Abuse are at times simply a matter of perspective.

The question then, is what to do when you need to gain your partner’s attention.

The approach that I’m seeing as most effective is slightly slower to work, but less risky. It’s called Reality.

There’s a fairly big overlap in what Dread and Reality look like, but with some subtle differences. The most important of which is the change in frame from consciously doing something to try and evoke a positive change in them, to that of making a positive change in yourself, thus creating natural consequences your partner will have no option but to be affected by.

This is the difference between going out and seeking to pull attention from the opposite sex in front of your partner (Dread), and simply having the opposite sex respond to you in front front of your partner because you’ve improved your Sex Rank (Reality).

The Reality is you’re just hotter now.

The Reality is the opposite sex responds to you better.

The Reality is you’re hotter than your partner.

The Reality is they aren’t holding up their end of the relationship.

The really good news with playing this as Reality Game, is that when Reality is discovered by your partner, it only becomes more effective rather than backfiring on you. You’ve not been doing anything wrong, you’ve kept the moral high ground, you’ve been self-improving but not been trying to destroy the relationship.

What you’ve been doing is pouring a more positive energy into yourself. So if you’re heading toward an ultimatum, it’s only because the Reality of the situation is that you’re moving toward where your partner is forced to either join you in a more positive energy place, or be increasingly determined to try and drag you back into a negative one. A standard Reality Game Phase Four statement is something akin to…

“The reality is that if you don’t allow us to have a win-win relationship, I can’t sustain a win-lose one. So the reality is I’m going to have to find what I need to get for me.”

Or perhaps put more bluntly, something like…

“If you keep drinking, I can’t stay.”

“Go to the doctor, or I’m going to a lawyer.”

“How much longer do you realistically think I’m going to stay and put up with this?”

So eventually, Reality becomes more effective and safer as a strategy than trying to use Dread. There’s just one catch though…

Reality Game can’t be faked. It has to be real, because that’s what Reality means.

Your Wife’s AAAAAF Report Card (The “F” is for Sex)

by 24 Comments

I keep coming across this thing where a husband will positively gush about his wife. She’s an amazing cook, looks great, is kind and sweet tempered, keeps an excellent house, fabulous mom to the kids and on and on and on. Then the sad face comes… and he mentions that there’s hardly any sex. The husband always looks depressed and defeated because she’s far too good to leave but he never gets what he really wants from the relationship. There may well be delicious pie and a nice home, but it feels like he stumbled into a trap nevertheless.

For a long time I’ve been seeing that as a form of compensation on the wife’s part. She doesn’t want the sex for whatever reason it is, so she becomes like a kid coming home with a school report card with five A’s and one F. As a parent you kinda have to look at the report card and think… Well she did flunk math… but everything else is amazing, so I don’t think I can really be too much of a hard ass about it.

Except when it’s a marriage and she’s flunking sex, it really is way more aggravating than your kid flunking math.

“In fact”, I usually say, “you’d probably much rather have the house be a bit messy, have her dress down a little, have a little more noise from the kids and less perfection with the money, just as long as you got some more regular sex. Instead of an AAAAAF report card from her, you’d rather see her turn in a BBBBBB report card.” 

That’s the husband’s cue to scream in relief that someone finally understands his situation. Up until this point, complaints about his wife to anyone else typically gets looks of confusion and polite questioning of the husband’s sanity. The wife is after all perfect, because the AAAAA part of the report card is what everyone else sees and only the husband has to lie awake at night with a raging hard-on silently cursing the cruel F that fate has dealt him.

So she’s compensating for her sexual disinterest by maxing out everything else. It’s a great strategy for keeping him on the hook.

But…

There’s another angle here too.

As much as she is compensating for her weakest area, she’s also mirroring her husband.

Pretty much all the AAAAAF wives have AAAAAF husbands.

These guys are really great. Hard working, good jobs, pleasant, agreeable, great with the kids, helps around the house, yada yada yada. But they all have a giant lack of attractiveness somehow.

Maybe it’s their weight. Maybe it’s the cluelessness about how to instigate and flirt. Maybe they just fold up like wet napkins any time she challenges them. Maybe they fail to do anything when other guys blatantly hit on the wife in front of them. Whatever it is, it all sums out to some huge defect in being attractive and pulling her sexual interest.

Meanwhile, the wife probably has her internal hamster treading water coming up with reasons to be happy in her marriage despite the bed death. He’s such a great guy, any woman would be happy with him… just… ugh. This would all be simpler if he just cheated so I had a reason to divorce him.

So…

Whatever it is that’s causing the F in your sex life, you have to find it and root it out. Helping you in that process are the books, the forum and the 1:1 coaching.

So get to it. Class is back in session.

Does The End Justify The Means?

by 22 Comments

I’m often criticized by Christians as being either “too quick” to suggest divorce, or even “pro-divorce”.  Usually it’s not a complete slamming of me/MMSL, more of an element that makes it’s way into my final grade so to speak. MMSL is amazing and wonderful and deserves an A, but the whole willingness to divorce thing drops me to a B.

I get it. I totally understand that point of view. If you have a Christian world view, that makes sense to me that you think that way. The trouble is though, sometimes a completely genuine divorce threat works like nothing else does to unstick a stagnant marriage.

So the difficulty is that it can work, but is wrong to use. Awkward.

So let’s get real about this shall we.

There’s not too much question in my mind that a genuine divorce threat is a non-sanctioned Christian tool. I agree that you’re coming over to the dark side to try this tactic. That being said, I *very* rarely jump to an instant divorce suggestion and those cases where I do are truly horrible. The entire Phases of the MAP is designed to actually slow down the rush to judgment and get everything as good as they can be, before ever getting to a true divorce ultimatum. It’s a true last resort. Even then, it’s a true ultimatum – a choice – with a positive option for the other spouse to choose. All they have to do is act right.

It’s not simply a random nuke tossed out. It’s something that offers a clear and positive resolution if your spouse is willing to take it. So honestly I get a little ticked at being framed as “pro-divorce” or slap happy on recommending it.

So does the end justify the means?

Yes. Yes it does. If that means you’re in a happy marriage as a result, absolutely it does.

It all just needs to be controlled, managed and staged as best it can for minimal risk and maximum possible gain. If it all works out for the best, I think you’ll be able to live with it. But I do get that it’s stressful and stomach churning to think about.

You know what the REAL risk is though? One day something in your marriage is just going to get so bad, you’re going to snap anyway.

I’d rather see you get help before that happens. If you’ve tried everything else and it hasn’t worked, come see me.

MMSL is the Manosphere Root Beer Part Two

by 25 Comments

Comment on Why Relationship Momentum Matters. As you read, watch everything play out exactly as you would expect… assuming the genders were reversed.

Audrey:  I recently ‘guarded’ my husband from a friend in the midst of going through a divorce. I’ve known her for years because our kids are friends. My husband casually mentioned that he was sending her some research on an item she was buying. I asked why, and he said that she’d emailed to ask him for help making a selection.

Pardon me? She approached HIM and not ME? Me, I’d have nicely told her to research it herself (lots of online info, library has Consumers Report, etc.). My life is busy enough. I don’t do homework for those who should be able to help themselves. I had to point out to him that she was playing the damsel in distress and that he was buying it. He was completely taken aback and pointed out that he was just trying to help as he would anyone. I told him that I knew there was nothing wrong with what HE did, but would he mind her estranged hubby calling me up and asking me to come over and help him with something I’m better at, such as picking paint colours or furniture for his new digs? He paused. And then the lights went on and he saw what I was seeing.

I asked if he thought this woman with a master’s degree was really incapable of reviewing ratings on her own, or did he think it served her purposes better to play the victim and have other men do things for her. After all, other women’s husbands are safe since they can’t even expect a ‘perk’ for doing it. She just touches their arms, flatters them by saying how good they are at these things and how much she appreciates the help. You know, the stuff that many wives forget to do since busy spouses tend to take each other for granted over the years.

He went from thinking I was nuts to being irked about potentially being played. I think it’s safe to assume that she won’t be getting any more help from MY man. Besides, Miss I’m So Lost Since Hubby Left has three strapping sons at home, all well over six feet. If she really needs a man to do things, she needs to tap one of the walking appetites that lives with her.

What amused me the most was how THRILLED my husband was to have me ‘guard’ him. Seriously, he was all puffed up about it. I earned big points there and I wasn’t even trying to. LOL

Athol:  Audrey’s completely correct response reads exactly like we teach a husband to do when someone starts honing in on their wife. There needs to be a word for female cockblocking.

Anyway…

I realize probably a minority of my readers and certainly a decent number of other manosphere types think I’ve lost my mind and/or sold out with the new book. Sure it’s a softer approach, but the truth is I see the exact same issues playing out over and over in both sexes. 90% of the wives on the MMSL forum are the female version of Betaized Nice Guys. Too patient, too submissive, too frightened to stand up for themselves, no inner game, endlessly orbiting and sexually frustrated.

The overwhelming majority of my advice applies just as well to women as it does to men.

Get to the gym, get in shape. Dress well. Don’t allow yourself to be mistreated or taken advantage of. Be kind and affectionate, but only if you’re being treated with basic respect. Get good at something. Ask for the sex you what. Be loyal, but also be prepared to walk if the relationship is a disaster. Play up your sexuality and gender. Instigate, isolate, escalate.

I won’t lie and say the extra money isn’t nice and that the book isn’t more commercial. Of course I wanted to make money and sell more books. Duh.

But we gotta make Red Pill women, or it’s going to get very lonely for all the Red Pill men the manosphere is making.

This isn’t anything new. I wrote Why MMSL Is The Manosphere’s Root Beer nearly two years ago. I’m playing a long game here.

When a Blue Pill Nice Guy with a serious relationship problem comes stumbling into the Manosphere looking for answers, he comes with a pro-female mindset. After coming across variants of “All women are devious whores!” a few dozen times – something possible in the comments of a single post on some blogs – he can easily become repulsed and move on in his search for truth. Then we call him a Mangina for good measure. We do this because insults make other people listen better and consider our viewpoint.

Likewise, sympathetic women reading the same venom quickly become unsympathetic women. At some point we’re going to want some things to go to a vote and there are more women than men that can vote. Therefore we need the support of women to at least some degree.

So I see my role in the Manosphere as a diplomatic outpost. Some people start here and then explore the rest of the Manosphere. Some people start elsewhere in the Manosphere and get directed here after being jilted by what they first discover. Me being happily married, having a great sex life and generally being a quirky Vulcan makes MMSL taste like… root beer.

So watch the video, it’s a classic.

If other bloggers want review copies, let me know where to send them.

Transparent 3Dcover for website ad

Why Relationship Momentum Matters

by 11 Comments

Okay…. lets assume your relationship is basically good, but you’ve made a misstep with a mate guarding fail. You know it, she knows it. You know she knows it and she knows, you know it. And… well… let’s just say it’s obvious.

And no sex happened, clothes all stayed on, it’s just one of the those things where “nothing happened”, but your stomach feels like you swallowed four lemons and a giant bag of Pop Rocks. That’s your sign that mate guarding should have happened.

So nothing happened, but you still have to address it somehow though. You can’t simply let it just slide.

Here’s the big picture concern.

Right now your relationship is GOOD. Let’s say that you’re at the 90 mark out of 100. A really good relationship.

But relationships also have momentum. What’s happening now is that a small negative event has happened. You failed to mate guard, some dude got isolated face time with her, or you stood around doing nothing while he hit on her in front of you.

As a result your relationship dropped from a 90 to 87. Which is still a GOOD relationship. But the momentum has started DOWN.

If this situation keeps going on unchecked, you’re going to get a slow but stead string of small negative events, -1, -2, -1, -2, -1, -3…. yada yada yada. There’s another isolation event with Mr. Studly, there’s a mildly naughty text, there’s playful looking over, come out to the club…. yada yada yada.

Then one day a few months down the line, your relationship is DOWN to a 47 and Mr.Studly has worked himself UP to a 54. Then things start getting really awkward.

Would your wife cheat on you today? NO. No way in hell. Because your relationship is GOOD. But left unchecked, your relationship will continue it’s downward momentum.

So it sounds like I’m over reacting here, but I take downward relationship momentum *very* seriously. In fact I’d almost be more comfortable learning your relationship was at 20 and heading up to 25, rather than 90 dropping to 87. The relationship momentum will tend to hold in both cases.

If it all gets nipped in the bud *now*, you’ll save each other an amazing degree of pain and grief.

So even in a GOOD relationship, with a GOOD wife, you still have to pay attention and be willing to step in and say something when a line is crossed. Either to her, or him, or both. That’s how your relationship stays GOOD.

And of course the same applies the other way around…

Explaining The “In Her Or On Her” Rule

by 15 Comments

Forum issue…. spent a long time triaging this case and everything went back to the husband having a porn/Internet addiction. As in we figured out the exact month everything started falling apart being when they first had cable Internet installed. Literally a bright motivated guy one month and starting to flunk out of college the next. Then over a decade of unemployment and underemployment after that. Her carrying about 80% of the income load while he stayed home and jerked off to porn. Long story short, I gave her a full and complete triage experience, she unleashed “Option A or B” on him, he went for Option A.

Which brings us to this post. One of my suggestions that was part of Option A was to adopt the “In her or on her” rule. Meaning where his semen ends up. i.e. no jerking off to porn, if he’s having an orgasm, it’s with her in some way shape or form. Don’t care where he comes, just as long as it’s with her.

Then comes the hamstring questions. What if she’s not available, or doesn’t want to? Or other reason to get around the rule. Squeaky squeak squeakum.

My response…

(1) He’s the addict, so anything he says isn’t reasonable or valid related to the addiction.

(2) He’s allowing himself to have his brain be rewired to experience her as the outlet for his sexuality.

(3) Given long enough (months) doing (2) will make his brain eroticize her to him. Just like he’s conditioned himself to particular porn to be a turn-on, now he’s conditioning himself to be turned-on by her. Yes that’s “artificial”, but it will feel completely real when it’s done.

(4) Like any form of hunger, the longer it goes between feedings, the greater his desire to be fed. So if she is unavailable (work) or unwilling (I expect somewhat rarely), all that does is make him more interested in her and more attracted to her. If he routinely masturbates without her, then he basically messes up the entire program. The orgasming without her is the entire problem.

(5) What he’ll come to learn is that 99% of eroticism lies in the feeling of being turned-on. After he orgasms, it’s over. It seems very counter intuitive I know, but he’ll actually find a more satisfying sexual experience on the other side of this process. It’s really not robbing him of anything.

(6) Without the endless dopamine chasing of the porn/Internet addiction, he’ll find greater personal focus in his life as a whole. He’ll think better. Perform better. This is a real addiction he’s been facing and it’s terribly draining on him.

(7) Monogamy isn’t exactly easy. It’s not for me. I’m a higher desire person than Jennifer, but it’s the experience of being turned-on that’s the most enjoyable thing. By a conscious focus limiting myself to her, it actually is sexually frustrating in a positive sense. Much of Oneitis is simply a biological response to sexual frustration coupled with an emotional focus on a single woman. As long as she is a basically good wife, it’s pretty freaking enjoyable.

Or in other words, the “in you or on you” rule may seem like a gimmick, and to an extent it is. But it’s also going to work to make him find her more sexually attractive and help him fall in love with her again.

And even if the process to make that happen is artificial, the feelings he’ll experience as a result of it will be real.

The caveat to all this being that she’s actually into him. She’s been a total Nice Girl slaving away supporting him and being sexually cut off by him. She wants to lay him like tile.

Jennifer:  This can also be a lot of fun for her. We don’t often skip nights but the positive change in Athol’s attention toward me is noticeable the longer it goes since the last time we had sex. It’s nice to be the focus of that level of desire. Now if a girl was mildly evil…

Framing the Official Relationship History

by 17 Comments

The half of the couple who is in charge, is the one who gets to take the official meeting minutes of the relationship. As long as the relationship is going well, this isn’t a concern because the official meeting minutes reflect the happy harmony of the relationship.

But on the rare occasions the relationship has some minor points of interpersonal discussion, requiring greater thought as to the structural situations in which the happy couple periodically finds itself at sub-optimal levels of unification on a temporary issue, the official meeting minutes of the relationship, become an important resource to clarify the memories of prior statements of mutual agreement, to the appropriate course of action for exactly the circumstances in which discussion wishes to take place and as the matter has already been settled before the present point of time, this entire debate amounts to a potentially offensive reopening of a closed matter, as the expectation remains that talks made in good faith will be honored and not discarded on a whim, especially when additional plans have already been made with outside parties and costs borne predicated on the original agreement, thus it remains not only a reasonable expectation that the plans of action unfolds as mutually intended and agreed upon, it is in fact going to be damaging to attempt to not proceed and therefore is doubly justified as the only possible thing to do at present.

Or perhaps put more plainly…

“We’ve already talked about this. You agreed that I could have a weekend away with the girls, you can’t change your mind on me now, I’ve already got plane tickets and booked the hotel.”

“I didn’t think you were going to Vegas though, you said it was the beach house.”

“What? No! You agreed that I could have a weekend away with the girls. The beach house was only one idea of a possible place. We decided on Vegas as a group after that.”

“I don’t think that’s how it happened, you said the beach house.”

“Okay, well now we have this problem again where you can’t remember conversations we’ve had. You don’t pay attention. I have to remember everything, and I clearly remember that you agreed I could have a weekend away with the girls.”

As you can see, if she controls the official meeting minutes of the relationship, she gets to be the one that remembers the relationship correctly. Which means she controls the entire frame of the relationship history. Which means if she’s fallen out of love with you, your entire relationship will be rewritten to frame you as some loser she was putting up with and her as the long suffering spouse. Thus explaining, when driven to the breaking point, the need to seek solace in the arms of another.

This mind control tactic is called Gaslighting.  And yes of course men can do the same thing to women too. I’ve seen victims of both sexes come stumbling onto the forum with having experienced Cardassian levels of mental conditioning.

Anyway…

If there is a patron saint of hamster, it’s Sir Humphrey…

Jennifer:  It’s nice to be Athol’s editor and ensure his postings are officially official.

 

Common Warning Signs Women Give of a Relationship Decline

by 20 Comments

Actually that’s a trick post title, there aren’t any common warning signs, there’s only one.

The sex starts to go away.

That’s it. That’s all you have to go on. You can fairly safely ignore all the words coming out of her mouth about the state of the relationship and simply focus on whether or not the sex is crappy/gone, or hot/frequent.

Marriage is always a sexual relationship. It can be a good sexual relationship, or a bad sexual relationship, but it’s always a sexual relationship. So if the sex is bad, your relationship is bad.

Unless you can point to clear reasons as to why sex isn’t happening, like she’s totally exhausted with breastfeeding a newborn, or her exam finals are stressing her out like crazy, or her parents are staying over and the walls are paper-thin, then you have a relationship problem happening. Note in all those things I suggested, they can all resolve and sex can bounce back. The newborn can get bigger. The exams are over. Her parents go back home. The sex comes back.

But if there is no bouncing back and your sex life is just crappy…  you’re in a bad relationship.

Any time someone says *everything* is going great about their relationship, except the sex, it’s a crock of shit. The relationship is a sexual relationship and the sex is bad so it’s a bad sexual relationship. Plus if you’re in a bad sexual relationship, so is your wife, so the clock may be ticking on a lot worse than simply you having to jerk off in the shower.

If this is all news to you and you want a good sexual relationship, you gotta buy the MMSL Primer and get the whole story.