@mattyanon after what, our honeymoon phase?

She hit menopause early, and her hormones crashed out. She stopped sleeping with me as much, then at all.

I blamed myself at first, and while trying to figure out where I went wrong, looked Roosh back up. He had helped me a lot around 2000-2002, but once I started hitting my stride I stopped reading his stuff or participating at his seduction BB. when I found him again, his writings led me to the Red Pill, but on blogs rather than on reddit. I read him, Roissy/Heartiste, Rollo, Dalrock, Athol Kay, and some others long before I ever found out what reddit really even was.

By the time I got on reddit (mainly for WAATGM, which I found out about through Dalrock's comments section), I'd mostly straightened out what I'd been doing wrong (beta-ization by a thousand concessions, and too much NiceGuy behavior) and just occasionally lurked MRP and TRP to fine-tune some things. I still find things to adjust, because learning never ends.

Also, she got on hormone therapy and got her shit mostly straightened out around when I was first unplugging (2013 or 2014 or so).

20 years married this past July. Partly thanks to Red Pill, more thanks to her hormone therapy, and mostly thanks to both of us being too bull-headed and stubborn to admit that we fucked up!

@mattyanon

It's not a honeymoon phase though...... there are a lot of public announcements (her family, your family, your friends, her friends). There is a lot of wedding booking and planning.

We ended up eloping because the logistics for both families was too much, and I had an upcoming deployment to Iraq. My mom still gives me grief for eloping, and her sister to her, but everyone else understood.

It eliminated a lot of the problems you mentioned.

And we fucked like rabbits the entire time.

I keep seeing others in this thread saying things about the honeymoon phase, and engagement and cohabiting both being new honeymoon phases, but that was not my experience.

Our honeymoon phase lasted from our first date all the way until about 9 or 10 years of marriage.

However, I had 3 tours of Iraq and lots of training missions and schools that would separate us here and there, so it's not like we were physically together the entire time. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" combined with the corollary "how can I miss you if you don't go away?".

CC: @Vermillion-Rx, @Durek_The_Bald (I forgot who else I saw talking about "honeymoon phase")

@Vermillion-Rx as I said in another thread on this:

there really isn't a prefect arbitrary amount of time at which you completely eliminate the gamble such a commitment is.

Fuck, we'd already been married 10 years before my wife suddenly changed (hormone issues).

And as I said upthread in that same thread:

Really, my only objection to it is that getting married without our nations doing a serious overhaul of the laws governing marriage is a terrible idea, and marriage/LTR shouldn't be a man's goal anyway (religious needs aside for now).

So again, with the caveat that it is not in a man's interests to get married in most western countries, here's how my engagement went back before I knew any of this stuff.

The woman who would become my wife was one of several plates I was spinning at the time (2004). I was fucking several and had even more in the works (OLD was awesome back then). She was older than me and divorced, so I didn't take her seriously at all. Every other woman closer to my own age always ended up doing or saying things that made me not take any of them seriously, either.

However, since my wife and I never put on any airs or did any kind of pretending with each other, we accidentally got really close really fast. Additionally, she was the best sex partner I'd ever had. Only 2 others came even close. The rest were mediocre at best, whereas she was just awesome. I fell iN LuuUuuUuuRrrRv and so did she. We had already become de facto exclusive by the third month because we had both just kind of dropped everyone else over time, but made it official then.

A couple of months later, I moved in with her and her mom, as they had a house together. We got engaged. I think I asked her to marry me before I moved in, but she had asked me to move in like a month before that and I had declined at first. I don't remember for sure because this was 21 years ago, and I've had an eventful life since then.

Anyway, we got engaged and I moved in right before Christmas, but I still followed through on plans to visit my family back home. We were married the following July (2005), and have been married ever since.

Some factors at play that were likely unique to just us, or at least are highly unlikely to come into play for anyone reading this:

• she was able to prove to me that her divorce was her ex's fault. She "had the receipts" as the young people say. Bad on her for marrying him in the first place, but she really thought he was a good man at first. Dumb mistake on her part.

• I had an upcoming deployment to Iraq looming on the horizon, so that put a bit of a rush on things. I'd have normally wanted to live together longer (like at least a year) before getting married, but that just wasn't in the cards.

Holy fuck this is long.

@universitythrowaway

Field Report - Weird date?

I’m a 25M, and I’d been talking to this 18-year-old girl for about three weeks, though we hadn’t gone on a date yet. A few days ago, she asked to hang out. She lives about an hour away, which is one of the reasons I hadn’t met her earlier because I was busy going on other dates and didn’t really have the time until now.

On the way there, I called her, and she said her house was busy, so we’d need to hang out elsewhere until her roommates’ friends left in a few hours which I know was true as she mentioned her friends having people over before. I agreed, picked her up, and then we went to her friend’s place to pick her up too.

She suggested we get ramen and all go back and eat it and drink, so we stopped at a nearby convenience store. Her and her friends grabbed a bunch of drinks, while I just got a small one. They were teasing me the whole time, saying things like, “Don’t get too much, you’re going to have to pay for all of this.” I joked back that they’d owe me $100 for giving them rides to the convenience store.

At checkout, they looked at me to pay. I told one of her friends to cover the three drinks, and I’d pay for the rest. She acted shocked, saying, “Are you serious?” Then they all started playfully implying I was broke. I recognized it as a shaming tactic and didn’t fold. I just agreed and amplified. and I repeated that she could cover the drinks while I’d get mine.

The cashier mentioned the smaller drinks didn’t qualify for the deal, and that it would actually be cheaper to swap for the larger ones. I told them to go switch them out, but they pushed back, saying, “You go do it,” and “Stop being cheap, it’s just $5.” I found it ironic that they expected me to pay and were still trying to pressure me into spending even more. I held my ground and they went and exchanged the drinks.

Eventually, to avoid making a bigger scene, I just paid for everything. It wasn’t much money, but for me, it was about the principle. I didn’t want to play the role of a beta provider. After paying, they all went outside and left me to carry the bags. When I got to my car, I teased them a little by not unlocking the doors right away and pretending to drive off. When they got in, the ride back was quiet, except for them saying I embarrassed them at the cashier for being “cheap.” The tension was becoming more serious and I was becoming increasingly annoyed at the situation.

I know they’re just broke freshman college students, but I found it ironic that they were trying to tell me how to spend my money. When we got back to their friend’s house, they got out, and I asked where I should park. They told me they didn’t think their friend wanted me coming in and that I should leave, apparently they’d texted her about what happened.

So I asked them to give me back everything I paid for. They first tried handing me just my drink, but I told them I wanted it all since I covered the whole order. They gave it back, and I drove off and blocked her number.

Throughout this whole "date" I was being shit tested by the girl the most and sometimes by her friends.

I don't think this was a plan by them to get me to buy everything and ditch me because the girl had been inviting me over to her room afterwards too.

Did I overreact in this situation in how I handled it or was I valid for not wanting to buy her and her friends groceries and seem like a beta?

You weren't being sh!t tested, you were being shat on. There's a difference. You got played and it happens to the best of us, especially when we're young. That the co-ed harlot was able to talk you into giving her and a friend both a car ride and free food suggests that before they escalated from mocking you to insults fierce enough to bruise your ego and provoke you to react, she accurately pegged you for a Beta/Bravo.

If you'd spent any of the last six months studying the book, you would've known enough to not let yourself be talked into a situation as that one. Keep approaching other females, this one's not one to concern yourself with. Consider yourself lucky you learned this lesson at little cost.