Emotions

If you are a technically oriented kind of guy who wants to succeed as fast as possible, here are a few tips on how to avoid getting stuck in a dead-end. Taking things slow and gaining wisdom can sound great in theory, but what if learning slow just agitates you too much and you can’t learn that way? Does it mean you are broken or need to learn another way of thinking and feeling? It turns out that no, you are not

The Ancient Greek philosophers had it figured out two and a half thousand years ago: you should know yourself. But fast forward to today and there’s no shortage of modern men who know nothing about themselves. These men are not going after what they want, because they don’t know their own desires. They suffer from self-perceptions that are stunted or warped, and they can’t be sure of themselves. Perhaps worst of all, men without self-knowledge question and doubt themselves – especially when they fail with women.

In Part 1, I showed how failing to know yourself will hold back your progress with women. In this article, I’ll talk about some strategies for learning about yourself. But more importantly, I’ll explain the principles behind the pursuit of self-knowledge. Once you understand these, you’ll be able to advance your self-knowledge, explore and strengthen your character, and, ultimately, triumph with women.

Gentlemen, welcome back.

Today in Part 4 we are going to take a look at:

1. What can happen when marriage doesn’t meet your expectations,

2. What (if anything) you can and should do about it when this happens, and,

3. A couple of things you should never do.

Because, as we found out in Part 2, let’s face it: no marriages meet all of the expectations that are set for them.

The percentage of Americans who divorce has been above 40 percent even since 1970s. There are a lot of reasons that that number is what it is. Unarguably though, is the notion that the inability to reconcile differences is what eventually makes things come to a head and is why we divorce.

Is infidelity the reason you got divorced? Roundabout, perhaps, yes. But it was really more because a reconciliation couldn’t be reached.

How about a financial crisis? Can two people just become so poor that some crazy law says they have to get a divorce? No, it’s because they can’t agree on how to repair the problem (or they just don’t).

Your marriage is never going to be as fruitful and perfect as you think it will be, and you’re going to deal with a whole slew of life problems that affect one or the both of you. It’s not the problems themselves that cause divorce to happen, it’s the people not being able to deal with them that is the biggest issue.

So what exactly happens when you end up in an unfulfilling, dead-as-nails marriage that suffers from one (or a multitude!) of the more serious relationship-downers that we discovered in Part 3?

I found that when my marriage was getting to the point where it had seen better days that the toughest thing I had to deal with by far was the shift in the balance of power that occurred when I actually started to sense things beginning to go haywire in the first place, and started scrambling to make things “right” again.

I couldn’t wait to get my driver’s license when I was 16, and before my 17th birthday I got my dream job as pizza delivery boy. On my second night of work in Mississauga, Ontario (a suburb of Toronto), I got fired.

I went to an address with a pizza. As I approached the door, I could hear the pounding bass and the hoots and hollers of the people inside. I knocked on the door, and when it opened, a bunch of happy young people burst out practically on top of me, followed closely by thick wafts of tobacco and weed.

A cute girl about 3 years my senior (19 – LOL) tried to pass me a beer over the shoulder of the dude who was facing me and counting the money for the extra large… It was cold outside, so I suggested they let me step inside while they figured out the money and I could drink the beer (Canada and the USA have some of the most draconian public drinking laws imaginable and, ironically but not surprisingly, a huge problem with public drinking).

Someone passed me a joint. I found myself on a couch with a beer in one hand, a slice of pizza in the other, and the cute 19 year old on my knee giving me a “supertoke”. One thing led to another, and I was shocked and appalled to see how angry my boss was the next night when I went back to the pizza parlour asking if I could work again. I was fired on the spot. Logically I understood why, but I still resented it; why couldn’t I have fun AND have a job I love? Does life always have to be a tradeoff between doing what’s best for you and doing what you love to do?

As I get older, I’ve started to become more aware of the value of self-control.

Self-control is simply the ability to resist urges when it’s profitable for you to do so. It is the strength to put all things into priority and context. It would have taken only slightly more player skill to look at the host and the 19 year old girl and everyone else in that party in the eyes and tell them that I WOULD be back in 2 hours as soon as my shift was done, and if they would save me some booze and weed I would bring more pizza. How hard is that? I was already in with them. It was difficult because I had no self-control, no sense of timing, and no healthy view of context.

According to Napoleon Hill, author of the Think and Grow Rich, men learn self-control in one of two ways:

1. Their sex drive diminishes, usually with age but sometimes prematurely due to bad health or injury

2. They learn to sublimate their sex drive to higher thinking and purpose

Hill wasn’t talking about abstinence, he was talking about the correct sequence of profitable action. In a nutshell, if you’re feeling “frisky”, Hill wants you to do productive work FIRST, before turning to the opposite sex. Consistently doing so, Hill says, means your results in all areas of life will skyrocket.

Underlying my desire to risk my job to be close to a woman was an extremely high sex drive. Well into my 40s now, I find it challenging to go a full 24 hours without an orgasm and ejaculation at least once a day. It was 3, 4, even 5 times a day, for DECADES.

Don’t get me wrong – I was as unsuccessful with women as they come back when I was 16, but I was also very much a “natural”, something I did not fully appreciate about myself until well into my 30s.

It is late at night, your hands wrap around the wheel, the car eases out onto an endless stretch of highway. The road hums beneath you. Your breath is slow... In... And out... Your eyes are clear and steady as things come and go. You tune out the need to "get where you are going" and you just drive.

Life in that moment is just a sequence of breaths and subtle adjustments, and you never feel out of place or "off the mark". Your mind extends out into the horizon, and you lie in wait, perfectly ready.

Sometimes when we talk about women we get too focused on what is supposed to be happening that we forget how good it feels to not have to do a thing and just remain on target.

The other day I was sitting in the car with my mom, discussing a recent traumatic experience and its effects on my psyche. At some point in the conversation, I lost my calm and hit the car door in my rage. I immediately recognized my mistake and soothed my mind with some quick meditation. After swallowing my chill pill, we discussed my life-long struggle with aversion.

She conjured many anecdotes of my angst, whether it was yelling at kids over Xbox Live or getting 2nd place in a Tae Kwon Do tournament. Of all destructive emotions, anger is my closest and most poisonous friend.

To rid myself of this friend, we then brainstormed the cause of my anger and my mother proposed a theory, saying to me, “Hector, anger is a sign that you’re afraid. Animals only lash out in anger when they’re afraid of something....”

As my mind reeled, she followed with a question, “Hector, what are you afraid of?”

I feel as though the perfect follow-up to our last entry in this series, Part 2: What Men Think Marriage Will Be Like, is an article exploring all the bad things that happen when your relationship doesn't turn out quite as perfect as you thought it would and the whole thing starts to go haywire.

Also, if you're just jumping in here, see Part 1, where we explain in detail reasons why guys get married in the first place.

Usually it's not any one little thing that will sour the grapes, but rather a combination of a handful of different problems that really does a relationship in.

As a married couple, you are going to constantly face life situations head-on together, and while many of these can be avoided completely and others just come with the territory, all of these that we'll talk about in this article can end up being cause for divorce and should have the kibosh put on them as soon as you observe them.

In Chase's recent article The Key to Nipping Girlfriend Drama in the Bud in LTRs, we found that you can't be non-reactive and turn a blind eye to certain issues like you would early on in relationships. As explained in the article, the landscape changes significantly in a long-term relationship, and at times you actually need to be quite dogged in going about actually getting her to tell you about her concerns or problems in the first place.

Conflict resolution is important. However, conflict prevention is preferred, right? Though at some point there will be situations that either can't or just don't get prevented, so you end up having to deal with them.

As a final note before we get started: There's one really ginormous, obvious problem that I'm not even going to tear into here - and only because it is fairly cut and dry and I think most guys get this - and that is physical abuse. I just do not feel that it is a subject that warrants a copious amount of commentary. It is basically the lowest possible low that can happen in a relationship, far worse even than anything that follows.