Athol Kay is an innovative thinker, coach and author focusing on marriage and personal growth. Pulling from multiple disciplines, he creates simple, actionable steps to create positive change in your relationship and life.
Core Theory
Athol pulls from five separate veins of knowledge and knits them into a powerful single approach.
The first is from a biological understanding of the three primary biological “love systems” that make up our feelings of attraction, relationship comfort and sexual drive. An example of a book from this genre would be Dr Helen Fischer’s “Why We Love”.
The second is from the dating community about how exactly romantic attraction works, and how to create it. This aligns with the first love system of attraction.
The third is from the traditional marriage advice community emphasizing positive communication skills and expressions of love and commitment. This aligns with the second love system of relationship comfort.
The fourth is from the sexuality community about the actual expressions of sex men and women really enjoy the most, not all of which is exactly politically correct. This aligns with the third love system of sexual drive.
The fifth is an all-purpose general knowledge of health, common sense, basic morality and a holistic approach to life that ties everything together.
Message First, Marketing Second
Athol is fanatically driven to find “the answers” to the underlying reasons why people act as they do in relationships and life. Without understanding why people act as they do, the solutions offered will always be of limited value. That being said, theory must always translate into some kind of effective practical action that works… or it’s all a waste of time. Theory must work in reality.
What Athol teaches is strong enough that it will succeed without some kind of sleazy marketing campaign to bait people into overspending to get his core information. You will never be told a 30-page eBook is “worth $197, but just for today it’s on sale for $79”. Naturally there is marketing as its all part of paying the bills and sticking around long enough to spread the message, but at the end of the day, prices are reasonable, books are on Amazon, you won’t be screwed over.
Some History
Athol started writing about marriage and sexuality on forums in 2009, and then started his Married Man Sex Life (MMSL) blog in January 2010. MMSL has since grown to a number of books, a forum and a life coaching practice. Originally aimed at men fixing sexless marriages, it slowly widened its scope to a co-ed, dynamic approach to relationships and your life as a whole.
The move to opening AtholKay.com is to allow the full scope of Athol’s work of “everything related to marriage and personal growth” to be expressed, and allowing MMSL to revert back to a tighter focus on helping men create change in their sexless marriages. Much of 2015 will however be focused on the final polish to MMSL style material.
Athol and Jennifer
Athol has been married to Jennifer for 20 years. If Athol is the front man, Jennifer is the behind the scenes woman assisting with editing print and video, social media, marketing, coaching coordination and generally making sure Athol pulls away from his computer once in a while. They still have sex nearly every single day.
What is the MAP?
The MAP was originally called the Male Action Plan (2010-2012) but reframed as the Mindful Attraction Plan (2013). Essentially Athol refined the concept from his first book (The Married Man Sex Life Primer) and made it the complete focus of the third book (The Mindful Attraction Plan). The MAP takes all the key points of MMSL and channels them into a coherent plan of action to maximize your attractiveness and sense of self-worth. Then from that stronger personal frame, it allows you to more positively influence people to have better relationships with you.
“Running your MAP” means to start your own personal process of positive and productive self-improvement. Many people start the process of their MAP with a fixed objective they want to meet, i.e. saving their marriage, restarting a sex life, finding a new job and so on. However the further you get into running your MAP, the more you will find the true power in self-development is becoming Outcome Independent and seeing where the MAP takes you. You will become stronger and more capable than you could have ever imagined and far more often than not you reach your relationship goals when you stop worrying about them.