I have always struggled on the concept of Dread Game as a Christian.

On one hand, it grieves me that a man should seek female attention, flirt, etc. in hopes of gratifying his ego. In hopes of satisfying a need that his wife may not be fulfilling. To seek that validation from a woman who shows interest, when in fact, our validation should come first and foremost from God. Yes, it feels good to flirt with women and for them to flirt back. You feel validated as a man, but this is not a good or godly thing. I would lie if I said that when a girl pays me compliments, I do not feel validated. There is nothing wrong with feeling good about yourself, in fact it is encouraging and uplifting to see the fruit of your hard works. The problem, is when you go seeking this from women outside of your marriage instead of running into the father’s arms and finding your validation as his Son and as a significant citizen of his kingdom. I watched my father pursue the attention of women as a child and I watched it lead to a broken home, a failed marriage, multiple affairs, multiple marriages, and a childhood that leaves you broken and confused because trust, loyalty and security are tossed aside for the satisfaction of feeding the flesh. Surely, he may have sought after validation at first, but the temptation to pursue this to the next level was too strong, and he was too weak. Be wary of yourself and tread lightly. Is it wise to put yourself in a situation where temptation may prevail? I know this is not the idea of dread game, that you will fall, but at what point can dread be seen as sinful. When you deliberately pursue dread as a means to manipulate your wife into having sex with you because if she doesn’t, someone will, you have entered into something that is ungodly, I see no way around this.
It is often sighted that actively flirting with attractive women is good because it will give you validation. That this is a positive side effect of dread game. This is not a Godly concept. All Validation must come first and foremost from your walk with Christ but never from women outside of your marriage. Maybe some will disagree with me.

However, on the other hand, it is paramount that your wife sees you as a High Value Male. This may be true in your relationship already, but without dread, she is not often easily reminded of this.
This “reminder” often comes, not from you blabbing your mouth about your sick gains and the diet you have committed to for 4 days, but from visual results and social ques.
Now the six pack does a lot on its own, surely ( I am working on getting one of these so I can prove this theory right or wrong), but another huge aspect of this is that you will also find your wife taking ques from other women. She will witness another woman who does x,y,z for her man and think “ She does this for her man, why am I not doing it for mine”. She will see other women paying attention to her man and think “How have I been so selfish lately. How could I forget about what an amazing man I have” and she will show and express this in various ways.
She will actively seek your attention through sex or increasing her own value.

These are all good things. A woman who respects, loves, and is attracted to her husband may become complacent, but the gentle reminders brought on by these levels of dread often bring her back into reality. A man cannot say “Look over here, look at me”. A man can only do, and be, and become. We as men can just as easily fall into complacency as well.

The “good” forms of dread, for lack of a better word, come primarily from noticeable improvements in one self. She may think “He is changing to get another woman” from a place of insecurity, to which I respond, “come on this journey with me, that we may both find the best of each other”. As Christian men, we do not exploit insecurity. We do not supplicate to it either. We simply continue to do what we know must be done. Our actions speak for us, not our words. Kiss on the forehead, tell her you love her and she is the only one for you, then continue to dress nice, put on your cologne, and wake up early to attend the gym. Comfort where it is needed, but do not waver from your resolve to see this thing through.

Social cues, on the other hand, are where the game gets slightly more difficult to navigate. After all, can you truly be sure that your intentions are genuine when you interact with the girls in the office? Is it flirting, or strictly professional, friendly chitchat. It is good for a man to speak with attractive women often, so that he may grow in confidence and learn that, to be afraid to talk to women because they are attractive is quite childish. After all, they deserve to be the beneficiaries of your hilarious sense of humor as much as everybody else. Perhaps the boost in confidence when dealing with women in general, will help the man handle his business affairs or personal affairs better overall. Self-confidence is critical to a man maintaining frame and is highly attractive to his wife. All the better for a man to have his wife by his side, witnessing his High Value while interacting with Males and Females alike.

It is therefor, quite foolish for a man to avoid these things, when the wife’s resistance stems from insecurity, or God forbid, from a place of fear of losing her dominant position in the marriage. From fear of giving up frame to the man of the house. She has the reigns after all, for a reason. Because the Man of the house proved he did not have the resolve, courage and stamina to lead, and she had no choice but to step in. When the captain became a drunkard, thank the Good Lord there was a first mate at all willing to grab the wheel and not just abandon ship. Now she is weary and resistant, and you better believe she is afraid that the Captain is going to sink the ship. With grace, the Captain must climb back off the deck, dust off his pants, and grab the wheel.

I was asked on this forum once before about what kind of “resistance” I experienced in my journey. It has been immense, and I have not always had the will to persevere. We don’t leave the blue behind and enter the red without resistance. We could only hope to be resisted, that our resolve may be tested and refined in fire.

Let me share a recent story with you.

About a month prior I was asked to Bartend for a “Girls night out” event at a business that my sister owns.

The advertisement specifically stated, “Come get served by Hot Bartenders”.

As you can imagine, my wife, upon reading the pamphlet, was thrilled. She just loved the idea of other women flirting with me at this event.

NOT.

To make matters more fun, I had an entire month to deal with the hamster on this one. How long can one hold resolve when being bombarded with resistance? Lets find out.

So, here is the thing. Originally, I didn’t want to do it. In fact, I would much rather hang out with the Bros on Saturday night and play some games. The more I thought about it, however, the more I wanted to do it.

Work on my social skills and talking with people. Networking and putting my face out there in the community (I run my own business). Improve my outgoing-ness, confidence, and take a whack at some of my insecurities.
It was something new I hadn’t done before, and heck, was I really going to pass up an opportunity to dress up nice and go out and have a good time.
No.

The wife however, had other ideas. Her words were something like:

“other women are going to be flirting with you. How would you feel if it was me out serving drinks”?

“I don’t want my husband used as a sex object”

“You just want attention from other women”
“You don’t know what women are like at these events, they will have their hands all over you”

Now to be fair, had I wanted to flirt, and get female attention, she would have been right. It would have been cruel, stupid, and even sinful. Had my intentions even been to make her jealous, I would have been in the wrong. We don’t do that in our relationship and it goes both ways. However, this was not the case. My intentions were sincere, and I was nervous to go do this thing. It made me quite uncomfortable, and this just made me want to do it even more.

So, I committed to the idea of doing it and I did not back down. I hardened my resolve.

I don’t even think I did great with my verbal responses to her constant battery of resistance. And you know what? I didn’t care, and if felt great. HA. WRONG. It was uncomfortable, and I thought several times that I wanted to give up, to give in. Maybe she was right, and I was wrong. But I had made a decision, and I was not baking out of it.

When I felt she was seeking comfort, I replied with things like:

“You know that’s not true, I am doing this to help X and I am looking forward to it.”

When I felt she was just fitness testing me, I would make some ridiculous remark:

“But If I don’t go, all those poor women will be so disappointed.”

The bottom line is, for some this whole thing probably sounds stupid, but for me, it’s a big deal.
There were even the moments during that month where I initiated sex, and the excuse of:

“I still feel bothered by this thing” and the hamster-ing would begin. That’s fine. I expected this.
Heck, I WELCOMED THIS.
If you think that’s going to break my resolve now, after all the changes we have been through, after all the fire, and the weights, and the starving myself, and the mental and spiritual battle I endured over the past few years to rise out of that place of weakness and disgust, forget about it.

If you think for one moment, that I am going to give up my frame over an insecurity, just for some sexual scraps, you can forget about it.

Instead I invited her to come with me and enjoy it, and eventually basically said, “You are coming with me, and we are going to have a great time.”

The night of the event came. She was kind of looking forward to it by then (can’t beat him, might as well join him mentality). She even invited some friends.

During the event, I must say, it was fun. I have never served drinks before, so I was learning on the fly (me and another guy) and there was a steady flow of people, one after the other the whole evening.

It was high pressure, and the more attractive girls were testing us hard (that’s how the pretty girls flirt I guess, by mocking you and seeing how you react). And it was great cause I was an idiot and didn’t know how to respond and fumbled my words a lot, not because they were pretty, but because I was not expecting to get fitness tested from strangers. It was a weird and novel experience for me. I had to settle for some Agree and Amplify (which I rarely do ) “Does it look like I know what I am doing here?”

Naturally, I also got a lot of comments throughout the evening, especially from the girls that knew me. “Wow you look great. You really toned up.” It’s amazing the difference dressing sharp and fit makes on how “toned” you seem to be, because I am at 20% BF probably. Sure my chest and arms are big, but dressing nice really does take a few pounds right off.
I could care less however, of the attention the girls were giving me. Obviously its nice to know that I look great, and that I can take on a new challenge and interact with hundreds of strangers. What I enjoyed the most however, was the Wife watching me at my best. Before we were dating, when we were just friends, we were at this garage sale event and I was chopping wood to sell and she came out and was chit chatting with me about stuff, but really, she was just there to watch me chop wood. For me, this was another wood chopping moment for us, and that was the best part of the evening.

Later in the evening, one of the girls asked if I was someone’s boyfriend. Wife was standing right beside me. She was of course referring to one of the staff’s boyfriends, so I informed her that actually, the owner was my sister.

“Oh, ha-ha, my friends and I were talking about who the bartenders were going to be and X said it was probably going to be staff’s boyfriends.” It was so obvious she was flirting with me, and right in front of my wife.

A part of me thought “Yep, I am going to hear about this tonight. Did you have to say that while she is standing right there?”. To my surprise at the end of the evening, it was my wife who was joking with her friends about someone asking if I was someone’s boyfriend. Almost as if she took a bit of pride in this. Is this the girl I know? Is this the girl who was so insecure? Was this the source of so much resistance over this last month. Had my first mate actually handed me back the steering wheel and said “ok, you can drive, I trust you”

This was another rp milestone for us, despite how small and insignificant it might seem to those reading this. Just like when I first committed to the gym and had countless levels of resistance. She would call me and tell me to come home and I had to strengthen my resolve and do what I knew I needed to do. Eventually she got used to it, stopped being insecure about it, and started going to the gym and getting hot and fit herself instead.

One day, our social life that includes other women, won’t be a source of insecurity and resistance either. She will simply see it as a reminder of the High value of her man. I am not going to diminish myself over insecurities anymore in my life. I am not going to dress down so that my wife won’t be insecure. I am going to dress my best and be my best, and she has already proven her will to follow.

This story is just one example of how I put myself in an environment where my wife would see me as a high value male, not with intention to make her jealous, but so that I could grow in my social nature, get some more confidence and just be outgoing, and in the end, she seemed to enjoy the experience after all and it achieved a level of positive attraction, not as the intention of my actions, but as the natural byproduct.

“Are you someone’s boyfriend?” She jokes with me now, as she grins and giggles.

PS. I have to add this, I have come up several SMV since I started this journey and would consider myself a 7 if you don’t know me well, and 8 if you do. I was easily sitting at 6 in both regards prior. Not ugly by any means, just not attractive and overweight. In the time that I have worked on upping my SMV, my wife has gone up a solid 2 points as well, from a 7 to a 9 and at her best, she’s a 10. At this event, of all the girls there, she stood out as the most attractive, hands down. I thought to myself “Damn… I have a lot of work to do” Sure, I may be biased, but I wanted to added this little note at the end because, sometimes it’s easy to lose sight when we aren’t getting the sex we are hoping for. We forget about how much work our wives have put in to follow. This is a girl that dropped 30 lbs and completely changed in so many ways for the good the moment I decided to change myself. Yes, it was hard. Yes It took time. Yes, I had to strengthen my resolve, but if you lead well, she WILL follow.

My wife did, and I am sure, that if you lead with compassion and grace, your wife will as well.

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God Bless!