Had a set of questions in a comment on The Dark Side of Game. This turned into a long and quite personal post. I’m quite naturally good at marriage, but that’s not the same as perfect. Read on.
Cool blog. Athol, you seem to subscribe to the Cinderella model of male/female relationships i.e. man and woman can live happily ever after.Studies abound that show that brain chemistry, while wildly active and effective at first, loses nearly all potency in approximately three years. Again, on a chemical level, lust turns to love, then to like then to roommates and often it goes downhill from there.~55% of married men cheat and ~%45 married women cheat. Their combined efforts implicate an ~80% chance of infidelity affecting marriage.99% of all mammals are not monogamous. Are you still clinging to the Christian ideal? Just curious…-Bill
Hi Bill, no I don’t have a fantasy outlook on marriage – there are clearly serious risks involved, but it is also possible to maintain a long happy relationship with a excellent upside. As a smart guy I think I can affect the outcome. Choice of wife is paramount of course.
I would lean on the work of Dr Helen Fisher for the biochemistry of attraction. There are three quite different sets of biochemistry – the “in love” one which is quite erratic, the “pair bond” which tends to develop and strengthen over time, and “basic horniness” which is a diffuse all purpose desire for sex. If you lose the “in love” chemical surge, but fail to develop the pair bond, you will end up roommates and have relationship failure. But the two chemical markers are different and it isn’t an either/or choice. It’s possible to be both in love and pair bonded at the same time. I can assure you I still find my wife quite sexually arousing after 15 years together.
Cheating figures vary wildly, so it’s very hard to know what percentage of marriages are affected. To be honest it’s best to just accept that Sex Rank issues do not stop at the altar and that both partners need to maintain their attractiveness and interest in each other or risk relationship failure. Whether that comes via affairs or simple disbandment the outcome is the same.
Once you toss emotional affairs into the mix, I think basically all marriages probably have attachments to others outside the relationship as a natural hazard. How you and your partner negotiate these hazards is the question.
The most interesting question is whether or not I am still clinging to the Christian ideal. Actually one of the most difficult aspects of Christianity to me was the ideals of no sex before marriage et al. Honestly I really hated it and figured it made minimal sense for the modern age. In the historical context of no birth control it certainly made more sense, but not really for now. It was a factor in why I stopped believing.
After I stopped believing I very much explored non-monogamy on an intellectual level and put some gentle pressure on Jennifer to explore that in real life with me as well. We’ve had a very limited number of quite mild experiences with that more than ten years ago, but it simply became apparent that Jennifer was complying for me rather than her own interest and just didn’t really want to do anything with anyone else but me. So all in all it was shelved as some thing we were not going to be doing. This was quite frustrating to me for a long time (I have a strong sexual impulse!), but not a deal breaker in the middle of a very happy marriage and life continued on.
After many years together I’ve had a few outside “opportunities” thrown my way. I probably could have converted on these with some basic confidence, but lacked the sort of PUA Game back then that would have assisted in those moments. I’m a natural for Marriage Game, not quite so much at PUA, though I know much more now that I ever did before. Most of what I know now about PUA is me trying to reverse engineer why I am a marriage natural.
In retrospect I’ve come to realize and appreciate the way the story arc would have played out if I had followed up using PUA Game “correctly” and seduced a few women on the side… Jennifer would know. I know she would know, no matter how well I covered my tracks. Right now I’d probably be in a shitty marriage, or more likely divorced, paying child support and having to work a lot harder for a lot less sex than I’m getting now. I may well still be blogging, but this would be a very different blog. I’d not really be over Jennifer either, I’d miss my kids. In short the non-monogamy outcome would have been a lot worse for me than the monogamy outcome has been. Plus I’d unbelievably hurt her. I just don’t need a theological argument for that to justify my thinking.
In retrospect I have unwittingly dodged some marriage ending bullets by being a little clumsy with women. If you want the Mystery Method explanation… I can waltz to C3 and stumble historically at the transition to S1. The facepalm is realizing that all I really needed to do at those moments is say “lets find someplace private and talk about how many orgasms you’d like”. My basic issue is that I relate very well to women, work almost exclusively with them (I’m a nurse) and my emotional connections can progress quite quickly and get quite tangled. It’s the downside if you like to being passionate, sexy and a good listener. Both Jennifer and I are aware of this much better now and we talk these issues out more. It’s quite diffusing of these situations to bring them into the light rather than let them continue in secret.
Having been though multiple cycles of being completely centered on Jennifer, and having any sort of emotional / romantic pull to another person, I’ve just come to the understanding that I enjoy life better and have more enjoyable sex with her when I’m centered better on her. At this point if she were to suddenly express an interest in swinging or something similar I would be concerned… I’ve read too many horror stories where good marriages collapse when one half of the couple completely activates on the lover after only a single sexual experience and it’s basically game over from that point. Seems a terrible risk to take for an orgasm. I’m quite humbled and awed that Jennifer has taken this all with such good grace. I’m not sure I would if the situations were reversed. (Yes that’s a double standard I know.)
I see monogamy as a sexual strategy rather than a moral requirement. Obviously another sexual strategy is being promiscuous. As truly horrible as it sounds even rape is a sexual strategy to propel your genes into the next generation. Obviously all the different sexual strategies have different pros and cons, and in the case of rape a major con is the very strong and very appropriate social and legal sanctions that go with it. I just don’t have the need for images of hellfire to justify the benefits of the monogamous strategy, the outcomes seem to be enough of a justification as it is. If I cheat on my wife, there’s no God to see me doing it… I’d just risk damaging the best thing I have going for me… for us. Plus I’d damage my kids, which in turn damages my ability to have them propel my genes into the generation after them.
My major concern for other people is that pursuing the promiscuity strategy is not nearly as casual as it may appear on the surface. Mating with someone results in a major neurological and endocrine event designed to bond you to that person. Sometimes those links can be near permanent off of only a single mating, sometimes it takes more, but ultimately mating is designed on a biological level to bond us to the partner we are with. We’re all familiar with reading about the Facebook Effect of old flames reigniting with outrageous passion after even decades apart. The bonding is real.
And yes, I can view an act of cheating as a simple EPC (Extra Pair Copulation) with the best of them. I get it. It’s a sexual selection strategy at work.
But I just can’t help but wonder if having multiple hook ups, single night lays, pump and dumps or whatever your term is, just damages our ability to properly bond to the person we decide to marry. Damages our ability to have the depth of the possible sexual connection with the one person we finally settle on.
The old standby advice from the PUA community in getting over a bad case of Oneitis is to FTOW – Fuck Ten Other Women – then see how you feel about the girl you had a terrible crush on. My question is – never mind the original girl, are you even going to be capable of feeling anything like that again for anyone? Or will you simply be too jaded to care?
As I’ve said before, a married guy learning PUA sort of game is going to eventually face a test. I passed mine not too long ago and that’s about all I want to say on that front. Being honest though, it was much harder than I thought it would be and I’m turning 40 this month. I can’t imagine the struggle younger guys would have with it. I don’t know if I would have passed it when I was 25. I probably would have ruined everything I have now. It’s sobering.
The irony of my views on monogamy now as compared to my younger self is not lost on me. The switch from a Christian desiring non-monogamy, to a Atheist enjoying monogamy is somewhat counter-intuitive, but there we go. Maybe I’m just older now.
So anyway… life continues on. My wife continues to amaze and delight me. The kids are of the pleasing variety. I am happy and content. More so now than ever before. The sex is outstanding. Monogamy is a type of wood.
Thank you Jennifer. You are remarkable. I love you.
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