Oh…… the transitory nature of human affairs.

You are gems, each and every one of you.

62 year old here. I happened across your blog because I googled something similar to the above sentence. I’ve been married for 35 years and I love my wife but we’re not in love the way we used to be. To be blunt I’m not nearly as sexually attracted to her as I was just 5 years ago even. She’s fit and attractive enough for her age, and I often get compliments on how young and handsome I look for my age. We both eat right and exercise regularly. The thing is, I retire in a few years and as all us oldies are being phased out through retirement, every year one or two new employees are brought on board and many of them are women and a few have openly flirted with me. I’ve flirted back.

As I’m a man of my word I have not let things get beyond flirting nor would I ever. But I am toying with the idea of suggesting to my wife that we transition from our current monogamous model of marriage to an open one. I would have never considered such a thing even 10 year ago, the thought wouldn’t have even entered my mine, but being post menopausal there is no risk of her becoming pregnant and quite frankly, I couldn’t care less if men find her attractive or if she’s into them anymore. What loss would it be to me if she also had a fling?

I don’t know. I think monogamy is a tad ridiculous at our age. There’s nothing to be jealous over anymore so why not just have some guilt free fun?

For me, Red Pill awareness has built a bridge across the canyon of cognitive dissonance between the way I was raised (‘BE NICE!’), and my life-long observations of the ways humans actually relate to one another.
It’s also made a lot more sense out of the dynamics I observed in my family growing up – My grandfather died a withered, beat-down, pathetic emasculated shell. An entire life spent under derisively hateful, condescending lamentations for the crime of completely supporting my Grandma, providing her several beautiful children in relative comfort. A woman who never had to work a day in her life once married and- to this day- still pines for the Ace who was crumpled in an aluminum ball somewhere Over There before she married my granddad.

I was compelled to respond to your post here b/c my wife has recently started glomping onto the feminist drivel that’s been slinging around after Isla Vista, yesterday she was referencing some FB post she saw linking MRA sites to mass casualty events. Nevermind the fact that Elliot appears to have been about the least masculine person you could imagine, and had immersed himself in a community actively despising PUA and players.

And I was concerned about that linkage happening long before this tragedy- It can be very easy to get lost in the bitterness of mainstream pickup TRP blogs, and IMO the blatant racism & homophobia in some do much more harm than the good that can come from helping men arrive at a clearer understanding of themselves.

I’m struggling to figure out what I’m going to say to my wife the next time she brings this kind of stuff up. The fact that I could be a fucking poster-boy for a lot of the material you discuss. My ingrained beta behaviours up to this point have lead to a one-sided relationship I’ve allowed to develop with her. A woman who at one point when dating said she ‘loved!’ giving head, not that I’d ever know that now.
It seems sorrowfully way too late for me now to recognize that I should’ve run screaming the other direction when she’d complimented me for being different than the other guys she ‘used to like’. So for now, I just laugh at her and mentally hit the highway with a backpack these days when she mentions for the thousandth time how ‘hot’ it is when I do the dishes.

To close, I appreciate you for the work you are doing. I still have a long way to go though in figuring out how to maintain sanity knowing what I’ve always suspected deep down- that I’ll never, ever be rewarded for being a responsible and good person, the way I was promised by those I trusted most as a child.

The most important thing to me, at this point, is to raise my son differently.

I’ve read pretty much everything you have written on here, including your book, very rarely is there a source. Your book has no reference section or footnotes. I just went through all of Best of Year One and couldn’t find a single link or reference to an established study published in a peer reviewed journal. A couple of established theories were referenced like Social Matching Theory and Stockholm syndrome, and you briefly mentioned Dr Martie Hasselton, but that’s it.

I think it’s better to have evidence that is a bit contestable than no evidence at all, but in my limited research I consistently come across peer reviewed research that would back up what you say. As I said, it’s the one thing I can’t back you up on, which is a shame because I’d love to have a one stop shop I can link people to that will tightly, logically and scientifically make the points that you do.

this might sound strange i know, but essentially – just stop caring…. embrace the dark shadow that’s hanging over you…. find it and absorb it…. get out there and do something with yourself… anything and just get on with it… no one really cares that much …. no one is going to bite you for trying…. no one is out to get you… encouragement will only come once you pass the threshold of being valid in some way…

listen to this…. i am sure your situation is nothing like as tough as this