Just took the red pill, calling the Nebuchadnezzar...

August_West

1)      I am 33 and my wife 35. I married up, which never really occurred to me as an issue, I always hung around the older crowd anyway. We’ve been together for 11 years, married for 9 of them. No kids.

I am 6’ and around 250 lbs. I have swung in weight from around 275 in 2007 to a low of 200 in 2010. I was born with a cleft lip, so I have a facial scar and a slightly non-symmetrical nose. Hard to tell unless you’re looking close, though.

Wife is around 5’9, 160 lbs right now. When we met she was around 110, a total beanpole. She has a big nose with a bump in it that I find adorable, but makes her self-conscious. We’re both brunettes – I’m a little blonder than her – with green eyes. She has chronically bad teeth, more on that later.

2)      I always have a job – my family is a working family, work-ethic is built right into me and I am never unemployed. That doesn’t mean I have always had GOOD jobs. Right now, I’m doing very well for the first time in 10 years, growing some breathing room, putting money away for a new house and upgrading the car/furniture/clothes. I am obese. I have mild cerebral palsy that makes me fairly unathletic to begin with.

We live in a safe neighborhood in an unsafe area.

My wife has no car. We carpool to work. We have been a one-car household since we first moved in together more than a decade ago.

Our house is a mess – once every month or every two months I get fed up, clean like crazy, and then it just devolves from there. I do most of the dishes. I do most of the laundry. I take care of the bills. I suck at cleaning things, but these things still seem to fall to me.

For the past 4 years, she has been unemployed or marginally employed. She followed me as we left our hometown for a new job, and then relocated again for another job. Recently, she found full-time work and it seems to be helping her self-esteem.

3)      I screw up all the time, but this isn’t going to be a huge list of critical moments. Asking her to leave her home town and follow me 800 miles away, then move another 300 miles after that was a big deal. For a while I worked a job that required long hours, and she was unemployed, so she was alone in the house for extended periods and developed some ‘cabin fever.’

Another issue that is definitely on me, over a few years I became a couch potato and a television/internet addict. I neglected my music, my creative writing, and other extra-curriculars. As I try to put things back together now, I find myself a man without hobbies or extra-curricular activities.

4)      We’re pretty well entangled with each other’s lives. Neither of us is cheating from what I can tell. I’m not a big snoop, but I know she hasn’t received calls from unusual numbers or romantic/sexual emails from others because she leaves her communications open and readable around the house.

I am overcoming an almost 20-year porn addiction – 2 weeks now without a skin flick. I didn’t download a ton of porn or surf sites all day, but I still became a daily visitor to the ‘tubes and have “spilled more seed than Michael J. Fox at a bird feeder.”

5)      I can’t figure out when it started to go bad. We stopped approaching each other for sex some time after we were married, but before we made our big move. I had a huge experience shortly before our move where I travelled overseas with some very eligible young women and I was strongly tempted to cheat, but remained faithful, so it was already bad 4 years ago. I can’t believe I‘ve been hanging on for that long without trying to do more about it – internet porn is a hell of a draw.

6)      I was inexperienced before our relationship – not a virgin by any means, but I have only had 2 other partners before my wife and they weren’t anything to write home about. She says she has had 7 partners through her life. Sex was great before our wedding and for a time afterwards. We did some exploration, got a little kinky with one another, but she is very much a vanilla girl and I find my tastes a little more kinky. Approaching her about them turns her off, and always has. The problem is that it is getting to be that way with vanilla sex.

7)      When I was young I liked older women. Now that I am in my 30’s, I like younger women. I fantasize about women who aren’t my wife. I work in a place where I interact with thousands of mostly beautiful young women. The urge and opportunity to cheat is almost constant – but I made a vow that I wouldn’t, and I’m a man of my word.

I worry that we’re growing distant. I fear that the relationship I’ve spent 1/3 of my life in is going to end ugly. I’ve let myself become boring, overweight, and lazy over the past 11 years, I’ve been too comfortable to settle for the diminishing returns of my marriage.

We both smoke pot. I drink – for a time, I would say I had a drinking problem, I would get drunk in public or try to drive a car while intoxicated. Those days are behind me. I still drink, but rarely to get drunk.

8)      I am the leader. I choose where we go when we go. I handle the money. She’s not always happy that I am in control of so much, and I try not to be an overbearing alpha, but there’s no denying that I am dominant.

9)      We’re really in love with each other. We’re not having sex, but we still love each other. We used to go a lot of places together and hang out with a group of close friends who grew up with us – since we’ve transplanted, we have not had that group of friends. Since we went through a financial apocalypse over the past 4 years, we haven’t had the resources to create leisure opportunities. Our last vacation together was our honeymoon.

BONUS ROUND: I haven’t bought the books yet, I have read the blog and perused the forums. I am taking some of the advice I have received so far and using it – I am going to the gym. I am dressing better. I am paying more attention to her. I’m a charming bastard when we go out, and not just to her, but to her friends, too. She still turns down sex constantly, and criticizes me when I try to instigate. She says she hasn’t been feeling ‘womanly’ and that she is ‘stale.’ She says she feels pressure – I can empathize with that, to a point. She says my advances make her feel like I only love her for her pussy – which isn’t at all true.

August_West

I forgot medical - she has depression, ADD and social anxiety. Except for my palsy and my obesity, I am pretty healthy. I did have a cancer scare recently that turned out okay. She is on two psychiatric drugs that have methamphetamine-like side effects. She breaks out in skin lesions on her breasts, arms and thighs and it makes her very self-conscious. her teeth are also falling apart. Hygenically she is fine, she showers, she brushes - and I still think she has a great body and a beautiful smile - but the side effects are definitely causing issues in our relationship.

Angeline

Welcome! Thanks for the great (complete!) triage.

It sounds on the surface that you have a bit to wade through, but you sound determined, which is a good thing. If you're thinking of getting one of the books (cheaper than divorce!) I think the MAP book would help you draw up a plan to put out the fires more efficiently. 

Good on you for stopping porn. I don't have any moral objection to porn from consenting adults, and my partner and I have watched it together, but that's a few times a year tops. The more we find out about it sapping motivation, the more leery we get. Is the pot also on the way out? Kind of amazing really that you've been the one holding things together, as many people find their motivation gone just on one of those. Problem is there will be a lag on your wife responding to your improvement until it feels really solid. This reserve is probably 95% subconscious on her part, so try not to be resentful about it. Try to consider it Quality Control of the new you.

I think the lopsided chores is the first thing to address, freeing up some time and frustration to pursue exercise and diet and health for the both of you. If you search the forum for "chore chart" you'll find numerous discussions about it. 

If she balks and asks where this is coming from, be blunt, don't dance around it. "I just decided I wasn't going to piss my life away with weed and overeating, and I'm not living in a pigsty anymore." Don't try to soften the hurt or smooth it over, just ket it hang there, and keep making improvements TO YOU. Tell her directly to help you with some chore or another every day/night. Is she sitting doing nothing while you do chores? Does she do any at all or literally nothing towards maintaining your home?

SaigoTakamori

Welcome, you are in the right place.  Ready to do the work? You will get results, be patient.

Listen to @angeline ; Advice

Rock it Homie!

DarKeyes

what is her medical status? is she getting help? she might need psych help for the depression, that can be a deal-breaker regardless of how hot you get. cleaning up the house will help, and also throwing in a bit of good beta, if you are already pretty alpha

and keep initiating

maxx138

I'll be watching this. My W also has depression and housework and cooking have nearly disappeared and I do most if it or we go out to eat. Now I don't mind cooking. I love it in fact. But the housework thing is something I need to get her to work on. She is depressed as well so I don't want to be too harsh about it. But at the same time, I need help and we can't just keep eating out all the time

August_West

The pot is on its way out - it is high time to put away the childish things, pun intended - but not right away. She doesn't sit and do nothing while I do chores, quite to the contrary. Some nights she brings her work home with her, even though she is not obligated to do it at her place of employment. She is also an artist and craftsperson and tends to immerse herself in her projects.

Every once in a while we pair up and overhaul the whole house, but in the interim it becomes dirty, the dishes, garbage and recycling begin to pile up, and I just get to work on it myself.

She is getting help, but perhaps not the kind of help she needs with her psychological issues. She sees a psychiatrist who asks her a couple of questions every month and then writes new prescriptions for her meds. Basically, it is a pill dispensary. Her social anxiety drug can be used to treat clinical depression, but most doctors I know are reticent to prescribe it because of the side effects (in particular, its use creates significant physical and mental dependency and lethargy).

There's a lot more to the story, particularly how I ended up here in the first place. I was in a serious car accident a few months ago. I was fine, but the car was destroyed. Luckily, we had a way to make a down payment and get a new car almost right away - but while I was in the hospital my CAT scans showed enlarged lymph nodes, which combined with some other chronic symptoms appeared to show cancer. I was worked up for cancer for almost two months, scans, labs, biopsies, etc. only to be told after everything that I had an auto-immune condition, not cancer.

That two month waiting period had me focused on my own mortality and what I was doing with my life like I never had been before - I kept having that moment where your entire life flashes before your eyes - and I came to realize that I was boring and my marriage had become boring along with me. For years I was okay with the status quo, with coming home from work, opening a beer and plopping in the recliner. With going a month or more without sex. With not bothering to cultivate a personality, with not worrying too much about my grooming habits or my dress - I beta-ized myself with comfort.

Now I find that I have a good personality. Somewhere under all those soft folds of sloth there is an interesting person, I've just been starving him with my own indifference. That is what the 'red pill' is to me, a jolt of adrenaline, awakening the cool and creative me that spent all those years neglected. I'm a patient man, I hope my marriage and my wife follow me on this journey - but I am also aware of and prepared for the possibilities.

August_West

I love cooking, too - I worked in kitchens in my late teens/early 20's and realized I was pretty good at it, one of the few parts of myself that I have worked on and improved over the past few years, I've become quite the international chef - Asian, north African and Mediterranean foods are my specialty.

Scarlet

Good for you.  Taking a frightening, negative experience and turning it into something that changes your life in a very positive way is an amazing and admirable thing.  

All of Athol's book are very good and would help you, but I think the key would be The Mindful Attraction Plan.  It's all about fixing your whole life.  It would be really good structure for you to start with. 

August_West

I'm buying the book. I'm happy I landed here - most of the rest of the manosphere is full of misogyny or religious appeals, and I'm an atheist who genuinely likes women, so I didn't fit in there.