The married life

I was married once.

It ended in failure.

Looking back on the situation I was able to see some mistakes that I made. I'm not going to take all the blame, it wasn't all my fault, but I made mistakes and one should try and learn from them.

In the years subsequent to my failed marriage I dated now and again. Nothing too serious, but I was putting myself out there. In the times between what really were infrequent forays into the dating world I couldn't help but notice some patterns in my life that were, shall we say sub-optimal, for a dating life. I would talk with a few friends about things, we would discuss relationships and such things. I learned a lot.

I learned about how important a first impression really is.

I learned about the concept of 'game' and started to take a little more seriously the differences between men and women.

Towards the end of my time in Canada I began dating a woman who had a child. I had some reservations about this, but decided that I wasn't sufficiently popular with women to reject one on such grounds. We dated for a few months. At first she was hesitant to try a relationship with me. We talked about it and decided to give it a go. It didn't take long for me to realize that despite all the talk of equality, I was at best third in her life (her child, herself and then me). She insisted (or at least she tried to insist) that she be first in my life. I don't blame her for putting herself or her child above me. If that's what she wants then more power to her, but I wasn't getting what I wanted from the relationship and so on a long walk home one day I decided that it was best for me to end the relationship.

When I got home that day in my inbox was an email from her saying that she didn't think that the relationship was working and that it should end. I sent a short reply wishing her all the best and that was that.

I didn't whine. I didn't complain. I didn't try to convince her that she was wrong, because she wasn't. I had just resolved to end the relationship and she had just offered me a pain free way of doing just that. So my two line response was simple and polite but in the end it was easy for me.

It didn't take long for her (a week) to email me back saying that she thought that she had been hasty. That she had made a mistake and that perhaps we should give it another try. I replied that she should go with her first instinct (ending it) as that was probably best. Less than a week later she replied again saying that she knew that she had made a mistake and wanted to try again.

This was my first experience with something approaching 'game' or alpha mimicry. It was something of a revelation and it felt good.

Shortly after that I decided that I was going to move to South Korea and simply stopped trying to date women, but I never forgot how empowered I felt in ending that relationship. What was usually an awkward or painful experience was liberating and empowering.

In subsequent months and years I began looking into 'game' a bit more. Nothing too seriously but I knew that I was making mistakes and that I could improve that area of my life.

The main source of such information is a man named Roissy who runs a blog called The Citizen Renegade. He had a lot of good information but I had a hard time accepting much of what he wrote. Some of it was my own beta insecurities getting in the way, but some of it was just a real clash of mentalities between a hedonist and a Christian.

A second source of information that I found was called The Married Man Sex Life and while I wasn't married at the time, I had just begun a relationship and I found that this was more in line with my own personal views on life. It wasn't about bedding as many quality women as possible (Roissy's apparent view on life) but rather building and maintaining a quality married or at least monogamous life.

Written by a gentleman named Athol Kay (with the help and support of his wife), MMSL provided me with much of the same information that I could find on Roissy's blog, but in a manner which didn't leave me feeling like a douche bag for reading it.

One of the problems that I found though, when I started investigating the realities of the inter-gender relationship is where to start? Roissy had put out so much information I felt lost trying to find out where to begin. It was a bit the same when I began reading Athol's blog.

Luckily though Athol has solved this problem by making available his ideas and methods in a book, called The Married Man Sex Life Primer, a book that I will joyfully purchase and share with my (now) wife.

But don't take my word for it, here are a few reviews of the book:

The first from the Ruth Institute:

In sum, I am not just telling you to buy this book. I’m telling you to get it as a wedding present for the newlyweds in your life. I’m telling you to get it as a present for any of the married men in your life (including your husbands, if you are a wife).

The Ruth Institute is all in favor of lifelong married love. Well, here’s a guide for how to get it done in the modern world. Now go get it done.

The second from Gaming My Wife:

The tone of the book, like that of the blog, is perfect for reaching Athol’s target audience: regular, everyday guys. Athol never adopts an antagonistic stance towards women, even when he’s describing their worst behaviors. Likewise, he manages to describe those behaviors in non-insulting ways. The result is that its average Joe male readers don’t have to live in fear of their wives blowing a gasket over them reading it. At the same time, Athol strikes a very good balance of honesty, directness and humor without getting excessively graphic. That makes his book very accessible to the everyman who might need things really spelled out for him every now and then, but probably isn’t really looking for a porn book. This is a book that a wife could buy for her husband, a woman could buy for her brother, or a mother could buy for her son. It’s also a book that a man might buy for his father, brother, or son – or his friends. Riding that line is a difficult balancing act, but Athol has pulled it off splendidly.

It is completely fair to say that Athol’s blog has helped transform my marriage. I live too far away to realistically buy him a beer as the Man Code demands, so I’ll be blunt: I’d have spent $20 on a book of blank pages if he’d put it out with this title. In my book, he’s already earned that. But for the men who haven’t been reading his blog, this book is worth the cover price and then some. I can all but guarantee that I’ll be providing copies of it to friends at some point. Well done, Athol.

Here is a third from Alpha Game:

The Married Man Sex Life Primer is, without a doubt, one of the more eye-opening and alarmingly informative books one is ever likely to read. Athol Kay is one of the foremost theoreticians of practical Game, with a particular focus on its application to married life. His background as a male nurse is significant, not only in relation to his highly developed ability to communicate with women, but in his frighteningly clinical ability to write more freely about bodily fluids and body parts than anyone since Galen or possibly the Marquis de Sade.

[...]

The Married Man Sex Life Primer isn't merely for those who languish in miserable marriages, or even for men who are already married. As Kay states with regards to the purpose of his book, it is for both men and women who wish to improve what is, after all, the core bedrock of every marriage. I highly recommend it, albeit with the requisite warning that it is sufficiently explicit to make Japanese tentacle porn look conservative.

If you're still unsure if this is something that can help you then feel free to head over to his website where you can "read the Contents, the entire Introduction and around the first two pages of each chapter of some of the early chapters. There's an avalanche of content, so go take a peek."

Or, if like me, you can see the value and worth in owning such an invaluable collection then you can order the book from Amazon in standard paper form or ultra modern Kindle form.