There is a saying in the manosphere that is so notorious that it has been labeled by some as the "kiss of death" to a marriage: ILY, BINILWY. "I Love You, But I'm Not In Love With You." This is usually directed from a woman to a man. It's an expression of her hypergamy and hamster brain at its finest: "I'm not a bad wife. I still love my husband. But someone else is giving me the tingles. That's reasonable, right?" 9 times out of 10, when you hear this phrase, it's over. Only the top men will figure out how to recover from this - and doing everything you can to make her happy isn't the answer because that's what got you into that mess in the first place. But this isn't the only "kiss of death" out there - it's just the only one that gets verbalized.

As many of you know, I see a lot of broken marriages. It's my day job. I've noticed another kiss of death, and this one is usually directed from a man to his wife. It doesn't roll off the tongue as nicely, but here goes: IH, BINHFY. "I'm Horny, But I'm Not Horny For You."

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THE PEOPLE

Women talk. Men do. Women are willing to say ILY, BINILWY. Rarely will a man communicate IH, BINHFY.

For these men, their wife is willing to have sex with him, but has no personal desire. She wears jeans and a t-shirt everyday. She spends all her time on social media, primping her house (because you know it's not really his), or binging Netflix. She may have been attractive at one point, but she no longer feels the need to put in the effort.

The men themselves are boring. They waver between work and vegging out. They don't have a mission. They don't employ kino. They're not hitting the gym. They may have been attractive one point, but he no longer feels the need to put in the effort.

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THE PROBLEM

What's unique here is that these guys have willing wives. How do I know? Because the thought of not having sex with her doesn't cross his mind until she actually offers and he realizes he's not interested. After that it delves deeper to the point where he's not interested in initiating either.

If she's willing, what's the problem? The problem is that he's not attracted to her, which is closely related to the fact that she's not attracted to him. If she was, she'd see his disinterest and try to spark interest again. Married men have standards too. When talking about SMV, most men size up a woman by her looks, but most of us agree that this isn't based on the raw material alone (weight, symmetry, etc.):

• How she dresses. This is a part of her looks. An attractive woman who hides what she's got isn't attractive anymore. To pick on an easy example: have you seen Jennifer Lopez in sweats?. Not bad. But have you seen her in actual sweats?. No thanks. Outfit matters.

• Makeup. This is also part of her looks. We've all seen before/after pics of celebrities without makeup. Dear goodness, most of them look ... normal? Some women can pull off normal and still make me want to screw them. Others can't.

• Posture/Pose. This is all about how she presents her looks. It's the difference between "There she is on her phone again" and "Dang, I gotta get her off that phone again!"

• Seduction/Attitude. This is less about how she looks and more about sexual behavior, speech, mannerisms, etc. When you talk, does the conversation go like this? Or a little more like this?

There are more I could go into (hair style, skin tone, muscle toning, accessories, etc.), but you get the point. Having a hot wife doesn't mean squat if she's only hot on Friday nights when you happen to have a babysitter, and even then only if she feels like it. Yes, I've been there.

Ironically, his non-attraction to her often makes her feel more validated in her sexuality within the marriage, not less. Her hamster spins, "I'm ready and willing. All he's got to do is initiate. He must be the problem, not me. I'm fine." How can she get away with this false-validation? Because he's too big of a pussy to tell her plainly: "Screw off, woman. I don't cum on to just anyone. I have standards," or even, "I'm horny, but I'm not horny for you."

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MISTAKES/SUCCESSES

Now, when a man actually has this conversation with his wife, it rarely goes well. I tried that in the past. My wife is naturally attractive, but doesn't always put in the effort I like to see. Progress is progress, but here are some mistakes from my past.

• "You should wear more tank tops and skirts. I think they look really sexy on you." ... didn't result in her wearing more tank tops and skirts. It's good for her to know what I like, but simply telling her didn't cut it.

• She's riding me, but I'm not even close. I tell her to bite her lip and moan. Mistake. She goes off about how she's not going to fake it, and she already finished and just wanted to be done because she was getting sore. Blah, blah, blah.

• I've also tried outright saying "No" to sex when she initiated, giving a clear cold shoulder and explaining that I'm just not feeling horny toward her in the moment. Huge butthurt moment. No, this did not inspire her to start perking her chest when I walked in the room from then on in order to make me horny.

Want to know what did work?

• Buying her a skirt. She wore it.

• Making her moan in bed, then sticking my dick in her while she was still moaning.

• Initiating sex in a way that made her feel sexy and want to keep feeling that way.

See the difference between how "saying" failed, but "doing" can succeed?

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TEMPORAL HOTNESS

Now I'll note, this is still something of an ongoing struggle with my wife. Every now and then I catch myself thinking, "What's the point of having a hot wife if I don't get to see her being and acting hot?" Then I remember that "hot" is not just about a woman's potential for hotness, but about her actual hotness in the moment.

To that end, my wife was not hot yesterday. There were a couple days last week when she was hot, though. See how that works? Yesterday she was a harpy. There are other days when she's an incubus. Some days she's all business, other days she's all play.

RETENTIVE ATTRACTION

The degree to which I am attracted to my wife isn't temporal, though. Guys seem to have a weird lingering subliminal memory for how we view women. About once every 6 months I'll go on Facebook and see pictures of people from high school. My ONEitis from back then looks fine today, but for some reason I still see her as a goddess. My wife is 11 years older and 10lbs heavier than when we married, with stretch marks from 4 pregnancies, but there's a part of me that still sees the girl I dated when I look at her.

Yet my attraction toward her does waver. Why? Because I see the dissonance between my memory of her hotness and the present reality in front of me, when they're not aligned. But instead of a sharp spike in attraction from day to day, it's more of an average. If she's hot 6 days in a week, I'm still horny for her on the 7th, regardless of how she's wearing her hair, posing her body, or that she's not wearing make-up. But if she's only hot 1 day in a week, suddenly I'm more interested in the girl with the tight midriff walking down the street. Did my wife's facial features change? Did her weight take a massive hike that week? No. But in those times she does make it hard to visualize the hotness my memory wants to recall.

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WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

For guys out there whose wives already make them horny 7 days a week, it doesn't. For that matter, if you're the type of guy who would bang a brick of cheese to get off, it probably doesn't matter for you either.

For those of us who find ourselves sexually disinterested from time to time, acknowledging when you're not horny for your wife makes a difference. For some guys, this is the "kiss of death" in the relationship that leads them toward divorce. They've given up before they even started. However, instead of cutting off hope of things getting better, this recognition can give a guy motivation to take action to improve things - especially if you're the kind of guy whose mission and MAP includes keeping her around.

IMPROVE THE MAN

We talk a lot here about "fixing the man" and general self-improvement. That's great. But in my experience, a guy's self-improvement doesn't automatically make his wife start improving all on its own. It does increase her attraction to him, but if he wants to be more attracted to her, she's got to make some changes too. Her being more attracted to him might give some underlying reason to improve, that reason doesn't manifest into action until there's something prodding the action. Remember, women are told all their lives that they're perfect and any guy would be lucky to have sex with them. If you keep positively reinforcing her through your expression of your sexuality toward her, all she thinks is: "This is awesome! I'm getting a better husband and I don't need to do anything at all, except have sex more often with a more attractive man."

This is one of the greatest shortcomings I see in MRP. I completely get that "you can't change her, only yourself." I also get that self-improvement is foundational. I also get that there aren't to be any covert contracts: she may never actually improve. But none of this is a license to ignore all conversation about how to get her to improve beyond "improve yourself first." What after that? The imbalance of content on MRP in favor of male-improvement leaves the implication that men shouldn't nudge their wives to improve themselves because we're so used to reading, "Just work on yourself and if she responds, great; if not, leave. Abundance, blah, blah, blah." The posts about how to "train up your slut" are either incredibly narrow in focus or otherwise extremely rare. I'm not saying to make this a 50/50 - but 90/10 is better than 99/1. Improving the man is only the starting point.

THEN IMPROVE THE WOMAN

Last week I made this post about "gravitational centers", which tracked a common journey from "ILY, BINILWY" to bliss. Bob had thought "IH, BINHFY" toward his wife before. But Bob's wife didn't improve all on her own. It wasn't some magical thing in her that she suddenly decided to do when she saw him making progress. He was inviting her to improve with him all along the journey.

• "I'm going to the gym. Want to join?"

• "I need a new suit. Want to go shopping together? You can do a fashion show for me in the dressing room."

• "I'm going to cook a new meal. Want to help?"

He led by example. Instead of affirming her, he stretched her.

Most wives don't ever realize "IH, BINHFY" is a thing a guy thinks from time to time. I remember my wife at one point thinking that sex was just about ejaculating and that it didn't matter how she acted, which outfit she wore, etc. "I'm naked. Why aren't you hard yet?" She had to be taught that guys don't get hard on command. I remember a radio host doing a prank call with a woman, sharing embarrassing stories, who commented, "This girl must be hot because apparently she grew up believing guys were always hard. She'd never seen a naked guy in front of her who wasn't!" The sad thing is: in today's culture where just saying "Do you want sex?" actually will make a dozen men nearby hard, there's not a lot of reason for women to believe otherwise.

That's why dread is so powerful. You've got to be high enough quality to make her want to keep you happy. But even after that, you've still got to nudge her to work on herself too. It's not enough to tell or show her what makes you happy: you have to make it an express expectation.

SUGGESTIONS

How do you do that? A few things I've tried to get the conversation rolling:

• Buying clothes that I like to see her in. I actually went to an "adult superstore" recently, for the first time. It wasn't as absurd as my pious sensibilities were expecting. I bought a pair of leggings, looked around for a while at some lingerie and toy options, and left. (Funny: I commented to my wife about how I heard the store was going out of business and she replies: "Good. Less of that kind of sin to worry about." She'll get there).

• I also downloaded a free app that offers sexual ideas and matches them between partners (Kindu, if you're interested). Every now and then she'll do one of their "packs" [of options] and press the "wink" button, which sends me a signal that she wants to try it. This gave her some inspiration to start working with.

• Instead of averting my eyes as soon as my wife sees me glancing at another girl, I let her see me linger. She doesn't like it, but it tells her what catches my attention. It was easy to start with steamy scenes in a show, then move everyday life.

Figure out what works for you. But don't just assume that self-improvement by itself is going to get her on the self-improvement track too. It might give her the energy to change, but you've still got to make clear that you expect her to change.

If you all have any more tips, feel free to share. I'm far from an expert on the how of this, but given how little conversation I see on the subject (other than "improve yourself and see what happens"), I bet there are some good answers to go around.