Diary – Page 3 – Rant Over

Male sexual dysfunction

There aren’t a lot of subjects that make men feel more uncomfortable than talking about male sexual dysfunction, but I have no filter and I don’t think there should be taboo subjects we don’t talk about, so I’m going to talk about it anyway, including some of my own experiences.

Pressure to perform

When it comes to heterosexual sex, the burden of initiating more commonly falls on men. Men act and women respond, not always but it’s certainly more prevalent. Men want to please their partners, they want to feel that they’re sexually attractive to their partners and that they satisfy them. With that can come a lot of pressure and anxiety.

He might worry about climaxing too soon or not being able to get an erection or whether he can make her orgasm, whether her previous partners were better lovers. If you think about all the jokes about men not being able to please their partners and the unrealistic expectations from pornography. It can be a bit of a minefield.

Of course women can feel pressure to perform too. Maybe she feels like she has to engage when she’s not in the mood. Maybe she worries that he might run off with another woman. She will worry about her body and if he finds her attractive and she might internalise it if he is having problems with premature ejaculation, erectile dysfunction or low libido.

Sex is an important part of a relationship. It bonds a couple together and makes them feel connected. Orgasm causes a flood of feel good hormones to be released into our bodies, oxytocin, that makes us feel bonded and dopamine that triggers our pleasure receptors and serotonin that makes us feel happy.

It’s a very natural thing and as normal as eating, drinking or breathing yet some how its personal nature makes us feel uncomfortable about talking about it, especially if there are problems.

Premature ejaculation

According to the NHS, premature ejaculation is where a man ejaculates (comes) too quickly during sexual intercourse but what does that actually mean?

How do you define “too soon”? That’s a very subjective call. Does it mean before penetration? Does it mean before a certain amount of time that is deemed acceptable or does it mean before his partner has reached orgasm?

According to this article, penis in vagina sex typically lasts between three and seven minutes, does that mean sub three minutes is premature ejaculation?

What if you take the barometer of your partner reaching orgasm? According to this article, only 25% of women consistently reach orgasm through penetration alone and only about half of women sometimes have orgasms through penetrative sex. 5% never have orgasms at all.

It seems to me that this is less a medical condition and more about the pressure men feel to meet unrealistic expectations. That is not to say that men shouldn’t care about making their partners feel good, there are multiple ways that can still be achieved even if it isn’t directly through sex. Most women enjoy clitoral stimulation. It’s all about both partners getting to know what works for them and enjoying the journey together, the responsibility should not just fall on one partner, it should be a shared experience.

When I was younger this was something that worried me a lot. Sex lasted a fairly average amount of time but I felt like I should be lasting longer and I would sometimes use desensitising gels but they would sometimes make it more difficult to keep an erection.

Now I’m older and better educated I’ve learned to just accept sex for what it is and just enjoy it without worrying too much.

Erectile Dysfunction

Erectile dysfunction is when a man is unable to achieve or maintain an erection for long enough to have sex with a partner. It can be caused by lots of different things. Sometimes it’s psychological, perhaps previous sexual abuse, performance anxiety or stress and depression. Sometimes the cause is physical. It could be circulatory or heart related problems so it’s important not to ignore it if it persists over a period of time.

Women will sometimes interpret this as him not being attracted to her, which only exacerbates the problem. The best thing to do if your partner suffers from this problem is to offer affection and assurance.

Viagra or equivalent medications can sometimes help but they only help when the problem is a physical one, not a psychological one and psychological issues are more common. For some men, the placebo effect of thinking that they’re taking something that will solve the problem will work but there are a lot of unrealistic expectations about what these pills actually do and what the results will be and that can leave men feeling even worse about their bodies.

Male body dysmorphia is a subject that is starting to get attention but it’s still poorly understood and seldom talked about.

I’ve never really had problems getting or maintaining an erection but there was a time where I found myself unable to ejaculate, which is not ideal when you’re trying to make a baby at the time. I would fake orgasm rather than admit it just wasn’t happening. In the end I worked out that it was anti-depressants causing the issue and within a couple of days stopping taking them my body’s response was back to normal. I’ve tried a few different anti-depressants and they all seem to have the same effect so I “came” (pun intended) to the conclusion that the psychological impact of sex was better for me than the anti-depressants anyway.

Funnily enough, in the Victorian era, women were often diagnosed with a mental health condition they referred to as hysteria. The cure was prescribed orgasms and in fact, the demand for the prescription service was so high that eventually doctors got tired of administration and invented the world’s first vibrator instead so I’m not the first person to observe the mental health benefits of sexual activity. You can read about this, and a film covering the topic here.

Low libido

There is an assumption in society that men want sex all the time. Men, on average, do have higher sex drives than women on average and that is because in both sexes, testosterone plays a big role in sexual desire and men produce as much as ten times more testosterone than women.

This assumption can sometimes lead to female on male sexual assault not being taken seriously. It can also cause problems in relationships. In Michele Weiner-Davis book, the sex starved marriage, she describes low male libido as one of our very best-kept secrets.

It may be temporary, it may be a psychological factor like depression, stress, anxiety or even just tiredness but for some men, they just don’t have a strong desire for sex, which can make their partners feel neglected or unfulfilled. It can be harder for a woman to understand if they’re used to previous partners that have all had higher sex drives. Men are much more used to being in the position of having to initiate intimacy and getting knocked back. It’s much more difficult for a man to have sex if he is not in the mood than it is for a woman, an erection is essential and sometimes we conflate an erection with consent to sex and those two things are not the same either. Erections can happen at embarrassing times for men, especially when they are younger.

For men with a low libido, it’s important to find out why. It could be a previous negative experience that needs to be dealt with, feelings of shame or guilt or it could be that he needs a more gentle approach to get him in the mood. Drugs, alcohol can effect libido too.

Infertility

It seems to me that people that don’t want to have children are often very good at reproducing yet other couples that desperately desire starting a family have much more trouble. Infertility can be very cruel.

Not being able to conceive a child can make men and women both feel like failures. it challenges our own sense of masculinity or femininity. It makes us fear abandonment by our partners and can cause arguments. No man, even a man that doesn’t want to have children, wants to be told his body is not producing high enough quality or quantity sperm to make a baby.

It can be a bitter pill to swallow, especially as a man watches other men in his age group become fathers. It’s not something we like to talk about.

When my wife and I started trying for a baby I took a fertility test that came back with not a great result but we actually ended up getting pregnant within three months, unfortunately we miscarried the baby and subsequent failed attempts to get pregnant made me feel inadequate to the point where I had to give up for my own mental health.

At the time, comedian Rhod Gilbert presented a documentary discussing his own experiences with infertility. It’s a much more widespread issue than we care to admit.

Porn addiction

Being addicted to anything is bad. If a behaviour becomes so compulsive that it takes over and prevents participation in a functional life, then it is a problem.

These days porn and sexual imagery is everywhere and often children are exposed to it before they have the maturity to handle what they’re dealing with. For some men, it can become addictive and prevent them from forming normal healthy relationships with the opposite sex (or the same sex if that’s what they’re attracted to).

Like many addictions, it often requires increasing stimulation to maintain the same level of dopamine release and that can lead to more risky behaviour.

I’m no prude. I do not believe that pornography should be banned, for many consenting adults it can be useful. I do not believe that the human body is something people should see as shameful or dirty. Sex is part of life and I see little difference between visual forms of pornography that are often preferred by men and literary erotica often preferred by women. 50 shades of grey did not become a best seller for it’s deep storyline or the quality of the writing, it simply tapped into a common female sexual fantasy. We are sexual beings and there is nothing inherently wrong with that.

Cultural Stigma

Lots of the things I’ve talked about in this article are the butt of jokes in our society. It’s actually healthy to laugh at things we can’t control at times. I’m a fan of gallows humour but I’m not a fan of sexual shaming. We should be more empathetic, more understanding and less cruel and we should talk about these issues more so people know that they’re not on their own in what they’re going through.

Everyone has something they don’t like about their body. It takes courage to admit it but the more we do, the less power these things can hold over us.

Feelings 65 days on

It has been 65 days since I found out my wife has been unfaithful and 65 days since she last engaged with him sexually.

To say it has been traumatic is an understatement. I’ve gone through a rollercoaster of emotions, few of them positive. I’m finally at the point now where the most intense pain has subsided, it still hurts, and it will always hurt. I will never forget what she did but we are getting on better now and there is hope for the future.

I’ve been reading a lot, I’ve been thinking a lot, I’ve been writing a lot and for the first time in my whole life I’m prioritising my own needs. To her credit, she has done everything I have asked of her and she is working hard to try to repair the damage and it is working.

I still have blips. I still have nightmares. A few days ago I dreamt I was with my Aunty in hospital and it was like a replay of a few days before she died but she was sat up talking to me and I was telling her what Mandy had done. I don’t remember anything else from the dream.

I always thought that Mandy and I would be like Mary and Brian. My aunty and uncle were childhood sweethearts and had been together ever since.

They suffered so much hardship in their life together, child loss and grief, a house fire, ill health, children with additional needs but I never remember either of them complaining. Life was never easy for them but they always stuck together and were always faithful to each other. That’s what I wanted, a soul mate for life, a companion through the rough and the smooth.

For many years I had that and it’s been really hard to come to terms with the fact that those hopes are gone now.

I still don’t really understand it. It’s still very hard to take. The process is one of grief. No matter what we do from now on, I’ve lost something that meant something deep to me. I don’t want to let go of it but it’s already been taken away.

I just don’t understand how she could do what she did knowing my aunty was dying. It scares me to think it will happen again. She may say all the right things now but what happens when things get hard and she wants a bit of escapism again? By not walking away I’m putting my heart in a vice and asking her not to turn that screw but ultimately there is nothing I can do to stop her.

I know she loves me and I know she regrets what she did but that doesn’t change the fact that she did it. I have to focus on myself and my own happiness. In a few weeks I’m going on holiday for the first time since 2021 and it’s without my wife, me and a friend.

Last September, after Mary died, I was jaded and desperate to go away somewhere with my wife in her October half term hols but I couldn’t pluck up the courage to ask her. I knew what she’d say, “we can’t afford it”. Instead, she spent several days visiting him, being intimate with him and having sex with him.

I wonder whether if I asked her she would have chosen me over him? I doubt it! That’s not a nice feeling! I try to bury these thoughts to the back of my head and focus on other things but every now and again they float to the surface unexpectedly.

I’ve finally got a wife that’s listening to me and we’re working together as a team but it does upset me that she wasn’t listening to me in August when I reached out to her, desperately trying to connect. She didn’t realise what she had until she pushed me to the brink of walking out. I hope she’s learnt her lesson and that she never takes my love for granted again!

Men and the pressure to provide

Everybody feels pressures to conform to certain expectations placed upon them. It could be the pressure to find someone to love and settle down with if you’re single, the pressure to find a career you enjoy, to get good grades at school if your a child, to have children, or to be the perfect mother or to keep up with the Joneses. Whatever it is, we all have something that we feel we have to do and that we feel the outside world is judging us on even if in reality that pressure is mostly coming from within, and our own perception and expectations of what our lives should be like.

For many men, the author included, there is a great deal of pressure to provide for our families. A lot of that pressure is internal. We want to provide for our families, we want to have nice things, creature comforts that make our lives easier. We want to put smiles on our loved ones faces and we want to be comfortable enough to be able to deal with life’s ups and downs.

Pressure isn’t a bad thing if it incentivises us to do things that are good for us long term but when it becomes all consuming and a cause of stress and anxiety, it can become a problem. When that happens it’s important to have an outlet to be able to talk about it, but it’s also important that you have somebody that is prepared to listen and empathise with you. A problem shared is a problem halved, as they say.

Sometimes when I have opened up in the past and talked about the pressure to provide the reaction has been quite dismissive. Not by everybody, but there is sometimes a defensive reaction as if I am blaming other people for the pressure I feel when in reality I’ve just tried to express what it feels like to walk in my shoes. It actually took a lot of courage to admit to feeling vulnerable, that’s a very uncomfortable feeling for me.

For me personally, some of the pressure comes from the fact that I have had excellent support from a loving wife that allowed me to focus on studying and changing careers whilst she provided the lion’s share of income for both of us. I’m very grateful to my wife for that support and I feel a responsibility to stick to a career that I wanted to work towards, a career that comes with more challenge and more responsibility than that which I had in the past. For the most part it has been an enjoyable journey, but what do you do when covid happens and overnight your job switches from being very much a collaborative experience, working closely with other people, to one where you find yourself working from home in isolation all the time?

In honesty, at times I’ve felt completely lost. This wasn’t the career I signed up for. I’ve discovered that actually, I need social contact far more than I previously knew and now my whole industry has changed, and regular office hours are a thing of the past. For most people this is a good thing, who doesn’t want freedom and flexibility? Well, apparently, me.

I’ve gone from being somebody that loved to go to work, someone that was always participating in meeting, organising social events, mentoring junior colleagues, and putting in extra hours to get stuff done to someone that feels like an imposter, an outsider.

At the same time, the financial pressures have gradually increased. I’m in a position where we are reliant on the level of income that comes with the territory. Taking a job at a smaller company, where the pay is less competitive, but the working methodology is more in sync with my strengths is not an option, or at least not without causing financial insecurity at a time when interest rates are high and all our bills are going up.

Clever financial manipulation, finding the best deals and astute financial decisions has always been one of my fortes. I’m the sort of person that loves a good spreadsheet, but it does come to a point where the numbers don’t add up anymore, all the slack you used to have is gone, and I’m a very independent person. I’m the person other people turn to for help. I’m not the sort of person that finds it easy to ask for help when I need to. It’s a lot of pressure to carry and I’m just about treading water, although I’m swallowing a lot more water than I should be.

I don’t expect sympathy. The economic climate is very difficult for everyone right now and there certainly are a lot of people in far worse situations than me. These are tough times and everyone is doing their best to just muddle through and survive.

Although a lot of the pressure in my case is internal, and I think the desire to provide for a lot of men is just as instinctive as the desire to nurture is for a lot of women, I do think that we need to address the fact that a lot of the reason why men feel the need to provide is because that is what a lot of women demand and expect of men.

People say things like “this isn’t the 1950s, men aren’t trapped in that strict gender role now”. Actually, I think they are wrong. For a start, the 1950s was not as austere and restrictive as people claim, that’s an illusion of looking backwards rather than looking forwards. When your point of reference is the freedom people have today, that period may look more restrictive, but if you look through the eyes of the people at the time, their recent experiences were of two world wars. I wrote a whole article about this illusion here.

Secondly, although women have been liberated to enjoy much more choice in terms of what they do with their lives as a result of modern technology, actually for most men the choice is an easy one. You either work. Or you work. Or you work. Yes, there are stay at home fathers but they still feel the same pressure to provide. It’s much more comfortable for women to ask for help than it is for a man and that’s not to say that it’s easy for a woman either.

Women still turn to men to solve problems. A man that can’t solve problems is no good to a woman. Love is not unconditional, it comes with expectations. In all honesty, from what I’ve seen and heard by talking to lots of other men, things don’t end well when men open up and expose their vulnerabilities to their partners. It’s a fast track to divorce in a lot of cases.

When women say they want men that open up about their feelings, what they really mean is they want men that express positive feelings about them and that they want men that are willing to listen to how they are feeling. They don’t want to see men crying, feeling anxious or vulnerable. That makes women feel unsafe.

If you look at the data from dating apps, women still prefer to have a partner that earns more than they do. Yes, there are lots of exceptions, but the pattern is clear. As women earn more, this means a shrinking number of men fit that criteria. If you happen to be a man over 6 foot tall, with a 6 figure salary then your experience of “the dating market” is very different from the vast majority of men. Women are still very much the gatekeepers of both starting and ending relationships.

Many women still feel men should pay for dates and woo them and asking a man not to want to do those things is like asking a cat not to bring you half a mouse as a present. Pairing up is a dance as old as time and although technology may have changed the modern world, it has not changed our mammalian limbic system that orchestrates that dance.

I think we should acknowledge that women’s mating preferences have an influence on the pressures men feel, or at least with heterosexual men. In just the same way, men’s preferences for youth and beauty have a big influence on the pressures women feel too, why do you think that women’s fashion and beauty is such a big industry in comparison to the equivalent male market?

I don’t think it’s fair to tell men that they shouldn’t feel a pressure to provide when actually the expectations on them are not just the same as they were in the 1950s but are actually even more restrictive. A common cause of complaint from women who divorce their husbands is that their husbands were not emotionally available to them but that’s often the result of having to work incredibly long hours to make sure that expensive mortgage gets paid and the kids have all the latest gadgets that they crave. Perhaps we should lower our expectations and put a little bit less pressure on each other?

You can’t have it all. Life is about making trade off choices and I think a lot of the dissatisfaction with modern life, despite our relative ease and comfort, comes from these silly expectations of perfection that come from social media and seeing the mask everyone puts on to make our lives look perfect when, in fact, reality is very different.

The rat race is insatiable, we need to learn to be content with the important things, not the material things. At the end of the day, when we look back at our lives it’s the people we love and the memories we’ve shared that are important, not the fresh flowers, latest phones and expensive handbags.

The female accountability gap

Before I start, I realise that this subject is likely to be controversial and that women reading this will instantly become defensive and talk about the fact that men are irresponsible and unaccountable for their actions and to that I say I agree with you completely.

I don’t believe that taking accountability is a gendered trait and everybody has times when they will try to deflect away responsibility for their own actions, including the author. It’s a natural defensive mechanism and it is a learning exercise, a process, to hold yourself more accountable for the things that you do and their impact on yourself and others.

What I wish to describe in this piece is not about individual behaviour. It’s about how we collectively have different expectations for men and women when it comes to taking responsibility for ones own actions. It is by no means universal and I can think of legitimate situations where women are held to a higher level of accountability than men are but this article is not about those situations, it’s about situations where female bad behaviour is justified or tolerated when in the same situations male bad behaviour would be vilified, hence the accountability gap.

It is not always the case that women are responsible for this gap either. It’s often men’s natural desire to please women and compete with other men for the affection and respect of women that drives the different standards. When it comes to men’s issues and women’s issues, it’s very often our own sex that cause the problems we perceive to be the fault of the opposite sex.

Additionally, there are often logical underpinning for why these differences in the first place. The aim is not to blame, the aim is to understand what these differences are and why they occur so we can observe them in our own lives.

Enough babble, time for some concrete examples of what I’m actually talking about.

Violent Behaviour

Boys are often taught from an early age never to hit girls, girls are not given the same message. In fact, our culture encourages us to see violence by women towards men as not only acceptable but amusing. How many times do we watch films or TV and see a woman slapping a man, alongside canned laughter? When violence against girls is depicted, the undertone is very much that this is a bad thing.

One study found that half of heterosexual partnered abuse was mutual violence, and that in 70% of nonreciprocal cases the initiator of the violence was female. Many countries have domestic violence legislation that specifically addresses violence against women and girls but dismisses female violence. Ironically, one of the impacts of this is that lesbian violence is often ignored.

When a woman does commit a violent crime, we are much more likely to excuse the behaviour. A woman whom kills her partners is often portrayed as a victim who snapped whereas a man in the same situation is deemed a monster.

Some groups have even called for the abolition of new female prisons altogether in favour of community punishments. Judges consistently pass lower sentences or suspended sentences for violent crimes when committed by women, even when the woman has a long history of previous violent offences.

You may argue that men commit the majority of violent crime, and this is true, but it does not explain the difference in treatment of offenders. The justifications applied to female assailants often apply equally to male offenders, things like childhood trauma and abuse, but we do not consider these factors in a fair and evenhanded way.

In fact, factors used in mitigation for female criminals such as caring for children are often treated as aggravating factors for fathers. The needs of children to have their mother present is taken into account even when the child has been taken into care as a result of the mothers neglect or abuse but a the importance of having a father around is often ignored, or used as a justification to set a harsher sentence as a deterrent.

Absent Parents

What do we call a father that chooses not to participate in or contribute to his children’s lives? A deadbeat father. What do we call a mother who chooses to abdicate her responsibility for a child through safe haven legislation or having her unwanted children adopted?

There have been cases where a male child has been coerced into sexual activity with an adult female and still been expected to pay child support to his statutory rapist. Men are expected to assume the responsibility for a child even if the conception of that child was the result of foul play, tampering with contraception, for example.

A woman has a lot more options. She may access emergency contraception after coitus, she may have access to abortion, she can abandon the child at a public building under Safe Haven legislation in many countries, she can put the child up for adoption, even without the consent of the would be father. Of course, none of these choices are easy but the point is, there are different options available to a woman that are not available to a man.

I’m not suggesting that women should not have access to some of these options, although if it is fair that a father should be expected to financially support a child he helped create, is it not also fair that a mother whom abandons her child should also pay financial support to the state in the case where the child needs to go into foster care or children’s homes? Or should men have equivalent rights to give up paternal responsibility for an unwanted child?

Not all absent fathers are absent through choice and not all mothers have the best intentions for their children. Whilst there are cases where mothers are made to pay child support to the father and there are also cases whereby a father completely abdicates his responsibility for a child he had willingly and refuses to contribute, the system and societies attitude to mothers and fathers in general is heavily skewed towards apportioning blame to fathers and sympathy to mothers that fit the same dysfunctional mould.

Cheating and Infidelity

From years of observation on social media, there seems to be a consensus amongst women that if a woman is unfaithful to her partner, it is due to some unmet need that her partner is failing to provide.

I find this problematic on many levels. Firstly there is the idea that your partner is responsible for your own happiness. Life is not a fairytale. Bad things happen and it is an unrealistic expectation that one should be happy all the time and even more unrealistic to put the responsibility for your own happiness onto another person. Both sexes are equally guilty of doing this.

We have phrases in common parlance such as “Happy wife, happy life” that re-enforce this idea that it is a husbands responsibility to make his wife happy and it is a poisoned chalice that many men take fully to heart.

Any relationship of length will go through peaks and troughs, just as life itself does. Relationships take work, effort and good communication skills. If a relationship is failing then the first step should be to look inwardly to see what it is that you are doing that could be contributing to that rather than to seek distraction or external validation.

In my opinion, infidelity is a sign of cowardice. If something is broken, try and fix it. If it can’t be fixed after genuine attempts then part ways but you should never resort to the easy option of cheating. I apply that same standard equally to both men and women but a large cluster of people apply different rules for cheating women and cheating men, and this includes those working in relationship counselling.

There is a perception that men who cheat are just doing so for sex and that women are doing so for emotional reasons. In reality the justifications used by both sexes are often the same, the difference is in how we are more likely to empathise with one sex than the other.

If a man cheats, the expectation is that he is the problem and needs to change in order to fix the relationship. If a woman cheats, the expectation is that the man is the problem and needs to change in order to fix the relationship.

These are just some examples

This pattern is repeated in many different spheres of life and to the unitiated, it is difficult to recognise but as a thought experiment, have a think about how many calls to action you see where men are expected to solve a problem as a group on behalf of women as a group and how often any attempt to consider responsibility and agency on the part of women is rebuffed. These calls to action exist precisely because of men’s desire to provide and protect for women. It’s an effective strategy.

The goal is always to assume malevolent behaviour on men as a class, the modern version of original sin, and penance for such perceived offense is never for women to take ownership of their own lives but for men to compete with each other to prove that they are different to other men whom in all reality had the exact same desire to please women at their own expense.

It’s a game that cannot be won. The only way to win is to stop playing it and treat both men and women as equally accountable for their actions, stop excusing or minimising bad female behaviour, be it violent offences, child abandonment or infidelity because actually, owning your own actions is empowering. A victim mentality always leaves you at the mercy of a gust of wind or the flow of the tide.

You can’t control everything. You can’t control the world or how other people behave but you can control yourself and how you react to adversity. Both men and women need to hear that message, but whilst we cling on to preconditioned ideas about there being a “fairer” sex, we’re not going to be able to do that. People are people. We all have flaws and the more we can learn from our mistakes, the better the future will be for all of us!

I can do it. I will do it. I am doing it

Back in January 2022, in a state of desperation I started a VLCD to attempt to lose some weight. In fact, that was the starting point for this blog. By the end of February I had lost 2 stone 4 pounds but couldn’t really keep it going, I burnt out. It’s very difficult to lose weight when you’re dealing with severe depression at the same time but the two are deeply tied together so I didn’t really have a choice. The upside of that is if you can start to deal with one, the confidence you gain can help you with the other.

Since late July I have been on a weight management programme called More Life that is the pathway for bariatric surgery and I’m am about to be referred to Salford Royal for surgery having met the criteria of losing 5% of my body weight, attending bariatric surgery information sessions and attending 80% of the More Life sessions.

I’ve managed to do that despite suffering from PTSD with two separate traumatic life events, suffering from severe anxiety and at times crippling depression. If I can do that with both arms tied behind my back, just think what my real potential is.

Unfortunately the wait for bariatric surgery at the minute seems to be around 5 years from referral and that wait is not coming down, it’s trending up. Once again, the NHS is absolutely useless. I’m not talking about the people that work at the coal face for the NHS, those staff are doing their best under difficult circumstances but the system itself is a shambles. If I’m going to do this, I’m going to have to do it on my own despite the system.

So, here we go again. I’m currently 31 stone 11 lbs. I started at 35 stone 5 lbs so I’m already 3 stone 8 lbs down but I consider this the start and this time I’m angry and I’m determined and I believe in myself. I know I can do it because I have done it.

Yesterday I signed up for a local gym and I’ve already done two hour long sessions on a treadmill. The pace is pathetic, only just achieving 3 miles distance in that time but it’s a start and Rome wasn’t built in a day. Give me 12 months and I’ll be doing 6 miles (10k) in 70 minutes but each session is another step towards the goal. There will be ups and downs along the way, and I don’t just mean the incline setting but I can do this, I will do this, I am doing this!

Right now the treadmill is the only cardio equipment that’s easy for me to use but over time I will jump on the cross trainer too. I must look like a right tool on the treadmill as I close my eyes, put on some motivational emo music like Linkin Park, MCR or Eminem and rap sync. My stamina isn’t great so I think of it as four 15 minute sessions with 30 second breaks in between. I’d prefer a longer pause but that’s all these particular treadmills allow so I extend it by going slow for a minute or so after the 30 seconds pause. I think in terms of how many songs are left before my next break, and in the last 15 minutes, I switch to looking at that distance and set a target.

I find walking/jogging on a treadmill much harder than just going for walks. I can cover similar distance on the streets without it feeling like I’m doing a workout. I need to mix it up and do a bit of both. Walking lets me think. I go on autopilot and my mind just writes. The treadmill requires more focus to maintain a consistent pace.

I don’t like using a treadmill next to someone else, I would prefer to be as far away from other people as possible, not that anyone else is judging you but you still feel like they are. I don’t like being near mirrors either.

I will incorporate some weights at some point as muscle uses up more calories at rest, may even get a personal trainer for help with that once I’ve shifted a significant chunk of weight. I am doing a VLCD again but this time I’m going to try 3 weeks on, 1 week off and see how that goes. I will allow myself food for special occasions etc but I need to stay focused and not allow blips to go on for weeks or get too disgruntled when I do slip up, because I will. It’s a marathon not a sprint. It’s not even a marathon. A marathon has a finish line. This isn’t about reaching a target then you’ve made it, it’s about creating new habits for life. There will be targets and milestones along the way, you do need to know what you’re working towards but there is no end game.

Back to frustration and rejection

This morning was painful again.

After going away to Swansea for a few days, yesterday we headed back and to be honest I couldn’t wait to get home.

Sunday night, despite having a dry mouth and sore tongue, I went down on Mandy. Couldn’t smell or taste but I still enjoyed the way her body felt and the sounds she makes as she’s about to orgasm. I was desperate to have sex with her after but I can’t do that in hotels as we need a specific position with cupboards in the right places.

I was thinking about it all night, though I restrained from touching myself, I wanted to save the contents of my testes for inside her.

By the time we got home on Monday we were both really tired and still fed up of this cough, dry mouth and sore throat. I even wondered if it was an STI as the symptoms are similar to oral chlamydia but I don’t know what the incubation period is. 06 January was the last sexual contact she had with him so you’d have thought it would have happened sooner if that was the issue.

Anyway, I digress, Mandy fell asleep on the sofa straight away so I fed the cats, brought the essentials in then we went to bed. I thought she might need a catch up, neither of us had slept well recently. I had a sleep to but woke up in the middle of the night with a really strong sexual fantasy about her going down on me, recording it herself and her talking about how much she enjoyed Tony’s much bigger penis. I teased myself and watched a video we previously made a couple of weeks ago of her giving me oral sex.

I knew she wouldn’t want to do this in real life whilst her mouth was still dry and that’s fair enough but I was hoping that if she woke up in the night or the morning maybe she’d let me bring her to orgasm with my mouth then have sex.

I did stroke her back and tummy and sides during the night. I love having physical contact with her.

When she woke up properly, went to the toilet and came back to bed, I was really hard and hoped she’d notice. I sleep naked and uncovered myself so if she did glance over, she’d see.

She had no interest. She kept picking her phone up. That’s another theme that makes me feel like shit. I know she’ll say I do the same but nowhere near to the same extent and I’m not talking to a woman all the time, she’s obsessed with her friend Steve. Actually addicted.

I tried reaching out and touching her hand. I stroked her thighs over her leggings and over her pubic mound in an affectionate rather than overtly sexual way. If she did any of those things to me I’d be in heaven but there was no reaction at all. It was like going back to our early years. I was just an inconvenience.

I know people are going to think why did you go straight to her genitals. Why not kiss her neck and her arms, engage in foreplay Women take more time to get interested. I do try those things. There’s nothing I enjoy more than passionate kissing and feeling her respond but when she’s turned away from you so I don’t always get that chance.

I slid my hand into her leggings and under her knickers and just stroked her pubic hair a little. I love that feeling. I did touch her labia majora too. It really excites me to feel the warmth of her slit. She kind of made it difficult for me so it was obvious she didn’t want me and I felt rejected.

I decided to touch myself a little instead, hoping the sight of that would encourage her to want to touch me but of course, I’m not Tony so it didn’t interest her at all.

Eventually, with a little persuasion, she did touch my body. You wouldn’t have thought that someone touching you could feel like rejection but I could tell she wasn’t really interested, it was just her thumb and one finger. I’m not exactly a handful with my tiny penis and it’s no wonder the thought of it doesn’t excite her.

She wasn’t really paying attention. It didn’t feel loving or caring or affectionate, just habitual and she didn’t even notice when I orgasmed and kept going. It didn’t take long as I had soo much pent up sexual energy.

Before her affair she could just put it down to a lack of sex drive but the horrible truth is she’s just not attracted to my body and what women could get excited about a big fat man with a tiny micro penis. It’s just not attractive. Before she could lie to herself and say that it didn’t matter and that she didn’t have anything to compare it to but now she’s had Tony’s cock in her hands, in her mouth and inside her vagina and she really enjoyed it. I don’t blame her. It must have felt amazing by comparison. No wonder she couldn’t get enough of it!

When I had the stalking app on her phone I caught her watching porn one time. I made a joke of it. Didn’t look like she had been searching, was a direct link so I don’t know who sent it to her or whether it was an old favourite or something. She made out she wasn’t watching much of it but it was a 15 minute video and she watched over 13 minutes. It had lots of deepthroating and I wonder if that’s the thing that really turns her on. Obviously, she can’t do that with me.

I bet she fantasises about it and the things he did to her whilst they were together. I actually don’t mind now. I’ve come to accept that I’m not enough to satisfy a woman sexually. It is what it is. I can’t do anything about it and there’s no point her lying to me and pretending otherwise.

Maybe I need to allow her to have a lover on the side. As long as it’s not behind my back and I get to watch someone else giving her the sensations I can’t, it could be a turn on for both of us as long as she prioritises sex with me and making an effort to meet my needs too because having a micro penis doesn’t mean I don’t want sex like a normal man, in fact, the intimacy is more important for reassurance.

Maybe I could get something out of this too! She is the only woman I’ve ever had full sex with and just like she was curious about how it would feel with a real man, I’m excited too by the idea of sexual variety with different women. I love the female body and it would be nice to sleep with other women even if I have to pay for it so I can experience what sex feels like with somebody else.

This is why she had those two separate lives. I could give her love and romance and everything else she needed except that excitement, passion and physical arousal. She didn’t really want to give that up having only just found that part of herself!

Realistically there are 3 options for our marriage. We keep to a monogamous relationship, but there can’t be any more affairs. It would kill me.

Switch to a tightly controlled arrangement with an additional partner for Mandy of our joint choosing but it must just be sex, not emotional. I’d have freedom to use prostitutes too.

Alternatively, divorce! I’d rather avoid this if I could but we will see!

Physical reactions to adultery

It has been interesting to observe the different physical responses between my wife and I since I completely exposed her adultery.

My initial reaction was fuelled by cortisol, the body’s stress hormone. I felt very anxious and overwhelmed as all the details came to light.

Then followed a big spike in testosterone fuelling anger and taking back control through risk taking. The two hormones are dovetailing each other. I’m in a state of hyper-vigilance.

Since Mandy found out I knew everything, at first there was relief as she no longer had to carry the burden of her dishonesty but since then the adrenaline has kicked in and she’s had a constant tension headache and raised heart rate.

The cause is a combination of guilt, fear and loss of control.

The guilt is not the same kind of guilt as I would have experienced. It’s not that she regrets her affair in a genuine way. She was still pinning for him and the excitement the affair gave her even after discovery. I would not be surprised if she still fantasises about him and what could have been if only she was a little bit better at keeping her two lives separate. The guilt is more about the consequences for her of getting caught.

The fear comes directly from the lack of control. She isn’t calling the shots any more. By contacting the other man I blew away any chance of her keeping him as an orbiter to use when it suited her.

That’s what women do, they’re hypergamous and if they see an opportunity for an ‘upgrade” or some flattering attention, they will flirt and keep other men just far enough away so they don’t have to do anything for them but close enough so that these orbiters are always just a tearful phone call away from being brought in to replace their current partner. It’s a monkey branching strategy.

Destroying that prospect and sending a warning shot to show her that I understand the game she’s trying to play and won’t tolerate it actually restores her respect for me and makes her feel secure in one day. Women need boundaries and they will keep pushing if you don’t enforce them.

On the other hand she’s feeling very insecure. She can feel my anger and knows her sexual power as a woman won’t get her out of this situation. The game is up!

In the back of her head she’s wondering who I’m talking to and what I’m saying. For all she knows I could be lining up her replacement as I type.

Sex since the discovery has changed too. It used to be pair bonding sex. Comforting, loving, intimate and about a shared experience following a well trodden path.

I’ve lost that oxytocin response to her body. Oxytocin requires trust and that’s gone. Sex now is much more animalistic. It’s about reclaiming her for my pride, marking her. It’s more exciting. It’s dopamine fuelled, ironically, the same as the sex she craved from the third party. I don’t know what it feels like for her and actually I don’t care. She could be thinking about his cock and the hotels every time she’s sleeping with me for all I know!

When I found out she was lying about some of the details and was seeking contact with him, I invited her round for sex. She wouldn’t have consented had she known what I knew about her. It was the closest to rape I’d ever get. I didn’t feel any guilt whatsoever. As far as I was concerned it was no different to her having sex with him and then coming back home and kissing me.

I enjoyed the experience. It felt deviant and it must have felt significant for her too as she brought it up in counselling.

The same thing happened again the day I contacted the other guy. I was on the phone to him when she walked through the door and in my haste I didn’t even hang up. Part of me wanted him to hear it. Hear her tell me she loved me and hear me kiss her. I would have liked for him to hear me fuck her but I didn’t take my phone upstairs. If felt raw and powerful taking back control in that way. We had sex twice, which was deliberate. It was what she told me she had done with him.

Later that night after image after image that she had sent him were coming through it sent me into a hyper aroused state combined with anger, disgust, shock and horror. I deliberately sent the images to her sister as revenge. I knew that would fuck up what her sister thought of her and it felt good to expose her for what she really was.

The level of excitement and dopamine is starting to drop off now but the oxytocin isn’t there yet so sex is now more of an anti-depressant than anything else. My testosterone is still highly elevated and I need intimacy more. It’s not just a bonding or fun activity, it’s a need and necessity.

It’s very strange how much this has changed both of our personalities. Her going from someone that wouldn’t have a strong sexual appetite to seeking out sex with a stranger and getting as much as she could and for me going from a selfless, kind gentle man to someone with no qualms about expressing a deviant side.

Fuck knows what will happen next, it’s all new territory but I don’t think this assertivity is going away anytime soon and that’s a good thing. I’d love to know what she was really thinking! I think I can read her quite well but then I didn’t think she was capable of the prolific lies so who knows!

Floating bodies starting to resurface

One of the stages of recovering from an affair is apparently bodies resurfacing. These are deep seated relationship issues that couples have avoided discussing due to fear suddenly resurfacing.

That normally happens later on, but for us, I think the first body has started to emerge, and it’s the oldest issue in our relationship, so to understand it, we have to go right back to the start.

By the time we met, we already knew each other on a psychological level. She was my friend and an agony aunt from previous relationships, but it was all online, so our first date wasn’t getting to know each other, it was working out whether it could transcend from the online world to real life.

The repeat in sequence with her affair has not escaped me.

I never felt butterflies with Mandy. It was just comfortable, and by the end of the first date, I knew there were legs.

The second date was only three days later, and this was where the intimacy started. There was hand-holding, hugging, and passionate kissing and heavy petting. I was never afraid to show affection in public, and it was exciting, if not passionate, like my first relationship.

This continued into the third date where we were approached by a couple of kids that asked us if we were going to make a porno, much to our bemusement.

The first time she stayed overnight at my flat, we had outercourse, and I gave for oral sex for the first time. Something I always loved doing.

I was more experienced. I was her first, I had Charl before her, although it was just about everything short of full intercourse itself with Charl.

My sex life with Mandy was very much me initiating, and Mandy responding to my desire. I had more confidence with sexuality.

With Charl it was much more powder keg with both of us. One time we were watching a film, a day time kids film called cats and dogs in the cinema and she lay her coat over her skirt and let me penetrate her with my fingers and bring her to orgasm whilst biting my shoulder hard to stop her from making too much noise.

There was a point where I wondered whether the way I felt for Mandy was enough. It was the difference between a combination of lust and love, dopamine and excitement, and a deeper, more oxytocin based love. It would have been the worst mistake of my life had I not stuck it through with Mandy. She was my soul mate. I bring this up because I think she knew about this difference deep down, and her affair was an attempt to seek the same kind of passion for herself. It does hurt to know that I’m not the one that excites her or gets her going anymore, and it feels very unfair that I made loyal decisions whereas she made disloyal ones.

Anyway, that isn’t even the “body”. The key thing is that there has always been a sex drive difference between Mandy and I. Intimacy to me is a display of affection and love. It’s about having that connection with someone, feeling wanted and desirable. It’s never just been about sex and in fact, although I do enjoy sex more now, I’ve always preferred oral sex as it’s more about one person focusing all their attention on the other person. It’s purely about pleasure, not a natural reproductive impulse.

For me there was nothing I enjoyed more than making my wife orgasm with my tongue. Sometimes it would turn me on so much that I’d have to masturbate four times during the night as she slept next to me just thinking about that all out assault on all of my senses.

Sex was more of a chore. It was more about worrying whether I’d orgasm too quickly or if I wouldn’t orgasm at all. I could never make her orgasm through sex although she’d tell me she was enjoying it. Sometimes, it would just feel like she was doing it just to shut me up. To me, that felt like rejection. Just going through the motions, she may as well have been a flesh lite or a prostitute and I didn’t want that. It wasn’t uncommon for me to refuse sex if I didn’t feel she really wanted it. It was hard for me to take. I wanted intimacy because I wanted to make her feel good. I wanted that connection with her and for her to desire me because I always did desire her.

Sexual rejection hits the same receptors in the brain as physical pain. Being rejected hurts and there was a cumulation affect.

I knew she had a lower sex drive, and I understood that. In every single relationship, there are times when one partner wants it and the other doesn’t. I knew that. It’s not that I felt entitled to or demanded intimacy, but when you experience rejection on a regular basis, it builds up.

Imagine how it felt when your partner would half-heartedly touch you and fall asleep the the same time. She’d tease me, making my body prepare for sex then leave me with pain in my testicles. Blue balls is a real thing.

After a while, I’d snap and withdraw. She was denying me touch so I’d deny her affection. I wouldn’t let her touch me, and I’d get angry with her and with myself when suddenly she was interested in initiating sexual contact. Finally, I was getting something I craved, to be treated even a tiny percentage of the way I treated her, but I was angry. Why only do this now when I’m pissed off? It felt manipulative, and sometimes I’d brush her off, but other time, the desire to be touched was too much, and I’d let her, but I’d be angry at myself for allowing it.

It even happened on our honeymoon. I refused to speak to her and she was just crying, which only made me angrier. I wasn’t asking for much. I wasn’t asking for equal treatment, just showing me some sexual affection and desire would have been nice.

I don’t know precisely when it changed, but there was a point when she started getting more confident. All of a sudden, she found that she could make me orgasm consistently through oral sex, something that was very inconsistent in the past. I could tell she was enjoying it, and that probably made my body relax more and stop worrying about whether I was going to orgasm or not.

Now we were giving each other oral sex on a much more equal level in comparison to the past but I started having problems orgasming again but I reassured her that I still loved every second of it. In fact, even masturbation had become very difficult and would take a long time, which wasn’t like me at all. I eventually worked out it was anti-depressants numbing me. Stop taking them for just two days and it was back to normal.

Mandy got even better at felating me. Now she would carry on as I orgasmed and got used to having my orgasm in her mouth. It was something she never liked the idea of before but now she was enjoying it and I finally had the sex life I always wanted.

We tried things we’d never done before. One time she stripped nude downstairs in front of the cameras, knowing I was watching one time. We’d email each other with what we wanted to try. It was hot. She’d let me film her going down on me and vice versa. It turned me on when Jo moved in, making love to her, knowing he sister was only in the next room.

It’s hard to understand why she turned to another man when we were both having the sex of our lives over the last few years. It wasn’t stale or lacking.

The way she behaved with her bit on the side has really unpicked this old wound. He didn’t get the frigid Mandy that wasn’t interested in her partner that I got for most of our relationship. He got sexual messages and photos. He got video booty calls at all times of day. Anticipation, desire. He got her meeting him for surprise extra nights. He got her living out fantasies with him. It really makes me angry. I got the shitty end of the stick, and she saved the best for him. I don’t think I’ll ever get over that.

I could have been selfish and went after my own needs. I could have used prostitutes to make up for what I wasn’t getting with her. I could have sought out female attention online. Despite my looks, I knew what to say and how to approach it to press all the right buttons with women. I knew how to use vulnerability to make women want to fix you and I knew how to get their pulses racing.

I could understand what my motivation could have been if I had an affair in those early years but I can’t really understand hers now.

It makes me wonder what I’m missing. Is my interpretation of evens completely different to hers? Will I ever know why or it it something she’s hoarding deep inside and will never tell me.

This should have been a body that had completely decomposed and evaporated but it’s not, it’s still with us.

This weekend the half-arsed touching when almost asleep came back. In fairness there are extenuating circumstances in that we’re both ill but it’s worrying. Everytime she sexually rejects me now I’m going to be comparing myself to him because she couldn’t get enough of his body. I don’t know where we go to from here. There’s a rotten stench I just can’t get out of my nostrils!

What she’s done has completely emasculated me and that makes me angry and I can feel the testosterone surging. A strong man doesn’t accept this kind of disrespect from a woman, so at some point I’m going to have to make a choice.

Ironically it’s that very same testosterone that will make her want me again, that might just make me walk away, and start again on my own terms. It’s not a decision I can rush or make in the heat of the moment but the game has changed now. Past loyalty means nothing!

I married a child with tits

I’ve been doing a lot of analysis and soul searching since I found out about my wife’s affair and the more I think about her behaviour, the less enamoured I am with her as a person. It’s not just the affair itself, it’s the behaviour since I caught her out and what that tells me about her.

The only conclusion I can reach is that she’s not a mature, responsible, competent adult but a child that has learned just enough to paint herself in a way that endears her to other adults that haven’t seen through her yet.

I asked her to write down what she had done a bit like a teacher giving a child a detention. What she came up with was a childish piece of fiction with more plot line defects than holes in swiss cheese.

For example, she expected me to believe that she used a vibrator that we had only used once and lost the charger for and not the much more expensive one that she used on a more regular basis. What was the motivation for such a lie? Was she scared I’d confiscate her favourite toy if she told the obvious truth? Or did she just know I’d see through it if she said she didn’t use a toy at all? An adult would have just recognised the game was up and admitted it!

Virtually everything she said was along the lines of yes, I did take some of the sweeties mummy but they didn’t taste good so please don’t tell me off.

The classic example of that was her describing her exploits of being “intimate” 3 or 4 times a day in his hotel room but sometimes she found it hard to orgasm as if that makes it better. No shit you would have found it hard, you’re normally asleep 5 minutes after one orgasm and complain that your body can’t cope with “intimacy” on consecutive days yet here you are getting your end away as many times as physically possible so don’t try to tell me that I should be comforted by the idea that you had to work harder to orgasm sometimes.

Honestly, if you think 50 shades of grey was written badly, Mandy’s 50 shades of lies was like a homage to a four-year-olds level of reasoning to extract herself from a vice of her own clamping.

Remember the context of this was supposed to be a truth amnesty where she was told that she could be forgiven as long as she met just one basic rule, that she started to tell the truth! Still she kept digging! The more unbelievable the lies, the more inclined I was to get to the bottom of the truth so I did, first by monitoring her comms with an app then by speaking to the third party directly and cross checking the lies!

Now she wants credit for telling the truth when there was literally nowhere to hide?

It was a relief for her once I talked to the other bloke and exposed her lies. It had all gotten way out of hand for her to deal with, she was unravelling and now the grown ups knew and could try to fix it for her, wiping away her crocodile tears.

It wasn’t just her lies that unravelled at that time, it was my respect for her too. She wasn’t the person I thought she was. I thought she was an adult but it turns out she’s just another incompetent woman, unable to deal with her feelings when tough things happen so instead she reverted to being a child! Chasing boys to make her feel better, then telling lies to get those boys into trouble afterwards.

Give me a real woman that has the emotional maturity to speak to her partner rather than going behind his back any day!

Marriage and desire

This morning was fairly typical of an issue that has reared its head a lot in the past in our marriage.

Last night I freaked out a bit because we’re staying in a hotel chain very similar to the one where my wife had been having an affair for six months.

It put images into my head that no man wants to see so I had to get out and stay in the car for a few hours, writing about it and trying to work out what to do.

The process of writing seems to be enough to calm me down so eventually I returned to the room and went to sleep in the same bed as my wife.

In the morning I woke up needing to release the built up testosterone but she is rarely interested in the morning, or should I say she’s not interested with me.

Male and female sexuality is different. Men get aroused much more easily just by being near your wife or girlfriend. A lot of women don’t feel desire until things get going. Of course it also varies a lot from person to person, some have higher sex drives than others and there are lots of women too with high sex drives that get frustrated with their male partners not being particularly interested.

When I’d get frustrated, it wouldn’t be because of a single incident. It’s not because I “felt entitled” to sex, in fact, it was rarely sex that I wanted. For me, it would be a build-up of collected frustration over time of not feeling as if I was desirable to her and needing that connection.

Sometimes it would just have been nice not to always have to be the one doing the initiating and it would have been nice at times to not be made to feel like it was a chore.

It sure as hell was different with her affair. She was having phone sex with him early in the morning as I slept in the room next door and from her diary of events she was all over him any chance she had to get her hands on him.

Some of that will have been the thrill from the risk of being caught and knowing what she was doing was wrong and risky. Some will be because it was a fantasy bubble without all the attachment to real life long term relationships.

There is a difference between new partner dopamine sex and long term relationship oxytocin sex.

It’s not that she’s never aroused by me, our sex life was active and fulfilling for both of us but it does leave me feeling pretty shit knowing the woman that tells you she’s just not that interested in morning intimacy is suddenly very interested in it when it’s with someone new. That’s quite a big slap in the face, especially for someone that’s a very selfless lover that makes sure she has a good time before I do. It’s not like I was useless in bed and she was left frustrated, much more likely the other way around with us.

Intimacy is important to me and it’s not just about sex. Obviously sex is nice but it’s more about feeling wanted, desired, needed and having that special connection with her.

I’m not saying she needed to jump on me every single time but just being there with me and acting interested would have been nice without falling asleep halfway through!

Other times she’s very good and it’s obvious she’s enjoying doing things to me and is excited by it. In fact, I would have classed our sex life as really good for the last 3 years, but the affair has destroyed my confidence and peace of mind!

I can’t compete with someone a lot slimmer and 6ft3 tall. I can’t compete with the fantasy of a new partner. This game is rigged against me and maybe the only way to fight is to fight fire is with fire.

Height is the number one thing women look for in terms of physical characteristics and the difference in terms of your chances of success with women for a man is brutal when you look at the data from digital dating.

There are two reasons women want taller men and it’s primal. Firstly it’s about scarcity. In the UK only 15% of men are over 6ft. It’s even lower in other countries. Secondly it’s about safety. Women want a man that can hurt other men. It makes them feel safer.

My wife really liked having her hands pinned above her head. It’s a position that makes her feel smaller and dominated. Feeling sexually dominated and controlled is a massive turn on for women. Being cornered into a position where she can’t escape gets her blood pumping. She would ask him to do this just as she’d ask me to do it.

She got turned on by being made to kneel at his feet further adding to that sense of being dominated and controlled by a man. Being submissive is a very comfortable role for many women no matter how un-PC it is to admit that about female sexuality. They like to be told what to do within that context.

If I start seeking out attention from other women, she won’t like it. She knows I’ve got a way with words and traits some women find attractive. Physically, in terms of appearance, I’ve got no chance right now, but I can work on that.

Nothing makes a woman feel more attracted to her partner than when other women start showing interest. This is why players are so irresistible to women.

Everybody has a light side and a dark side. She’s seen the brightest now. Maybe it’s time for some shade! I tell you what I won’t do, though. I won’t lie through my teeth to her face. As far as I’m concerned, as soon as she brought a third party into our life, she gave me a license to do the same. If she doesn’t like that, tough! I won’t be anybody’s second choice!