First time poster to askMRP, looking for blunt feedback in any form.

TL;DR: Woman reacts to depressed, emotional husband in typical AWALT manner. Need to fix.

Background: M34 F32, married 1 year and together 4. No kids yet, unlikely in the next 1-2 years. Both busy professionals, good income, affluent lifestyle, etc. Relationship is the typical story: starts out with a bang, DB sets in, BP bitching and whining gets me nowhere, I find MRP and here we are. Been RP aware for the past year but things have not started clicking until recently.

Problem: Working slowly through the sidebar I’ve been able to start recognizing patterns in behavior with myself and the wife, although the consistency in implementing the necessary changes with myself has been difficult. I’ve had a mild to severe depression with associated anxiety for the past decade following the abrupt death of my mother and never dealt with it. I essentially wasted the better part of my 20s doing nothing besides work (career trajectory very good) and some exercise, but outside of those two things I had zero social life and zero extracurricular activities. I’d come home and sit on the couch for hours until bedtime; enter porn addiction and general uselessness.

2 year LTR prior to wife was dysfunctional but I didn’t connected the dots on the problem being ME; wife is an upgrade on many levels however some of the same patterns are repeating and now I’m fully aware I own my situation and am the only one to change it. Wife has reacted to me being a depressive, whiny, emotional manchild by going headlong into her job and somewhat ignoring me. The living situation can be described as “affectionate roommates”. She had a fucked up childhood, similar to some folks wives on a recent post in MRP, she compensates by focusing entirely on her work and career, hence her ignoring me instead of engaging with overt bitchiness. Essentially: If she’s not getting a strong, emotionally stable mate she withdraws and works. This seems to be common.

She’s dropped hints over time about my baseline condition such as “You’re depressed often”, “I can’t give you the emotional support you need”, “I really don’t like these conversations” in response to some emotional blathering on my part, “You need to go do things you like”, “can you please decide for me” on some nominal decision, etc. Essentially, she’s out rightly saying she wants me to be a strong, stable, Oak-type masculine figure in her life despite her so-called feminist and woman empowerment political leanings. Funny how that works.

Started seeing a therapist to unpack the emotional baggage and get on a long term trajectory to emotional stability. Not an RP or NMMNG aligned therapist necessarily but there are enough apparent parallels between his advice and MRP to compliment eachother. Saw a doctor for the first time in 6 years today and got some bloodwork done to rule out any major medical issue, although I’ll bet a lot of money I have low T. Factor in mild ED and crappy EQ and you get the idea.

Sleep is shit and despite trying to improve sleep hygiene it’s still inconsistent. Sleep seems to be the key; everything else falls apart with garbage sleep and the negative feedback loop takes hold. Even if I can get a few good nights my overall durability sucks once stressors return and sleep goes back to shit. Working through the Robb Wolf template of sleep-nutrition-exercise-sun exposure-community, but again: sleep is the key.

Things recently improved: Social life without her, athletics/exercise, doing things I enjoy, getting out of the house, being flirty with women overall, general awareness of my own emotional state, trying to STFU about my problems.

Things to work on: Getting back to lifting heavy, leaning out a little, building frame, building identity overall, DGAF and not reacting to her, stopping validation seeking in any form, leadership and taking command of the relationship, gaming wife, initiating sex.

Sidebar: NMNNG, MAP, MMSLP, Pook (underrated IMO), SLSM (made everything finally click). Halfway through SGM and WSM. Put off WISNIFG due to length and density but that will change immediately.

Again, looking for feedback of any kind, any experience with MRP and depression, tips, tricks, any other resources available.

A huge thanks to the community here also; I honestly wouldn’t have moved myself off center on self-improvement unless I found the MRP template and the case studies of every guy’s journey on this path. I have nothing but upside coming here.

edit: formatting