r/DecidingToBeBetter

I am a 28 year old male living with ADHD and some other fun brain things.

I find myself to be the perfect target for social media addiction. Although I do not use it as much as I see others, I use it way more than I wish to. Most importantly, I do not feel like I can control my use of it. I feel entirely incapable of controlling my use. I also struggle with buying things.

Overall I consume in life more than I wish to. I wish to create more often, but often lack the inspiration or energy to do so.

I cannot change the fact that AI, social media, aggresive advertising, and so many other things grab my attention. I can't just live in a hole avoiding a healthy social life where I will inevitably and unfortunately be exposed to the things that make me want to escape and consume.

I have an amazing therapist and a supportive wife which I am very grateful for. They help immensely, yet I feel there is still some obstacle in the way. As if I am lacking something novel that will truly inspire me to reduce my habits of massive consumption.

I want to be better and feel free from this mental prison.

Does anyone else experience this and find things that help?

Posting here for some accountability and hoping to regularly update.

I've been married for 5 years [34M], and have a young child. In the past 2 and a quarter years, my wife and I have not had sex. We have barely kissed, hug mostly because we realise we haven't for a while, or if one of us is going away from home. Initially, I thought the dead bedroom issue was because we had a child, who was quite demanding and for most of his early first year, didn't sleep. Having a child has affected our relationship, but the truth is, we werent having a lot of sex even before the kid was concieved, we got into a lot of arguments about things relating to housework, planning dates and outings, general effort in the relationship etc.

I admit that I wasn't really on it in the first couple of years of getting married, and I've apologised to her profusely for it. I would say that in the past couple of years, I've changed a lot in terms of being more organised, taking on the majority of housework tasks, childcare, and generally trying to lift some of her mental load. But I've also grown frustrated that despite putting in way more effort, this hasn't really been met by any attempt to rekindle some intimacy.

Recently, my wife and I were clearing out our closets and she discovered some lingerie at the back of her drawers. I made a joke that it was perhaps a gift from god, and that we were getting a divine sign telling us that we should maybe have sex. I meant it half joking, but my wife didn't respond beyond a hum. So I asked her whether she ever thought about having sex again, whether she missed it or if she missed me. And for the first time, we had quite an honest conversation – or at least, she was quite frank with me. She basically said that she had lost a lot of attraction to me, partly because she was angry about the first years of our marriage and how we wasted a lot of time because of my own selfishness and ego. But what surprised me more, though perhaps it should have been obvious, was that she wasn't really excited about me as a person. She said that over the past couple of years, I hadn't really put much effort into myself – I wasn't looking after myself physically (A baby did make this difficult, but I wasn't going to make any excuses directly) or mentally (phone scrolling and a lot of screen time), and this affected how i acted and moved in the real world, whenever we'd go to friends and family events I would be too distracted by whatever was on my phone.

She also said that I was no longer excited about life – that it had been stagnant and in turn, I also lacked the ambition that made her attracted to me when we met. Now, at the time we met, I was a fairly successful TV news producer, had published a book that won a couple of prizes, and had a lot of accolades. The pandemic kind of killed a lot of my career trajectory, and while things are currently fine, I do admit that I have become quite disillusioned by my work and industry. It's meant that I've tried to pivot into other career avenues and projects, only to abandon them fairly quickly. My wife gave the example of another book I started to write, where I started off pretty excited, took two weeks off parenting to go research and interview people, only to lose faith in it, and myself really, and come back home depressed and feeling like a failure. My wife said that while she understood why that might have happened, that the feeling of helplessness and not having agency or control of my life was making me sound cynical and that this was unattractive to her.

Most of all, she said, I didn't get things done, including things I said I would do, and this has led to her not finding me attractive. This ranges from the book, to general house DIY, contacting people and general admin. I often put things off or in some cases, don't remember to do them at all. And this has all contributed to an image of me that is detached, despondent, unreliable, unambitious and uncharismatic. No wonder, then, that she wouldn't be enthusiastic about wanting to have sex with me.

I was upset about what she said, and we haven't spoken about it for the past few days while I've tried to gather my thoughts. It does feel like a lot, and initially I was angry because it does feel like she's asking me to change everything about myself, including fairly legitimate critiques, in order to make her feel attracted to me again. But I've also realised the anger isn't getting me anywhere. I need a new plan to address the above, and to execute it in a way where at best, she finds me attractive again and we develop a healthy and exciting sex life before we get too old, but at worst, she decides were too far gone and files for divorce, but I've developed enough to be confident I can move forward and have a life worth looking forward to.

To that end, I'm spending the next day or two working out how to execute a self-improvement plan for the rest of this year, with a goal of:

1.) Losing some weight and building muscle
2.) Reducing my phone screen time to an hour a day (with the aim to get that reduced more next year)
3.) Building systems at home to track housework/chores etc. to get them done thoroughly and efficiently
4.) Finishing a draft of my book, or actively working on a different book project (and treating this seriously, like an actual job)
5.) Being a better dad and building rituals with my kid
6.) Being more active in rebuilding my marriage – scheduling check-ins, date night ideas, planning a family vacation.
7.) Re-building a social life! I feel like so much of getting this isolated is that I just dont keep in active touch with my friends and it would be good to spend regular time expanding a social life beyond my wife and kid.

This is all pretty ambitious, and if im honest I don't really know how to start when it comes to planning. So i'd be keen to hear from people who've also taken on a challenge like this, on how they did it while staying sane, and not losing faith.

Back in January I did the cheesy thing. I sat down and wrote a letter to 'future me,' the version of me reading it in July. I felt a bit silly doing it, honestly. I almost didn't finish. 

This weekend I found it and read it. And the strangest thing happened. January me was worried about things that completely resolved themselves. She was scared to start something that I have now been doing for months without thinking about it. She apologised, in advance, for probably not changing. And she was wrong. 

What got me was how much kinder I felt toward her than I ever feel toward present me. Present me is behind, lazy, not enough. But past me? I just wanted to tell her it works out, keep going, you have no idea what you are quietly building.

There is research floating around that we treat our future self like a stranger, which is why it is so easy to trade her future for a comfortable today. Writing the letter closes that gap a little. You start treating tomorrow-you like someone you actually love. 

So here is my nudge for the mid-year reset crowd: don't rewrite your goal list. Write one honest letter to the version of you reading it in December. Tell them what you are afraid of, what you hope, and one small promise you are keeping starting now. Then set a reminder to read it. That is the whole exercise. It costs nothing and it might be the most compassionate thing you do all year. 

Has anyone else done this? What did past you get wrong about who you would become?