Last year was a roller coaster ride for me. My mother passed away in February, I got a substantial promotion at work as our division was sold into a JV/startup, and I was selected into a national level high performance squad for my sport which culminated in an end of year tournament where selections for the following year's promotion to higher squads were made (spoiler alert- I choked).

In hindsight, I could have handled any one of those three easily, two of them would have been a challenge but doable, but all three in the same year meant that I was going to drop the ball somewhere. And that somewhere was ultimately at home. My wife and I have three kids, who are now 7, 5 and 2, and prior to last year, and at the time I was reasonably happy with our relationship. We had enough sex, but often on her terms. She could be a bitch at times, but I generally had the stature to call her on this in real time, and get her back on track. In hindsight, probably an 80-20 split on beta-alpha behaviors.

But somewhere around March/April, I passively made the decision that the best way to free my mind and time up to be able to focus on these other three demands (grieving, working, and sporting) was to just turn entirely beta at home. I stopped handling her shit tests, and rather just supplicated to them to keep the peace. I stopped initiating as much, because she was tired and if I left her alone, she'd be better able to go about her day. Basically, I withdrew from the few alpha-ish behaviours I've been able to hold on to, and went full blue to avoid any conflict at home, and let me spend my evenings focussed on either work or sport, under the guise that the distraction would help with the grieving, and that peace and calm at home would allow me to better pursue these goals I had. Meanwhile, my wife starts going through some stressful shit as well- a close friend of hers gets diagnosed with Bowel Cancer (he passed away in January), and a battle with a local council over land access rights to a place she has gone for holidays since she was 2 (still ongoing). I am little to no help on either of these, I do enough to avoid conflict, but am far from the supportive oak that I should be. I also prioritise work and training over pretty much every social invitation I receive, and go far too long between catch ups with good mates who have always been my sounding boards and sources of support.

So the end our year tournament rolls around, and I stumble on the first day, get some bad feedback from the coaches, and just fall apart. Emotionally, I'm a wreck. I put too much effort in and made too many sacrifices for it to go like this. In preparation for the second game day, all I can think about is the sacrifices I've made to get here and perform well, and now that I haven't performed well, what a waste the entire year was. I just didn't have the mental strength to right my ship and stop my hamster running, and by the end of the week I've put in three middling performances and become an afterthought as far as future promotion goes. I'm crushed.

Work, thankfully, has gone along pretty well, with the only real stumbling block being our Financial Controller where we learned the hard way that we shouldn't hire the first person, but hire the right person.

Home life is a mess. I'm sullen and depressed about my sporting failure, but have no-one to talk to about it that gives a damn. It's hard to call mates that you haven't spoken to in months to vent about personal failures, and my wife couldn't care less about trying to emotionally support someone who all but ignored her for much of the last year while she had her own shit going on. Every night, I just go home, try to put on a brave face in front of the kids, and then end up sitting outside in the spa pool alone, staring up at the stars, and thinking about how unhappy I am while she sits inside watching TV.

By December, I've turned into a stereotypical whiny beta POS- why don't we have sex more, why don't you ever suck my cock, why don't you desire or respect me anymore... Waa waa waa. We have a number of big fights where I alternate between self pitying cries for help, and aggressive attacks of her and how she treats me/lives her life. Life sucks, and eventually we agree to see a marriage counselor in the new year.

In the new year, I get onto google, and stumble across the MMSLP website. Get the kindle version, and read it cover to cover in a couple of days. It was a lightbulb moment, and put everything in terms that were not only simple and actionable, but were well aligned with many of my strongest held personal beliefs about the importance of self responsibility. That website leads me to the Talk About Marriage forum, and then here. My wife arranges us to meet with a counselor, but after a few sessions, I pull the pin on it and tell my wife that what the counselor is spouting isn't going to fix our problems. I basically tell her that I realise that I've dropped the ball on our marriage, and that I'm going to fix it, and all she has to do is come along for the ride. I realise now isn't exactly true. I'm going to fix me, and by extension, that may fix the marriage. Either way, I'm going to be better off.

The last two months have been amazing. I started lifting in early March, and have been doing 3-4 SL 5x5 sessions a week since. I'm integrating it into my sport, which is very hard on the legs, so do the full workouts Tuesday and Thursday, a cardio session Wednesday, gameday on Saturday, and an upper body SL lifting session on Sunday (BP, OHP, Row, dips and chins). I've dropped 10 lbs since March (currently 190 lbs and 6 foot with 18% BF- work in progress), which has been helped by tracking nutrition properly for the last month. I've been reading extensively on here and MRP, and am churning through the sidebar of NMMNG, WISNIFG, etc. I've started doing things that I've long wanted to do but have always been too self conscious to do thanks to a long held bad body image- my hamster will always see me as the "husky" teenager I once was. This includes getting a BSC wax (hurt like hell at the time, but just a phenomenal result in terms of look and feel- I could not recommend this more), booking in to get a vasectomy, and stuff as simple as walking around the gym changing room naked.

On the home front, I used to get really stressed out dealing with my kids, but the mindset switch to being a captain has allowed me to much better engage with them, and much more easily lead them into doing what they need to do. My wife went away for a week at the start of this month, and I had been long dreading the week, but with a change of mindset it turned out to be awesome. I had to scale back work hours to do pickups and dropoffs, but it was just a really rewarding week in terms of the discussions and fun I was able to have with them. I've reconnected with friends that I all but ignored last year, and have played more golf in the last two months than the whole of last year. Relationship with the wife is improved too, with a few speedbumps along the way. We're communicating better, and while we've had a couple of arguments, we've actually been able to settle these like adults without one or both of us devolving it into petty mudslinging. Sex is better and more frequent, and like golf, I've had more BJ's in the last two months than the whole of last year, but that was a VERY low bar to get over.

My frame is still weak, my A&A/AM/STFU responses to shit tests is still weak, and my language is still really weak. But I'm working on it. Read, lift, think, apply.

Above all else, I'm really excited about where this is heading. I've already become the best version of myself that I've been in years, and it's only 4 months removed from sitting in a spa pool full of self pity. There is so much more room for growth and betterment. I'm just really fucking excited.