I’ve been on vacation but reading to catch up. One recurrent theme I’ve seen over the last month is the problem of the marriage “check book” and keeping it balanced.

One gent told his forlorn story of working his ass off and scrimping and saving to buy a house. He busted his ass, had a huge emotional day, and his wife threw a comfort test at him to remind him of how hard he worked. Another guy goes through something similar, busts his hump to get his family debt free only to be reminded of how it was “a shitty present”.

My own personal story is similar. I’ve been blessed in my life to be mechanical, I was taught by my father to handle my shit, and there’s literally nothing I can’t fix with my hands. I bought our first house, a tiny shit-box in a red-hot market. I spent a month before we moved in removing and replacing every inch of drywall, sanding wood floors, re-carpeting, and making it look better than the day it was built. I stood back when we moved in and in my best Tim Allen said “Oooooog!, I have created!”. I sat back waiting for the blow-job dam to break open.

My wife promptly went and bought curtains, and filled it up. She reminded me that she worked hard too; you know decorating and making sandwiches. Then she asked “when’s the basement going to be done?”. I was like “what in the actual fuck did she just say?”

In my mind, I had just banked like 10 fucking years of good will. She had a brand new house without going in to massive debt. Yet the moment it was done, she was like “Well I did this too. What’s next?” The marriage bank account had just been reset to zero.

I made the critical mistake of assigning a discrete value to the work I had done. My wife, as all women, only assigned one value to it, +1. I made the mistake of doing that for years (lots of covert contract in there by the way), thinking my bank account with her was like +15,000, when the only achievable numbers are +1, 0, -1. Me, remodel the house +1!. Her, decorate the house,+1 her column. Back at zero. Me, get called on a last minute trip, -1. Get $10,000 bonus because of said trip, +1, yeah back to 0…

It was a critical mistake to think I could bank good will all these years. Just like Pauli in Good Fellas, she was there again with her “Fuck you, pay me”. This fact rears its ugly head when you are particularly beta. Because everything you do is easily cancelled out by some little thing she does. Women are transactional and resource seeking. So she gives you starfish sex, and thinks she deserves a new car, because pussy. She makes you a sandwich and thinks she deserves a new purse, because it’s fair. On and on. It may sound exaggerated, but it’s not far from the truth.

I finally realized I would never win this battle. I had given up completely and decided that I had no more fucks to give. I embraced TRP, and made myself the center of the universe. In fact, I went to the bank and closed all accounts. I stopped engaging in covert contracts, and flat out told my wife “I don’t need you. I don’t want someone I’m beholden too.” I stopped putting stuff in the bank. I started to do things because they either needed to be done, or I wanted to do them. I didn’t do them because I thought she would approve. I gave my wife the attitude of “I’m the prize, if you want to come, join me. If not get out of the way.” I flipped the script, so now the ball is always in her court. She knows through subtle and not so subtle ways there’s only one column in the bank account, that’s me. She can choose to make it +1 or not.

Are you still trying to fill the checkbook?