lol @ bit. I wholly agree with you that schmoozers a-kissers family-neglecters employees who take advantage of opportunities to network get farther faster in business than people who value relationships over money, success and recognition those who don't. You will get no argument from me on that point.

What I will argue is: people who value money, possessions, material success, and the admiration and recognition of a bunch of suits over the well-being and admiration of their own spouses and children have no business having spouses and children. I've been beaten up about this before on this board, but my argument stands: I did not marry a job or a paycheck. I married a man.

We had a pretty productive conversation last night, and I got answers to some of KT's questions. It was like pulling teeth to get it started, but it ended well. The tough part was getting him engaged, and that's so very frustrating to me. During the course of the convo he mentioned how connected to me he'd felt over the last several months after not feeling that 'for a long time' and how much he loved the feeling of connection.

Well, this is how it started: we'd just put the little ones down to bed and came out to the living room. I sat on the sofa, he sat in the chair and picked up the remote. I asked him if he would come sit by me, that I needed some physical affection from him. He said, "I gave you that this morning." I said I wasn't talking about sex, but physical closeness, he'd been away all day and things are tense and I would like to be able to rest into his body. He sighed, got up, put the remote down, and sat next to me, said, "Is this what you want?" I said yes, this is perfect, then I laid back against one armrest and put my legs up and patted for him to put his legs up, too, and just started chatting, and we stayed that way for a good hour.

And I'm thinking, THIS is how you 'feel connected', you REACH for it, you OPEN yourself to bids for connection...nobody is going to 'feel connected' if they close off connection over a fit of self-righteousness.

So, to KT's q about what marriage is to him, I got that kind of tangentially, it would take pages and pages to get to where we were in the conversation, but the short version is: he felt attacked and said that he could make a list of a 100 pages of everything I've ever done wrong, so I told him that I would love to see that list but if he was in the mood to make a list right now, I'd really like to see a list of what he thinks marriage is made of, a list of what marriage means to him.

He didn't write it down, I didn't either, but he said what I expected him to say given the MB education. Spending time together, growing a life together, being O&H, being BFFs, taking care of each other...the part that sparked the most interesting conversation (to me) was when he said TEAMWORK.

I asked him what he meant by teamwork. Did he mean working together toward a shared goal? Yes. What did he see as being our shared goal? What did he think he was doing toward working for it, what did he see me doing, where did he see me failing, where did he see himself?

My failings are not being happy about the new deal, changing my support of the new job, and asking others for help in what should be our personal problem.

His failings were not being O&H, but he doesn't feel that is a failing anymore since he told me about the event and trip as soon as he knew.

I love the guy, loved talking with him last night even though it was difficult to get started. I can't do anything about how he sees himself as not responsible for not feeling connected to me, nor how he feels not responsible for my diminished support and trust.