TR,

What I meant was "how come you are in places where your man has any reason to have to protect you?" Where I spend my time, other than W's nephew, nobody ever insults women. I don't go to bars. Is that where these insults happen?

And my need for admiration, affirmation - whatever you call it - is not at all linked to any kind of protective action. That is, I don't want a woman to admire me for protecting her. I'd rather we just never be in a place where she is in any way threatened or insulted.

Affirmation - applies to accomplishments, activities, projects - in short everything that a person does that can be appreciated. My W did complement me on some of that, but not as much as I would have liked.

-AD

Faith1,


I noticed that you posted - then deleted your post.

On another thread you indicated that you were feeling ignored.

I'm sorry if I ignored your post. I didn't intend to.

-AD

That's ok. Everyone else said the same things, much more eloquently, and ya'll had moved past your original questions, which I attempted to answer... from my perspective... so I just changed my mind and deleted it...... but thank you and don't worry. No biggee.

Ok Faith1,

I appologize again for overlooking your post.

-AD

AD,

It's not that we necessarily go places that men are like that to me personally. Though years ago, I did.

When he made the comment to his friend, we were at his friends sisters house visiting her. And it was in reference to his friends comments about the sister and his friends wife. (and they don't associate with each other anymore)

And another time I know that he made a comment was at a restaurant, a husband was being rude to his wife and he made a comment to the husband.

Another time was when we went to his daughters birthday party with his ex-wifes family, his ex-father in law was making some pretty rude comments to which he called him on. Needless to say, we didn't stay very long.

So it's not that we go anywhere in particular that it's an all the time occurance, but it does happen on occassion at places we do go. And it's not that things are said specifically to me, he just thinks it's disrespectful of men to talk to and around women in a certain way.

And years ago, the guy I dated when he was wanting to fight, over comments that were made, that was at a bar.


So how much would you have liked her to compliment? On every project? I'm glad my husband doesn't have a high need for admiration and appreciation as most of the things he does around the house fall under domestic support and we all do them, as part of a family.

TR,

I think the everyday things can be handled by just a "thanks" or "that looks nice" or "you did a nice job on that". I did that for my STBXW, constantly. She rarely took any notice of the things I did around the house and for the family - unless I stopped doing them.

She did show some appreciation for some things. For example, I planned a vacation, bought all the tickets, chose things to do, made all the arrangements. She appreciated that - and said so - also told me my SIL said that my brother would never do that in his life.

It's not like I'm dying 'cause she didn't tell me how nicely I picked up my fork. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

The problem was more on the negative side - constant criticism, blame, complaints. Most of the time, what I did was not good enough in some way. If I did some household project, she would usually express anger that I didn't do it sooner or better or some other way.

For example, several times she had invited people to dinner and I took off work early to help her clean house. She would always yell at me, scream at me - constantly complain that I wasn't working fast enough. A few times, she was violent in that situation. I finally learned to use a boundary. I would just calmly tell her that unless she stop harrasing me, I was going to go back to work and not only not clean house, but skip dinner altogether. It was the only way to get through to her.

I think I was constantly doing things for her because I just wanted her to say "thanks". I rarely did anything for myself.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's not my #1 EN. I've been missing another one, LOL - and it's starting to seem more and more important. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

-AD