This came up on the RPC chatroom, but I figured it was worth a post, as we don't talk about it often, though a lot of guys likely think about it.

THE EVENT

A "main event" is a conversation in a marriage that results in an ultimatum: fix this, or we're getting a divorce/legal separation. The closest I've referenced this in my writings is in 108 - Life Path of a Relationship, specifically the lower-right quadrant. And yes, I spent a great deal of time talking in that post about the ways the conversation can go. To summarize:

  • You can get divorced.

  • You can regress, by expending life resources you've accumulated to return back to happier days.

  • You can get on board with a joint mission and proceed forward with actual purpose driving your relationship.

But that doesn't say much about the conversation itself - only what needs to happen after the conversation to get back on track.

THE CONVERSATION

ILY, BINILWY

MRP talks about the conversation as having one of two directions. Either she hosts the main event by telling you, "ILY, BINILWY." At this point, the man has to decide whether he's going to become more attractive or let her walk away so he can find someone else.

For those of us who believe the remarriage after divorce is sin, it's easy to feel trapped by this conversation because your "only option" for sexual release seems to be running full speed in the opposite direction. There's been lots of conversation on this topic, but for these types of guys, if you cannot control your sexual urges, I do believe it is better to sin through remarrying than sin through repeated extramarital sex. At least remarriage itself can be viewed in a spiritually polygamous context, which may not actually be sinful at all - but that's a much larger conversation.

FMOFY

The other way the conversation can come up is when you hit a high enough dread level that you finally blurt out: "FMOFY" (F- me or F- you). Athol Kay talks about this in MMSLP, and it gets discussed on MRP a fair bit with new guys who Rambo their way to a main event pretty quickly.

I'm about 95% persuaded that the FMOFY conversation doesn't actually work over the long-term. Rather, it's an option to buy a guy some time. It creates hysterical bonding, if the woman is afraid of losing her husband, which is not the same as genuine attraction. It is an attraction of immediate compulsion to cling to the familiar and have one's needs met and avoid the confusion that a divorce would bring about. Hysterical bonding is also caused by the intense emotions that a woman feels when she fears losing her husband - and strong emotions (even bad ones) are always better for a woman than no emotions at all, and can make her more sexual overall.

In my experience with my divorce clients and some friends who have experienced it, I get the impression that hysterical bonding lasts 2-4 weeks. But I've also heard stories of it lasting 2-3 months. Eventually this will fade. The value isn't in the great sex you get during this time, but in that it lowers your resentment levels toward your spouse while you're getting great sex for long enough that you can unscrew yourself from the way you screwed yourself up in the first place.

That is, hysterical bonding is a sabbatical from the sexual resentment so that you can get your head on straight, hit the gym, and start developing some frame with limited fear of rejection to stand in the way. After the hysterical bonding wears off, either you're rejuvinated enough that you can keep pounding away at self-improvement until you can develop genuine attraction, or you didn't get anywhere, slide almost immediately back into old patterns, and you're back on the road to divorce.

GHGO

In my Second Kiss of Death post I referenced a third way that a main event could start, and it's more of a male counter to ILY, BINILWY than FMOFY is: I'm horny, but I'm not horny for you." This can be simplified even further: Get hot or get out.*

This conversation comes about when a guy has already made substantial improvements and he can pull much hotter, more submissive women than his wife - even after accounting for the "grass is greener" mentality that makes us think other women are better than they are. Despite his improvements, his wife refused to jump on the bandwagon of self-improvement and continues to be a lazy porker who puts no effort into her sexuality toward him. Sure, he can probably get her to have sex with him, but he just doesn't want her in the first place, so he stops initiating due to his lack of attraction toward her.

COVERT CONTRACT PARADOX

These conversations usually only creep up when resentment hits peak levels. But where does that resentment come from? Unrealized expectation. This means that a guy has to expect a certain degree of responsiveness from him wife in order to feel resentment when those expectations aren't met.

The paradox of it is that we call this a covert contract and often tell guys not to have them. Remove the expectations, otherwise you're not outcome independent. But these concepts are really only meant to apply to individual attempts, not broad-based patterns of interaction.

  • Individual: A guy cleans his house and expects his wife to have sex with him. This is a covert contract.

  • Broad: A guy makes significant improvement and expects his wife to be more sexually responsive than she was before. This is not a covert contract. It is a boundary.

We often think of boundaries as things that keep something out. You don't want your wife to act like a harpy? You set a boundary that says: "That type of behavior will not happen in my house. Get it out." But this assumes she's in your boundary and it's the bad behavior that needs to go.

What if she's out of your boundary? What if your boundary is being married to a 7 and she's a 4? Now she's not in your boundary. She herself is what you're bumping out - and you won't let her back in until she has improved herself.

But boundaries also keep things in. Suppose she's in an acceptable boundary now, but she's slacking. She starts gaining weight, stops wearing lingerie, etc. She's heading outside your boundary - so you set a boundary that lets her know you will not accept her movement in that direction any further than whatever point you set. The boundary is now a way of showing her how to stay in a healthy relationship with you - and yes, that requires effort on her part just as much as all the effort you put in to becoming attractive as well.

Establishing clear boundaries and expectations for the relationship from a bird's eye view is healthy. Becoming invested in your expectations on isolated incidents is unhealthy and will lead to incredible disappointment and losing frame.

FRAME PARADOX

Another aspect of this that makes things somewhat paradoxical is that a guy with a strong frame shouldn't get resentful toward anyone in the first place. Right? That's what we tell each other, at least. He remains positive, upbeat, and emotionally stable at all times.

I believe this is actually a misconception about frame. Your "frame" is not the totality of everything you feel and experience in life. It is the way you project yourself to others and impose your perspective on those around you.

A guy doesn't have a strong frame because he never experiences emotional pain or turmoil. He has a strong frame because he can experience those things and still engage with his world with the same degree of wisdom, perspective, and insight as he always has, as if the painful event had not occurred.

So, yes, a guy can have a strong frame and still develop resentment.

Does that mean, though, that initiating a "main event" conversation is a break of frame? If you're doing it out of anger, absolutely. If you're doing it because your boundaries have been crossed and they need reestablished, then this is actually frame-fortifying, not frame-breaking.

THE SIN PARADOX

But isn't a "main event" always a communication of sin? What real recourse does a guy have? Even in the case of legal separation, this goes against Paul's message in 1 Cor. 7 that separation should only be for a short time and for the purpose of prayer. Legal separations are technically permanent, and if you're only planning it to be a short time, why make it legal at all? As a lawyer, I have several scenarios where that would make sense - but that's off topic.

The bottom line is that you're still telling your wife that you intend to act in a manner inconsistent with the Bible. So, is it ever right for a Christian to initiate a "main event" conversation in the first place, or do we just have to suck it up and keep dealing with it?

The fact is that the alternative to a main event conversation is letting the resentment boil you so hot that it erupts in another avenue - like actually cheating on your wife, or perhaps murdering her (hey, it happens). Those are worse alternatives.

Now, in the secular world a guy would just cheat on his wife before ever needing to get to this point in the first place - that's an acceptable release, especially on MRP. Otherwise, he could use the main event as a means of warning his wife that he's going to cheat so that he doesn't feel as bad about it later - he can hamster that it's her fault for not stepping up when he gave her the chance.

As a biblical matter, cheating is still sin. That's not changing. But the practical reality is that guys are going to be sexually tempted regardless. So, a main event conversation is an appropriate admission of spiritual immaturity to a degree that you lack sufficient self-control over your own sexual urges to the point that cheating, divorce, murder, or some other extreme eruption is inevitable. Yes, this is an admission of weakness. Yes, it's an admission of spiritual immaturity. Yes, it would be better if you could just will-yourself into perfect self-control. But the fact is that self-control is a discipline that must be trained and not something that all guys have at excellent levels whenever the need arises.

I've actually had this conversation with my wife. "I don't want to, and I know it's wrong, but it's just a matter of time before I cheat on you." No, she didn't take it well. But yes, it did produce some changes. No, the changes were not permanent - they faded. Like I said, it created short-term hysterical bonding and not genuine attraction. It actually undermines attraction because you're displaying low value due to your poor self-control and spiritual immaturity. But these are things that can be recovered during the sabbatical you get from sexual rejection as you continue to improve.

CONCLUSION

Main event conversations are a display of low value, but this is offset by the hysterical bonding that follows. You just have to be willing to OYS with your own spiritual immaturity and lack of self-control. Once you're having a main event, the goal is not to communicate your feelings. You're not a girl. It's to set clear boundaries as to what you will and will not accept going forward in the relationship.

If you are not willing to follow through with enforcing those boundaries, you will undermine every effort you make at self-improvement thereafter. Accordingly, NEVER initiate a main event unless you're willing to follow through with the consequences of the ultimatum you give. Yes, this is sin. Yes, she's in sin for not following your lead. There's sin going around everywhere. That's why a main event is a last resort, not a kick in the butt you give her when you think she needs to step up her game. Using it out of turn can permanently cripple the strength of your frame.