How To Choose A Wife | Married Man Sex Life

Girl Thinking About Having Coffee With Plate Spinning Ex-Boyfriend

November 29, 2012 By Athol Kay 44 Comments

Plate Spinning = The practice of a single guy keeping multiple women in a soft harem arrangement. Initial effort to get each woman up to speed and spinning on the end of his… er… stick… and then consistent occasional effort split between them all to keep them all up in the air for him.

Anyway…

From the forum… behold the hamster wheel doing this…

Sparrow: Yesterday was…a trip. This is a bit disjointed; I’m in an emotional tailspin and just bought a bag of cookies. I could use some advice. Even if the advice is: Sparrow, you’re an idiot. And, wait, you acted like that? And, what is your SR again? Just, please, if you do think I’m being that silly, please tell me why I’m being an idiot and not just “yep. Silly birdie.”

Some background: I once dated what is commonly referred to as an asshole alpha. I (unknowingly) shit tested him into beta. I kept breaking up with him and we got back together three times in three years. To this day, I’m not sure if he’s emotionally abusive or has some kind of Cluster B issue. I think it’s a strong possibility, but I also know that, especially towards the end, I was being a bitch. After last breakup, I spent a fair amount of time apologizing because I figured out I was a bitch. Including once, memorably, on my knees. Yes, I did the whole submissive posturing thing. Apology accepted. Then I went abroad for a year (and got more religious over the period of time). Thought I was done with the cycle. During that time, my former best friend carried on an fwb situation with the fellow at the same time he was e-mailing me asking to make up.

I know I handled a lot of it badly. We started dating when I was 19. This was the second guy I ever kissed. Aside from all the emotional stuff that went on, the physical stuff (sort of sex?) was…Really Good. Ok, so I pretty much went from 0 to 500 in this relationship, and have no real basis of comparison, but as far as I can tell, sex type stuff was really good for both of us. Emotionally: good to ok to godawful. Chemistry: through the roof.

Eventually, sort of made up with the friend. She asked me to be a bridesmaid at her June wedding (she’s engaged to a different guy). *sigh* I said yes. Except, she also wants my ex boyfriend in her wedding party. The guy is a starving musician trying to make it big and currently has a harem of six, not counting the ONS. She asked me to play nice. So, Monday, we were all in the same place at the same time. I’m so much on edge that I can barely think straight, but I did my best to be friendly. Boy tries to give me (and assorted other female types) a hug before he goes; I take a step back. Boy asked if he could call me to get a cup of coffee next time he’s in town. I said: ok.

I called later that night because I wanted to understand what his intentions were. After some phone tag, he said he missed having me as a friend in his life and would call about the coffee next time he were in town. Except…we never did well as friends. That’s one reason why we kept getting back together.

So I’m confused. Is he actually serious about the coffee? I’m a bit skeptical about the friend bit, but he’s also incurably honest. Is he trying to gloat? Be friends? Add me to the harem? Get back together? And how much are regular awesomely good sexytimes worth? I don’t know if you want to label this as, “idiot hamster can’t step away from alpha,” or “ex-stupidity,” or, “bad relationship cycles,” or “what’s the worst that could happen?,” or “men and women can’t be friends” or “Sparrow thinks about sex too much” or “get out and date other guys” or what. I’d just like to know what you guys think is going on. Help?

Athol: Oh coffee…. why are you so delicious?

It sounds like you have a lot of attraction for him, but it never sounds like it was a good relationship with him. You can’t be his friend, because you’re attracted to him and he isn’t remotely interested in just being your friend, so it’s always going to escalate in the direction of the bedroom. You may have tested him into Beta at the end of your last try with him, but if he’s spinning six plates these days, I doubt he’s going to revert to that for you. So your relationship options are (1) A 4th round of a really bad relationship, or (2) don’t have a relationship with him.

Anyway, I’d write more, but I’ve had this song waiting in the wings for the correct post for THREE YEARS.

Oh and @ your girlfriend… having the prior (?) fuck buddy in the wedding party. Stay classy girlfriend.

Filed Under: Cheating and Infidelity, How To Choose A Wife, Humor and Everything Else

Religious and Political Differences: How to Raise the Kids?

November 28, 2012 By Athol Kay 16 Comments

Reader: I’m sure you’re busy so I’ll try to make this brief. Girlfriend, mutually in love, happy relationship (not quite 1.5 years), talking about marriage and eventual children. Nearly all points in your Chapter 28 are met beautifully. Important differences: 1) I’m strongly libertarian, she’s stubbornly liberal; 2) I’m agnostic leaning toward Christianity, she’s Jewish and, well, Jews don’t do Christianity (so she says). Neither one of us are severely politically active. We prefer to keep our beliefs to ourselves, so these differences have been minimally problematic in our commitment-free, children-free pre-marriage state. But when it comes time to raise children and lead a household, I intend to inculcate my children with my values. On fundamental issues, I don’t see where I can bend and I don’t care to. However, encouragingly and impressively, she is beginning to come out of that reflexively liberal mindset in which she was raised.

But what to do? Shall we accept that maybe not everyone in our hypothetical future family will be on the same political and spiritual boats? Should we give it more time and see whether we come to see more eye to eye on things?

From your own experience and your nearly limitless opportunities for observation of others’ relationships, how divisive do you think such differences could be in the long run? I’m sure the right course varies greatly from case to case, but what questions would you consider? What are some specific points she and I could examine together to figure it out?

Thanks for any help. Of course, your contributions to a sane perspective on relationships have already been valuable help.

Athol: Well you also have to understand that you will both change too. When I met Jennifer I was the guest speaker for a Christian retreat weekend. Now I’m an atheist. Jennifer has softened her religious views over time too. For all you know you’re going to going to turn into a Zen Buddhist Republican fifteen years from now. Then what?

If you can agree together to educate your children in knowledge of both faiths – Jew and Christian aren’t that oppositional in terms of content – and then allow them to choose, then that’s the solution. The kids are going to choose what they want to do anyway. Your job as parents is to educate, not to “win”. Nothing like forcing it down their throats to make them rebel against it.

You’re actually going to find the basic behavioral approach to parenting the most effective anyway. “When the mess is cleaned up… then we can go to the park.” “If you throw a tantrum, you don’t get rewarded for it.” “Sometimes when you’re good, we’ll randomly reward you.” That isn’t a religious or political thing. Works for everyone too. Works for cats, dogs and killer whales as well.

You’ll find as the kids get older they will make their own choices. My youngest is mildly interested in church, mostly because she likes being part of a group of nice people. My oldest actually has a highly negative reaction to religious services, believing everyone around her is having a mass psychotic episode and is genuinely made anxious by it all. Which considering it was a Lutheran service was pretty funny. I can’t say we’ve done anything differently for either one of them either.

Hope that helps.

Oh… seems like she’s a go to more seriously consider marrying if this is the worst issue you can dream up.

Oh yeah… trust me on this one too. By the time they are teens, the only moral / religious / political issue you’ll really care about in relation to your kids is that they don’t start having babies in high school.

Filed Under: Captain and First Officer, How To Choose A Wife

The Green Peppers and Sausage Incident

November 20, 2012 By Athol Kay 37 Comments

(TL:DR Yes Jennifer is a magical unicorn, but unicorn’s have a long horn and occasionally it gets inserted up my ass and I’d like to break the damn horn off and shove it up her ass.)

I’ve tried to write this post about six or seven times now, but it always comes out being too angry and too blaming of Jennifer, so I’ve trashed it every time I’ve tried to write it. Anyway, some important bits of information before I begin.

(1) My least favorite house related task is raking leaves.

(2) My least favorite meat is sausages. I believe I have eaten my quota of these growing up, I do not wish to eat any more of them.

(3) My least favorite vegetable is green peppers. I hate them. They taste bad and give me heartburn.

So… anyway…

In August 2010 we fly to New Zealand because dad has crossed the threshold from “really unwell” fighting his cancer, to “the doctors finally let slip that he’s totally going to die”. So we winged our way to go see him before the end. Our last conversation together was how if he didn’t in fact die after all the travel and expense, that it would be socially awkward next time we saw each other.

About a month or two later mum Skypes us and turns the camera on dad for a bit. He looks at the screen and says “hello” with a tone of expectant but polite confusion. My father is a very bright man… and that’s all gone. I can’t react to that though. I don’t really know how.

The Friday before Thanksgiving in 2010, I’m at work and my cellphone rings. The incoming number being a long line of numbers scrolling across the screen leading off with the 0064 meaning a call from New Zealand. Thus I know dad is dead before I even answer it. It’s mum, dad had a really rapid decline at the end and it’s over and both sad and a relief.

My work day is planned to be over in about five hours, but I know I’m not going to be coming back at the start of next week, and then it’s Thanksgiving. I’m somewhat sole charge of my area and effectively just got handed a nine day vacation. I stay at work for about another seven hours tidying it all up and prepping for me being away. I can’t remember when I called Jennifer, but I do remember holding off on telling everyone around me and my boss until later in the day. Just didn’t want to deal with people trying to “support” me, when I just needed everyone to say out of my way so I could crunch out a whole bunch of work and then not come back for a week and a half.

Now because Jennifer and I are so much in step with each other, having a mild form of telepathy after then 16 years of marriage, when we miscommunicate it’s like a tire blowing out on a NASCAR Sprint Cup car at 200mph. It’s bad. Really really bad. The corner goes left and the car goes right. The wall comes up at you so fast and you hit it so hard. After that you’re just a passenger on a badly maintained rollercoaster.

At some point on the Friday, I told Jennifer that I would be okay by myself. What I meant was, on the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I would be okay staying home by myself. We had the weekend together and then Thanksgiving was coming and after that was our wedding anniversary too. So plenty of family time and stuff around me. I would be okay. Not like dad’s passing was a surprise out of the blue, it was just here finally.

Unfortunately what Jennifer understood was that I’d like to be… by myself. So she very dutifully gave me a lot of personal space all weekend, including shepherding the girls to friends places and she had work events on the Sunday she kept as well. This I experienced as being totally abandoned by my family.

I can’t remember much of the Friday night, or the Saturday… but I do remember that by Sunday afternoon… raking fucking leaves all by myself… that I stopped feeling upset about dad and started feeling upset squarely at Jennifer. Plus I seriously hate raking leaves. Hate it , hate it, hate it… and as the sun went down, I raked leaves into the darkness.

I can’t imagine I was pleasant to look upon when Jennifer got home with the kids, because I think she scampered fairly quickly into the kitchen to cook dinner. She knows by this point I am really off balance and is simply trying to recover the situation. Immediately cooking something is a great idea. What’s not so great however is what she cooks…

…sausages.

Whatever.

I bite into one.

There’s actually little pieces of green pepper inside the mother fucking sausage.

I do remember being sorely tempted to simply bat the entire plate across the room, but resisted it in favor of coolly getting my car keys and driving to the nearest McDonalds. I purposely left my phone at home to punish Jennifer. I know she’s going to be freaking out and don’t want to let her off the hook. Anyway I eat and about a hour later I go home and we don’t even have an argument because that would require communication skills on my part.

I’m just mentally cycling through all the times I was there for her… pregnancies, miscarriages, bad mammograms, surgery, another bad mammogram, another biopsy, the death of her grandfather… and now it was finally my turn getting something nasty happening… and Jennifer was a no show. So decided in that moment to divorce her. If you cannot act like my family, you cannot be my family. I couldn’t actually tell her though, because after I decided that I completely, totally and utterly lost it. I met the wall at 200mph.

I remember feeling at the time completely disconnected from my body, just a passenger as my body convulsed in the most appalling crying I could ever imagine. It was more like throwing up than anything else I can describe it as. Just so far beyond anything I thought myself capable of. I don’t remember really anything else of that night. Just an emotional cartwheeling that never seemed to stop.

The Monday morning I’m still hazy on too. I think Jennifer went to work for like 30 minutes to do something vital and then was back home again in full panic mode. Meanwhile the first twinges of intellect started returning to me as I simply didn’t understand why Jennifer was acting as she was acting. It all simply didn’t make any sense. Why would she ignore me all weekend? That’s not like her at all. I’ve never seen Jennifer screw someone over… why would she do that to me of all people?

There were still more leaves to rake and haul to the curb. I forget how, but somehow in that process of trying to figure out why she avoided me, her coming back home from work and immediately helping… and looking like she had accidentally run over a box of kittens… somehow it all started to come out. She had been trying to do the right thing all weekend… it was just the wrong thing. By the time she figured that all out, it was too late as I’d already flipped out on her.

We made up and went out for lunch together. Later that evening Jennifer and the girls gave me/us all a big long group hug. That’s all I really wanted and needed.

I’d love to say everything was peachy right after that, but it wasn’t. This one really hurt. It really hurt both of us too. Jennifer put sausages and green peppers on the banned substances list, then forgot her own rule a month later and burst into tears cooking dinner with green peppers. It took a while to work through and stop smarting, plus dad’s passing was much harder on both of us than either one of us suspected it would be.

This time last year everything kind of bubbled up again. I was kinda mentally off as I was raking leaves but Jennifer was around, so didn’t really get bad bad. I tried writing about all this last year and basically devolved into framing Jennifer as a cunt, so tossed it. This year, I’ve raked up most of the leaves myself and haven’t felt that cycling down into darkness. Had a little sad moment writing about dad during the post, but that’s it. I haven’t had a random tear up about losing him for a long time now.

Anyway…I know I’m meant to have some kind of wondrous point to all this, so here goes. Jennifer and I have a really good marriage, but no one is perfect. Of all the people in the world, I think we can hurt each other the most. Almost always it’s been accidental though, one of us hurt, the other horrified at what happened. It’s also not like I’ve been brooding about this for two years, it’s only when I’ve tried to write about it that I get sucked back into the emotion of the moment. If there’s a bright side to all this, Jennifer and I have such a strong relationship, that it survived this colossal wreck of miscommunication.

Jennifer: And we’ve also been reminded that we cannot, in fact, always read each other’s minds, so it’s important to have that “Did you mean…” or “Did you really want…” conversation just to be sure.

Athol: You just figure out what the problem was and correct it. You slowly build the Relationship of Tomorrow.

Filed Under: Captain and First Officer, How To Choose A Wife, Humor and Everything Else

But The Blue Pill Tastes So Much Sweeter

November 9, 2012 By Athol Kay 19 Comments

Some questions from the last post…

Greenlander: Will someone please remind me again of why I should want to get married? I’ve forgotten why I should want to give up my single life to jump through stupid hoops for sex with someone who agreed to provide it.

Athol: The main reason to get married is to have children together. I think a stable couple is a far better arrangement for raising children than trying to do it as a non-couple. Otherwise marriage is simply a very binding agreement that isn’t a critical need for a long term sexual relationship. Marriage is primarily an agreement for legal status and wealth sharing in a family structure.

If you don’t want to have children with her, there isn’t any driving need to marry her. If you have a child, you’re on the hook for 18 years of child support one way or the other, regardless of your martial status. A lot of effort flagged as “marriage” related is actually “child raising” related.

You’re going to be jumping through hoops for sex whether your single or married. Don’t tell me picking up women in bars is something you can just throw together in 5 minutes on any given night.

Jeigh Di: Or, as has been pointed out elsewhere, remind her that if the grocery store is closed, there’s a convenience store just around the corner who will gladly do business with you…

Athol: And likewise by that same logic, should you become less than enticing, she can get delivery.

Don’t get me wrong, if you can reasonably prove that you are someone she should find attractive, the proof being other women are hitting on you, and she still has no interest in you, then yeah sure I don’t see why you stay.

Badger: I have to go with Athol’s first reaction – if this hair-trigger treatment is what you can expect, why get married? Why pledge your life, fortune and sacred honor to the sword of Damocles that can decide you’ve emoted enough for her taste, thank you very much, and you should just share your problems with your drinking buddies like single guys do anyway?

Athol: It’s not quite that hair-trigger, and it’s also going to be the same with any women you’re with too. When you’re out meeting a new woman, it’s an incredibly bad move to start being overly sensitive and emotional. You don’t bounce to a second location to tearfully talk about how dolphins getting caught in tuna nets just needs to be stopped.

I think if anything wives give you more leeway on this issue than a girl you just met will. But if you blubber it up on them and morph into a sad four-year-old sitting in the sandbox quietly banging his trucks together… the vagina is closed.

Chesterfield: This post about Ricky Raw’s 31 days of game over at badger’s site earlier really drove this home for me. Item # 6 Your Woman Can Never, Ever, Truly Be Your Best Friend or Closest Confidante. (Athol: Chesterfield links to Badger, not sure where it is on Ricky’s site exactly.)

It struck me (hard) that no matter how much I long to truly open up to my wife and let her be my best friend in the whole world… I can’t allow it. If we’re friends then by definition I’m in her friend zone and that’s definitely NOT where I want to be with her. I can be her friend and confidante, but she can never truly be mine. When I accepted this I felt the last thump of my blue-pill white knight’s dying heart. I understand now why I can not draw strength from my wife without losing her respect. If she’s the strong one then which one am I? Of course I can have a bad day now and then where I need her to encourage me and help me get back on my feet, but the more strength I draw from her the more of her respect it costs me.

Athol: I’ve long thought of Jennifer as my best friend, but having accepted the Captain / First Officer model of relating… she is certainly the person I am closest to and we are friends, but I also sense in myself a slight pulling away from her as well. I’m the Captain, thus I’m always a little more on duty than she is… or at least more on duty than I was before staring MMSL.

So I don’t think it’s the case that you can’t ever be friends. But it is the case that you can’t ever not be the Captain. Not forgetting that you can order her to take command of the ship while you’re either not available or are having some R&R. I’m pretty sure that on commercial aviation flights, the First Officer doesn’t nap the whole way while the Captain does everything. Balance people, balance.

I think having your relationship stay Functional and Productive are the two key goals to work toward, rather than trying to seek Happiness from your marriage. Being Happy is always a side effect, not something you can directly pursue. Though it seems to be a pretty common side effect of making your relationship Functional and Productive.

Once you stop talking about marriage law and family court… which are slanted toward women… and start complaining about being married and having a family as requiring effort, it all starts sounding increasingly like mourning for the fantasies of Marriage 1.0 where you were independantly wealthy and had a trophy wife.

Being quite blunt, some of the general complaining is nothing more than hamstering complaints about being men. Women get all hot and bothered thinking about having sex with winners. Winning isn’t easy though… so if you want to be a breeding male… your life isn’t going to be easy either.

Filed Under: Captain and First Officer, How To Choose A Wife, Monogamy and Marriage 2.0, Nice Guys and Betaization, The Male Action Plan (MAP)

Piercings and Tattoos

November 1, 2012 By Athol Kay 38 Comments

Nevaeh: Athol any thoughts on body piercings?

Athol: Let’s expand that to tattoos as well.

Permanently marking your body is always a strong personal statement. The more intense the markings are, the stronger the statement. So something like vanilla earrings are pretty tame, and genital piercings are very strong.

Heck if you want to toss in cosmetic surgery that can get even stronger still. Half the reason boob jobs end relationships is because the new boobs can sometimes quite dramatically improve her visual appearance, but getting a boob job requires a mindset of commitment to outcome. Once you know someone has fake boobs, you know they are quite prepared to do whatever it takes to get the sexual outcome they want.

So if you want a basic rule of thumb, the more dramatic the body modification, and the more intimate the location it’s in, the stronger the statement of sexual impulsivity is. A little fairy tattoo on a woman’s ankle is one thing, a tattoo of a sexy bunny rabbit with it’s ass up in the air right next to her vagina… well that’s another.

In terms of economics, crappy tattoos brand you forever as lower class. Under no circumstances get anything other than a really top notch professional working on you. A tattoo that costs $100 is NOT cheaper than a $650 one. You’ll pay for the difference forever in disdain and repulsion. Shitty work means you’ll be dating from the lower end of the gene pool. Seriously good work is a conspicuous display of disposable income… and naturally… pain tolerance. Which is fairly Alpha.

The one thing that really sets my hairs on the back of my neck up in terms of getting into a relationship though are tattoos of names. I think whoever that person the name belongs to is, they will always somehow loom larger than you. I mean if your name is Mike, and your girlfriend has the word “Steve” tattooed on her left breast… I’m thinking no matter how bad things were with Steve… he’s getting out of jail eventually. If you’re getting involved with a single mom and she has the names or faces of her kids tattooed on her… that’s a much stronger statement of commitment than anything you’re going to get.

Wives getting a tattoo or piercing as a “surprise” is a classic Fitness Testing routine to throw on their husbands too. It’s always something they know he’s not going to be happy with in the slightest. “But it was meant to be a surprise for you! I thought you would like it! Waaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!” It’s pretty much the opening salvo in what’s going to be a sustained campaign of testing and boundary pushing. If he fails to Alpha up fairly quickly, she will blow up on him and the marriage will end… badly.

It’s a completely reasonable expectation that permanent body markings are going to be agreed on by both halves of the couple. After all, you’re both going to look at it forever, so you want to be sure that your partner is going to like it. It’s not like a haircut that can grow out again.

If you’re casually dating someone, and she surprises you by showing up with a tattoo of your name on her… she’s Batshit Crazy. You may as well just go to the police station now and ask if you can pre-fill an assault report.

So in the end, if you’re getting something done, think carefully about whatever you’re getting because it’s going to last forever… and make it look like it cost a crap-ton of money. You want it to be something where people say, “I don’t actually like tattoos… but I like yours.”

Filed Under: Girl Game and Sexy Wives, How To Choose A Wife, Sexy Moves

Your Potential and Why Women Value Loyalty

October 17, 2012 By Athol Kay 35 Comments

One of the best insights in the Red Pill is that men who keep themselves physically and professionally together, can in their early forties with a little Game, have a cherry picking of women in their mid-twenties. While women in their early forties… meh not so much. I touched on that topic with Young Guy Game vs Old Guy Game. I actually had a friend phone me up after I wrote that post saying I soft peddled it way too much and that “Old Athol” would simply bury “Young Athol” in a match for “Young Jennifer’s” charms.

So the question begged then, is why don’t far more older men, bag younger women. Historically there’s always been a 2-3 year age difference between brides and grooms that’s held steady even as the average age for marriage moves toward being older. Why is that age gap only 2-3 years instead of 12-13 years? Why don’t 27 year old women routinely marry 40 year old men? Why do young women in their early twenties – at the very peak of their Sexual Marketplace buying power – settle for men in their mid-twenties?

The answer is simple…

The purchase the man not as he is, but as he shall be… potentially.

Or put more plainly, they’ll marry a med student because he’ll become a doctor, not because he’s a med student. They’ll marry a young business guy because he’ll become a captain of industry. They’ll marry a musician because he’ll become the rock star.

Your potential is a somewhat nebulous thing though. Shit happens. The economy tanks. People get laid off. We don’t all get to grow up to be astronauts.

In some cases, your marriage is tanking because she’s emotionally involved with another man… the mental image of the you that reached your potential. The fact that you did pretty good when all is said and done, may not appease her when she traded a smoking hot 22-year-old body for someone that turned into a fairly good 42-year-old man. It’s not that you’re a loser because you’re not… it’s that she feels she gambled and lost.

This is why you must pay special attention you’re entire marriage to the structural attraction issues. You can’t let your career slide away into nothingness when she has a mental image of you becoming someone more than you are. She did not trade a hot 24-year-old body to end up with a fat 39-year-old man.

Likewise, if you actually keep all your shit together and become what your potential suggest you can be… you will have the opportunities to just dump her and saddle up a new hottie as a replacement wife. Her gamble on you will never pay off as she hopes unless you are loyal to her. Thus when you act disloyal, or questionably loyal, her hamster kicks into overdrive, and she takes steps to ascertain your true loyalty to her. That’s why women will always sift through your unattended, unlocked phone.

Of course men aren’t terribly different either. The level of disgust men have in watching their trim perky bride morph into Jabba the Hutt’s sister is quite acute.

Filed Under: Body Agenda and Sex Rank, Captain and First Officer, How To Choose A Wife, Nice Guys and Betaization

Are Introverts Too Beta?

October 3, 2012 By Athol Kay 34 Comments

Cautiously Pessimistic: A question occurs to me. Is being an introvert inherently beta? I ask, because I’m on the extreme end of the intro/extroversion scale, and what energizes me generally involves being alone to do my own thing (reading, researching, playing, etc). Being around other people just drains me, unless powerful pharmaceuticals are involved.

Athol: The short answer is “Yes to some extent.”

I think extroverts get a great advantage in making early ground in becoming socially dominant. While the introverts all sit on the edges of the group and gaze into space thinking deep thoughts, the extroverts take over and make things happen. On balance I think people in leadership positions are going to be more extroverted than introverted. That leadership is Alpha and will have a pull on women’s attention.

However, once in individual relationships, introverts can prove to be amazingly stubborn individuals who insist on getting what they want from the relationship. For an introvert, relationships are valued for their usefulness, so a crappy relationship is poorly tolerated. It’s no issue to a strong introvert to simply jettison a bad love relationship to be by themselves. Introverts have a natural dread game thing happening in the background all the time.

On the other hand…

Lots of extroverts are people pleasing weaklings who fold on their personal standards just to maintain their relationships. They spend so much time in the social universe that one day they awaken to find that being Mr. Party isn’t so great when the bills need to be paid and the party is over.

Likewise an introvert can narrow their entire connection with the outside world down to a single person in the most needy of oneitis.

There’s also the thing where introverts end up developing a skill in private so valuable, that the rest of the social group have to acknowledge it. There’s probably more introvert doctors than extrovert ones for example. Hence complains about bedside manners and treating patients as “the diabetic case in room 201″, which is exactly how a heavily introverted person would see a problem. 90% of all art and entertainment is created by introverts, maybe produced and distributed by extroverts, but the creative types inventing it are introverted. Pretty much any time you see someone with some crazy high skill level at anything, odds on it’s an introvert. The right skill gets you a ticket to Alphaville.

That all being said, neither extraversion or introversion are destiny. You can learn to cover your weaknesses and balance your strengths as you get older and wiser. For those playing the home game, I’m a Myers-Briggs INTP. I used to come out at the extreme end of the introversion, thinking and perceiving scales when I was younger. These days I’m mostly introvert, almost borderline on the thinking vs feeling scale, and have moved much closer to balance on the perceiving vs judging scale as well. (As an aside… I personally like the Enneagram better than Myers-Briggs. I’m a 5 with a 4 wing if anyone is into it.)

Because I’m going to hear some sort of shocked comment that there’s no way I could be an introvert with splashing my sex life on the Internet… most of my day I’m alone, writing happens alone, part of what energizes my marriage is that both Jennifer and I are introverts and having each other as a primary and deep relationship works for the both of us. I relax playing computer games or reading, and not by going to a party. Yes I’ve dealt with several thousand pieces of reader email, but I tend to focus on the diagnosis / advice / follow up angle…. “the affair case in room 201″…. there’s very few who I end up being chatty with.

So it’s really a case of taking the good bits from your natural state and balancing it as best you can with the opposite. Which is how I ended up being an introvert who really likes people. If you’re an introvert, it’s simply not enough to have a skill. You have to get good with people too. At the end of the day, people are the only things that really matter.

Oh and introverted women can get overwhelmed by extroverted men in relationships, so consider the audience you’re seeking out. Introversion may be less of a bug and more of a feature. Also introverted women tend not to be infected with multiple strains of herpes. Just sayin’.

Filed Under: Alpha and Beta Male Traits, How To Choose A Wife

The Most Difficult Job In The World

September 22, 2012 By Athol Kay 81 Comments

Here’s the headline… Is ‘Opting Out’ The New American Dream For Working Women?

The short version: Women have started to figure out that it’s more fun and easier being at home than going to work. I mean it’s better for the kids yada yada yada, whatever… There’s started to be an actual shift out of the workforce, back to the home.

Here’s the most important part of the of the article. In fact we know it’s the most important part of the article because it’s the only thing they bolded in case men read it and didn’t know what was expected of them.

But it’s true: according to our survey, 84% of working women told ForbesWoman and TheBump that staying home to raise children is a financial luxury they aspire to.

What’s more, more than one in three resent their partner for not earning enough to make that dream a reality.

So let’s speak plainly. Huge numbers of women want to go back home and raise the kids and one in three Fitness Test their husbands into a sexless marriage because he can’t provide them with their dream in a down economy.

Look, I’m really torn by this. I think having someone at home is great if you can afford it, but if you turn one spouse into the financial dependant on the other, there’s significant risk in a no-fault divorce society of an unmitigated disaster in the future. After a divorce, no matter how you slice up one income between two households, there’s going to be a ton of pain to spread around. But at the same time, it’s a bit of a return to more traditional values and thinking. Family matters, relationships matter, kids do better with an adult around rather than a key under the mat and junk-food. Hell I work from home now and I can see how everyone looks a little happier.

The great risk is that the husband that encourages/caves/allows his wife to stay home with the kids for a decade or more, really is somewhat de facto adopting her financially. She’s become his dependant. If she then ”takes early retirement” and turns into a worthless house keeper, a crappy cook, a neglectful mother, mires herself in soap operas, trolls Facebook and even cheats on him… he’s got no easy options for fixing the situation. The minimum requirement for effort as a stay at home parent, is the threshold where the state decides it needs to remove the children from the house. So unless the state moves in, all the husband can do is choose between putting up with it, or divorcing and having his wallet removed through his rectum.

The nightmare / dream is this…

So anyway…

…here’s the deal. There’s not enough to do at home once the kids are in school to keep an adult properly occupied. There’s just not. Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t want you to know how great it is being at home. So they tell you it’s the most difficult job in the world. Plus if they have an IQ over 100 they just go stir-crazy from not seeing any other adults during the day other than the mailman.

As I’ve said many times, what a stay at home person needs to be, is a SAHM or SAHD “plus something”. What that plus something is, I don’t care, you just need some sort of productive activity that your spouse or any other person can look at and say, “Yep that’s actually something of value you’re doing.” Have a part-time job, take care of someone’s elderly parent that needs some kind of assistance, special needs kids majorly up the effort needed too, run the PTA, teach music on the weekend… seriously anything other than soap operas and Facebook. Get outside and walk around if nothing else, especially if you look like a bag of soccer balls.

The truth is many SAHMs are already SAHMs+Something, but some aren’t. You have to make very very sure of things before agreeing that a working wife should become a SAHM. It’s a very significant decision, right up there with getting married in the first place.

Also for women who want the SAHM route… you’re making a serious choice too. It’s not Marriage 1.0 anymore with copious alimony, it’s Marriage 2.0 with a lot of variance in alimony and child support. Even if you “win” the divorce and get cash and prizes, you’re still likely to have a very hard time of things financially if you can’t immediately start working. Doesn’t matter how you split one income over two households, it’s going to be worse than before. You may find yourself unable to extract yourself from a truly terrible marriage because you can’t afford it. Also assume that if you are divorced and you can’t find proper employment promptly, you’re going to have to consider finding a new male partner quickly, with his income being his most important feature. Which is to say, he might bring home the bacon, but not be someone you’re terribly into getting naked with. Blowjobs on the second date and all that. Welcome to Marriage 2.ho.

Oh and $1500 of Mary Kay cosmetics in the hall closet and you selling $40 of foundation to your mother doesn’t count as “plus something”. That’s called you wasting $1460.

Filed Under: Captain and First Officer, How To Choose A Wife, Monogamy and Marriage 2.0, Nice Guys and Betaization

The Awkward Post About How Penis Size Matters

September 21, 2012 By Athol Kay 23 Comments

Look I hate to be a downer, but penis size actually matters. Every study comes back saying that most women don’t really worry about the size of the guys penis, unless he’s like way too big, or way to small. Every article on penis size ends with a serious but kind statement to the effect of “Guys it’s all in your head. So relax.”

Well as much as I’m a social science guy, I think it’s all Blue Pill prattle. Let’s have a wee peek at Wikipedia.

Human penis size is the measured length and width of the human penis. The most accurate measurement of the human penis comes from several measurements at different times since there is natural minor variability in size due to arousal level, time of day, room temperature, frequency of sexual activity, and reliability of measurement. When compared to other primates, including large primates such as the gorilla, the human penis is largest, both in absolute terms and in relative size to the rest of the body. Measurements vary, with studies that rely on self-measurement reporting a significantly higher average than those with staff measuring. However, the mean of an erect human penis is approximately 12.9–15.0 cm (5.1–5.9 in) in length. Flaccid penis length is a poor estimate of erect length. Most of human penis growth happens between infancy and the age of five, and between about one year after the onset of puberty and, at latest, approximately 17 years of age.[1]

So while the studies all say “size matters not”, we’re all walking around with what amounts to a big cock compared to our primate cousins. That unusually large human penis is the result of sexual selection. Meaning in plain English, human females kept choosing human males with above average penis size, and after that went on long enough, we all ended up… proportionately… slightly better hung than horses. (But not quite as good as an African Bull Elephant.)

So I have to think women all, shall we say, “soften the truth” to the pasty nerdy guy holding a clipboard in his slightly shaking hands as he asks an actual girl how much penis size matters.

So…

Penises come in four types to women, and where the lines on actual inches are varies from woman to woman, so it’s all relative.

(1) Way too small. There’s just nothing you can do about this one. If she’s really into you and as soon as she sees your penis the entire relationship changes direction toward you being dumped, you’re too small for her. No matter what she says was the issue, it’s cock size that was the issue.

(2) Way too big. Oh it may look majestic and powerful, but if she’s basically in pain from sex, she won’t like it very much. Being very long can smack something internally and she’s going to worry about being not merely “a good kind of sore”, but actually injured from sex. Plus there’s no such thing as a quickee, there’s take-a-lot-of-time-and-lubrication-and-take-it-slow-ow-ow-ow-I-said-slow. Some women also need to feel the guys balls slapping against them too, so if those are a couple inches clear because he can’t go balls deep, it’s not as fun for her.

(3) Just right. Some lucky couples have a perfect match up. He’s right on her maximum limit of what she can take without heading into too big world. He can pound rough and it doesn’t hurt, or slow and sweet and it still feels good. If this is you, you have a good thing going and can probably have an easy time of gaming your wife. I guessing around 5% of couples fall in this group.

(4) How Much Money Do You Make? The truth is, about 90% of all guys fall into this group. Your penis is within operational parameters, it’s not way too small, or way too big, but neither is it just right. What you do however is compensate by making money, running game, having a proper house, not taking her shit for no reason, and generally doing everything else I’ve been talking about on the blog. As long as you’re doing all that consistently, you’re probably going to be just fine, that’s what women mean when they say size doesn’t matter… they assume the penis is attached to a great guy who isn’t way too small or way too big. They aren’t going to dump you to put themselves back on the market for some other guy who probably has the same dick size as you anyway.

I gotta be honest though, the closer you are to the small end of (4), the more effort you need to put into keeping your crap together. All things being equal, if two guys lose their job and end up sitting at home playing too much Halo, when they should be looking for work, the guy with the four inch dick is skating on a lot thinner ice than the guy with the six inch dick. That’s all I’m saying, ya’ll know its true, it’s just ugly to say it out loud.

If you’re on the smaller side, it is an utterly terrible idea to introduce swinging, hotwife, or polyamory into the relationship. If she gets a “Just Right” match up, you’re in a world of trouble faster than you can blink. Likewise when getting involved with high partner count women, you have to assume that somewhere back in the past is a Mr. Just Right, and if that guy Facebooks her out of the blue, you’re going to have a harder time of time pulling it back from the brink.

If you are particularly small, don’t give up. Just like male genitals come in all sizes, so do female ones. Keep looking and even advertise it quietly but confidently. For a small percentage of women it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. A woman who is very small in the triangle with an above average hung husband isn’t going to be a happy camper.

There’s also a fairly significant positive boost to marital happiness, self reported sexual enjoyment and reduced divorce chances from marrying a virgin (or at least a virgin when you met her) woman. I gotta wonder how much of that is directly related to an “ignorance is bliss” effect, where lack of experience means wives married to a husband with a type (4), believe that it’s in fact a type (3) penis.

Also something to consider is that almost all penis size “studies” ask for volunteers to allow themselves to be measured. So the results can be thrown off by a bunch of self-selecting bigger than average guys volunteering to drop their jeans to be measured by some female grad student with a flippy ponytail. So as far as I can tell there’s no clear understanding as to what exactly is average anyway. If you’re worried about how big you are, try getting a side on view in the bathroom mirror of your wife blowing you...

…it may surprise you.

Filed Under: Body Agenda and Sex Rank, How To Choose A Wife

Does Wanting To Have Sex With Other People Go Away?

September 20, 2012 By Athol Kay 16 Comments

Serenity: Let me ask you this since we’re being all open and honest and all…I know you’ve said that even though you love your wife, you’re still sometimes attracted to other women. Do you think that can ever change? I still have to fight that in myself. Is it possible to ever be so much in love with your spouse that you’re no longer attracted to others? It’s tiring sometimes to always have to shut your mind down.

Athol: Understanding how the three love systems work is helpful here.

(1) The basic “oh she’s hot” testosterone sex drive will never go away. A nice rack is a nice rack is a nice rack. Velly Nice. This one simply can’t be helped as long as you have testosterone and a pulse. I check out other women all the time. Not in a creepy hands doing something under my raincoat sort of way, more in a sort of a dirty anthropologist way. So if you happen to catch me checking you out, please just relax, the photos are for science.

(2) The pair bonding oxytocin/vasopressin system between Jennifer and myself is very strong. I can totally appreciate a stunning girl and have no impulse to live with her whatsoever. I really like Jennifer and she’s someone I trust and never want to hurt… non-consensually. Actually back up a little… I can totally appreciate a stunning girl and have no impulse to be her friend or trust her. Some of that is simply being 42 instead of 22 I think, but a lot is just being bonded to Jennifer. After having an orgasm with Jennifer I pretty much have an automatic nap that I have no control over, just the vasopressin pathways with a deep groove in my head.

So I’m horny and happy, and that’s all good. The potential trouble of the (1) system is handled by frequent sex and the (2) system. Being laid like tile really helps. I’ve had a couple of blindingly obvious offers for sex in the last few years (“oh nurse, can I show you something in private, I just want to know if it’s okay… how does THAT look?”) and turning them down was actually pretty easy, especially the guys.

My trouble… and likely your trouble too, comes from the third love system…

(3) Most couples have a higher desire person and a lower desire person. That’s simply in comparison to each other though, in our relationship, Jennifer is the low desire spouse, really only wanting sex for her own pleasure 5-6 times a week. If she was with a guy that only wanted sex 2-3 times a week, she’d be the high desire spouse.

So anyway, I’m the high desire spouse, and that desire is not just a sexual desire thing, but also an overall need for stimulation and attention. It’s a need for dopamine. Mix in my ADHD and I’m pretty much… pretty much…. okay fuck it I’ll say it, I’m the Crazy Bitch in the relationship.

Jennifer: Lmao, I would like to point out that he said it, I didn’t.

Anyway… I do get bored and understimulated and that’s where I go astray and get into trouble. It’s so easy for me to start chatting and flirting and BAM! I’m starting to emotionally engage with someone and I can feel myself starting to line up a set of crosshairs on them. I’m much, much better at recognizing when I’m doing it and breaking things off nowdays though. Awareness of what is happening on a dopamine level is really helpful in breaking things off. Whoever I’m talking to is simply not my soulmate or a special snowflake, they just emotionally feel that way. In reality she’s just some pleasant, attractive, interested in me woman, and everything in my head is lighting up on cue. Attraction isn’t controllable. But breaking it off early is. I’ve actually done really really well with this the last year.

The other half of the fix is understanding that it’s just a need for stimulation, there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with the relationship, me being bored doesn’t mean Jennifer sucks as a wife. Well she does suck the other way, but you know what I meant. It means I can just ask for stimulation from Jennifer. “Help I’m starting to feel nutty, I need X Y or Z tonight.” I used to meet that whole dopamine thing via World of Warcraft as a form of self-medication. Now I write the blog, swoop in to help marital crises yada yada, and ask for particularly intense sex acts.

I’ve given Jennifer near total information on what turns me on emotionally and sexually. Hell you guys can just read the blog and you’ll figure out 90% of what turns me on. It’s really not rocket science or mind reading to push my buttons. There are things that she can do that pull my attention onto her. If you ever hear that we divorce it will totally be Jennifer’s fault for not following the handy 57 page guide to my personal kink. RTFM.

What was the question again?

Oh. No, it doesn’t all vanish. Not if you’re basically high libido and have a pulse. But that doesn’t mean you’re eyeing the exit or standing at the window whimpering to be let out. All it is, is a need for stimulation that you have to pay attention to. I also get that it’s an effort to try and shut your mind down about other people sometimes, but the solution is to ask for help from your partner and clue them into what to do. You just need to have the conversation about “this is asking for help and working on our marriage” as opposed to “I’m threatening to cheat on you”. It’s completely possible to manage it forever… and have some amazing sexual experiences together ”managing it.”

Jennifer: All true. Athol is fun to live with… tiring lol, but fun.

Filed Under: Body Agenda and Sex Rank, Cheating and Infidelity, How To Choose A Wife, Monogamy and Marriage 2.0, Sexual Health Issues, Sexy Moves