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Sin or Misery: Birth Control

April 17, 2012 By 35 Comments

Before anyone says I hate Catholics simply because I’m atheist… no I don’t. Really I don’t. I have some pretty pointed criticisms of “the church” as an institution, but I’ve known and liked plenty of Catholics in my lifetime. Pre-Jennifer I’ve even dated Catholics, fondled their breasts and found it pleasing. I disagree with what you believe in obviously, but I don’t have a pressing need to turn you to the dark side. I don’t team up with atheist buddies and go knocking door to door asking people if they would be interested in visiting the planetarium.

However…

If you write to me and say you’re a Catholic in a sexless marriage, primarily because your wife is terrified of having more children, that’s when I start experiencing a pain in my right temple that travels behind my right eye and makes it twitch a little. Then I’m going to say something like “Ahhh… have you considered birth control?”

When I suggest birth control, please then don’t explain-to-me-more-slowly-that-you-are-Catholic-and-cannot-use-birth-control-and-need-a-different-answer-that-you-can-actually-use. I know that, I was purposely suggesting that you stop being miserable and start sinning a little. I know, I know, that’s clutch-the-pearls-immoral for me to suggest isn’t it. (I’ll let you into a secret, the devil and I do a session together on Sundays to discuss ways of being more evil. I’m not going to say how much I charge him though.)

Look being completely objective about this, if you have a religiously based cockblock stopping your sex life from being happy, then that’s the cause of the problem. Your options are either to do some fancy bible study to find a way to approve what you want to do sexually, dump that particular aspect of religious belief (which is exactly what 98% of Catholics in America do on the birth control issue), or dump the religion completely. But more religious activity, more church attendance, more prayers, more giving, more pleading to God to make the misery end, isn’t going to solve your sexual problem. More of the cause of the problem isn’t going to be a solution.

Look I want to help, really I do, but I can’t fix this sort of problem. I’m also not going to pretend to you should just trust in God to provide and say you’re well overdue for a little bareback doggystyle either. Because from my point of view, suggesting that would be immoral. I just want everyone to have an enjoyable sex life and married people to enjoy being married. When your choices are either sin or misery, and sinning makes you miserable, you’re miserable either way. Is that not a terrible cruelty to have programmed into you?

 

Filed Under: Humor and Everything Else, Sexual Health Issues

Very Dangerous Over Short Distances

April 13, 2012 By 4 Comments

In theory I’m off work today… so I can write productively.

Youngest has a touch of conjunctivitis so there was a call to the doctor to get a script. Racing to the pharmacy to pick up the script and then the patient teaching portion of the medication regime. So all very much like I was still at work being a nurse to teenagers. Bleh.

I did manage to make a detour into Goodwill as I’m a book hoarder and you never know what you find in there. It’s the books I didn’t know I was looking for that I seem to find there. Back home youngest showed little distress at the loss of a school day and was her usual angelic self and immersed in YouTube and the wonders of Avenged Sevenfold. Frankly avenging sevenfold seems a little excessive to me though, I mean a really thorough avenging should pretty much only need to be done once. Or does it sort of start slow and build up from each of the prior avengings? So say if someone murdered your wife, the first avenging is just pointedly parking them in at the grocery store, the second avenging something like prank calling their house at 3am for a whole week and by the time you’re up to the seventh avenging you’re doing stuff like holding them hostage and making them eat their own small intestine? That would be badass because by the time you’re up to the fifth avenging they’ve got to be seriously freaking out about what’s going to be coming after that. I might do six avengings and then just hold on the seventh… thus leaving them forever in the terror of imaging what the seventh horror would be.

So anyway, like I was saying, I went and got my youngest her eyedrops and some peach iced tea. I got some books from Goodwill. Youngest all happy on the computer and the sun was hitting the carpet in the dining room, so I pushed the chairs back out of the way, got a pillow and pretended to be a one of the cats. I read some of the book, but basically passed out asleep on the floor for about an hour and a half. Middle of the day napping somewhat unusual behavior for me.

I’m hungry and want to be petted. The sun moved and no longer hits the dining room floor. Why am I tormented so?

Didn’t write nuffing. Nuffing all day, and that’s okay.

I’m acutely aware that telling someone to improve half a dozen critical areas of their life, many of which may well take a couple years to complete, is a long exhausting mamoth task. MMSL is a marathon, not a sprint. So you can’t bust a nut and get it all done in a few weeks. You have to keep it all long consistently for your best results.

Added to that, a great deal of being sexy is simply having a lot of energy. The life of the party that all the girls want isn’t usually the guy that’s nursing a beer in the corner mumbling “I really cannot take it anymore. I’m so wasted from X Y and Z.”  You’re meant to be cocky and funny, not cranky and… and … dammit look I can’t think of a word that rhymes with funny so I can say “You’re meant to be cocky and funny, not cranky and [brain-failure]“ because I’m so f-ing tired and I can’t think straight.

So here’s the questions of the day. What gives you energy? What drains your energy?

The more you can do that gives you energy and makes you feel happier, the better off you are. The less you can do that drains your energy and makes you feel depressive, the better off you are. I get that there’s no instant magical fix for these things, you just have to try and make progress on righting them as you go.

Serendipitously the book I was reading was called, “Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow.” From the introduction… bolding mine.

“I write of this so that, at the outset, no one thinks I am suggesting that material rewards immediately flow out of the leap of faith which is to do one’s right livelihood. The reason the books title contains the phrase “The Money Will Follow” is precisely because we must do the work first, invest of ourselves first, seed faithfully in the small, stead, incremental ways of our chosen work first, and then – as a harvest of abundant crops naturally follows the seeding, watering and constant caring process, of seeds – the fruits of our efforts result.”

There is no quick fix if you have major structural problems in your ability to attract women. But you really can apply yourself and make things better over the long term. But it’s hard work some days more than others, and some days you just have to call in sick to yourself and take a nap.

…

Frantic. That’s the word I was looking for. You’re meant to be cocky and funny, not cranky and frantic. FML.

 

Filed Under: Humor and Everything Else, Sexual Health Issues, The Male Action Plan (MAP)

Is My Online Flirting Addiction Immoral?

April 7, 2012 By 14 Comments

Reader:  Hi Athol, Long time reader and fan. I’m in my mid-30s, married, very happy and very committed. I’m a strong alpha with my wife, and she loves it.

I have a secret addiction: flirting with girls online. I do it all the time. It makes me feel good and strong, and helps me keep up my game, at least verbally. I have many girls online with whom I flirt constantly, and even engage in explicit sex chats with sometimes. None of these girls know my real name, and I’ve never met any in person – and I don’t think I would. To me, it’s something akin to Interactive Porn. So it’s not physical cheating (I’ve never met any) and it’s not emotional cheating (I don’t actually have a real emotional relationship with any of them).

My wife and I don’t have sex too often. But I get seriously turned on by the excitement I get from flirting with these other girls.

I’m not worried about getting “caught” because I’m good with the privacy and technology and boundaries. But I feel like I’m doing something wrong, and I feel like I should stop; but I can’t help myself. The problem is not practical but moral, in my mind. And it’s not obvious to me if I’m doing something severely wrong and I should stop, or if I’m not causing any harm to anyone so it’s okay to continue.

I’m not quite sure what to do. I’d love to hear your suggestion; I value your opinion a lot, Athol. Thank you.

Athol:  Ironically you’re writing to me unworried by the practicalities and worried about the moral issues. I pretty much approach things from the other direction. People get themselves all sorts of tripped up trying to create and maintain a moral framework that often simply isn’t workable in reality. It’s often far easier to find out what works in practical reality as the greater good, and then say it’s the moral thing to do.

Most things that are really fun are potentially addictive or in some way damaging if done to excess. Rather than being the all purpose Fun Police and stamping out all enjoyment except for 1950′s chaperoned formal dances, my general rule of thumb is that “It’s not a problem until it’s a problem.” Flirting itself isn’t a problem, I mean I flirt quite a lot in real life and generally run the “Goofy” part of my “Goofy and Groping” game on everyone. But you’re basically emailing me to tell me there’s a problem with your flirting routines… so whether you want to say it’s a moral issue or not… you know there’s a problem of some sort here.

So rather than getting mired into this activity as a moral issue at the start of the process, let’s look at things from a purely practical point of view and ask the key question…

Is this activity helping you get what you really want from your marriage?

My hunch is that all the excitement (dopamine) you get from this activity means you don’t actually really engage with your wife all that much. Which means she isn’t really responding to you sexually because you’re basically not tripping her wires all that much. Thus not that much sex. Which is probably what you really want and is the need you’re trying to meet by going online and doing this activity in the first place.

Which makes the whole thing a vicious cycle of wasted effort getting you what you don’t want. Bingo! We found the problem.

I suppose you’re going to want a solution now…

My basic solution would be for you to stop this activity that isn’t working to get you what you want, and start trying to engage with your wife, the same way you engage with these women. It’s not going to be an instant fix and will take a solid month of stopping the old behavior and starting the new one to rewrite your way of thinking.

 

It could also be helpful to have a discussion with your wife about you feeling under-stimulated and needing to do something more fun and engaging. I wouldn’t blurt out exactly what you’ve been doing up until now, but it’s certainly not a bad idea to state what you actually need from her.

Filed Under: Cheating and Infidelity, Instigate Isolate and Escalate, Sexual Health Issues

Toilet Seat Up Or Down?

March 30, 2012 By 29 Comments
Reader:  An update and a question…
The wife has continued to attend Mass and 12-step meetings. We have been seeing a lay couples counselor associated with the diocese. Much less conflict and drama, and she apologizes for her previous behavior. She is now willing for us to move 60 miles to the city where I work, which will give me an additional 2 hours/day that I now spend on the highway.
The past 6 months have been just about the best 6 months of the marriage. It still upsets her when she thinks about how I “walked out” on her 6 months ago; though I am convinced that we’d be stuck in the same rut if I hadn’t done this, I don’t rub her nose in it. Now my focus has to be on maintaining a proper alpha-beta balance in the future, rather than lapsing into beta behavior and needing an alpha “explosion” to get things back on track.
Now the question – might be one for your blog. What is it with women and leaving the toilet seat down? Her justifications are:
1) “If you leave the seat up and I sit on the toilet in the dark if I get out of bed at nite, I could fall in,” but she gets annoyed even if she finds it up during the day; and
2) leaving the seat up communicates “disrespect.”  It feels like a shit test, but it generates a lot more heartfelt feeling than I would expect a shit test to generate. Do you have any insight into this?
Athol:  In nursing school we were taught about the aerosol effect of toilets flushing fecal matter into the air and getting poop all over your toothbrush. So high five everyone for doing some ass-to-mouth twice a day. No more complaints about life not being kinky enough okay?

So seat down and lid down to flush. Ya’ll are nasty.
Also leaving the toilet seat up angered my mother during my childhood and I have been the target of extremely well executed behavioral program to leave the seat down. So even though my mother lives nearly on the opposite side of the planet from me, I remain careful not to offend her. One never knows when she may arrive unannounced for a quick inspection and complaints about the quality of American tea. (Which she rates between “Questionable” and “Nun’s piss.”)
Honestly though, this one is trivial and isn’t worth fighting the battle. Put the toilet seat down without prompting and tell her that it’s the way you signal you’re interested in having sex that day.
Oh and big up on reigning in your wife. Knowing the extended history I would have sworn she would have gone the full Batshit Crazy on you. Getting her into a 12-step program is truly tremendous news.
Jennifer: Eeeeeeeeeeewwwww……
Filed Under: Humor and Everything Else, Sexual Health Issues

Ignorance Is Bliss (But Facebook Can Fix That)

March 13, 2012 By 36 Comments
There’s a double standard because the sexes are very different around the studs vs. sluts issue. In a general sense I advise both the man and the woman to have as limited of a sexual history as possible. I believe that’s been a massive benefit to Jennifer and myself and our happiness. However I also advise very strongly that you need to be assured that you have a good sexual chemistry together before you get married. I can tell you dozens of horror stories of those that have deeply regretted waiting until the wedding to experience sex with their spouse.
In the comments frequent and appreciated commenter Doug1 said:
I think it matters VASTLY more that the prospective wife have a fairly and ideally quite low partner count for lots of reasons. I think it’s actually better for the prospective husband to have a good lot of sexual experience. It’s better for the captain first mate dynamic if he’s teaching her some things sexually, from a starting point of her having lots of hunger and enthusiasm.
To which my reader Technical Virgin emails me both quotes and asks:
I read somewhere that every sexual partner a guy has before he’s married reduces the likelihood of sexual satisfaction in his marriage. Also, you’ve mentioned the insecurity issue of being with someone who’s had a lot of partners. Kind of seems like a big risk for a virgin to take–increased chance of infidelity and serious insecurity in the sack?
What say you Athol? Should virgins hold out (even longer haha) for a guy with a low/no number, or do the virgin and the Mr. Many Experiences have a shot at happiness?
Athol:  It’s basically a case of having a low sexual partner count for both the woman and the man, seems to create longer lasting and happier marriages. It is a bigger effect for women, than for men.  That being said, these are simply influences on outcomes and not destiny. There’s double-virgin horror stories and slut+stud successes.
The old joke is that you can’t make a ho’ a housewife, and neither do I think you can easily make a player a stayer. I can see how some sexual experience under a man’s belt makes him look good to women in a general sense that he can actually attract women, but after a certain point it all becomes a little bit icky doesn’t it? Once a guy is up in the 20+ range you have to start wondering how rancid some of those holes were.
Also in this day and age, there’s actually zero reason to need prior partner experience to know some sexual skills. This is not 1950 where a teenage boy could only imagine what a girls naked breasts looks like unless he managed to convince one to take her top off. There’s books, DVD’s, toys, websites and enough porn freely available on the Internet to crash the computers on the Starship Enterprise. I mean you thought Genghis Khan saw a lot of pussy…
Half the fun is discovering things together and trying stuff out. Bedsides that, not all women are the same and what works for one doesn’t work for another. It’s the practice together that makes things really click. Prior experience might get you through the first dozen times together more easily, I’m not sure it matters at all after that.
And yes I completely get that “banging everyone” really sounds like fun. I’m not immune to wanting to do that either. Trust me on that account, I write a freaking sex blog, I’m horny as a goat eating three square meals a day of horny goat weed. But at the end of the day, when we’re together, it really is special to me that the only woman I’ve really been with is Jennifer. It’s also special to her that it’s true as well. There’s a mutual cycle of appreciation for being each others only, it helps bond us together and create a sense of what we have is special. So when we talk about having sex every day together, I think all that plays a serious part in our success. When the double virgin strategy works out well, it works out really well, it’s just not newsworthy so it seems a lot less visible than it really is.
If I had sexual experiences with more women, I know I would very much enjoy them in the moment as I’m not shy about body parts or technique. But I’m not convinced that I would be as happy as I am now as a whole if I did that. In any case, Jennifer can get me off amazingly well and it would take months to train someone else to replace her. She gets better and better too, her latest trick is after a lot of foreplay getting me off just by squeezing her vagina on me. I think the correct term for that is ninjutsu.
Plus the insecurity issue isn’t exactly limited to “Am I the best she’s had?”, because any serious prior lovers, or even Beta Orbiters never go away anymore. You’re always one Facebook search away from her old boyfriend private messaging her. You’re a pre-paid phone from Wal-Mart away from her sending naked photos of herself back to him. Old flames can burst into an inferno very quickly. Marriages have their ups and their downs and old lovers emailing her during a down can turn into critical incidents.
The stats I heard on the radio one morning driving to work late last year was that Facebook was now credited as a factor in 30% of divorces.
So yeah you can certainly try it with Mr. Many Experiences, it’s just a influence on outcomes, not destiny.  Ultimately the best target for both sexes is someone that clearly has a good sex drive, that can contain it to one other person.
Filed Under: How To Choose A Wife, Sexual Health Issues

What Do To If She Miscarries

February 28, 2012 By 34 Comments
Just a quick add on to my recent pregnancy post - mostly because I didn’t want to drag it down with this stuff.
Sometimes she loses the baby and miscarries.
As soon as you get that news, no matter what you are doing, or where you are, or how important it is… you make an absolute beeline for her and push the limits of social nicety to do so. This really is an emergency situation as she is in a deeply disturbed state of mind and anything trivial can be blown up into major drama over years. You really do NOT want to “finish off your shift” and get to her four hours later when you could have been there in 30 minutes, not unless you want to risk having “he wasn’t there for me when I needed him” burned into her psyche forever.
When you get there, all you need to do is (1) be physically present, (2) hold her and (3) run interference and block anything other than other than people that genuinely care for her too and want to also be doing (1) and (2).
You don’t really need to say anything. There’s no words that can fix it in that moment, and only words that can make it worse. If you tell her anything, tell her the (1) (2) (3) plan.
It’s going to be a little while until she recovers from this. Her needs for comfort are going to be extreme, so dial up the Beta and ride out the wave of grief.
If she asks why you aren’t crying, tell her, “Someone had to be strong for the both if us.”
Jennifer’s first pregnancy was easy as pie. She miscarried her second pregnancy about a month after she knew she was pregnant. I can’t remember how long she cried, but she pretty much broke down and sobbed in my arms every night for a good 5-6 nights in a row. Even after that she was still drifting along unhappy. In all seriousness I just decided the only thing I could really do was get her pregnant again as quickly as possible and that pretty much played out to plan as she fell pregnant again on her next cycle. I am the Baby Sniper after all. (One Cumshot, One Medical Bill.)
If I have any words of advice and comfort for couples that miscarry it’s this…
It’s less traumatic to say you had a miscarriage and leave it at that, than to do the whole naming your baby, building a shrine and treating the expected delivery date like an actual birthday thing. Doing that can make it all far more vividly real and more painful for you and much harder to let go.
Your body has it’s own wisdom and counsel. You will likely never know the reason the miscarriage happened, but you can have some small faith that your body knew what it was doing. Between Jennifer and myself we now have about 37 or 38 years of experience in the developmental disabilities field. Please take our assurances that while there really are quite fun and happy disabled people with rich lives that defy your expectation of what a limit is, there are also disabled people that live quite tragic existences too. Plus to be quite blunt, it is a rare couple that has a seriously developmentally delayed child that does not ultimately divorce.
But like I said earlier, if she miscarries…  it’s probably best to just shut your mouth and hold her.
Filed Under: Body Agenda and Sex Rank, Captain and First Officer, Sexual Health Issues

Sex Is Designed To Be Enjoyable

December 31, 2011 By 52 Comments
Athol:  I’ve had a hard time writing today’s post. It all started with this comment left a few days ago…
Dex:  Athol – you might consider also building on the success of MMSL by translating it into Christianese and marketing to churches. I bet you still speak the lingo…
Athol:  I ended up writing a very long post addressing that question, and it’s a great post, but frankly probably only myself is really interested in it. So let me cut out all 1500 words and just get to my Jerry Springer “final thought” on that question…
…once I start cloaking myself in Christianese and “crossing the border” into Christendom, I’m doing so in what many will assume as a covert manner and with evil intentions. Eventually someone is going to be seriously pissed about that, and there will be retaliation. I can cross the border as an Atheist “diplomat” wearing my shiny Atheist uniform with my Science Fair badges pinned to my chest, but I cannot cross the border as a “spy”.
Even more importantly, I simply detest pretending to be something I’m not.
So I let the post rot in the editing folder all day and answered email questions, determined not to write about anything religious in nature.
A few hours ago though, I got an email from a guy in a twenty year marriage. He and his wife are Christians, involved in ministry work for at least some of the time, and he’s basically going batshit crazy because the sex is so awful. Everything apart from lights out, her lying still, quiet sex is right out of the picture. I’m not talking “vanilla sex”, I’m talking bleached and bland instant rice sex. (I just made that up, I don’t even know exactly what “bleached and bland instant rice sex” is, apart from not wanting it.)
It’s not the husband’s fault either. He had pictures in the email, and pretty much has a A+ body. I mean I’d tell him to run the MAP but, great body, 100k+ earnings, house broken, mix of Alpha/Beta, I got nothing much left to tell him. The problem was very clear, she was just highly sexually negative. She could pop out three kids, but it seems kinda like the end justified the means rather than it was something enjoyable for her. By the husbands own statement, he was deeply resentful of “all the Christian teachings on sex”.
But I walked away from the computer just kind of annoyed about it all. If I say something, I’m a religion hating atheist. If I say nothing, I’m not helping anyone. So far not even 2% of my “religious issue” emails hit the blog as a post.
And then I go all Jimmy Neutron and it snaps into focus for me.
When you are born and growing up, your sexuality is a blank slate in terms of your beliefs and socialization, but your physical body is designed to enjoy having sex. So your basic default orientation is going to be that sex is a positive and desirable experience. Unless you have some sort of physical fault that makes sex painful or unpleasant, you’re going to like having sex. If you’re inexperienced at sex, it won’t be crazy wonderful good sex, but you will like it and feel good about it.
So if you don’t like sex, if you think it’s nasty, dirty, disgusting, wrong, bestial, sinful, degrading or frightening, it’s because you have be taught to think that way about sex. And to overcome your own body’s design to find sex the most enjoyable experience possible for a human, that training either needs to be systematic purposeful education to crush sexuality, or as physical sexual abuse as a child. And with deep regret, I have to say that parts of the church specialize in both.
So yes I am angry, and you should be too. And I know and appreciate that vast numbers of Christians are just as angry as I am about these issues.
So whether or not you believe that God created our genitals to vibrate with glorious pleasure during sex, or you think evolution and sexual selection has resulted in extremely pleasurable incentives to propel your genes into the next generation, it doesn’t matter that I am… well… right. Because either way, sex is meant to be just fucking fantastic.
But most of you already know all this, so please bear with me while I try and reach that tiny minority of MMSL readers that don’t.

/clears throat, climbs up on soapbox and strikes a heroic orator pose…

If you find sex with your spouse nasty, dirty, disgusting, wrong, bestial, sinful, degrading or frightening, then you’ve been fed horseshit and told it’s chocolate your whole life. Your right to grow up and experience a normal healthy sex life has been stolen from you. You have been knowingly lied to. It’s also destroying your marriage as your partner dies a little inside every time you flinch from them.

/steps off soapbox to sounds of a recording of thunderous applause

If that makes me an angry religion-hating atheist, then so be it.
There is, however, hope. It’s never too late to learn to enjoy your sex life. Your bodies are designed to experience pleasure, so almost as soon as you stop trying to repress that natural instinct, you can start to discover a whole world of enjoyment. It will take some time to unlearn the old things and enjoy the new, and you will have to experience feeling uncomfortable and weird as some of the boundaries fall away, but it’s possible. I’m not talking about having a threesome on the pitchers mound in Yankee Stadium, I’m talking about married couples getting it on in their bedroom… or on the trampoline in the backyard with an oversupply of blankets hiding them from the passing cars.
Or put another way…
…if you think you’re going to go to hell for giving your husband a blow job, what do you think your husband thinks he’ll be getting when he’s in heaven?

Jennifer: It’s all true.  It’s really okay to like (okay loooove) sex with your husband. What he wants most is you being excited to be naked with him.

Filed Under: How To Choose A Wife, Sexual Health Issues

Game Doesn’t Work For The Morbidly Obese

December 11, 2011 By 26 Comments
This is part of a longer exchange with a reader, so there is no one question I’m answering. The short version is crappy sex life, she’s moody and on anti-depressants. Here’s a few snippets and responses.
Hi there, some of this is going to read as very harsh, I’m just trying to be utterly realistic.
“As far as her attraction to me, what I can say when we were in high school was that I was the friend while she was dating someone else.  I was the listener of the problems and suggestor of actions.  I guess I had some game going then that I didn’t realize and she dumped her very alpha boyfriend for me.”

My immediate reaction is that she was dumped by the other guy, but told you she dumped him. Your role was being her Beta Orbiter and emotional shoulder to cry on. She was turned on by wrestling guy but whatever happened there didn’t work out.

“On the sex front, it never has been something she has seemed super interested in.  In fact in some of our conversations in the last several months she has said it’s just not a big deal for her.  Bummer for me, as that has left me rejected and hurt after many failed attempts to initiate sex throughout our relationship, which has caused a lot of the resentment I spoke of.  I now am starting to see my role in it as well, so it’s not an “all her fault” thing.”

She might very well be interested in sex, just she’s not attracted to you, so she says she “isn’t interested in sex very much.” because she doesn’t feel sexually turned on around you.

 

“As far as sex rank goes, I would have to put her at a 7. She would likely rank herself a 5.  If she were at the top of her game I could see and 8, even possibly a 9.  If I rank myself I would go for a 5.  My guess is she might rank me higher but I really don’t know.  She’s 5’4″ and ~160lbs.  I am 6’1″ and ~290lbs.”

A female 7 just doesn’t want to have sex with a male 5. If she’s a potential 8 or 9, she’s likely depressed because she’s even in a relationship with you. Family factors play a role too, but it’s likely just her default setting to head to if things aren’t the greatest in her life.

In terms of the anti-depressants, they very likely aren’t helping her sex drive at all, but the good news is that having her sex drive nerfed is very likely what is helping her stay in a relationship with you. If she was feeling horny and sexy, she’d dress up nice to an 8 and very likely be going out to bars and/or just straight up cheating on you.

Right now the number one thing you need to do is get control of your physical fitness and health. 290lbs is very heavy and repulsing her sexually from you. She may not be able to consciously think that, or admit it to herself, but it’s true. You can try all manner of Game and whatever at 290 lbs and very little of it will work. Doing the exact same stuff once you are at 200-220lbs will have very different results.

You’re in a deep hole to dig yourself out of if you are 2 points of Sex Rank below her. In all seriousness, give yourself two years to work yourself up to being on par with her. All you have to do the first year is loose weight and get fitter, seriously, that’s your #1 goal and action step right there.

“It is just very difficult to maintain any consistency when she has these severe ups and downs.  Today is a big down day, and she’s just going to be pissed, nothing more about it.  It makes my job much harder, because trying to run the show sends her into a tirade, however standing back and waiting for her to come up with an idea pisses her off too.  And when this happens the poor kids are often stuck right in the middle.  She thinks I treat them too harshly but when she gets like she is today she is way worse.  So, how do you “swat her on the ass” to get her to back off in a way where she doesn’t swing around and kill you with her laser eyes?  I’d like to gain insight on how I can start working those situations in order to avoid the loose-loose.  As Kirk would say, “I don’t believe in a no-win scenario,”  I just haven’t learned how to reprogram the simulation yet.  Yes!  Two Star Trek references in the same sentence!”

You can’t control her behavior. Her good day or bad day isn’t = to you having a good day or a bad day. Define your own good or bad day as to whether or not you got your exercise (or planned rest days) in appropriately.

“Speaking of Alpha and Beta, it is strange enough trying to employ these traits in proper balance when she is stable, but doing it when she’s not stable is something I am having a great deal of difficulty working with.  I have a hard time not just coming off as an asshole all the time.”

Right now your Sex Rank is below hers, so you don’t really get to make many demands in the relationship. The entire Alpha Beta thing is going to be very ineffective with you at 290 lbs, but increasingly effective as you get into shape. As an example, swatting her on the ass now would probably anger her, but when you’re 200-220lbs or so, it might turn her on.

So yeah I’m a broken record… lose the weight, lose the weight, lose the weight.

your motivations to exercise are many…

(1)  Your health.
(2)  Your kids are growing up in a family setting that can be improved.
(3)  Your sex life.
(4)  By focusing on her depression rather than your needs, you are empowering her depressive behaviors and weakening yourself. It’s a lose-lose outcome.
(5)  You have a random time limit to get this done. She may simply decide to reach for the divorce option and be done with it. That could be next month, or five years from now. The standard red flag that this is starting to come close is her getting interested in being physically in shape.
I don’t have any carrots bigger than those. There’s really nothing much to talk about, or think about over much for a while on this one. There are other factors at work here and things you can do to solve them, but trying to will be ineffective now. Just hit the weights and get into action.
Filed Under: Body Agenda and Sex Rank, Sexual Health Issues

Natural Family Planning

December 5, 2011 By 36 Comments
I’m getting a ton of questions about Natural Family Planning these days. I must have gotten mentioned on a Catholic website or similar somewhere, because I’ve never written about it before now. So here goes…
All forms of birth control, including Natural Family Planning, are extremely effective when done correctly. The weakness in any method, is the users who are hard wired to try and find ways to get pregnant, or get someone pregnant. It’s the “one time” you forget a condom that just happens to line up with her ovulation. It’s her flushing the birth control pills each morning. Even something like a Depo-Provera shot, you would think it’s pretty much foolproof, but it’s always possible to miss an appointment to get the next shot.
Or as Dr Ian Malcolm says, “Life finds a way.”
So while Natural Family Planning done correctly is extremely effective, it is also one of the most wide open methods of birth control to allow life to find a way. Ovulation does skip around a bit. Right when she’s most horny is when you’re not supposed to do it. You don’t have any other form of birth control available on hand to cover the moment of weakness.
I’d also mention that Natural Family Planning is the most perfectly created system of “birth control” to allow a husband to be cuckolded. It purposely keeps the husband’s semen well clear of the vagina during her fertile period, and a lover would be unimpeded in impregnating her. In this sense it is completely unnatural and major display of weakness for a husband to take part in. If she’s ovulating, you’re totally meant to be filling her vagina up with your semen.
That being said, the wives all crazy for Natural Family Planning are typically highly religiously motivated, and one hopes that they are likely to stay faithful if they stay true to form. They are also highly likely to have traditional values and want to get pregnant anyway. So ahhh… wife will find a way.
So anyway, my hunch is that if you’re in a Natural Family Planning relationship, the wife is pretty much running the show as she has total control over the sexuality of the husband. If you’re a husband, you’re having reduced frequency of sex, and having more children than you probably want. So all in all, a woman all excited for Natural Family Planning, is probably fairly questionable as a wife choice for a highly sexed guy.
Which is not to say you should rule out Catholic women as a whole… from Wikipedia…
“Catholics for a Free Choice claimed in 1998 that 96% of U.S. Catholic women had used contraceptives at some point in their lives and that 72% of Catholics believed that one could be a good Catholic without obeying the Church’s teaching on birth control.[53] According to a nationwide poll of 2,242 U.S. adults surveyed online in September 2005 by Harris Interactive, 90% of Catholics supported the use of birth control/contraceptives.[54] Use of natural family planning methods among United States Catholics purportedly is low, although the number cannot be known with certainty. In 2002, 24% of the U.S. population identified as Catholic.[22] But of sexually active Americans avoiding pregnancy, only 1.5% were using NFP.[23]“
Or put another way, it’s a religion/Catholic thing that most religious/Catholics think is weird/stupid. Not sure how else to spin that. If you’re a husband in a Natural Family Planning marriage, my advice is to simply assume that you’re going to become a father in short order and repeatedly.
Jennifer: All birth control methods have side effects and negatives, it’s simply a case for shopping for the one that works best for you as a couple.I’ve always done well on birth control pills, so we’re doing that. If I wasn’t, we’d find another option. Likely a Copper IUD would be our next option.
Filed Under: Sexual Health Issues

Don’t Model Sexual Dysfunction

November 17, 2011 By 49 Comments
Reader comment on Church Lady and Orginial Sin.
Reader: Now, there is one slight technical matter I will address. I feel Athol’s description of semen buildup may be overstated. I am not a doctor, and can only speak from my experience. I have a very high drive, and masturbated near daily from puberty until just a few years ago. I had a desire to quit in my early 20s, as I could tell it interfered with having sex with my girlfriend. However, as I only saw her once a month (different city), it was simply too long in between, and I continued masturbating unabated. So far, this fits with Athol’s description.
However, around the time I joined the Church, I finally managed to quit. Since then, I am not having sex, I am not masturbating, but I have only had wet dreams very sporadically, with 6-8 month gaps. It is not like I am lacking in stimulation, as every weekday I am on a college campus full of attractive women in the 18-25 range, and I also see and touch (just hugs, kisses, and back massage, no sex) my fiance every day who I am very attracted to. So, to make a long story short, while infrequent sex with your husband will definitely increase the probability that he masturbates, it is not a physiological guarantee in the way Athol says.
Athol: I think you’re confusing a good thing, with potentially a quite bad thing. Masturbation is normal sexual behavior and designed to remove aging sperm from the male in order to allow room for fresh new sperm/semen.
What you’re essentially claiming is that your body no longer produces any particular volume of semen. Going 6-8 months between ejaculations is highly sexually dysfunctional, and while you see this is as a good thing, there may be an underlying medical issue at work that makes this feat even possible. Most men only having that level of sexual function, would be going to doctors to try and find a fix to the problem.
Like most things, the old saying of “use it, or lose it” applies to sexual fitness. You are laboring under the assumption that once you marry, your physical ability to have sex will return to a normal level of sexual function. It simply may not happen as you hope, or it may take a few years.
I can very much assure you that women react extremely poorly to male sexual dysfunction in their first few sexual encounters with a man. Wives dealing with a broken cock husband in the opening of the marriage, may simply not care to stick around for too long at worst, or have it set a tone of a negative sexual pattern that continues into the marriage.
I strongly recommend you find out if you are still capable of producing sperm of any volume and find out if you’re now also having a fertility issue as well. Not having night time ejaculations makes me curious as to if you have an orgasmic disorder as well, or simply a total lack of semen production.
My very strong advice to your fiance, would be to not marry you until she could be assured of your ability to return to normal sexual function.
Jennifer: Seriously. OMG.
Filed Under: Sexual Health Issues
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