An Open Letter To Married Men

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I want to talk to you married guys for a minute. If you're not married, you're welcome to listen in since some of what I'm about to lay out applies to you also. (Moreover, even with declining marriage rates, and even though you're reading blogs like this, there is still a good 90% chance you will get married at some point in your lifetime. Societal Programming is extremely powerful.)

-By Caleb Jones

I am well aware there are a lot of married men who read this blog. A few of them are happy, "happy" being a relative term when you are married, monogamous, and have been that way for longer than three years (unless you have a very low sex drive and/or submissive personality).

However most of you married men, I know, are unhappy to some degree. Now I don't want to over state this...most unhappy married men are not miserable. They're not walking around in a zombie-like state wanting to kill themselves (though some are). Rather, they're just "eh". "Eh" is another word for "okay". Not bad, but not good. Ask them how it's going, and you'll get an "eh" answer.

"Eh, could be worse."

"Eh, not bad."

"Eh, you know."

"Eh, I love my wife and my kids but it's been five months since I've had sex and she bitches at me all the time and my job is lame and all my dreams I had when I was younger have been crushed and I have no soul and I'm going to go mow the lawn now. But eh, could be worse." "Eh" means your happiness on a scale from 1 to 10 is around a 4 or a 5. Not "bad", but nowhere near good.

You Only Get One Shot

There's a common saying out there, often used for tattoos. It says "One Life, One Chance". Nice saying, but what does it really mean?

I don't believe in an afterlife. I'm not religious and not a Christian, but I'm also not an atheist. Unlike an atheist, I do believe in aspects of the universe that are currently beyond detection of our five senses and beyond our current level of scientific advancement to prove. But when it comes to an actual afterlife where I'm still me and retain my consciousnesses in some other dimension...yeah, no. The older I get the more I am convinced this is not so. I also don't believe in reincarnation, which is simply another form of afterlife.

When I'm dead, I'm dead. I'm not coming back. I'm going to fall asleep and never wake up. Even if there is some form of afterlife, which I strongly doubt, that thing that moves on to the next world will not be me. It will be something extremely different. The man I am now will be gone forever.

It's very sad, when you think about it.

I believe this of you, too. I could be wrong of course, but I believe that when you die, you're done. You're gone, and you're never coming back. You are more than welcome to disagree with me, but I'm just telling you what I think is most probable. (No big religious debate about an afterlife in the comments, please. That's not the point of this post.) In keeping in with the no-afterlife stance, I'm going to illustrate an analogy once made by my favorite non-fiction living author, Robert Ringer:

If we arbitrarily state that true adulthood beings at age 25 (which is becoming increasingly true with men in the modern era if it isn't true already) and also arbitrarily state that average life expectancy is age 80, that gives us approximately 20,000 days of life as an adult to do whatever we want, and then we're dead and never coming back.

20,000 days. That's it.
That's not a lot.
It gets worse. The problem is, about a third of that time you're sleeping. Now we're down to about 13,000 days.

But wait, there's more. About another third of that time is spent doing nonproductive life essentials. You have to go to the bathroom, take showers, shave, eat, do your taxes, go grocery shopping, get ready for bed, etc. You (usually) don't do these things because they're fun or because they accomplish anything. You do them because you must in order to exist within a physical world and a societal framework.

So now we're down to about 6,600 days. And then you're done, and you're never coming back.

But wait, there's even more. That 6,600 days assumes you're only 25 years old. Most of you married guys are well over 25. I'm 41, which means I haven't been 25 in 16 years. I'm down to about 4,500 days. Yikes. Thankfully I'm not traditionally married, which means can do whatever I want, have sex whenever I want, pursue and achieve whatever dreams I want, but can still love and be loved whenever I want, and even still have kids. So 4,500 days is bad, but at least my happiness is almost always around a 9 instead of a 4 or 5.

But wait, there's even more. This 6,600 figure also assumes you will be in 100% perfect health and vitality during your entire 70s. And hey, maybe you will. But maybe you won't. Hell, statistically speaking, a huge number of you won't even be alive in your 70s, much less infirm and unable to live life fully.

So you can see that as horrible a number 6,600 days is, it's actually way too high for most men in most cases. You're probably down at around 3,000 or 4,000 days. That's it. And then you're dead and gone, and never coming back.
Does Your Life Still Make Sense Now?

Now that you understand how little time you have for this one-time gift called life, does it make any sense to spend years and years of your life existing at a 5 in happiness? Only for those little spurts up to 7 occasionally when your wife lets you?

Do you see now the precious time you are wasting? Time you will never, ever get back?

I'm sure you love your wife. I'm sure she's a wonderful person. I'm not going to dispute that. But does it really make sense to spend your precious few days left on this earth submitting to the completely irrational, nonsensical rules of that overweight, stressed-out, non-sexual woman whom you haven't had sex with in months and who is even more unhappy than you are? Really?

Is maintaining the status quo, which is maintaining her unhappy, non-sexual state, really the best thing for her? Do you think she wants to be unhappy or bored or stressed or angry all the time? Is that something you want to give a woman you love? Really?

I'm sure you love your kids, and I'm sure your kids are great kids. I have two kids myself and I love them very much. And yes, having kids and being a good father does indeed represent a sacrifice to a degree. No question about that. But does it make sense to completely destroy huge swaths of your life and your being just because your wife or society says you must because you have kids? Is maintaining a shitty, boring, soul-killing, monogamous marriage really the best thing for your children? Is that the best example you can show them of who you are as a man? Really?

When you look into the eyes of your children, what kind of father do they really see? What kind of man do they see? Think about that for a minute. I'm sure you have extended family that appreciates the fact that you're married. I'm also sure you have married friends and co-workers whom you enjoy to spend time with. That's wonderful. I have the same. But does it make sense to sacrifice your 3,000 days left just to impress these people and go along with what they think is right, even if it makes you unhappy? Really?

A Change -
If you are like the vast majority of married men in the western world who have been married for longer than three years, you're going to have to make a radical change in your life in order to get your usual level of happiness from a 4 or a 5 to a 9 or 10.

Before I tell you what a "radical change" is, let me tell you what it is not:

Discussing your problems with your wife is not a radical change. You've tried that a hundred times already. Did that work? (Haha!) Marital counseling is not a radical change. I agree marriage counseling can be useful in some cases, but the majority of couples who go to a marriage counselor still (eventually) end up with the same problems they had before, or get divorced. Reading a few manosphere blogs and becoming more "Alpha" with your wife is not a radical change. I certainly agree that's better than doing nothing, since being more Alpha never hurts in the long run, but it will not radically change the status quo.

You can be as Alpha as you want...you're still married. You're still monogamous. You still never signed a prenup. She's still got you by the balls. A traditional, societal-programming-based, monogamous marriage is not a place a true Alpha can live long-term. (I can tell you from personal experience that when I started to "Alpha-up" in my marriage, things in the marriage got worse, not better.) Throwing ultimatums at your wife is not a radical change. That's just drama, and you and I both know you won't follow through on them anyway. She knows it too.

No, when I say "radical change", we're talking about one of two things:

1. Getting a divorce.
or
2. Converting your marriage into an open marriage.

I don't care which option you choose, but you need to choose one of those two. Continuing forever with the status quo ensures a zero percent chance of you living the rest of your very short life as a fulfilled, happy man. ZERO PERCENT, pal. But if you get a divorce or work through an open marriage conversion, that zero percent instantly becomes 40%, 50%, 80%, or even higher.

Is getting divorced fun? No. It sucks. A lot.

Is converting your mono-marriage into an open one easy? No. It's hard. I can tell you exactly how to do it, but it's still hard.

Regardless, I can tell you, and millions of other men can tell you, that once you go through the pain of the divorce or conversation, you're going to be more happy than you ever remember being. I still remember about four months after my divorce, driving home in my car one day, and suddenly being so full of joy I laughed out loud for no reason at all. I had a big stupid smile on my face for six months. Finally being free to live my life as I choose, free to be a man, to live my life as a man, the exhilaration was intoxicating, like jumping into the crashing waves of the ocean. It's been seven years since then, and the joy has not stopped. It's still with me every single day. I feel it now as I type these words.
She Changed The Rules First-
You're going to be very fearful about doing either of these things. This fear will take the form of guilt. "She's my wife. She's the mother of my children. I can't leave her. I can't start having sex with other women. I'm married. I have to live up to what I promised. That's what a real man does."

Before I respond to that, I have to be very clear about something: I'm not telling you to cheat on her. I am completely opposed to cheating and always will be. I have never cheated on a woman in my entire life and I will never advise a man to cheat, ever. What I'm talking about is telling her you are changing the parameters of the marriage whether she likes it or not, and then having sex with other women in a very discreet way with your wife knowing what you're doing. Or getting divorced.

If this sounds selfish or mean, you have forgotten something...
When she married you, she promised to keep you sexually satisfied. Even if she didn't specifically say this, this was one of the many implied promises of marriage. (Remember all the stuff she said you "implied" when you married her? Same deal here.) You won't have sex with any other woman, and in return, your wife will keep you sexually happy. And for a while, I'm sure she did.

Is she still?
If the answer to that question is any variation of the word "no", then she has already changed the parameters of the marriage without asking for your permission. You don't sleep with other women, she keeps you sexually satisfied. She's now conveniently deleted that second part while keeping the first part.

Did you make that change? Did you ask her to make that change? Did she consult you before making that change? Of course not. She's changed the parameters of your marriage, and did it without your consent. She's not going to have sex with you any more (or less than you need) and you're still not allowed to play around with other women. If you don't like it, tough shit. "If you really love me, you'll just deal with it." I'm sure you've never heard that before, have you?

Now you need to do the same thing. You need to either end the marriage or tell her you're going to start sleeping with other women and actually go do that. And always remember, she changed this arrangement first. You're simply responding to her change.

A married woman reading this will instantly respond with, "Well, the reason I don't have sex with my husband any more is because...!" and then start listing some crappy things her husband is doing. Guess what? I agree. If you're a shitty husband or shitty father, you deserve a wife who bitches at you and won't have sex with you.

BUT! I know that thousands of you out there reading these words are good husbands. Not perfect husbands, but good ones. You bust your ass, get the bills paid every month, never cheat, don't do drugs, don't hit your wife, provide for your children...and she's still bitching at you and restricting sex from you anyway.

It's time for you to make a radical change, whether you choose divorce or marriage conversion. There are abundant resources all over the internet to assist you. You are not alone.
You deserve better. Your kids, if you have any, deserve better. You are not alone.
The clock is ticking.
One life, one chance.
Don't waste it.

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