Intro: Girl Situation, perspective sought!

[Parkour]

Any feedback or perspective that the community could provide would be extremely helpful. I sort of poured it all out here:

I'm in my mid 30s, happy/excited with my career, doing decently well in terms of fitness, financials, friends. Relationships are more complicated. I've had anxiety/girl issues since I was young (awkward white knight with poor social skills) that got slightly better because of fundamental improvements in college, but never was a strong point. I came here because I feel like getting good with girls and improving social dynamics in general will have a huge beneficial effect on my life but I'm not currently in a position for straight pickup

My girl situation:
I've been in a 10 year relationship with a woman that has mostly been sexless (avg 1/month with dry-spells). It all started in a 3 month window when I was getting over a prior 3 year relationship (my first real relationship). I very much care about her but it feels more like intimate friends who have known each other a long time and I don't feel like this is on a confident path to marriage. Since I've been reading sites like this, I've been able to improve her attraction to me but that has only slightly built back my attraction to her. I'm doing much better with fundamentals and I'm at least aware of concepts like investment, least-effort, and other power-balancing dynamics (before this site, I often found myself on the passive/wrong end of many power dynamics with strong-minded women and friends). I'm dealing with the sort of guilt type of situation where I'm not sure if I'm doing more harm staying with her (it's super comfortable right now) or breaking up. In the last year, she's indicated she wants kids which I do too but I'm not ready to have them with her. I don't know if she's exactly in physical shape enough to attract a different guy that I think would be good enough for her so I'm sort of working out with her and trying to help her with her fundamentals so she's in better shape whether we stay together or breakup. It's complicated, real relationship sh*t. If she actually gets her attractiveness level sorted out well enough, I might just want to marry her and get on with having kids etc... I'm actually impressed at how well we do get-along and support each other even despite a lack-luster attraction history. She's getting more and more into me as I've sort of worked out my dynamics, fundamentals, and other things I've learned from this site.

A different girl:
I started a successful business with a different girl that I've worked with for roughly seven years. It's going well. I supposed I've been attracted to her since the beginning and that's always factored into the dynamic but she's also been a fairly competent, effective colleague. I've played several orbiter-style roles that are consistent with the nice friend status that I maintained for the first five-ish years: given rides, advice, helped in times of need, etc... but I've reduced that activity more and more as I've realized, I don't need to do these things to bring value to someone's life. Before our business, our careers generally grew well together and we were an effective team as employees so it's been good work-wise all around.
We hooked up once, that she initiated and I sort of resisted, then was into it for a min, then not turned on, then she gave the "this was a mistake" look, and I agreed, we put clothes on, and drove home in silence and the next day I didn't respond to the "i'm sorry" message she gave. This was followed by 6 months of attitude problems and comparing me to her BF at the time that eventually thawed when she broke up with him. The drama and BS of that period were hell and I had a few breaking-down moments in there that may have helped thaw her coldness but killed the attraction. I sort of backed-off the friendship front a bit by not showing up at events/invitations where our other employees weren't there. This has changed but things are mostly neutral. She's on to the next one and I've got slight twinge of jealousy but that's already starting to pass. I've got 100 reasons to not want the girl, and a handful to want her. I can try to reframe, reduce, attraction but when you're viscerally into a girl it's not super easy. The thing is, I wonder that if I wasn't attracted, I might not get along with her as well in business... Any given day we can end up in a moment where she's looking at me with admiration or even attraction, or contempt. I'm somewhat best suited to just don the right armor that will allow me to be positive and social but nonreactive (even dismissive) of BS drama when it comes up. Likewise, I'm trying to train myself to realize that even if she is into me and there is attraction, it isn't likely to end super well and I'd feel like hell if it happened while I'm still with my GF. I think my business relationship/friendship generally goes better when she's into me slightly but not when she's roped me into feeling the same way. I haven't fully mastered my fundamentals, attitudes, etc... to maintain the right dynamic but I'm working toward it.

I have some serious decisions to make: namely:
1.) Under what condition should I end things with my current girlfriend, or should I wait it out and see if it's something that could be great.
2.) Regarding the work girl, do I find a way to reduce/eliminate attraction with her? Is it even possible, and at what cost?
3.) How will I get into the dating scene in my mid 30s if neither of those girls ends up being the go-forward scenario? I'm doing a lot better at improving/morphing existing female dynamics but this is a different level.

Some thoughts on 3: Maybe if I could convert work-girl into a friend (like I really fully accept nothing will ever happen there and don't even foster attraction from her), that would at least give me a female perspective I could lean-on that could help me get over the relationship. I am sort of curious what I'm capable as a single guy. I've really only been single a few months of my adult life and those were all recovery months from the last relationship. Being in my 30s makes things different too. A lot of my friends are married, have kids, or are at least in LTRs so I'd need to expand my social circles to include more single people, hopefully close to my age, who are similarly interested in improving their attraction/pickup abilities. I like to help other people and I tend to "get" concepts fairly well even if I have trouble/anxiety executing them. I've been trying to play out some scenarios in my mind and I'm looking at approach techniques to apply them to business networking, and socializing at local bars just to build the skills and cope with social anxiety.

Thanks for reading this long, drawn-out message. Your feedback is invaluable.
Parkour

 

[Mr.Rob]

Hello Parkour, I know nothing about relationships but based on how you're describing your relationship it sounds like your settling when you know you might deserve more.

I didn't read it word for word so correct me if that last statement was wrong but I don't think you would've wrote the post in the first place if that wasn't the case.

There was a guy that used to frequent the boards here quite a bit by the screen name of Marty that was your age (late 30's) that started learning pickup (by himself, no wingman or anything), busted his ass trying to figure it out, and recently met an awesome girl and is in the best relationship of his life when he was previously settling for less.

Men get better as they age sexually and just need to fix fundamentals and limiting beliefs from what I've gathered.

I actually have a neighbor that's a massive pimp at age 60, dates women that are in their 20's and he's an overweight, red headed guy with a squeaky voice.

It's all possible.

What do you want to know specifically, being that most of us aren't going to read your whole spiel you wrote? You want advice as if you should break up with your girlfriend?

I'm not by any means qualified to give advice on that area however in my life when I get comfortable to the point I'm settling for something, and rationalizing to make it seem not so bad I know I need to axe that out of my life immediately.
You get soft when you get comfortable, that scares me.

Good luck.

Perhaps shorten the topic down if you want more people to respond as well, just a tip.

-Rob

 

[ray_zorse]

I think your outlook would improve a lot were you to discover abundance. It sounds like you've improved your conversation and fundamentals but haven't yet got into the swing of approaching girls. You absolutely need to do this. And as an honest person (GC does not advocate lying) you will need to break up with her first. Improving yourself is a lot more important than maintaining a commitment you're uncertain about.

It also sounds as if you're staying together with your GF partly for her sake. Well I had a similar situation with a friend (not girlfriend) who went crazy and started to think he was Jesus. Although it was difficult to maintain the friendship after that, I tried to do it for his sake to help him get better. This does not work. A friendship or any other relationship has to be mutual to be of benefit to either party!

Another thing is that you cannot take someone else's problems on board and make them your own. For instance your GF's fitness level. She's gonna put in the amount of effort necessary to meet her life goals. And that life goal is not gonna be meeting a new hot BF while you are still around. So unless you twist her arm and make it a condition of the r/ship (a mean thing to do) then you cannot really help her in this.

For these reasons I guess, based on what you've said, I'd recommend that you end the r/ship. Check out Marty's recent LR for the circumstances in which you should decide to "settle for what you've got" haha.

I'm not sure what to do about your business partner. Perhaps just tackle one problem at a time. You may find that once you're regularly pulling hot girls home and she finds out about it, you're good with her too.

cheers, Ray

PS. Just editing to say I'm 38 and there are plenty of dudes on here my/our age. As to social circle you do not need it, in fact it's a disadvantage. Trim down your social circle to only friends who provide you with proven value and do not cut you down, preferably those who do not dominate or tool you and who at least give you some measure of compliance. Look for dates through cold approach not social circle.

 

[Parkour]

I think your outlook would improve a lot were you to discover abundance. It sounds like you've improved your conversation and fundamentals but haven't yet got into the swing of approaching girls. You absolutely need to do this. And as an honest person (GC does not advocate lying) you will need to break up with her first. Improving yourself is a lot more important than maintaining a commitment you're uncertain about.

It also sounds as if you're staying together with your GF partly for her sake. Well I had a similar situation with a friend (not girlfriend) who went crazy and started to think he was Jesus. Although it was difficult to maintain the friendship after that, I tried to do it for his sake to help him get better. This does not work. A friendship or any other relationship has to be mutual to be of benefit to either party!

Another thing is that you cannot take someone else's problems on board and make them your own. For instance your GF's fitness level. She's gonna put in the amount of effort necessary to meet her life goals. And that life goal is not gonna be meeting a new hot BF while you are still around. So unless you twist her arm and make it a condition of the r/ship (a mean thing to do) then you cannot really help her in this.

For these reasons I guess, based on what you've said, I'd recommend that you end the r/ship. Check out Marty's recent LR for the circumstances in which you should decide to "settle for what you've got" haha.

I'm not sure what to do about your business partner. Perhaps just tackle one problem at a time. You may find that once you're regularly pulling hot girls home and she finds out about it, you're good with her too.

cheers, Ray

PS. Just editing to say I'm 38 and there are plenty of dudes on here my/our age. As to social circle you do not need it, in fact it's a disadvantage. Trim down your social circle to only friends who provide you with proven value and do not cut you down, preferably those who do not dominate or tool you and who at least give you some measure of compliance. Look for dates through cold approach not social circle.

Both of the posts are helpful. Change is hard. The social circle/age feedback is clutch though. I'm still in a strange place with my GF relationship improving faster than I was prepared (like is this for real?). I just need to trust in the process of self/social improvement. Abundance is there but I might not "get it" until it's hitting me over the head with opportunity from more positive interactions. We'll see how it goes in the next few months. Thanks again for the perspective! You guys are great.