If You Really Really Love Me

From the forum…

Kalda:  Now, almost three months later, I am doing better and still making progress. The biggest improvements have been physical. I’m in the best shape of my life and maintaining 5-6 workouts a week while cutting back on the junk food. She, however, is the heaviest she has ever been.

My wife bounces between commenting on how good I look in positive ways and expressing concern I will leave her for a younger or fitter woman. I’m looking for some ideas on how to respond to the latter comments. I’ve told her I’ll support any positive health changes she wants to make when she has brought up exercise or diet, but when she talks about me leaving her I just laugh it off. Tonight she said something and laughing it off felt awkward and she seemed sad. Is there a good way to redirect those comments to flirt or keep a positive vibe between us?

Athol:  This is her Loyalty Testing you.

This is actually a pretty serious thing. If she’s really starting to dread that there’s nothing she can do to keep you, she’ll give up on the relationship. So whether she starts checking out of the relationship because she’s unhaaaaaappppppy and about to Eat, Pray, Love an exit, or she starts checking out of the relationship because she thinks you’re going to dump her, doesn’t matter… she’s going to start withdrawing from you, or even start looking for someone who she can jump ship to before you pull the trigger.

In fact you might be a sizzling 9 and her a 7 and she might move sideways to some guy who is just 7 himself to avoid the pain of you smashing her to the ground.

You trying to laugh it off is the exact wrong thing to do, because to her, this is a really unfunny situation. When you laugh, she experiences it as you laughing at her predicament. She’s looking for loyalty and your emotional involvement with her, instead you’re displaying high value and detachment from her.

This is why the pure Alpha approach utterly fails in long term relationships. You can pretty much set your watch on a six month timer for pure Alpha to just blow it all up.

Anyway…

You do two things to pass this test.

(1)  State clearly what your standards are for her behavior as a wife. Stuff like her sexual interest in you, appearance, general work ethic. Make them all reasonably high standards, but by no means impossible. Something that she would have to apply herself to get done, but not kill herself to consistently do in reality.

(2)  Say that as long as she does (1), she never need fear you leaving her, or cheating on her. If she does right by you, you will do right by her. You need to say this with complete conviction and emotional content. You can also say that you know you could find someone else if you had to, but you want it to be her.

What this amounts to is an all purpose, “There is no X until Y” variant. X is the (2) and the Y is the (1).

This all sounds horribly manipulative I know, but what it sums down to for her is this….

(A)  She’s with a guy hotter than her.

(B)  He demands her best of her.

(C)  He’s loyal to her.

Which all in all doesn’t sound like a bad arrangement.  The trick for the guy pulling this off though is this…

…there is no trick. You have to believe it and commit to it, to sell it. What you’re saying is that if someone hotter than your wife comes along and makes a play for you, you’ll just enjoy it as compliment and that’s as far as it goes.

Anyway… Steel Panther video time… kinda like this, just bring it down a couple of notches.

 

…okay so not very much like Steel Panther. My bad.