I have been doing amazing stuff applying mrp tactics throughout my wife's pregnancy but these final last couple of days totally overwhelmed me. The baby was born 3 days ago - a very healthy boy. Something about staying up most of the last 4 days and not eating enough and feeling like my wife was throwing more and more shit at me, to include literally throwing a bag of trash at me in the kitchen and slapping me, and basically breaking down at every interaction we have - Her body language is emotionally wild right now, two days post partum, literally insane. My role in these interactions is innocuous to begin, but after being misconstrued 1000 times I've lost my frame and squabbled and DEERed and yelled. Now shes postpartum insane AND I'm the bad guy, on my backfoot, struggling to form and maintain stable thoughts, torn between a sense of indignation and a rational urge to get my shot together.

Right now I went to go stay at a nearby hotel. This is calculated because my being there ensures fights and that's no good for baby with mothers milk forming. I just called and shes calm. Everyone's eating and sleeping fine. I know that I am way out of the zone. I'm out in left field, feeling like I totally failed the last few days. I knew I needed to call in to do a safety check, but I'm aware on the periphery that an ugly attachment and need to get kind words from my wife was mixed in. I tried not to entertain this feeling.

What I realized from going to therapy with my jungian analyst, and really studying NMMNG very carefully is that I have long put my wife on a pedestool, along with other women, work and societal pressures and family obligations- and in the last year I've opened up this great world of selfishness where I dropped personas at work, realized I'm not at my wife's back and call, learned to go to the gym when a boundary was being violated and wait for the inevitable string of fuck you texts followed by the I'm sorry text (which has evolved our relationship because my wife's outbursts are generally no longer rewarded), and be able to talk openly with my brothers and parents in an honest way that seemed to start healing old family wounds.

I'm a recovering nice guy and my wife is a princess accustomed to getting her way. I really feel shitty because the stress of the last few days coupled with the gravity of caring for the new human life making it hard to say fuck this I'm going to the gym, the need to redefine family patterns and schedules, my wife's post partum emotions, and the drain on physiological energy levels has led to a massive regression. I've literally been angrily texting my wife even while knowing with complete certainty that it's a mistake, and allowing myself to be driven to a degree of frustration that my actions were controlled by outside manipulations. I lost the protective integrity of calm, collected, leadership, and my household is a shambles.

Tomorrow morning the only path I have available is to put all the new learned behaviors back into place, dust myself off, accept that I made mistakes, and not dwell on my failure or allow it to perpetuate itself. Maybe not tomorrow or next week or the week after, but I will ensure that this stumble leads to a greater wisdom and a stronger foundation.