What destroyed my marriage

[come2pappy]

I'd like to share with you all what has destroyed my marriage of 23 years. When my wife and I first met, we were individuals who valued our freedom. What made things work so well for us was that each of us was able to maintain a sense of individuality, a sense that we were free to love, or we were free to go, and in either case, we were alright with that. Because our needs were being met so well at that time, it only felt right that we marry and build a family together. What we didn't know at that time was how our insecurities, the ones we each brought into our relationship, would conspire to work to destroy the initial foundation of love we first established.

In my case, our unresolved insecurities caused a neediness to develop in our relationship. This neediness was reinforced by a mental attitude that we now "owned" eachother, that we were a POSSESION of eachother, and because of this attitude, we now had the right to CONTROL eachother. Had we known that this attitude was destroying our marriage and especially had we known how to identify and correct this attitude to shift back to the sense of individuality and freedom that was so attractive to us, the many years of pain we endured as we struggled in our ignorance might have been avoided, and the blessings we were given could have been seen in the right light instead of taken for granted.

Calle's materials [Ed. http://www.DoThisGetSex.com] speak to this very issue. But they are only part of what needed to happen in order for the changes to occur that would bring them to clarity and practice. You see, I lost my marriage because I did not know how to become an individual again. I stripped away layer upon layer of the freedom we had as I tried to control my insecurites by seeking my wife's approval, by being jealous and envious, and by becoming dependant. In the Wife Seducer ebook, I was given the tools to identify these things. But head knowledge is not enough to allow for change to occur. Something much deeper had to happen in order for what I was learning to finally take hold in my life.

For me, it was the actual loss of my marriage that provided for this transformation to begin. I was so caught up in my own unresolved insecurities, insecurities that allowed me to blame my wife and others instead of accepting the truth about who I was, that it took the actual loss of my marriage to shock me into accepting truth.

Imagine for a moment that your wife tells you it is over. Imagine how you would feel. Would there be anger, blame, resentment, thoughts of your wife with another lover, jealousy, envy, denial? Would you brush it off as just another "mood" your wife is in? If you can relate to what I am saying, then you will know where I have been. And the end result was not the restoration of our relationship, but the final straw that caused my wife to block me completely from her.

It is easy to believe we all have time to fix our relationship with our wife. It is easy to excuse our ignorance. It is easy to try to use patchwork methods to repair the holes we drill in the fabric of our marriages. I am living proof of all these excuses and methods. My marriage has ended because of all of the above.

For me, I needed to be driven to the lowest possible emotional level in order to finally accept my need for help. It is only by coming to my end that I cried out to God for Him to stop the pain, and sob in the realization of what I had done to destroy my marriage. Only then could I be given the insight that my reaction to my insecurities, my neediness was the cause of so much of the pain. And when I finally came to this, when I thought that I was unloveable because of what I had done, did God come alongside me and hold me and show me how I needed to allow His will to begin leading me to the healing I desparately needed.

My story is not unlike that of the alcoholic, the drug addict, the sex maniac, or any other addictive personality. My addiction was to CONTROL, and this addiction nearly destroyed me and did destroy my marriage.

So where is the hope for me now? It is in God's hands to lead me through a more positive faith, a faith Calle's materials reinforce so eloquently, and it is to know that I do not control anything. My hope is to at least establish a friendship with my now "ex" wife, one that comes from a return to my freedom and away from neediness, so that what good can be salvaged might come by the will of God for our futures.

If my lesson can inspire you to begin this change in any way, then the pain I have endured will have brought some good. There is good out there, men. There is a way out, but it will not come by our will. It will come when we accept that we do not have the control and it will come when we honor the freedom each of us have been given, and the freedom of that of our wives. God bless you all in your journey back to this freedom. It is possible.

[Louie]

The other day I started day dreaming about what it would be like to start all over again with a different woman. What if I could take all the lessons that I have learned from Calle and others here and applied them right from day 1 in a brand new relationship with a new woman who had no preconceived notions of who I was. What things would I do differently?

I indulged myself in this little fantasy for a while. I thought of lots of things that I would do differently and I knew that if I did those things I could have a happy relationship with any woman.

Then I snapped myself back to reality, sighed, and thought for the 1000th time this week about the mountain that I need to climb in order to get my current marriage up to where it would be now if I had been a real Man over the past 13 years. I have dug myself a big hole to climb out of.

However, I know that if I do the things that Calle teaches I will be successful in turning my marriage around. It would be easier to just walk away and start again with someone else, but that is not what God wants me to do. God wants me to stay with this wife and children and find a way to make us all happy. I led my wife into this mess, so I need to lead her back out again. Its my responsibility.

[jpmohave]

good posts brothers, I admire both of your courage for sharing this info.

I to have daydreamed the same dream about starting over with a new woman fresh and also bounced back that I made a promise. But I also truly believe that if I left my wife to start over because she was not responding to me the way I wanted her to then the other woman would eventually become the wife I left and I'd be back at phase I only with divorce, broken family for children, child support, custody exchanges, and a big f'n mess.

But I really love my wife for her, the control thing is a big challenge for men. I learned to harness my energy into things I CAN control like my physical appearance, I can work out, I can eat healthy, I can control my abs, that and music. I can control the sound that comes out of my Taylor 810 guitar. But I can not control my wife, I can't make her have all the characteristics I want her to have.

Because that's the curse of man to recognize and relieve yourself of. Just as women have task lists that constantly run, men have control lists or outcome lists they're constantly trying to attain. Your wife gives you oral only now you want her to finish differently. Or she sleeps with you as much as you want only now you want her to do different positions or have different more powerful orgasms etc. etc. etc. In the end you need to love the woman for the person, and truly do this.

I still struggle with this, I tried celibacy recently but only lasted a few days because my wife REALLY wanted me, and so she had me. I just didn't want her to have to sleep with me so i'm not moody, but she genuinely wanted me because she did, and that was acceptable.