I know! Be patient... It will take a little time. He will need a little time to get it together too.

CV

Nevermind

Are you ok?

CV

David, do not read !!!!!
Not really but if I vent, it will get worst so I'm just giving up.

I feel like I'm starting an old motorcycle that just wont fire. Keep on kicking away. You just cant help but ask yourself if you keep buying parts to fix it or just scrap it and start over.

David, do not read !!!!!

Ok, venting anyway. First off, I'm the one that set up the min golf after the bowling alley was full (yep me sugesting that one too) then I'm the one that had dinner ready when he got home tonight and after we ate I was the one that pulled the game out and put it in front of him.

My taker is in full force tonight and I cant even sleep because of it. He posts that he wants to do more things..... WELL PLAN THE DARN THINGS THEN. We have both filled out the RC lists.

I got snapped at pretty bad Sunday morning and it really hurt my feelings. It brought back memories of the times right before the A where he just didnt want to see I was meeting his needs so he could blame it on me.

I really appreciate what you are trying to do but Poppa Bear has already givin up becuase he never follows through. NONE OF YOU GUYS SHOULD HAVE TO STAY ON HIS BEHIND TO DO THESE THINGS FOR ME.

I'm betting he has not started on your thing.... He never seems to have enough time but they have time during the day to goto a 2 hour lunch at work almost every day. EXCEPT when he has something he WANTS to work on, like a car or somthing to weld on. Then he will take a short lunch and finish working on it while the other guys are at lunch. Just like we didnt have the money for the online course but he could come up with the money by selling the spare car for the "really good deal on a trailer" we didnt need.

OMG, I'm just really ready to scream my head off.

It is everything I can do not to fall back into just doing my own thing to make me happy again like I did before the A happened.

He told me Sat night that he "loved to hear me laugh it had been awhile" while we were at work Sat morning. His son and I were laughing because we could not hit the darn bucket with the water we were trying to pour in it and kept getting it all over ourselves. His son and I got into a bubble fight on Sunday (we are washing the 18wheeler trucks and trailers).

He complains about working so much but he was the one that told me he loved the job even though it was long hours and 6 days a week. Now he told me Sunday that he took the job so we didnt lose everything. I told him we would lose it all anyway if we dont have a marriage becuase neither of us can afford it alone.

LD, I suspected this was what was going on when I read his post. I'm not ready to bail on his thread yet, but I really need to think some on it today.

You both are in my prayers.

CV

luvs- thinking about you!!

We have some of the same problems, i am the planner. so it very frustrating i know!!!

I am the one who makes all the arrangements... blah blah blah.

i had to drag him thru the crap.... blah blah blah

get us back on track..... blah

i have done the i would love it you planned something.... and he does try and has had successes. but its not as often.

so any help on this one, we would be getting a 2 for one deal.

just letting you know that you are not alone.

BTW- i bet my H would have said exactly what DTL said.

and i know to some extent there is truth to it in my case.

I think some of it comes from doing everything for myself for so long and i am sure control and other issues.

The Policy Of Undivided Attention; I don't care if you've read it before, read it again... link to POUA

It's pretty childish for either of you to complain about who comes up with the activities your going to do during your UA. Both of you should be sitting down once a week and planning out your UA schedule, otherwise the UA schedule doesn't happen! Flying by the seat of your pant's with UA time just turns to resentment in the end!

When you can't think of anything else to do, fill up the bath tub and go take a bath together, laugh about how hard it is to wash while your in there together. Then move to the bedroom, enjoy rubbing some baby oils, etc. on each other and make love.... UA time is critical!

RE-read the Link and follow Dr. H's road map!

POJA. You should be planning these together, including who is going to do what. If one of you doesn't follow through on the plan, then you implement some Negotiation to discover what it will take for the two of you to keep your commitments.

There are probably many reasons he's not doing what you expect him to do, so I won't speculate. But often it's not simple apathy; a simple "Honey, I'd love your help right now. Are you free for a few minutes?" will be enough to get an apathetic partner involved in the process.

After Rule #1 -- the Policy of Undivided Attention, spending a minimum of 15 hours meeting each other's intimate emotional needs -- comes Rule #2: Never be the source of your spouse's unhappiness (read: no Love Busters).

Have you guys read through Love Busters together? What he has going on here is an Annoying Habit: agreeing and not following through. So you need to apply Negotiation to both sides of the equation:
1. Make sure he's actually enthusiastic about what he's agreed to do. Often, men will agree reluctantly then "forget" or "not have enough time". What this actually means is they aren't enthusiastic about the job in the first place! Often all that is required for enthusiasm is for a spouse to come take them by the hand, say "let's do this and then do something fun together afterward" or "let's make this fun together" to get involved. Speaking from experience here as the reluctant, oft-forgetful husband.
2. If he truly is enthusiastic about it, what would be necessary to be sure he follows through? Reward systems work well. I hate mowing the lawn, but my wife and I have worked out some reward systems that help me look forward to mowing the lawn more. Same for her with some onerous chores; we decide how we'll reward ourselves for doing the things we don't want to do, and that really helps us get it done. And in some cases, we hire out.


Men take training. You two should plan these together to start with, at the frequency you both can agree on. Then transition the duty. As a for-instance, if my wife and I are going to do lunch during the week, that plan is always up to me. I know this, and schedule one or two lunches a week together. Our weekend date is planned together. And our shopping dates are planned by my wife. Each to his area of expertise, but it took us a while to work out that responsibility domain, you know?


Inform him that you were hurt due to his angry outburst, and you'd like to brainstorm ideas together how to avoid the situation that resulted in the snap. If you feel Love Busted, you were; don't allow anybody to tell you you are "too sensitive". You both need to learn how to not make each other miserable!


Nope. You and he should be sitting down every Sunday night and scheduling what your activities are going to be and who is going to do what. Then set alarms on your phones or watches, grab each other at the appointed times, and get your habits going in the right directions.


That's called Independent Behavior and is another Love Buster. You guys haven't worked through Love Busters yet, have you?

It really sounds like if the two of you could learn to control your Love Busters you'd have an amazing relationship. But you keep doing -- or agreeing to do and not doing -- things that make one another miserable.

Looks like others are posting some good stuff here. And giving some loving 2x4's as well. I will just give an example that we struggle with from time to time (ok, **I** struggle with):

There is one particular thing that we are working at over and over again. We are both enthusiastic about doing this thing together, but it is always planned sporadically and those darned kids always seem to interfere with our plans! W knows it is soooo important to me, and wants to do it as well, but fears failing at it. My take is "so what if we fail at it, we try and try again until we get there". Her fear often causes inaction though. And then I complain. It's been the cycle. An unhealthy one.

Here's the truth of it though: BH or BW, the burden almost always rests on us to do the heavy lifting on many many things. I believe it is the way of recovery. Why? Because somewhere down the road the WS got it in their mind that they are entitled to not work on the relationship and the habits/patterns developed have been one of inaction towards us. We have top teach the FWS how to do these things again, and we need to relearn how to not enable them to continue in the cycle of take take take.

The POJA helps break that. It's needed to relearn these habits (the healthy ones).

CV

Wow ! Thank you so much for this, after reading this we went back and talked about it. When we read Lover Busters we could not think of a single thing that would have been applicable but now that you point these things out as what they are, we can see where we are LB almost daily to each other. Its funny how things sometimes need someone on the outside to knock it into our heads.

We are going to start reading it again and after each chapter we need to take a few days and "look" for the one we read about in our daily life and talk about each one. I think this is the one BIG thing the online course would help us with.

For my wife and me, the start of our radical transformation was honestly working through the exercises at the end of each chapter together, reading the questions aloud and exploring them.

Demands and disrespect are really tough ones. It's incredibly easy to fall into a demand, and incredibly easy to be disrespectful unintentionally.

For instance, one of my wife's recent complaints -- complaints are good, criticism is not! -- is that I was judging her when she talked about her religious activities. (She's very religious; I am not at all religious.)

Now, that's a valid complaint, but nestled inside of it is a disrespectful judgment: making a claim about my state of mind, or "telling me what I think". I'm very used to her religious activities, and felt that I wasn't offering any judgments. In fact, I recalled the conversations and knew I'd offered no comments that judged her religion in any way.

This went back-and-forth a bit until we figured out a different way of approaching it that involved no disrespect. I ultimately came up with the right question: "What am I doing when you talk about your religious activities that causes you to feel I'm being disrespectful about your religion?"

Then we were able to nail it down: I'd roll my eyes, or offer a comment that sounded sarcastic, or not pay full attention. To that last bit, at first she said "you act bored", but that was too vague for me to work with. And again, it was disrespectful because "bored" is a state of MY mind, and the heart of disrespect is telling other people what they think!

So we came up with a plan to fix it. Turns out I had an annoying habit of not paying full attention when she discussed religious matters, and that's one of the Enemies of Good Conversation. So I had to become a better conversationalist about religion, including showing interest, exploring the topic, etc. It doesn't mean I'm a believer by any means, but now I know how to talk about it in a positive fashion without exhibiting body language or tone of voice that implies disrespect.

And as far as fixing her side of the road, she learned from that experience to not make assumptions about my state of mind. She's learned to isolate the ACTIONS in which I engage that cause her to feel badly, and focus on that when talking about what should change. And the same for me; we do much better to avoid language that implies a problem with someone's state of mind, and instead focus on specific actions that cause us to lose Love Units.

Chasing down those things that each of you are doing to cause unhappiness is worth the difficulty of the exercise. You may have fixed the major Love Busters in your relationship, but the small ones are worth patching up so that your Love Bank can stay full!

Well guys, I'm done with MB. Sorry but its just not working. I just cant get to a point that I feel safe and until that happens I cant let him in.

When I snoop, I find IB's that I didnt know about and when I ask about them I get half truths and lies.

For example: There was this girl that used to call him daily (sometimes multiple times) about questions on her car. I told him I didnt like it becuase she depended on him too much and he got a kick out of it. Anyway, I was snooping the other day and found out he had a car in the garage for a side job..... he never told me about it so I asked..... It took me asking 3 different ways to have him finally say it was her husbands car. I dont even know if that was the truth or it was hers since he didnt want to answer the question. This makes me think the following.

How many times has he had side jobs and not told me?
What is he doing with the extra money?
How many times has he left the shop and not told me?
Who shows up at the shop and I dont know?

Witholding one thing makes me think he is witholding a whole nother life. I cant feel safe so I cant allow him to deposit anything in my LB.

Thank you everyone that has tried and failed on my behalf.

CV, never got that special thing either. Nice try.

I am very sorry to hear that, LuvsDavid. I agree that you cannot put up with this level of independent behavior and dishonesty, as it will drive you crazy! Of course you cannot become vulnerable to a person who acts like this, and so he will never be able to make love bank deposits as long as he continues to be dishonest and independent.

Luvs,

Like Markos, I am sorry too. I was really hoping he'd come through on at least that one thing we talked about. If he is constantly breaking trust, you do need to protect yourself. Please remember, MB works, even if your marriage doesn't. He has a very short learning curve and is going to have to get it together ASAP before any progress can be made. The question is whether or not he's got what it takes. and of course whether he has another shot. That's your call though. Don't bail on the program because David isn't working. there are other aspects that can help you along in your healing.

CV

See its not just the marriage I would be giving up on. That IS the most important thing but we have started my dream here. I've always wanted to work with animal rescue so we built a kennel here at the house. I board shelter dogs on donations untill they can get moved to the rescues. Originally it was supposed to allow us both to leave our jobs and work from home but david went back to work before we lost the house.

If I leave, I leave that dream behind also. When you say he took my life away you are explaining it 100%. On a scale of 1-10 my LB balance is about a 2 because of all the hits it has taken. I still love him and want it to work but I can't MAKE it work for him. This is truly the lowest point in my life right now but I've learned I can make it. I will get through this I just don't know who I will be on the other side.

((((((((luvs))))))))

You aren't going to like this, but...


1) If MB isn't working for your, it's because you aren't working MB.

2) What are you doing to make Openness and Honesty safe? Yes, I know - "He should just BE honest!" That's what people think, that's what people say. Folks right here will get in and "You go girl" about dishonesty, and conveniently forget that this is Marriage Builders, not Disrespectful Judgement and Demand Builders.

What does Dr. Harley say about overcoming dishonesty?


http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5016_qa.html


Look at your response to dishonesty here; you throw your hands up and say "That's it! I quit!"

So here is my question for you; do you actually think that is the type of behavior from you that is going to inspire honesty from him?

It's not.

Honesty with you should be safe and rewarding. If you have to drag the truth out of him, hitting the roof and threatening divorce is NOT going to promote honesty. It's going to promote dishonesty.

Why? Because the association is this; the truth = you freaking out.

Even though the truth many be; discovering lies = you freaking out.

In fact; (anything = you freaking out) = avoid whatever makes you freak out - no matter how it's misunderstood.



You CAN maintain boundaries within a marriage without threats of divorce or separations, and you can promote honesty without hellfire and brimstone about dishonesty.

You need to build NEW habits.

You ain't done it yet.


MB ain't workin, cause you ain't workin it.

I got upset because he didnt tell me..... Not becuase he told me and I didnt like it. There is a BIG differance there. He made a bad choice in taking the job, yes, BUT if he had told me about it instead of me finding out, I would not have freaked out.

Are you trying to say he can do anything he wants even if it is an EP and never have to tell me about it even if I ask? If that is what MB is about then NO, I ain't working it and never will.

Its not the truth that gets me upset, its the having to drag it out. Lying by ommision is the problem I have with this. I cant feel safe if every time I snoop, I find more independent behavior. Examples: not being where he says, not doing what he says he is.

And I have decided to quit becuase I have no follow though from him. NONE! Neither I nore Dr.Harley can make my husband want to follow through. He has to decide that on himself.