Fellow men,

I'd be interested in hearing from any of you guys who, like me, are married, and are wondering about the role that 'game' might play in their life.

Before you judge me as a swine or a chump who should never have got married in the first place, here is my perspective:

I married the sweetheart of my early twenties. We were very happy in each other’s company, the sex was great and we talked so much you could barely get us to shut up. When we got married, (after we had already been together for seven years), it felt totally the right thing to do. Now, 20 years into my marriage, I am in my 40s, got three teenage kids, and along the way, my marriage has lost the spark. I love my wife, but am no longer IN love with her, and we don't have a sex life to speak of. It sounds like a cliché, because it is. But if this is so common, maybe it is ultra important to understand what is going on. I believe that most marriages end up in this phase, where LOVE outlives DESIRE. Let's just focus on these two words, Love and Desire:

LOVE is all about having and owning and all those qualities that ground you to home, such as reliability, dependability, belonging, companionship, trust, consistency, responsibility, sharing, etc. (Some of the more commonly recognised DHVs that PUAs use actually happen demonstrate these same qualities (e.g. provider; protector of loved ones, etc.), although they only become potent catalysts for attraction when combined with qualification, mystery and possible fear of loss, etc. - Which takes me to Desire, the very element that I think is the first to fade in a long term relationship.

DESIRE is all about transgression. It is all about wanting. It involves a journey to what you do not already own in its entirety. Desire involves novelty, edge, excitement, exploration, either going somewhere new or seeing with new eyes. There is no neediness in desire, only wanting. There is no caretaking in desire. Caretaking is mightily loving, but it is a powerful anti-aphrodisiac. So desire requires some distance, and involves the process of bridging that distance, amid feelings of anticipation, uncertainty and even tension.

So back to maintaining both LOVE and DESIRE in a long term relationship:
Is it possible to want what you already have? For a few years, maybe, but what about for ever? When a couple get married, the vows they declare to each other include a promise ‘to have and to hold’. But where is the part about a mutual obligation to maintain desire for each other? And how does the social institution of marriage, (which to a very large extent was constructed to protect women and raise children in comfort and safety), deal with the fading of desire? If a married man overtly goes out and seeks a mistress, it is considered by wider society as a shameful taboo, even a failure on his part to keep his house in order. He should have chosen a better wife. He’s made his bed, now he should lie in it. But is it not so ironic that sex makes babies, and babies spell erotic disaster in couples? And time spent addressing the daily needs of the family increases familiarity and may sustain love, yet it requires a unique and elusive set of conditions or skill to keep desire burning brightly.

Believe me, toys and lingerie alone amount to a feeble attempt at the answer to this problem, which is deeply psychological. I confess I do not know the answer to this problem. Perhaps there is no one stock answer. What I do know is that I am torn between what society and my own family expects of me, (and my duty to them as a provider and protector of their interests), and my deep human need for desire that I am hard-wired to feel as a man. My genes have designed me to protect and provide, but they have also designed me to spread sperm and impregnate women. I do not want to break up my family just because of this. Because actually I love my family. But I do not want to live out the rest of my days as a eunuch. I need to have sex and desire, and I am spending a lot of time thinking about how I should go about seeking this and obtaining it on terms that suit me, whilst not hurting those I care about.

Does anyone else here have any thoughts / experiences / perspectives on this?

If you haven’t thought about this, you should do, as it affects virtually every man who is in, or desires, a long term relationship.