Epic Struggle leads to Legendary Success

Husband3point0

Ok, so this is going to be a slight departure from the usual Success Story thread. Since my Triage and MAP are not publicly readable, I'm going to provide an abbreviated version of them and then relate my tale. 

Caveats/Info: this is going to start out with some really ugly dark stuff, but I promise the ending will be good. This is a Success Story thread after all. I hope that by understanding where I started, people will get a full appreciation for how far I've come along and what this process is capable of achieving. In addition, I sincerely believe that my story has many parallels to several guys here, notably a few who either are or were stuck in a rut for quite a while. And, since I have spent an enormous amount of time analyzing my situation (which admittedly in itself exacerbated one of my issues), I believe I might have insight that others can leverage. So, I invite those people to ask me questions. As I have related elsewhere, I have paid for this knowledge via a dangerously severe sleep shortage such that it'd quite frankly frustrate and depress me immensely if I failed to help someone else avoid this path. This is my 'give back to the community that definitely saved my marriage, and possibly my life' thread. [This is also my admission that since most of the guys who need my thread cannot access it, I need to provide something public so they can extract something useful.] I invite any and all questions. Ask away. 

Mini-triage:

I'm 44, wife is 40. Two kids, DS is 11 and DD is 7. Medical is somewhat long and involved, my side is pretty clean and the children are in almost perfect health, but hers is a near train-wreck -- chronic weight issues, undiagnosed illnesses that present as an autoimmune thyroid condition and perhaps another genetic blood disorder, multiple miscarriages, stones in gallbladder (removed) and kidneys, etc. Anyway, she has genetic conditions, doesn't eat well and has NEVER exercised in her life. This is all compounded with her extreme fear of doctors due to receiving poor medical care while a child (leading to a staph infection among other things) and generally being treated very poorly during her surgeries and births. Her mother (my MIL) also received extremely aggressive treatment for lung cancer which (probably) accelerated her condition, and certainly made the quality of life during her final six months pretty horrible, tbh. So, that didn't help my wife's impression of doctors either. 

We have a few structural issues, mainly three big ones: (1) our bedroom has no door (it's a long-term RED with an ugly backstory even, but a tale for another day) and (2) my NG issues are large and pervasive, originating in severe emotional abuse from my mom (including convincing me that I was a problem because I was born male and culminating in her hiring a shrink to hypnotize me and help her implant false memories with my dad as the abuser) and (3) my wife experienced a traumatic event as a child which compounded her negative sexuality upbringing (I cannot be more detailed, hopefully that is enough). I was also addicted to both porn and Warcraft (I know, I'm such a keeper, stand back ladies); both are gone, but I would count up each as its own serial CMN. Both have been kicked for a while, but they were huge issues.  So, we have a man who's ashamed to be male, married to a women that is ashamed, embarrassed and even afraid of her own sexuality, both with low self-esteem issues. Needless to say, the sex life of these two people was virtually non-existent for the first fifteen years of our marriage. Our sex life didn't go bad, it was always bad. I had absolutely no idea that a sex life was supposed to exist or could be good even. I was taught women hate sex, all men are pigs and effectively borderline rape their wives in order to have children. 

To say this place was eye-opening would be trivializing to the point of epic comedy. Women can have orgasms, regularly? Women actually want sex? My wife desires me? My wife actually feels rejected when I'm NOT coming onto her? The list goes on. I sat up all night long several times a week in 2012 reading threads here thinking I was being duped by some elaborate hoax. I honestly read this stuff and it blew my mind. I just figured that most men got one of the 80% of women that just aren't programmed to enjoy sex at all, and we live in misery because to push ourselves on our wives would be assault, and there's no chance of turning her on on the first place so why try? I'd never met a couple who have an active healthy enjoyable sex life. Ever.

You people probably read that and think -- this guy must be a complete brain-dead idiot. And, yet nothing could be further from the truth. My IQ is absurdly high (~99.99%). I have a PhD in Mathematics and started on a paper focused on solving a Hilbert problem that everyone in the department thought had a strong chance to lead to a Fields medal (I gave up on it a while ago, and I over 40 now, so I'm ineligible if you're wondering). I guess my point here is to never underestimate the power that rearing and environment can have on the development of a child, and eventually then as an adult. 

So, I started implementing changes haphazardly from NMMNG and MMSLP back in late 2012. I made some initial progress but stalled until I read the MAP book and reassessed where my real problems were. On July 13, 2013, I created my official MAP, rolled up the sleeves and started the hard work. And, it was hard. 2014 in particular was a very difficult year for me. Without the help of Brian Rideout (@BrianC here), I'm not sure I would have made it. But, over the past 2-3 months, things have eventually turned around. And, our sex life is now beyond my furthest expectations. Usually averaging more than once per day outside of SW, and often in the twice per day range for 4-5 days in a row. By the end of the year, I would estimate that around 70-80% of our sex throughout our marriage will have occurred in 2015. And, out of the remainder (the other 20-30%), the majority of that was during 2013 and 2014 during minor periods of sunlight in the dark tunnel I spent nearly three years traversing. We now have sex more each month than the entire first fourteen years of our marriage combined.

It seems implausible. I'm sure there's another guy out there like I was in 2012, reading this thinking "this dude is full of shit!" But, it's possible. The depth of your hole will determine how much work it will require to get out. But, take heart in this -- if I could make it out, while only working on 0-4 hours of sleep per night for over 18 months, then you can too. 

I owe a huge thanks to the Moderating team here. And, another huge one to many of the forum regulars, particularly several Gold individuals who held my hand (metaphorically) and gave me hope. But, most of all I need to thank three people above all others:

To Doctor Glover, if he reads here, I wish to thank you immensely for providing a roadmap to attack my inner demons and five inner peace. 

To Athol Kay, I must thank you for providing me the blueprint for the end goal. For showing me what's possible. And providing me with an initial guide for how to start working on my own solution. 

And, last but not least, to Brian Rideout, for being my coach, guide master, friend, confidant, cheerleader and torch bearer, especially when I was ready to give up and piss on the flames instead of continuing the journey. 

Husband3point0

As I mentioned earlier, please feel free to ask away. I want to give back and help anyone else in any and every way I can. 

BourneAgain

Simply Awesome. Hero's Journey indeed!

Reborn

Okay, here's a question.  

What are the benefits, in addition to the more sex?

What else has changed for the better in your life?

Tennee

It appears you in fact seized your Awesome.  Cheers my man...

Howard

Reborn said:

Okay, here's a question.  

What are the benefits, in addition to the more sex?

What else has changed for the better in your life?

+1 for that. Fantastic achievement @Husband3point0, but I would hope that quite apart from the sex, life is so much better for you in many other ways?

Husband3point0

Reborn said:

Okay, here's a question.  

What are the benefits, in addition to the more sex?

What else has changed for the better in your life?

That's actually an excellent question. So, some of this is going to be correlated and others might be causal, and in the interests of full disclosure I must admit I'm not fully sure about some of them so I'm not attributing any sort of credit yet. But, I can categorically state that my psychological makeover was the long pole in the tent for nearly all of this. 

(1) I sleep better. I now have what I would consider 'normal healthy' sleep patterns, where I get 6-7 hours nearly every night and feel rested. Sure, once a month or so, something happens and I only get a short stint. But, I no longer go 5-7 weeks per week with sub-4 hours of sleep. According to my Internet research, my sleep levels were dangerously close to causing minor long-term brain damage, actually. It's pretty scary. 

(2) I'm happier. Before, my internal theme song was probably an atonal Phillip Glass interpretation of one of the more melancholy Bach pieces. Now, I walk around with a bounce in my step and a lightness of heart. And, this is immediately evident to my wife, which in turn has made her happier. 

(3) My comedy is back. When she met me, I was an improv comedian (as in actual professional stage appearances). Along the way, I slowly soured and transformed into a much angrier version of me. My comedy at home was still there, but nearly all of the slapstick was replaced with vitriolic sarcasm. I was still a funny guy, but there was very little light-hearted fun and playful joking around. It was all way too serious and almost ominous at times. Gloomy. 

(4) I'm in the best shape of my life. Honestly, I'm not sure I could have sex 20-40 times per month if I weren't in great shape. I'm 44 years old. I'm lucky in that my T is naturally astronomically high, but even still, it's hard... getting and staying this hard.  

(5) My wife is naturally extremely submissive and I had absolutely no clue. In fact, due to my upbringing, I actually believed that a man who even thought of his wife that way was an abuser. (Seriously.) So, she has been subconsciously desperate for me to lead for a really long time, and is now so supremely and sublimely overjoyed at my transformation into her perfect man. It's pretty mind-boggling, to me anyway, what she really needed. What's even more crazy is how well she had me actually pegged as to who I really am/was underneath all of those scars. It's amazing, to me anyway, that she was able to be attracted to who I truly was underneath all of that. I don't know how well I'm conveying that though...

(6) She is taking a bit more control in dealing with her vampires. This is huge because despite my psychological issues, her REDs are quite a bit larger than mine. In addition, now that I've been at this for a few years, I've resolved a lot of my problems and moved the needle quite a bit on my big ticket stuff. So, there was a period of time where she started to see me get my house in order and was so far behind that she effectively believed I was leaving her and there was no hope. Athol's entire process is setup largely to scare the other person into compliance. The problem for me was that she was so depressed and down on herself that she didn't take that dread as a call to action, she interpreted it as the final set of nails into the coffin. She assumed I was just getting myself mentally and physically ready for a new wife, which wasn't the case of course. But, you can't convince someone else with words about a different version of reality. So, it took a really long time, with a virtual boatload of tests of every kind, for me to effectively 'prove' to her subconscious that I was staying. This was possibly the hardest part -- constantly battling with her that I was staying while she was offering me little reason to, and in some ways even providing incentives to just walk away. I effectively went through one big massive six-month long loyalty test. The good news is that passing that flipped the switch in her that I was staying and that I was the man she deeply wanted and needed at her core. 

I am glad you asked that question. I have a ton of notes and sometimes I need good thought-provoking ones to draw them out. Thanks!

Blackwulf

I was about ready to ask what was the tipping point with your wife.  Glad to see everything is awesome with you @Husband3point0.  

realeyes

What an awesome turnaround, for both of you! Bravo and thank you for sharing your story.

As the wife of a man who seems content with his rut, I'm wondering: at what point did you realize that your marriage could/should be more than it was? What exactly got you seeking out this information?

Husband3point0

realeyes said:

As the wife of a man who seems content with his rut, I'm wondering: at what point did you realize that your marriage could/should be more than it was? What exactly got you seeking out this information?

This is a good question, especially since I have abbreviated my Triage here. This info is available to Gold members but is helpful to others I imagine. 

So, when I turned forty, I lost my job when my hedge fund imploded (I'm a Math Finance guy... think of me as one of those dudes connected tangentially to the complex stuff that destroyed the economy in 2008). At the same time, my wife and I tried to have a third child and we miscarried, twice. After her mom's death, the gallbladder removal and then two miscarriages, I gave up on inflicting any more pain upon her, by having myself snipped. To some this might not make sense, but to a white knight like me, getting a vasectomy felt like I was coming to her rescue and being a good husband. Previously, we had all kinds of serious problems with birth control methods of every kind, which helped create the conditions by which I just stopped initiating sex entirely with her before we started having kids. And, strangely enough, the only time she was getting any sex she wanted was while we were trying for kids. I think perhaps that I was a lot more primal during those moments when I was trying to impregnate her; that's at least my current working theory as I look back now in trying to explain why she actually seemed to like sex during that (somewhat) brief time. It's ironically sad in a way that I was a perfect shot every time since that meant those periods of good sex were so brief, since I thought the only green light I would get was just to inseminate her and then she wouldn't want it once I had succeeded, as it were. 

At the same time, my wife got into 50 Shades around this time and subsequently bumped into Taken in Hand. She forwarded me the website and asked me to read it. At first, I was completely freaked out and then eventually began to realize that I wasn't afraid of becoming that guy but rather ashamed that what she wanted I was capable of theoretically but I wasn't there psychologically. She took this very hard since she felt like she put herself out there and I had rejected her. So, she retreated deeply and it took me a while during this process to undo that CMN. 

Anyway, that corresponded to my reassessment of my life. I had done that back when I turned 30 with great results and did it again at 40 and decided there was a lot of lingering baggage with my mom that I hadn't fully dealt with. That eventually led me to No More Mr Nice Guy by Dr Glover, which in turn led me to MMSLP, which completely blew my mind. Which then works its way into the tale above. 

I have read a tremendous number of books on manhood, child development, abuse recovery, sex, marriage, relationships, communication, etc. as part of this. Between 2011 and 2014, I want to say I read well over 3 dozen books on various topics. My kindle app on my iPad is loaded with everything from guides on female ejaculation to forgiveness to red pill manifestos to the Crossfire series by Sylvia Day (to grasp her FSOG fascination) and even on to things like how to just be more awesome in bed like Sex God Method. It's weird seeing "Interest Rate Securities" next to "Just Fuck Me" in the list, but it is what it is. 

I am a voracious reader who suffered from three concurrent forms of insomnia (translation -- lots of extra time to burn). In addition, I'm extremely analytical and tend to reconstruct issues into problems that can be solved, especially since I have a highly advanced and trained problem-solving engine up there. So, I guess it's no surprise that I took the issues and turned them each into problems to solve and then researched solutions to implement. That's how my mind works. 

Not sure if this helps, but there it is. 

realeyes

Thank you. So basically it was your wife that led you here in a roundabout way, which was what I was guessing. And you are a genius who is was open and willing to change, a rare find! I've been reading around the site and can find very few stories of success from women who discovered this first. (Maybe they're all Gold Members?)

Husband3point0

realeyes said:

Thank you. So basically it was your wife that led you here in a roundabout way, which was what I was guessing. And you are a genius who is was open and willing to change, a rare find! I've been reading around the site and can find very few stories of success from women who discovered this first. (Maybe they're all Gold Members?)

My wife didn't really lead me here. My depression and stress led me to NMMNG. And, then Amazon effectively led me here since MMSLP is on the list of "people who read that also bought this" once I finished that and was searching for more. 

IME, geniuses aren't closed to change, not any more so than any other individual anyway. The problem is that we think we have better solutions than yours, which lets be brutally honest, if you're in the 190+ IQ range is basically true, a lot. My advantage here is that I knew that I didn't know anything about women and I knew that I was horrible at relationships. So, I had the wisdom to know that my intellect was of little use since my knowledge base was so limited in this regard. Interestingly enough, I did flounder for well over a year trying to solve the problem on my own before I went into coaching. I'm a strong proponent of team-based efforts though (I call marriage a team sport, I manage groups at work and focus them on team-building activities and accomplishments, I parent my kids into being a team player, etc.). So, this probably assisted my search for a coach -- to help guide my team. 

As to your last point, most female success stories involve a Phase Four ultimatum after a really long drawn-out MAP. I wish I had better news for you there, but that's unfortunately the typical case for women here. Sorry. 

Angeline

Well, once the women start running a true MAP, instead of trying to dress sexy and fuck their husbands into the Captain's role, they actually start seeing progress in time frames and Stages no different then the men. They're just so afraid of being mean and bitchy, some of the worst things you can call a Good Girl, so they bend over backwards trying to run and invisible MAP. Something you are well acquainted with  

SaigoTakamori

Ba Bam. INDEED

MiddleMan

I can't express how happy I am for you, @Husband3point0! I know how much it means to you to be posting here, although I only had the smallest inkling of what you were up against.

Internet high-five!

ffp20

Wow this is awesome. I really enjoy reading the successes here.

fordsvt

That is a huge turn around. Great work there. 

BetaTester

@Husband3point0 ;
This post is interesting to me as it could describe my wife's health status.  I am guessing you received quite a few excuses as to why she could not do "X".  Especially in the bedroom.  I am wondering if she ever addressed it on her own or did you have to push her to it.  I have set my expectations but have seen very little effort toward DW improving her health.  Has her health improved?

george

Late finding this thread. But very happy for you!  I've struggled with putting the fun back in my life and it seems like you had some success there - that's inspiring for me.

Husband3point0

BetaTester said:

@Husband3point0 ;
This post is interesting to me as it could describe my wife's health status.  I am guessing you received quite a few excuses as to why she could not do "X".  Especially in the bedroom.  I am wondering if she ever addressed it on her own or did you have to push her to it.  I have set my expectations but have seen very little effort toward DW improving her health.  Has her health improved?

My wife's health has barely improved. It is on my radar of changes I want to push for going forward. I am currently pushing for her to change her job situation first, as I think that might yield more immediate and impactful results. 

There are several red lights in the bedroom that I hope to eventually flip to green. But, it's important IMHO to understand that as an ongoing process and not some sort of 'big bang' event which finalizes your marriage as an ultimate success. I personally believe that that type of thinking can get people into an analysis paralysis deadlock whereby they're so focused upon gushing where they are that they forget to keep going. It's analogous to the guy who stops the car completely in order to get his GPS coordinates accurate to the millimeter, rather than just doing a quick check, saying "looks good" and then continues driving. 

But, I'm prone to analysis paralysis by training and aptitude, so I'm hyper-vigilant to its existence and might over-detect or over-compensate for it, if I'm being brutally honest. 

Self-awareness is crucial in a MAP. Without that, you're throwing darts in the dark. IMHO anyway...

ddad

I want to drop a congratulations and high five.  My read is once you understand (have taken the red pill) then it is a matter of believing it and deciding that you are going to do the hard work.  Lift, Captain, Get stuff done etc.  Then leading in the bedroom becomes possible.  I am impressed at how fast you made the changes and can only think that it is because of your focus and the difference it makes to have the help of the coaching team.