About six month since I stumbled on TRP. The first week I tried some of the tactical stuff like saying no to things she easily could manage by herself or head out a while for no particular reason. Just doing bits and pieces taken out of its content and coming from wrong angel (wish to change her, not knowing this is ultimately about me) and with an attitude of frustration/anger off course worked really bad. Since then I've been reading and lifting. Working in stealth-mode. I've made progress with myself but are still in the same situation with my wife. I know the rule of thumb, one month per year which would mean I'm pretty much half way.

Now I've reached a point where I feel my biggest problem is to handle my frustration and bad mood and turn it around to be that cool guy I once were. If I had been in a good place to begin with it might have been easier but as you all understand I really wasn't. Rather I was ready to give up.

Lately I've even found myself get in to an even worse mode when reading about how other are making progress. And this can start the feedback loop from hell because I absolutely understand this is really, really unproductive.

I've come to the conclusion that my focus now needs to be not to slide deeper down into my AFC habits without raising to many alarms.

The topic for now is how to start interacting with my wife in a better way. As I wrote earlier my first wavering attempts really did not fly.

The specific problem I'm contemplating is this. I'm half busy doing something like cooking or cleaning up (now a days no covert contracts, I do them because they need to be done in order for me to feel good in the house) when I'm asked for a favor. A simple question like; -could you do/fix x?

This probably seems laughably lame to most of you, but I can not find a good way out of this. If I let go of everything and immediately fulfill her wish that's a DLV, reinforcing a dynamic I'm seeking to mitigate. If I say no I'm heading in to a conflict I'm still not enough prepared to handle in a good way (all my life I've been brought up to be a nice guy and I still for the most part live in my wife's frame and my own is not strong enough yet). What I usually ends up doing is thinking three-four seconds and saying something like "I've got it" or "I'll handle it".

A few second later the wife does it herself instead. With an attitude that radiates contempt.

The most obvious solution would of course be to own my shit to the degree where this situation would not occur. But a woman looking for something to test about will always find something... so do you have any advice?

I appreciate both direct reflections on my situation and tips about older posts that you who have been here longer than me think I should read.