Originally Posted by holdingontoit
After all the thousnds or millions of words here, the dynamic is very simple.

I was a failure at work before I met Mrs. Hold. I married her in the hope that copious sex with a beautiful woman would provide me with the confidence needed to succeed. It was a stupid idea and it is not surprising that it has failed.

She was supposed to be the cure for my unhappiness. Which, of course, is ridiculous. Happiness must come from within.

Now, she serves as a useful excuse for my failure.

If I were healthy, I would succeed at work. To provide a better future for my children. And our marriage would succeed or fail. But I would be happier either way.

However, I do not believe I can succeed. I was failing before I met her. Now I am older, tired, cynical, depressed and pessimistic. If I could not succeed then, why should I expect to succeed now?

On the other hand, I am confident that I can succeed at failure. So that is what I seek. What I work toward.

She is engaged in the same mechanism from the other side. She uses my lack of success and general wimpiness to excuse her failure to address my needs or do her internal work. Each of us finds it easier to blame the other than to work on ourself.

Both of us are familiar with and tolerant of failure / unhappiness. Hence we prefer the certainty of failure we can blame on our spouse. To trying and failing in a way that is purely personal.

Unless or until one of us is willing to risk more a personal failure. Neither of us has any chance of success.

As J_M said, it is all victim puke.

Part of that is explained in the book, No More Mr Nice Guy. I think you read it before. The Break Free Exercises in the book is VERY hard to do for Nice Guys (NG).

I too have thought that by having a great sex life with my wife, that I would have that magic to propel me to more achievements and successes.

Yet, despite having accomplishments, I still felt not good enough. And the more I want that sex to fix the feeling inside, the more I got frustrated when I was not getting the fulfillment in SF. I spent many years focusing on the lack of sex in my marriage, my unmet SF needs.

I even put less importance to finance because my mindset was that I could always make more. Eventually, finance becomes an issue because wife became SAHM, the business was closed, and the spending remained as if we were still generating such income. It also became more of a pressing matter when I realize that my earning potential is finite.

Anyway, many books and forums later, the NMMNG book had a line something about "I am the only person in the world responsible for my needs, no one else." I was totally against this thought in the beginning, especially towards SF. But I eventually come to realize the truth of that, and our sex life now is much better than what it was, but still have plenty of room for improvement.

It's been said many times here in MB that "change from within" and that is something I had to do, and left me with "hope" that wife would want to make changes for herself.

One more important point is that I change for my own reasons. And this lead me to be in the position to "choose" and be in the marriage because I want to; because I evaluate all the values is it, even when sex is one factor that is not near perfect, on the whole, it is acceptable to me.

Likewise, I am able to emotionally "let go" if my wife "chooses" not to be married with me.

-- Still JM --

Met `82, Steady May`86, Married Jul`95. D12, S9, D3. MB`ing since Apr`02 to fall back "in love."

05.20.06: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right."