In preparation for The Ultimate Open Marriage Manual and Video Course coming out on THIS THURSDAY at 4PM EST May 28th, here is an overview on how to plan out the relationship logistics when you are married to or live with a woman full time. Click here to register for a free online training I’m doing at noon PST on Thursday May 28th where I will cover OLTR Marriage techniques in detail.Â
When most people move in together they just do it. They don’t really sit down and plan out exactly how the relationship will work, how they will integrate into each other’s lives, how they will handle future disagreements, and so forth. At best they might have a quick talk about how the monthly bills are paid and whether or not they’ll ever have kids, but that’s about it.Â
That is one of the many reasons why the divorce rate among people who actually get married is around 76% (and rising). Moving in with a woman/getting married to a woman, if you ever do it (and statistically speaking most of you guys will once you’re well over age 35 or 40 regardless of how you feel about it today), will be one of the most complicated things you will ever do. This is not something you just execute without a lot of prior planning, prior discussions, and setting up logistics. Â
Below is a summarized list of everything you need to establish in an OLTR Marriage before and during the marriage. Doing these things will minimize the odds of problems and drama arising as well as keep your personal levels of freedom and attraction high. I go into all of these things in great detail in The Ultimate Open Marriage Manual and Video Course.Â
1. Home Layout
You can’t just move into a shared home without a plan. If you do this, generally speaking the woman will essentially take over the entire house except for one small corner designated as the man’s tiny area.
Always remember that not having a home layout plan = woman runs 90%+ of the home. Her decorations, her style of furniture, her rules about where to eat or sit, her preferences regarding the kids (if any) or the pets (if any), all of this will (usually) take precedence. Â
This will cause one of two problems. The first one is that you won’t like it (or will eventually grow to not like it if you don’t mind it during the honeymoon phase) and you’ll fight her, causing drama and conflict. Since most women are “nesters,” she’s going to fight back with claws you’ve never seen her use. Have fun with that.Â
The second possible problem is that you’ll just suck it up and take it like a good little beta and slowly build more and more resentment over time. For a few years this will be fine, but one day you’ll explode and do something stupid like get addicted to porn, have sex with one of your female co-workers and get caught, gamble away your retirement in one crazy night in Vegas, or fall in love with a stripper… all of which I have seen quiet, resentful husbands actually do.Â
All of this crap can be easily avoided by laying out who exactly will control which parts of the home and ensuring these regions at least close to 50/50 or better (favoring you).
2. Financial Separation
I already discussed this in the last article. You need to sit down with your girlfriend/wife or future live-in girlfriend or wife and tell her, not ask her, but tell her that you’re both going to have 100% separate finances FOREVER. Then you’ll need to map out a plan with her on how to manage these separate finance pools. Â
Paying the rent, paying the bills, buying groceries, paying for the kids (if there are any or will be), managing investments, resolving debt, and so on, all of these things need to be discussed and plans laid out and mutually agreed upon. Exactly how these things are done are really up to the two of you, and these plans can certainly change down the road if conditions change. The only thing that can’t change is the 100% separation of finances. Just be flexible about how you do it. (Incidentally, the same frame goes for non-monogamy. You are always going to be having sex with other women and that will never change but you’re going to be very flexible in how you go about doing it.)
By the way, if you haven’t moved in with her/married her yet and you discuss things like home layout, separate finances, and so on, and she loses her shit and screams about how she will “never do that” or “never agree to something like that” or how that’s “not a marriage,” then guess what? She’s just shown you she doesn’t qualify for an OLTR Marriage with you. Next her or downgrade her to an MLTR or FB and find a more flexible and chill woman to live with. Â
That’s how many of these discussions can actually be used as secret screening tools. When I first discussed these things with Pink Firefly, I can promise you that I watched her very, very carefully regarding her initial reactions to these concepts. Fortunately, she was more or less cool with pretty much everything from the get-go, and if she wasn’t, I would have dropped the subject immediately, kept her as a low-end MLTR instead, and looked elsewhere for an OLTR. Guys forget that most women won’t qualify for an OLTR. Just because you like her does not mean she qualifies.Â
3. How to Handle Drama and Disagreements
Everyone who lives together will eventually get upset and/or argue about something. It’s unavoidable no matter how prepared, relaxed, or compatible two people are. Instead of doing what most co-habiting couples do and just scream at each other for 40 minutes, you need to lay out a specific procedure with your OLTR that you’ll both follow when you have times when you are upset with each other. Â
Remember, as soon as you move in with a woman you instantly lose your greatest drama management tool, the soft next. This means you need to use other effective drama management tools that work when you actually live with a woman. In the Ultimate Open Marriage Manual and Video Course I cover the live-in replacement for the soft next, the Drama Corrective Procedure, which has been vetted by several marriage therapists. Â
PF and I haven’t argued about anything in over three months. Name one married couple you know who can say the same. During the rare times there are any arguments or anger (always on her side since I never get angry) arguments last just a few minutes and then they’re over. Compare this to when I was in a TMM years ago when I would argue with my wife at the time for anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour like most normal married couples.
Stupid.
4. Sexual Logistics
The odds are high that you won’t be allowed to have sex with your side-FBs in your own home where your wife lives (unless doing threesomes or something like that). That’s fine. It just means you’ll need to plan out exactly where to have sex with these women and configure logistics accordingly, ideally before your wife/girlfriend ever moves in with you.Â
In the Ultimate Open Marriage Manual and Video Course I cover ten different systems I and other open-married men have used to accomplish this with ease. I currently use an office configured like a small apartment, but there are many other options. The point is you need to think this through before executing. I’ve seen a lot of guys move in with their girlfriends or convince their monogamous wives to convert to an open marriage, and then these idiots sit and stare at a wall trying to figure out how to have sex with women on the side when these girls aren’t allowed in the house. Don’t make that mistake.
5. How and When to Attract Side-Women
You need to plan out exactly when you will need to attract new FBs into your life and how you will do this now that you’re a “married” man living full time with a wife or girlfriend. When and how to tell women you’re married, where to meet these women, what to do about sexual logistics, how to handle your wedding ring, all of these issues need to be addressed. Men who live alone don’t have to worry about any of this stuff, but you do. I’ve seen a lot of open-married guys (as well as TMM guys cheating on their wives, though I am against cheating) really screw this stuff up. You must plan.Â
I talk about all of the above topics in great detail in the Ultimate Open Marriage Manual and Video Course, available on May 28th for just four days. Click here to register for a free online training I’m doing at noon PST on Thursday May 28th when we launch the book and the video course where I will cover OLTR Marriage techniques in great detail.Â
I’m surprised the divorce rate, being as high as it is, hasn’t reached an equilibrium point yet. I’d give it another 5-10 years before it gets to around 90-95%, which I see as the equilibrium point, or close to it.
That is a straight up dictatorship/tyranny.
A fun(ny) little test I thought of to help qualify a woman as OLTR material is to give the woman a Ring Pop as a wedding ring. If she reacts negatively to that, instant disqualification as OLTR material. As I don’t plan on marrying due to how resource intensive (in terms of time, money, financial/legal upkeep, physical/emotional energy, loss of complete freedom) marriage is and because I have no need for a relationship, I’ll throw this hypothetical test out there for another one of your readers who wants an OLTR and has the balls to risk losing potential OLTRs to actually give it a go.
This is just my guess, but I don’t think marriage works that way. I think people today are so irrational that if the divorce rate was literally 100% you still wouldn’t see a massive decline in marriages taking place. (A decline, yes, but not a massive one.)
If you combine the delusional people (“This won’t happy to me because I know what I’m doing and she’s a Christian virgin”) with the weak people (“I need to get married because all my friends are getting married and my mom keeps pressuring me”) with the chaotic people (“Pssshhh so what if I get divorced in six or seven years??? So???? What’s the big deal???”) the “market” for marriage will always be strong regardless of the actual divorce rate.
…that most men eventually agree to.
This man/woman stuff is so easy. Enjoy being with her while she’s fun and nice. At some point she will stop being fun/nice. That is the time to move on. You will be amazed at how happy your life becomes when you jettison unhealthy relationships.
It works best if you have more than one woman in your life. Then you move on without a care in the world.
This seems a bit weird. I agree that it’s a crappy model, but if the guys are cheating, it’s not monogamous. It should be something like TCNMM (Traditional Cheating Non Monogamous Marriage).
I know quite a lot of guys who claim to be monogamous — except they don’t count the bimonthly visit to the brothel … the office girl at the Christmas party … the overnight business trip. Crappy sex lives, yes, but not monogamous.
Instead I call it “monogamous” in quotes. You’re pretending to be monogamous but you aren’t. But TMM is TMM regardless of if you’re cheating or not, for these reasons:
1. Most men in TMMs who cheat don’t cheat literally all the time. Sometimes they do, but for many years they don’t, meaning they are indeed monogamous.
2. If they are cheating all the time and the wife knows it, that is not a TMM but an open marriage.
3. I have enough acronyms as it is and it would be even more confusing for the audience if I started adding more in regards to whether or not a guy was cheating in a “monogamous” marriage.
So do I. Very common. Monogamy doesn’t work.
The question is whether or not their wives know. If they don’t, they’re still in a TMM in my book (even though they’re “monogamous”). If they do, they’re in a dysfunctional open marriage and not a TMM.
Caleb,
As a background I have never lived with a woman , as a matter of fact even in college I always opted for a single occupancy no share room.
Why do women end up taking over 90% + of a house in most relationships? Why do they end up wielding so much power over a household ? Is the average man really that whipped
Also what do you mean by women are “nesters” ?
This is so damn fucking true! My parents are exactly like that. My dad cheated from the get-go constantly, even semi-publicly with no shame whatsoever. My mom knew all about it, so do their friends, but she chose to pretend nothing happens for years to protect us (me and my brother, we didn’t know until we became adults). Needless to say, this turns to a lot of dramas down the road when my dad (how dumb and careless he was) had a step-child but chose to lie about it…
Well, women generally CARE about that sort of thing more, care about decorations and furniture and gardens. So it might start off by men saying, well, she can paint the wall any damn color she likes. Fine, pick your battles. But pretty soon, she’ll do something he really doesn’t like. But by that stage, shes decided the home is her territory and will fight claw and tooth.
It’s pretty insane that guys don’t plan this all out before co-habitating.  My guess is it’s partly pussy guys letting their girlfriend’s tell them what to do. People make these big life altering decisions just because “it’s time…we’ve been together for X amount of years…” and never hold each other’s feet to the fire on the tough questions.
1. Because women are emotionally stronger than men, particularly in live-in relationships.
2. Because women care more about these things than men do.
3. Because men let them.
Yes. (Have you ever met any men before?)
They like to “build a nest” and make everything in their home pretty and homey, more so than men (on average).
Exactly.
It’s much easier to set these boundaries and put your foot down about these things as soon as she moves in than it is six months or two years down the road (when she’s already taken over most of the house) which is when most men start bitching about these things.
Yup. Too bad it’s the norm.
It’s that for some men, yes.
For a lot of other men they don’t think it’s a big deal until it’s too late (per the above).
For a lot of other men it’s just pure laziness. Men suddenly get really, REALLY lazy as soon as they’ve made the decision to move in with a woman, particularity Alpha Males and woman-experienced men (former PUAs, etc). The attitude is “I’ve spent the last X years dating and banging women and now I’m tired of all this. Thank goodness I can now just relax and not worry about this part of my life anymore.” It’s the exact wrong attitude to take if you’re going to live full-time with a female and it’s a huge mistake that bites a lot of men in the ass. (If that really is your attitude, you should live completely alone and get 2 FBs on the side.)
Hey Caleb.
Considering that off-topic comments are allowed just wanted to ask you if you plan to do another post on covid, mostly focusing on how totalitarism is on the rise.
Or maybe, debunking that?
Take care
This is spot on!!!
When in fact reality is quite the opposite: the work is just starting. What most experienced Alphas and ex-PUAs forget is that long-term serious relationships are a VERY different game than seduction or less serious types of relationships, even if you are very knowledgeable on those last two.
I don’t live with my OLTR yet, but we are already setting all the boundaries for when this happens (which is probably gonna be in the next 2 years, if everything stays this good).
Being an architect myself sure helps….but you don’t need to be one to stay out of trouble. These are some basic spatial rules every guy should follow when moving in with a woman:
-02 bedrooms (03 is best…even more if any of you has kids);
-02 kitchens (they don’t need to be big, just functional);
-02 separate bathrooms (plus one small one for guests);
-an office just for you, where you can work alone and without interruptions;
Everything else is negotiable – as long as it doesn’t interfere with your routine.
Rgearding women taking 90% of the home:
In my expierence, I was the only income earning. I worked at home, she went to medicine college. At first I considered convenient that she managed all the furniture, decoration, etc, because I like living confortable but I dont like and dont know how to arrange a house.
Red flags:
-She tried to send me to a tiny room or a shack in the backyard (I worked in the living room, as it had been my single/bachelor home, so I had it all for me). She succeded with the tiny room eventually.
-She arranged a whole room for when HER family came to visit.
-Every time I said something was out of my budget (furniure, decoration, parties, etc), she complaint and resented me. I didnt even buy clothes for myself. This worsended 1000% when she got pregnant.
-Eventually, she got a good job and left right away, never EVER sharing one penny from her salary. And I kept all the debts. I managed to keep my car, etc, because somehow I expected all of it and we didnt get married. She always resented me that.
-Bonus red flag: At all times we had a nanny and a housekeeper. She treated them poorly, I treated them as friends (nothing sexual, I worked at home and they were like my coworkers). One day she arrived at the home in the evening and found everything clean and tidy. She said: wow, this is how I want to live. The fact is realized that I paid for all of it and was busting my ass to give HER the life SHE wanted.
Totalitarianism was already on the rise well before COVID-19 in the USA, China, Russia, India, etc, as I clearly stated in some of my YouTube videos last year. It’s a growing trend in larger countries with or without the pandemic.
But yes, I will do another extensive article about the Coronavirus demonstrating what irrationality looks like, showing that all those maniacs in the comments in my last two articles about this, screaming about tanks in the street in America, hospitals all over the country being overwhelmed, millions of people dead, millions of people needing respirators, 30%+ unemployment, and so on, were 100% completely wrong and more rational people like me were right. I can’t wait; it should be a lot of fun.
I will not discuss this topic further in this thread.
Caleb what is your basic strategy when your wife start minor drama? Do you try turn it to joke?
What about terminating the conversation and leaving the house? Then return later like nothing happened. Or is that guy drama?
How long do you think it takes for you to fully recover divorce if that happen in some day?
In the book/course I cover the Drama Corrective Procedure, a specific procedure on how to diffuse drama quickly when you live with a woman and soft nexting isn’t an option. There’s about 10 steps but the very quick summary is that you repeat back to her what she’s angry about, make sure she’s says that’s right, then resolve it right there if you can, and terminate the conversation if she’s still upset/irrational to regroup about it the next day.
If it’s very minor, sure. If it’s not, then no.
If she’s angry to the point of being irrational, yes, you need to very nicely terminate the conversation. You should not have to actually leave the house (and if it’s bad enough where you do, you may have married the wrong person, because that’s pretty serious).
Leaving is the opposite of guy drama. Guy drama is standing there and continuing to argue or lecture her.
Emotionally it takes most men 1-2 years to fully recover from a traditional (monogamous) divorce. It took me just over a year. I’ve seen it take as long as 3-3.5 years for some men though.
That thing of repeating back and confirming that you’ve understood is part of Jordan Patterson’s “listening” chapter, an excellent lesson. He doesn’t claim that it’s original to him, other therapists also recommend it. It’s great for avoiding arguments where two people are both making entirely separate points and not listening to what the other person is saying (most bad arguments are like that).
I mean how long takes to recover from your OLTR marriage if divorce happens?
Financially and sexually it takes zero time to recover, since you lose no money and your sex life continues regardless of the breakup or divorce. That’s the entire point. Emotionally, that really depends on the guy (your personality, length of the marriage, whether or not you have kids with her, etc).
I think that if a guy chooses the OLTR modelo Caleb’s teaching, then he will be aware at all times that relationships doesn’t last, and emotional recovery time should drop drastically.
Hi there,
I am relatively new to this blog. I have lurked a bit around here in the past few months. I’ve read some interesting stuff here. Thanks!
I’ve been in an open relationship for quite a while. I’ll make a few comments.
Regarding 1. I have messed up. I had not plan. Still things are not too bad. She sometimes says that our home is actually mine since I own 80% of it. Probably, this helps. We’ve chosen some of our our stuff together. (Although at some point in time it seemed like we would never agree on anything!) Sure, the pictures of naked girls on the walls are long gone. Nowadays they’re collecting dusk in a corner. What I miss is a place where I can be along without anyone disturbing me. We have two daughters and we live in Paris where population density is high? This does not help.
Regarding 2. I made one big mistake: she owns 20% of our home. Other than that I have handled things almost perfectly. What belongs to me, belongs to me. We’re not married. She’s not going to inherit directly from me if I die, but I have made sure she’ll get a large amount anyway. Of course, when we part I might have to give her some allowance to help her raise our daughters. The only way I could have prevented this is by not having children. Or by having children with a woman who was richer than I am.
Regarding 3. I managed drama very badly for years. I was like one of these guys who don’t know how to fight, yet they enter a cage and fight against an MMA professional. Every single time we had an argument, she would metaphorically beat the crap out of me. And I kept making the same mistake year after year: I would try to show her she was wrong through reason. This was a sure way to infuriate her! I have not suffered any drama in a long while, though. I have finally realized I am not interested in fighting. Thus when offered to enter the cage, I calmly decline with a slight smile on my lips. When her complaint is warranted, which is usually the case these days, I tell her that she is right and I address the complaint as soon as possible. Her last complaint is I have bought quite a large amount of rope I intend to use for rope bondage and I have left it in the middle of our living room. She said this was insensitive of me, since I am not going to use it on her. (Not her thing.) I agreed it was so and said I would move the rope somewhere else. No drama. No shouting. No cries.
Regarding 4. I am one of the idiots! I was once dating a young woman who was a lot of fun. We would usually meet at her place. Now she is gone and logistics are likely to be a problem.
Regarding 5. This is a tough part for me. I am tall, athletic, handsome, smart, quite wealthy… No kidding! But when it comes to attracting women, I just suck. I have tried online dating lately. Many women will ask questions trying to find out whether I am single, whether other people live where I live, what kind of relationship I am looking for and so on. And most of them will not like the answer. Online dating feels like a grind to me. (Although admittedly I am new to it.) Another annoyance is my OLTR does not want to know when I am with another woman and I don’t want to lie. This would probably be manageable if I was away most of the time. Right now this is a problem. And yes, it feels like things would be much easier for me if I lived alone. And since desire has been dwindling between the two of us lately, getting back to living alone is very tempting at times. This would mean we would no longer raise our daughters together, though, which is holding me back.
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This is not unusual. Women usually “beat” live-in boyfriends/husbands in arguments because they’re far more relentless about it. Men just want to get to equilibrium and women don’t mind at all of they’re very unhappy. I explained that in detail here.
Yup. Guy logic is the dumbest way to argue with a woman, yet that’s exactly what most men do.
Good description of your relationship though.
Thanks! This was an entertaining read and it is very true. Women will do extreme things to have their way. During the worst crisis mine punched herself and threatened to take her own life. She had bruises all over her face and body. She also acted in a very aggressive way towards our daughters. As a result I feared for the three of them. This was a very effective tactic. I did submit in the end.
By the way, I find that making me fear for them is a tactic women often use to grab my attention. NRE aside, nothing will make me obsess over a woman like fearing for her. As a result, whenever we are going to part for an extended period, they give some worrying news and then stop all communication. This drives me nuts!
Is this dumb or ignorant? It would be dumb if we were knowledgeable. I think that in most cases we men do not understand women. In that case the problem is ignorance more than stupidity.
It’s ignorant at first when the live-in relationship is newer. Over time it moves from ignorance to laziness (since you keep doing the same damn thing and it never works but you still don’t change your approach).
Okay here’s what I’ve got to say. I don’t know your spiritual orientation or lack there of but personally mine would include European Paganism/Taoism.
Now regarding TMM, yes I agree it does NOT work. Granted I would attribute this primarily due to the fact that we are a fallen people, in the modern world people exist only to serve themselves, there is no unifying ideal, we are bound up in materialism, man exists to serve principles and through serving these principles he begins to embody them and thus he provides a life affirming vision for a woman to serve in him. Man serves god/spirit and woman serves man.
Now in saying this I still think monogamy does NOT work but not for the same reasons as you might think. My reasoning is that monogamy kills love. True love. The kind of divine madness that stikes unexpectadly. Which is, from a practical point of view, one of the most insane things you can do, or that can happen to you. Because in the eyes of a given woman or a given man, an opposite who go to the eyes of everybody else a perfectly plain and ordinary person can appear to be God or Goddess incarnate.
This love fades you cannot expect a single person to love you indefintely it’s unrealisitic.
Marriage has ONE purpose and that purpose is kids. The family structure I believe is crucial to a stable society. Marriage SHOULD be based on the old idea of mutual agreement to cohabitate and raise kids, who are expected at best to be good friends and to allow one another freedom, thus when love strikes it is tolerated. This agreement is one of mutual responsibility and freedom for the purpose of healthy progeny. The vow of marriage is to be always true to one another, to always be truthful and not pretend that your feelings towards one another are other than what they are.
This does NOT mean the partner should go sleep with whom ever he or she pleases for physical pleasure and base hedonism. Man shouldn’t sleep with a woman unless he was happy if that woman ended up being the mother of his kids, if he was proud that such a woman would resemble his future daughter, a woman with some values, NOT a woman that just looks good but lacks inner beauty. This is a bullet to a mans integrity, such a woman does not deserve your sexual attention.
I guess my question is, what are your thoughts on this perspective?