Gentlemen, I'd like to start this, my first post with a big FUCK YOU. To everyone. Fuck you for being so painfully simple, direct and helpful about RP. I've been pouring over the material and I'm not even a week into reading and cannot believe how much my life is like a newbie textbook from MRP. Stupid amounts of 'textbook examples'
Let me start from the breaking point. Last Thursday, I lost my shit. I had a passive aggressive blow out with my wife and it ended with me punching a solid door. Needless to say, the door is great, my hand is not. I am typing very slowly right now because of it. I knew I had to change, I knew I was at fault. After this blow out, I went into a instinctual state of creating dread. I was so goddamned sick of her that I didn't care to see her, talk to her or be anywhere near her. Since then, I have been leaving the house at 5am M-F to run and lift at the gym. I come home to shower, then take off for work. I haven't left the office before 7pm since last Wednesday. The dread kicked in immediately. In the first two days, she was much more 'polite' and friendly. Monday, I found MRP. A friend had mentioned RP a couple years ago. Read a bit, didn't pay much attention. Now that I've been reading (a shit of a lot, and have been reading WISNIFG) already this week she's been putting in a very concerted effort to make dinner, clean the house and do a lot more with the kids. (I'll admit, she is great with the kids, but is terrible with the rest, NEVER cleans up after herself). She has initiated sex perhaps three times in the last six years. In bed last night, she started rubbing my back it all went from there. She even acted like she was enjoying it! What the hell took me so long to find this place? While sitting here at the office tonight reading MRP, she texts me "I suck at cooking everything :(" I replied, "Hmm. I started to read that differently" She replies "lololol" "I'm proud of you for how hard you are working to take care of our family. We all appreciate it and love you very much."
Is it really this easy? Are these creatures really that simple?
Now, onto the difficult part. Owning my shit.
I'm a small business owner, landscape installation. I do very well, making plenty of money, driving fast cars and big trucks. I am the husband in our neighborhood that other wives gossip about "wishing my husband was more like him" because I can fix anything from a car to electronics or anything in the house. Many times have been called a man's man (this part not so much recently). I've always been in decent shape, still quite strong, but I've become a fat ass. Hell, even before we were married, I ran a half-ironman triathlon at 210lbs and I'm only 5'10." I'm the same weight now, without much of any definition or nearly the fitness level. However, I became a beta bitch during the beginning of my six years of marriage. It started with my loss of work a month prior to our wedding. I had a pity party for a while, but not yet being a BB, I went out and busted my ass to paint houses - this was the easiest route for me to make some money and get shit moving again. I hate painting. And the frustration with myself drew me down a deep hole. I made money, not enough for the bs I dealt with, but I didn't have a better choice. Eventually, things changed. I was repairing a leak in our sprinkler system and my wife says, "You're really good at that, why don't you start an irrigation company? I can build a website and setup a online advertising campaign (she worked for an internet marketing company then, and we also have a marketing company together now). Anyway, I did it - knowing nothing about what I was doing but that I know I can fix anything and when you mix a lot of confidence, decent skill and a terrible amount of desperation a lot of good can happen. And it has. In four years we went from a 1 man show (me) to doing over a million annually in revenue. I'm certainly not bragging, just trying to give you all a reference point as one of the posts I read mentioned how the passive aggressive guy looks like he has it all together until one day, BOOM!!! I'm living proof. All this makes my frustration that much worse. I gave into the mainstream shit of 'being a good little bitch' to my wife. Taking care of her demands, failing every shit test, even begging her to not leave me. In order to cope with her shit, and her down right bitch attitude, I started drinking heavily, just so I could come home and sleep at night - and I don't mean a couple, three beers. I'm talking nearly a fifth of whiskey most nights. I've been so sick of myself for so long. Knowing full well it is I who needs to get his shit together. I just needed a breaking point and something to help me put the pieces in my head together. As they say, "the pain of staying the same has to be greater than the pain of change" before we will get off our asses.
It's been a big pit of whiney, bitchy despair, but damn do I feel like a new man already. And damn it I love the straight talk here!