Time to take the plunge. Like many of you, this subreddit and the members of this community have improved my life immensely. I believe that I am now at a point in my personal development where I may be able to give back to the community in some small way.

My background: 30-YO, married, father of three. Wife is SAHM.

Like some of you here, I have always been a natural alpha and enjoyed success with women. I recognized the elements of Game early on in my teenage years and mastered interacting with women on my own without being fully aware of what I was or wasn't doing. A lot of the terms and concepts being thrown around here today had not been well-defined at that point in time. I met my wife during the peak of my single, plate spinning phase.

My wife and I have a natural connection with each other. We are cut from the same cloth: much more alike than different in spirit and demeanor. We are both strong-willed and she exhibits innate alpha social tendencies that match my own. We fell in love easily and, foolishly, had our first child within 10 months of dating. I was 23 when my first child was born, and I had no idea how to be a father or a husband. I floundered for the first three years of our marriage. We had our second child when I was 26. I maintained a self-assured mindset throughout this period of our marriage despite my shortcomings and, although I now laugh at how foolish I was, I recognize that my behavior was the source of the disappointment and resentment she built up toward me because I was a poor husband, an awful provider, and a terrible father.

Despite all of these errors in judgement on my part, we still enjoyed each other's company (when we weren't fighting) and had sex with some regularity ... 2 or 3 times per week. I attribute this to infatuation.

As the years passed, I realized that my behavior during these first formative years of our relationship hurt my wife deeply and she began to develop feelings of insecurity in our relationship. I gradually learned what it meant to be a man in a relationship. Since then, I have worked my ass off to become a wonderful father to our children, I am a high earner for my age group, and I am now working on becoming the best possible version of myself that I can be for myself and also for my wife. I truly believe that she deserves to be with a good man.

Three years ago my income became so significant that I was able to facilitate one of my wife's dreams of being a SAHM. For me, this was also a moment of great significance because my wife had been historically vocal, and I would say envious, of her friends who were able to stay at home with their children. I began to develop insecurities over the fact that my wife seemed to idolize her friends' husbands who were able to bring in enough income to support the entire household. At the time, I didn't realize that her desire is a natural element of female hypergamy. As surely as the sun will rise in the morning, all women will desire the man that they perceive as having the highest value, the man who can "make her dreams come true" financially and emotionally. It just so happens that my wife was either especially poor at refraining from expressing this part of her nature or especially determined to remind me that I was not "that man." Probably the latter.

As you may imagine, my internal feeling of accomplishment at having finally made this "dream come true" for my wife was not shared by her. Promises of sexual paradise disintegrated as if they had never been spoken, and she was immediately onto the next area of our home life and relationship that I wasn't living up to her expectations in. It was at this point in our relationship that I began to harbor resentment for my wife. For those of you who have felt this, there is no lower low than resenting the mother of your children and not understanding what went wrong.

We all know what comes next ... the death spiral. I gradually lost all sense of self-worth and became complicit in my wife's idea of what our relationship and family should be. I resolved to continue to give her more and more in hopes that I would get what I needed in return. Covert contracts abound. Sex becomes a holy carrot that, to this day, is still a weapon of mass destruction in our relationship. Men, do not EVER think that your wife is capable of leading your relationship or your household. It is a fool's honor.

Sex in our relationship is still what I would consider abysmal, maybe twice or three times per month, but I have come to realize that this is not the prize. I am the prize, and I still have a lot of room to improve.

Why I am here today: since immersing myself in this subreddit and the sidebar my life has vastly improved. I am my old self again in so many ways, and I have learned to love who I am as a man. I believe that this is the true foundation of self-improvement. Can you look at yourself in the mirror and like who you see? I wish that I had documented my journey to this point, because there are many lessons that I have learned. I will contribute to this subreddit going forward because I recognize that the field reports in this subreddit are so valuable to beginners and intermediates who are starting or in the early stages of the journey.

Things I am working on:

  • Improving my SMV. This is the job that never ends. I am currently enjoying the challenge of seeing just how high I can raise this value. Objectively, I currently register a full 2 or 3 points above my wife. Within the relationship, I believe that she perceives me as equal or perhaps 1 point higher.

  • Identify and pass comfort tests. I pass shit tests easily and, because this subreddit helped me understand what they are, they have all but disappeared; however, I fail comfort tests regularly. I am struggling with finding the true desire within myself to comfort my wife in spite of the fact that she witholds sex in our relationship. This is a major red flag in my relationship: Sex, or lack thereof, is a weapon that is used against me relentlessly and it kills my desire to comfort her or give her the attention she needs.

  • Gaming my wife. I have become so goddamn lazy with Gaming my wife it is despicable. I read the "ten second kiss" recommendation recently and it really stuck with me because it made me realize that I haven't kissed my wife like that (outside of sex) in forever. Date nights are virtually non-existent. Kino is at an all time low because she immediately equates it with a desire for sex (my fault there, that is how I have conditioned her).

  • Making excuses for not Gaming my wife. No excuses.

Thanks for reading. This is one of the best subreddits I've ever come across. Acta non Verba.