Man, afraid of his wife and her spending
Or, what you, your shrink and a UK soldier with PTSD have in common
This is a case study on why the people whose profession they claim will help you, don’t. It’s got a type 2 captain: fat, neurotic, and with a debt laden wife. It’s got an example of why UK soldiers get PTSD more than everyone else and why that means your shrink won’t actually help you. Then finally I draw it all together in why Rule Zero is both positive male identity and sexual strategy. The two concepts are connected in ways we don’t often think about.
Kayfabe
If you see my untethered thoughts on Twitter, you’ll know that I have very little respect for the various professionals who claim to fix peoples mental health. With the exception of Dr. David Ley, Dr. David Bus, Dr. Robert Glover and Dr Thomas Seager, I consider the profession to be little better than pro wrestling. This isn’t to say that I think psychiatry and psychology aren’t useful, they absolutely are. But there’s a certain distance that they lack which taints so much of their work.
Whisper himself wrote a piece on Harvey Weinstein a few years back which put it into perspective.
Ever hear a physician criticize another physician in public? You won't. Some idiot could amputate the wrong leg and others of his guild will rush to defend him. Why? Because closing ranks prevents public contradictions to the perception that physicians are the most highly trained and competent of professionals and deserve to be the only ones called doctor (as if PhDs didn't exist,) as opposed to a mixed bag of ordinary dudes doing jobs that require recognizing the same things over and over again, and doing the same things over and over again.
…
Have a look at software engineers.
Unlike physicians, or actors, they have no group loyalty, and will ruthlessly criticize the slightest shortcoming in their fellow professionals' work, right in front of the public, calling them idiots and incompetents and whatever else comes to mind. Go read some Linus Torvalds posts to see what I mean.
Ultimately, mental health professionals have a kayfabe that they are the equivalent of medical doctors (they aren’t) who are able to suture the brain in the same way that a suture allows the body to heal a laceration (it can’t) and hold truth because of the years invested in getting their sheepskin (they aren’t.)
While there are exceptions, the doctors I’ve mentioned above are examples of that, I find it far more useful to assume the doctor bought their mark than to assume they can fix a brain. Being in the military for as long as I was there was a lot of exposure to the mental health profession. I found this funny, since there’s plenty of other examples of the military subsidizing sub-par equipment with the ingenuity and long term health of it’s members.
It’s what they call military-grade, or the lowest bidder. Why wouldn’t they jump head first into the mental health racket!?
A good solider does what he’s told
I’m not there yet, but the reason I have such disdain for them is because they don’t work. I’m not guessing, I have experienced it. First hand, second hand, third hand, I don’t have enough hands to describe it properly so I’ll tell you a story about an article in the war on Terror. The Guardian, pre-communist, had a piece, asking why soldiers kept coming home from Afghanistan with PTSD. It’s been since deleted, but I remember it well.
Comparisons of UK soldiers and their commonwealth counterpart's noticed that more UK soldiers had PTSD than the rest. After much navel gazing, a researcher came to the conclusion that the reason for it was that they had such robust systems in place for PTSD. Critics said that didn’t mean they had it more, just that they were diagnosed more. They accounted for that and still the gap was there. It took a lot of words to get there, but it turns out the issue was one of expectations.
Everyone assumed every soldier came home with PTSD. They acted as if every soldier had PTSD. They treated every soldier, like they had, PTSD. And if you’ve ever been to a hypnotist show, you’ll know that not everyone can be hypnotized, but more people become hypnotized that go to hypnotist shows than don’t. What was happening here is that soldiers were exposed with the idea that they had a certain identity, a wounded warrior, and a portion above and beyond them just went along with it. When I snap my fingers, you won’t sleep and have panic attacks and probably beat your wife.
One person can sway a crowd
I put a video out on my gaming channel, where I talked about this. The previous video described how you have to ignore comments on social media, since it’s only a small percentage of people who comment out of a small percentage of people who have accounts, which is a small percentage of people who watched; you’re getting the most biased sample. And in there a single comment, answering my question: Have you ever known anyone who went to a shrink, was cured, then stopped going?
“Actually yes, it was me.” Susen304234 proclaimed, as if the experience of the dozens of sailors I’ve known must not have been shrinking hard enough.
And I know most people are good people. Someone giving an endorsement like this makes them stay quiet. It helped one person so maybe my skepticism will cause harm? And that is how a lone person can skew peoples reality until they believe something they truly don’t believe and haven’t seen. Our need to fit in. Shitting on shrinks is one of the few sacred cows in SCIENCE™.
And now that you have the example of people slipping into a diagnosed disease in the same way an audience member slips into hypnosis, and our good nature being ill equipped to handled impassioned comments from the outlier of outliers, we can get to the point where mental health professionals aren’t actually helping.
You’re not a puzzle, you’re a person
From everyone I’ve spoken with, their experience with shrinks was horrible. Guys have an expectation similar to that of a Doctor™. They come in, describe symptoms, get a diagnosis and then treatment or medication until the problem goes away. Instead of that, they get the experience of a doctor. They wait on a list until the problem gets untenable, get a series of leading questions about their symptoms, and the shrink treats it like a game of Clue. They then spend hundreds of billable hours to describe what they learned about the probably diagnosis in a level of detail that no one asked for or could possibly benefit from. And now that the guys are primed with an identity (diagnosis) and a list of attributes (symptoms) they act out the diagnosis.
The thing is not that it’s a larp, it’s that the professional said so, and since we trust their authority we adopt the identity as if it was true. We are UK soldiers with PTSD. And I know some person reading this will get very irate, want to tell me an impassioned story about how I’m causing damage, using their singular outlier case or a hypothetical, abstract example to shame me into not stating the obvious. If you’ve ever tried to tell a drug addict, that they are addicted and have them logically argue why they don’t have a problem , you’ll know the dynamic here. Our life is a series of narrative structures, and woe to the writer who ignores the story and writes what he observes.
**Why it doesn’t help**
And here’s the rub. I have a field report from a man who has the clichéd story we all had. Wife stopped sleeping with him. He went through the sidebar and started working on himself. His wife was also a petulant teenager who always got her way, and he a neurotic mess. It’s your standard Type 2 captain: the captain and his neurotic first officer (one of the archetypes from Dread)
Billy earns his spine
Whether she likes it or not, my wifes spending is under control and we're staying above water. I am continuing to reach out to friends and colleagues about my investment ideas, even though that is way out of my comfort zone. I hate asking anyone for any help, ever. I try to do something every day that moves me toward financial independence, even if I don't want to. But.
I got butthurt last week after a scathing email from the wife. She sent me a list of things we need to buy. I replied that until she starts bringing in money from her job, we cannot afford them. She lashed out for forcing her and her parents to underwrite all these frivolous expenses, calling me a hypocrite for all the times I wasn't supporting the family.
Instead of responding by email, I left work and went home to confront her. While she admitted that I'm not spending frivolously or hiding money from her, she's still mad because she has to borrow money from her parents and because I emptied our joint account a couple of months ago. I didn't yell or scream but it was obvious I was angry by her accusations. I have to remember, she's a spoiled teenager and to be amused by her tantrums. It's a lot easier said than done.
My wife is mostly pleasant and cordial. But when she gets mad, the bitterness and contempt drip from her mouth. She obviously doesn't respect me, thinks I'm completely selfish and don't care about her at all, and it hurts. I find myself thinking about what she thinks of me far too often. I know I'm doing a lot of things right, but I was a drunk captain for a long time and she doesn't trust me at all. Sometimes I feel that she never will. I keep thinking that I want her to be happy. I need to remind myself that is not within my control nor is it my responsibility.
I didn't initiate sex last week. She gave me a nice blowjob one night but it seemed like she was rewarding me for doing the dishes that morning, which took some of the sexiness out of it. Then she went out and got drunk one night over the weekend and came home all sweet which is a turn-off. I don't like the idea that she has to get buzzed to feel attracted to me. I need to initiate more and not worry about whether I get laid or not. Another very difficult challenge for me.
All of this is related, but it's easy for me to slip back into the anger phase. There’s a lot of resentment over years on withholding sex. A lot of resentment over her contempt for me and my sexuality, and blaming me for everything that's wrong in her life. I'd love to tell her that she adds basically no value to my life, but what would be the point? Right now, I need to choke that down and keep working on me.
My first field report was three months ago, which means I still need at least 9 more months of improvement because I'm in a position to make any real demands of. She's such a drag most of the time. It's hard to wait. I dpent a lot of time this week wishing I weren't married. Wondering if any of this is worth it. Wondering if I would ruin my boys if I divorced their mother. Thinking about things I can't control. I’m not a fat fuck any more, but still fat; 20 pounds from where I need to be. Lots of people are noticing how much weight I've lost and compliments from the soccer moms, but it has not translated into my wife insisting that I fuck her in the ass or something.
It's been at least four months since I took a day off from exercising. Leangains is the best. I've stalled a bit the past week but I've still lost 12 pounds in October. I should be under 200 next month for the first time in more than 10 years. The wife and another guy I know recently told me I didn't want to lose too much more weight or I'd start to look sick. Fuck that, I'm going to be shredded and getting swolested like u/redneck001. (our resident nutrition and fitness expert of the time.)
I’ve embrased shutting the fuck up and to give way less fucks. For the most part, this is my default setting, which is a marked difference from how I used to be. I would talk all the fucking time and I worried constantly about making her happy. I need to graduate to more Agree and Amplify or Amused Mastery. For now, STFU and IDGAF is working.
Saw a post in here, talking about getting the wife to do chores, and Rian (yes) asked the pointed question,
“What if she says no?”
I'd like my wife to get our house in shape, stop borrowing money from her parents, and quit complaining about everything; but what if she says no? Should I go meet with wife's parents and respectfully ask them to stop giving their daughter money? It drives a wedge between us and gives her something else to blame me for. They have coddled her their whole life and I don't really expect it would change anything, but maybe they just need a gentle shove in the right direction.
When my wife accuses me of not caring about her and only caring about our boys, should I agree with her? Because generally speaking, she's not far off. It may be my fault she's not a good wife, but I don't find myself caring all that much. I know the answer to this is STFU, but I'm just putting thoughts on the page.
Military grade advice
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