How to have the marriage you thought you were going to have. By which I mean doing it like rabbits.
There are no guarantees with life.
Sometimes you’ll win, sometimes you’ll lose.
But if you don’t play the game, you will always be choosing to not win.
If you live a life of not winning long enough, you’ll be a loser.
So get in there and play.
The only thing you have to lose… is losing.
When you negotiate to get something you want from someone, if they agree to grant your wish… STOP TALKING.
Seriously. Just zip your lip. You got them to agree to what you wanted, so stop trying to convince them further that you should get what you want. You already have the yes you want, so all that can happen if you keep talking to them, is you give them a reason to change their mind to a no.
You’ve already closed the deal. Stop yapping. Just let it sit.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a kid asking to go to a party, an employee asking for a promotion, a wife asking her to husband go to the doctor, a husband asking for sex. You’re asking for something, they said yes. Don’t hear the yes and then explain that saying yes is a great deal because…
…Mike’s brother was the one that bought all the beer to the party last year and he’s not coming because he’s in jail now. So it’s cool right?
…that’s you’re the only one in the whole agency that can operate the old TPS Machine and the new ones aren’t being delivered for nine months. So you’re valuable right?
…that you’ve been talking to all your girlfriends about Mr. Droopy and they all agree that you really have to see a doctor. So you’re going right?
…that you’re tired of jerking off. In fact you did that just last night to some Japanese Tentacle Porn. But it was only $4.99 for the show, so that’s no problem right?
Right?
Right?
No you can’t go to the party. What the hell happened last year? What did Mike’s brother do to go to jail? Who is Mike anyway?!
No at this point you’re just too valuable working the old TPS machine. There’s just no way we could move you until the new ones arrive.
What do you mean to talked to everyone about that?! WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT TO EVERYONE? I DON’T HAVE A PROBLEM, IT’S ONLY BEEN HAPPENING FOR A YEAR.
What’s Japanese Tentacle Porn? Hang on let me Google… huh… ahh. WTF IS THIS SHIT?!?!? OMG!!! YOU PAID MONEY FOR TH…. Bbbbbbrrrrooooghghghhhhh… You sick, sick bastard. Get away from me. NO. NO. NO.
See?
See?
If you get your yes, just stop talking.
Jennifer: Athol gave me the “what has been seen can’t be unseen” warning for Japanese Tentacle Porn. I’m not looking. I’m not looking. I’m not looking… sigh dammit…
…Ohhh FML.
Athol: @Hygenius and @x1134x are married forum members who discovered MMSL in June 2012 and joined the forum when it opening in July 2012.
Some selected quotes from July 2012…
@x1134x - HOW THE HELL DO I MOVE SEX TO THE FRONT OF HER ‘want to get done today’ list? Why is IT the expendable item? It was on her list this morning. The answer to “how could you have energy to work out but not the energy to fool around?” was “I need to workout for my back, its really tight”. Am I being a jerk? Or is the the fitness test I’m just unable to overcome? Feel like we took four steps forward, but now I’m right back at where I started. I DO NOT FEEL WANTED BY HER. Because the first thing on my list is the last thing on hers.
@Hygenius – Am I up in the night to expect that these changes should take longer and that patience should be a factor? 10 years of difficult sex, no exercise and relationship issues can not be solved in a month and surely not after such life changing events, right? Or am I just a cock tease that is fitness testing my husband daily with no intention of having sex with him because I just am not interested anymore….hmmm?
I am HURT and EMBARRASSED but most of all, I’m tired. Perhaps a trial separation would be best. Suggestions anyone.
Athol: @Hygenius actually never returned to the forum after her first set of posts, but @x1134x has stayed active and I assume he posts and they talk. Anyway, the plan we put in place appears to have worked, because today…
@x1134x – Born Tuesday: Baby x1134x / @Hygenius 7 lbs 11 oz born via Cesarean Section. (name too unique to divulge – our last name is very common. A common first name would make him “John Smith” I’ll PM it to anyone interested.)
Baby is 100% healthy, mom is recovering well. Dad is shot. Delirium tired. You might not see me around here for a while. . .
Thanks @Athol_Kay.
Seriously. Thank you. I haven’t cried happy tears in decades. Thank you. You didn’t just help me fix my sex life. You helped me fix my life.
Athol: So… Happy Mother’s Day. 
I told y’all the MAP only does everything.
Buy the book, get the free forum booklet…. fix your life.
I think we have a new first date question…
“Do you like Pinterest?” is a lot more subtle than “So…. are you Borderline Personality Disorder?”
‘Pinterest stress’ afflicts nearly half of moms, survey says.
In our exclusive TODAY Moms survey of 7,000 U.S. mothers, 42 percent said that they sometimes suffer from Pinterest stress – the worry that they’re not crafty or creative enough. Symptoms include staying up until 3 a.m. clicking through photos of exquisite hand-made birthday party favors even though you’ll end up buying yours at the dollar store, or sobbing quietly into a burnt mess of expensive ingredients that were supposed to be adorable bunny cookies for the school bake sale.
and…
Aiming for magazine- or Pinterest-worthy perfection all the time is an impossible goal for anyone, especially when you’ve got kids. And striving for perfection is a major source of stress for moms: One in four mothers told our TODAY Moms survey that the pressure they put on themselves to be perfect is a top cause of stress, and 75 percent report that the pressure they put on themselves is worse than any pressure or judgment they get from other moms. The result? Our average stress level is 8.5 out of 10, the survey says.
Anyway…
If that’s your wife, tell her to knock off the art department that only the mean girls in her head care about. Suggest she’d be better off lying on her back, letting you check in to the phallus palace and then she could take a nap.
But that’s not all. In a press release published Tuesday, [Ashley Madison] also revealed that they typically see the highest spike in female signups on the day after Mother’s Day. In 2012, they saw a whopping 439 percent increase on that day as compared to a typical Monday.
“Mother’s Day tends to magnify the flaws, leads to questions about the choices you have made, and ultimately fosters conclusions around doing something different for yourself,” explains Ashley Madison founder and CEO Noel Biderman. “This latter choice tends to be the genesis of many women’s journey into an affair.”
So…
Maybe you could step up and burn the bunny cookies for her this weekend, or cook dinner or something. Meh it’s Mothers Day, there’s a little more expectation of Beta love. Some dinner suggestions… roast chicken… sides dishes. If you’re buying her flowers… buy her a Just Add Ice Orchid. I got Jennifer one last September and it’s still alive! She loves it.
Sometimes a little extra effort saves you a ton of angst and trouble later on. You don’t want to be starting over asking questions about Pinterest as a screening tool because you couldn’t pass Loyalty Testing 101.
Just remember to keep the Alpha goodness in place. Have fun with it. Don’t skip your workout for any of this.
(Disclaimer: I have no idea what Pinterest is. I think it’s like a Special Olympics version of Facebook)
From the forum…
Sleepy: I was reading Athol’s blog yesterday “Quirky Gifts and Flair” and read this line… she starts checking out of the relationship because she’s unhaaaaaappppppy and about to Eat, Pray, Love an exit.
So, my wife of 20+ years and 4 kids who has always been anti religion started to convert to Catholicism in secret. When I figured it out, I felt like she was cheating on me (about 6 months of individual and couples therapy and I still feel this way) as this was done in secret and her reason for needing god was that we were no longer good as a couple and she needed “love”. I flipped and basically took a position of no contact as if this was an affair, which she has done with just enough complaint that I know she still wants too.
Without going into all the details here (if there is a lot of interest I could add a thread in the 911 Relationship ER section) I guess my question is how evil am I and are there others out there who have felt this way?
Athol: Well Eat, Pray, Love refers to a book, but the answer to your questions is yes / no / kinda / sorta / it depends.
It’s usually a critical junction when one half of a couple changes their religious status, either becoming more religious, less religious, or changing religions. They can be a wide variety of changes in personal interests and personality from benign to quite alarming as someone changes from one religious viewpoint to another. It’s always hopeful that an inter-faith marriage will stay stable, but the more divergent the expressions of belief are, the greater the stress is on the marriage.
This is largely the same effect at work as shared beliefs of any sort. Two democrats or two republicans are likely going to be more comfortable married to each other than a democrat and a republican are. It’s all about being able to relax with each other at the end of the day instead of wanting to disagree about something. Same deal if someone suddenly becomes crazy about a diet while the other isn’t. It’s a relationship stress to have one of you wanting to eat Paleo and the other being a Vegetarian… though the old joke stands that if you really want to piss off a Vegetarian give them vegetables to eat… most of them just want to eat pasta all day.
The more fundamentalist (Wikipedia) the conversion the greater the stress on the relationship is. Note that Wikipedia link to fundamentalist covers Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu and even Non-Religious fundamentalism. As soon as one half of the couple digs in their heels and states they are right and their partner is not merely in misguided disagreement, but utterly wrong… or even literally damned and/or evil for whatever reason… the relationship is heading for seriously choppy waters.
If you’ve ever had your partner educated as to your total failure of morality by their near entire social group, you’ll know just how hopeless your situation is. You could be a tax-paying, law abiding, full and complete stop on red, look both ways before you cross the street, girl scout cookie buying sweetheart, but having 20-30 people tell your spouse that failure to believe in [religious belief] turns you into a horrible fallen person hell bent on destroying everything precious and good… well, it has an effect. Speaking as a good evangelical Christian back in the day my first serious girlfriend was Catholic… it doesn’t take many people giving you “Godly frowns of concern” to make you feel uneasy about your relationship. That was a Catholic girl too, not even a clutch-the-pearls Non-Christian… that would have had people directly saying things to me like, “I’d like to encourage you to seek the Lord’s guidance”, which is how evangelicals tell you you’re retarded.
And yes I get that there are a wide variety of expressions of belief from rather insipid, to rather psychotic in intensity, even within each faith or even denomination. I’m painting with a wide brush here.
Anyway… back to the question at hand…
My knee jerk reaction to your situation is that you have two issues rather than one issue.
(1) The state of the marriage.
(2) Her interest in Catholicism.
What she’s saying is essentially, “Because of (1) I’m (2)” which is trying to turn it into one issue. This is a poor solution because the marriage issues aren’t going to be fixed by going to church and it is obviously driving a bigger wedge between you.
My advice would be to figure out the marriage issues as marriage issues, and allow the religious issue to be handled as a religious issue. So grab the free forum booklet and answer the nine triage questions in a 911 thread on the forum and people can help you get to the bottom of things.
Or put another way, if the marriage is chugging along just great, everyone getting along well, lots of sex and laughter… would it matter very much at all if she was a standard issue Catholic?
I will say this much though, I’m not convinced she’s been hiding it from you as a way of hurting you, more as a way of trying not to lose you in the process. When I became an atheist, I kept that a secret a looooooong time. I thought I was risking my marriage coming out about it, which because my faith was part and parcel of my attractiveness to Jennifer, I think it really was. When I finally told Jennifer she bawled her eyes out with me feeling like the worst husband ever. Even after that, it took fourteen years before I felt comfortable publicly identifying as an atheist.
Anyhoo…
As official MMSL policy, I personally don’t care what you believe or disbelieve in. I obviously self-identify as atheist because I don’t believe in a deity, but I’m not trying to actively convert anyone to that point of view on MMSL. I only try and get involved in religious issues on MMSL when it seems to be clearly screwing with the marriage. At this point the entire fabric of western civilization is sufficiently screwed up that individual marriages are like sandbags keeping back the flood-waters. I don’t care what type of sand you have in your bag, just that you have a sandbag that isn’t going to fall apart.
I’ve always been kinda funny about music in that I “get it” about three to five years after everyone else does. I remember being a teenager and the entire world being crazy about U2. As in everyone listening to U2 and I’m like… uh-huh. U2 even came to Wellington in either the late 80′s or very early 90′s and for months before the concert I had to listen to all the pre-concert hype from all my friends. Then the concert which obviously I skipped. Then the months of post-concert cooldown. I can’t tell you how sick of U2 I was after all that.
Then five years later I DISCOVER U2, IT IS THE GREATEST BAND IN THE WORLD, WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME ABOUT U2?
Everyone else is like… uh-huh… where have you been?
So anyway…
I’ve been digging around on YouTube for all the old bands from back in the day. There’s so much music I’ve forgotten from then. Found a few bands and cranked it. Made a Pandora.com station or two and just had stuff playing in the background doing the daily routines. It’s surprisingly energizing hearing the old music in the background and…
…OMG…
…I’ve become like one of those old people. You know the ones, listening to jazz from the 1930′s or something.
I mean no. It’s VERY ENERGIZING and screw anyone that doesn’t like your music. It’s what you like. So crank it up. The hardest thing in the world some days is feeling positive and able to face it with a smile. The truth is it really does matter and makes a difference for you when you’re more positive. You being happier makes everyone around you a little happier. Feelings are infectious, so infect someone.
Okay, okay I admit it.
I’ve been listening to freaking Petra, but if you tell anyone I’ll fucking cut you.
Reader: This is prompted by the fact that Mother’s day is next weekend. My problem is just being done with the divorce I’m not sure how to play this or her birthday in August.
I bought a cashmere scarf for her in Scotland when I was there this year. I’m thinking that should be the Mom’s Day gift, and it would be just from me.
Of the two, the birthday seems the most problematic: I won’t necessarily celebrate anything with her and she’ll likely be partying with her group of fantastic, sycophantic friends. Add to that the data point of my bday in March, when the only thing I got from her was a “Me and the Boys” gift, which was the one thing I asked for. So I’m thinking with bday I just slide in with the boys on a gift like she did.
Athol: Okay… so I just heard “cashmere” and figured it was expensive as hell. Which means you don’t give something expensive to your ex-wife. She is probably ex-pensive enough as it is.
Recommendation… sell it on eBay.
…then just for shits and giggles, I Googled “Cashmere Scarf eBay“.
Ah… wow… holy crap.
That’s a lot of scarves for cheap.
I *think* they might be great deals.
I have no fucking idea what I’m looking at. I thought cashmere was made from rabbit fur, but these seem to be made from goats. Or something. I mean I really have no clue what I’m looking at. Cashmere could be made from the inner lining of Muppets for all I know. But they seem to look nice and for crazy cheap.
Jennifer came over and started explaining what cashmere was and labels and I kinda lost track of what she was saying in her cleavage.
Anyway…
Guys… What’s your secret for quirky gifts she didn’t see coming?
Girls… Whence comes your flair?
If you had to advise someone about things to simply stop doing, or start doing, as part of making their life / relationship / Game better…
…what would they be?
i.e.
Stop apologizing for things that aren’t your fault
Start going to the gym.
Stop…
Start…
The one minute drill on my high school in New Zealand in 1983… All boys school. Each year had classes streamed in order from highest to lowest of academic potential… i.e. smartest kids in the top class with electives like physics, economics, accounting and languages… and dumbest kids in the lowest class with electives like woodshop and thuggery. Middle school in NZ tends to be two years long – Form One and Two. High school is five years long – Forms Three through Seven.
So when you start high school, you start in Form Three… aka… Third Form… aka Turd Form.
Which makes you… a turd.
Anyway…
I was in class S3A… the top class of the nine Third Form classes. I say this to brag and to explain what comes next.
Being in the top class means expectations are high… and every single one of my six teachers gave us the “Welcome to high school, we’re going to break your will to live” supply of homework.
I mean a ridiculous amount of homework.
I remember going home and starting on all this homework and by some time past 10pm I had completed five of the six classes of homework and I just gave up in frustration and exhaustion. I just couldn’t do my science homework. It was just impossible to get it all done.
Turns out skipping the science homework was a bad choice.
Me and another five other boys, were taken out into the hall by Mr. Renyolds and caned.
Now in fairness, mum and dad had collected me for a spanking once in a while, so the concept of physical punishment wasn’t beyond my experience, but I’d always at least done something wrong related to whatever was coming. But I’d never been physically punished in school. I’d seen and heard the greatly feared the strap at St. Marks, but it was always someone else who deserved it. Except for that one time there was no teacher in the class for ages and we all got noisy and Mr. Huckleberry the Assistant Headmaster burst into the room and just bitchslapped poor Fortios for the crime of being the one sitting closest to the door… SLAP!
Thirty intakes of breath followed by the most. awkward. silence. ever.
Mr. Huckleberry kind of stammered out an apology “I shouldn’t have done that” and quickly left the class.
As far as I know, no one said anything to anyone. I don’t think a parent was told. I don’t think a teacher was told. The next day it was like nothing had happened.
No one told.
Oh… yeah… missed my science homework, lined up outside, bend over and touch your toes.
Mr. Renyolds coming down the line…
Crack! Five boys left.
Well I guess science was the wrong one to miss.
Crack! Four boys left.
This is so unfair, there was no way to do all that homework.
Crack! Three boys left.
I can’t believe this is happening to me.
Crack! Two boys left.
Holy fuck I have to do this.
Crack!
Fuck you ,you fucking asshole. Fuck you forever. I fucking hate you and I hope you fucking die like a fucking fuck.
Then I went back inside and we had science class.
Now…
Let me explain what I would have done differently if I could go back and relive that moment…
I’d hit him back. As hard as I could.
Remember, I’d be twelve years old at that point, 90 pounds soaking wet, like 4’10″ or something, facing off a grown man with a six foot long cane. I’m not actually a threat to him.
But I don’t have to win. I just have to prove I’m always going to hit back, no matter what, no matter the odds, everytime like a crazy motherfucker who doesn’t give a shit. Tit for tat baby. You do X, don’t wonder Y.
You see if I’d done that, I wouldn’t have spent the next four years of my life being the target for bullies. That finished with me getting clubbed in the face with a cricket bat and having to actually have a fistfight to defend myself during english class. A fight I actually lost… but I never was directly picked on again. Because I finally hit back.
So…
Why am I telling you all this?
Well maybe I’m cynical, but I think violence is the most awesome problem solving tool. Hitting someone beats talk every. single. time.
You simply cannot have a rational debate with someone who is prepared to be violent, when they know you aren’t prepared to be violent. Your options are either verbal agreement to what they want, or getting hit. It’s a fabulous behavioral modification tool. Mr. Renyolds was an asshole, but I never did miss an assignment after that.
There are only two solutions to dealing with violent people you’re in a permanent relationship with. (1) Smashing them back harder than they can hit you, or at least making the situation risky enough that they figure you aren’t worth the effort and they move on to a softer target, or (2) having outside use of force come and do it for you.
i.e. have the cops come in and cuff them, cart them away and have the law, courts and jails do what they have to.
I really do mean call the cops and make a report. If someone wants to use violence as a tool, greater use of force is the only thing that they understand. I’ve had to deal with psychotic patients in community settings and it’s utterly remarkable how quickly they stop wanting to beat on their roommates and smash windows as soon as the police arrive. There’s just something about a tazer that makes most crazy people instantly polite and cooperative. I’ve also seen remarkable long term behavioral improvements after court appearances, dwarfing the effects of medications and other behavioral programming.
This simply isn’t a gender issue either. If you’re being hit, you’re being hit. The main difference between men and women being violent is when push really comes to shove, women have to weaponize or do it while the husband is sleeping. Not advising things here, just stating the obvious.
Should a situation become unsafe, start videoing them, dial 911 and defend yourself / get to as safe a location as you can. Your safety is always your priority over what happens to them when the police arrive. Violent people simply don’t stop using violence as a solution if it’s getting them what they want. They only become progressively more violent until you get greater force involved to stop them. This is why police, courts, laws and jails exist…so we don’t all get caught up in a game of He Dead, She Dead.
Or even more cynically in the vein of “screenshot or it didn’t happen”.
Make a police report or it didn’t happen.
Mr. Huckleberry never hit Fortios because no one said anything.
Catching up… New Zealand did make corporal punishment in schools illegal in 1984, so I got my caning… er… just in time.
As to Mr. Renyolds… I don’t know, I transfered to another high school for a fresh start for Seventh Form. Something I’m grateful to my parents for. I did hear a rumor that during that year one of the boys collected Mr. Renyolds with a one punch KO in the hall. Don’t know who did it… but thanks.
