Originally Posted by Jackblack
"Changing one's behavior eventually changes one's feelings."

This statement is wrong and most definitely wrong for you.

Pray tell, what is wrong with this statement? I disagree with your generalization. Feelings oftentimes follow intentional actions, I think that is what HOLD was referring to. When people are depressed, they don't wait for the negative feelings associated with depression to subside, they have to take deliberative actions despite their current feelings in order to eliminate the depression (exercise, eating right, medications, counseling, etc.), as one example.

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From reading some of your posts it seems that you think, If I can make a million dollars, everything will be ok and my wife will have sex with me.

This is not how it happens. If you do happen to make a million dollars your wife will probably take her cut and shack up with the gym instructor.

Yes and no. It is difficult to say whether Mrs HOLD would in fact be more attracted and more open to sex with Mr HOLD were he to be a partner pulling down a seven figure salary at his firm. I'd guess that at least part of the reason that Mrs HOLD is not attracted to Mr HOLD is because of the reasons that HOLD has already said, because he isn't leading the successful life that Mrs HOLD anticipated when she married him.

HOLD's situation is akin to, IMHO, one of the first examples that Harley outlined in the HN/HN book. He wrote of a husband/wife couple who met at the gym after the wife had lost a bunch of weight, after having been overweight most of her life. Physical attraction was a primary EN for the husband. After marrying, the wife gradually went back to her old habits and gained quite a bit of weight, and the husband had major issues with her weight gain. She had never communicated to him her struggles with her weight prior to meeting him. In other words, she was not open and honest, didn't practice the PORH.

I see Mr/Mrs HOLD's situation as similar in many respects. HOLD married thinking that all of the sex he received prior to the marriage would continue into the marriage, and Mrs HOLD married with intentions of living the high life married to a successful attorney who would go on to make partner in a prestigious law firm. Mrs HOLD did not practice the PORH with respect to her true intentions with regard to sex, and HOLD probably wasn't entirely open and honest about his glass half empty approach to life and his struggles with his self worth and so forth and so on that have probably contributed to his struggles with job performance. Both were putting on facades in order to get what they wanted.

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Your real problem Hold, is that you are a glass half empty sort of guy. I understand that you like being this way but unfortunately it is death to all women. They absolutely do not want to hear it. It makes them uncomfortable and insecure. They do not want to be attached to failure.

This is a generalization that I disagree with. I know plenty of glass half empty women. Attorneys are born skeptics. They are highly paid to be glass half empty skeptics. Industry analysis of the legal profession has consistently shown this to be the case (just ask HOLD - he'll tell you the same thing I bet). There are plenty of women married to attorneys that are plenty happy despite the glass half empty skeptical personality.

Don't get me wrong, I hear what you are saying, that some women want their knight in shining armor, to be swept off their feet, but not all women want this.

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Your failure is the perception that you portray. You tell your wife that you are a failure and she believes you. Why do you find fault when she believes you? When she believes you she acts accordingly.

The funny thing with women is that so often it takes so little to impress. I know a guy that took a woman to the casino twice. He won $20 and $4 dollars and told her he was �always lucky�. She believed it totally. Built a life around it. She believed that life together with him, would always be lucky. It wasn�t but that�s another story.
I guess nature has made women this way because where else are they going to go?

On the other hand they can always spend twice as much as you could ever earn. Look at Fergy, $10,000,000.00 in debt. That would take you a hundred years to pay off. See how lucky you are you didn�t marry her.

The point is until you begin to see the glass half full, no mater what you do, things will remain the same.

LOL, IME I have to agree with you on the spending twice as much as you could ever earn. smile But then again, HOLD and I share a mutual struggle of financial well being due to our wives overspending. Sometimes it's truly never enough.


God Bless,

HitchHiker

All I want to do is learn to think like God thinks. , I want to know Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details. , When the solution is simple, God is answering. - Albert Einstein

INTJ married to an ENFJ