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Avoid fighting AT ALL COSTS means literally "at all costs."

What came of this? This was May 3. Were you telling us the truth?

I'll be on the radio show today if you want to tune in about noon CST. That way you can hear the person who isn't working the program live. Yes you heard it here first folks, grab your popcorn and listen to Hilltopper try and convince Dr Harley and his wife that its not his fault and his wife is to blame!

Seriously I'd love for you all to listen and I'd like your feedback.

I have my workbook in front of me. I'll share a bit and maybe you can help me deal with some of the things I feel particularly how to communicate them to my wife. There is a couple of LBs and an EN.

Selfish Demands:

1. Much of the communication from my wife begins with, "I need", "Can you get me", or "Will you do this for me?" I feel an inequity because I ask for very little. For example today, I stayed home to work from home office. My wife asked me to take son to school even though she knows I should be working. I paused for a moment, then said, "I really need to be working." She began to tear up and I felt manipulated. I would love to get more ideas on how to say "no" to my wife without her getting angry or upset. I'd also like some advice on how to ask for things from my wife more without feel like I'm troubling her.

Disrespectful Judgements:

1. I feel bad when I express my feelings which is why I so frequently clam up. My attempts to express my feelings are almost always met with, "You just took it wrong" or "You just reading into things" or "That is not what I meant". This make me feel like not bringing up my feelings and that my wife doesn't believe they are valid. I like some ideas on how to express my feelings better or how to respond to my wife when she won't validate my feelings.

Affection:

1. I have a strong need or desire to have physical contact with my wife. To be cared for and empathized with. I'd like for my wife to bring me soup when I'm sick, or show interest when I've had a bad day at the office. I'd like for her to sit next to me on the couch and put her hand on my leg. I'd like for her to hug me back when I hug her. I'd like to feel loved. I'd love to get some help in providing my wife feedback so that the affection she gives me because a habit.

Yes, this was a great idea! May 3.

Yes I was telling you the truth. My wife wasn't down with it so I didn't call them back. She wanted me to write into the radio show so I did which worked out for me. I told her last night that I needed to do this for me and she said ok.

Hey, bring that man back!

Call Steve Harley or his father, Dr. Harley, and ask for some help becoming this man.

Tell them you have a problem with wanting to gain at the expense of your wife's feelings. Because you do.

And it took you two weeks to do it?


Okay, so what exactly have you done at this point? Written the radio show? When? Have you received a response back?

I wrote them last night, Joyce called me back. They'll be calling me in about 30 mins. Look man all I can tell you is my wife wasn't enthusiastic about me calling Steve so I didn't do it. I want to work with Steve alone for now to help me cope with things better. Despite all the info and workbooks, I still don't know how to respond to my wife.

Great! Dr. Bill Harley (that's Steve's father) can help you! I will be listening! If I can't hear it live I will pick it up as soon as it is available.

Hilltopper .. I too suggest you phone Steve. This "crazy cycle" has to stop. Who will be the one to stop?? The person who feels they are the most mature will be the one to stop.

**edit**

My wife used to say the same things "you should find someone who can treat you like you deserve" .. etc.. but ya know what?" WHen she said that .. she was really loking for reassurance that I was willing to keep working at it! .. I would replay "Honey, im NOT going anywhere .. no matter how much we fight .. I am going to find a way to make this work .. im going to learn and be the hubby you NEED me to be. EVEN if it takes me the rest of my life!"

You CAN do this Hill .. I have faith that you can. Sure it might take a while to relearn and break your old habits .. but stick with the program ... watch htose videos ... keep working at yourself ... and do NOT worry about your own EN's right now .. rebuild your wife! .. recharge her ... she needs your strength to pull her out of withdrawl and into conflict .. and then into intimacy! Dont let the things she says distract you from your day to day attempts to woo her .. or to cheer her up .. or to show her your trying as hard as you can or to show her that you got what it takes to keep the family stable!

Again .. you CAN do this Hill ... if many here did from worse situations ... you can too!

MNG!

Ephesians 5:33 "Each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband."

Put that verse in context and it means that the husband must give his wife love FIRST! .. AGAPE love(there is 3 different kinds of love find out what agape love is). The husband (most of the time) does not naturally love (clams up and goes silent) in the way agape love describes but god asks we provide it no matter what for our wives(this can be just as dificult for men as respect is for women). And when it says the wife must respect her husband is becasue the wife does not do this naturally. Women have a natural tendancy to disrespect (not all .. but as a general rule it is very easy for them to use harsh words)so thats why god asks it secondary to asking the man to love. Love your wife FIRST ... and then she will respect you.

EDIT: to post a biblical reference and describe its context a bit.

I heard some assignments and a couple of free books in there.

Hill, seriously, get ahold of yourself emotionally. You CAN control your emotions if you really want to. You're not a child or a hormonal teenager.

You're still playing tit-for-tat...the "I've done this and this and this for you and you're not doing anything for me." Not that you should go without your needs met but when you start tracking the things you're doing and she's not, then you're keeping score.

Handle yourself. Even if she cursed you out one side and down the next, a simple "I don't appreciate it when you verbally disrespect me" will suffice and leave it at that rather than returning in retaliation. And I'm not saying she does that but stop responding.

And it's been this long and neither one of you have filled out the ENs questionaire? No wonder neither one of you know what needs you want met or how you want them met. And yet you're getting mad at something she doesn't know how to do.

This is like banging a pinata. Take the blindfold off.

Hi Hill,

I've been following this thread and reading your struggles, but as I am still learning myself, I didn't feel I had much to say. Last night changed that for me - because I saw something happen in my own situation that surprised me, hurt a hell of a lot, and yet confirmed I was on the right track.

I've been where you are, for quite some time I was too busy balancing the 'hurt books' - placing blame, saying 'maybe I did but you did too', trying to 'fix' my partner so she would stop hurting me - just acting out from the position of my own Taker and butting heads with hers.

Until she finally pulled back completely and went into shutdown. She went into the first signs of Withdrawal.

It seemed like there was no hope - but I found this place, and I found guidance from others as well, and despite myself and my Taker I started putting those pieces of wisdom and guidance into action.

Earlier in this thread it was said 'it always gets worse before it gets better' - I have seen this to be true. My partner spent a few weeks basically withdrawn - she was present, but shut down, she went through the motions, and would occasionally fly into fits of anger over the tiniest things, seemingly completely unreasonable and out of proportion - but I refused to fight or Love Bust. I didn't bother to even count or notice when she employed Love Busters towards me. If we disagreed, or if she got angry with me - I would apologize, explain that I understood her hurt or anger from her perspective, and then explain the mistake from my own, and then I *did not continue discussing or arguing about it* - she would try, and I would continue the same thing "Honey, I am deeply sorry for hurting you, I understand completely how you feel, I would feel the same way in your shoes, I only ask that you accept that it was a mistake and had no malicious intent to it at all."

My Taker didn't like this. To be honest my taker HATED this. Sometimes it was several times a day I had to get up, walk away, and have a little 'shut up and sit down' talk with my Taker. At the same time, my Giver was getting desperate - advising me to say anything, do anything, beg, plead, promise,fall on my sword, give until I broke the bank, whatever it took to love this woman. The Taker would switch sides and sort of encourage this plan in the moment, because hey - then I'd get what I wanted, right? It was a terrible battle, and I had to stop listening to *either* of them and take action from a different place - just as Dr. Harley advised.

And then I watched several hours of Tony Robbins doing relationship interventions - and a common theme came through.

A theme of - if your partner (speaking from the male perspective here) DID come out of withdrawal and back into conflict, if she WAS in a position of allowing she might be willing to let you meet her emotional needs again (even in the tiniest fraction of her heart) - then things were about to get a *whole lot worse* for you right away.

Because she is hurt, scared, angry, and her Taker is in full control - and as Tony Robbins put it - she may *want* to believe, but before now you've given her no *reason* to believe, so she is going to test you. HARD.

In my own situation, when I put out my hand and said 'I love you' - her response was 'I feel like you're ignoring how I really feel, trying to pretend it's not true'.

Me: 'Honey, I am not ignoring how you feel, I see and understand it, and I realize completely how you got there, and what I did to cause it. I love you, and am working and learning to be a better man for you.'

Her: 'Lovely sentiment, but I think you're just saying whatever it takes to get what you want. I've seen this before, you say whatever it takes, and then in a few days or a few weeks it just goes right back, and I'm miserable.'

Me: 'Yes, that has been the pattern of the past, and while I never intended it to be that way, and never wanted you to be unhappy, I realize that was the effect. I am deeply sorry. I love you, and I want to be the man you are more than happy to have and be with. I want to support you and help you have what you truly want."

Her: 'What is I am learning I don't want to have or be with anyone? I am *unhappy* here, being your partner.'

Me: 'Then I will have to support that decision too. I love you, there's no other answer. What you want and need can never be wrong, because it is what you need.'

(and right here - and some of this is paraphrased and shortened for space - my Taker was screaming to run, or fight, or GTFO because OMG there was huge pain looming in those words - but I remembered that Tony Robbins said - the *first* thing she is going to do is test you, hit you hard with all her hurt and anger, to prove you're faking it and are going to revert to your old ways, and the only way to save your relationship is face those tests and survive them with love - prove you're not just talking a good game. But frankly, I was expecting her to say she was leaving)

Her: 'You have no idea how many times I have come *so* close to saying screw it, I'm done. I think you underestimate just *how* upset and unhappy I am about this.'

Me: 'I don't underestimate it at all. I have seen it, I have noticed, and that is what has spurred me to begin making these changes. I love you, I want you to be happy, I would prefer that be with me, but I want you to be happy either way.'

- and it went on like this, she would throw up another accusation, saying I had not changed, I only wanted what I wanted and was pulling a con job on her to get it, and as soon as she agreed everything would go back to the way it used to be.
Several times she repeated she was unhappy, miserable, not sure she even wanted to stay. Each time I agreed with her feelings, apologized, said I would not force her - that I *preferred* that she stay and we work it out, but I would support her either way - and I would condense her statement into a 'then you don't want this or that with me' question, adding that whatever her answer was, was okay to say.

And every time I asked that, she would step away from it 'it's not even that, I'm just *miserable*' and she would begin explaining the extent of her hurt again. And when I didn't pull back or argue, she'd turn to 'being honest' - which is both an admirable quality in her, and one she uses as a weapon.
I know from her own telling that in her past, and even in her past with me - she would be honest, and then be punished for it, attacked, judged, fought with, and so on - and I began to see her using 'I'm going to be honest here' as a test - to break my resolve, to prove I was conning her, to reveal what she feared - that I wasn't for real.
It hurt - it hurt so much I can't describe. As was said earlier, it was like staring into a mirror where every ugly truth and mistake you ever made was revealed - and it took everything I had not to run, hide, or fight back.

And in my mind and heart I held on to two things - that I loved her, and whether she was preparing to leave, or was testing me, it didn't change what *I* had to do - which was stand strong, take everything she threw at me, respect her, love her, and just keep coming at her with all the love and understanding and respect and desire I had.

And before long her responses took on the tone of 'I don't know, even if I say yes I can't just turn everything back on like a switch, which is what you seem to expect'.

I am open to the possibility this is still leading to her leaving. But I have looked back over the entire evening and the exact pattern that both Dr. Harley and Tony Robbins predicted is right there as clear as daylight.

Given every opportunity to leave, without negative consequence, she chose to stay and explain herself and try to argue and make demands - selfish seeming, entirely all about her, her, her - but she was still talking to me. She hit me over and over in ways she knew would hurt me more than anything - honesty about the past and her feelings she knew would be the most painful for me to hear - and I took it and gave back love and understanding.

It was hell, and wherever it goes from her I know it's not going to get much better for a while. But loving her and meeting her emotional needs, even if it starts simply with respect and support, is the *only* option I have allowed myself.

I do not let myself judge her.
I do not let myself evaluate how *she* is doing in the relationship. I ignore her Love Busters.
I do not give myself the option of running away - withdrawing or leaving.
I do not give myself the option of trying to excuse or explain away the past and invalidate her feelings.
I do not give myself the option of anger - if I feel hurt and my Taker tries to lash out in anger, I walk away, go silent, take deep breaths, force myself back to the same place where I love and understand and respect her.

Tony Robbins said, at this point it is her *job* to test me - I want to be better, but you never *get* to be better if it is never tested. And he said *she* wants me to be better, but she has to be able to believe in me, and she can't do that without first proving that the old me isn't going to come rushing back as soon as her guard is down.

So I weathered the first serious storm, and stood strong in the face of a severe round of testing. But I warn you - it hurt like hell, at times my chest hurt so bad I felt like I couldn't breathe - but you have to do it anyway. Have to.

Yes I think not spending time together is the main reasons I feel not wanted. I pushed this pretty hard early on but I got quite a bit of push back from my wife so I kind of laid off it a bit. We HAVE to get babysitters for the little one. This isn't happening and as a result my wife and I get the scraps from each other at the very end of the day. Hardly conducive to creating love I'd say wouldn't you? I miss my wife!

I heard that sentence from Joyce. I'm glad you realize it's both of you getting scraps! The way she worded it I wasn't sure that came across.


Yes. Go get her back, Bud!

Just heard you on the show, Hilltopper If my H and I don't get good UA time outside of the house (yes, also not at the end of the day when we are tired!) we start to feel some tension almost immediately.

If I recall correctly, Mel and I tried to talk to your W about the importance of quality UA time and getting babysitters and she seemed like she was onboard with that idea. Now you two just need to follow through on it!

Well this should take a lot of pressure off both of us for now. We are both scared and walking on egg shells all day. We just spoke about finding babysitters immediately and making a list. I expressed a sense of urgency with this to my wife because we have a tendency for a day to become a week, to become a few weeks, etc. The words "This has to happen" resonates in my ears from Dr Harley. I am also going to make my efforts at doing nice things for my wife usually about doing something together. So rather than pick her some sushi up on the way home which is a nice gesture, I'd rather call a babysitter on the way home, pick up my wife and take her to sushi instead. Two for the price of one you know?