Sometimes, your wife is just a dud
You may have problems, but that doesn't mean she's salvageable.
Everyone’s best advice boils down to “get in a time machine and don’t do what you did,” or “never make a mistake and everything will be fine.” This is not helpful or even true, but it feels good and smug to say while wrapping ones self in a blanket labeled ‘it won’t happen to me.’ In this example, all that advice accomplishes is convincing a man to continue suffering quietly and get back on the plantation.
There’s real skills to learn, deficiencies to address, and choices about your family that need to be made. There’s where the advice belongs, not in some dear Abby Reddit-tier snark.
This is another interesting case study. A field report spanning a 6 month period. A wife who was pudgy when they met and fat now that they are approaching their 4th year. There’s no large revelation, no big reveal, no singular narrative or lesson to learn. Real life is not like a book, and real life replaces grand narratives with hundreds of small ones. In this case, a husband dealing with a wife gaining weight, a husband who walks on eggshells (type 2 captain) a husband who treats the process as a coping strategy, and the pigeon dances men do to pretend they can control the things they can’t.
Billy 1
I'm still new to RP and have been tearing through the reading. For the last year I have been growing more aware of just how out of whack my marriage has been and just how far I've fallen. Discovering the RP has helped to accelerate my progression as well as provide a road map for self improvement. I need a lot of it.
I have to work on:
General aimlessness
Minor addiction
Finances are in the tank
Limited male friendships
No worthwhile hobbies
There is a lot to do over the next year and I intend to own it and stop making excuses.
General Aimlessness
A major part of that is doing all the required reading and becoming a consistent lifter. I always feel like I'm on my A-game after being in the gym for a few weeks and that is something I've sorely missed over the last year. I'm also horrific at just doing the shit that needs to be get done around the house so I'll be making daily lists and following through on them
Minor Addiction
I say it is minor because I can range from fapping three times a day to going several days without needing anything. Thankfully it has not negatively impacted my work. This has been a struggle of mine for nearly half my life so it is going to be a nasty fight. The fight is made more difficult because I have I wife that is disgustingly overweight and whom I do not enjoy having sex with. And she has a high sex drive which I *have* to meet as part of my husbandly duties.
Finances
Two years ago I made a series of stupid decisions that tanked our finances and put our marriage in a very bad place. I ceded control to the wife and have not looked at them since. Over the last year things have gotten steadily worse and they are once again in the tank. I've had to take a loan out on my 401k to bail us out. I’m using this as leverage to take back control of the finances and I will be involved in them going forward.
Limited Male Friendships
I had a few friends before getting married and those relationships have all but withered away. I'm only able to interact with my last friend through xbox live so it's not the best. My plan is to start exploring several interests of mine and see if I can start building some better relationships that way. I'll be joining a climbing gym shortly, exploring my local comic shops more frequently and begin to connect to others through meetup.
No worthwhile hobbies
Until recently all I did for fun was game, waste time on Reddit and read the occasional book. I've already been making progress in this over the last few months by getting involved with Habitat for Humanity and turning my garage into a workshop where I can make pallet furniture. I've never been able to be handy around the house so I'm starting to fix stuff more as well.
I will be focusing on building and maintaining frame throughout the whole process and re-establishing myself as the leader of the household. I know this won't be an easy process and that I still have a lot to learn going forward. I also know that it will not be a smooth or steady process and that there will be setbacks along the path. I'm not going to be discouraged by those and do at least one good thing for myself everyday.
I’m hoping to look back at this in a month and see some decent improvements across my life.
The first thing I’d tell guys to avoid is what I call new years resolutions. This list is a future list of wants, with only a few examples of SMART goals peppered in. If you read his wish list, it attempts to bury the lede. In this case, he’s shitty with money, and he isn’t attracted to his fat ass wife, and he puts a lot of time into calling his jerk off habits a porn addiction, even though (his words) it doesn’t impact his life, and he jerks off as much as he does because he doesn’t have attraction to his wife.
That’s not addiction, that’s a coping strategy because he’s afraid of hurting her, which you will see as a theme throughout his Male Action Plan (MAP)
This will be a problem. For guys I have seen do their MAP, the more specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound his goals are, the more likely that you’ll see growth in his field reports. They will be more self aware, self reflective, conduct proper OODA loops (observe, orient, decide, act) and generally shorter than the new years resolutions will.
Billy First Month
It's been a rough week here and I've been struggling with some underlying weaknesses that aren't making things easier. Last week involved a lot of fighting. The majority of it was centered around stupid emotional stuff because she would get butthurt over innocuous statements that I'd make.
I mentioned on my previous report that I'd started to journal things and it was mildly therapeutic for me. The therapy value ended Friday morning at 1am when my wife decided to read the thing while I was asleep. Of course this lead to a massive fight that lasted for over two hours and just sucked. I couldn't use any of my normal counters for shit tests so I just had to endure her ranting for a while. I mostly stuck with keeping my mouth shut and just letting her rant. I was able to hold frame and didn't apologize for anything that I had done, only that she'd read it and even then it was on her for reading my personal journal.
I didn't do much hobby wise but that's mainly because of the heat. It's hard to do woodworking in the garage when it's 100 outside. I did however get a table saw and a mitter saw so my project capabilities have expanded immensely. My involvement in habitat is also out of the window for the next month or two because of another issue and I'm none too happy about that either.
I finally got enrolled in a gym and started working out yesterday with the wife. Picked a 30 day beginners program that we can both do together and started on that. The wife refuses to lift weights since she is (her words) fat and hasn't worked out in two years, and wants this to be something we do together. So I’m holding myself back for the time being even though this workout is essentially a warm up. Since part of the goal is to get her involved in the gym as well I'll do this for a month and try to incorporate some lifting into it as well. After the program is over I'll be hitting the iron hard. It's not ideal, I'm not thrilled with it but it's progress and I'll take whatever I can get at this point.
And just yesterday the wife turned in her two weeks notice to the shit show that is her job. Normally I wouldn't care but she doesn't have another job lined up yet. So now I'm being a good little beta bitch and will be working 60 hours a week until she finds something else. The oldest teenager in the house has struck again and now our anniversary trip to Disney World in October has to be scuttled. I'm in the annoying position of being happy for her that she is now out of that hellhole and also being pissed at what she has done to our finances and my time. She is aware of my anger though there is obviously nothing I can do to change the situation. She says she'll Uber and babysit to cover the shortfall but I highly doubt it. She pulled a similar stunt two years ago with another bad job she was stuck in and that was a catastrophe for us as a couple. I'm definitely hoping that history won't repeat itself again.
Finally I've started monk mode. I'm quitting reddit and porn for the next month and will focus completely on self-improvement. I did a week long version of this back in may with some decent results. Hopefully a more focused and sustained one will provide better results.
Overall I've had better weeks but it has been very educational as well. I'll be focusing on self improvement and strengthening my frame a lot in the coming weeks. Definitely need to get a handle on her shit tests though I still struggle with determining what is a shit test and what is an actual issue. Dealing with her quitting will obviously be the biggest issue for the week as well though I should probably make that a full post to get better advice.
I saw this coming, and so can you
I normally read and write about these reports in sequence. I wrote the previous paragraphs in this case study before reading the updates. It’s important because if I am off, it means I’m missing something and need to get back onto the sidebar, but I never do anymore. It’s not that I’m smart, it’s that after going through a few hundred of these they get very predictable.
This is a good thing for you, since
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