Mulan:

I think you are living a "groundhog" day kind of life. You are a wise woman and have offered some great advice here to other people, yet you continue to live the same B$ with your Wayward day in and day out. YOur Wayward Husband has more than let you know where you rank in his life....and it ain't anywhere near the top. Now, you have said in the past that you are willing to live like this for the sake of staying married for your son....ok, not would I would do, but well within your right to do. You have CHOSEN to LIVE like this and in a way you need to accept this is what and who your Wayward HUsband is. You can't change him......that is impossible. If you aren't going to change what YOU DO about the situation, then you are probably better off sucking it up and just getting on with life and not posting more threads about him continuing to do this to you when a YOU WILL NOT DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT.

Now, I know that you are too smart a woman to take what I am saying the wrong way. You are CHOOSING to stay with your WH, despite him SHOWING you time and time again that you rank somewhere in between replacing his shoe polish and getting new moth balls for the closet in his life's priorities.

If you are unwilling to CHANGE your life.....than why complain.

Thoughts????

LM

Good points Lemonman. I agree.

Susan

LM and Susan,

This is why I usually do not post about my own situation. You are right, I *have* chosen to stay for the time being, and so I do try not to complain about it.

I only posted this weekend because I was really struggling with this five-day wedding/family reunion trip. My son was there, too. I posted primarily to try to understand some things, and I found Gimble's posts extremely helpful. That's what I was looking for -- not sympathy or commiseration, but another viewpoint to try to understand the dynamics of what's really going on.

I do hope Gimble will post to me again.

And it *did* help. Like I said, I finally stopped calling and I have *no* desire to call WH again. That's a first. So, it helped.

thanks
Mulan

Hi, Mulan.

Quote:
===========================
Just trying to maintain that connection and terrified of losing it. It is my family, after all, and no one wants to sit back and just watch their family drift away. I've also got a whopping case of PTSD from all of this and the panic attacks are sometimes overwhelming. I know, I know, that doesn't make it *right* for me to fail at keeping a distance. You asked, so I answered.

***As a wife, do you think you are exhibiting controlling/desperate/grabby/needy behavior?***

Well, I don't know about "controlling" or "grabby," but I'll give a "desperate" and "needy."
===========================

So, you already know what you have to do with the desperate/needy behavior. The controlling behavior is a result of you inputting to your husband and not getting the expected results back. You then start modifying the input in a further attempt to get an expected or desired result back. That is the essence of controlling behavior. The 'grabby' part is just a natural extension of being desperate and needy because you aren't getting what you think you should (entitlement), so that ultimately, you end up trying to control the entire situation.

Your husband fights back. He further exacerbates the situation by not outputting what you need. He may offer what he feels comfortable giving if he is feeling generous, or you may do the same, but most of the time, the situation simply gets escalated. The 'loop' gets broken only when one spouse or the other decides to output an expected or desired response. It is a basic his needs/her needs situation, only turned abusive.

The reason I guessed the age difference, and I have no idea if you have ever posted it here or not, is that you talked about his climb up the latter and how your relationship changed as a result.

In the early days, you were older and likely had the confidence and experience to take on life head on. You were probably more like a team, with you mostly leading, at least at first. Then the roles slowly started changing. I suspect that you had a really hard time with this. He had no idea how to handle the changes in you, and the gap formed and started widening.

So here you are. Both of you have played the current game so long that neither has any idea what the path to recovery looks like, or if it even exists at all.

The simple logical approach in order to change the game is for one or both players to simply stop playing, and dump the entire game. That includes identifying all of its components, disassembling them and discarding the pieces. You will have to start over, it is the only way to get there from here.

Here is the problem with starting over. Hubby has done things that you may never be able to forgive, and as hard as it might be to believe, he has a boat load of issues with you as well.

That leaves you with few choices from where you sit. You can disassemble the game, and start putting your half of your life back together. Or you can dump and run, eventually to potentially face a similar situation with someone else.

To further complicate the issue, as you put your life back together, you will find hubby hot on your trail trying to figure out what has happened, and to get back together with you. That idea probably made your heart skip a beat, but the problem is that you would have hubby, in his current state of disrepair, to deal with again. That is clearly not a good outcome either, as you would find yourself right back where you are now.

And here we are again, back at the really hard question of what to do now.

The only answer is to start cleaning up your part of the mess. Disassemble the game, fix yourself up, and prepare to move on.

During that process, as hubby sees the changes in you, only he will be able to decide what, if anything, he wishes to do about it. You simply can't influence his choice beyond fixing you. Anything more would be dishonest, and he wouldn't stick with any changes as a result, simply because he didn't put it on his pile himself.

That also means that you can't concern yourself with whether he gets it or not. The really hard part for you is to understand this well enough that you don't change from spite, but from the necessity to make the changes in yourself.

Are you with me? That is a lot to process for now.

All the best,
Gimble

***The reason I guessed the age difference, and I have no idea if you have ever posted it here or not, is that you talked about his climb up the latter and how your relationship changed as a result.***

***In the early days, you were older and likely had the confidence and experience to take on life head on. You were probably more like a team, with you mostly leading, at least at first. Then the roles slowly started changing.***

The roles did start changing here - but honestly, this was not a problem. I had no trouble with him stepping in and making more money than I did and take on more of the head-of-the-household role. This did not take long. The roles had completely switched inside just a couple of years. He was very close to DD, who was only six when we got married. We were a good family and had no problems to speak of at all.

***I suspect that you had a really hard time with this. He had no idea how to handle the changes in you, and the gap formed and started widening.***

This *did* happen, but not when the roles changed. It started much, much later -- several years later -- when I realized he was using his big success at work to lead a double life and go out with other women. THAT is what I could not handle.

The basic problem, as I see it:
1) He wants a double life, with one life at work and one life at home -- one box for each and neither one ever affects the other. He thinks this is the ideal life, probably because he managed to get away with it for so long, but this is intolerable to me. It makes me feel ignored and shut out and only leaves that door wide open for some other female to walk through.

2) He is very angry at me now because "you won't do anything with me" -- meaning, I finally withdrew because I could get no committment from him to put our marriage first and STOP going out without me. If he cannot reserve the right to go out and have fun without me whenever he feels like it just like a single guy, whether it's work-related or not, well, Mulan can just go to hell.

He wants a part-time partner. I think this is not what a marriage is at all.

I want a full-time partner. He thinks I am sick and in need of help because of this.

The most important thing to me was for him to STOP going off to anything resembling a social event without me, because this behavior is exactly what started the trouble in the first place. He refuses to stop doing this.

I offered to POJA things. He absolutely refuses to POJA *anything.*

So, thank you for listening. I do not know what else I could have done.

When we had a good marriage and spent a lot of time together, he ended up ignoring me for other women.

When I tried to talk to him about the pain and damage this was causing, he laughed it off and went right on doing it. (Jealous wives are fun! Big ego stroke there!)

When I finally began breaking down and losing it, he got angry and blamed me for ruining everything.

I have asked him what I could have done to change anything. He doesn't like my getting upset, and trying to be close to him made no difference, so what *should* I have done? He has no answer.

If somebody here can tell me what I should have done, I'm listening. I guess the only answer is "You should have left a long time ago."

thanks for responding
Mulan

To continue:

***Here is the problem with starting over. Hubby has done things that you may never be able to forgive,***

I almost think it's more like, "What kind of person am I that I would take this for so long and *still* take him back?"

***and as hard as it might be to believe, he has a boat load of issues with you as well.***

Well, of course he does. I went from supportive, silent doormat to a wife who expected him to put his marriage first. You BET he's got issues with that.

***That leaves you with few choices from where you sit. You can disassemble the game, and start putting your half of your life back together. Or you can dump and run, eventually to potentially face a similar situation with someone else.***

Am I really that clingy and demanding? I think a huge part of the problem here is that I was *nothing* of the kind for so long so he got away with bloody murder. Yes, I get very upset *now* when he keeps on leaving to go have fun without me, but he is most angry now because I stopped going anywhere with him and I began leaving on the weekends in order to stop fighting him about it.

***To further complicate the issue, as you put your life back together, you will find hubby hot on your trail trying to figure out what has happened, and to get back together with you. That idea probably made your heart skip a beat***

Not hardly -- it made me laugh. That's the *last* thing I can ever picture him doing.

***but the problem is that you would have hubby, in his current state of disrepair, to deal with again. That is clearly not a good outcome either, as you would find yourself right back where you are now.***

Of course. As long he sees no reason to put his marriage first, you are exactly right. That's why I have withdrawn as much as I have.

***And here we are again, back at the really hard question of what to do now.***
***The only answer is to start cleaning up your part of the mess. Disassemble the game, fix yourself up, and prepare to move on.***

By simply withdrawing and disengaging from him, as I try to do now?

***That also means that you can't concern yourself with whether he gets it or not.***

Yes, I know. That is very difficult, because his lack of "Getting It" has cost me a family.

***The really hard part for you is to understand this well enough that you don't change from spite, but from the necessity to make the changes in yourself.***

I don't stay away from him out of "spite." For one thing, he has shown me time after time that being with me means nothing to him anyway, and even I am not so stupid as to think it's going to hurt him in any way. I stay away and try to lead my own life purely for my own sanity, and to have some sort of security for myself. I work two jobs and spent the last two years training for, and starting, a new career. I couldn't have gone on this wedding trip anyway because I cannot yet take that kind of time off from work -- and he is well aware of this.

My greatest disadvantage here is my weakness for my marriage. His greatest advantage is his ability to put his marriage in second place. I can't do that. He can. He knows this. He wins every time.

So, how do other people "dissamble the pieces" and move on?

Thank you again for responding to me.
Mulan

Hi, Mulan.

I was not judging your decisions. I laid out some of your past as best as I could guess it, so that you could see that the only CLEAR path BACK to the good part of your relationship, is to start over.

You can't fix the character issues your husband has evidenced. You can only fix your own issues. He has to want to fix his.

Please consider stopping the game, so that both of you get a chance to step off the tortuous, obsessive path you are currently on.


All the best,
Gimble

My character issues:
Being too dependent on my marriage and husband for emotional support and attention.

His character issues:
Insisting on his right to independent behavior even though he is married.

Is that how you see it, too?

Mulan>just trying to understand.

Hi, Mulan.

I don't see your issues so much as character issues, rather emotional ones, brought on by the issues with your marriage, and the bad interactions outlined in previous posts. I wouldn't consider it a character issue unless you find yourself unable to stop, now that you have identified behaviors that are causing you and the marriage additional problems. I am specifically talking about the controlling/desperate/grabby/needy 'loop'.

Your hubby, on the other hand, does appear to have a character issue, as evidenced by his serial cheating. While he may have started life out in a rough way, and his choices may have come from a lack of emotional understanding, he still appears to be feeding an addiction of sorts, that he is either unwilling or unable to change.

The only way to know for sure if your hubby is dealing with a character issue, is for you to fix your problems. Without the spotlight divided, you will soon see what, if anything, can be done about your situation. That won't happen until you remove your part of the equation.

How's that?

Gimble

I'll put on my best Lemonman hat...

Life is about CHOICES...right now you are CHOOSING to stay in this maelstrom that your M has become. Why are you choosing this?

From what I read your H is rather unrepentant and will not work on the M with you...

That choice to stay in the M is causing you a lot of distress...

- Staying M'ed is causing you stress...
- Your H will do NOTHING to relieve your marital stress

Perhaps it's time for YOU to make a choice...CHOOSE the UNKNOWN of singledom...at least your chances of being happy are 50/50 AND you don't have to deal with your H anymore.

Are you better off (emotionally) with him or without him?

If you have the financial wherewithal to divorce, perhaps it's an option to REALLY entertain as he will not change and life will continue to spiral downward until you CHOOSE to remove yourself from the chaos of your M.

It is scary to strike out on your own (I a living it right now... <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />...it does get better), but is it REALLY any worse than staying with your H?

I REALLY hope you find happiness...CHOOSE it...

WNB

***I am specifically talking about the controlling/desperate/grabby/needy 'loop'.***

Okay, I hear you. I will keep working on this.

***Without the spotlight divided, you will soon see what, if anything, can be done about your situation.***

Just one more thing, and I think I'll have it: What do you mean by "the spotlight divided?" Do you mean his unwillingness to share his *own* spotlight of success with me, or something else?

thanks
Mulan

Hi, Mulan.

Let me make an example of what I mean by spotlight.

Think of you marriage as a room with two children in it.

A parent hears a large commotion, things being ripped, objects falling to the floor, and screaming. The parent runs to investigate, and throws open the door to the children's room.

Therein the parent sees one child swinging wildly from the remaining curtain. He has tears streaming down his cheeks, and he is kicking and screaming in a fit. The other child in the room is lying on the floor quietly, crayon in hand coloring. It is obvious that she has been working on her drawing for a while.

Which child was causing the commotion?

As you remove your contributions to the unruly mess of your marriage, and replace it with a calm, directed, upright demeanor, then you highlight the source of the remaining issues within your marriage. The spotlight is the TRUTH of the situation.

The nice thing about being able to see the truth in a given situation, is that it often causes change by the simple fact that the 'untruth' gets exposed. That is why taking care of your issues is likely to expose your husbands issues in a way that he can see FOR HIMSELF. He won't see it with you telling him why he is wrong. Only the contrast of your change is going to present the truth to him. He will still be the one to decide what he will do about it, if anything.

All the best,
Gimble

***That is why taking care of your issues is likely to expose your husbands issues in a way that he can see FOR HIMSELF. He won't see it with you telling him why he is wrong.***

Okay, I see what you mean now. Thank you very much for all your time spent on this. I'm sure others are lurking and learning as well. I hope so.

thanks again
Mulan

I am Mulan.

My relationship was simular to your marriage at times.

I am so glad Gimble is working with you Mulan. I have read your posts since I came and have always hoped somehow you could either change things around or move on and find peace.

I'll hope for the first at this time, because I know that is still where your heart and hopes lie.

Dear Mulan ~

I've read through this thread and I feel the need to add my 2 cents. You see...you sound like the person I used to be.

I completely disagree with those who are advising you to get out now, and that your husband will never change...etc.

I think that you have not earned your way out of the relationship yet.

I do agree that you are in the place you are at by your own choice, but I disagree that your choice is one of leaving or staying.

Your choice is about who you chose to be.

I think you choose to be a victim, a martyr, and a doormat. A victim, a martyr and a doormat are actually controllers and manipulaters in disguise. Being a doormat used to give you a pay off. Now the payoff isn't happening... the more your husband has detached...the less of a 'fix' you've gotten...so your controlling has changed from manipulation into selfish demands (ie staying home from the wedding was not a boundary on your part, it was demand that actually came back to bite you on the hiney).

I think Gimble's analogies about how you relate with each other are good - he is right - if you change how you react (who you are in the relationship) , your relationship will be forced to change. You can't change him, but you can change you - and you are 50% of the equation. You can't change 50% without changing everything.

Your husband will absolutely change if you change. Change doesn't always mean for the better. But I will tell you that how he will react to your changes can be predicted. It will probably be ugly at first, as I bet he is comfortable in his own sick way with your dynamic, so he'll be upset when you change the dance and step on his toes! But if you persevere, he may actually decide he likes the new dance step and stop resisting!

You've spent alot of energy on this thread about what an awful husband he is. Ok. Sounds like he has issues. But, really, so what? Take a break from dissecting him. It's interesting information to take into consideration, but should NOT affect your choices about the type of person YOU are.

What kind of wife have you been? Really? Forget about who your husband is for a moment. Can you look in the mirror and honestly say "I've been a great wife. I've learned to stop love busting in my relationship. I've learned to be honest about what I need, and ask for it directly in non demanding way. I've learned even more importantly that my husband's needs are valid, and I meet them in the way he needs them to be met."

I suspect Mulan, that at least part of your husband's issues have more to do with defending himself from your control than it has to do with his being self-absorbed. If you are not a safe place for him to be open with, he will protect and hide. Should he hide and exclude you from his life? Of course not. But he is not here...you are.

I hear your husband saying alot of things that mine used to say. Pre-affair, my husband didn't understand why I didnt feel loved, and I didn't admire him for the great job he was doing bringing home the bacon. He felt VERY un-appreciated. What I learned after his affair was that his bringing home a paycheck to me and rushing home every night was his way of saying I LOVE YOU.

BUT - I had not been honest with my needs - I didn't tell him in a nonwhiney, non demanding manner that I felt loved when he spent time with me or bought me romantic gifts - so who was at fault?

I just expected...that if he loved me...he'd know what to do. And when he didn't do those things...he obviously didn't care (Talk about disrespectful judgements). And so the nasty downward spiral began to spin wildly out of control day by day.

My poor husband, busting his hiney at work, coming home to what he perceived was an ungrateful wife...who whined, moaned, and did every childishly manipulative thing she could think of to get attention - when he was tired and exhausted from saying I LOVE YOU by working so hard everyday. Nothing he did (in his perception) was good enough for me.

And of course, when he tried to talk to me about work - I was either uninterested, or often critical. I wasn't getting his attention, so it ticked me off that he came home talking positively about female coworkers. I wasn't exactly a pleasant after work experience at all!

While I was separated from my husband, I learned alot about me. And when I became honest, and I became appreciative, non-judgemental, non-demanding, and willing to meet his needs without expectation...my husband began to slowly drift back in my direction.

My marriage now is not perfect - my husband is still a man with tremendous issues - but I became someone I like, someone who makes confident choices instead of fearful reactions. And as a result, my marriage changed - in a huge satisfying way.

My husband now has a reputation at MY work place. Every woman in the place is incredibly jealous - because my husband sends flowers to my office for every special occaision. Even the mailroom knows who I am (the girl that always gets flowers!) and thats a big deal as I work for a company with over 8000 employees just at my location!) He always has some beautiful little piece of jewelry picked out for me - for my birthday this weekend I got 2 dozen sweetheart roses delivered to the office, and a beautiful gold bracelet when I got home!

This is a man that used to be (so *I* disrespecfully judged) so selfish and self-absorbed, I never would have believed it if someone had said, BR, your husband will one day meet your needs with enough flowers and gifts to make ALL the girls jealous!

So I guess I'll repeat myself. Until you change who you are, thereby changing the dynamic of your marriage ... we'll never know if your husband really is a big selfish jerk that deserves to be dumped.

Weaver, thank you very much. That was very kind of you.

BR - thank you for your very lengthy post. I can say, though, that your marriage sounds like mine in reverse. Things were good for a long time, but then he was the one who became cold and critical *to me.*

It was his idea to start leading two separate lives, one at home and one at work. He set this up and insisted I never cross that boundary. (Why? So he could hang out with the girls unobstructed.) This was *his* idea, BR, not mine.

I could very, very easily have had my own A and justified it by saying, "My husband ignores me and does not meet my emotional needs." That's exactly the way it was. But I did not do this.

I want to emphasize this: Yes, I can honestly say that I was a good wife to him, and no, I did *not* drive him away with coldness, distance or criticism. If anything, it was the opposite: I always loved doing things with him and thought sharing his work life would be no different. For a long, long, time, I found myself univited, but for all that time I never complained about it.

Then I found out why I was always shut out.

Okay, I'll give you this one: *That's* when the sh*t hit the fan. *That's when I started questioning everything he did, because I suddenly realized I could not trust anything he said. *That's* when things fell apart.

Today? Yes, I am a complete wreck and barely able to cope with him at all. I have already taken Gimble's advice to stop telling him what he is doing wrong and let him see that for himself.

Am I perfect? Hell, no. But I was never a "controlling b*tch" until long after I found out why WH was shutting me out so thoroughly. The cause and effect here is reversed IMHO. Even WH will tell you that for all those years when he was ignoring me for the girls and feeding me crap to keep me quiet, those were the years "when we were happy" and he doesn't understand why we can't go back to that.

But I do appreciate your response. I have a lot to think about.
Mulan

Mulan ~ I was never suggesting that your husband isn't a problem. I was simply focusing on the things that YOU can control at the moment, and he isn't one of them.

Understand...my husband's "issue" is that he is an active alcoholic in complete denial about his addiction. My husband's primary relationship is with a bottle, not with me. Your husband's primary relationship may be with himself...and not with you.

But it doesn't matter what the problem is. You can't fix the problem. You can only change who you are in the relationship, and change how you choose to react to his problems.

My point was that...my husband's outrageous behavior did nothing but give me a perfect chance to focus on him instead of myself.

As long as I focused on being right, as long as he was the one with the problem, as long as I stayed in victimhood to him....I stayed engaged in the fight for control.. ie being "right" and forcing him to acknowledge it and change to match my superior and morally correct demands. There was no chance to examine myself and see that maybe I had not been as perfect as I had thought I was.

Because I was right and therefore a victim - our relationship got worse and had no chance to get better.

Demanding that my husband change so that I could be happy never got me anywhere.

When I changed, and got happy, then my husband wanted to change.

Stepping out of "righteousness" and working on me is what worked for me. Maybe that is not your answer.

My WH has a lot of independent behaviors as well. At times he doesn't even consider me or the kids. Most of this happened when he got involved in politics. All those "functions" to attend, the meetings and the meetings at the bar after the meetings. OW who was just a friend would just happen to show up there. He always thought I was ridiculus for being up set by this. "You think I like having all these meetings? I have an obligation...its the way things get done...blah, blah, blah" I never thought my H was an insecure man that required SOOOO much ego stroking. I guess he just likes it.

BR, I do appreciate your response and I see what you are saying. You and Gimble have shown me that I will never get anywhere trying to tell WH that what he does is hurtful to me and destructive to the marriage. (That is obvious, even to me. It *has* gotten me nowhere.)

It seems that the right way is to simply step back and "let" him do what he is going to do, and then remove myself if I cannot cope with it. I have already started removing myself -- I just need to lose the part where I keep trying to talk and explain and "get through to him." No more trying to explain how I feel or persuade him to see things my way.

Right?

***He always thought I was ridiculus for being up set by this. "You think I like having all these meetings? I have an obligation...its the way things get done...blah, blah, blah" I never thought my H was an insecure man that required SOOOO much ego stroking.***

confused, I've heard exactly the same thing, and come to the same conclusion.
Mulan

I do not post, but I lurk dailey. Mulan, we have many similar issues. Though I must say my H does not have anything on the side. He likes to do what he wants, when he wants, and assumes his family is glad to pick up the pieces. I understand why you continue to try to get your H to understand your pain and stop his behavior. I know in my case I am afraid that if I stop trying to make things "better", I'll just give up and neither of us will have the M we deserve.

How do you fulfill your own unmet emotional needs without risking inappropriate relationships? Affection, Intimacy etc? I do not know how to be content when I feel unloved, unwanted, and unimportant to the one person who is supposed to 'Love honor and cherish' me.

Just wanted to let you know that I am hoping we both find the strength to let go and trust our lives will work out like they are intended.