She doesn't love you

And Every unhappy wife is a rape victim.

From your work comes self respect. From your self respect comes options. From your options comes authority. From your authority comes expectations. From your expectations comes investment.

— Praxeology Volume 1: Frame

What is it you want out of your wife or girlfriend? Do you know? You think you do, but men say one thing and expecting another all the time. They meet a girl and make her his mission and after the first month they break down crying because she moved on. Dread requires you to temper your expectations.

She cannot love you in the way you want her to.

Don’t read this and think it means that women cannot love you at all. Don’t hear this and think women are all gold digging whores who would cheat on you with a guy who makes them tingle a 1% more. It’s not about women being identified as whores of Babylon or virgin Madonna’s. It’s about looking at women with your eyes and not your heart and your ego.

Men have social and emotional needs. We aren’t robots, nor do we need to be. We have vulnerabilities, embarrassments and low points. Everyone tells us we need to share these with the women in our lives. David Claire, author of Practical Female Psychology wrote about how the second phase of relationships involve women getting their men to be vulnerable and open up as a sort of mate retention strategy. It’s for their benefit, not yours.

Besides, when women want men to open up more about their feelings, what they are actually saying is they want their own feelings reflected back at them. They want to know if a man gets it.

There used to be an ecosystem for camaraderie. We had priests for existential issues. We had fathers and brothers and friends for relationship issues. We had organizations which fostered camaraderie and belongingness. The military when you served became the Legion when you retired became the Shriners when you were old. Male spaces were everywhere and men were able to compartmentalize their lives in a healthy manner.

Over time we have become more civilized. Women have come into our spaces and then complained until they accommodated women. No there are almost no male spaces. The idea has become taboo. In most of life we overlap and it’s not an issue: a job is a job, a bowling club is a bowling club and a barber shop cuts the same hair.

However, the last but can trip you up if you don’t understand. Men and women aren’t the same. Guys need a place where they can just be guys. So when there is no space away from women, guys end up treating women like men. Women don’t like this and so men self censor.

You love your woman, and want her to join you in the gym, or join you on your meal plan, come clothes shopping with you and help you pick a cologne. You’d love to take her fishing on the weekend, shes’ your best friend. Whether you know it or not, she will interpret this as you seeking validation. On top of that you will lose focus on the things you are doing in order to make her more comfortable. It’s a covert contract: if I bring you into my space, you will love me and we will have a problem free life.

You didn’t make your space better, you made yourself worse by accommodating her. She will understand them through a solipcistic lens. For example, you aren’t going on a cut because you want to be in better shape and be a better dad and husband, your diet means:

“He thinks I’m fat and wants to get into shape to divorce me and get another woman!” Is it neurotic? Is it irrational?

As you get into shape you’ll find your wife or girlfriend starts to feel insecure and becomes a pastry chef, hoping to keep you fat enough that you can’t leave her. Of course this makes you physically less attractive so she also doesn’t want to have as much sex. This makes you angry, seeing her as a saboteur instead of as a woman. You thought you were both the same and could join each others journey of self improvement.

She can’t love you in the way you wanted her to. She can’t even understand what you’re doing. This is why Dread has to be covert. Instead of marketing yourself as an exclusive, luxury good, you are exposing your woman to a series of sales pitches that only make the entire experience look like a used car salesman slapping the hood on that lemon.

She isn’t your therapist, your priest, or your father. She loves how you can be so confident and calm while she is a raging storm of neuroticism. She loves a man she can look up to. Every time you open your mouth with your concerns it erodes that love a little bit. You may need to get something off your chest, but her chest is occupied with more important qualities.

Male friends exist for that need for vulnerability. The way to turn an acquaintance into a good fiend is to have him in a position where you could fuck him over, but choose not to and for him to have you in the same. That moment of vulnerability, loss and failure is the moment where you know you can trust him and you both bond because of it. A wife isn’t your best friend. She doesn’t want an equal, men and women aren’t the same. She wants someone to look up to. By trying to make her fill all the roles in your life you end up making her resent you for giving her a job she never asked for, doesn’t want, can’t do, and will resent you for it regardless.

As for the question of what is it she brings to the table? This isn’t a question for anyone to answer but you. This book doesn’t exist to make you love all women. It’s for you to remove all the ways you think men and women are the same, so that you stop sabotaging your successful sexual strategy.

So your woman cannot be your best friend, confidant, therapist, mother, muse, gym partner or scapegoat. If you like what’s left, then make sure you are getting out of it what you’re putting into it.

♦♦♦

Every Unhappy Wife

The psychological trauma typically experienced by rape victims is the feelings of helplessness and powerlessness. The physical act is sex. That feeling of complete powerlessness is the trauma. One way women cope with it by retaking control through sexual promiscuity which is why so many sex workers come from abusive pasts. Other ways include using vices like alcohol, consumerism as a crutch. Of course this is an extreme example, what does it have to do with Dread?

It has more to do with it than we are comfortable admitting.

Sexless marriages and long-term relationships of quiet misery exist in larger numbers than you’d expect. Women have sex for many reasons while men have it for two: sex and validation. One reason women have sex is to pacify, or to keep the peace in a relationship. Frigid wives may agree to missionary sex with as low a frequency as possible to keep the marriage alive. This is done, not exclusively so:

• The kids can be raised in a two-parent household

• The wife can maintain a lifestyle to which she has becomes accustomed

• Religious obligation; etc

Duty sex is that it misses the point of sex. If it was just about the money shot, then prostitution would be the easy solution. It’s about the validation of one of the two things men have. Things that are the only distinct features of men: sex and violence. You cannot fake them, you cannot lie about them, you cannot delude yourself into having them if you don’t. You’re either able to win that fight or not. You are either able to sleep with her or you aren’t. Duty sex is a consolidation prize; hollow and meaningless but with just enough dopamine to keep the peace.

An author by the pen name Archwinger has a field report on the topic:

A good friend of mine had one of these marriages. He told me how things came to a head. Seven years, once-a-month duty sex. After years of quiet desperation he came unhinged. He gave an ultimatum. Fuck me or fuck you. He assumed it worked and thinks he won. Now he is getting more frequent sex.

We got together for drinks. He’s on top of the world, alluding to sex with uncalibrated irrational assholery. I chat with his wife later that night. She says something odd:

“It’s hard being more sexual with him.”

I want to see if she knows what she means.

“What do you mean? What’s so hard about sex?”

“Huh?”

“What is so hard about sex? People do it all the time!”

“I dunno.”

“It’s physically easy. Not difficult at all. It’s not challenging. It doesn’t take much time. It doesn’t cost any money. I don’t see what’s so hard about it.”

“I guess it’s just hard to make myself do it.”

When she says it is hard to be more sexual with her husband, what she really means is it is very difficult to force herself to have sex with him. She is repulsed by the thought of being sexual with him on a level she cannot comprehend. She does not want sex with him so badly that it takes emotional strength to push through. The physical acts not hard. But making herself do them when her subconscious is screaming at her not to? That’s hard.

Wives who don’t want to sleep with their husbands create barriers. They pretend to be asleep. They stay up late with busy work. They pretend to be on their period. They claim trauma from their past (and make themselves believe it.) They have an illness. They go as long as they can while having as little sex as possible.

It’s not that they are evil or like to torture their man. They don’t feel attraction on a visceral level and feel guilty. They talk with their friends and develop narratives to process this lack of desire. They decide it’s normal for a marriage to cool off, to lose the spark as they get older. She may decide that being a mother is so important that the children have to come first. She may gain weight because the dopamine hit of junk food is preferable to the pain she feels sleeping with someone she is forced to.

It’s never been studied, but I assume that women in unhappy marriages exhibit similar, but lesser forms of the psychological traumas rape victims experience. These women are not being raped, but water-boarding wasn’t supposed to be torture either.

Take Archwinger’s friend. His wife does not want to have sex with him. There is an implied threat that her marriage will end if she does not have sex. She might lose her financial stability, or the financial stability of her children. Within her feelings, he may as well be holding the kids at knife-point and forcing her to fuck.

Over time, these unwanted sexual acts take a toll. Theres quite a few guys I’ve talked to over the years who had their wives cheat on them with some objectively worse man. Fatter, lazier, drug user, broke; it wasn’t the cheating that hurt the guy, but that she would rather downgrade. Therapists call this reclaiming ones sexuality. They felt powerless when they were raped so having a bunch of stupid, irresponsible sex gives back that feeling of control. It’s not rape, but it plays one on TV. When women are single you have to be better than all the other men available. When she’s married, you only have to be better than the one man she doesn’t desire.

How a wife loses attraction is up for debate. But during the evolutionary selfishness phase they may go out on a girl’s nights out, fuck other men and reclaim some of that lost power. she will feel in control for a night.