Feels like I am doing it all over again....

[Strong&Alive]

Tyguy, I’ve looked through all your posts here in order to understand the background. I’m now going to do my best to give you some advice. A word of warning. You may not like it at first – it all might seem too hard-hitting – but I make no apologies for that. Once you’ve let it sink in, maybe over a day or two, I think you’ll start to see things in a whole new light. In fact you might never look at life the same way again. There is far more to your marriage problems than simply a lack of sex. I’m talking from hard experience here, and although my own wife has never had an affair, I’ve had to deal with the SSM situation. Its tough. Very tough. But I’ve come out of it a wiser and better man. It might sound weird to you right now, but I’m actually profoundly grateful for the whole experience, because it forced me to look deep into myself and discover emotional and spiritual resources I would never have known I had. Anyway, here goes.


(1) Your wife (more about her below) currently has little or no respect for you as a man or a person, and this is a situation you yourself have permitted to develop over years. You have been far too “nice” – as in weak and placating. That is something you are going to have to come to terms with and remedy as apriority. EDITED--ADVERTISING NOT ALLOWED I’m not going to even attempt to summarise it here, but once you’ve read it you’ll realize several things: you need to stop being “nice”; you need to become an “integrated male” i.e. more masculine; and at some point – if your wife continues to behave the way she’s behaving now – you may well have to end your marriage. I’m going to deal with this point next.


(2) I know this will sound bleak, but when your marriage is in turmoil and negatively affects every other aspect of your life, its in fact very healthy to step back and contemplate how you would go about life if the marriage was already over. Let me explain. Your life would go on. It would go on. No matter how distraught and depressed you might be, and how worthless you might now feel, you would have to keep going. If not for your sake, then for your children’s. There would be living arrangements to sort out, property to be sold and bought, contact agreements to make regarding your children, and if this couldn’t be agreed amicably, this would all have to be decided by a court. It would all be very stressful and expensive and time-consuming. Very. (As you have two children from a previous relationship I assume you have already gone through something similar?) So you know you can do it if and when you have to. And then what? Perhaps after the 6 months or a year or 18 months that this all took, you would at last have some breathing space – time for yourself and to plan your own future. You would inevitably start thinking about your own career – which you’ve probably neglected because you were so depressed during your marriage. You would want to perhaps do other things that you’d not been able to do before – sport, pastimes, travel. You would also start thinking about dating again, and of starting another relationship. But this time you’d want to get it right. You’d want to be the very best man you could be, in order to recognise and attract and keep a healthy attractive woman. Have a long think about all that. It really puts your marriage in perspective doesn’t it?


(3) Now here’s the punchline. Start working on yourself and your future as if you were already divorced. In other words, devote yourself to a 6-month plan. An exciting programme called “Project Tyguy”:

(a) Focus on your career – stop thinking of it as something you are just doing to earn money for your wife and children. Start looking at it as an expression of your true self – something that allows you to come alive and show the world what you’re really made of. Work hard, push ahead, and don’t coast. If what you’re currently doing is not what you want – change jobs. If you’re not already, get on top of the family finances – be aware of what’s coming in, what’s going out, that you’re getting the best deals on everything.

(b) Get yourself in top physical shape. Start going to the gym regularly, lose the excess weight, become physically stronger. It will really help your self-esteem and of course your work.

(c) In addition, start spending some time with male friends. Preferably, strong successful men with happy marriages. If you don’t have such friends, start making them, either from work or the gym, or the fathers of your children’s friends at school. Meet up once a week to play sport or have a drink. Don’t spill your guts to them about how awful your marriage is – just learn to relax in their company and have a laugh about other things.

(d) Pick one more thing – an interest, pastime or hobby – to pursue. Something that’s close to your heart or that you’ve dreamed about, that you would definitely want to try if you were no longer with your wife.

(e) Start doing all these things. Not for your wife (or even your children), but for you. Only you. Mentally sever yourself from the expectation that your wife is at some point going to turn around and thank you for any of this. Judging by your background, that will be a tough proposition to get your head around, but you’ll eventually see it makes sense. Whatever happens in your life, whether you stay with this woman or not, its your destiny to be the best version of you that you can be. That’s your sole responsibility but also your great freedom. It means doing these things for yourself, with no expectation of any thanks or appreciation or indeed any response at all, from your wife or anyone else for that matter.

(f) Here’s where it will get interesting. If you stick to your programme, after some weeks you’ll start noticing changes in yourself. You’ll feel mentally sharper, stronger, more emotionally stable and much more at ease with yourself. You will start to feel and look and act like the man you were always supposed to be. People will definitely notice. Your wife will notice too (more about what to do about that below). I’m telling you so that you are not surprised when people notice. They will. But do not do these things for that reason. And do not stop doing them if they don’t.

(4) Your children. You love them a great deal and they are your responsibility to feed, clothe and bring up as strong and decent young men. Their greatest chance of all that is for you to be mentally and physically (and economically) the best that you can be. Again, you do these things for you, but that helps them as well. What kind of father do you want them to see as they grow up? – strong and heroic of course. Make efficient use of your time to ensure you are able to do for yourself the things I’ve suggested above. By fulfilling yourself you will enjoy the time you spend with them all the more.


(5) At last I get to sex. Sex is fun and exciting and exhilarating. Except when it isn’t. Sex can be intense and emotional and intimate. Except when it isn’t. Sex can really make a man feel he’s a man. Except when it doesn’t. In other words, sex is like any other activity – it can be good or bad, depending on the situation. Don’t get me wrong, I like sex as much as the next man (probably more) but you will never have a truly satisfying sex life unless you can get the whole thing into perspective. Sex is a celebration of your masculinity, not an ingredient. Sex is a desire, not a need. You do not need sex, from your wife or any other woman, in order to be a man. If you were marooned on a desert island with no female company for years, you would be no less of a man. Believe it and act it.


(6) Finally, your wife. I’m sure you love her very much. She is also the mother of your son, and that is a bond you will share no matter what happens. But she clearly has issues regarding sex and commitment to your marriage. On the one hand she has no sexual desire for you, but on the other she was capable of having a physical affair. As another poster NOPkins has pointed out – she may even still be cheating on you. You should consider taking steps e.g. an investigator, to establish whether or not this is the case. Either way, you must not tolerate her current unreasonable and selfish behaviour. So far it seems you have let her walk all over you, and that has to stop.

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You then should have a talk with her, making the following crystal clear to her:

(a) Your marriage is in difficulty.

(b) You still love her, but you will not tolerate any further infidelity (mean it and watch her closely).

(c) You will now be taking time to do some things for yourself – you and she will have to divide up housework and childcare on a fair basis.

(d) You want to have an emotional relationship with her. (It has to be said that her present attitude to you – verges on outright contempt. However, there is also a good chance that in the past you have not understood what her emotional needs are. When a woman is with a man who has allowed his innate sense of masculinity to fade, and who does not know how to listen to her, she loses sexual interest.
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(e) You want to have a physical relationship with her, but you will no longer accept grudging or mechanical or “pity” sex.


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When saying all this to her, do not be angry, or accusing, or get dragged into a fight. Be firm, be calm and make yourself understood. Listen to what your wife says, but do not make an emotional response or backtrack. You then get on with “Project Tyguy”.


(7) Lastly, I understand how down and depressed you feel right now, but once you start focussing on yourself you will start to notice that these are feelings that come and go and are part of life’s cycle. You are at the bottom of a particularly bad cycle, but things are going to get better for you. The more you work on cultivating a sense of masculine strength and self-esteem that is completely independent of your wife, the better you will be able to deal with her and your marriage.


You may think I’m patronising you by writing so much about so many aspects of your life, but that is not my intention. I know from experience how very deeply sexual rejection can wound a man, and there is simply no point in dealing with it in a superficial manner. If a man doesn’t get the right kind of advice, its effects can be destructive in all kinds of ways – and then everyone in his life suffers. It’s a taboo subject that rarely gets properly talked about. So I’m giving you in one post pretty much everything that I’ve picked up from lurking on this board and from previous posters (particularly NOPkins, Crazy Eddie, Corri, Mojo, Lilliperl and others too numerous to mention), and that worked for me.


However, it’s of course totally up to you what to do next. Hit me back if you have any further queries.


Best of luck, Strong&Alive