tl;dr LTR trashed due to my laziness, apathy, desire to please and manipulation avoidance.

My story has a lot of similarities to others here, but there are a couple of lessons that I think are worthy of emphasis. I started a relationship with a hot woman, at the beginning I was aloof and she did everything I could possibly want, including in bed. Over time I developed oneitis and made her comfortable that I was there for the long haul, things began to cool and the power shifted; ultimately she lost respect for me, the sex became ordinary with an element of her doing me a favor, I got resentful and the relationship imploded. The part that is a bit more unique is that when we met she was 27 and I was 51. We lasted over 4 years and broke up in the fall.

While my actions in this relationship can paint me as a complete moron, I need to relay that I am a successful executive that has lead very large global businesses, mentored numerous people, regularly addressed large audiences, is in the 1% financially etc. So my glaring stupidity was fairly restricted to this dimension of my life.

So what are some of the key learnings?

First, I had an ethical resistance to manipulating her. I felt somewhat guilty about dating someone only slightly older than my kids and made a conscious effort to treat her as an equal. Manipulation is a charged word. The definition is "the skillful handling, controlling or using of something or someone" Well, I made sure not to be skillful. Everything in life is taking actions to get the result you desire, generally from other people, this is not unethical. (Ironically, her hamster now accuses me of being manipulative, which is the opposite of what trashed the relationship).

Second, I got lazy. I'm used to having an admin at work that does all of the busy work, and my x was an admin at her job, so I delegated a lot of planning and logistics to her. Over time more of the planning fell on her shoulders and what started as delegation of tasks became her deciding what we would do on weekends etc. A key aspect of this is Perception. It didn't matter whether I was truly delegating - she felt that she was leading and that's relationship death. Lesson: be tenacious. Never get lazy, and pay attention to what she perceives - it's her reality and she will act based on it.

Third, I was apathetic. There is a danger in IDGAF. My misuse was in things like I don't really care whether we ate Italian or Chinese, so I'd let her decide. I don't care much for TV so would let her watch her trash, etc. etc. Add this to the above laziness and you can see I gave up all power and leadership. Ever so slowly over time so that it was like watching your kids get older - you don't see the change on a weekly basis but then you stop and look back and realize just how different things are. Lesson: make the decisions, even if you really DGAF. She will be much happier and less resistant when you need to decide something important.

Lastly (lots more but many things like 'losing frame' and 'sharing feelings' are covered better elsewhere and I'm not ready to write a book), nice guy that I was I wanted to please her. I'll focus on just the sexual repercussions but the impact can be across the board. You all know that women are different sexually and have various things that turn them on. Well I take a lot of pride in my sexual abilities so I would pay close attention to what she liked. However, there is such a thing as paying too much attention. I slowly over time ended up letting her call the shots in bed by constantly listening to what she wanted. This evolved into us doing missionary 90% of the time. (The fact that I gave up my Alpha power obviously was a big contributor to her diminished desire). Lesson: pay attention to what she wants but don't let her call the shots. I will now say things like "yeah, but this feels good to me", or "sorry, that's enough suggestions for today, turn over".

I hope these lessons can be useful. Part of my intent in posting this is to ensure that they are indelibly etched in my own mind.