Yes, that does help, Mark.


This is very much the direction my sponsor gave me in making decisions. Only the question is �Will this help or hurt my recovery (personal, not marriage)?�

I think asking, �Does this get me closer to my vision of marriage? Will this hurt or help my personal recovery?� will be my two guiding questions. Personal recovery comes first, because I know that I can�t have a healthy marriage unless I am coming to it as a whole person, rather than looking for him to �complete� me. I�m sure there will be times when the answers to those two questions may be opposing, so in that case, I will turn it over to God and ask him to �bless it or block it,� another decision making tool I�ve been practicing using.


The good news is that I HAVE been doing this (albeit imperfectly) and my husband IS noticing a difference. He has said so. He doesn�t understand why I�m so happy (which is because I save my negative venting for the boards and for other understanding ears) when we are so obviously in conflict with each other. He doesn�t understand why I�m being so �nice� to him, and he frankly doesn�t like it. He doesn�t trust it. He thinks I�m either trying to manipulate him or that I�m faking it. I really am NOT faking it. I have made a decision to be respectful towards EVERYONE, regardless of how they treat me. Again, ain�t perfect at it, but I am VER committed to this goal, and he should be at the top of the list of people I�m respectful and kind to.

Some of the �arguments� I�ve been making in this thread reflect his mindset even more than mine. Like the discussion about manipulation. Much of by questioning is driven my his questioning of me. When I first stumbled onto this site and read to him about POJA, the only thing he got out of it is that he has to �give up� something, not that we get to replace it with something better. I am not a big fan of conflict (been in withdrawl a LONG time!) but he is even less fond of it, as I�ve mentioned before. He wants to go straight to intimacy from withdrawl and bypass the conflict state. I understand that�s not how it�s done. We are different people, and we are bound to have conflict, and I�m OK with that because conflict is where I get to be honest (in a respectful way, of course). For him, conflict can result in only two outcomes: winning or losing. He wants to win, but doesn�t want the guilt of doing it at my expense. So he avoids the conflict altogether and just IBs. And I often do the same thing. That has been our marriage, and even our dating and engagement. We don�t know any other way. I want to learn better. Maybe as I learn better he will too.

I just want us to be on the same team, with the same goal. Right now, we�re not. So I guess I carry the water until he joins me. Care, time, protection and honesty in those buckets.

I love the analogy of carving the elephant. It got through to me. Thanks!

I'm hoping to scheudle a session with SH sometime in April. At this point, I can't afford more than one session a month, and even that will require a radical adjustment in the budget. We don't really have any "extra" left over after paying the mortgage, car payments, utilities and groceries, and we will not go into debt 'cause we cut up the credit cards (doing Daver Ramsey's program successfully for over a year now! YAY!)

My question is, should I have husband fill out LBQ now or wait until the session?

Also, a question about meeting EN. I know my focus right now should be about meeting his EN and putting my own on hold temporarily. He is also pretty aware of what some of my EN needs are, because he can repeat them back to me (even though he doesn't call them EN); he just refuses to meet them at this point. At what point do I bring that back up? Should I just wait for him to meet my needs, since he knows what they are? I don't want to badger him about my EN, but at the same time I don't think he will meet them if I don't say anything. But if I say something, even after a few months of doing my best at MB, he is likely to say, "See, I KNEW you were trying to manipulate me!"

I'm not posting this stuff to be difficult. I just see this as a pretty likely delimma, and I don't want to shoot myself in the foot unknowingly.

I�m recopying the questions and answers that reflect my renter or freeloader mindset, and my lack of buyer mindset. These are the areas where I need to change my thinking in order to be 100% buyer. Let the brainwashing begin (just kidding!).

I�m thinking that we should take one question at a time. Please help me chip away at this elephant!

So what is the fallacy of thinking this? Isn't this scenario exactly what the POJA strives to create . . . a situation in which what I give is worth what is given to me in terms of happiness without sacrificing? Isn't the point of POJA to create a win-win solution?

If we define marriage as a relationship in which both people give 100%, then wouldn't anything less on either side make it an unequal and unjust relationship? I'm not talking the occasional short term situation of one giving more than the other. I'm talking about the long-term relationship in which the giving is not 100% on both sides most of the time.

As in the case of my marriage, I don't think either one of us has ever given 100%. I think there are times when it FEELS like we are giving 100%, but we are giving 100% trying to meet the wrong EN. I know that is how my husband feels because he has said so:

"I've changed a lot since we have gotten married. Just not in the ways you want me to change."

So if I give 100% and am actually meeting the RIGHT EN as he states them, isn't he SUPPOSED to naturally want to give 100% to meet MY EN, so that ultimately what I give is what I get (in terms of %)?

I know it seems like I'm focused on the "getting" here, and that really isn't my point. I'm just trying to see where this mentality DOESNT'T fit with the "conditional nature" of the marriage relationship as Harley defines it.

Think,

Gotta get to church so not a lot of time now and UA time this afternoon so might be much later. (Not gonna fix it in one day anyway...)

What do YOU think is the piece that looks most UNlike a happy marriage? I have an opinion, but first I want to know what you think is the biggest hindrance to achieving your goal.

Mark

Posted while you were typing I guess...Is that what you see as the biggest problem in your relationship?

It does describe a misunderstanding of POJA which NEVER advocates compromise as it gets practiced in other relationships.

POJA is NOT about me getting less than I want and you getting less than you want until we are equally unhappy with what we are getting.

No time now...

I'll be back...

Think, I will be watching your thread closely for answers to these. And I guess I will go bite the bullet and take this true false quiz. I hate quizzes that I might not make a 100 on! Ha! Always the teacher.

Oh, and thanks Mark and CWMI for your posts yesterday!

Mark, do you mean to tell me that your life does not revolve around making me see the light, come hell or high water?




I do have some thoughts, but I think I need to let them gel a bit.

Luri, when I took that test I fully expected to see renter tendancies. What suprised me is that I have such strong buyer tendancies as well, more than I thought.

I think we label "renter" with a big black X. In fact, I think some of the renter mentality is VERY healthy when you are in the discernment stage of a relationship. I think my problem is that I never fully transitioned out of that stage into marriage. Our culture currently maintains that the renter mindset is the healthy way to proceed, and even religions can justify some of the renter mindset (unconditional love). So I don't think it's that unusual for most people to fall within that category unless they are well-versed in MB.

JMO!

No, I'm just going in order.


Oh, I do understand that this is not what POJA means. I understand that the goal of POJA is win-win 100% of the time. I just don't believe that is actually possible 100% of the time unless both people are buyers, and maybe even when both people are buyers it may sometimes be hard.

I have recopied the statement just so that I stay on topic.

I think this is my unerstanding of POJA: that I don't ever GIVE anything that I can't give enthusiastically. (Back to the sex topic, my POJA might be that unless I can meet the need for SF enthusiastically, then I shouldn't meet that EN, because that would be sacrifice. My "solution" has been that I enthusiastically engage in a minimum of 1 time per month in a non-fertile phase of my cycle. I have initiated more than that, though. I say "minimum 1 time per month" to prevent myself from getting so withdrawn that I have major aversion. Ultimately I see this increasing over time, but that is my starting point, what I can be enthusiastic about NOW.)

Let me rephrase the above statement to reflect my understanding of what it means to me:

Romantic relationships require mutual giving to meet each other�s EN (give and take), but what I give to meet his EN should be worth what he gives to meet my EN. In other words, I should be able to get out of this relationship what I put into it.

Mark, you asked what I see in this statement as being UNlike marriage. I have trouble seeing anything wrong with this way of thinking being incompatible with marriage as a conditional relationship. However, if I believed that marriage is an unconditional relationship, then I would see some problems with this line of thinking. As I understand it, one of the bedrock principles behind MB is that marriage is NOT an unconditional relationship, but one consitional upon mutual interdependence.

I read this and here is my conclusion. I feel you rejected the idea of romantic love because of your "failed" relationships before marriage. When you threw the baby out with the bathwater (the idea of romantic love being real) then, you ended up marrying someone who you were not naturally attracted to and were not naturally compatable with.

In order to stay with this man, you now have to deny all that you are.

On top of this, you try to use a method of birth control that is destined to fail.

I would look at your prioritites now if you are going to work on the marriage.

1. No more children
2. Work on areas of the marriage with husband
3. See if your H will work on the areas of marriage with you

I would get some foolproof birth control going. Or permanent birth contro. If you want temporary BC, use two types. Before i had my tubal ligation, I chose condoms and diaphram. Or the cap and condoms, or you could do the pill and condoms.

Is there a small part of you that ONLY wants sex once a month? In this case, your EXCUSE could be that you have to use that method of BC so sex is only once a month.

Are you attracted to this man at all?

Do you enjoy sex at all?

I am sorry you destroyed your life like this and married the wrong man. If you had waited and learned more about love, you could have had a chance to meet a man who was compatable with you and who you were attracted to. Yes both of these things exist within the same person.


Now your job, to make the marriage good, is a lot harder. But it can be done. I would not make more children however. That will make it even harder to work on the marriage due to lack of time and money.

I am putting myself in your shoes. If I chose to stay with a man I was not attracted to and not compatable with.... I would write down all the areas we are not compatable and hit them one by one.

If there is no abuse, addictions, and enough money to live, then you can try and solve one issue at a time.

I would write myself a list.

1___________
2____________
3_________

All the issues we are not compatable


Then a second list:

All the expectations I had of marriage


Then a third list:

Areas in our marriage that dissapoint me.

(These lists will all be slightly different with some overlap)


Then take the most important issue, or the most all encompassing issue, and work on just that one.

You got nothing to lose by trying.

Not much time right now. Waiting for my wife to be ready to go someplace.

Let me throw three words at you to think about...

Give

Take

Get

A fully functional romantic relationship according to the MB model is not GIVE and TAKE, but GIVE and GIVE when it comes to meeting ENs.

So rather than give and take it becomes give and get...

While it might be a viable premise that if I give something I should get something of equal value in return what this idea results in is withholding what I should be giving until I am getting something of equal value. Once we hit this dynamic in marriage we end up waiting for our spouse to go first in meeting our ENs and we never commit to giving what our spouse needs. It turns into a case of I will remain selfish until you stop being selfish.

When we talk about Care in the four pillars of MB we are talking about providing for the ENs of our spouse. We do what will make our spouse feel happy thus becoming their source of happiness. This it the word love used as a verb. It is not the feeling of love but is what Dr Harley calls "caring love."

What MB gives a couple as much as anything else is a vocabulary for enumerating, ranking and specifying what we need in order to be happy. Most often our spouse does not withhold what we need, he or she simply does not realize what it is that we need since our spouse usually has emotional needs that are completely different than what we need. The same is true for us; we did not first stop meeting our spouse's ENs because we were refusing to meet them, we stopped meeting them because we never knew what they were.

But once we know what our spouse needs from us, the only reason for not meeting them is a purposeful withholding of them. We are basically saying that we do NOT want our spouse to be happy unless and until he or she is making us happy.

So we provide Care by caring for our spouse, that is, providing him or her with what they need to be happy within the relationship.

This seemed so simple when we were dating, but for some reason we think we can stop doing this when we get married. It's like we don't understand that the reason we felt the way we did about our spouse was because they were doing stuff that made us happy. So when they stop doing those things we don't seem to be able to convey to them what we want because from our POV what is missing is the feeling. Since we thought the feeling was something that came about by some process that was out of any one's control and not as the result of what our spouse did, we began to believe that the feeling went away of its own accord as well, or more likely, we believe we never really felt like that and were mistaken when we thought we did.

So we stop meeting ENs because we don't feel like caring any more because we are no longer getting what we need to sustain those feelings. Be careful that you do not equate these feelings I refer to with sexual attraction since hardly ever does an affair or falling in love begin as purely sexual attraction for either the man or the woman. Many folks in an affair will say "It isn't about sex." They mean exactly that. It is about getting other ENs met. Seldom does that prevent an affair from becoming physical though because once people are in a state of Intimacy they WANT to begin meeting ENs in an effort to make the other person happy.

And this is where the whole process turns into garbage in many marriages. Something happens that I don't get my ENs met. Since I have no way to communicate that to my spouse properly in a way that my spouse can understand and get a handle on, I instead begin to allow my Taker to begin running my negotiation to get what I want. This means I use SDs, DJs, AOs and all the rest of the stuff my Taker is in charge of and actually make it LESS likely that my spouse will meet my ENs because now my spouse is also not in Intimacy but in Conflict and his/her Taker is stepping up to make sure that he/she is getting what he/she wants from me.

If neither of us is giving to the other, providing care for our spouse by meeting ENs in an effort to make him or her happy, if we wait until he/she is in a state of Intimacy and so willing to meet our needs how will we ever get our needs met. So meeting ENs becomes a case of giving in order to get rather than withholding from giving until we get. If we give and can communicate without hurting our spouse what it is we need, then by meeting our spouse's needs we will be able to get what we need without having to resort to taking.

That's what is so hard about this and why people have such a difficulty being first to start giving. It is this idea that I am entitled to get what I want in direct value and direct proportion to what I am giving and I must get it right up front. We only want to pay for what we already have. It is also what makes saving for retirement so hard for many people. We want to see value for what we invest and unless that value is in our hands, we can't see it.

If I buy a house, I get to take possession of that house as soon as I sign the papers. But seldom do I actually even own the house. I am going to be paying for it for a long time. If I stop paying for it, the bank has the right to come and take the house away from me. How long I paid before defaulting or how many times I paid more than was required as the minimum or how many years I got to live in the house before stopping making payments has nothing to do with getting to keep the house. If I default in the last month of my mortgage the bank has the same right to the house as if I had defaulted in the first month. I might have built more equity by defaulting later but that does not mean that I will get to keep the house.

Now where we get into problems is when we think the house should always be worth more than we agreed to pay initially. LOTS of folks have found themselves in this situation. They paid 350K for a house that today is worth only 300. For those who never intended to remain in the house but were only using the house as a way to build value or equity, this means they now are paying more than the value being returned to them. So many are defaulting on their loans just because the house dropped below what they agreed to pay for it.

Of course if they keep maintaining the house, putting in the added value of taking care of it, eventually the house is likely to be worth much more than it is worth and even worth more than what it was when they agreed to buy it. But the return on investment needs to be right now for them to see the value and so they are unwilling to make the payments and so will lose the house and look for something else that isn't so "upside down."

Short sighted strategy at best and one that is actually what is driving the housing prices downward instead of letting them recover. BTW, the ones most likely to do this were the ones who got the NINJA loans to start with. They actually borrowed more than the price of the house knowing that the loan was for more than the house was worth in hope that the house would be worth more fast enough that they could sell it and get a bigger one by the same process.

But in marriage, we need to consider not the short term benefits but the long term consequences of our choices. The feeling of love is NOT magic. It is not an accident. It isn't something that happens just by chance. When we agree to love someone (the verb) we aren't talking about the way we feel about them (love, the adverb). We are talking about showing care.

When the value of what we have agreed to pay drops below what we are paying we have two choices. One is to continue paying what is required in anticipation of the return to full value in the future. The second real option is to stop paying all together and let the deal collapse to go look for something we value more.

If we stop paying we are forfeiting our right to keep what we have already invested in and if we stop maintenance it will drop in value as time goes on. Renters don't pay for maintenance, only for direct one to one value. Of course when the lease ends, a renter has no right to remain unless the landlord is willing to allow them to stay.

That's the thing. A renter has no right to expect anything to change. Agreed upon value for what is willing to be paid is the only thing that counts. Just as the renter has the right to move on to something better, the one renting to them has the right to expect more from the property as well if any improvements are made. So a landlord will seldom improve an income property beyond getting rent from it. It caps out what the renter can expect since no amount of paying the agreed upon rent will ever yield any more than value already given.

Only by buying a house can you even take advantage of an increase in equity that comes from paying off the loan. For a renter even this benefit goes to the landlord since as the value exceeds the rent, the rent will go up whereas with a buyer as the value increases the investment remains the same. So ultimately a buyer gets greater value from an investment than a renter can ever hope to get from paying only fair value for what is received.

Maybe more later. Time to go...

Mark

I like what Mark has to say. Now fitting with what I was saying lets carry it furthur.

I think you need to look back and see why you bought this particular "house". And what things about the house you do not like. Putting energy into correcting the areas you do not like (rehabbing) will make your marriage happier, at least it should. Perhaps you and your husband are still young and you both can change some. And "become a bit more compatable". at least for the kid's sake.

Wow, Mark, when you made the comment about each spouse waiting for the other spouse to go first, you described the cycle H and I had gotten into to a T. I called it "playing marital chicken."

Think, I don't know if this is MB, but I wanted to share something. I used to think that out of 6 billion people on earth, there was this mystical "one person" and that only with that one person could I ever have a happy marriage. That God chose "John Doe" for me before the foundation of the world, and if I screwed up and married someone else, my life was doomed. I now believe that is crap. Even though my emotions vary from time to time, what I really believe in my life and as a Christian is that - when push comes to shove - when I said "I Do" to DH...he became the "right person."

Now, obviously if he is abusive or a serial cheater or something like that, I need to run like the wind. But at least at this point I reject the idea that just because the fireworks weren't as big with him or just because we have very different personalities or just because our EN's vary greatly means that I chose wrong and have a get out of jail free card. I know you don't think that either. But at my core, I really do believe in one man and one woman for one lifetime.

BTW I got 8 questions for buyer, 1 for renter, and 0 for freeloader. I was a little surprised because I thought my discontent as of late would skew my values.

Okay, I jumped into this thread from ChrisInNOVA's new thread about SF: a Female Perspective.

[/quote=thinkin] I personally do not believe that anyone should engage in sex until BOTH are ALREADY in the state of intimacy, even if they said vows and have a piece of paper. [/quote]

I assume you are talking about married couples, so I have to disagree. Most men are going to lose feelings of intimacy in relation to a decline in sexual relations with their wife. SF is the fuel of marriage. If you have lost the urge, you are going to have to learn to initiate sex in order to rebuild intimacy, especially if you are the woman who has been withholding SF or just lost interest and rejecting your husband.

As Mark said:

This doesn't mean he was faking Affection and Conversation just to get the "reward" of SF. But it doesn't matter if it is SF or anything - if you get turned down 95% of the time, you are likely to stop wasting your time initiating. The one who has done all the rejecting and no initiating now bears the responsibility of fixing what they broke.

There's been plenty of rejecting to go around between my husband and I over the last 10 years. Whatever is "broke" got that way as the result of the actions of both of us, not just one or the other.

But I see your point. In this case, I am the one who is here, I am the one attempting to embrace MB and become a buyer. I think the key in meeting any EN (even SF) is that I am able to do it in a way that is enthusiastic. Anything else is sacrifice. And I am NOT willing to just excuse or justify myself out of SF (although it probably sounds that way from what I have written). In fact, I'm making some solid efforts to work on the SF thing and stretch myself as best I can without dipping into the "sacrifice" realm any longer. 'Cause I done that, and it does NOT work for me or my husband. He used to want me to "take one for the team" as he phrased it. Now he phrases it "pity sex" and he wants that less than I do!

More coming later. I have a lot of work to finish tonight and Monday morning though. Lots of good stuff to chew on.

Feeling very grateful that we are not upside down on our house (literally, not figuratively). But also very glad we have no need to sell right now

Mark, if that's what you write when you have a few minutes, I would hate to see what you come up with after a few hours. I'm a writer, and your speed and clarity makes me jealous!

Bubbles,

While I think your presentation is a bit dramatic, I think you analyzed the situation pretty darn well. I was in a very dark place when I met my future husband, and not quite into the light enough when he proposed. By the time my doubts were raging full force, we had bought a house and the invitations were in the mail, and I believed that God would MAKE us right for each other as long as we both committed to giving 100% to the marriage and leave our old lives behind. When it became clear to me that this was not my husband�s goal for marriage, instead of addressing the problem I went into withdrawl/denial until about 2 years ago. Since then I have been fighting my way out through all sorts of self-justifications and the like. I also had to break through my husband�s denial because he didn�t see a problem. Now we both see a problem but can�t agree on how to address it. His solution is to accept our differences and be grateful for what we do have and let that be enough. If I could enthusiastically agree to that solution I probably would. But the way I see it, an intimate marriage is the closest thing I�m gonna get to �God with skin� in this world, and I�d like to set my goal on an intimate marriage. I would never have gotten married if I knew that he didn't want this goal too, or that his definition of intimate was so different than mine. He doesn�t want God, with or without skin. He believes in God, just wants to keep him at arms length because anything more makes his head spin


LOL . . . at least I have a sense of humor about it. I love my kids and really loved childbirth, although the pregnancies were no fun. I struggle with my identity as a mom, but I think that has a lot to do with struggling with my identity as a wife, and also not adequately having my EN met.


He has talked about getting the big snip snip. He doesn�t want more children. I, on the other hand, struggle with BC, because I actually take what my faith says to heart. Mind you, I haven�t always. At one time I tried the pill, actually several kinds. The side effects were awful. I was VERY dry and could not get aroused at all (this was with a different partner) and it made me crazy. I was also on them when I first got married, and they contributed to the pain of sex (dryness) and also made me crazy. When I went off, I mentally was a lot more stable. After the fact my doc said that was common for women on BCP, and have had other female friends confirm it.



Yes and No. And originally, this WAS my excuse for the once a month limit. However, I have moved beyond that now because I really do want to have sexuality as part of my marriage, and also don�t want to be living excuses anymore because that doesn�t have much integrity. Also, I truly do take the church�s stance on birth control seriously. I know that if I had the �ideal� marriage that Mark describes above, I would be open to having more children. Not like the Duggars with 19 and counting though!I think in the absence of that idea where both of us can be open to the procreative aspects of sex, we should lean on God to fill the void that is left by abstaining. Obviously that is NOT what my husband believes! And I wouldn�t want to force the belief on anyone else either. But it is what I feel called and challenged to live myself, not simply as an excuse to deny my husband, but as a path for my spiritual growth, and maybe his if he so chooses.



Again, yes and no. I�m assuming you mean physically. There are a lot of things that I dislike about his physical appearance, some within his control, some not. I think that if he were meeting my EN and took care of the things he could control, the things he can�t would not be a big deal. Right now, though, I am not really attracted physically.


Yes. When I was in my late teens/early 20s I was still a virgin but otherwise very sexually curious and had great experiences, especially with a long-term boyfriend of three years. It wasn�t the greatest relationship due to our immaturity, but we were most definitely in love, and the conflicts we had didn�t matter because we were good at meeting each other�s EN (him more than me probably, but he was VERY ok with being a self-sacrificing martyr, which is why I broke it off . . . hated being the Taker all the time). After that I had both good and bad experiences with sexual intercourse, pretty run of the mill mid-20s story, but even the good experiences were short-lived because of the �expectation� from my partners. My husband is my longest sexual partner, and he does have �skills.� In fact, I remember just weeks before we were married thinking that even though I wasn�t in love with him, �At least he knows how to get me to orgasm.� That obviously was before I was in withdrawl! He is still able to do it, but I don�t like what I have to do mentally to get there . . . fantasizing about imaginary people and scenarios. I am ashamed to write it, but we are only as sick as our secrets, and that is one that I will need to air sooner or later. I hate that that is what it takes for us to achieve a mutually satisfying sexual experience, because it demands that I pretend to be someone else. It may be satisfying physically, but not fulfilling at all.


Now Bubbles, you know that this is a bit melodramatic. For one thing, I don�t know that I married the wrong man. Maybe I married exactly the RIGHT man that God intended for me to bring me closer to Him? I haven�t destroyed my life, and haven�t destroyed his either. We both made choices, and now we are both living with the consequences. And we can both make any number of different choices today. Whatever choices either of us make God will use to bring us closer to Him, how he will do it is a mystery.

MB teaches me that the �wrong� man can become the �right� man if we both follow MB.



Ain�t that the truth!

Mark, this sentence really jumped out at me. I have complained for the longest time that my husband doesn�t speak my language. I don�t mean �love languages� although I bet if we read that book together it would do a lot to bridge the gap. My attempts to communicate usually elicit anger and frustration, either due to my admittedly poor presentation at times, but just as often due to his apparent inability to understand. I�m pretty good at asking him to reflect back what he is hearing, and he is not usually able to do this. It is frustrating for both of us. Most of me wants to just say that he is �in denial� and hiding behind �I don�t get it� so that he doesn�t have to change. I know, that is a major DJ in thinking, but at least I�m saying it here and not to him! Trust me, if there were a way to get him to understand, I would want to learn it. But efforts at �educating� him have fallen short and I�d rather avoid that and leave the educating to someone else. Unfortunately he�s not a reader, and his limited knowledge of MB is very skewed.



Your house analogy was great. I think this above quote really speaks to the decision I must make. But really, it�s not a decision. I can continue to pay and make improvements, and if the return on investment doesn�t seem to be happening, then I can stop paying, let the deal collapse and look for something else. The only thing �wasted� is time. And it�s not really wasted if I learn something in the process.


I kinda feel like I�m the renter (duh) and that my husband is the landlord. I can even make improvements myself to the rental property . . . paint a few rooms, plant a few flowers, fix the leaky faucet, because it annoys me. I do it for myself. Yet the improvements make no impact on the original agreement, save the possibility of rent going up due to the improvements. Such a cynical way to look at my marriage though. I don�t think I will stay with that line of thinking long.


I agree that the key to changing my thinking on Question 1 is wrapped up in the words Give, Take and Get. I think ultimately what looks like the �ideal� marriage is a pendulum swinging between giving and getting, where it starts out with the pendulum swinging to the extreme of either end, but over time eventually becoming shorter and shorter distance between the moment of giving and the moment of getting. The key is to keep myself out of withdrawl enough to actually receive when he DOES give.