You make some points here that I believe are assumptions on your part. You do have a few thousand posts on me here so I'll yield to your experience, however she made whatever she wanted for dinner, not me. I asked her if she wanted to make dinner, she said sure, she opened some cook books for ideas, and chose what she chose, I had nothing to do with it. She has no problems saying no if she doesn't want to do something.

In regards to to leaving the room, I should rephrase my comment to "It isn't difficult, but it makes me feel sad every time it happens."

In holding back meeting her emotional needs, it is not really a conscious intentional decision. It is more along the lines of not wanting to meet her needs because she doesn't bother meeting mine. This is instinctual and selfish I know this, but I have yet to see a change in her behavior as a result of a change in mine. She's still taking, I'm giving, and it is hard to do day in and day out without fail indefinitely. My Taker wants to come out and play and I keep shoving him down out of the picture. I can appreciate things taking time, but at some point there needs to be a shock to the system to make progress and this is the part I'm struggling with. She likes it how it is, I don't, and it has to change. I don't want everyday to be about me being brutally honest about how she makes me feel and how unhappy I am, this makes her resent me and lash out at me.



Married 15 years
12 y/o DD
10 y/o DS
6 y/o DD