[FR] 1 year after discovering the manosphere - wall of text

I, like many, found my way here after living through the hell of a dead bedroom and staying with my marriage 'for the sake of the children'. I'm in my early forties and have been married for 18 years, and have three children. I've always enjoyed participating in sports and physical activities and never been a fat lazy slob. I've owned my shit pretty well during the course of my marriage, but found myself getting despondent about the lack of sex and intimacy. That despondency was seeping more and more into other areas of my life as I would live day by day.

The biggest mistake I made in my relationship was selecting her as a future wife and treating her with far greater deference than any previous girls (putting her on a pedestal and buying into her frame). In all previous relationships my frame was solid as I knew that I would never marry any of them, and they were principally there for sex and fun.

The wife was and still is extremely hard working and honest, but sex was never fantastic or exceedingly frequent. I continued until we got married because we were otherwise good together. I had in mind that over time she would lose her prudishness and learn to let go and really enjoy sex. I now realise that was another substantial failure to lead her there. Since she started out sweet and doting and sex was acceptable, I never really pushed my sexual agenda.

Over the following years sexual frequency dropped, as I received more and more refusals, and I continued to treat my 'sweet fragile woman' with kid gloves. I never realised that LMR was an issue for women in marriage, so I no doubt took far too many soft no's to be hard no's. Later children came along and sex all but dried up as she saw her role as mother and nothing else. I had thrown myself into working hard to provide my family with a good and comfortable life. In the process, I had dropped many of my social and sporting activities. As the years passed, the sex didn't return and I was left on the drip-fed starfish plan.

I was really unhappy. The lack of sex, prevented me from sleeping well and left me anxious and damaged my self-confidence. The lack of sex and intimacy led to several arguments, which changed nothing, of course. Over time she became ever more bitchy, She also wanted me to provide her with more time and resources. I've never been a totally internalised beta, and my attitude was "fuck you, you're not meeting my needs, so I'll not labour any more to meet your 'needs'".

I started to restore some boundaries that had been abused. I picked up my sporting activities again, despite her not being happy with a losing significant portion of my availability. She tried to reassert control over my availability by "booking" me up in a supporting role for her social life. I responded by setting the boundary, that my sporting activities will happen unless she can convince me to change plans with a an exceptional reason. We were left with only one car (which I had bought her) after she had reluctantly convinced me to sell my old one which was rarely used because we had previously lived in a town centre. Now living in the countryside, she tried to limit my activities by asserting her right to use "her car". She would not entertain discussing sharing our car equitably. She didn't want me to buy a car, so I just bought one. Fuck that disrespect. She knew better than to make any complain about it afterwards.

I had managed to survive on the drip-fed bad sex plan, with the resultant stress, brain-fog and lack of enthusiasm for life by kidding myself that I wasn't going to set out to cheat on my wife, but if a cute woman took me in that direction, I wouldn't refuse. On a few occasions, some attractive women propositioned me and I turned them down. The final straw was when a beautiful fit, sex bomb of a 24 year-old (HB 9) propositioned me one night. I turned her down and returned home to the frigid wife. I was the horniest that I can ever recall being, so much so that I initiated hard with the wife, only to receive the usual rejection and was then totally incapable of sleep. That night I resolved to fix my lack of sex one way or another - to hell with what the wife says or wants. I also gave up on trying to make her happy. I had been trying to do so, and she was less happy than ever, and I was also thoroughly unhappy and totally unappreciated. I decided to look after my own happiness, and that her happiness was going to be her own problem.

I started doing resistance training to improve my upper body strength since the HB9 and a friend of hers said they found it extremely sexy, even though I was already very fit. I had been running and mountain biking hard for a number of years and although very fit, my arms and shoulders were reminiscent of a t-rex's.

I had started to scour the internet to find resources to help fix the dead bedroom. I found the deadbedrooms sub, and saw it for what it is: namely a useless pit of self-pity and inaction.

One day, shortly afterwards, while the wife was taking her turn driving while on an outing. I was asking my daughter to respect a family rule (an important one for me) that I had agreed with the wife to implement, and my daughter was being insolent. The wife threw a huge hissy fit and told off both me and the daughter. The wife had been growing a history of disrespectful behaviour towards me with respect to this rule. I had made the mistake of letting this slip, and until then I had just been removing affection and attention from the wife, but without any positive response from her. The wife broke a final straw that day, namely relating to me treating her with deference and respect. I saw that she was no longer the sweet respectful young woman that I had met.

I bit my tongue and let her emotions blow over, then a couple of days later when she had calmed down and thought that it had blown over, I hit the nuke button to make her aware of a few things:

• I would not tolerate her disrespect any longer. If she wanted to have me as a partner, then she would have to treat me like one
• We had agreed upon the rule that I was trying to implement and I would not tolerate my wife's mutiny, and I would not let it drop.
• I called her out on the criticisms that she would make for not doing household chores the way she would do them.
• I said that she was treating me like a caretaker or a doormat, and that I'll no longer tolerate that.
• I told her "If you do not ever want to be intimate and share pleasures that are supposed to exclusively bind a couple together, then we can find a workaround; but I don’t intend to live my life under enforced celibacy or be treated like a pet"
• She had taken to dressing for bed like an eskimo - it was unattractive and extremely unsexy, and I did not appreciate that.
• I would not cuddle her in bed if sex was not going to happen. It was like torture to me, and I would no longer do that to myself.
• I had concluded that she was asexual, so I intended to open my end of the marriage. Unless she did anything to solve the intimacy problem, this was non-negotiable. Thus before finding the manosphere, I had executed a little low level dread, then assertively jumped directly to dread level 11.

I also asked her if she found me attractive. Her pause before responding (on top of years of behaviour) told me all that I needed to know. She said that she did, but I knew that she didn't. Over the coming months she made an effort to be more sexual, but but I saw it for what it was. She also tried to negotiate sexual access by getting me to do more jobs for her. I didn't go there, because it was clearly bullshit. Then I found the manosphere and started reading furiously and the fun really began.

When planning holidays I eliminated covert contracts regarding sex. There had been a terrible history of little to no sex on holidays. When arranging one holiday she wanted to save some money by taking a smaller apartment, which would leave the adults sleeping on a sofa-bed in the living area. I made it clear that I would no longer tolerate going on a holiday where bad logistics would ensure no privacy and booked a larger apartment with an additional bedroom. She wanted me to join her on holiday for a week at her parent's large holiday home and I refused (note that her job gives her considerable holiday time). She later asked why, so I explained that over the years, there was a history of almost no intimacy in that house (I think due to extreme prudishness when her parents are near). Furthermore, she would be looking after our kids as well as her brother's very young kids as a favour, and enjoying her parents' company. It would have left me doing nothing that I particularly, wanted for a week, and also unable to relax properly. I would not be able to leave the house and grounds easily due to having to transport all the kids. Simply put, I chose not to spend my time that way. This made her cry but IDNGAF. This was a matter of asserting my frame.

I ramped up my bodyweight resistance training and soon began visiting a gym to lift regularly (3-4 visits per week). I prepared a MAP, and began working on the areas that needed the most action: social life, approaching women, grooming, posture, frame, and game.

After an initial burst of sweetness and sexual interest from the wife, she returned to form and tried to re-assert her frame. She expected me to serve her long term interests (provide her with attention, affection, plenty of money, secure retirement, child-care duties, etc.) while my on-going happiness, life satisfaction and sex were to be considered unimportant. Shit testing increased as she tried to push me back into her frame, but I started to enjoy dealing with them. Time and again she tried to guilt and shame me into burying my sexuality, but I accepted none of it. I simply asserted (mostly unspoken) that I was a sexual man, and I will have sex whether or not it is with her.

On several occasions I just decided to give up on having sex with her, to have sex with another woman during the coming week. This showed itself as either turning down unenthusiastic sex and asserting that I don't intend to have sex with someone that doesn't want it, or ceasing all initiation in the face of extremely heavy shit testing. The result was rather surprising, as though she could read my mind. All of a sudden she began initiating hard and the quality of sex would increase significantly albeit only for a short while.

She really helped me to build my frame with various shit tests. One that sealed her fate for me any feeling of guilt relating to active dread or giving up on monogamy was her challenge that "I didn't have the balls that her father has". When she said that to me, I just smiled and thought to myself "I teated you with care and great respect, and this is my reward. The gloves are coming off. You do not deserve special treatment". That message was burned into my mind and I truly DNGAF about her feelings any longer. She hasn't cared about my wellbeing and has not treated me with care or sympathy. Another funny one that she threw at me with rancour was when she accused me of being 'needy'. I am competent, very handy, earn a good (most of the) income, and considerably more outgoing than her. The only thing that I considered that I needed from her (in the context of a marriage) was sex.

Since then she can be angry, sad, try to shame or guilt me, etc. and I truly DNGAF. I will now act in accordance with my own interests and mission. If she wants to join my happy existence, that's fine, if she doesn't then it's her loss. I am totally OI about the continuation of our marriage. I don't care if it ends because I know that I'll be happy regardless. It is now utterly clear that she wants the marriage more than I do. The balance of power has been reversed.

I enjoyed the strength training related shit tests that MRP had warned me to expect. She threw many flavours, including: Sexual attraction: "I don't like muscular men", "Yuck, you're all sweaty". (while of course saying things like isn't her bluepill friend's (heavily muscular) husband nice) Mockery: "Hah look at you, you're out of breath and you thought that you were fit", Guilt trip: "You bought that equipment, and you said we should cut spending", Frame assertion: "You're lifting weights, but you should be doing ..........". Negative judgement: disgusted / disapproving looks

After a couple of months, she gave me a weekend full of this shit testing, we both knew what was going on, and I just couldn't be bothered to play her silly game any further. I realise that this will not the generally accepted MRP endorsed approach to this, but it was at least funny. I nuked the silliness with a single text message when I was away on a business trip. I just asserted that she can stop pestering me about lifting weights because years of sexual denials had dented by self-confidence. It was non-negotiable. She replied by text with a WTF!!! and tried to make me feel guilty. That evening when I called her, she just hung up the call. That was no great loss since I no longer give a fuck. Over the coming days I didn't attempt to contact her, and she sent me some conciliatory messages that I ignored. By the time I returned, she was extra sweet. It followed a now typical pattern of clearly setting a boundary and refusing to tolerate her excessive bullshit, followed by better behaviour from her.

The current status of the marital sex life is that sex is essentially available on initiation. Nevertheless she will still almost never kiss. The sex has been considerably more passionate (no starfish) but extremely vanilla. Most of the time she still does not accept oral either way, or manual stimulation either way, toys, etc. Sex quality is gradually improving, but I'll no longer allow myself to be monogamous. She did not value monogamy, but has rewarded me for breaking away from it. She has almost completely stopped her bitchy whining when having sex, where she would make cutting criticisms such as "what the hell do you think you're doing!" when changing position. She never provided positive feedback. I recently caught myself DEERing, when she asked me, after sex (critically and disrespectfully) why I changed angle slightly because it was really good. In the moment I took her too seriously and explained that she needed to give positive feedback to get what she wants. The next time it happens, the IDNGAF service will have resumed and apply fully to sex. She will then be on the receiving end of laughter, teasing and amused mastery.

I have confirmed more Redpill predictions recently, relating to jealousy, mate guarding and hysterical bonding. Recently she went into full-on guarding mode when she observed an attractive younger woman, enjoying my company during a party and holding on to me. On another occasion she saw me twice during one morning chatting with different women from dating sites. The first time she gave a enquiring look and I returned with an IDGAF "so what?" look. The second time she asked me "Are you flirting with those women?", to which I responded with "Yep". Each time sex was much better afterwards.

I guess that judgemental non Redpilled people would call me a callous 'asshole' for doing all this, but IDNGAF. I can see no future for the marriage without proper intimacy. I cannot imagine that my wife nor I would want to spend time together after the kids leave home, unless proper intimacy is restored. I certainly will not tolerate having my time and commitment being taken for granted any longer, and I'll not accept disrespect. I'll certainly not spend my time, commitment and health while suffering bad sex only with her, just for her to later initiate a particularly comfortable divorce / separation arrangement.

For now, my journey continues, but I'm happy and enjoying life again. I'm not huge: 6'1", 180 lbs and sub-15% bf, while bulking and steadily getting bigger. Furthermore the children are happier and for what it's worth, so is the wife. I'm still at dread level 11, and don't actually plan on ever dropping the level again. I would like to thank the contributors to this sub for their wonderful insights, and the authors of the sidebar materials. I will sign off by 'doffing my hat', smiling and offering a warm "fuck you" to the fem-centric Bluepilled politically correct establishment and mass media and eagerly await my well earned chorus of 'faggot shaming' from the MRP veterans.