Another tough luck story

“Those who learn too late can pass on the news to those who can learn before it explodes.”

Reader Kells posted a comment a while ago based on the reading of this previous post, to which I responded.  Despite it being some months ago, I’m not quite sure why it came back to my Sunday afternoon thoughts the other day.  Maybe it is because you don’t go long without hearing an all so common story of similar theme.  Kells seemed like a good chap, so I’m sure he won’t mind me taking liberty in publishing as a dedicated post.

Hi Vi Nay
I read some of your posts on Krauser's blog and followed a link to your own site. I have found your posts very interesting and have been trawling through your archive for the past couple of weeks. This particular post brings to mind my own situation somewhat. I wonder if you could help me with a personal question I have? If so, great, if not, I understand you have better things to be doing.
I'm 43 and recently split up with my girlfriend after a 17-year LTR and 3 kids. I would surmise most of the relationship as, ultimately, just paddling water. 
We first met when I was 22, she 21, and re-started going out when I moved to her hometown a few years later. She then got a job abroad and I followed her. After 2 years, she fell pregnant with our first kid. We had been having unprotected sex but this was an 'accident' (at least, I thought it was) and we agonised about an abortion before deciding to keep the child. In hindsight, she led this discussion and I was happy to agree with her decision. She was 29 when our eldest child was born, by which time we had been living together 3 years.
Sex dried up while she was pregnant and continued at a rate of once every two months (or less) on average for the rest of our entire relationship. Since she got pregnant for the first time, she was totally passive during sex and always put roadblocks in the way or made me hurry up. I'm a nice guy who rarely loses my temper and did what I could to share the burden of running a home and family. Regardless, whatever I did was never enough, in her opinion. Based on all my manosphere reading over the last year and a half or so, I obviously never controlled the frame of the relationship, and I was frequently passive as I thought letting her have her own way would make life easier.
With the birth of our eldest, she opened the door to her family, whom she is very close to and whom I initially got on very well with. But it was as if they had been waiting for kids to arrive. This destroyed my relationship with them as they knew that I wasn't happy with their too frequent, overlong visits, where they took over the house and did as they pleased, which I had made clear to my ex- were unacceptable. Later, they stopped visiting so much because of me, something my ex- resented me greatly for.
We had a 2nd son in 2006, my wish, and then a daughter 3 years ago (she got pregnant first time at 39 – I am considering having a dna test performed on my daughter), which I agreed to have because my ex- wanted a last child before her ovaries dried up and I wanted her to be happy. I agreed to this because I always felt that things would get better, and that our family would stay together.
As time went by, it became more and more obvious that she had no respect for me. Over the years, she appreciated nothing I did, said every now and then that she couldn't imagine us getting old together, etc. We slept apart at her instigation as I made too much noise in my sleep. At the start of 2013, she asked for both of us to make a go of things and we began to (briefly) have sex more often and it was exciting for a change (although visibly enjoying herself, she later denied she had liked this sex). Unfortunately she got pneumonia shortly afterwards and was in bed for a couple of weeks with me, uncomplainingly, doing everything to keep the house running, kids happy, and minding my own job. She asked for her mother to come, who is obese and in bad health herself. I was still doing most things but was told by my ex- that her mother had saved us all from going under and we had a blazing row, which was the beginning of the end.

Sex disappeared, we went for counselling where she came off worst in discussions we had with a counsellor so she found another one and went by herself. By this time, I had read that counselling is only good for giving women justification for their own actions so I could see the writing on the wall. Finally, late last year, she said she'd "had enough" and we agreed to split, well, I gave her what she wanted because I was sick of her and our shitty relationship. We had sex, as it turned out, one last time, which she surprisingly enjoyed. In the afterglow, I asked her some questions where she mentioned rough sex she’d enjoyed with a former lover and agreed that, initially, our sex life was good too but quickly died, as I mentioned (although she didn’t remember it dying as quickly). 
Btw, I was basically a virgin when we met whereas she had had 6 or 7 lovers. She was pretty, but over the last couple of years has mentioned herself how haggard she is becoming. I have discovered that she is emotionally besotted with a former work colleague who is older, has 5 kids, and lives with his wife in another part of the country we live in. I am chubby, but would rate myself as above-average in looks and attract plenty of IOIs from the young, attractive women I work with. Part of this is to do with my strong sense of humour where I tease/neg women and which they love. I have also found a lover since my break-up who told me that I was very charming and that I seduced her. I guess I am learning to be less of a chode.
Wages-wise, I usually earned a bit more than my ex- although she was always short of money and frequently asked/checked if I was contributing my fair share to our common accounts. We were both university educated although she had a doctorate in her chosen subject, something I never had an issue with as I always considered myself better informed, more intelligent and more socially confident.
During the breakup, until I found a place of my own to live, I had to endure 4 or so months of following a break-up template she obviously had been planning for ages, her losing her temper with me constantly, threatening to take the kids off me and with getting me legally evicted from my own home, bringing lawyers into negotiations. As usual, I kept my cool, knowing that arguing with her would be useless (she always won our arguments, then again almost always started them and then would wish aloud that we wouldn’t argue) and not wanting to affect the kids any more than already was the case.
I finally moved into my new flat at the beginning of March. I can feel that the end of a 17-year LTR is quite heavy, emotionally, but it’s also a great relief and I see my kids every other week for 6 days, something I had to fight for but which I am happy with. 
I hope I’m not being too longwinded nor coming off as an asshole – I’m just trying to be even-handed in my assessment of things and rational discussion with my ex- was an impossibility. 
Essentially, I have two questions:
• Who is to blame for the relationship failing? Is it me for being a naive fool/average nice guy who knew nothing about steering a relationship, or her for being a devious, manipulative shrew who got what she wanted but couldn’t be pleased? 
• Are LTRs possible without having to 100% game all the time? I look around and see couples who are bored with each other but stay together for their childrens’ sake. This is noble, to my mind – after all, it’s what I wanted – but don’t the vast majority of people grow apart and end their days with the woman in control and little or no sex in the relationship? I have more tools now and am aware of having to steer a woman but find this situation that most relationships seem to end in profoundly depressing and am wondering if I can be bothered trying to have an LTR again.
Thanks for your time, Kells 

My response:

Kells,

Although you cover a lifetime relationship in its entirety, this kind of story has been seen in front of my eyes many times before. There are various aspects of advice I could give you, but the bottom line of it is you are where you are right now. Besides, I’m a great believer in being excited about the future and learning from the past. You seem, despite your obvious mistakes, to be in a good place mentally.

I’ll take both questions in turn:

• Who is to blame for the relationship failing? Is it me for being a naive fool/average nice guy who knew nothing about steering a relationship, or her for being a devious, manipulative shrew who got what she wanted but couldn’t be pleased? 

Ultimately, you are both to blame. Although you may not want to hear this, she will have contrived the first pregnancy. A high percentage of women in their mid 20s start to see friendship networks dwindle, they see their friends settling down, and they feel the need to project self-value and self-importance onto the watching world due to fragmenting attention aligned to their declining beauty. As a decent catch, she would have put you down as a good provider for her life plan. When it happens, and if you cannot trust a woman, you needed to be on guard from that day on. I would have given her a chance to prove to you she could develop into a better person and a good mother, but as soon as it was clear she couldn’t change then you should have moved on. The kid would have been no better off in an unhappy household. Even if the purest claim is that an unhappy two-parent family benefits the upbringing of children’s welfare, the bitter memories formed from separate bedrooms, arguments, abusive behaviour, lies, hatred, brainwashing, adultery, emotional despair and inevitable parting of ways will manifest to haunt the child throughout adult life. I can tell you this from first-hand experience.

She was never going to change, because once the novelty of showing the baby to the world wears off, she would start to resent you for holding her back in life. She would further resent you because once a mother, her options with other men (for LTRs at least) would be far more limited in comparison to pre motherhood. This would explain why the two of you went on to birth two more children. As an unmarried father, your options in the sexual market as a single guy would not have resulted in considerable negative results, and conceivably this parentage status could have assisted you. 

• Are LTRs possible without having to 100% game all the time? I look around and see couples who are bored with each other but stay together for their children’s sake. This is noble, to my mind – after all, it’s what I wanted – but don’t the vast majority of people grow apart and end their days with the woman in control and little or no sex in the relationship?

It all depends on the level of game a person requires. The rule of thumb is: “the hotter the girl, the bigger the game”, but this isn’t absolute. I know of a few cute “homely girls” who appear to be happy with a loving and giving male partner. But a man has no choice but to go with the normal sequence of events, and yes, game (aka psychological common sense strategy) will be necessitated with most women. This is all the more pertinent for men who are alongside more physically attractive women. Basically, the mindset a man should have is to start with firm game, and only loosen the grip when she has given reason due to what she has done, and not what she claims to do. Personally, I never fully trust a woman for as long as the relationship lasts.

The sad truth to women being in control is that children, and mainly marriage, offer the female gender this passage in a relationship. A woman positively feeds off a man who puts his foot down, acts selfishly (to a point), shows a lack of primary consideration to her in life, and is not living in trepidation of emotional or financial consequences if the two of them go their separate ways. Women love men who they are never in full control of. Once kids and marriage are in place, a man relinquishes much of that luxury due to the knowledge he has far more to lose if it doesn’t work out. Women know this, their egos take over from the thoughts of what they most desire in men, and they increase all the provocation, manipulation and lies that are in their innate characters anyway. Simply put, the modern world in western society offers women a route to not be worse off (they are usually better off) than before she met him, and for men to be worse off if they split up. If there is a financial imbalance when they meet, and marriage is an empathetic motivation, any man with two brain cells to his armoury should have a pre-nuptial in place. The lack of sex as you mention is also a by-product of all as explained.


If any of this sounds harsh then I make no apology. It’s all about moving forwards with optimism from here on in, and you seem like a person who is prepared to take the proverbial high road. That’s the beauty of life – rarely is it too late to make amends and put the wrongs right.

What can we take out of all this, in general terms?

• Man more interested in the woman at a younger age (hence when she is at her most desirable) than her comparative genuine feelings for him.
• Woman manipulating a situation – hence pregnancies – to suit her life plan.
• Once a woman has nested her eggs, in this case securing a ring on the finger, a wedding day and kids to show off, her appreciation of the man who supplied it all will fragment.  This fragmentation may be progressive, but just as likely sudden.
• A man needs to stand up to his respective female partner, no matter how idolized he is with her, from day one.  This isn’t to say he should be all argumentative from the first date (as a woman may construe this as him being highly strung, argumentative or a “know-it-all”), but he should make it is firm intention early on that she is merely a part of his life, and not the priority.
• A man should ensure his woman does not get her own way any more than he does likewise.  He should also give her the luxury of his giving ways when there is little to negatively impact on him.  In other words, if she wants a wall in the house painted pale blue, and it is no skin off his nose either way, then let her be.  But on the other hand, if she desires a holiday destination not of his choice or liking, the minimum should be a compromise.
• Marriage, and to a lesser extent fatherhood, takes a high proportion of power away from a man within the relationship in comparison to prior these events.  The reasons were explained in my response.
• Marriage will not make a woman love her man any more than before, and the inverse applies too.  A marriage certificate is nothing more than an emblematic status, and it has no connection to inner emotional feelings.  Women will allow men to believe marriage reinforces or elevates the strength of love, but if this is the case, it begs the question to whether the love is strong enough in the first place.
• A failed marriage will be, in majority cases, more detrimental to a man’s current situation due to the economic legal bias towards the female side.
• As most women instigate divorces, men are usually the more susceptible to emotional and psychological strain.  Women will allow you to believe they are the victims due to the jerks who cheat on them, but these examples are minority cases and not representative of the common happenings.
• A failed marriage or relationship with children involved is more damaging to woman’s pursuit of future male takers (decent calibre men) than it is to men’s equivalent future success with other women.  Simply put, other women are not put off by a man being a father even close to the way men are deterred from a woman has a child seat in the back of her car.

Q-tip:

It’s rarely too late for a man to make amends, even when he has hit rock bottom.  A failed marriage with kids produced will not deter many women, and in fact it will attract more women if all else is equal.  Women do not have this luxury, whether they admit to the reality or not.  In the same position, they face having to downgrade on their future male mate choices.  If in fact they do seek a higher calibre man, the big money is that the ex was a complete loser in the first place.