I'd like some advice about trying to recover a relationship that is starting to fail.
Backstory: I was my girlfriend of 3 years' first love. When our relationship started, I was quite attractive and she treated me really well. She cooked, cleaned, was sexually available whenever I wanted. Adequately pretty and a great personality. She respected me quite a lot. I was satisfied with that, so I stopped focusing on getting girls and put 100% of my effort into my work. For a time, it worked great - my career took off, and I got promoted twice to a very senior, well paying position for my age at a prestigious company. I threw myself into my work, traveled to 75 countries (my goal is to visit all ~200 in the next few years), got a nice apartment, saved a ton of money, and generally set myself up with a very comfortable life.
However, the past year or so has been really tough. I injured my knee, which has been causing pain and making it hard for me to stay active. I've put on a lot of weight, and gotten a bit depressed about it. I made a few bad decisions (related to my substandard work ethic), which also caused me to lose some of my girlfriend's respect. My desire to be frugal means that I've had to drop a few of my hobbies, and because I can't afford a car, I've been restricted to doing activities near my apartment. On top of that, i stopped approaching girls,so I've lost my abundance. A few weeks ago, I realized that my girl is not happy with the direction of the relationship anymore, and that's been a huge wakeup call for me.
I've started approaching girls again, and started focusing more on my health (healthier diet, swimming for exercise since it's easier on my knees). However, I also need to put some work into my relationship if I want to keep it going, and I'm struggling with finding the right balance between the two relationship issues I have.
The first issue is that I've lost my abundance, and I'm not as dominant as I used to be. It's a fairly self-explanatory problem with a self-explanatory solution. The second issue is that the relationship doesn't have as much growth as it needs. Chase wrote an awesome article about the problem and how to solve it (https://www.girlschase.com/content/self- ... ationships).
My question is, how do I balance these two problems? If I try to focus for growth in the relationship by taking interest in her passions, I'll be devoting more time towards things she's better than me at, reducing my ability to be more dominant.
Backstory: I was my girlfriend of 3 years' first love. When our relationship started, I was quite attractive and she treated me really well. She cooked, cleaned, was sexually available whenever I wanted. Adequately pretty and a great personality. She respected me quite a lot. I was satisfied with that, so I stopped focusing on getting girls and put 100% of my effort into my work. For a time, it worked great - my career took off, and I got promoted twice to a very senior, well paying position for my age at a prestigious company. I threw myself into my work, traveled to 75 countries (my goal is to visit all ~200 in the next few years), got a nice apartment, saved a ton of money, and generally set myself up with a very comfortable life.
However, the past year or so has been really tough. I injured my knee, which has been causing pain and making it hard for me to stay active. I've put on a lot of weight, and gotten a bit depressed about it. I made a few bad decisions (related to my substandard work ethic), which also caused me to lose some of my girlfriend's respect. My desire to be frugal means that I've had to drop a few of my hobbies, and because I can't afford a car, I've been restricted to doing activities near my apartment. On top of that, i stopped approaching girls,so I've lost my abundance. A few weeks ago, I realized that my girl is not happy with the direction of the relationship anymore, and that's been a huge wakeup call for me.
I've started approaching girls again, and started focusing more on my health (healthier diet, swimming for exercise since it's easier on my knees). However, I also need to put some work into my relationship if I want to keep it going, and I'm struggling with finding the right balance between the two relationship issues I have.
The first issue is that I've lost my abundance, and I'm not as dominant as I used to be. It's a fairly self-explanatory problem with a self-explanatory solution. The second issue is that the relationship doesn't have as much growth as it needs. Chase wrote an awesome article about the problem and how to solve it (https://www.girlschase.com/content/self- ... ationships).
My question is, how do I balance these two problems? If I try to focus for growth in the relationship by taking interest in her passions, I'll be devoting more time towards things she's better than me at, reducing my ability to be more dominant.