I don't have the full story here, but I have read your last few threads OP (e.g., wanting to get your wife to do a threesome, wanting to get her to "open up more" sexually, etc.)
What's the backstory here?
This is what I'm aware of off hand:
- she was the first woman you slept with in your early 20's
- you've been married for 8-9 years, have a daughter not much younger than that
- the past year or so you've been trying to "fix the marriage"
- she's combative
- you're wealth/career has advanced significantly since the time you got married
- she's a stay at home mother
- you're in California (matters for divorce courts)
What I'm missing is when did you start to "get your head straight", as I think you put it?
1, 2, 3 years ago?
How did that come to be?
How did you realize you were "unhappy" and went down the RP pathway?
You may had realized it sooner, but I mean when did it start to occupy a lot of your thought, and a lot of negative + conscious emotions around it (rather than reactive-in-the-moment annoyed about the situation but not having a big picture sense that you do now)
Reason I ask is it sounds like this is a relatively recent (1-3 years) "crisis" for you, and in that time you've done a lot of thinking, a lot of reading/videos/etc. (RP or otherwise), etc.
The context is different, but when I was in my early 20's I went through a phase where the way I thought about things, approached life, etc., rapidly changed, and in that change there were many poor decisions I made in attempt to remedy/relieve/improve my situation.
I was in a survival mode, which isn't great for long-term decision making.
While the experience + growth that stemmed from it has overall improved my general state of mind years later, the poor decisions of the time are something I'm still paying for to some degree 5-10 years after the fact.
Another symptom of this time for me was I became much more selfish for a while, after having been much more passive in life before.
But, I didn't strike a good balance right away, it was too much, which in itself caused new problems. Too much "taking".
It sounds like you might be going through something similar, but in your case, the context is marriage/finances/RP
In any case, I think:
- you have unintentionally poisoned your mind a bit (e.g., become fixated on a perceived problem, which effects your thoughts/emotions/etc., and have potentially made your own situation worse since then as a result),
- are thinking too much in the "extremes" (which I was guilty of in my period of turmoil),
- might be in a more selfish state than your usual,
- you are trying to make up for now-perceived bad decisions of your past
- you are feeling the pressure of California's 10-year-deadline for your marriage-financial coupling (i.e., a bit of "survival mode"), and,
- I suspect you are not going to make great decisions at the moment.
But, you're mind is already made up, as evident in this thread.
And yes, you're the one who has to live with the consequences of it.
One digression, some of the stuff you've posted about marriage in this thread reads as a rationalization.
Comes across as something deeper is happening than you've admitted, perhaps even to yourself.
Food for thought. No specific suggestions in this post.
