Keep the faith, it works

iam44

Hey gang. I have not really been around here in a long time. I actually started in Early January 2013, but a few months ago I had Athol wipe my identity and posts etc due to a somewhat nuclear meltdown on the home front.

I started this post as a kind of update / success story / confessional / word of encouragement to those who are new to the red pill.

Before I was wiped I had some 650 posts and climbing, lots of participation and an endless array of victim pukes. I'll give you the very quick triage now as a back grounder.

Married 11 years now, 9.5 years when I found MMSL, thanks @britguy68, I owe you big time for shining a light on it and leading me here. When I found this site, I went out and got the book and inhaled it in less then a day. I was 35 lbs over weight, in a sex starved marriage, I was and have descended into pure Beta hell, despite having grown up as naturally kind of Alpha. As soon as I read the book I knew, right away that it was right in so many ways (Married man sex life primer was the book). I instantly could see so many instances of all this evo-bio stuff at play in my entire life, where I had succeeded and where I had failed.

So I set about MAPping like a mofo, and with the help of the fine folks here I started to make some serious progress in my life. I dropped 30 lbs, I stopped shit test in their tracks, I cleaned up my act and got focused, stopped smoking weed constantly as a way of avoiding my elephants. In short I started doing all the things that I should have been for my MAP.

However, I did one bad thing, and that is sort of the ultimate Beta sin as I have come to learn in the last 18 months or so. I played the victim card for a long time. I fell into the trap of "You can't MAP a medical". In truth it's not a trap, it's an excuse. I spent a lot of time here whining about how my wife suffered from anxiety, and depression and general asexuality. While I worked away at restoring my body and my confidence, I let that become a cop out on dealing with the harder emotional issues in our relationship. sure enough she was suffering from those things and she was taking a bunch of medicines that certainly suppressed her libido. they also happened to make her gain a bunch of weight, so she was not feeling too great about herself either.

So in the course of pounding away at the easy part of my MAP, the physical, I cut her off sexually. I was so frustrated with the decline in our sex life in our marriage over the course of two kids and a decade of wild structural changes etc, that I said "fuck it". I chose to not initiate for almost a year. at first it made some sense to me, it allowed some time and space between us on sex and it served to defuse the issue at first. I mean when you are only getting starfish sex once a month if that for a long time, well, a break of a few months really doesn't seem that bad does it?

The mistake I made however was to demonize my wife a bit. I ascribed to her motives that were not real, like, "she is just using me for housing and money and doesn't really care about me that much". Now pre red pill I had made all the classic Beta mistakes, do more housework to get more sex, she should love me for who I am, we're married, am I not owed sex to some extent. I was a passive aggressive bitch who was the absolute opposite of outcome independence when she would pre-emptively throw out "not tonight dear signals".

again, I made every mistake possible pre red pill.

I'll break this into a couple of posts to make it easier to digest...

iam44

So in the course of banging away on my MAP I said to myself, "I cannot MAP the medical" so work on everything else. As I said I didn't initiate for almost a year, but if she did I would never say no. Something I had learned here was to not say no to any initiation from your wife ever, so I took that to heart and would go to pound town if she ever wanted to be intimate.

In many ways I stopped talking so flipping much. There had been times, pre-MMSL where we talked and cried and flopped about endlessly with me being "vulnerable". Well I shut all that down once I started my MAP. But in truth I also really withdrew from my wife. This was not really fair to her. At first it made sense as I just wanted to get my own shit together but after a few months of that it was really, to be honest more of a passive aggressive thing on my part. Despite all the progress I had been making, and how much clearer my head was and how much better I felt in general, I was still carrying around a lot of bitterness and I was taking it out on her by pretty much isolating her or not really engaging with her beyond the most basic mechanics of married life with two kids (8 and 10 years old).

Again, I would frequently hide under the banner of "you cannot MAP a medical". Which it turns out was one great big cop out for me, and her too. So in some ways after say 6 months our relationship was getting better, meaning it wasn't sliding downhill, but it wasn't growing stronger. She was clearly happier with my outlook on life and my new, or old sense of agency returning. She was responding well to basic Alpha stuff about not being passive aggressive, not chasing her for sex and being pissy about not getting it. She was very happy with my weight loss and new found health and energy level. But the truth is she was also desperately lonely. As an SAHM who was supposed to be finding work, but not succeeding. As a woman in her forties who had a previous career and was now almost a shut in suffering from sometimes debilitating anxiety, it was very lonely indeed for her and the truth is I didn't really do much to help her with that at all, because I was still holding onto a lot of bitterness about all the "wrongs" she had perpetrated upon me over the course of our marriage.

iam44

Now to continue a bit of triage, in the ten years of our marriage I had wound up hiring my wife into my business for a few years when our kids were still quite young. I had done it mostly so that she wouldn't have to go back to a hostile work environment after baby two, but also because she had basically had a nervous break down at her place of work. It was a gesture of "protection" on my part. Unfortunately it was like a nuclear Beta reaction. Her sense of entitlement went off the charts, and if familiarity breeds contempt I can assure you that spending 23.5 hours a days together 7 days a week is a recipe for disaster. It was where out marriage actually accelerating downhill.

So much so that I ended up having a brief affair with a woman who I was working on a project with, essentially right under my wife's nose. We ended it after not a very long time. Not long after that the recession nearly wiped me out, I had to let go all my employees including my wife, which she took very personally and was very bitter about for a long time. (Solipsism anyone?). Anyhow, eventually the affair was discovered but I trickle-truthed her, we did a bunch of very blue pill marriage counselling and laboured under the illusion that "things were better". which of course they were not.

So circling back to my summer of MAP in 2013. I was in great shape, my confidence had returned, I had started to address a bunch of structural issues but my wife was overweight, felt like crap about herself, especially as she had tried in vain to lose some weight and find a job without success. I was harbouring bitterness about her abject lack of progress and essentially punishing her by putting distance between us emotionally and physically.

Well by chance we had to go and spend a week together on a boat, the four of us as a family unit. I had agreed to move it 600 Miles for my parents. at first she protested and was pretty upset about it. When we started the trip there was not a lot of love between us and the shit tests were flowing.

I knew we had along way to go in a short amount of time to hit my desired deadline and we were going to have to work as a team to accomplish the mission. so I set aside my bitterness and contempt and said to myself, "Well this next week will be a literal captain and first officer relationship, so I should make the most of it." Now up until this time I had not shared any red pill knowledge with my wife. I was quite sure that she would be pretty hostile to the concepts in general. but I also knew that in this case she would accept the captain / FO model as it was literally what had to happen to succeed. Also I happen to have 40 years of experience on the water and she knew in that context she could trust me to "be the captain, 100%". So I laid it all out for the whole family, a clear hierarchy within the crew and literally called her the first officer.

It was a beautiful thing. first off, we got away from the every day pressures and routines. Second, we all had our responsibilities clearly spelled out without a wit of debate. It was also hard work with long days, which she had not really done in a long time. finally, as a happy accident, she as usual forgot to bring enough of her anxiety and depression meds for the entire trip. It turns out this was fantastic.

iam44

So for the next 7 days we worked long and hard to move the boat, and at some points were running 24 hour days in a watch system. she had to take responsibility for driving the boat in some tricky conditions and it challenged her in a positive way. She stepped up to the role and impressed me with her dedication and effort, the likes of which I had not seen in years. As for the medicine, well it ran out, and we had a back up plan for what to do if she really went off the rails without it, but she didn't. In fact she was fine without it. No doubt it was helped by the strict routine and structure of our life on the boat, but it was fine.

for me this was a major turning point. for both of us it was a major turning point. Because it suggested that perhaps all the medical was "much ado about nothing" or just medical practitioner over-reach. either way for the first time in a long time we stopped viewing her as the VICTIM of a medical condition. She felt empowered and I felt a connection and a sense of respect that had long been absent.

upon successful completion of our trip she promptly worked with her doctor to wean her off the medications she had been on in a slightly more structured way than what had transpired on the boat. but she / we did it with confidence that if she could survive the trip without it, and with some solid routine and structure, that she could likely do without the drugs at home.

This was really important because it launched both of us out of a victim mentality with regards to the medical and allowed us to work together to push forward through whatever might happen without the drugs.

At that point I knew I ad to begin to start to let go of some of my bitterness about what I would call her "failings".  Truth is it took some time to do that, and that's on me. I was distracted with a huge project and I used that as a wedge between us to allow me to continue to dodge the issues for another few months. In that time, to her credit, she began working hard to lose weight and all of a sudden it started to work. Once she got off her Valrpoic acid she was suddenly able to lose the weight she had been working on for ages. It went in stops and starts, but today, she sits at the weight she was on our wedding night. She deserves my full respect for her pulling this off as it was truly an act of will on her part. Nice job babe!

Now fast forward to Christmas of 2013. We still had issues and I was still kind of hiding out in my own MAP avoiding two elephants. 1. Our finances, we had been running at a monthly loos for some time, as I had expected that she would be bringing in at least some income. So I had to finally knuckle down and at least clean up our finances which I had been avoiding. elephant number two was our non-existent sex life that I was still resolutely avoiding. At this point I was likely more consumed with fear of how to reengage without looking like an idiot and in turn I was actually back sliding on my MAP. I was gaining weight again, being indifferent and falling into a victim trap.

iam44

So fast forward to February. Despite my wife coming out of her shell, losing weight, gaining confidence, I was peddaling backwards. Anyhow, we ended up going to Florida to visit her parents for a vacation. She went before me with the kids and had no sooner landed then she had picked a fight with her mother that ended in people threatening to fly home. When I arrived wife and I had a two hour drive from airport to the resort to chat. I thought I would go out on a limb and try explaining some red pill concepts to her, in a way that was not directly applicable to our relationship so I could test the waters and see what she thought of them.

I explained to her that her mother would calm down and stop being such a bitch when I arrived on the scene as I had always AMOG'd her from day one. As an army brat I knew her mother would respond predictably to a strong Alpha in the room as her father had been a base commander, Unfortunately her husband, my FIL, was a full blown blue pill Beta guy who had tried 40 years of appeasement to no good end. my wife was skeptical of my promise of peace due to alphaness but I went on to explain a few simple red pill truths and she began to eat them up. sure enough when I arrived on the scene MIL acted as predicted and settled right down which was proof positive to my wife that this red pill stuff held some truth.

I was very encouraged as I had painted my wife as a bit of a hard core feminist who would shred my for such thoughts. Well it turns out she loved them. the rest of the trip became a safari of sightseeing and social experiments to see the evo-bio truth in action all around us. She learned it very quickly and wondered where in hell I had found all this knowledge and figured it out. I still played my cards close and did not reveal MMSL.

for the first time in 13 months I actually went for hard initiation and we fucked like mad rabbits for the rest of the trip. She fully bought into a very dominant frame from me in the bedroom, which after 13 months of very rare sex was easy to deliver on.

Upon our return home, she was sold on red pill completely, I asked that she not go all over the web looking for more, and that I would provide her with more knowledge but she had to be a bit patient. I was frankly concerned because of all my victim puking and frankly all the shitty things I had said about her here on MMSL.

Well sure enough curiosity got the better of her and she soon found MMSL and in short order deduced my identity. Then things blew up. for of course I had laid out all my nasty victim thoughts, I had spelled out the full scope of my affair, which I had never shared with her fully before.

So after only two weeks of her signing onto the red pill it was really put to the test. It was difficult. She was quite rightly very upset at the things she had read. but she eventually also eventually started to take my previously deep thoughts to heart and started to gain insight into why I had acted the way that I did. With a few intensive days of talking we worked through a lot of stuff. It took her a while to realize the extent of change in my way of thinking and acting between my blue pill life and my red pill life. Once we got past that however, things really started to point up. I no longer had anything hanging over my head or hiding in the closet, it was all out on the table. for her sake I had my account deleted so she would not keep going back and reading my posts and punishing herself with rumination.

Angeline

I am SO thrilled to hear such a wonderful update! You always seemed to be right at the open doorway of success, but too angry and then hopeless to step through. I am so, so glad for your family that you did.

And your sailing adventure sounds awesome!

iam44

Wow, long post I know.

So where are we now?

Well we are way better. waaaaaaaay better than blue pill land. We are able to be very honest with each other without getting bent out of shape, about anything. she is thriving when I captain up and provide strong direction and structure. Her anxiety has for the most part melted away and depression is not even considered. Money is still an issue but we are able to deal with the issue and not hide from it.

We are simply far happier and able to be honest about what is important.

Sex is fucking awesome. initiation is a breeze and without pressure. We have explored a bunch of stuff in the bedroom that was totally off limits before. Hint, it's all about me being pretty dominant and manly in bed. Pure caveman meets spanking at times.

She is a far nicer person. The red pill has opened up a whole realm for my wife that she was confused about before. she is all of a sudden very happy to be feminine, and vulnerable and pretty and not feisty or assertive or bitchy. she is happiest when I provide strong unequivocal direction for her and the whole family. her health is better than it has been for years and her confidence is way up. We are closer than we have been in a decade.

We still have work to do and we know that but now we can be honest about what need as to be done and we don't deceive ourselves about the issues the way we would have before.

So what have I learned in all this that I could share with you?

Don't play the victim card, ever, it's weak, it's Beta, it may be in fashion these days in our society but it's straight up bullshit for anyone who want so get anywhere in life.

Accept evolutionary biology as truth. hypergamy is real. She was as ready to leave me as I was ready to leave her ass in our darkest days. she knew and eventually admitted that when things were bad she was preparing her parachute and getting ready to jump from the relationship.

You can MAP a medical. sure they are all different, but too often I see here people doing what I did which was to hide under that umbrella and say, "That's beyond my control". Well that is patently false. It can be chipped away at from all angles by simply following the MAP. I learned that so much of her anxiety and depression was from a lack of leadership and direction. the lack of structure made her edgy just as it does the kids.

@Athol is right about timing. One month of honest MAP for each year of relationship is just about right. So keep at it, and be patient it does take time to gain traction and to rewire your brain and your social and emotional interactions.

You both need to game each other all the time. Don't be shy about practicing game everywhere all the time either. Early on she got upset about the idea of dread, "would you like it if I flirted with other men?!!!". To which I said, "I don't know that I would like it, but I am going to encourage you to do it". I don't want you to get yourself into trouble with other men by any means, but I want you to be confident in your sexuality and flirting is a natural part of that, it builds your confidence and you'll bring that back to our relationship. She has, and it does. (Only a little bit of flirting with other men is all). The important part has been that she has gotten in touch with her feminine side like never before. she feels comfortable in that role where she could not before because of social pressure and expectations. We both feel far more comfortable living in a relationship which could best be described as patriarchal. Unleash your natural instincts unapologetically and have some fun with it. Wow does she ever have more fun with her wardrobe now. what a difference, from prude to well. very sexy wife.

You have to let go of the baggage to move ahead. It's not easy and it takes a long time to process, but as part of not being a victim do yourself a favour and just say, "there is my blue pill days, and my red pills days" or better yet, "our blue pill and OUR red pill days" It is a total before and after, If you can let go of all the bullshit rom the blue pill days, life gets so much easier. For both of you. you need to address the elephants, but once they are done, move on and enjoy life together.

What else, well, you must accept your responsibilities within your relationship, you must accept reality, biology and all. This means accepting that men do judge women for how they look and women do judge men for how they appear and act. It means the hypergamy is real and there are no special snowflakes. It means you have to work constantly to make it better and be a great version of you. It means that if you are a stick in the mud life is not going to be too fun for you, so figure out how to lighten up some times.

If you're a total newbie, just stop talking so much at home. every time you want open your mouth in an argument with the Mrs, S.T.F.U.!!! just shut up and put a shit eating grin on your face. Keep doing this for months on end until you get it. you may not understand now, but it will work, so just do it.

iam44

So, thanks.

Thanks to my wife, for being patient, for trying hard, for having faith in me and our marriage. Thanks for putting in all the effort that you have to improve yourself, to improve me or at least support me and to improve and support our home. Thank you for your forgiveness and your effort to change how you think and approach life. Thanks for your openness to the red pill and to the changes we have made. Mrs 44 deserves huge credit for not giving up even when I was not being a very good husband at all. Lot so love babe if you end up reading this and lots of respect too.

Thanks to all the gang here on the forums. A lot of new faces I don't know well, and a bunch of older ones like @serenity et al. thanks of course to @Jennifer and @Athol for everything. This place made it possible to turn the bus around and get headed in the right direction. The work never ends but without MMSL I would have been divorced by now and likely bankrupt and an alcoholic or worse. So thanks for making the knowledge available.

Our home is a lighter, happier place now with a sense of possibility and agency. And the sex is awesome too!

iam44

Cheers and thanks @Angeline. Yes, I was being a pussy and wouldn't step through the door. I was dodging responsibility. Truth is I was just scared I think. I was scared that despite all the effort that it wouldn't work and it would all blow up anyhow.

But eventually I got to a better place by hook or by crook.

iam44

Another few thoughts for newbies who have just started their journey.

I have taken breaks from MMSL and for good reason. I already have a predilection towards addiction and the little dopamine hits you get from coming here and drinking from the fountain of knowledge are incredible, but also addictive. It's easy to get caught up in the drama of the 911 section and imagine parallels to some of those train wrecks in your own relationship. Sometime those parallels are real, some times they are illusory. My point is that it's easy to get very caught up in this joint because what you learn is so earth shaking and powerful and so out of step with everything you were ever told before.

Don't be afraid to step away for a while. give yourself a chance to get your own bearings and clear your head. Ultimately it's you relationship, your life and no at some point you have to own it and the forum and the help it offers cannot do it. So take some breaks if you think you need to from time to time, gain some perspective in stages, and then re-engage when you think you are ready.

What else. The red pill is fucking harsh at first. I see everyone, absolutely everyone who takes it go through what I call the arc of experience. It starts with a feeling like you just took acid, it totally blows your mind. Then there is the self recrimination and self loathing. "How could I have been so stupid?". There is the "Oh my god she's banging the gardener phase" of paranoia which is really a masked indication of guilt that you know you let yourself turn into a beta schlub and she would not be horrible for actually banging the guy. Only you can answer the questions about your fears.

There is the really hard stage of self assessment where you have to be honest about your shortcomings. This stage hurts and some people may never make it past this stage.

There is the killing the oneitis. It's especially hard for those who do not have a long track record of intimate relationships. They are super ego invested in their marriage and relationship and rely upon bedrock blue pill truths to delude themselves. Deconstructing the notion of "true love" is very challenging for some people and downright scary. It is the biggest act of unplugging from the matrix.

There is the bitterness I just described. "I am doing all this self improvement, what the hell are they doing to improve our relationship?" It feels lonely at times.

There is the other eager anticipation mixed with bitterness and disbelief about people who are 18 months ahead of you in their MAP. "I'll never get there!", "When will I be getting laid like tile?" WTF, I tried last night and she blew me off like snow on the windshield!

There are the sublime moments when some things start to work, like facing down your first shit test by just nodding and smiling without saying a word and letting the hamster blow itself out. Sooooooo satisfying when you get empirical proof of all this red pill business in your own life and your ability to do something about it.

There are the set backs where you do so well for three months then you cave on an argument and you go full blue pill beta pussy and end up kicking yourself for going backwards so far so fast. Yes you must resist the temptation to argue, to rationalize, to speak even, you must be the reed that bends in the wind and let it all blow past you some times.

There is the frustration of realizing how far you have to go.

Probably the worst part for many is a sense of slightly cynical bitterness about it all. Once you really understand and take to heart evo-bio, you cannot really ever believe in "true love" again. It strips something away from you, it makes you harder, but in some ways it frees you. In other ways it traps you. Once you see it, you can never un-see it.

Then eventually without realizing it, once you've started to gain some traction after countless false starts, numerous soft initiations that you try to rationalize were actually hard initiations, all of a sudden a kind of calm starts to ease over you. This is a great time because you've finally internalized the red pill. Then you are not acting alpha, you simply are Alpha.

This moment creeps up on you but sure enough one day there it is, you may not even notice it at first, but from it you will find some strength you had either lost in the blue pill haze, or perhaps never had before. It's a calm repose where you don't feel any need to jump up and defend yourself, you don't need to rationalize, you don't need to even speak. Things will simply start to be as you wish them or expect them to be.

Finally, one day there is just fun. There is a feeling of confidence, you can walk right up to women you don't know ten years your junior and hot as hell and just strike up a conversation knowing just how to press her buttons. not because you want to bang her, but just because its fun to finally understand how people work and to have the power to play with that.

So again, I say be patient. give it time, give it lots of work, listen to the moderators and the long haul red pillers. There is no special variant for you, biology doesn't work that way, we are all slaves to our DNA. Accept it and you will eventually find happiness.

Mongrel

This should be under "Success Stories" so it doesn't get lost. @Serenity ?

Capster

Is there a Cliff Notes version?

Serenity

Can't tell you how happy I am for you. Awesome thread. 

iam44

Capster                                             

Is there a Cliff Notes version?

sure,

We are all animals, nothing more, nothing less.

Be the best version of you that you can manage at any given point in time.

Expect the same of your mate, it's not unrealistic.

Don't play the victim card, it's weak and that is not a turn on for anybody.

Be brutally honest with yourself about reality, all the time.

Don't be shy with your wife, if you want something, say so or act that way (E.g. just start undressing her when you want sex, no talking, no negotiating).

At the risk of sounding corny, be true to yourself.

It all takes time, be patient and keep working, it does pay off eventually.

newredpillrecruit

Thank you for sharing.

Truly inspiring.

Sisyphus

I needed some inspiration lately so thanks!

aha

iam44 said:

Then eventually without realizing it, once you've started to gain some traction after countless false starts, numerous soft initiations that you try to rationalize were actually hard initiations, all of a sudden a kind of calm starts to ease over you. This is a great time because you've finally internalized the red pill. Then you are not acting alpha, you simply are Alpha.

It is downright creepy how accurate your "arc of experience" stages are.  And this paragraph... I had to read over and over.  This is essential for true progress, and I think I'm on the brink of it ... meaning I'm on the brink of success.  

Congrats to you, and thanks for taking the time to share your story.  I needed this hope today. 

SaigoTakamori

Rock On!  I am still walking the path of those who have gone before me.  Thanks for Cleaving the way a bit.

Athol_Kay

Thank you for this thread. Very much appreciated.

iam44

My pleasure to be of service to you all, I am only really returning the favour. I figured it would be good to show one full pass at a MAP in one simple thread to show that there is hope, structure and a pattern to this whole thing. At least in a sample size of N=1.

I have also been lurking without really posting for a few months and I was noticing a lot of the same kinds of questions, moments in the arc etc. happening again and again. I thought that perhaps my experience could serve as a bit of a road map complete with detours, speed bumps and speed traps to show how it might work for the new guys.

I am pleased if it can be of any help to the fine folks here in MMSL-land.

sasha

I saved your entire post for future reference and inspiration. Thank you!! and so happy for you and your wife.