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Is a Religious Conversion Like an Affair?

May 8, 2013 By 11 Comments

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.

 

Filed Under: Captain and First Officer, Cheating and Infidelity, How To Choose A Wife, Humor and Everything Else, Monogamy and Marriage 2.0, Uncategorized

The Eternal Captain Rule

April 25, 2013 By 61 Comments

If there’s a element of learning the Red Pill that’s like getting a gaping chest wound… it’s The Eternal Captain Rule. Namely…

“Ignorance of your responsibility to have been the Captain is no excuse.”

The perception is that men always have the personal power to effect change, while women can more easily frame themselves as the victim of circumstance. Therefore, if you’re the husband, just because you didn’t know you were supposed to be the Captain, doesn’t excuse you from having failed as the Captain in the past. Even if having an equal relationship was by mutual agreement, if it all falls apart it’s going to be the husband who carries the most blame for the failure.

I’m not saying it’s fair. I’m just saying what it is.

Just as importantly, the average woman quite pointedly responds sexually to a dominant leading man. Lack of a husband displaying reasonable dominance and leadership is a fast track to relationship failure. Weak and poorly leading husbands may as well be actively pushing their wives into the arms of other men. Women as the manosphere so rightly explains, are hypergamous – seeking strong, powerful, leading men. It’s what they are designed to do, its normal female behavior.

Harsh truth here… complaining about normal female behavior makes you sound like a loser. Stop whining about it.

In the same vein I don’t react with shock that someone was half eaten by their pet tiger. Tigers are created to be merciless, rampaging, killing machines. It’s what they do. Your pet tiger killing you is simply your tiger displaying normal tiger behavior.

So for whatever reason your life falls apart and you suddenly become homeless… odds are pretty good that your wife isn’t going to be homeless with you. If she has a better deal than you she can get to be with… she’d be rational to not bed down in the cardboard box with you. It would be her being crazy to stay with you.

I’m not saying that all women are jaded, gold-digging whores waiting for the first moment of weakness to jump ship to a larger cock… it’s not THAT bad (he said softly massaging his right temple for effect, thinking that the tiger metaphor was perhaps poorly chosen)… but every woman expects you can hold your shit together and be a productive spouse on a routine basis.

The old line is that “women don’t want to win, they want a winner.”

There’s a lot of truth to that, but it’s also worth saying that no one expects you to roll through life like an endless perfect season either. You can even have a losing season…

…but if you do, you better have a plan and a show of confidence that you can turn the franchise around and have a winning season.

Right now…     —–>   Buy the damn book.

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

She Comes Fourth In Your Life vs. Children Come First

April 8, 2013 By 32 Comments

One of the fun things about having a co-ed forum is sometimes you see a woman and a man say exactly the same thing. Word for word. Just one favors men and the other favors women.

Male: A slight variant on the classic Patrice O’Neal line about making your woman, the fourth most important thing in your life. The order being, (1) You, (2) your mission, (3) your blood relatives (Patrice just said his mom for #3) and then finally (4) your woman.

Female: “I will never put a man ahead of the children. The children always come first.”  Hmmm…. well then, one also imagines if she is the one that decides whether or not something is in the interests of the children, she also trumps both the kids and him. Which suggests an order of (1) Her, (2) Shoes, (3) the kids, (4) that guy that’s always here for some reason.

So…

Well that ain’t going to work if you both decide to play the same strategy of my way or the highway. What immediately begs the question is what happens if someone else comes along and offers the #1 spot to your #4 slot spouse? If only for… oh…  five minutes or so?

You have to consider that for someone to allow themselves to be the 4th priority in your life, they need to be about in the range of 2 points of Sex Rank below yours. That’s a healthy Orbiter distance. I doubt a learned MMSL reader would allow themselves to be so taken for granted.

The Order of Priority

Assuming no one is toxic and needs to be treated with purposeful distance…

Athol:  Self Care > Husband > Father > Son > Brother > Friends > the rest of humanity.

Jennifer:  Self Care > Wife > Mother > Daughter > Sister > Friends > the rest of humanity.

If you notice, Jennifer and I both have each other in the #2 spot. Frankly neither one of us has the interest or ability in micromanaging the others day and self-care. We obviously care about each other, but at the end of the day, if I turn into a complete douchebag I expect to be jettisoned from the marriage. Likewise Jennifer may not turn into a Beluga Whale without me authorizing the self-destruct sequence and heading to an escape pod. We hold each other to high, reasonable and positive standards. It’s a really easy way to live.

The Captain and First Officer differences kick in at the Husband/Wife role position. After that we’re parents and so on down the line. We have a very clear order of priority and mutually understood chain of command. It makes things so easy to manage.

Anyway…

All I know is that all these women proudly saying “the children come first” are keeping me in business.

Because you know that somewhere in the background there’s a hollow-eyed man raking the leaves out of the gutters… thinking about what he just read on MMSL… and how he’s sick of her not fucking him right.

You can say “the children come first” all day long. The husband always hears it as “you’re last in line.”

When they start having an affair, they won’t even need to hide it from you, because you don’t notice them anyway.

Exact same thing goes for husbands with the super Alpha careers. Little woman at home wondering if he’ll ever call or show up for dinner on time. That shit gets old fast. Let alone telling her his mother trumps her. Gotta sting like hell to hear that. Thank God for Facebook and old friends…

 

Filed Under: Alpha and Beta Male Traits, Captain and First Officer, Monogamy and Marriage 2.0, Nice Guys and Betaization

Everything Is Better Except I’m Not In Love Anymore

April 2, 2013 By 18 Comments

Reader:  Okay, I was a beta schlub. That seems to be so far in the past now. I am reading the post on GNO and the man trips and am thinking, if my wife really wants to mess up, I am fine with it now. I won’t put up with it, I will just move on to another woman if that happens. I am content with my wife. She has a lot of great traits. But so do lots of women. I would be giving up some good stuff and a little bad stuff for new good stuff and bad stuff. I am not about to burn my marriage down, but I look at other options as possible if she decides she wants something else.

Have I gone too far in my thinking now? Is this too much lack of oneitis? I am just so far removed from my divorce is always the last option mentality of two years ago.

Athol:  I think there’s always a mental dip in love feelings as you run the MAP. If you’ve had your illusions shattered and figured out you did a bunch of stuff wrong in your relationship, it’s always hard going to own up to it and fix it. Usually there’s a sense of hope and progress as you turn things around, but it’s just not the same blind joy in your relationship you had before. It’s definitely better than the bad stuff that was going to go down… it’s just not as giddy as when it all started and before you realized it was almost about to all get flushed down the toilet.

Oneitis and the Alpha Widow effect are damn near the exact same thing, just two different terms to spin it into the frame of the man better. It’s basically just a high dopamine, low serotonin mental state and looks damn near the same as OCD focused on a person. It’s called falling in love.

That being said, learning the whole Red Pill point of view where everything gets boiled down to chemical reactions and you can consciously start doing things to manipulate your feelings, and your partner’s feelings…

…well after a while it starts seeming like the entire concept of love is all bullshit. Not only that, your entire relationship history was just slot A, tab B and a bunch of chemicals. If it’s all just this giant game, love dies. It’s all fake. Cause, effect. That’s it.

The good news is that you manage to fix your relationship and change all the structural stuff in your life Everything turns out better. You get on great. Sex is up. Kids are behaving better. More respect at work.

It’s just….

…meh.

Everything is meh.

In time though, especially once you start really mastering what you’re doing and understanding about Alpha Beta et al, and you have your structural stuff together… you’ll start to forget you need to game each other. You’ll just be doing what you need to and getting on with it.

Then you’ll read something about some other couple with some kind of freaked up problem and you’ll look across the living room and tell your partner about it. They’ll look back with that “WTF” face and come over and read it over your shoulder and groan at the cluelessness with you. Their hand will be on your shoulder as they read and for some reason, their cheek is so very kissable…

The truth.

The truth…

The truth is that anyone who tells you that Oneitis can finally be killed, is either a badly damaged individual with serious attachment issues, or someone still working their way through the process. Quite obviously the goal of learning Game is not to turn yourself into a Cluster-B personality type, but to discover and master a relationship skill set in which you can love in relative safety of not being taken advantage of. For most of us though, getting to the end of the process is something that can take several years. It takes a long time to unlearn everything we did wrong, stablize and then learn what we need to and have it become second nature.

The truth is that all those chemicals… they. feel. so. real. and. you. cannot. stop. them.

The truth is you can resist all you like, but attraction is not a choice. So you will feel love again. You can’t choose not to feel.

The truth is love will come back.

***

Though I do have one caveat about all that in relation to the woman you are with…

…she needs to be a First Officer worth a damn.

***

Video related / unrelated.

Filed Under: Captain and First Officer, Girl Game and Sexy Wives, How To Choose A Wife, Monogamy and Marriage 2.0, The Male Action Plan (MAP)

Old Flames… It’s Cool If We’re Friends Right?

March 26, 2013 By 24 Comments

Athol:  Married dude calls up old flame to discuss things. To his great surprise it’s like stepping into a emotional Narnia as everything comes flooding back. They talk for 4.5 hours on the phone.

Thus the question…. is it possible to keep this on a friendship level?

Er…… no. No it it isn’t. It was a mistake to even call her.

HamsterMan:  No, it wasn’t a mistake.  Calling her up cleared up some mental crap I had been carrying around for a long time, so that was an unalloyed good.

My intentions are completely honorable.  Geography makes a Physical Affair impossible.  I don’t want an Emotional Affair.

Is there any way to get into the friend zone?  Lol, when did people start to want that?

Athol:  Well, okay. If you kill her sexual interest in you, it could work. Maybe you can…

Call her up and start talking about dolphins getting caught in tuna nets and cry for 10-15 minutes.

Talk about how when you watched Bugs Bunny as a kid, and he dressed as a girl bunny, you felt confused inside.

Tell her you have erectile dysfunction.

Drunk dial her at 245am her time. And 310am. And 325am. And 430am. On a Monday.

Have your wife screaming in the background of the call that you need to go to the store to pick up tampons for her.

Mention your colostomy bag keeps falling off. Your insurance was denied and now you have to use ziplock sandwich bags and they’re hopeless.

Call collect. Then ask her for money.

Use the joke, “Yes, but why is the rum gone?” seven times in the same phone call. Then text her it twice.

Ask if she’d consider making a healer for World of Warcraft.

Tell her you jizzed in your pants thinking about her. Two weeks ago. During a funeral.

I mean you realize when she Friendzones you, she’s not going to take your calls right?

What’s the point of this exercise?

No. No you can’t.

 

Filed Under: Cheating and Infidelity, Humor and Everything Else, Monogamy and Marriage 2.0

Age Gaps are a Relationship Stress

March 18, 2013 By 38 Comments

There’s a fairly well known average age differential in marriages where the husband is about 2.5 years older than the wife. Humans have a mild Sexual Dimorphism with the males growing bigger and stronger than the females and full mating maturity takes a little longer for the men. The rule of thumb being the bigger the males get than the females in any species, the more important male on male violence is to win female sexual interest. Which is the only reason football exists. The girls may have no interest in watching football, but they are interested to know who is on the team.

Anyway…

Average age difference is about 2.5 years older for the men. In more MMSL related terms, the male Sex Rank takes a little longer to build and the female Sex Rank is weighed towards the younger model.

Most couples are going to clump around the average and have normal age spread between the couple between about zero and five years in favor of the husband being older than the wife. So a married 35 year-old man for example, usually has a wife aged anywhere between 30 and 35. That’s going to be a mildly positive effect on the relationship. He’s a little older and it’s easier to lead someone younger than you, so there’s a nice built in Alpha dynamic there.

I know it sounds trivial, but all the little milestones like turning 40, if the husband hits them first… there’s this tiny sliver of knowledge and experience he has over his wife. It’s just a tad easier being Captain when you’re a little ahead of your wife.

However, once you start spreading the ages apart much further than that, it starts becoming increasingly a negative factor the further you get. Whoever is the older partner, must bring a more focused game to the table to maintain the relationship interest of the younger partner.

Take for example a much older man than woman. Say a couple meets when he is age 40 and she is age 25. She cute and bubbly, he’s in shape and has some cash and game. They marry. The 40-year-old husband though, had to be able to be competitive with age 25-30 men (her normal age cohort of interest) in order to win her attention. So he’s had to bring some serious skill and likely just straight up resources to the table. In fact she probably wasn’t immediately interested in him, but he won her attention. She’s probably said, “I didn’t think I would go for an older guy, but….” and then fill in the blanks about why wonderful Mr. X is the exception to the rule.

However, Mr.X is always going to have to remain competitive with men 10-15 years younger than him, to maintain her interest in him. So when he is 55-years-old and she is 40-years-old, he’s still having to act like his competition is 40 to 45-year-old men. Which as time passes, is somewhat of a risk. If Mr. X at age 55 has a major reversal of fortune in either finances or health, he’s quite likely going to have trouble maintaining his wife’s attraction. He must always be on top of his game.

Likewise in relationships with a woman who is older than the man, similar stresses exist. If he is 30-years-old, and she is 35-years-old, her competition for his attention are 25 to 30-year-old women. Thus she must always keep herself in excellent shape, pay attention to maintaining a youthful appearance and generally be pretty pleasing in the sack.

If you’re eager to tell me a story about a hot, sexually insatiable older woman, that’s just making my point. Men barely even notice women older than themselves unless they ooze sexiness and look great for their age. 35-year-old men don’t swap stories about obese 48-year-old women who wear granny panties. A totally put together 48-year-old who swallows, is down for anal and threesomes… well maybe.

There are particular risks for the older woman though. I’m very often seeing the younger man, older woman situation develop, because the man has some sort of limitation with women at the time the relationship begins. Whether that’s just terrible skills in meeting women, some sort of childhood issue unresolved, a lack of understanding his value in the sexual marketplace, it doesn’t really matter. In short, he has a problem. The risk for the older woman is that at some point… he solves it.

So say a couple meets when he is 23-years old and she’s 30-years-old. He’s not the greatest with women, she’s got some experience and makes it easy for him. He’s kinda broke and she’s established. He’s a little lost and she grounds him. It’s all good, because she’s good for him. But if when he’s 35-years-old, his life finally clicks in place, he’s in shape, his career is going well and he learns a little game…. well he’s solved his problem… he can fairly easily pull the interest of 30 to 35 year old women… and she’s 42-years-old. In that situation, if she has any weaknesses in her game, things can unravel rather quickly.

So… what to do?

Well if you’re already in a relationship and you’re the older one… you’ve absolutely got to bring your A-game. It’s no different than any other relationship, but the margin of error is smaller. You want to be with the young hottie… you gotta keep the young hottie interested in you.

If you’re getting into a relationship with a major age spread, it isn’t an automatic ruling out, but you do need to go into it with eyes wide open. Is this something that can be sustained over the long term?

Also if you’re getting into a relationship with a major age spread, is the relationship only interesting because it’s solving a problem for you now, that you will eventually solve anyway? Thus reducing your need for your partner over time, or possibly even encouraging them to sabotage you fixing it?

Plus for normal age distribution couples…

The way women out live men is always a concern for the endgame years. It’s no fun living alone for the last decade of your life. Mutual good health is always a priority in a marriage.

So yeah… kinda depressing to read and think about it I know, but knowing your Relationship Math can be the difference between an easy marriage and a hard one.

Filed Under: Body Agenda and Sex Rank, How To Choose A Wife, Monogamy and Marriage 2.0, Nice Guys and Betaization, Sexual Health Issues

Negative Work and Energy Vampires

December 13, 2012 By 14 Comments

So following on from yesterday’s Good Beta, Betaized, Butler and Hooker Math.

Wolfie: OK. So how do we move from Betaized to Good Beta then? I’ve been running the MAP but this is an area where in the last couple of weeks I’ve started noticing directions & expectations.

Athol:  The only difference between Good Beta and Betaized is her attraction to you. So the only solution is to increase your attractiveness. If that entails cutting back on Beta goodies to work on your exercise and Alpha moves, you may as well do so, because all your Beta efforts count for nothing other wise.

Beta Tester:  So how do you change this? Don’t just say “run the MAP”. My wife works part time but parks her ass on the couch for 4 or more hours after work. She does not even put her clothes away after I wash and fold them. If I stop doing these chores, the house becomes a squalor pit and the kids and I have to live in it. Her solution is we need a larger house (big time shit test).

Athol:  I think the immediate move is to stop washing her clothes. Stop folding them. Stop putting them away. Don’t even touch them. Either she washes her clothes or she can look and smell bad. She’ll get mad as hell that you aren’t doing her laundry, but that’s simply a tactic to try and get you to change your attitude and get back to work catering to her. Ignore the entire issue. Ignore everything to do with her clothes. If she gets really pissed, start laughing and film her having a fit about you not washing her clothes.

Though I get the feeling that you’re doing a lot more than just the laundry. I also have a vague hunch that your wife is performing “Negative Work” in that she actually creates more mess by her presence in the house, than she provides in terms of chores and child care. Or at least she’s breaking even on positive vs negative effect on her presence in the house.

Several times I’ve ended up in situations at work where one employee is performing Negative Work. The days they don’t come in to work, or are on vacation, are more functional and productive with them not being around. The mood is better and more gets done without them, even if you’re short-staffed that day it can be better without them. Usually they are in a position of some kind of middling authority. Their mere presence drains the energy from the room as they demand, distract, delegate, depress and dominate an entire team. They also complain loudly that the team is failing, unmanageable, disloyal, requires constant supervision and that they are very unhappy in their job. Complaints about them, or direct criticisms of them, are typically met with harsh sanctions as a response.

Sound familiar?

The only solution that I’ve ever seen work with dealing with these people is that they get reamed out by someone in authority, nearly get fired and get a smack down a level on the totem pole. Otherwise, you simply have to get out from their sphere of influence. But there is no magical cure where they see the light and turn their shit around and become wonderful people. Sometimes though the rot goes up a couple of management levels, so it’s just easier to move sideways or out completely.

Anyway…

Assuming you’ve reasonably maxed out your attractiveness, well into a Phase Three and other women are showing you attention. You’ve stopped doing all the personal catering to her that you can without making the entire house a health and safety risk. Yet she’s still digging in like Jabba the Hutt on the couch and performing Negative Work. At some point you just have to either stop fighting her and be her minion forever, or say enough is enough and make a bid for freedom and stop carrying her through life.

There just are some basic functional practicalities about running a household. You need income and chores done. How that all gets assigned between the couple and the kids I really don’t care. But part of life is being a self-supporting functional adult and for lack of a better word… doing your job… and if you can’t do your job, you can’t have your job.

So yeah… run the MAP. Not what you wanted to hear I know and a whole lot easier for me to say, than for you to do. It’s worth it to be free of energy vampires though.

And yes… all this applies to husbands too. Even if you’re struggling to find work, there’s always something positive you can be doing. No free lunch. No rest for the wicked or something. About 40% of my email is from women about this exact same sort of issue. The advice I give them is no different than this post.

 

Filed Under: Alpha and Beta Male Traits, Monogamy and Marriage 2.0, Nice Guys and Betaization, The Male Action Plan (MAP)

When You Come From Different Countries

November 30, 2012 By 11 Comments

Reader: After reading your post about religious and political differences and raising children, I was wondering what you thought about cultural differences and being from different countries. How did you and Jennifer decide where to live and have children? Would you ever go back to New Zealand?

Athol:  Well we did have a plan at the time we got married. Being structural thinkers even then, we realized that the exchange rate between New Zealand and America was very much in America’s favor. So we figured if we ever had to switch countries it was going to be much easier to move from America to New Zealand, rather than from New Zealand to America. As things have turned out, the exchange rates have stabilized somewhat and housing in New Zealand is more expensive than America and any advantage we imagined is gone. Oh well, it was a best guess anyway.

We also figured Jennifer was going to struggle a great deal without her family around, while I’m fairly resilient in that aspect. If we moved now, she’d be fine though. We’re family now. Overall, it’s worked out very well for us. We moved to a middle sized town in Connecticut and then have moved twice within that town since then. So I’ve lived in New Zealand until I was 24, then in America for 18 years .

The good points are that people are the same where ever you go. New Zealand and America are English speaking, Western, democratic, capitalist countries, and there are more differences inside the countries, than between them. If you have money and a job you’re okay, if you’re broke and uneducated you’re not having a good time. So moving here was fairly easy for me.

There’s always a nice little edge to things between you when you’re from different countries. You’re always just a little bit unknown to each other, though the longer we’re married the less those little moments happen. We don’t hear each others accents anymore. It’s kinda fun to be from different countries.

Both kids love New Zealand… though they’ve only been on vacation, so it’s not a true understanding of the culture. They like that they have a mixed heritage. Also they have both been very healthy kids. Cross breeding for the win. I’m totally serious on that point. I think the separate countries deal plays a role in still being attracted to each other.

It also makes for a great destination for a major family trip. There’s a natural drama and excitement to see the other half of the family and you get an insider’s vacation experience rather than a touristy one. The kids get to play with their cousins and meet aunts and uncles and whatnot. It’s a BIG trip. Very memorable. Photos and albums and whatnot. I think it rounds the kids out more.

The bad things creep up on you slowly. We only have one set of grandparents close by for babysitting and visiting. When something bad happens in New Zealand… I can’t really do anything but know about it. I basically lost contact with everyone I knew there for ages upon ages until finding people on Facebook a couple years back. I didn’t realize how losing my entire social network was going to affect me. Looking back I realized dad could have probably made a few phone calls and seriously helped get me a pretty decent starting position somewhere. For a long time I was behind Jennifer in earnings and that was just weird to me.

The most important thing you can do is make a decision to be in one country or the other and just stick with it. There’s good and bad in every country, you’re just picking your poison. If you try and ping-pong between the two places it’s hugely expensive and unless you’re moving for a juicy promotion, you’re hurting your career advancement. Plus moving really screws with the kids.

The separate country marriage is a double or nothing gambit. If it’s good, it’s really good. If it’s bad, it’s really bad.

In-laws are critical. We both have understanding and good parents. I think if either set was nutty it would be vastly harder.

Being similar to each other is important. Aside from the differences in country, Jennifer and I are quite similar. It’s not good to be exactly the same as each other, but some differences are fun and create a little friction that keeps things fresh. But too much different and you run out of common ground and stop relating to each other.

In terms of going back to New Zealand… maybe. I’ve been back three times now and it’s always a really good, but slightly odd experience for me. Like I stumbled into Narnia by accident or something. We might retire there or something. We’ll see. We’re actually looking at a potential move to Dallas in about 2018 when the girls are in college.

Anyway… as long as we go together… we’ll always be home.  (Jennifer: happy mushy sigh…)

 

Jennifer:  The girls are minor celebrities at school every time they go on a trip to New Zealand.  They have a wider appreciation for the world, and understand that not everyone lives the same way.  It’s the little things that they pick up on too…like loving being somewhere where they could walk to town to go to a restaurant or shopping (the whole cafe culture thing…love it!), and the fact that their cousins could go to school with no shoes on and not get in trouble for it!

 

 

 

Filed Under: Body Agenda and Sex Rank, How To Choose A Wife, Monogamy and Marriage 2.0, Uncategorized

Can Your Wife Be Your Best Friend?

November 11, 2012 By 22 Comments

GC:  Athol you said “I’ve long thought of Jennifer as my best friend …. 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…”

This is very discouraging to me. I want more sex/better sex to bring my husband and me and all married couples closer, but you’re saying that by following the MMSL principles you are pulling away from Jennifer, not drawing closer. I don’t see how that can be a good thing. I know that men and women are different and that wives in general want their husbands to be strong, but wives who are in it for the long haul also want to be close to their husbands in all ways, even if that means he’s vulnerable some of the time (vulnerable adult male, not whiny toddler – which wears badly on both sexes!) I know that the biological mechanisms of attraction are important, but we’re not just animals – we can make choices that favor our marriages, even when one spouse is going through a time that makes him or her less “attractive.”

Jennifer:  I reacted negatively to the phrase “slight pulling away”.

Athol: Well I also went on to say…

“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.”

You have to remember that I’m a born and bred Care Bear. For the longest time it would have be unthinkable for me to try and do anything without being joined at the hip with Jennifer. Some of that came naturally in that we both like a lot of the same stuff, we both are introverts and we both like each other.

But once you say to yourself, “Okay I’m going to be the leader in this relationship. I’m going to be the one who is the most responsible for how it all plays out.” It starts becoming a little less buddy-buddy. Once you become the one that makes the final call on big decisions… knowing that she may or may not like them… that if you consistently screw up enough it eventually all ends in tears and drama… that takes some of the fluffy thinking away.

I think if you go too soft and cuddly, you end up killing some of the attraction. It all comes back to the thing where a woman is far more likely to fall in love with her boss at work, than with a co-worker… and there’s minimal chance she’ll fall for someone below her status at work. While you can be a considerate and good boss, you also have to hold your people to standards or they sorry start despising you, so ultimately you can’t be their BFF.

You also have to remember that men are constantly told to throw themselves into emotional bonding activity and expressions of devotion to their wives. The whole Blue Pill edifice that for the Low Alpha High Beta guys is the problem not the solution. If that all worked, there would be no need for MMSL at all. Guys have tried that until they have passed out from exhaustion of devotion while struggling with a never-ending hard-on.

A little distancing though, seems to do the trick. Don’t get me wrong though either, I do love Jennifer, more than just a little. If I lost her for whatever reason I would be devastated. We spend a lot of time together hanging out and talking. We do things for each other. When she’s not around for an extended time, I miss her… but I’m still the Captain. It’s just a balance thing.

Or coming at it from another angle, if you asked me who I thought Jennifer’s best friend was, I’d say it was her college roomate.

 Jennifer: Okay, my first instinct at that last sentence was to be insulted and upset that Athol doesn’t think he’s my best friend.  Then I thought about it for a moment and realized that he’s more than my “best friend”…I’m not sure there’s a word for it. 

Athol:  I think the word is “husband”.

The great concern I have is the sheer number of husbands who only come to relationship consciousness when it’s all finally too late to fix. After she’s already cheated. After she’s already checked out on him completely. After she’s visited the divorce lawyer. Beyond a few sociopathic women, wives don’t just walk away.

In the editing round, Jennifer and I had a back and forth about this for 15-20 minutes. The crossed wiring being her hearing “pulling away” as “not caring”. Me explaining that it’s in fact the opposite. It’s like how Jennifer is always somewhat “on duty” when our girls are around. She’s always got 10% of her processing power set to “Mommy”. Likewise I always have 10% of my processing power set to “Husband”. I’m always mindful of her and of our relationship.

You have to be emotionally engaged with her, but you cannot be emotionally enmeshed in her.

 

 

Filed Under: Alpha and Beta Male Traits, Captain and First Officer, Monogamy and Marriage 2.0, Nice Guys and Betaization, The Male Action Plan (MAP)

But The Blue Pill Tastes So Much Sweeter

November 9, 2012 By 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)
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