well, tommorow is Wed. here we go again, the golf debate. thankfully next wed will be the last one until the fall.

for those of you who know what i am talking about... question was asked... can i go to work late so he can golf in the morning. last week, he golfed monday, wed and then one more time on sunday (long story on that one, very frustrating but i totally managed to let it go, i didn't even vent/whine here about it).

this week at work, pressure is increasing to get all tests run, but there are so many bugs in the system it is very slow going. H has NO appreciation for pressure at my job. i try to tell him, he has NEVER wanted to hear about it. ok, ok, i should not say never, but more often that not.

of course now he has a new weapon he can use on me. "how am i suppose to know if you really can't work it out so i can golf, i'm sure if the reason for going to work late was something that you wanted to do, you would work it out. you have told me that most of the time you used to see that guy was during the day when you should of been at work"

i don't even have the energy to really vent. not to mention the time.

edited to add... oh, yeah, and we are golfing on friday, i'm completely taking the day off, to use a certificate I won for him for a free round of golf, with carts and followed by lunch. we are going with another couple. it runs out at the end of May. at least i get to go with on this round. but knowing i am taking off friday, he has to realize that just bumps up the pressure to get a lot done mon-thurs

<small>[ May 18, 2004, 02:35 PM: Message edited by: FinallyLearning ]</small>

FL
I no I am not the person to be giving advise, but I will share my thoughts.

Have you talked to your H about how you are feeling? I know in my case is I did not communicate. I dont know your whole situation but think talking is the answer. Your H still there shows his L for you. I would tell him how I felt. Maybe just explain the stress with work not that you dont want him to go golfing.

How much time are you spending together working on your M?

FL, put your foot down and stand up for yourself. In non LB'ing way of course. Your mistake doesn't make your entire life null and void. Work is a top priority and supercedes golf. It's just a fact and nothing to do with anything else. Fight fair but fight. This is one way to move your life forward. Stop walking on eggs. I have that job covered. I think it would really help your M to be able to seperate your responsibility to work from the selfishnish of the A. I hope you get my meaning. My W and I are able to fight/argue constructively about other things without always the cloud of the A entering into it. That has taken a long time but I enjoy giving it a break and fighting about other things some times. Please try it.

Hi FL,
Sounds like a bad hair day!!! I don't have any answers or solutions. I guess I gonna ask if you LB w/o knowing it? Hey, I agree, he golf's too much. Sorry men but only my father golf's 3 times a week and he's retired. Is there anything here to negotiate or is he gonna LB you the rest of your life just to get his way? Also, I'm gonna pry a little and ask is there any way you can go part time? I know a little bit about this stuff and usually you can go PT and not suffer financially.

I know I'm all over the place with this, but you indicated you would love to change careers. Why can't you go PT and school? Then you could name your schedule. Could you work at all from home?

Now that I have the practical out of the way, what about the emotional. What are the positive signs in your M? I saw some of your replies to others and I see your resolve. It is super difficult to endure the abuse and it is traumatic emotionally. My only concern here is that you don't go back to the wrong thing. I know how hard the struggle is to find comfort when you are not getting any needs met by your S.

You know how recovery works by seeing the success stories here. I don't consider my M to be in recovery yet and it is 9 months past dday. We are close, but not there yet. Your's is not in recovery either. It takes two committed people to work on the M to be in recovery. Right now you are the only one who is committed to making it better.

I was reading somthing last night from Ed Wheat's book, Love Life for Every Married Couple. It is my marriage bible. Anyway, he made the point that the way to get love is not by straining to attract love, but by freely giving love. I know that when I get all uptight about the lack of intimacy in my M, it produces and anger that comes accross as an LB. I don't have to say a word, but is is still the wrong way to attract love. I have found the best way is to support my W with words backed up by actions that are truly giving. For about 18 months I had to be the rock with no help from my W. I learned alot about myself and how to give love.

It is hard to distinguish whether a person is straining to attract love or really giving love. Some may say that person is a doormat or a fool not to stand up for their rights. Yes, you need to speak up and express your feelings, but the key is how you express those feelings. You do have a gift and a very compassionate side that I have seen in your encouragement for others. If you wrote this post to yourself, how would you respond to it? What advice would you give? I think that might reveal to you where you are in your recovery.

The only other question I have is how much do you hate golf? I would not blame you a bit if you said you did. I would bet it really bothers you because it takes your H away from you and the family. also, it seems to say to you that your work is not important and I'm sure you resent that. How do you feel about what your H does for a living? Do you encourage him?

I don't golf much b/c of the time it takes. In fact, my W gave me a golf gift certificate last year and I still have not used it. I told her I would use it if she would go with me. I think we will use it this year. A year ago, not a chance! What a difference a year makes. The tough part is getting through today so we can see what tomarrow brings.

Hang in there and keep coming here to vent! I have said before that every day is 1 day closer to recovering my M. The same is true for you!

Christ's Love,
Roman

Men can be such cads sometimes. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" />

If you need to be at work, you need to be at work. I think it's great you can rearrange your schedule for him, but if you can't all the time, you shouldn't feel too bad about it.

dewt

thanks for the feedback, only time to read right now, will post later.

morning all,

first, the outcome....he is golfing but says he will get home by 8am. I am going to leave shortly and will leave my cell phone on my daughter's nightstand and call her at 7:30am to get her up and going. she has a late arrival day at school so they both have to be out the door at about 8:45. if he really does get home at 8am, it should all work out ok. we didn't really talk about the decision to golf or not anymore, H just told me what he decided to do, to quit after 13 holes which should get him home at 8am. he did not know about the late-arrival day, so his plan had daughter getting up and out 100% on her own (she is 8th grade) something i am not comfortable with. but then i told him about the late arrival day, so the issue became non-existent, as long as he really does get home by 8am.

communication... very good advice, no i don't think we are all that good at it. the communication skills we learned at Retrouvaille (to dialogue) he does not want to do now, he was never crazy about the technique but he would use it sometimes before, now, anything was done/learned during the time i was having the affair he wants nothing to do with. which seems crazy to me because that is the stuff that brought me back home. he just cannot see that right now. hopefully that will eventually change.

we are not really spending time "working" on the marriage. that is what concerns me the most but for H, he felt like he was "working" on the marriage for so long only to discover i was not being honest. so i can understand why this is so hard for him, but it does not help us recover.

hi roman, "am i LBing him without knowing it?" well, if i am 100% honest with myself, i would have to say, maybe i am more than i want to realize. and that is something I must work on.

this sure hits home: "when I get all uptight about the lack of intimacy in my M, it produces and anger that comes accross as an LB." for me it's more like when i get sad and focus more on my pain then his, i am LBing him. we all have seen me in days i have been sad (thankfully I have been doing ok with my mood this past week). i cannot be loving when i am like that.

when I am irritable and give snap responses that are not loving, I am LBing him. i have been snapping at the kids too. i once had patience that never ran out, now i seem to have none.

when I do not put his happiness at the top of my priority list, I am LBing him. I don't think I can honestly say I am doing that. deep down, I am worrying about my happiness more than his.

these are areas i must work on, instead of worrying about my H's actions.

i know how recovery works... it takes work, it takes sacrafice, it means being a giver.

to quickly respond to the other thoughts you had:

pt working - pt is not an option now, financially for us, we could probably deal with a bit of a pay cut, but the work load is too great right now to put in the request at work.

my response to emotional distress - i continue to be tempted to make contact again. but i have not. i don't like that i am even tempted, it is such a stupid concept, i don't understand why the temptation is even there. however, I am more determined then ever to NOT act on this temptation. the email filter remains safely in place. i wish there was a way for my memory to forget his phone number and email address, so i would have no way to contact him. i am going to have to rely on God to help me, because i now i am weak when left to my own power.

dewt, thanks for the post. whether he acts like a cad or not sometimes is not something worth debating. i want this marriage to be a happier one, bottomline. there has to be a way!!!!

seems like there is so much more that i could be saying here but i have to get going!!!

however, today, i will take the time to find 3 nice things to do for my H for the sole purpose bringing him happiness. if i could really do that everyday, what a success story i could bring to this forum, don't ya think??

Please God, help me be true giver, at the core of myself, help me love as Jesus loved. this is my prayer for today.

after posting this morning i decided to make nice thing #1 be, go to work late and let him finish his round of golf, the weather here was so nice this morning (cloudy now) i know he must of really been enjoying the golf. he was appreciative. nice thing #2 will be to give him a foot rub sometime before bed. nice thing #3 will be to ensure he can watch the news/weather tonight in peace (lots of nights that does not happen, mostly due to kids not quite in bed yet).

after posting this morning i also got out the journal that i got for us to use to write to each other while we were reading the book, "Getting the Love you Want" but that didn't go very far. so i decided to use it myself, whether or not he reads it and whether or not he chooses to write his own thoughts/feelings back to me.

i wrote about my desire to have a happy marriage and then i wrote about how a specific memory continues to impact me sometimes. trying to resolve the bad feelings of the memory once and for all.

when we first went to MC, we were given an assignment to do 3 nice things for each other each day. a similar assignment was given when we started working with the second counsoler too. H did not take it seriously either time. at least that was my perception of the situation. We were supposed to literally write down what we did. I did, he did not. i felt i did what was asked of me. i.e. "see i'm doing the right things, it's not my fault our marriage is so bad". the point i wanted to make to myself this morning in the journal is that, when i did the assignment, i did not do it just to lovingly give, which was the real intent of the assignmnent. i did it just so i could say i did it. and i did it with the expectation that H would do it too. i remember focusing on seeing if H was going to keep it "fair" when all i should of been focusing on is acting lovingly towards my H.

so this morning i decided i would give the assignment to just myself this time. 3 things, everyday, quietly given out of love.

as i was writing out this plan in the journal, i burst into tears. why????? why, why, why? why do i feel sad whenever i try to write postivie things? write about hope? write about feeling impowered to make a difference?

i manage to recover, wake up kids and get on with the day. unfortunately H gets home right after my son and i have a disagreement about his pants being too dirty for him to wear to school today. and instead of calmly repeating (and repeating) my desire he change his pants, i snapped at him, which seems to be the most effective way to get son's attention, although it is also a must unpleasant way to get son's attention.

So when H walks in, which also happened to be 5 min before kids had to take off, not only were son and i disagreeing about the dirty pants, we were in the crunch time of having to get out the door, it was not a peaceful environment for H to walk in on and that really does not help!!! and i got frustrated and after kids were gone, i burst into tears while giving H a hug. saying how i just want us to be a happy couple, how i had spent time in the morning reflecting on what i could do to help our relationship, feeling impowered, but that once again i blew it because of snapping at son and for having a less than peaceful household for H to walk into. He told me he didn't really notice any problem.

then i told him about writing in the journal. inviting him to read it IF he wanted to, but that the choice was totally his. (now, i had told myself i would not tell him about the journal, "quietly do things", and then i go ahead and tell him anyway. i kinda wish i had not, because i know words don't mean much, he needs actions.) and the best action is consitent peace between us not me bursting into tears!!!

so what did i end up accomplishing? after posting here? and re-inforcing my resolve in the journal? absolutely nothing!!!!

while driving to work i was still sad and so i asked myself, what are you internally saying to yourself right now?? what thoughts are behind this feeling of sadness. this is what came to mind. i am telling myself, nothing is going to matter, i could do 3 nice things for H everyday till i die and we still will not have a happy marriage. H will still not really love me in the sense that he will treasure me, be proud that i am his wife, enjoy my company, and thank God everyday that we are together. i don't think i ever truely felt that from him. the question is why?? is it because he never has had that high of an opinion of me; or was he just not good at showing it (he has a critical nature and he is not good at saying positive things); or i am not good at seeing it. my head says it is probably a combination of the last two things but my heart fears it is #1. and if he didn't have a high opinion of me way back then, how can i ever expect him to have one now??? and thinking he never will really love me the way i want to be loved (i.e. deep down be thrilled we are a together) makes me very very sad.

figuring out the cause of the sadness helped. i could then go to work on my internal message. i changed "he has never thought highly of me", to "he does not always think highly of me", which means sometimes he does. i can believe that sometimes he does think highly of me. and that helped.

right now i feel somewhat at ease. but now it is time to get in car and go home and i fear by the time i get there, the anxity will be back and in the end, my actions will not be ones that will move us towards having a happy relationship.

irregardless it is time for me to go now. thanks to those who read this, feel free to provide any thoughts...

<small>[ May 19, 2004, 04:52 PM: Message edited by: FinallyLearning ]</small>

FL, I can definitely add here. Perhaps it's a male thing but I absolutely adore my W and she has no idea of that fact. Not now, not before and probably never will. It hurts, not that she doesn't love me but that she doesn't know how much I love her. So perhaps like your H, I am somehow missing the mark. Consider this possibility in your own marriage. The message my W sends me is basically I don't know how to love correctly. My love isn't quite good enough.
Don't send that message. Try to change your glasses to see the positive signs that he loves you. I absolutely took W for granted so I know how she initially got that feeling but now I am powerless to change it. Hope there's something in this you can take.

WOE

woe,

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> FL, I can definitely add here. Perhaps it's a male thing but I absolutely adore my W and she has no idea of that fact. Not now, not before and probably never will. It hurts, not that she doesn't love me but that she doesn't know how much I love her. So perhaps like your H, I am somehow missing the mark. Consider this possibility in your own marriage. The message my W sends me is basically I don't know how to love correctly. My love isn't quite good enough.
Don't send that message. Try to change your glasses to see the positive signs that he loves you. I absolutely took W for granted so I know how she initially got that feeling but now I am powerless to change it. Hope there's something in this you can take.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">very powerful post. thank you. i don't know why it is so hard for me to accept he loves me. and what you said about the message it sends you, i am guessing H gets that same msg, cuz he has told me at times that he feels like he must not be good enough. there has to be a way for me to really let go of this fear of mine and just believe in H and his love as well as believe in myself and my ability to love and be in a healthy relationship.

thanks again for the post