Gents,

I'll keep this long and sweet. Married 5 years with a daughter and when we started I was alpha which attracted the wife. Life caught up to me and stress of work, kids, wife, Navy, etc, and sadly admit now a beta.

My wife and I have had our issues with us reaching out to people outside the relationship. She pushed me away before and I reached out and recently she reached out and had an emotional affair with a married coworker because I suffocated her as she says. I found an "I love you" letter stuffed in her wallet when I was putting her gift card away two days before I left for deployment. I confronted her on it after she spewed a speech trying to spew guilt my way until I told her about the letter I saw. She showed true shame and apologetic emotion.

I left home to be away for 3 months before I get to see my family for XMAS. I decided to reflect and I read through NMMNG and realized I hit so many wickets it was eyeopening and disgusting at the same time.

I was raised solely by my mom and did not have any fatherly figures in my life (NG), my wife was raised by her dad and has the tendency to think like a guy. I was applying NG to a guy mindset and it turned out bad and I am accepting it and moving on as it is a lesson. The paradigm is uncomfortable.

I have admitted to myself that the NG in me was requiring external validation that I was groomed to have in the "Help them, help you" mindset that my mom ingrained in me. Still to this day I am an emotional crutch for her since my dad passed when I was 1.

The issue I am having in applying this is: I am deployed and away from the wife.

I can chat, text, facetime but I do not know how to implement RP because I feel that the digitalsphere takes out the required emotion to convey and remain in the frame. I am lifting and cutting as I get to see the wife in 6 weeks but at the same time any hints on how to follow through with RP to alpha up?