What did YOU do to ruin the relationship?

[Desdinova]

Easy... I picked the wrong woman. I didn't listen to my gut which was screaming "NO YOU FVCKING IDIOT!"

But seriously... It's really difficult to pinpoint how I caused the relationship to fail. She was never home. How the hell can I figure out how the relationship failed when she just decided that being away from me every night was more fun than spending *any* time with me?

If you must know, it began right after we moved into the house which was 3 months after the wedding. I'm pretty sure that I was mostly just a conquest. She was competing against all the other women who were interested in me. Once she married me, the conquest was over and she had won. Now she was able to move onto other things.

I KNOW what caused her to cheat on me. It had come to a point where I had given up on trying to spend time with her. I was done with arguing about it and tired of taking the blame for not spending time with her. I seriously tried to put in effort and it never amounted to anything because she always had somewhere to be that was more important than making time for her family.

But I was done. Done arguing. Done putting my foot down. Done defending myself against her accusations. I was too exhausted from putting effort into the relationship while she put nothing in. No more

I remember when she took me out to lunch and specifically told me "I DESERVE to be treated better." I just told her she was right and that I should. I didn't but I didn't fvcking care either way.

She cheated on me when I stopped putting my foot down and stopped putting effort into the relationship. Honestly, I was kinda relieved. I didn't need to put in the effort anymore. She obviously wanted out, and I was fine with it. I needed someone who actually enjoyed spending time with me instead of avoiding me like the plague.

And BTW, it wasn't just me she was avoiding. She avoided spending time with our son too.

Now, if we get into my first failed LTR when I was an AFC, I can point out ALL the 5hit I did wrong. I was boring, a doormat, I put her on a pedestal, I spoiled her, never said 'no', gave into her every request, treated her like I was in debt to her every time I fvcked her, I cried sometimes, and just acted like a big fvcking pu55y. I can't blame her for ditching me.

 

[imarockstar]

I'm pretty sure that I was mostly just a conquest.

This reminds me a lot of what I just recently went through. However, respectfully, I think that making this kind of statement is a cheap way out. I believed this same thing up until a week or two ago.

Leading up to my break up, I had always shrugged off my ex's attempts to make things concrete. Mainly in regards to early in the dating process when I finally gave in and we became official, to a month before we broke up and I confessed my love for her. This is all after months of her complaining that I needed to let my guard down, when in my own reality, I was just taking things slow. Do not get me wrong though, I don't regret saying it because, at that moment, I really did feel it. During that period of time, she was going above and beyond to be a stellar gf, not to mention the fact that we were on an awesome vacation and I was just really happy anyways.

Long story long, I felt and even confronted her after the breakup that as soon as I gave in, the game, the conquest, the challenge, was over. She had won. In retrospect, I now disagree with myself.

I disagree because I failed to realize the most important aspect of any relationship; controlling the frame. Desdinova, what was your situation like? Can you honestly say that you were the one leading, that you were owning the frame, or was it the other way around?

The way I see it is if I had been maintaining the frame, if I had remained the prize, the one to be pleased rather than worrying if I was pleasing her enough, well then, letting my guard down would only enhance her love for me. Instead, through her controlling of the frame, it does become a game. They start to wonder subconcouisly, “he makes every decision based on me, reacts from my actions, yet he still won’t be my official boyfriend/won’t confess his love/won’t propose etc.” Once they get what they want, BAM! Game over. The challenge has been overcome. However, if you control the frame, you control when in fact the game is over.

Controlling the frame is the key to a successful relationship that will flow based on your terms. Experience is the only thing that will teach this lesson, as I remember reading this kind of advice a year ago and I simply could not understand it.

Cheating is never justified. If a woman cheats instead of first leaving an exclusive relationship where her needs are not being met, then she's low quality.

Yes, I agree Findog, cheating is an unjustifiable act. I am against cheating, as I believe in just ending the relationship out of, if nothing else, respect for the other person. You are absolutely right in the sense of careful screening of the woman in order to avoid this. This is a pretty common mistake actually because desperate guys will not screen and take whatever comes falls in their lap. That being said, it's the man's fault and he is held accountable for not screening. Yet, with everything, there are no absolutes and there are isolated incidents, but they are very rare and few and far between.

 

[Desdinova]

However, respectfully, I think that making this kind of statement is a cheap way out.

I honestly wasn't trying to make it a cheap way out. I've gone over the whole situation over and over in my head, and did it over the course of almost the entire marriage. I honestly cannot find any other logical explanation. I've analyzed everything that I've done in the relationship until it hurt my brain. I came up empty every time.

Only recently have I come to this conclusion. I had to look at her life and how she views everything. She takes everything on as conquests. Once she accomplishes something, she abandons it and moves onto something else. That woman had all the keys to start up a successful photography business. Once she got some of her photos in the mainstream, she just quit doing it and moved onto something else.

It was the same situation with our child. About 9 months after he was born, she quit bothering with him and started doing things that excluded him from her life.

When I actually realized this pattern (and there are more examples) that's when I realized that I may not be the one to blame for how quickly the marriage deteriorated.

Desdinova, what was your situation like? Can you honestly say that you were the one leading, that you were owning the frame, or was it the other way around?

I certainly was, right up until I just gave up on the whole thing. That's how I realized that I was the only one holding things together. She remained at least somewhat attracted to me up until that point. After I gave up on owning the frame, putting my foot down, and standing up for myself, that's when she started looking for a new prospect.

I maintained the frame, remained the prize, rewarded her for good behavior. I wasn't infatuated enough with this woman to let her run my life. I chose to keep her solely because she was confident and funny, NOT because she was cute and sexy. I wanted a lifelong partner I could have fun with, and we did have fun until the honeymoon was over. At that point, it became all about maintaining her friendships. She didn't need to do that with me, we had a legal document to maintain the marriage.

It's probably the most bizarre thing I've ever seen with a relationship. Some of her friends and my friends commented on how she quit spending time with me shortly after the marriage. They thought it was strange and wondered how the marriage was able to function. The fact was it only functioned financially, and even then there were problems. I put up with it for six years. If there was no marriage license to speak of, I wouldn't have stayed.

 

[scrouds]

She marries the strong man that peeks out when the jerk steps aside for a minute to take a piss.

Well hopefully. Sometimes chicks marry because they want the non-stop attention of a wedding and some marry because that's what they think they should be doing, even if she doesn't feel in love.

 

[imarockstar]

Well hopefully. Sometimes chicks marry because they want the non-stop attention of a wedding and some marry because that's what they think they should be doing, even if she doesn't feel in love.

Wow, well put Scrouds. A lot of truth in this statement. It is a woman's dream from when they are very young to get married. It then stems from the biological clock ideal. On one side of the coin, the eager attention seeker will marry the first guy who is decent so that her dream of the wedding will come true. Shortly thereafter, it is back to reality. On the other side, the aging single female settles because, hey, she may not get another chance.

This is what makes me agree with your statement, Royalflush....

the #1 ACCURATE self-blame is choosing the wrong woman.

You are absolutely accurate in this statement. However, my initiative in creating this thread was to focus on learning from your own mistakes. If you did everything that you were supposed to do in the relationship and it failed solely on the basis that you picked the wrong girl, then this article will not really apply. However, an individual will not get anywhere if they continue to repeat the same unsuccessful behaviors over and over and not learn from them. A man who begins the relationship as a man, then becomes a supplicating drone is no better than a quality woman who later becomes a frigid bytch. It is not so much blaming oneself as it is digging deep inside yourself and reflecting on where and why mistakes were made.

I made this thread to reflect on my own situation and hopefully see where others went wrong. The common theme is that one either did not own his role as the man or maintain the frame in the relationship, or, simply, proper screening was not implemented. However, Desdinova's circumstances seem rather bizarre and I have no idea how you could have made the relationship a success. Although after all, we are a bunch of random guys on the internet, and I have no knowledge of both sides of the story or how things actually went down.

We are human after all, and sometimes no matter how quality of a man we are, people change their minds or just change in general, sometimes for no apparent reason at all. Perhaps at undetermined moments in life, undesired events simply occur with no rational explanation. When it comes down to it, life is short, and there is no reason to spend what little time we have unhappy or worrying about something futile.

 

[typical]

Yup I too blame myself for choosing the WRONG woman.

Simply put I was a lean mean kick boxer and she jumped on me while her folks and her were setting her up for a arranged marriage to an accountant overseas. (I'm indian btw if you're wondering).

Red flag right there she just wanted a "hot" bf to show off nothing more. I went through over 4 years with said girl and when I tore my lower back (imagine muscle hanging off your back under the skin which was bright purple).

Couldn't walk/talk/sit/sh!t/p!ss for 3 weeks ate next to nothing. Over the next few months had to learn to walk again lost so much muscle mass and gained so much fat form not being able to do fu(k all.

And I expected her to stick around and wait for me to heal LOL. Only took 6 months to go from "looking for an engagement ring" to "my parents have found me a guy to marry" and poof out of sight in a week.

There are also countless other small things which I have picked up on that I should have fixed a LONG LONG time ago but meh next time

I still have a hard time coming to terms with how cold she became once I wasn't her image of an "ideal" man, but oh well at least I learned on what to expect when you're down on your luck ........ and before I hit 30

 

[backbreaker]

this is probably the most important thread on this entire forum right now. alot of good stuff here.

I can't speak for others i can only speak for myself but i know the resounding motif in my life with my ex's, is just i cared more about what they want than i cared about myself.

dont' confuse what i am saying with saying i became a jerk. I'm not a jerk. I'm a pretty nice guy in real life that has a soft spot for people going through hard times and I like to help people out. To this day I'm a yes sir no sir type of guy, just how I was raised and I will always be like that. I'm not rude, I have manners, I hold doors, I take off coats (though I will never ruin a shirt or jacket so a woman can step over a puddle ***** is crazy lol)

but i never put the needs of a woman over my needs any longer. I don't make bones about what i want and i want what i want and that's that.

the women who get pissy are just mad beucase you wonm't play to their vanity or you won't fufill any of their other non sexual based wants at that time. i'm not the one anymore.

me, learning how to talk to women really wasn't so much learning game as much as it was just being brutally honest about what i want. either she's down or she isn't.


the more i understand about what i did wrong the more i understand women and the more I really don't blame them. guys will say that women are inferior or not as smart as men but those are just cooping mechnisms which don't work

what i willa gree with women with is that deep down every woman you are with knows what you want and I Think the more honest you are about what you want the better off you are. deep down the woman knows you are full of ****. you don't think that she doesn't know that you are on the 3rd date at red lobster and you re out of 200 dollars and 5 or 6 hours of your time listening to her bull**** pretending to give a **** and you want to have sex but you pretend like you want more out of the relationship when you barley know the broad? she will never come out and say it and neither will you but tis' ther and the more you dance around the issue the more subconsciously she's not going to be attracted to you.

i'm not a jerk but i want what i want. if i am interested in having sex with a female she will know it and she will know it quite soon and there will be no misunderstaning and if she isn't down okay bye.

i can't be tricked or minupliated into doing things i don't want to do with the promise of inimacy or relationships today.

even little **** like a few months ago there was a jazz trio down here in LA that i wanted to check out on a week night and my wife didn't particarlly want me to go out and kinda hinted at all the great sex we can have if i stayed home. i went out. i'm going to do me even while married. that's the only way this is going to work.

I think the one thing i can take from my previous life experiences with women and in life as a whole is to be uncompremising in what you want. I want what I want and i am not going to make excuses for what i want. i don't have to explain myself to anyone.

too long i cared so much about every boo boo or every trival thing that every woman *****ed and cried about but you know what they are grown up's too put on your big girl panties and deal with the ****. I remember the girl who brought me here in the first place, she used to talk to me every day about how her boyfriend was crazy and how he was threatening to kill himself and how she was tired of all the drama, yet she dated him for 3 years lol. and the entire time i stayed up late at night talking toh er about this **** pretending ot give a damn when if i were honest with myself i seriously could have cared less.

in short, we are so busy trying to fufill women's needs that we don't fufill our own and what good is a man without needs or a purpose? what good is a man whose entire purpose is to serve a woman? women want, crave to be in the company of a man with drive, ambition, manly traits.

it's like i watch mad men every week, I mean don draper is a pimp and all but everytime he does his thing or acts in a manly way his wife can't keep her hands off him. he fixes a sink, gets laid. he sales a huge job, gets laid. would don be as attractive if all he did was come home and care to his every wife's needs? hell no.

Friday afternoon my wife's best friend got a flat tire, and my wife calls me and asks me can i leave the gym and change her flat for her. Of course I do it, but she has a BF, who she called and tried to get to do it but he doesn't' know how to change a flat. took literally 10 mintues lol. and while it may seem rivial, the question i have to ask is why does the man not know how to change a god damn flat anyway? you can say it's becuase he's an efinamte man and you might be pretty close to being right but the truth is we spend so much time trying to figure out what kinda man that women want that we forgot that women want men in the first place lol we forgot to learn how to be men, we don't make time for man things, we don't bother to develop our own idenity anymore and when you are a manless human male drone what advantage does a woman have to stick around?

and another reason i don't mind helping her friends is because i know my wife gets off knowing her man can take care of **** like that. it's like her way of saying "yeah ***** lol, look what i got lol, cant' touch it, that's mine". that is the 10000% foul proof way to keep a woman; as long as your girlfriend or whatever can show you off to her friends or her friends are attracted to you, you can leave a woman in the middle of chip n' dales with 10 grand and she won't so much as kiss a man on the check. as long as her friends view you as a catch your relationship will be as strong as Samson. not in the "you are a great guy, any girl would date you" AFC type **** but the "damn her man is hot, where did you find him" type way.


what i have learned is focus on you. WTF do you want.

 

[Gro0ver]

this is probably the most important thread on this entire forum right now. alot of good stuff here.

I can't speak for others i can only speak for myself but i know the resounding motif in my life with my ex's, is just i cared more about what they want than i cared about myself.

dont' confuse what i am saying with saying i became a jerk. I'm not a jerk. I'm a pretty nice guy in real life that has a soft spot for people going through hard times and I like to help people out. To this day I'm a yes sir no sir type of guy, just how I was raised and I will always be like that. I'm not rude, I have manners, I hold doors, I take off coats (though I will never ruin a shirt or jacket so a woman can step over a puddle ***** is crazy lol)

but i never put the needs of a woman over my needs any longer. I don't make bones about what i want and i want what i want and that's that.

the women who get pissy are just mad beucase you wonm't play to their vanity or you won't fufill any of their other non sexual based wants at that time. i'm not the one anymore.

me, learning how to talk to women really wasn't so much learning game as much as it was just being brutally honest about what i want. either she's down or she isn't.


the more i understand about what i did wrong the more i understand women and the more I really don't blame them. guys will say that women are inferior or not as smart as men but those are just cooping mechnisms which don't work

what i willa gree with women with is that deep down every woman you are with knows what you want and I Think the more honest you are about what you want the better off you are. deep down the woman knows you are full of ****. you don't think that she doesn't know that you are on the 3rd date at red lobster and you re out of 200 dollars and 5 or 6 hours of your time listening to her bull**** pretending to give a **** and you want to have sex but you pretend like you want more out of the relationship when you barley know the broad? she will never come out and say it and neither will you but tis' ther and the more you dance around the issue the more subconsciously she's not going to be attracted to you.

i'm not a jerk but i want what i want. if i am interested in having sex with a female she will know it and she will know it quite soon and there will be no misunderstaning and if she isn't down okay bye.

i can't be tricked or minupliated into doing things i don't want to do with the promise of inimacy or relationships today.

even little **** like a few months ago there was a jazz trio down here in LA that i wanted to check out on a week night and my wife didn't particarlly want me to go out and kinda hinted at all the great sex we can have if i stayed home. i went out. i'm going to do me even while married. that's the only way this is going to work.

I think the one thing i can take from my previous life experiences with women and in life as a whole is to be uncompremising in what you want. I want what I want and i am not going to make excuses for what i want. i don't have to explain myself to anyone.

too long i cared so much about every boo boo or every trival thing that every woman *****ed and cried about but you know what they are grown up's too put on your big girl panties and deal with the ****. I remember the girl who brought me here in the first place, she used to talk to me every day about how her boyfriend was crazy and how he was threatening to kill himself and how she was tired of all the drama, yet she dated him for 3 years lol. and the entire time i stayed up late at night talking toh er about this **** pretending ot give a damn when if i were honest with myself i seriously could have cared less.

in short, we are so busy trying to fufill women's needs that we don't fufill our own and what good is a man without needs or a purpose? what good is a man whose entire purpose is to serve a woman? women want, crave to be in the company of a man with drive, ambition, manly traits.

it's like i watch mad men every week, I mean don draper is a pimp and all but everytime he does his thing or acts in a manly way his wife can't keep her hands off him. he fixes a sink, gets laid. he sales a huge job, gets laid. would don be as attractive if all he did was come home and care to his every wife's needs? hell no.

Friday afternoon my wife's best friend got a flat tire, and my wife calls me and asks me can i leave the gym and change her flat for her. Of course I do it, but she has a BF, who she called and tried to get to do it but he doesn't' know how to change a flat. took literally 10 mintues lol. and while it may seem rivial, the question i have to ask is why does the man not know how to change a god damn flat anyway? you can say it's becuase he's an efinamte man and you might be pretty close to being right but the truth is we spend so much time trying to figure out what kinda man that women want that we forgot that women want men in the first place lol we forgot to learn how to be men, we don't make time for man things, we don't bother to develop our own idenity anymore and when you are a manless human male drone what advantage does a woman have to stick around?

and another reason i don't mind helping her friends is because i know my wife gets off knowing her man can take care of **** like that. it's like her way of saying "yeah ***** lol, look what i got lol, cant' touch it, that's mine". that is the 10000% foul proof way to keep a woman; as long as your girlfriend or whatever can show you off to her friends or her friends are attracted to you, you can leave a woman in the middle of chip n' dales with 10 grand and she won't so much as kiss a man on the check. as long as her friends view you as a catch your relationship will be as strong as Samson. not in the "you are a great guy, any girl would date you" AFC type **** but the "damn her man is hot, where did you find him" type way.


what i have learned is focus on you. WTF do you want.

Awesome thread just got more awesome

I'm gona learn to change me a flat....

 

[zekko]

Okay, Backbreaker says this is an important thread, so I suppose I'll answer it.

The last year of my marriage my wife went a little whacko. I'm not sure what caused it, I hadn't seen signs of it before. Some guys on the forum here have said that she may have been entering menopause and her hormones messed her up. I still don't know, whatever.

She started making odd demands of me, like trying to tell me where I could go and who I could talk to and such. And I don't even mean women, I mean male friends and acquaintences. Obviously, I could not go along with her requests because to me it was a self respect issue. I couldn't go along with her unjust demands because that would be just handing my balls over to her. But that only made her more angry and unstable, and she started making a wide variety of complaints and accusations, and pushing my buttons.

And here's where I made my mistake. I let her p!ss me off. So I would yell and argue back at her. I never got physical with her, but we would get in heated verbal exchanges, and I admittedly lost my cool. I never should have let her get to me. Maybe I should have just walked out on her when she got like that, but in her frame of mind I was afraid she might tear up my stuff. But regardless, I never should have let her get to me emotionally, and I shouldn't have engaged in her arguments or fed the fire. I should have remained unreactive.

I'm not at all sure our relationship would have survived even if I had kept my cool, because she seemed so determined to end it. But my reacting to her BS was still a mistake.

 

[imarockstar]

the truth is we spend so much time trying to figure out what kinda man that women want that we forgot that women want men in the first place lol we forgot to learn how to be men, we don't make time for man things, we don't bother to develop our own idenity anymore and when you are a manless human male drone what advantage does a woman have to stick around?

Well fvckin said BB. Sometimes I view this website as a double edged sword. As time goes on, you hopefully learn, but at first the concepts, tactics, and even other people's opinions and outlooks can slightly brainwash one into becoming even worse off than the quintessential AFC. What I mean by this is, from my personal experience and looking back on myself, the first couple years that I was introduced to this website, becoming an expert with and obtaining a woman became my priority. Making sure each interaction and transition was exactly right according to the almighty Don Juans of the Sosuave world became an obsession. The unenlightened AFC probably has a more fulfilling life than one who makes obtaining women's approval the center of his universe.

What you said hit the nail on the head. It is not about being a nice guy just as much as it is not about being a jerk. Knowing who you are, what your beliefs are and sticking to them, going after what makes you happy, and not sacrificing any of it for anyone is what will ultimately lead you on the right track. It's so damn true what you said BB, we get caught up trying to figure out what a woman wants that we sacrifice what we as individuals want. Not only women, but trying so hard to impress others in general. However, if one lives an interesting, exciting, driven type of life, they no longer have to boast or try to impress others, their ambitious life will speak for itself.

Career, hobbies, healthy bodies, education; these are aspects of life that we should be trying to FIGURE OUT. The irony is that when you incorporate these principles as your foundation, women will flock in your direction because you become the "good guy" that Pook spoke of. No longer the supplicating nice guy, yet you are not the outlandish jerk (funny to realize, jerks are just as insecure and lack just as much self-respect as the nice guy, trust me, I have played the role of both). You become what everyone here should strive to become. Not a master PUA, not a pimp, and hopefully not a bitter misogynist; you simply become, A MAN.

 

[backbreaker]

I want to clarify something. When I said earlier that it's usually something you did wrong that made the relationship go sour, I did not mean that women aren't ever at fault. Just stating that, it's unhealthy and unproductive to get in the habit of throwing all the blame on crazy women who don't know what htey want. I feel just about every woman can be managed under the right circumstances, but some circumstances I don't particuarly care to reproduce. I don't care to become a druggie to party all the time to keep the pill poping coke snorting party girl.

It hurts now but this is one of the reasons men are usually better off in the long run


when I was in high school i was a pretty decent basketball player. not an all star, but i was good enough to start for my high school team as a junior. I never was going to play college ball I was too short and not overly athletic enough to do so.

Sometime during the first month or so of school my senior year, i was coming back as a returning starter, the point guard of hte team, with the spot all but wrapped up. we were practicing breaking the full court diamond press and the person who doesn't get the ball on the inbounds has to make a hard diagnogial cut so that the person who did get the ball can make a pass so that the person who is cutting can break up court and break the press. anyway i was makign my cut towards the free throw line so i could get the ball and I ran into this sophmores knee, we our knees colleidted and i knew right that moment i would never play ball again i was done. i could not walk without my knee buckling out of socket. after a week or so I had sugary and was on crutches utnil like october, ending my basketball playing career.

and honestly it sucked. i was pretty hurt. not only did i like playing ball all my friends played ball and being th point guard on one of the best teams in the city that's a status symbol. lol **** that was my game card right ther ei could walk in any school's football stadium and people knew who i was.

and while it sucked then, it was the best hting that ever happneed to me. it was around that time that the true nerd in mye started to develop and I took a very strong interest into computers, so much so that my mom, to get my mind off not playing ball, enrolled me into A plus courses while I was still in high school. By new year's I Had an a plus clarification. I liked it so much my mom enrolled me into CIW certification cou8rses, got that by the summer. by January I was working at best buy 30 hours a week as a pc tech. by the next January i was building custom gaming computers and selling them. by the next summer i met my business partner and we started our business that i would eventually go on to sale.

I was forced, because of circumstances to face my reality faster than my friends were. both of my 2 best friends went on to play college ball though not at a high level and neither were good enough to start in college. by the time they graduated from college i had already sold my company. the tables had completly turned. I was the more popular guy now because i had more status as a business owner with his own car, house, money in the bank, etc. they were looking for entry level jobs around town.


i say all that to say this is how it is with women. men, in general because of lack of options are forced to face the reality of the dating game faster than women are. women, can make excues, say whatever they awnt to say, believe whatever they want to believe beucase there is always some swucker ready and willing ot buy them a drink, play to their vandity to have sex with them.

but sooner or later, those opportunities become rarer and rarer and it's only then that most women really realize just how bad they ****ed up. But by then it's too late. Cystal, a girl who i have spoken about who I really did like a lot, and dated for a few months, I did absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever in that relationship. she had just really started getting male attention from guys, she lost weight, she got a big girl wardrobe, she had started going out and learning how to flirt... she broke up with me because i refused to go to see her mom with her in louisiana, but i did not go because it my first thanksgiving away from home and my mom really wanted me to go see her and she broke up with me because obviously i did not like her enough to go see her mom it was no point in continuing the relationship. then she got sick when she was down there and to her she said that was an omen to tell her that i was not the one for her.

I was 23 at the time she was 25. right before i got married, 27, so 4 years later, we always kept in touch beucase of the indusrty she works in. i have no ill will towards her i just moved on. i had no rpboelm talking to her if hse called. right before i got married it's like, the **** really started to hit home how bad she ****ed up some of her relationships, in particular mine. i did nothing wrong. not only did i not do anything wrong she liked me. she just had so many male options that she was real finicky about ****. she started calling me flirting with me, sending me letters via email and **** and i told her point blank babe it's not happening. i am not mad at you but i've moved on. then she sent me this long letter telling me how sorry she was and how she made a bunch of silly mistakes when she was younger and ****.

now she is your prototypical 30 year old bar fly. her dad left her enough money to hwere she will never just be broke, she will always have roof over her head, but she's miserable. now all the guys she liked are taken, and the ones that are left are dead beats. she isn't 25 years old in the looks department either and unlike my wife she is allergic to the gym so she really looks her age.

she used to be so upbeat and happy now she is bitter and spitful.

 

[Desdinova]

The last year of my marriage my wife went a little whacko. I'm not sure what caused it, I hadn't seen signs of it before. Some guys on the forum here have said that she may have been entering menopause and her hormones messed her up. I still don't know, whatever.

You know what I've learned from that? When a woman's personality seems to go through drastic changes, it means that there's another man in her life. When women become interested in another man, they seem to go through a need to rearrange their life, their interests, and anything else they can get their hands on. That is the dead giveaway that the relationship is over and you need to get rid of her NOW. If you don't, she's just going to drag out the end of it for way too long and cause you even more frustration.

 

[zekko]

You know what I've learned from that? When a woman's personality seems to go through drastic changes, it means that there's another man in her life. When women become interested in another man, they seem to go through a need to rearrange their life, their interests, and anything else they can get their hands on. That is the dead giveaway that the relationship is over and you need to get rid of her NOW. If you don't, she's just going to drag out the end of it for way too long and cause you even more frustration.

You can believe this or not, but there was no other man in this case. I live in a small town, I would have heard. In fact, she wouldn't date at all for years after our divorce because she was so upset over losing me. Shows you far how off the wall she went. She had actually hoped to win me back after the divorce. She told me repeatedly in the last few months "We have to divorce to save the marriage". I told her if she thought I would ever remarry her after getting divorced, she was sadly mistaken. But she didn't listen.

I agree that when it's over, it's over, though. No sense dragging it out.

 

[AmIAFC]

My history with my ex's can be perceived as a microcosm of the natural evolution from AFC to a more self-aware man. Similar to turning on the shower faucet and starting off with cold water, then arriving at a temperature that is much too hot before finally adjusting to warm, I began as a chump, transformed into a jerk (due to a combination of personal resentment and poor translation of the DJ Bible), and arrived at a place of inner peace.

Chump Phase: There was this Italian girl that I adored. She was much younger than I, but I was willing to overlook her regular spats of immaturity and emotional outbursts during the course of our friendship. Notice I said "friendship," because in the end that's all it was. She lived 50 miles from me, but I was willing to drive that stretch every other day to be with her, even for something trivial, at her request. Despite not having f***ed her, she teased me mercilessly with her young, supple body and big breasts. I had allowed myself to be subjected to this mental torture because, at this point in my life, I didn't take myself seriously, and as a result, she did not take me seriously. There were occasions when I would arrive to her parents' home, delivering food (since she was broke), and she would reward me with stories of this other guy she spent her weekend with, and the breaking point was when she gleefully admitted to sleeping with him. Was it her fault? No, I simply allowed for her to walk all over me, use me, and financially drain me because I was weak and I needed validation from her.

Jerk Phase: At this point, I was finding moderate success with average women due to them mistaking my artificially-created arrogance for inner confidence. The Jerk Phase (hot water) is preferable to the Chump Phase (cold water) in many ways since, for me, it portrayed this illusion of fierce indepedence and unconformity, which some women find attractive. The problem is that when it's not punctuated with acts of kindness and humanity, the quality women will start to resent you, and you'll be stuck marketing yourself to damaged goods with daddy issues. I was seeing this girl and she was into the "Save the poor" and "Help needy kids" thing -- all of which genuine and not just a phase. I kept ridiculing her hobby, openly disrespecting her in front of her friends, and just being an overall SOB to her. For me, it was a self-defense mechanism that I utilized to keep myself emotionally distanced from the girl despite the cold fact that I liked her. Well, in the end, she dumped my sorry a$$ after I made some awful remarks about one kid she was spending time with. Good for her.

Furthermore, at this stage, I became an alcoholic due to stress from work and social conditions. I would finish bottles of the Black Label and Tanqueray a week, and my mood, as well as my physical condition, deteriorated to the point where I dissolved into a borderline sociopath.

The Jerk Phase, at this point, was rapidly dissolving as it became too much of a struggle to continue with the act and to refrain my natural tendencies from resurfacing. Hence, when I sobered up, I found a middle ground and I haven't been happier. I'm now in shape, working out, and dating someone who, for some reason or another, seems to understand. She's the first girl with whom I've successfully been "warm" (not AFC, not a jerk...just in the middle), and she's into me like you wouldn't believe.

People like to say that being an AFC or jerk is a natural state of mind, but that's hogwash. It's all about experience. Everything boils down to experience, from your attitude to your personality. Nature created me to become a self-functioning, indepedent man, but exposure to artificial society and modern-day norms damaged that, and experience is now repairing it.