WARNING: This is a long post

I found TRP about 2 months ago and I am absolutely enraged with what I have learned. I am mad because my entire life has been a lie. everything I learned about male/female interactions, everything I learned about "being a good man" was a convenient lie designed to give the other team the advantage. This lie has caused me pain on many levels and what frustrates me most is that I can't even trust my own feelings right now because they are the result of years of brainwashing.

Let me take a moment to give you some background on me and you will see why I am disgusted with myself and my life:

I was raised by a single mother along side my 2 older sisters. I was raised in a den of man-haters that was a matriarchy through and through. Every women in my family seemed to marry/date inept men and then do nothing but complain about how useless they were and how the women had to be strong for the family. The only positive male in my life would have been my step father until he died from heart related issues. His death caused my mother to double down on her man-hating ways...

In school I was the stereo typical "perfect student": smart, introverted, preferred avoiding conflict, never broke the rules. I was also over weight, cursed with acne and could never get the girl I wanted. I managed to avoid most bullying by way of being physically taller and broader than most of my would be bullies and I had a good group of friends that were more popular than me.

By my junior year in High School I had joined the national guard and completed basic training, I returned to school very much buff and was getting lots of attention from girls but my self image made me see this as the typical friendly attention I always got as Mr. Nice Guy. Enter my oneitis.

This girl went to the same school as me freshman year then moved. She was a train wreck, emotionally damaged and full of trouble but my white knight instincts made me want to save her so bad. she never showed any interest until after I got in shape and my senior year she was all over me. We started dating and after graduation I had to leave for the second part of my military training. She convinced me it would be good for our relationship to marry before leaving.

While I was several states away she went wild, partied frequently and cheated on me several times though I didn't find out until much later. During a 4-day weekend she came to visit me on post and during that weekend ended up pregnant. Due to my BP mindset and not having my own father I decided I would do whatever it took to keep my family together. She saw this and exploited it. long story short just shy of my daughters first birthday I filed for divorce and custody. I got stuck with tons of debt that she opened IN MY NAME but I was free. 50/50 custody of my daughter was less than ideal but I had her 4/7 days a week so I chalked it up as a win.

Within months of filing my divorce I ran into another girl from my high school days who had always had a crush on me and it immediately triggered my BP scarcity mindset. Needles to say I developed oneitis and started another LTR. I thought this girl was leagues better than my ex wife with no obvious major red flags. I thought I could do better this time but I had no idea how to hold my frame or really that a "frame" even existed. I went into the relationship with the feminized mindset I was taught my whole life and never set boundaries. I let her know very early on that I would do anything to keep her happy and she could do no wrong.

During our relationship we always had "open communication" which I thought meant I could relax, open up and be honest with my feelings (apparently that is a HUGE mistake). We've had our ups and downs, in some attempts to keep things fresh and fun we explored our sexual fantasies, she orchestrated a FMF threesome with a close girlfriend from school and I made it a point to return the favor for her fantasy of a MFM threesome. This led to us exploring swinging and group play and eventually led to a semi-open relationship. Now at the time, I thought the group play was fun and harmless, we were doing it together and so there was nothing shady or sneaky going on. When we progressed to an open relationship she was very capable of finding guys to fool around with but I was always to preoccupied and honestly too exhausted to bother trying to find a FWB for myself.

We have been together 5.5 years, married for 2 and have 2 kids (yes they are both mine). After stumbling across TRP 2 months ago it awakened something in me. I devoured all the information I could. I had made it through year one of the rational male in 2 days. I couldn't believe this information. it seemed so alien yet so familiar. every example of BP failures rang true with my life experiences. I decided I had to find out for myself if this was real. I set out on an experiment. For the first time in our 2+ years of being in an open relationship I decided I was going to find a FWB. I read up on game, watched tutorials from lovedrop and mystery. I internalized the concept of maintaining frame. when I felt prepared I hit up tinder and found a girl I felt was in my "league" and withing 2 hours of matching on tinder had a date for drinks. When we met up I used these new found tools and to make a long story short spent 6 hours at 3 different venues, got her to pay for some of the drinks and made it back to her place to seal the deal.

Sadly I had some performance anxiety because I had never been with another women without my wife's direct involvement and I had a HUGE mental block but we eventually both got our orgasms and called it a night. Since then we have had 3 other meetups, she's bought dinner during one and desert on another and these new skills I have found are working. The types of interactions I get from her are completely polar opposite of how my wife and I interact. I showed my stoicism when she sensed I was stressed about my job and was rewarded with an offer to "fuck the stress out of me" in contrast when my wife heard of my frustrations at work all I got was a bit of sympathy then on to what HER problems were. And to be clear this other women knows I am married and doesn't care. she has on multiple occasions seen it as a challenge or a competition and honestly I don't care. I was/am using her to validate TRP for myself because frankly it was almost too absurd for my BP brain to believe without testing it myself.

And this brings us to why I am so full of anger right now. I am not mad at my wife. I understand she is following her biological programming. I am mad at myself for never setting a proper frame for our relationship all those years ago. I am mad that I was lied to about how to even have a relationship. I am mad that I proved TRP works and works well. I am mad that I feel like women have to be manipulated into "love" and most important of all I am mad that my love for my wife is built on this lie. I cannot deny that men and women love differently but I can't bring myself to accept that my love for her is false and that her love for me is so disingenuous. That she only loves me for what I provide her and not for who I am.

I don't relish the idea of tearing my family apart especially when she has not done anything to hurt me on her own volition but I don't know how far I can trust my own emotions and I don't know if its possible to turn around 5.5 years of bad habits. She called me out on how distant I have been since I started fucking this other women and I told her that it's not because I am with another women but rather what I have learned in the last 2 months. I just feel very lost right now. Now oyu know why I am disgusted with myself, my actions and the environment that I fostered due to being lied to for the entirety of my life. I don't want pity I just want to get these thoughts out of my head in a healthy way. Advice and criticism are more than welcome. After all, a man is made in the trials and tribulations he faces...