I had a typical nice guy upbringing.

My parents were never married, lived with mom. She complained about my dad and so I vowed to not be like him because why would someone hurt my mom?

I played video games 5+ hours a day. My mom didn’t want to interrupt my fun and I would get angry at her when she would.

Both of my parents used me for their validation. My dad complained that I never called him and would not call me to see if I would ever call him. My mom complained to me about my father in law. Neither of them was a good role model and I had to try to be an adult at an early age.

I didn’t learn how to connect well with people. Thankfully I was not bullied except maybe one time. I was likely 4/10 socially. I still struggle to make more than “surface” level eye contact with people, something I am working on.

In junior high I went to church for the people, not God. I prayed the prayer but still felt a lot of condemnation. I started looking at porn, initially out of curiosity, but kept going to help me cope with how alone I felt. I didn’t stop this until 398 days ago (woot) and praying that being porn free continues, to God be the glory.

In high school I joined the band and found my other awkward people. Made my best friend there and later met my eventual wife.

In college God changed my heart and saved me. I wanted sex asap so to do what was right I got married asap. I didn’t have real mentors back then (I hope to change this for others). This ended up being a huge covert contract with me and God. I thought jumping through certain hoops would lead to great sex.

My marriage was a wreck from the beginning. I have heard marriage is supposed to be about our sanctification and not our happiness. This was very true for me. I didn’t know how to lead sexually, and so I ended up begging and pleading with my wife to sleep with me. It's quite sad in retrospect. All of this so my pee pee could make me feel valuable.

This was unattractive and led to little and bad sex. I thought angrily quoting scripture at her would fix the problem. I can smile about this now, but it was a bad time.

I also didn’t know how to lead outside the bedroom, and the wife was bad at following.

Put this in a pan, shake it around for about 4 years, add a kid, 45 pounds of fat on me and this is what led to one of my rock bottoms. My wife maybe slept with me once over a 3 month time. This is where I saw my wife flirting with a guy from our church at our house. A few days later she told me “I love you but I’m not in love with you”.

I was lost, pissed, sad and fat. I just remembered what I searched back then, “How to lead a wife that doesn’t respect you”. I ended up here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/308j0b/how_to_lead_a_wife_that_doesnt_let_you/

I remember sitting on the john reading this being dumbfounded. How could this person be in my head?

Tune in next time for more of the story.

The Men’s Bible study is starting Dec 4th at 11:30am and will run for about 3 months every week (except Christmas and likely off New Years). We will be meeting in the Discord so stop by there and post and introduction.

In the meantime, post your story below, and if you really want to make me smile, post an OYS on Reddit or Discord. I’ll answer some questions I received over dms as I see helpful:

Are women invited to the study?

No. Men have few men-only spaces today. If there are enough women interested in a study I can try to arrange something. Reach out to me if you are a female and interested.

How did the church fail me?

The church is full of white knights that tell men to “love their wives” which I interpreted as giving her whatever she wanted. Obviously this is a failure on my part.

In another situation, my wife was going around my lead to church leaders and using the term “abuse” (I can assure you this was not true). She read a book on “emotional abuse” and that was enough. 48 laws of power helped me put up a helpful front while I actually fixed the things that needed fixed on my end, one of them being finding a new church.

How did you turn it around? What is the silver bullet to fix my problems?

Hard work. Commit to do hard things. There is no silver bullet to following God. More to come on this as I tell my story.