Athol Kay pointed out the other day that a lot of sexless marriages have real, honest-to-god physical issues at their root. The relevant quote (emphasis is mine):
However if you currently are in a sexless marriage of less than 10 times a year, that’s really a totally different situation to deal with. Working out and getting physically fit and gaming your wife isn’t really going to be enough to throw the switch on whatever is wrong from the OFF setting to the ON setting. You really need to seek professional help at this point and I suggest a full medical work up and marriage counseling. There’s more than likely something clinically wrong happening here. The wrong thing to do though is to do nothing and hope things change for the better – they won’t without some sort of intervention. Though often getting the sexually dead to seek treatment is harder than getting a toddler into a car seat when they would rather stay at the park just as the ice cream truck arrives. Also there may be no real solution that works, which is a whole different dilemma. Suffer through? Cheat? Divorce? Everything is a hard option.
The timing is rather good, because the last few days have left me wanting to talk about the physical issues that have played a role in my own marriage and, more importantly, how I’m working to overcome them. Also, I think I should mention that I was in a marriage that was having sex about 10 times a year. My words here won’t apply to everybody in that situation, but hopefully it will help at least a few of my fellow sufferers.
First, I want to point out that excessive weight can be a real physical issue in the relationship in more ways than one. If you’re considerably overweight (in the obese category or higher), then a couple of things happen. First, you can cross the line from merely being “not all that attractive” to being unattractive enough to actually kill your wife’s interest.
I think I’ve fit into this category a bit for the last couple of years (not excessively into it, but enough). When my wife and I first started dating, I weighed in at about 195 – and that was a pretty good 195. I wasn’t super muscle man, but I was muscular enough that at 195 I was really only a few pounds overweight. Not bad at all. Then I had two knee surgeries, and over the course of about 3-4 years, I ballooned up to around 235, peaking at close to 250. Frankly, I was a bit of a fatass for a while.
As an aside, this is directly related to why posting has been light lately. The single biggest improvement I need to make to my Game right now is to lose about 30 pounds. I’m working on it, and doing quite well, but it just takes time.
On the other hand, if your partner is significantly overweight, several things happen to her that will also fuck up your sex life. First of all, it kills her body image. Remember the PUA sex formula: Attraction + Comfort = Sex. If you’re fat it messes up the Attraction. If she’s fat, it messes up the Comfort. Why? Because women have crazy body issues. They blame it on western media (which I personally think is a load of BS, but that’s another post), but they really do have issues. If a woman doesn’t feel attractive, she’s going to be uncomfortable being sexual, and that’s going to kill your sex life.
The good news is that both sides of this coin are relatively easy to fix: eat better and hit the gym. The bad news is that it takes discipline and it doesn’t happen overnight. I’m closing down to 220 right now, but that still leaves me with a long way to go. Hermione is down from her height of 175 to about 145, but that still leaves her with a ways to go as well. Still, both sides of the weight loss issue have helped improve our sex life so far.
OK, let’s move beyond weight (well, sort of – we’ll be coming back to it later). My wife also suffers from two other physical conditions that are putting the brakes on our sex life, and we’re having to deal with those.
In January, she gave birth to our first child. During labor, our son got a little antsy, and his elbow got caught up in her labia and ripped her a bit. Her midwife was extremely delicate in stitching her back up. Still, more than three and a half months later, this area is causing her physical pain when it’s touched, which is unavoidable during intercourse. It’s not a “serious” (in the health/life-threatening sort of way) problem. The tear has healed up fine. It’s just scar tissue that needs to be worked out, stretched, etc.
The good news: sex is a little painful, but sex itself serves to help stretch out the scar. Even better, at her last visit to the midwife she got a cream to put on it. Once a day for ten days, then as needed. Friday night when I applied it for her (she can’t see the problem area from her vantage point), it hurt like hell. Last night, it still hurt like hell – but was a bit better. So far so good. I informed her that we were going to just wait the 10 days out and not have sex until then. In a PUA Game situation, taking the lead may mean pushing through and having sex regardless. In an LTR/Marriage situation, taking the lead means accepting the responsibility to look out for your wife as well. In this case: man up, and go for a week and a half without sex.
She was appreciative enough that she voluntarily gave me a blow/hand job last night to make up for it. Score one for manning up. Also, it’s worth noting that she was a lot more enthusiastic about it than she was about doing that sort of thing before I starting consciously running Game on her.
OK, so this problem seems pretty straightforward: sore spot, treated with proper medication. Medication seems to be working well, just give it the allotted time. Check.
Unfortunately, there’s a more serious issue that we have to work with. My wife suffers from a condition called Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. Usually treated and recognized as a fertility issue, it’s actually at heart a metabolic condition. However, one major symptom of it is also a drastically reduced sex drive. As Athol Kay says, what’s good for making and raising babies is good for sex. It should be no surprise that when a woman’s fertility drops, so does her sex drive.
The good news here? As I said, it’s actually a metabolic syndrome at heart. And metabolic issues can be treated with, you guessed it, diet and exercise (told you we were coming back to it). I’ve been trying to push her towards this for years, but I haven’t been the best example myself. However, in the last few weeks I’ve been having drastically higher success. I directly credit Game for that success. Properly applied, it’s helped me “manipulate” her (and myself) into being much better about diet and exercise, and we’re both quite happy with the short term results. We have a long way to go, but at least we’re on the right path.
To tie back into the beginning, I’m in an unusual situation. My wife does have physical problems that are contributing directly to our low sex life. But the odd thing is, for us, “working out and getting physically fit and gaming your wife” really is the solution. Weird.
Still, I think I have a couple of takeaways that can be applied to a more general case.
- Athol is right, a woman with physical issues causing decreased sex drive isn’t going to seek help on her own. Proper application of Game, however, can help guide her to it. Take responsibility for your partner’s health. In a way, it’s your job as the man of the family.
- Better diet and exercise may not cure everything, but they’ll help almost any physical problem. But it’s not just for you – your partner needs to improve her diet and exercise as well. Again, properly applied Game can help you very much here. Take responsibility for your partner’s health… wait, I said that above. Getting the message yet?
