I just finished reading a book a couple weeks ago called, "Leadership and Self Deception". It's a modern parable style story. There's a husband/wife illustration in the story that goes through how the husband set the wife up to be at fault; the wife was doing the same thing but the book didn't go into her side of the story very much.

I think you'll see the dynamic that you and your husband have going. I wouldn't recommend you have him read it; he already feels pressure from Steve that he's at fault and he's to blame (which he is - but that's not working to fix the core of the problem right now). But it will help you start to break your patterns of blaming him. It may be scary to take this step because if you let him off the hook and start owning how you set him up, then he gets to do the thing that requires you to sacrifice instead of him. Sacrifice is a destructive thing in your marriage. For either of you.

I realize that the travel thing is non-negotiable. With the exception of traveling to a manufacturing facility for training, I don't see why a car salesman ever has to leave home. EVER. He's not the one hired by the company to go out to auctions to find used cars. So he has no reason to travel. He's volunteering for extra duty because he has discovered that he has an emotional need to travel. It's the only way to explain how his taker took over and forced you to sacrifice your emotional need for him to NOT travel.

He can't speak to his desires because you are so very against it. He feels he can't be true to his aspirations because you've taken it off the table. He fears divorce because of children and love for you, but that love becomes less and less with each sacrifice he makes.

So while travel is non-negotiable for you, what is it for him? Do you love him enough to dare ask the question and be civil as you discuss the root causes of this betrayal?

A wise man speaking to a very large congregation about marriage said that we try to give others the benefit of a doubt, yet ascribe the worst of intentions to our spouse. "Assume the Good and Doubt the Bad".


I think if you want to save your marriage, you should find a way to ascribe the best of intentions to your husband instead of the worst. Even if his behavior seems to have the worst of intentions toward you, it may be that his own emotional needs which you are not meeting, either by intention or ignorance - have gone unmet for so long that his taker is in full control.

If you want to recover your marriage, it's time you start looking at the withdrawals your own needs are making on him. Start from there and see what happens.

The tough thing right now is the lack of ability to POJA on this issue puts you at odds with each other's emotional needs. It requires one of you to sacrifice. Right now, your husband seems to be at an emotional extremity, so he forced the sacrifice you are asking him to make, back on you by taking the choice out of your hands.

Sacrifice puts your marriage at risk. Neither of you should sacrifice.