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Watch Out, Digger's MAPping
Digger
MichiganSilver Member Posts: 54
Got through the first chapters of the MAP. Working my way through the second half currently. I've made lots of gains over the past year in areas 1, 2, & 3. Really need to start working on 4, 5, & 6, as well as bringing the whole picture together. Here's the plan...
1. Health & Fitness
2. Money & Materials
House:
3. Displaying High Value:
4. Building Comfort:
5. Personality and Preferences:
6. Sex:
1. Health & Fitness
- Green: Working out Regularly; 113 push-ups every morning, 30 minutes lifting 2-3 times a week, 30 minutes running 2-3 times a week, 30 minutes Yoga 2-3 times a week.
- Green: Household diet is well planned by wife. Does a great job putting together a weekly meal plan. Meals revolve around protein, veggie, starch. Snacks are healthy. Processed foods kept to a minimum.
- Green: No soda or energy drinks. Drink water at work all day, and lots of it. Coffee is a couple of cups in the morning. Starting drinking some green tea during the day when I want something hot.
- Green: I take my meds and get checked out regularly to manage my allergies/asthma. They have no impact on my life at the moment. Take fish oil supplement, to fill hole in my diet (no nuts and minimal seafood.)
- Yellow: Could be more social. I have a few, close, solid, positive friends, some also have kids. Need to make more arrangements with them.
- Yellow: Get an annual physical and get my cholesterol checked. I crush eggs like it's my full time job. Also, I get $100 bucks back from my insurance.
2. Money & Materials
House:
- Green: No major broken items. I jump on maintenance needs right away.
- Green: Most of our shit is organized into bins in the basement and is easily accessible. Of course we could have less shit... I'm pretty active at policing clutter and can almost climax from throwing things in the trash.
- Yellow: Have several major projects that need to happen. 1. Finish the flooring and trim on the steps. 2. Finish painting the breezeway trim. 3. Install a dishwasher in the kitchen (don't currently have one, it would be a full install.) 4. Gut the bathroom. I'm planning this job, have the funds for it, and have time set aside in December.
- Yellow: Organize the basement clutter not currently in bins.
- Yellow: My truck may need replacement. It runs great and is payed off but is starting to show it's age. Having a full sized would help my business, allow me to install a car seat for kid, could get something newer, and present a more professional image.
- Green: Currently have over $10K in savings. Have automatic deposits set-up for Roth IRA, kid's 529, brokerage account, vacation & emergency savings accounts. Will actively work to maintain this.
- Green: Actively manage using Quicken and have a written budget.
- Yellow: As a household, we need to be better about sticking to written budget. Were not bad, just need to be better.
- Yellow: Would like to increase income by 1. Hiring and an employee for my business and getting more projects completed. 2. Using sub-contractors more in my business to complete more projects. 3. Take control of a rental property and begin to see some passive income. 4. Explore the possibility of more than one rental property.
- Red: Our current rate of spending on clothes.
- Red: Business is currently carrying extra debt. It's being payed off slowly and I'm reluctant to use personal money to cover it right now.
3. Displaying High Value:
- Yellow: Pass more fitness tests. I do an ok job at this, but i've noticed I bounce back and forth. I usually pass a few with some good Alpha. Then the loyalty test start popping up and I throw some bad beta at them. After I DLV for a bit the shit tests come back. I need constancy.
- Yellow: Raise awareness of fitness test in all interactions, not just my relationship. By conscious of dominant and submissive elements in daily life.
- Yellow: Buy some new pants. My jeans are going down hill fast. Replace work pants asap.
- Yellow: Play more bass.
- Yellow: FRAME. Stop thinking what others would want. Ask myself what I want, now!
- Green: Greatly improved my wardrobe in the last year. I dress nicely around the house and put myself together before leaving.
- Green: Continue to put up a very professional front for my business. I do much better than the average builder, carpenter, tradesmen.
4. Building Comfort:
- Red: Give a small gift to my wife once a week. Start a weekly gift list.
- Red: Start passing loyalty tests. Tone down dread game. Give my wife positive feedback to increase her sense of security.
- Red: Start planning real dates. Get us some dopimene and fast. Find some more child sitting options.
- Yellow: Plan a significant family outing once a month.
- Yellow: Find out and apologize for any deep wounds.
- Yellow: More "please" and "thank yous" around the house. Be more gracious about offering and receiving assistance.
- Green: Continue to express affections towards my wife in my own ways, touch & acts of service.
5. Personality and Preferences:
- Red: Organize and establish some long term goals, personal and professional.
- Red: Play more bass. Find people to play music with. Nothing in my life gives me the enjoyment being in a band does.
- Yellow: Worry about my tasks around the house and let the wife worry about hers...even if we have different time tables.
- Yellow: Slow down and be in the moment. Take a break from the to-do list every now and then. Be thankful and appreciate how far you've come.
- Yellow: Read more books. I want to always be in the middle of one book.
- Yellow: Monitor Netflix times. I do enjoying watching new programming to relax. Start going an evening or two without it. Cut down on watching the same shows 100 times over.
- Yellow: Organize more social engagements for my friends and I.
- Yellow: Be aware of nerfing myself. I have opinions and thoughts, and I express them. I'm pretty good about this, but can certainly improve.
- Yellow: Stop using the term "we" when my wife is not present.
- Green: Short-term goals. I can crush a to do list like nobodies business.
6. Sex:
- Red: Stop blaming wife for sex (and other things...) It's your fault, pysch up and MAP on.
- Red: Stop trying to force it. Really try to pay attention to wife being red, yellow, green.
- Yellow: Hard initiations only. Try to be creative.
- Yellow: Push for new boundaries and try to be in the moment.
- Yellow: NO FAP.
- Yellow: Commit yourself to this relationship and to your wife.
- Yellow: Offer her an O, so she doesn't have to ask.
- Green: No Porn.
- Green: Be dominant and express yourself. Vocalize requests.
![[Deleted User]](../../../wb.vanillicon.com/b4dac62ce6cf7f548619a8cb2c4b2047_50.png)
6
Comments
This upcoming week:
This week:
I just read a review of "No More Mr. Nice guy" and was surprised how much it talked about a man's mindset. Seeking validation and serving others particularly stuck out to me. I'm going to get a copy of this book and ideally find some methods to help me get to a better place mentally.
This upcoming week:
I need to write a new to-do list. I'm hitting a new phase at work with a lot of projects that I need to start juggling. A lot of my fall projects around the house have finished up and I need to start moving into some winter ones.
Finished a book a started another. I still need to track down a copy of NMMG.
I just payed off the last of the business' long term debt, I've hired an employee and I'm running several jobs at once. Business income has been steady for several months and Christmas spending isn't ruining our budget, or my enjoyment of, the season. I'm reading books regularly and enjoying them. I'm slowly weeding time wasters out of my life. Things have really started to trend upward since I got on here. Looking forward to another awesome streak.
The second half of December was a little nuts. I remodeled our bathroom for a couple of weeks. We have only one bathroom in our house, so we moved to my in-laws for the time being. I completely gutted the entire room and was working 12+ hours every day trying to put it back together before Christmas. I started on the 14th. On Christmas Eve I cleaned the house back to respectable status and installed a toilet, so mission accomplished. Still picking away at minor projects, but were in the house and life is about 98% back to normal.
During the remodel I did zero other work on anything else, so I've spent the last week getting my life together. First it was just digging out of the hole of day to day stuff, then I moved on to starting up business projects for this month, now I'm back to MAPing and self-improvement.
I need to improve my frame. I'm getting better, but I'm still not living 100% for me without considering everything from some one else's point of view. I need to get a copy of NMMNG. I've said it before, but I need to get to it.
I need to lead my wife into more exercise. I know this helps her mood/depression/anexity. She recently bought a new day planner specifically for the point of working out more. I need to embrace this energy and assist how I can.
I need to be better about leading and scheduling our time. In the last few months I've improved in this area. But I'm usually only 1 step ahead of the game.
Sex was non-existent all month, obviously a lot was happening. I did ok with being OI during the drought, but i'm sure I came off as needy at some point. Sometimes you just want to scream, "Just grab my dick and play with it for 5 minutes, is that so hard!!!"
MAP on...
It was an interesting week in the Digger household:
Event #1:
I ordered a copy of NMMNG from Amazon. The amazon prime account is in my wife's email address so she get sent the shipping notice. She then checked out the book, read what is was about, and read some reviews. (I was well aware that this may happen when I ordered the book. Frankly, I cared more about the free shipping and not wasting my time switching the amazon accounts then I did her finding out.) So when the book arrived I got earful about not liking the title, or what it was about (all sex of course!) and that she's going to call me on any BS from the book. This spiraled downward into a discussion about why can't I be happy, nothing is ever good enough, why do I always try to fix everything, do I hate my wife and want to leave her...yada yada...She didn't break down during this, just stated her feelings clearly.
My response: The book is not about sex, it's about not filtering myself to the outside world and expressing my real desires. And yes, I desire a better sexual relationship with you. I am happy, happier now then I've been in quite some time. I don't see things as broken and in need of fixing. I try to improve upon things because I don't want to settle into complacency. I love you, our kid, and our relationship... I just want them to be the best they can be. (This is paraphrased and I was probably more indirect and said a lot more than I needed to, but I got all of above points clearly stated somewhere along the line.)
Event#2
At the beginning of the year I had a porn relapse. They are few and getting further between. The problem I'm having now is when I do have a relapse it has become a dumping ground of negative emotions. My resentment & bitterness about my lack of an exciting sexual history and sex life compile into a big fucking shame spiral. I'm usually really pissed and disgusted with myself afterwards. This particular episode was the worst I've had in terms of emotions, I was furious at myself. Since it was the very beginning of the year, I started to put a check mark on the calendar everyday I didn't look at porn. This is our family calendar that hangs on the wall of the living room. I knew eventually my wife would ask me what all these damn check marks are for. I wanted accountability.
So fast forward to this week: She asks about the check marks. And I tell her what they are for. I tell her I have a porn addiction, I tell her I've been working to stop using porn, I tell her I've been trying for well over a year and I have my ups and downs. I wasn't victim puking, I just her the situation straight out and that I didn't like porn anymore and don't want to view it anymore. I'm halfway through reading NMMNG and it has talked a lot about being accepted for who you are and not hiding flaws from the world. So when I finally got confronted I just put it out there.
The best/worst part of all of this... The porn conversation happened LITERALLY 3 fucking minutes after I had another relapse, my first since the beginning of the year. While I was looking at porn, my wife was getting ready for work. She was prancing around the house, top-less, in her new sexy underwear, that I had bought her the day before. She wanted to show them to me, but she couldn't find me. As I was in the basement on my computer.... I can't think of a better, more concrete example of how stupid and much of a waste of my life porn is. It's just cracked me up. I'm done with this shit. And I love that my wife knows, I feel so much better about everything.
Event #3
I started thread about communicating sexual expectations. The general response from the board was that I wasn't quite there yet. But, I just needed to say something. I could tell it was time. So we had the following conversation:
"Wife, there need to be more hand-jobs in this relationship."
"Ok."
That was it. We'll see where this goes.
MAP on...
Progress not perfection.
I feel like so many issues I'm currently experiencing in areas 4, 5, & 6 of my MAP are related to nice guy tendencies. A lot of second guessing myself and still viewing sex as the end all, be all of validation. I still think about the approval of others, consider others too much in my decision making, and nerf myself way too much. Generally, not having a strong enough Frame.
Since nearly all of my fitness, material, DHV agenda is green, I'm going to put those on the back burner (while keeping them green of course.) I'm going to re-read NMMNG, take notes on all the breaking free activities, and build a new MAP based around those activities. Rate myself, red, yellow, green on each one and start attacking the high priority ones and give myself some credit for the green ones.
Keep the green side up
My wife also had a negative reaction to my obtaining that book. Funny thing is she didn't blink an eye when MMSL and The Primer showed up!
Put back on course via a 'One Hour Call' with Athol. Seriously worth 10 times the cost, but don't tell him that....
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” - Victor Frankl
Areas I've made improvements over the last few weeks:
- I've started hanging out with my friends more, and I've been the one planning the get together. And we've been doing more constructive activities then having a beer and doing nothing.
- I've been working on removing "weak" language from the way I communicate. Things like "probably," "when you have a chance," "hope," "just," "if..." It is a lot easier to do with emails where I can edit them. Ideally, with continued effort it will creep over into my verbal communication as well.
- I've been working on accepting help and delegating. Having an employee at work has been great practice. I'm making a strong effort with him to be a leader with direction who communicates effectively and not just a boss, who leaves wishy-washy directions.
- Planning family activities. The Kid and I have been going on some wonderful dates lately. I'm still weak on planning date nights with the wife. Her coaching season is coming to an end in the next couple weeks. Her lack of free time has been a factor, but I need to pysch up and figure it out and plan quality dates regardless.
Out of time for now. Keep on Mappin...You are moving forward, progressing. Great!
Put back on course via a 'One Hour Call' with Athol. Seriously worth 10 times the cost, but don't tell him that....
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” - Victor Frankl
How will you live well today?
I don't like the feeling of rushing around from one item to the next. Right now I have too many to-do lists I'm working off of. I really prefer to complete things in a more orderly sequence. As a result I haven't had much time to devote to MAP advancement. I have been building new habits that are much more "me" focused, with the guidance from NMMNG. That is the biggest progress to report.
Some recent highlights:
My biggest Red right now is just getting a handle on the 100 things that need to be done. I just feel so reactive right now and not proactive, I will change that.
March was shot. I had a job that was going to be a couple days end up being a couple of weeks, after some extensive water damage was found. I've been behind schedule ever sense and doing what I can to pull an extra week out of my ass.
April started off well. We took a spring break trip to Disney World and the three of us had a great time. I captained the shit out of it and it went 100% better than are trip last year (also to Disney.) Since then, I've just been busy playing catch-up from vacation and from the log-jam of jobs I have. Mapping has taken a back seat and progress is slow. But, it's in the right direction.
Well on vacation I discovered/realized that I might need to take on something bigger than my MAP right now. Medical... I'm slowing starting to realize that my wife's medical has become my biggest road block. She suffers from anexiety and has tried a couple of different meds, first Lexapro and now, Welbutrain.
The Lexapro killed her sex drive and caused her to gain a bunch of weight. At the same time I was such a bill pill chump that I myself, was still my biggest road block. I picture us running to different races side by side. As I keep mapping, I've passed her and have been building my lead. She switched to Welbutrain to hopefully get rid of some SSRI side-effects. However, it just hasn't managed her anxiety as well as she would like and she can't keep up. Now, I'm turning around and seeing how far behind she is and realizing it's medical. And..."You can't MAP Medical."
So I need to Captain up and take care of this (while being awesome, naturally.)
Any ideas?