Ep. #66 Keeping Marriage and Other Very Long Term Relationships Alive with Athol Kay

[Angel Donovan] Athol, it's great to have you on the podcast. I've got a question for you. Where exactly do people think you come from?

[Athol Kay] Mostly, if people are confused, they think I'm from Australia. But I am in fact from New Zealand, the smaller, more attractive country of the two.

I'm born and raised there, until 1994, and then I came to the United States and married my wife, Jennifer. I've been here ever since.

[Angel Donovan] That's a long time, and you haven't at all distorted your accent by the sounds of it.

[Athol Kay] It comes and goes. A lot of it depends who I ended up talking to as well. It softens when I'm here, but if I talk to my mother or my sister, whatever, it sort of tends to lapse back.

[Angel Donovan] You are going to probably hate me for this, but most people seem to think I'm Australian or New Zealand when they meet me.

[Athol Kay] Really? I actually picked a slight sense of English.

[Angel Donovan] There you go! Someone who actually knows! I was born a long time ago in England! Yeah, but for some reason they think I'm out from where you are.

That's a long time, yeah. Great. You must be enjoying it over there in the US.

[Athol Kay] I am, it's actually not wildly different from New Zealand. There are more differences inside the countries than I think across them. I think any of the Western English-speaking countries are all vaguely the same.

It's not like you would move to England, or Australia, or New Zealand, or Canada and be completely lost. There's more differences inside the countries. But yeah, been in Connecticut for nearly twenty years now.

[Angel Donovan] Wow, wow. That's just two lifetimes. So how did you get into this relationship advice stuff? You ended up in Connecticut, and then what happened?

[Athol Kay] We had a normal, regular life. That went on for a very long time, with a very, very happy, content marriage. Then about thirteen or fourteen years into it, I had a vague sense of discontent and started feeling at times attracted to other people.

But at the same time, nothing objectively that I could see that Jennifer was doing was wrong. It wasn't like she was being offensive, or rude, or bitchy. We were still having sex all the time, and it was just sort of weird.

And I actually ended up being on a forum called Talk About Marriage in 2009, and basically just started shuffling through all these stories of, you know, different things happening to different people. And at the same time, I ended up sort of poking around on various pickup artist forums and blogs, and reading up on it.

And to my surprise, I found a lot of the pickup artisty stuff was actually working really well in terms of fixing some of these things in guys' marriages that I was reading on Talk About Marriage.

Just some of the real basic, you know, the guy just got so incredibly basic, couldn't stand up for himself. Applying some of that knowledge seemed to really, really work, and I had this sense of, "I've actually sort of found something here that is important."

I kept saying the same stuff over and over again on the Talk About Marriage forum. At some point it's like, "I need to start my own blog." I got to end up writing a book to sort of codify the information, so that it's out there. And then one thing leads to another, and here I am. It's about near five years later.

[Angel Donovan] So how old are you now? And how long have you been married?

[Athol Kay] I'm 44, and we're coming up to our 20th anniversary, in three months.

[Angel Donovan] Nice, congratulations. Which one's that? That's like bronze or something, right?

[Athol Kay] Um...

[Angel Donovan] You should know! Maybe it's a weird color, like purple or something.

[Athol Kay] Yeah, I don't know. I have no clue.

[Angel Donovan] Alright! Alright, maybe it's something you want to check up before you get there! I just saved your life!

[Athol Kay] Yeah!

[Angel Donovan] How many dates have you had in your life?

[Athol Kay] Oh, dates. Do you mean after we were married, or before, or anyone in general?

[Angel Donovan] I guess before, or however you want to answer it. This is the first time we've had someone who's been married as long as you. It's an exclusive marriage, right?

[Athol Kay] Yeah. In terms of Jennifer and myself, we didn't actually date before we got married at all. We had a somewhat strange arrangement where I had come and worked on a summer camp in 1991, so I was 21, and figured, "Well I am in New Zealand. I just do not want to get involved with anyone else," because then you just start these stupid long-distance relationships that go nowhere.

So I very dutifully avoided emotional entanglements with anyone while I was here, and then nine days before I was due to go back to New Zealand, I met Jennifer. And we hit it off really, really well.

She was initially dating somebody else at that time. I didn't quite like him, I think she looked unhappy with him. She dumped him, and then we basically got to spend the last four days I was in the States hanging out together.

And then I went back to New Zealand. Didn't think much of anything would come of it. She contacted me a couple months later, and then it's like, "Well if we're going to forget how to be together, we've got to be in the same country somehow," so the reality is, if someone's going to switch countries to be with someone, that's a big commitment.

You're not just going to do that at random. So we actually started talking about getting married relatively early in the process. We spent a total of three years doing a combination of long-distance and visit.

[Angel Donovan] How often did you see each other over that time?

[Athol Kay] We visited each other over the Christmas period twice. So I came out here for about seven and a half weeks. She came to New Zealand for three and a half.

[Angel Donovan] So like once per year, in one big chunk?

[Athol Kay] Pretty much.

[Angel Donovan] And then the whole of the rest of the time... For guys out there, if you're doing long-distance relationships, how did you do that? Is that Skype a lot, or what is that?

[Athol Kay] No, this was... You got to remember this was back in the early nineties.

[Angel Donovan] Oh right.

[Athol Kay] There is no Skype. There is no Internet. There is...

[Angel Donovan] Wow.

[Athol Kay] And even then, even then, phone calls were a couple of bucks a minute, so we only did those for sort of critical points. We wrote a crapton of letters to each other, which would then take five to nine days to actually arrive in the mail.

[Angel Donovan] So what kept you focused on this long-distance relationship, which was a lot more complex? Versus saying, "Look, I should just get back to where I am, and make a life here."

[Athol Kay] There was just something about it that I was particularly interested in, and liked. And don't get me wrong, it certainly got harder the longer it went on. I mean the first year was fine, then you get to see each other. Then the second year is much harder.

[Angel Donovan] Did you find you had a lot of arguments, or there was a lot of kind of tension just because of the situation?

[Athol Kay] Not so much arguments with each other, but just frustration with the situation.

[Angel Donovan] That didn't spill out? You got frustration... It could be, like, financial, it could be anything kind of spills into a relationship sometimes.

[Athol Kay] The biggest issue that we had was that our original wedding date was going to be, like, in July or something. June or July, which was then right after she was finishing her senior year of college. And then at some point she just said, "You know, this is all too much."

She's planning the whole wedding, and all this sort of stuff, completely without me. I was incredibly alpha and just said "I have no decisions about this. I'm not there, you do it. I don't like lace, I like the color blue. Otherwise, you know, go for it."

She actually... At one point she said, "You know, it's too much to get it all done," and she wanted to push the wedding back to November, which I said was fine, but I couldn't go any further back than that. Because it's incredibly draining. You can be getting on well, you can like each other, but it's just exhausting.

[Angel Donovan] So was the marriage because of the Visa? It was a pressure thing, or? Because you'd spent ten weeks, eleven weeks, together?

[Athol Kay] Yeah, but you can just do that as a tourist. We got married because we wanted to get married. The Visa was a whole different thing.

[Angel Donovan] So you decided to get married based on the eleven weeks you'd spent together, and the three years of long-distance relationship?

[Athol Kay] Yeah.

[Angel Donovan] Great. And as I understand it, you were virgins when you married, or did I read that wrong?

[Athol Kay] We were technically virgins, in terms of what we'd done.

[Angel Donovan] What does that mean?!

[Athol Kay] We had had intercourse with each other before we got married, basically when I'd come out the final time before we were getting married.

[Angel Donovan] Ah.

[Athol Kay] And before that, we had done... We'd certainly had sex with each other, in terms of handjobs and mutual masturbation, sort of stuff, before then. But yeah, basically...

[Angel Donovan] But you hadn't slept with other people or anything?

[Athol Kay] No.

[Angel Donovan] Okay.

[Athol Kay] Just coming back to that, I mean, that's actually an interesting thing in terms of... It's a positive thing in terms of, in the sense... I mean, we were both quite religious at that point in our lives, and we were kind of breaking the rules to be with each other, doing even what we were doing.

[Angel Donovan] Doesn't everyone break the rules these days, in that respect?

[Athol Kay] Pretty much, pretty much. But this is twenty years ago, so we were kind of breaking the rules then.

[Angel Donovan] sure. I have to keep trying to bring myself back twenty years. Okay, alright.

[Athol Kay] But the benefit in terms of the relationship is that we're still each other's firsts, and that is a positive. I mean we basically comprise each other's sexual history, so it's good in that sense.

[Angel Donovan] Great. And another thing I read was you had sex five thousand times in the first sixteen years.

[Athol Kay] And we basically continued that.

[Angel Donovan] So that's... Just for everyone at home, that's eight times per week, thirty-five times per month... These are all averages.

[Athol Kay] No, I don't think that's quite eight times per week.

[Angel Donovan] Are you sure? I did the sums. 16 times 365... I was interested, you know, so I did the sum! So I'm pretty sure... I'm pretty good at maths, I was in finance before. So I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, and Excel's wrong, but... And that's 1.1 times per day. Anyway that's a lot.

[Athol Kay] It's not quite that much. Basically for us, we've basically had this situation where we got on really, really well at the beginning of our marriage. We basically went at it at a pretty frequent rate, and that just sort of became the normal for us.

So in a sense, when we go to bed, we have almost just a default assumption that we're going to do something sexual with each other, unless there's a reason not to. Like someone is truly exhausted, someone's sick. With Jennifer's second pregnancy, she was basically on bed rest for the last, you know, five months, so we didn't get to do a whole lot of anything then.

But basically we've had this default assumption that we will do something. So it's not even like we've set out, and said, "Okay, well let's rack up some huge number," but it just becomes the normal for us. It becomes the default setting.

And that's actually been really, really helpful for us, because it just assumes we're going to do something, that we will connect, rather than lapsing into some sort of...

[Angel Donovan] Are you both initiating this, or...

[Athol Kay] Primarily it's me, but also, I mean... It's almost like the initiation is going to bed, in the sense that we will plan to do something. In terms of what we do, it's by far me initiating more than her, in terms of that actual, "Let's do this, let's do that."

[Angel Donovan] Great. Alright, well we all know sex is good for relationships, so that must be helping a lot.

[Athol Kay] Yep.

[Angel Donovan] So you're very well known for advice for married men. Do you think marriage is different to any other very long-term relationship?

[Athol Kay] I do. I think it is a higher, more serious degree of commitment, I think. But also, the big thing that's truly different is this is a legal agreement, and the legalities of this situation can be incredibly serious, especially when it comes to splitting up.

Most people get married with very, very little idea of what they're actually agreeing to. I mean, most people get married with the idea of, you know, "This is all for love, and forever," and then, you know, everything is happy families, and the magic is expected to last, and nothing bad is really going to happen.

And you don't actually, necessarily fully know what you agreed to until you're getting to the end of it, which is when the lawyers show up. It's funny, the lawyers show up at the end of this relationship, rather than at the beginning when you're signing the contract.

[Angel Donovan] So, if we walk into a marriage, like, trying to put this legal side of things to the side... If we have a prenup agreement, does that not put a lot of that side of it to the side?

[Athol Kay] It can. It will also depend on which state you're living in and what judge that you get, in terms of, you know, whether they are going to accept it or reject it. In Jennifer and myself's case, we had nothing when we got married, so it wasn't like we had assets beforehand that we would have worried about. But it's absolutely a legal contract.

[Angel Donovan] So this sounds kind of burdensome. I mean, it doesn't sound like a positive thing we're talking about! How is marriage different to long-term relationships? If you could give a quick summary, what's the positives and negatives of it, versus a long-term relationship, in your mind?

[Athol Kay] The positive of a long-term relationship is that if it is truly going bad, you can extract yourself from it typically more easily than if you're married. But that would depend, again, which state you're living in, and whether or not you've hit some magical number of years together that cohabitation law kicks in, and they basically treat you like you're married.

The positives for marriage is, I think it creates that stable financial construct where you can basically work together, pool your resources, pool your talents, and more consciously create a family. So you can have things like that. You can have access to each other's medical records, and if one of you dies, things get transferred far more easily.

That's some of the benefits of it, it's that if you have to look at it as different from the relationship itself, this financial, legal, economic construct that you're putting together. If it works great, it works really, really, really well.

[Angel Donovan] Yeah. Who do you think should, or why should you consider marriage? Say I'm in a pretty long-term relationship. I'm committed to a girl for at least ten years, for the foreseeable future.

[Athol Kay] I think for me, the most important reason to be getting married is one that you actually want to spend your time with this person for a considerable period of time, and, you know, hopefully, the remainder of one of your lives, and that you're consciously thinking about creating a family.

And that's something that just... You're looking to create the financial, stable relationship, family structure, where you can raise kids, and then at some point have grandkids and all that sort of stuff. So I think that's the primary reason, but I'm catching the vibe from you, too, that worry like, "Oh my God, it is a legal agreement. Is this a friendship with responsibilities instead of fun?"

[Angel Donovan] That is a lot of people, a lot of my friends these days... They're not considering marriage. They're quite happy to get into very long-term relationships. Of course, as many people listen to this today, marriage is definitely for them. So I'm just saying, there's all kinds of ways to look at it these days, and there's all sorts of people..

I myself, I have no idea! You know, I'm just like, "Maybe, one day, I'll decide to," but, you know, it's not in the plan. It's nothing I'm really thinking about. So I'm sure there's guys out there who're just...

It's interesting to think, "Should I consider this one day?" If it comes up in a relationship, give it a bit more thought. That's what we like to do here, because there's a lot of decisions made in society by default, because it's what everyone's supposed to do. And I think that's really the worst way to go about it, so a little bit of pre-thought helps.

[Athol Kay] And I think that's how a lot of guys stumble onto the issue of whether they should get married or not. They've started looking for someone's phone number, and then they get the phone number, and then they turn that into a date, and then they turn the date into a couple of dates, and then they turn that into a girlfriend, and then that into a long-term relationship.

And then, they start thinking, "Should I be married? Do we want to be married?" When they've started off just looking for a phone number. "She had symmetrical breasts, and a phone number. It was all green." I think you're right, people start at one end, and then they start thinking about it deep into the situation. I think that's common too.

[Angel Donovan] Do you think there are scenarios where it's better for you? Say if you take the guy, you know, his situation. Do you think there's scenarios, types of guys, or particular situations they are in, where they shouldn't consider marriage? Or it's probably not the best thing for them?

[Athol Kay] In terms of the guy himself, or who he's getting involved with?

[Angel Donovan] I'd like to discuss both. You know, maybe the woman he's interested in getting married with isn't the ideal, or the ideal situation either.

[Athol Kay] I think there's an element of truth to the fact that there seem to be some people who are a little more genetically predisposed to variety and novelty, and shorter-term relationships. And there are some that seem to be a little more predisposed to longer-term, stable relationships.

You can see that in different people, too, where one type of person is far more high-stimulation-seeking, far more, you know, out and about doing stuff, likes doing anything that's potentially fun, new, different, that comes along. Where other people are a lot more stable and relaxed, easy-going, whatever.

I think if you're in the latter group, then marriage probably comes a little more easily, whereas if you're in the former group, it's not quite so easy. I mean it's not impossible, but you'd have to consciously manage, you know, "Where do I get my stimulation from?"

I mean if you're the type of person where you've had sex with someone three or four times and you're like, "Well I'm bored. Where's the next one?" then I think that would sort of suggest that maybe marriage is not for you.

[Angel Donovan] Is that a biological scenario, or is that kind of something learned?

[Athol Kay] I think it's both. There are some people, though, that definitely respond... Have a high degree of craving for variety, and just doing different things with different people.

[Angel Donovan] Yeah. And I think there's a lot you can do in one relationship in terms of variety, and I think a lot of the people in that situation... If it's really just four times... If we're talking, like, maybe a few months, then I think the biological thing can come into it more.

However, if it's really just a few times, I think the problem is really that they're not putting enough effort in to create a great sexual experience for themselves, and the girl at the same time of course. So, that's kind of where I'd stand on that. I don't know if you agree on that.

[Athol Kay] I think you have to look at the pattern of what you do. I think if someone has had... And this applies to both men and women... If someone has had a whole string of very short-term relationships, one-night-stands, I think that's a pattern where you can say, "Okay, this is someone that's not probably orientated towards wanting to be in longer-term relationships."

Where you see someone else that hunts for something that will then turn into a longer-term relationship, so that even if they've had, you know, very short-term relationships, they're still actively hunting for the longer ones.

Then you can see some pattern in the history of longer-term relationships. I think they lean that way more. You can only really look at what they've done, and see if you can pick some sort of pattern from it. But also, it's up to the person, "Am I ready for this? Do I want this? Do I want this super-long-term relationship?"

[Angel Donovan] It sounds like a lot of the things you've come across are on the theme of stability. So if you're someone who wants more stability and structure in your life, marriage is probably going to be a more rewarding scenario, versus someone whose got a life that's changing up a lot. They like the diversity, they like to... It's in their nature to always look for new things.

[Athol Kay] Yeah, no, I think that's case. And it's not that it's the case of married people are tired, reserved and boring, it's that there's a certain need for variety, but they can get that from that one person.

[Angel Donovan] I've a friend and he got married a few years back, and he'd been a guy who dated multiple women for a long, long, long time. And his marriage lasted about a year or two years, which is, you know, it's pretty short. I was even pretty surprised myself, because it was kind of a big deal, him getting married.

But on the other hand, having understood his lifestyle before, I was wondering at the same time, when he got married, whether he was going to be able to break free of that habit, the way that he led his life. And I thought it'd be really tough, and, you know, he didn't make it.

So, I think there's a lot of an experiential thing, as well. It might take... You might be able to make the change if you go through an adjustment period. Like you slow down for a while, have a few shorter relationships, and it kind of enters some kind of transition. If you can see someone who's gone through some kind of transition like that, it's probably got more hope of being sustainable than not.

[Athol Kay] Yeah, I mean some of it's just basic maturity, but I think even then... Even as a young kid you kind of knew who the bad boy types were that weren't going to be able to control theirself throughout the rest of their life, and who were going to be the calmer, more stable ones.

So some of that initial way we are doesn't change all that much. The kids that were basically nicer, you know, at elementary school, grew up to be basically nice people. And the rat bastards you didn't want to hang out with grew up that way too. So I think it's looking for that, and knowing which one you are, and what you best respond to, and what you like. And I think that's part of it.

[Angel Donovan] Alright, so as I'm looking at the kind of area that you've been looking at mostly, it's kind of like ten-year-long relationships, basically marriage and other really long relationships, and where does problems coming up down the road, where it was good to start with... Something happened a few years in, or many years in. Is that the typical scenarios you're looking at all the time?

[Athol Kay] There's a whole lot of that. There's a combination of what we'd call just basic... Especially for the guys... Basic just, sort of, betaization, where they give away all the things that were kind of naturally attractive and alpha about themselves.

[Angel Donovan] Okay let's just define beta and alpha quickly.

[Athol Kay] Okay, I define them almost slightly differently than probably most people that write about this stuff do. To me... Most people see them on a continuum, where there's alpha at one end and beta at the other.

I really see them as two completely separate traits, and I really tie the alpha traits into anything that will generate attraction in the opposite sex, by which I mean, in specific, it's going to trigger some sort of dopamine reaction in them, so that they're going to get that hit of the neurotransmitter dopamine.

That's the whole thing of fun, excitement, that whole thing when you're turned on. You're getting a hit of dopamine any time you're basically excited, really, really engaged, having a great time. So anything alpha is that.

The beta stuff, though, which is basically everything that's going to be about creating relationship comfort. That sense of trust, that sense of intimacy, that sense of, "I'm safe with this person." And that's the hormone oxytocin-based. There are some things that can be both, and some things that are neither.

Most people though, when they start the relationship, they are very, very attractive to their partner. So they're doing things that are alpha. They're looking good, they're dressing good. They're fun to be with, you know, they're having a good time. They're being very, very engaging. They're being flirty. They're doing whatever cool-guy thing they do that attracts your attention.

And along with that they can be somewhat beta at the beginning. They can be connecting, they can be talking to you, buying the flowers, whatever. So they can kind of have both at the beginning, but as they go on in the relationship, they very, very often start giving away a lot of the things that were alpha.

So maybe they're not dressing up so nice, they're kind of dressing down a bit. They're working their job real serious, so there's not much time left over to have fun. They gave up their guy hobby, you know, they don't ride the motorbike anymore. They don't play in their band anymore. They're now sitting at home on Friday nights and doing stuff with the kids, whatever.

So they can give away all their alpha stuff, and at the same time try increasingly hard to increase the beta stuff, seeing almost all the mainstream advice out there is basically, "Be soft, be kind, be sweet, be loving. Be beta."

So they have this situation where, at the beginning, their alpha and beta was kind of balanced, and then ten years later there's almost next to no alpha, a crapton of beta, and then the wife is becoming increasingly disinterested.

[Angel Donovan] Why do you think this happens? Why are they dropping the kind of activities you were talking about that are alpha?

[Athol Kay] Some of it is that there are known drops in testosterone on getting into a long-term relationship, and the birth of the first child. So that kind of takes away some of that edgy, aggressive behavior, which, from a biological point of view kind of makes sense.

They've found their mate, and now they have young, so they don't need to do that risk-taking behavior to try and get one. They now start sort of defending it. So it makes sense in that sense. It's not like the testosterone drops away to nothing either. I mean, we're talking a moderate dip.

[Angel Donovan] Just in terms of modern times, testosterone has been falling. The standard's falling, so certainly with age, as well, there's decline as well, and as you were saying, there's relationship aspects, about being in a relationship, having kids, which influences it also. So all of those tied together.

[Athol Kay] Yeah. So yeah, I mean the testosterone thing, across the whole society, is dropping away. That's huge.

[Angel Donovan] Yeah. I don't know if you've ever had yours testosterone, or anyone's come to you with tested testosterone levels.

[Athol Kay] No, not me. I'm still functional!

[Angel Donovan] Okay!

[Athol Kay] Don't make me go to the doctor! I won't!

[Angel Donovan] Yeah, it's a fun exercise. I've done it, a lot of my buddies have done it. But I think every guy should go and get tested, especially if he's in this situation where he's dropping these kinds of activities, and he's also in not as good a mood as he used to be. He's more depressed, not as driven, and things like that. These are all, you know, indicators of lower testosterone, so it's an important issue you've brought up there.

[Athol Kay] I think part of it is the advice that they're given, is all to be basically, be more beta.

[Angel Donovan] Is this... And they're reading this stuff, or where are they getting this from?

[Athol Kay] I think it's just part of the overall culture. There's not much male-friendly advice that actually explains this. Almost all of it is, you know, how to be more beta. It's not like you're going to turn on the TV and watch Dr. Phil and have him say, "Well you need to go to the gym and ride your motorbike again." It's, "You need to talk. What's wrong with you?! Buy her more flowers."

I think that's part of it. Some of it is just demands on your time. There's only so many hours in the day. If you're working a long job, coming home there's only so much time in the day to get everything done. So I think it creeps up on people, slowly but surely.

The other thing that I see happening... And that's kind of a general sort of background thing, where I see this happening over and over... The other thing that I see happening is some sort of critical moment of neglect, or failure, or whatever, that either goes unrecognized, or unresolved, at some point.

[Angel Donovan] That's interesting. Have you got any examples to help us visualize that a bit more? Scenarios?

[Athol Kay] One of the ones I've seen that's common is some kind of death in someone's family. Like if your grandmother dies, or your mother dies, or whatever, and then you go to the funeral, and your partner doesn't go with you.

[Angel Donovan] Wow.

[Athol Kay] For whatever reason. I bring that one up because I've come across it a number of times, and it could be legitimate reasons of why that was.

[Angel Donovan] So there you're talking about a big break of trust.

[Athol Kay] I guess, yeah. So it's either a break of trust, or it's you've screwed up, or you just don't feel that your partner cares about you, or whatever. They can really sort of slowly dig into the relationship a lot.

[Angel Donovan] So what kind of excuses... Say if the guy's doing this, what kind of things is he saying to himself when he doesn't go the funeral, or whatever big...

[Athol Kay] It was going to cost too much money to get there. I couldn't take the time off work. I had to do this big job thing.

[Angel Donovan] So maybe they just didn't understand how important it was?

[Athol Kay] Basically, or even... I've now seen this happen a number of times. I've ever seen the cases where the wife has said, "It's okay. I will be fine." Like if someone died in a foreign country, she's flying back, she's actually said, "I'll be okay. It is what it is. I know you can't the take time off work," or whatever. But when they actually get there, they lose their shirt.

When that wave of emotion truly hits, and then they feel all alone. So it's never a clear cut, "Oh my God, he was just a jerk. What's wrong with him?" There's always some sort of confusion around that, where there's some sort of miscommunication, or misunderstanding, or whatever.

But then it goes unresolved. It doesn't get talked through. There's no sort of finish to it. Like it started as an issue, and then it just kind of festered.

[Angel Donovan] Right. I've seen this happen in relationships quite a bit. I always think of it as like some kind of break of trust, right? They trust you to care about them, they trust you to look after them, and you do something which shows that you can't be trusted to do that. Whether it's a funeral, or whatever bad thing happens to them, you can't be trusted to do that.

And then it's just... This lack of trust builds, slowly over time, and they start looking at other things, smaller things. It kind of builds, and you're looking at the relationship through a different lens, basically, because you had that little bit of, "Ah, it's not a bulletproof trust we have here." Whereas most relationships, they start, they should start, with this bulletproof trust, "Oh we're really a team here. We're going to look after each other, and it's all good."

[Athol Kay] Yeah. But even then, some of even the worst ones that happen don't necessarily start off with some sort of breach of trust. It's a miscommunication thing.

[Angel Donovan] Yeah.

[Athol Kay] That then becomes an unwitting breach of trust.

[Angel Donovan] Right. It's like an accidental... As you said, it's a miscommunication, yeah. So have you got any interesting scenarios from that to like, make that a bit clearer? Because I know that one comes up too a lot.

[Athol Kay] I can give you the worst one with Jennifer and myself.

[Angel Donovan] Excellent, you must know that one well!

[Athol Kay] I do! It took me ages to even sort of process and write about it. Going back four years ago now... It's almost four years... My father died. And we knew he was going to die, he was basically passing away from cancer. It wasn't unexpected. And he died on a Friday.

I basically got the news from my mother, like ten o'clock in the morning. I basically finished off my shift, told my boss that my father had passed away, and it was the weekend before Thanksgiving, so I got three days bereavement. So I finished off my Friday, and then I was going to have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday off as bereavement leave, and then Thursday, Friday was Thanksgiving.

So I knew I wasn't coming back for, like, over a week. So I told Jennifer, and basically said, "I would be okay being by myself," and what I meant was I would be okay being by myself on the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. What she thought I meant was I wanted to be by myself to sort of take time, process it by myself alone, and grieve, on the Saturday and Sunday. Because I'm actually quite introverted, so I mean it's not bizarre.

She very dutifully gave me lots of space to help me process on the Saturday and Sunday, and shipped the kids around me. And by the time Sunday night was rolling around, I was just beside myself, because I basically felt completely ignored. Here I am, Dad died, wife is ignoring me... I mean, I was just absolutely beside myself by the time Sunday night was rolling round.

I didn't really figure it out until the Monday morning. We didn't figure out there was this miscommunication, and I'm talking about it in very calm, easy terms now. I tried to write about that incident about six or seven times over the first two years, and couldn't even write about it completely until the end of this two years had passed.

[Angel Donovan] So how did you resolve it, or did you? I guess you did.

[Athol Kay] There's an element of, "Time heals all wounds," and there is an element of understanding that in that moment, Jennifer wasn't trying to fuck me over. She was simply trying to do what she thought I wanted her to do.

[Angel Donovan] So is that belief-based, or is that communication? If you know a person, you're just like, "Well, I'm sure that wasn't the intent."

[Athol Kay] There is still some residual sensitivity in terms of it now. In case anyone dies, I'm like, "So what do we do?" You know, do we send flowers, do we see them, do we..." whatever. And I'm certainly more sensitive to that now than I ever was before.

And part of it's understanding that she wasn't trying to be some sort of colossally evil bitch in the moment. That there was... She was genuine.

[Angel Donovan] Yeah. So did you talk to her about it straight away, or how did it go down?

[Athol Kay] Oh I left the house on... Basically went out by myself on Sunday nights, and took space from her, and would be simmering mad, and flipping between being extremely angry and just being extremely upset. And we basically sat together for about two hours on Sunday night. I couldn't even talk to her.

And then, woke up Monday morning a little more open, and then tried to figure out what it was. When I'm really upset, I tend to really just completely shut down, and be non-verbal.

But yeah, no, it was awful, but it's a miscommunication thing that could easily have ended things if we hadn't have forced our way to talking about it at some point in terms of what the actual issue was. So some of the pain still lasted, but at least we understood it wasn't...

[Angel Donovan] So did you bring it up?

[Athol Kay] Oh yeah.

[Angel Donovan] Because some guys, I think, they're out there, and there's this thing about guys who don't want to accept that we have weaknesses, we have vulnerabilities, we get upset sometimes. And something like this kind of delicate situation could really upset us in a big way.

So, how do you bring that up? How did you bring it up? Do you think you brought it up the wrong way, or the right way, or?

[Athol Kay] I think I had just asked her to explain why she had ignored me over that Saturday and Sunday, and her answer was "You told me you wanted space." And then it's at that point we looked at each other, like, "Oh! I guess we don't have telepathy to understand what each other wants." We tend to be very, very much in-sync, and in-tune, and understanding what each other wants, it's just that when there is miscommunication, it can be colossal.

[Angel Donovan] I think it's a good rule of thumb, when there's some kind of misunderstanding, when basically you're upset about something, is to think, "Right, it's time to clarify," because often, so many misunderstandings occur down...

[Athol Kay] Well the thing with miscommunication is that you don't actually get a message that you miscommunicated, because that's what miscommunication means. You think you understand what they wanted, they think you understand what they wanted, and you're not even on the same page. You're completely at odds or whatever, and you don't figure it out that there's a miscommunication until the situation explodes.

[Angel Donovan] Okay, we've looked at two areas, and we looked at the two challenges you've come across for men, which is the slow decline over time... I think we can kind of call that... Of being less alpha, or whatever you want to call it. And then there's this breach of trust.

So these are the two big ones. How do you fix these things? What are the main challenges to fix both of these areas? Obviously with the trust thing, maybe that can be avoided if you know about it beforehand, but saying that's already been done, what can we do about that kind of situation?

[Athol Kay] With the breach of trust, critical moment of neglect, these things, all you can really do is acknowledge them, attempt to apologize for them, and it's a one-time sort of apology. You don't just keep apologizing for years, and years, and years for things you've already apologized for.

Acknowledging them, apologizing for them, and attempting to fix whatever you can of the situation, and go forward, with hopefully not having the same thing happen again. That's about all you can do.

[Angel Donovan] Well say your partner, she's still emotionally upset about this... And I know I've had this situation before... This doesn't really put an end to it. And she's still, you know, you can feel it, or sometimes it'll come up in arguments. It'll keep coming back a bit. What happens there?

[Athol Kay] As long as you've made a genuine apology, and you've attempted to rectify whatever the situation is, that is all you can do. If they are going to continue on being emotional, upset, or whatever, at some point it simply becomes on them to process whatever it is of the situation. The more you try and continue to pacify them, calm them down, appease them, whatever, almost invariably the more justified they feel in continuing to be angry and upset with you.

It can actually become almost a display of weakness to them. But yeah, ultimately though at some point it's on them. You can only fix what you can fix, apologize for what you've done, or could have done, or should have done, or whatever, and then it's up to your partner. At some point, they let it go.

[Angel Donovan] It's like a choice, I think, you have to give them ultimately. It's like you said, "We can either do some work on this, and we can get over it, or we're going to split ways."

I've seen a lot that when this trust gets broken, it can be irreparable in some relationships, and you can work on it for another few years, and it'll be not much fun. There's this point where you have to see, "Is this trust irreparably broken for this person? Are they not going to be able to get over it, or is it worth putting a little bit of effort in here and we could probably get past it?"

[Athol Kay] You can give them some time. I mean, it does depend how bad the thing was that happened. But then if it's something that always is going to keep coming up, and up, and up, and it's nine years later and the time you accidentally side-swiped your car still keeps coming up, and she's still pissed or whatever, then it's like, "You know at some point, enough is enough. Either give it up, or..."

[Angel Donovan] So for some guys out there, say they're married or they're in a very long-term relationship, and they just find the energy's not really there... How do they know if it's an alpha/beta problem as you described it earlier, versus a trust problem? If they're not really... Because some guys are like, "I'm not sure what's going on here."

[Athol Kay] Generally the way I do it, it's starting off beginning to try and fix the alpha stuff, because that's true no matter what. In the case of a guy that's been horribly betaized, I mean if the guy is, say, sixty pounds overweight, and he's just not going to be pulling her attention and attraction, obviously that's something that's got to be fixed.

If then, when you get to the point where he's doing things that are far more alpha, and is doing a whole lot better with it, and there's still some kind of weird blockage thing that he doesn't have any kind of explanation for, then I would really want to know, "Okay, so what is the backstory here of why she's just not responding?"

And sometimes the guy just has no clue, doesn't even know what it was, or has completely minimized it. It's actually really, really interesting sometimes with guys, when they end up talking to their wives finally, and then they lay out some completely different scenario than the guy has laid out.

[Angel Donovan] So it's kind of the last straw. If you think you've got this alpha/beta balance, which we'll talk about a bit more in a minute, and you don't know of any trust issue that it could be, or any of these events that we're talking about that have come up, then is that the point where you say, "Okay, you've got to talk to her about it." Or what do you suggest in that scenario?

[Athol Kay] Well you actually have to find out what it is. So yeah, or she may have already signaled it, and he's not really paying attention to it.

[Angel Donovan] My point is, does he have to sit down and say, "Hey, I'm not sure about you, but I feel like the quality of our relationship has gone down the last year, and I have to say, I don't really know why." Start a conversation, and then say, like, "What do you think? This is what I feel, what do you think?"

[Athol Kay] Well even what I'm finding, coming across guys in coaching, or when talking to them or whatever, you have to almost look back at the whole relationship history, almost like you're analyzing a stock price, or whatever.

Like, "Okay, the stock was really, really high then, and then it kind of drifted down, and then it took that sharp dip five years ago. Then it was kind of stable. And then there was a sharp dip two years ago, and now it's kind of being stable. Okay, so what happened two years ago and five years ago?" There's a lot of that I have to do, in terms of like, "Okay, tell me this whole history. What happened five years ago?"

So, I mean, the guys can be struggling now. Someone comes to me and says, "Yeah, I basically have a sexless marriage," or it's, you know, once a month or whatever, and it used to be really good. It's like, "So when did it stop being good? You know, when did it change?"

[Angel Donovan] Is it sex, or is it something you referred to? Is that one of the most prominent kind of signals?

[Athol Kay] Oh yeah, look, absolutely. Look, any long-term relationship, or marriage, is always a sexual relationship.

[Angel Donovan] I'm just chuckling here. What kind of benchmark should you consider yourself under? If you're having sex eight times a week it's okay I guess, right? But at what kind of level should you be a little bit more worried? Or is it relative? Is it like, if you've always had sex twice per week, and, you know, all of a sudden you're having once per month?

[Athol Kay] It's relative. What I'm most interested in is when it changes. When does it change? If you've been going along and you've been having, say, sex four times a week, and then it suddenly just seems to dip to twice a week, and then once a week. Then, when that is happening, there's the question of, like, "What's up?"

[Angel Donovan] Alright. So look for the changes?

[Athol Kay] Absolutely. Marriage is always a sex relationship. It's either a good one, or an indifferent one, or a bad one, but even if you're in a... If some one guy has been married and has had no sex in the last three years, you should go and have that... Analyze it like it's a sex relationship. Why is it? When did it go wrong?

[Angel Donovan] Okay. I just thought of a couple of situation kind of, like, confounders. Babies, and the pill. If a girl's started to take the pill, or maybe gone off the pill, or she had a baby, I guess a sexual lifestyle can change a lot around those depending on hormonal changes and so on.

[Athol Kay] Absolutely. Birth control, pregnancies, good pregnancies, bad pregnancies, major career changes, moving, death of parents. Basically anything and everything that is a significant difference in your life, or lifestyle, can have some sort of dipping point.

[Angel Donovan] Alright, so it's not all about the guy. I mean, you brought up lots of external factors which could be influencing your marriage.

[Athol Kay] Yeah. Some of them though can be completely external, but you still have to try and pick them when they happen. And unless you're really digging around for when it happened, and why, you can miss it.

For example, there's a lot of women that have come to the forum, or written me, or whatever, who have a Mirena IUD, have had a horrible tanking of their sex life. And then when they take it out, it comes back.

Now I'm not saying every single one of them is awful, but everyone that comes to me with it, almost invariably this is the factor, while the guy is like, "Yeah, I've increased my alpha, I'm working out, I'm making more money," it's still dead, you know, why is...

[Angel Donovan] So there are other external factors you have to be aware of, just in case it actually isn't you in the relationship, it's actually something else. So you have to kind of look out for those variables, in case it's something else you might have to deal with, talk about, basically.

[Athol Kay] Exactly. Any time it changes, you have to look at the sex life as like the canary in the coalmine. If it suddenly dies for no reason, even though you can't see why, you know there's something bad happening. Is it something related to you? Is it job? Is it financial? Is it medication? I mean the number of people that have had their relationship tank while one of their partner went on an anti-depressant, that's huge as well.

So you have to almost look at everything that goes on. It's not just whether you're talking and being alpha or beta or whatever, there's so many different things.

[Angel Donovan] Right. So anyway, let's go back to the alpha, because I wanted to cover the alpha versus beta thing. Because obviously, there's a lot of information out there about being alpha, how to be an alpha, how not to be beta.

But when you're in a relationship, obviously if you follow all of the alpha stuff that's written down, eventually that's not going to work very well for you. So you've got this concept of balancing alpha with beta. How do you explain that, and what's that about?

[Athol Kay] Since I wrote that original book, I've almost moved away slightly from the word "balancing."

[Angel Donovan] Okay, how do you talk about it now? Give us the update.

[Athol Kay] It's still the two separate traits. There's the alpha and the beta. But you almost don't get credit for the beta ones until you have the alpha one in place. You can do a whole ton of beta stuff that is actually good, but that's almost like... You don't get credit for it unless you also have the alpha stuff in place first.

So there is a balance in the sense of if you have some of each you're doing better than missing one of them, but there is an element where it's alpha first, beta second. They're both required, but you don't get credit for the beta unless you have the alpha.

A lot of things I see with guys is... They'll all start correcting this quickly... Is they shotgun huge blasts of beta at the woman endlessly. I mean they compliment her, and they try and spend time with her, and they touch her, and they buy things, and they run around, you know, doing stuff for her in this giant shotgun blast of everything. And the truth is, she mainly wants one or two types of that.

For example, Jennifer. She doesn't mind me buying her flowers, but if I bought them for her every day, she'd be like, "What the... What is this? This is all too much. Don't want."

Whereas things for her like hanging out doing quality time, and touch, she really, really likes. Likewise if I complimented her all day 24/7, eventually she'd be like, "Enough. You know, this is all too much." It's almost like you're trying to serve someone five desserts, when they really only want one, or maybe two.

[Angel Donovan] Well I think most guys can relate to this, if they've ever had a clingy girlfriend. That sounds a little bit like a clingy type of behavior.

[Athol Kay] Yeah. Like, "Enough with the quality time. I need some space." So you have to find out what they truly relate to, in terms of actually what they really enjoy and crave, because they can still crave one, but not some of the other stuff. And some of the other stuff you kind of cut away, so you're not over-supplying stuff they don't actually want.

Because you know, any time someone's doing a whole bunch of stuff for you, completely orbiting you, you almost start feeling obligated that you should be doing something in return to try and even up the score between the two of you. And most women experience that as just kind of creepy, and all too much, and it actually makes them less attracted.

In terms of the alpha stuff, it's really just sort of basic relationship leadership, and just sort of benign dominance. It's coming up with a plan of something to do, "Let's go do this, then let's go here," and not endlessly folding any time there's some minor disagreement or minor testing. I think that's the biggest thing for the alpha stuff.

And along with stuff, like, you know, fitness, and dressing, and having your sense in terms of what you want to do with your life, and doing the stuff that you actually want to do, rather than creating in your own minds some sort of...

Putting you in second place to her, or third place after the kids, or fourth place after her, the kids, and her mother, or fifth after all of those and her friends. Where you actually have your own sense of self-esteem, and doing what you want to do.

[Angel Donovan] Yeah. Yeah, that's good.

[Athol Kay] It's a balancing act of sorts, but you really do have to have the alpha in place before you get the credit for the beta.

[Angel Donovan] Yeah, and I think that an important thing you brought up is, like, in terms of these beta behaviors, I mean it sounds like you're just putting everything that's kind of nice, or could be termed loving and so on, caring, these kind of things... And I think one of the things you brought up is that women can like different approaches with that as well.

So some of them maybe don't like you verbally complimenting them all the time, or they have specific areas where that's not really what they need. They prefer something else. Maybe they just like the touch.

So I think that's an important aspect you brought up there, which allows you to fit. And some of this is kind of natural, I think. You know, it's like when you get together with someone, you have a fit with them because you tend to be physical, and she likes physical. So there's different aspects like that which tend to fit together, and they can be warning signs early on in the relationship also, if you're not fitting.

If you turn to put your arm around her all the time and she's like, "You know, that's a bit too much for me," then long-term, that's probably going to be an issue, if that's just something you kind of like to do, you tend to do.

[Athol Kay] Well, I mean, everyone likes to be loved, but we also tend to express that sense of love in the way that we would also like to receive it back. So it's really common where guys are really, really into physical touch, and that's how they want to be loved. They would love, you know, her to touch them all the time, say.

But then if they do the same to her, she might like it to an extent, but maybe some other stuff is what really connects, "Why don't you ever say something nice about me?"

"Well I'm touching you all day, so why don't you feel loved?"

So I think that's really common too. And the biggest problem I see, too, with guys, is they learn this stuff for the first time, especially if they've been really, really heavily betaized in their marriage or whatever. They tend to go the complete opposite direction and really, really cut away almost all the beta, and then try and go just full-on alpha 24/7.

And that works great. It works really, really well for about three months, three to six months at the tops, and then eventually they do something that's not very kind, and then they assume that the wife is then pushing back on it.

You know, she's testing him, when she complains he wasn't very nice to her, whatever. And then it can really intensify, and that can even turn into some sort of critical moment of neglect, or breach of trust, or whatever.

So there is that balancing act of sorts you do need to be aware of. But yeah, I've seen the full-on alpha recovery thing work really well for guys, and then they screw it up, because they miss the beta. You do need both.

[Angel Donovan] Yeah. It's great to hear that. So, winding up here, a couple of questions I like to ask everyone. And the first one is, who besides yourself would you recommend for high quality advice in this area of dating, sex and relationships? So marriages, long-term relationships?

[Athol Kay] I quite like Michelle Weiner-Davis's stuff on boundaries and divorce busting. Her stuff is really, really good. I also like Dr. Bob Glover's stuff on No More Mr. Nice Guy. Yeah very, very much into why that nice guy role can be so toxic. So I think those are really good.

Underpinning a lot of what I read and write about in terms of, "Okay, the alpha equals dopamine, and the beta equals oxytocin," is Dr. Helen Fisher's work. She doesn't quite make that jump though, she just talks about it from the pure biological sort of point of view. Some of her stuff is interesting too. I have this kind of interesting hybrid role.

[Angel Donovan] Yeah. Yeah, I've seen Helen Fisher. She's on my radar as well, so I've been looking to interview her on the show. I think she's got some great stuff also, so that's cool to hear.

So what would be your top three recommendations to help men get results as fast as possible in this area of their lives?

[Athol Kay] It's almost sort of breaking it down then into Dr. Helen Fisher's Three Love Systems sort of stuff. The first one is if they're not physically fit, they've got to get to the gym and get that under control, because that's really what's underpinning a lot of the wife's attraction. And a lot of the things that we can teach them that just simply has no effectiveness at all when they're overweight and unfit, suddenly seems to work when they're in shape.

The second thing is if your relationship's not going well, and it's anything to do with your attractiveness, you've got to stop bitching about it, and stop complaining that your partner's not responding to you the way you would like them to respond to you. Because ultimately, their attraction to you is not controllable by them, but you being attractive is controllable by you.

So any time you start bitching about your partner not responding the way you want, and it's something you can change about you, then the onus is on you to change it. And often, stopping the complaining, the nagging, the whining, the, you know, "Where are my blow jobs? How come you won't do those? When are you going to initiate?" Just stopping the endless yapping and nagging. Just stopping it can just decrease this negativity a whole lot, and then you get to work on you, and change the things you need to do.

The third thing is, especially in a long-term relationship, you have to see that for the most part, most people get into the relationship because both parties are attracted and interested in each other, and there's a predisposition to actually want this relationship to work. And especially by the time you're married, and you have kids, and finances, and careers, there's so many sunk costs into the relationship, your partner really, really wants it to work.

Most people do not want to get divorced at all. They feel driven to it. So you have to accept that when the relationship is starting to break down, there's very often some underlying structural things that will need to change, and some of those things are going to take time. I think that some of the things that have taken years to develop are not going to take days to resolve. Some of them are really going to take a couple of months, or years, to change.

I mean for some people, truly working on the attractiveness means changing their career, getting a better job, losing a crapton of weight. For some people, going back to school. Really, really big structural questions. So, I mean, there's things you can do in the short-term, but some of it is a long-term fix. So are my three things there? I just rattled them out, didn't I!

[Angel Donovan] Thank you! Thank you very much man, they are great, great, great suggestions there. And thank you for coming on the show, not only because you've got some great advice here, but also because you're the first New Zealander on Dating Skills Podcast!

[Athol Kay] Oh really? Thank you!