The announcement rocks him to his core:
"Where have you been?" he whispers, as his wife comes through the door at 4 am.
"Well, if you must know, I just had a night of wild sex!" she casually yawns as she heads to the shower. Or maybe there has been no honest admission but he's somehow discovered the truth anyway:
She's seeing someone else, and he... is devastated!
Yes, of the many challenges facing modern men in the 21st Century, there is none greater than learning to overcome the sense of betrayal a man may feel when his wife or girlfriend has sexual relations with another man, or other men!
The age old standard of monogamy has, by and large, been trampled on and replaced by an array of open relationships all favoring the/a woman's right to explore the world of her choosing. Where once a man would have a wife and family while maintaining a mistress on the side, or even worse forms of duplicity, today it is women who are venturing out and seeking exciting, even exotic relationships beyond their monogamous vows.
There has been a great sea change in the way men and women form and operate relationships. It is not unusual now for a woman to have multiple lovers outside her marriage, while the man stays home to keep house and await his wife or girlfriend's return. These 'female-led relationships' are appearing with greater frequency, and I believe this is a healthy trend that is here to stay. Of the many men who've contacted me offering their support for my program, however, the overwhelming majority have stated that the greatest difficulty they had in adjusting to the choices their women were making was in getting used to the idea, and of course removing the feeling, of being betrayed.
Betrayal, as any student of history can attest, litters our historical landscape with examples of how destructive its power can be. One the earliest stories of betrayal found in literature, the Orestan trilogy of Aeschylus outlines the affects betrayal had on the House of Agamemnon, with the deaths of all the principles a direct result of betrayal upon betrayal. Shakespeare employed the motif in many of his plays, and until recently, the act of betrayal was commonly understood to be unforgivable and could legally be the justification for many vengeful acts including murder.
Thankfully we live in age where all the old standards have been taken down and are being re-examined, and re-defined. Where once the idea of betrayal meant the clear end of any relationship, today things are not so fixed or cast in stone that they can't be thawed, even re-negotiated, to the mutual benefit of all parties. Yes, loss of trust can be repaired, with the right amount of energy and action. Many men are quite easily adapting to their wives or girlfriend's desires for multiple partners of their choosing, and they report their relationships to be strong, vibrant and enjoyable.
Yet, as a Heterosexual Relationship Specialist, time and again I meet with men who seem to be stuck in the past, men who can't overcome the fact that their women want more than what they can give them, and feel as a result they have been betrayed. I have great sympathy for these men, having been down that road myself when young, but now I take a strong, almost strict approach to dealing with their misery. This approach is the best, most direct method for a man dealing with modern woman's need for independence and free choice.
But it is important we recognize the degree of suffering these 'men from yesteryear' are experiencing. Often, when speaking with a man who declares he's recently been betrayed and who's clearly still emotionally distraught, I'll head straight into his symptoms, before moving on to useful advice. It's critical men are allowed to experience their feelings, right or wrong, to realize and then release them, if they are to heal and become Good Partners to the women in their lives.
A typical session, after I have listened to him stammer out the situation, may go something like this:
"Alright, Pansy, it's time to face the Truth:
Your woman is fucking another man, or men; she's unfaithful, she's betrayed you, she's given her body, mind and soul to another man and you're suffering the most intense emotions of your life. The pain is suffocating, you feel lost, weak, uncertain, everything is poisoned; you can't understand much less believe what's happening; nothing makes sense, and nothing takes the pain away; there are no words of immediate comfort, and there are no instant solutions."
This declaration often leads to a breakdown by the suffering wimp before me, but I am compassionate, and I know he must go further. I then offer a series of questions:
"When you first discovered, did you do everything in your power to find out every detail about her 'activities'? Did you tear apart her world looking for clues, snooping about her private things, suspicious and driving yourself nuts from the thirst to know everything about what's going on?"
Usually the man will agree, and I will then add, "You are torturing yourself, aren't you?"
This can lead to the man suddenly standing up and shouting incoherently, with tears running down his face, "The bitch cheated on me!" before I grab him and sit him down.
"Are you sure you're the victim? You're angry and outraged, you've made everyone in your life aware of how badly you've been betrayed and how much you're hurting, you crave revenge, right?"
"Yes, yes, I do," he'll claim, before I reply, "You're feeling sorry for yourself, and pity only makes you weak. You know the old Chinese proverb, 'If you're going to seek revenge, dig two graves', for revenge is always just as destructive to you, the revenge-seeker, as it is upon her, who's simply out doing all the things she has long been denied."
Soon he accepts that his anger and feelings of revenge are displaced, and he's ready for more uplifting action. Sometimes, however, I find men who take a different course, men who, after discovering they've been betrayed, say nothing to anyone, ashamed of themselves and her and determined to keep this a secret till the day he dies. Often they'll withdraw from the world altogether and stop doing everything they've been doing with no idea what to do next, everything that once gave them pleasure now making them only sick. So often when a man feels betrayed, he can't eat, sleep, even communicate what's going on within, and can only isolate himself from the world, with thoughts of suicide to plague him.
Other men report only intense feelings of suspicion, consumed with finding out the reason why it happened, constantly analyzing and looking back at all that's happened, and then the endless questions: 'why did this happen to me, why did she do this to me, why didn't I see this coming, why didn't she tell me, why can't I stop her why, why can't I stop suffering, why doesn't this end?'
These men enter a spiraling kaleidescope of irrational confusion, buoyed by their need to know every detail of their wife or girlfriend's salacious activities until they collapse from exhaustion. It is often in this state that I find men admitting to me that they feel as if they're the only person who's ever experienced this. I often hear, "I just can't find anyone to talk to, and besides, nobody really cares even if they would agree to talk with me."
Intellectually these men may understand what has happened, and why, but emotionally, they are far behind. Making it worse is the fact that many women, seeing their men struggling with accepting what has happened, simply are not sensitive to their partner's suffering and demand he snap out of his funk immediately or they'll shortly leave, and very often do.
Into this mixture of extreme emotions and rationales comes what I believe is the solution for this volatile, explosive blend destroying modern men: learning to elevate women while subordinating oneself.
There really can be no other way for a man seeking harmonious relationships with Today's Independent Woman. He must re-shape his needs, desires and expectations to conform with those of the women in his life; he must learn to see women as naturally superior to him, and all men; he must learn the joys of turning his every waking moment to pleasing Today's Woman, and he must -and can- learn to enjoy this change in lifestyle.
By doing so, he will begin to experience the sense of joy and freedom from being responsible for things he doesn't do well and shouldn't do at all. By releasing control of the relationship and handing it over to the women in his life, Today's Man can experience the unlimited pride and sense of fulfillment that can be earned by learning to assist and accompany Today's Active, Dynamic and Goal-Oriented Woman.
For some men, the change comes almost overnight, but for the majority of men, it takes some real work to disable years of selfish instinct and habit, along with the implicit received messages from the Old Media with their Unenlightened Male Archetypes.
In my work, I am determined to lead men out of our present Dark Age of Male Dominance into a world where women take the lead in all things, unless otherwise agreed upon. It is time that women are allowed to come forward and take their natural positions as leaders of the relationship, the home and the community, and my work is dedicated to seeing that take place in my lifetime!
The changes I routinely see in the men who undertake my program are encouraging, but there is so much more work to be done. Join me!
R. Milton Quibner is one of the world's leading Heterosexual Relationship Specialists (HE.R.S.). Quibner has scoured the works of Western Antiquity in developing his program and, with tips from modern authors, along with references to products designed to assist any relationship, R. Milton Quibner stands alone in his field.
This article is brought to you by MATCHMAKING.
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