Hope you can bear with me as this is a bit long. I found and swallowed the red pill about 6 weeks ago. Believe me I still deal with the anger and disappointment in myself.

 

Background: I’m 55 years old. I am very successful VP level in my tech company. Make a good sum of money. I’ve been married for 27 years (wife is a principle grade K-8 catholic school) and have 3 kids, two grown and one in college. For the last 5 or 6 years I have been unhappy with my life. I couldn’t quantify why. In retrospect my unhappiness probably goes back even farther.

 

My wife was virgin when I married her. I was 28 she was 24. She had fooled around a bit but never intercourse. She was very inexperienced sexually and is very catholic (I’m not religious). Prior to meeting her, I wasn’t big on relationships and preferred one night stands and booty calls. I fell for my wife hard. The first time I saw her I thought to myself I will marry this girl. It was really weird nothing like that ever happened to me before. I think I swallowed about a hundred blue pills that day.

 

My wife is a really good person, very little bitching at me, but since I blue pilled and lived in her frame she didn’t have a reason to bitch. We have sex on average once a week to twice a month, and typically always the same. Not bad but definitely not hot. Wife can have multiple orgasms but pretty much only in one position. Even at my age I could have sex 4 or 5 times a week no problem. No issues with getting it up or stamina. She is repressed sexually. Claims to have no fantasies and doesn’t make a lot of noise during sex. We have had the typical blue pill complaining about sex, covered contract, BS for most of our marriage.

 

The Journey: About a year ago I tackled a new project with a new organization. It was a high profile new business with a bunch of new people involved. It was a very caustic environment. It was full of back stabbing ladder climbers. Needless to say it was very stressful and I hated it.

 

I have always been a drinker my whole life also did a lot of drugs in my much younger years. Well I was self-medicating (alcohol) every night. One night 6 months ago I was on my 4th scotch, drinking alone, and hit bottom. I thought this isn’t good. I decided to quit drinking. Went cold turkey for 3 months, since then I have had maybe 4 drinks, never more than one in an evening and never alone. I feel so much better mentally and physically.

 

Trying to understand my unhappiness with my life has been a losing battle, but at least I was persistent. I finally landed on MarriedRedPill, and I finally understood why I was unhappy. My blue pill ways were making me miserable. I also had a bunch of the nice guy crap going on. The next day I swallowed the red pill. Even at my age this stuff made total sense. I was so pissed, copped the attitude that I wasted 35 years of my life. You know all the typical crybaby crap that we all do when unplugging. I have read a lot of the sidebar material and started implementing it. It is never too late.

 

Lifting: Been lifting on and off for that last 10 years. But I had gotten out of shape. I’m 5’10” and weighed 198lbs. When I stopped drinking I decided to get into shape. I lift 3 to 4 times a week (just started 5x5). At my age recovery takes a bit longer then for you younger guys. I also do cardio on off days and take an urban combat class twice a week, although separated a rib in the last class have to beg off of that for a while. Injury hasn’t stopped my lifting and cardio. I have been eating right. I now weigh 175lbs and am trying to get down to below 15% body fat.

 

Appearance: Donated a bunch of cloths, got some new cloths, dress better outside of work. Get a lot of compliments on weight loss and new look. Yes even at 55 people notice.

 

Owning my Shit: It was easy to understand that all of my issues where self-inflicted. It was my fault I blue pilled. So taking responsibility wasn’t hard. The hard part was maintaining frame and STFU. I am a verbal thinker which doesn’t fit well with the STFU strategy, but I am making progress. Giving up my oneitis was easier than I thought it would be. I love my wife but I know I could go on without her. I totally buy into “she needs to come along for the ride or she can move on”.

 

What is probably the hardest is not talking everything out with my wife. She has been my partner and my friend for so long that it is difficult to stop the behavior. As I have been starting to do my own thing, even though I still do a lot with her, she has noticed this change and her hamster is agitated.

 

She has thrown a few shit tests but mostly comfort tests. Need to get better at these. Sometimes I handle them and other times I resort to my old ways of talking shit out, a big mistake.

 

I do have male friends and do stuff with them on occasion, but they are a big drinking group so have to adjust to them now that I don’t really drink. They are supportive but it’s just different.

 

Advice Needed: One of the things I read is that the man should manage the finances. I read this and told my wife that I was taking over the finances. She wasn’t too happy about that. Now in her defense, she has been keeping the books for her parent’s 10 million dollar real estate business (rental apartments) for years. She is also very frugal and tight with money. So I am thinking that taking over the finances isn’t that big of deal. I spend what I want when I want and follow our finance enough to know what is going on. I also manage both of our 401k retirement funds. She does nothing with those. So I’m thinking of letting her continue to manage the household finances.

 

My dad was a serial cheater on my mom and I hated him for it. Needless to say I have been totally faithful to my wife and purposely never put myself in position to even be tempted. As I am high up at work I cannot afford some women at work even hinting at a sexual harassment claim so I am above and beyond reproach at work when dealing with female employees. So it has been extremely difficult to try and talk to women for several reasons: been out of the game for decades, not around a lot of candidates, and when a situation arises at can’t get past friendly banter. Also being 55 I am probably overly concerned about the dirty old man syndrome even if the women aren’t young (my hang up).

 

I have good days and bad days. Some days I want to game my wife and can understand eliminating covered contracts and other days I am just sort of depressed for no real reason. The mood swings are pretty frustrating and they can change from day to day. Has anyone else experience this.

 

Sorry for the length but wanted to stop lurking and instead seek some advice.