Going through the sidebar - I'm 3 or 4 books deep and continuing to read. Lifting 3x / week (stronglifts), got my nutrition dialed in and eating well, losing weight. Spending a lot more time outside the house and on my own activities - more time with my kids daily as well.

Wife is resisting my new attitude of DNGAF and being less beta. I'm also STFU a lot more. Still have a ways to go on my SMV but making steady progress. I know that's a big factor in her interest in sex and I know it will get better as my SMV improves but I still want to work on improving my game meanwhile.

Sex is roughly once every week or two on average, pretty vanilla, but I'm initiating more frequently. She mostly declines but I reset each morning and stay positive, don't get butthurt. I also stopped initiating after cuddling - keeping cuddling separate from initiating.

Also doing light kino throughout the day - a light touch or hug when I see her / walk by her / etc. My wife is not very affectionate - and that's not just with me - for example most of the time when she sees/greets her sister they don't even hug.

Okay so the question is on my night time routine...when I get to bed, I've been initiating right away. Last night for example, she started talking, I listened for a minute or so and then when there was a pause I initiated. She turned it down and said some stuff about me asking how she feels first bla bla. We talked for about a minute and then I rolled over and went with my normal routine of listening to some podcast then going to sleep.

I could tell she was feeling distant from me already and the chances were low she would want to have sex, but I'm working on initiating consistently even when I don't think she will accept it.

What I'm wondering is if I should talk to her for 20 minutes or so and then initiate. I know that I'm not supposed to combine cuddling with initiating, so I guess that's why I was hesitant to combine talking + initiating. I do feel like she feels more connected to me when we talk, and I also enjoy talking with her.

We don't really have a dinner time routine where we talk because I'm doing IF, so bed time is basically the first time of the day we have to actually talk to eachother one on one.

I want to avoid a covert contract of expecting sex after talking though - so I need to think of the talking as a separate activity, which I also enjoy and which creates connection between us, and whether or not sex happens after that is unrelated.

I know a lot of people say that you shouldn't initiate at night, but also I've seen a good number of people say it's fine, it's more about going about your regular routine if she declines, which is exactly what I've been doing. I just generally am a lot more in the mood at night, that's when *I* want to initiate.

So...should I go with talking for 20 minutes or so and then making my move?