I think Dr. Harley's advice sounds great for people that already feel motivated to do everything they can to improve their marriage but the problem is that it seems like some of the worst offenders often don't care enough to do anything about it or are content to simply try to maintain the status quo. For example, it seems like there is more focus on how to improve your marriage than the question of why. Does anyone here know of a good way to successfully overcome extreme resistance to change?

My wife's idea of improving our relationship basically involves pointing out everything I have done wrong and all the changes I should make. Maybe she has a point to some extent because of the top 5 needs listed in "His Needs, Her Needs" I can't really complain about any of them other than the last one (admiration) but I definitely don't do much to satisfy her needs other than financial security (mostly by coincidence not because I wanted to do this specifically for her). I guess the real problem for me is that I just don't like my wife very much at this point so a few hours of undivided attention per week already feels like too much.

From my perspective, trying to make my wife happy sounds like another full-time job when I just want to relax and do the bare minimum I can get away with. I don't really believe in fairy tales about finding a perfect match but it would have been nice to have a wife that is a little more laid-back and easy to get along with. Basically, I wouldn't mind walking away from my marriage at this point but I just don't want to deal with the stress and inconvenience of a divorce right now. Certainly I don't want to be in the same situation 5 or 10 years from now but I always think I'll worry about this later so then another year goes by that I feel like I have wasted. So far the easiest and most effective way I have found to deal with my wife is to just agree with almost everything she says to avoid conflict at all costs.

grimreaper, if she is making complaints to you then she is trying to improve your marriage. A complaint is an opportunity to improve in a good marriage, and an irritation in a bad marriage. If you are not doing enough to fill her needs, then what are you doing to change that?


The problem is that all of your efforts are misguided. You are working hard instead of SMART. And that is what this program does, it guides your efforts in a strategic manner that produces results. Your efforts are not reaping results.

It is much easier to maintain a marriage when you are in love than it is to maintain one when you are not in love. Your marriage is very hard, no doubt. It is not hard when you are in love.

I don't agree that she is not motivated. It looks like the lack of motivation is on your part. This can be turned around with a little effort.

It is not the easiest and most certainly is not the most effective. It just builds resentment, AS YOU CAN SEE.

grim, your situation is a pretty typical situation that Dr. Harley addresses frequently. He usually deals with situations where one or both spouses are unmotivated, and he usually deals with situations where the husband needs to make changes in order to address his wife's complaints. Your wife's complaints are not unlimited (although it might seem otherwise!) and if you can systematically address them, her emotions will change, which will motivate her to change her behavior, which will change your emotions and your motivation -- and improve your life greatly. Right now you are mostly happy with the status quo, you just want her to stop complaining, and you would also like her to admire you. Well, if you address her complaints by changing, forming a better marital adjustment than you have now, not only will her complaints stop, but her comments will change into admiration!!

If you get a chance, get ahold of Dr. Harley's book His Needs Her Needs and read the chapter about establishing admiration. There is a plan in there you and your wife can follow that will probably resolve most of your difficulties. In following that plan you and your wife would agree to make a trade: she will provide admiration to you in exchange for certain things from you. Sound fair? Then you will have a status quo that you are happy about: one without complaints, and full of admiration.

You don't like her because she isn't meeting your needs as well as you would like...or she is meeting your needs, but not the right ones. Also since you aren't meeting her needs, her attitude toward you is probably a little cold.

Do you want to have a good marriage? Of course you do. You aren't very happy with a mediocre one.

Is it ideal that you have it with your curent wife? Yes!

So how can you do that? What can you control? You can control yourself. So that means you can start trying to meet her needs. You can't make her change at this point.

What are her needs? Perhaps you can guess. What does she complain about? Those are what you should start with. After a bit, see if she will fill out the emotional need questionnaire.

What about your needs? After her needs are getting met, then she will be more open to meeting yours. Perhaps you like to play golf. "Hey, wifey, how would you feel about going to the golf range with me? We could hit some balls. It will be fun and then we can go to YourFavoriteLunch place after."

I think we both don't have much motivation to change at this point. For her I think it is mostly because she thinks she doesn't really need to change anything and that whatever problems we have are mostly my fault. For me, doing what she wants feels like a no-win uphill battle because as soon as I do one thing she wants then she will just turn around and ask me to do 10 more things for her. So if she's never satisfied either way then I don't want to invest too much effort into a lost cause. I would actually like to go to marriage counseling simply for her to hear an outside perspective because if she hears it from me she typically won't listen but she's not very interested in that idea.

If I want to try to apply the concepts of radical honesty and joint agreement I wouldn't even know where to start because in my experience my wife just doesn't react very well to the truth as I see it. Even if she doesn't reject the idea immediately I don't know that it will really sink in easily so as soon as she doesn't get her way or hears something she doesn't like then she will freak out and it will be back to the way it is now. She is extremely sensitive and will take things that don't sound threatening or offensive at all to me and interpret them as a personal insult against her and get defensive about it. So I feel like I need to constantly pretend and tell her what she wants to hear just so she doesn't get too upset.

It is not simply lack of admiration and minor complaints that bother me as much as blatant disrespect and lack of consideration for my feelings. She constantly criticizes me and refuses to even listen to my opinions. Whenever I don't go along with what she says then she will throw an out-of-control tantrum, call me names, threaten to leave me, etc. These behaviors I typically see are described in Love Busters as selfish demands, disrespectful judgments, and angry outbursts. Some people wouldn't believe me if I told them that I think my wife is abusive because it's just not something they expect a man to ever say and they mostly associate this description with physical abuse not things like manipulation and emotional drama. However, that's how I really feel about it; I feel like I have basically been a victim of being repeatedly mistreated for years. I definitely want my wife to change but I don't know that giving her less to complain about will ever achieve that result by itself because I suspect that she will just find something else to nag me about or blame me for.

Grim, you are a conflict avoider, and as such, YOU have enabled your wife to disrespectfully demand things because...it works for her! You fold like a card table.

Stop it.

Next complaint she has, ASSUME it is valid. Tell her that you hear her saying that it annoys her when you, idk, leave your socks on the coffee table and then tell her how you will address it (and go all the way back to the origination of the annoying habit; with my socks example, it might be to take them off before entering the living room) and ask her if that would work for her.

It is incredibly frustrating to live with someone who avoids conflict. If you stop that, and start treating her with some respect (it is incredibly disrespectful to grudgingly agree to CARE for someone because it makes your life easier), she will very likely return the favor.

Get on the phone with Steve here at the coaching center.

It is your lack of care here that is the problem. Women who feel genuinely cared for do NOT act like screaming banshees, sir. She gets louder because YOU DON'T LISTEN. So listen.

Gr, you both have very poor habits that are destroying the love in your marriage. I would get marriage counseling with the Harley's and they will give you a plan to restore the romantic love in your marriage and learn how to resolve conflicts in an effective way. They are completely different from traditional marriage counseling in that they restore the romantic love to your marriage. People who are in love don't have problems with communication.

This article will explain how to fix your marriage http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi8114_plan.html

Okay, so there's a lot of things that have to happen here:

* You have to address her complaints
* she has to learn to make her complaints without being demanding, disrespectful, or angry
* the two of you have to learn how to generate admiration in your marriage
* (possibly) she has to learn to make decisions that take your feelings and opinions into account along with her own

Lots of marriages have worked through exactly these issues, learned the new skills involved, and turned the marriage into something both husband and wife appreciate.

Here's an article Dr. Harley wrote that sounds like a similar situation to yours:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5067b_qa.html

Many of us on the boards here have been here for a long time. Many for a short time. But the reason we keep coming back is because the MB program/philosophy works, **edit**

You were attracted to your wife once, and she to you. Most likely, you went on dates. You did fun things together. (recreational companionship). You had long talks (Conversation). You told her how nice/smart/pretty she was. (Admiration).

So as you met each others Emotional needs, you fell in love. You were in what Dr. Harley calls the State of Intimacy.

You got married, had a job, had some kids. No longer did you have just you too, but other obligations. Other things seemed more important than "date night". You got a little annoyed when your wife had more time for other things and wasn't meeting your ENs. You fell into the state of Conflict.

Well, if she won't (Have SF/Keep the house clean/Talk to me) then I won't (come home early/take out the garbage/go to her parent's house). You didn't want to meet her needs or even let her meet yours. You are now in the state of Withdrawal.

Since your LoveBank is so low, you dont' feel in love at all! You are wondering how you could ever fall in love again! I don't want to meet her needs because there are so many!
What should I do?

So you have come here.


I mentioned that many of us have been here a long time...and over that time we have seen many of the same patterns. You appear to be in the case where you have just stopped meeting each others needs and are co-existing. We don't see any red flags for an affair. That is good.
You can regain the love and you can do it by meeting each others ENs.

**edit**

1) Stop any Love Busters but keep firm boundaries.
If she won't listen to your opinion, just say that You want to come to an agreement that you are both happy with, and you will come back later after she has a break because you are not going to be yelled at.
If she has a tantrum, then just excuse yourself to another part of the house. Or go to the grocery store.
If she denies these tantrums, then secretly record her and play it back later.

2) Start meeting her Emotional Needs.
If she complains that you don't help around the house, then have the both of you make up a chart of household chores that need to be done and divide it up.
If she complains that you never talk to her, then ask her about her day/work/family/thing you heard on the news over the dinner table.
If she complains that you never spend time with her, then ask her to go on a walk with you/play a board game with you.
Start doign some of the (reasonable) things she is complainging about. Then try to get her to do the Emotional Needs Questionnaire.

Although you are in Withdrawal and don't really want to do these things, you are the one who is here so you are the one that gets to start getting the ball rolling.

**edit**

wannabophim, please check your email that you have listed with Marriage Builders or contact me directly at fireproof01@gmail.com Thank you!

I don't doubt that these principles will typically work if people are open-minded and willing to give them a chance; I just think it would be frustrating to try to do everything you can to save your marriage if your spouse isn't willing to do much to help the situation. One thing I was wondering about is whether some people here had a spouse that was really skeptical or didn't even want to hear about some of this but you were able to get them to come around eventually somehow or if some of you were the one that didn't think you had a problem then what did it take to make you realize that you really needed to change?

Thanks everyone for all the suggestions and links to the related articles, this definitely helped give me a better idea of what some of my options are. I have been ignoring problems for so long that I think it made things much worse and once I started to pay more attention to what has happened it seemed overwhelming and almost impossible to resolve; but now I see there are some simple steps I can take and I don't need to do it all at once.

When motivation is the problem, it is a good idea to employ some of the counseling resources offered by the Harleys. Most of the couples who sign up for the Marriage Builders course, for example, have one reluctant spouse. Once that spouse understands the program and sees how they stand to greatly benefit, they get on board. Your spouse will reap great benefits from the program so once she understands that, it is not a problem to get her on board.

My H had no use for Marriage Builders until he understood that he stood to gain alot in the deal. People buy things when there is a percieved benefit. You have sell her on the benefits and it you can't do that, then let the Harleys do it. My H and I went through the MB course in 2007 and he is he is a great supporter now. We have a romantic, passionate marriage because of it. It was the best thing we ever did for our marriage.

It is not hard to get someone on board when that is the outcome.

I'm someone who had a reluctant spouse, and I would spazz out like your wife because it seemed so simple to me, but he would do anything to avoid conflict or interaction, including moving out in the middle of the night while the family slept. We have four children, and I basically sold him on buying all-in on MB (even after six months of coaching with Steve) by busting up his fantasy divorce scenario where he would just walk away and I would keep the four kids. I told him I would REQUEST that the court give HIM full custody.

For some reason, he decided that getting involved in the marriage would be easier on him than being a single parent of a bunch of kids. It worked for me, in ways that I never thought imaginable.

Do you have children?

And you are correct: it is incredibly frustrating to be the only one working on the marriage. But the effort is worth it. Either you will learn the vastness of your strength and reap the rewards, or you will learn how to spot a soulless vampire.

Almost everyone who comes here or who goes to Dr. Harley's seminar has one spouse of the couple, either husband or wife, who is reluctant, skeptical, doesn't really want to work on the marriage, etc.

That's exactly what the board and all of the other help Dr. Harley offers is for. Please get to reading: you will learn that your spouse is much more likely to come around when your account is full in her love bank. She can start to feel better in as early as just a few weeks if you do everything right, and in time she will be willing to come around for you.

Dr. Harley says men have much more success winning their wives over in this manner than women do. If the husband is on board with the program, he is much more likely to be able to bring his wife around if he will stick to the program. You have great reason to hope if you are male and you are able to keep your emotions in check and follow the plan.

I recommend you check out Dr. Harley's radio show and become a daily listener.

No, I don't have any children yet. Also, I'm not overly concerned about the idea of losing some money or possessions in a divorce. So for me some of the main factors that often make people more reluctant to bail out of their marriage don't really apply. I guess I have just gotten used to the way things are where I didn't really expect to be happy or get what I want and I didn't expect to be able to make my wife happy either. At this point it is more about convenience and feeling secure than having a good healthy relationship. I don't really want to be single; my escape fantasy would involve being free to possibly marry someone more like my ex-girlfriends that didn't try to control me and expect me to change quite so much the way my wife does. However, I never lived with them so maybe I didn't really have a chance to see their most annoying traits or personality quirks.