Talk About Marriage - View Single Post - Divorce because of Overwhelmed? Need Help?

MEM11363 · 12-05-2009, 01:08 AM

SS,
I was very very lucky to meet my wife. I really mean that about the luck part. Over the years she has kindly taught me a lot of the stuff that Atholk talks about.

I certainly don't mean to imply that being assertive/dominant and confident will bring back a wayward spouse. I absolutely believe that with certainty it will:
- Improve their ongoing treatment of you if you have to interact post divorce (which everyone who has kids does)
- Reduce the amount of emotional harm they do to you even if they do continue to misbehave AND
- Help you to initiate and sustain a new relationship in a more healthy way

Quote:

Originally Posted by seeking sanity

Atholk and MEM - You guys both have consistent advice and I think it's sound for a guy not to be too invested in his woman. It's good advice to keep a healthy marriage going. And MEM I'm jealous of the relationship you have, from what I've read you've got it figured out.

But I'm not convinced that by the time a man's wife has checked out of the relationship, that going Alpha is going to somehow create attraction. It's good for the guy to put his needs first, because it saves a bunch humiliating, p*ssy behavior and he leaves the relationship with a measure of dignity, but honestly in 2+ year of reading boards like this, and dealing with my own cheating ex, failed reconciliation, etc, I've rarely seen a woman come back to a relationship. Sure, some come back in body, but they usually still act terrible, and the guy suffers. By the time a woman checks out, it's usually too late. And you're f*cked.

I did some counseling with the author of No More Mr. Nice Guy - a great book on this subject - and he had a real piece of wisdom: Hope keeps all suffering in place, meaning deal in reality and not fantasy.

jsniceguy - women check out for lots of reasons, if she was sexually abused as a kid/young woman, it tends to emerge in their late 30's/early 40's. Some women are so driven to marriage and kids, and then when they get them, they have no more goals, and go through a "now what" phase, it's as if their life goals were completed, and they can't reconcile that marriage/kids are a PROCESS, not a destination. Woman are conditioned not to acknowledge their sexual desires, and that repression comes out in full force during an affair (the OM gets the hot sex, you get the mommy). If she's emotionally immature, or unable/unwilling to communicate her real feelings, or she's wired to be a liar, or passive agressive, then what ever sh*t she is pulling on you has more to do with her own head, then you.

I don't want you to get your hopes up that going alpha is somehow going to fix this. It probably won't. Sorry to be a bummer.