My husband is the one who had an affair. He is an avoider. He is very poor at communicating, on fact he finds relationships in general to be cumbersum and more effort than they are worth. He owns his own business and frequently uses his relationship with his employees as an example of how our relationship should be. He finds it offensive whenever I disagree with anything. He finds me to be agressive when I try to make changes. He compartmentalizes his life and justifies doing things independently regardless of the affect on me or how he knows I will react. He is also very busy. Often when he is home he is so exhausted he can't keep his eyes open. When we disagree we can spend hours talking about why we disagree. He will make a million excuses and justifications. He refuses to show he has even heard a word of my conserns even after I have restaited what his conserns are. I can come up with several solutions to our problem but he is resistant. He won't come up with any solutions. His main consern is to convense me that I am unreasonable to have a consern. If he does agree to try something, he usually does not follow through with the agreement we have come up with.

Go read Dr Harley's book: His Needs/Her Needs. Learn to reverse babble and time implement.

One thing you will learn,(generally speaking) men and women communicate on different levels. Then with the twist of the A, it amplifies the difference even more so widening the communication gap.

The book gives you the tools to close that gap.

L.

I don't mean to be dense but I don't know what you mean by reverse babble and time implement. I have HN/HN. I went and reread the comunication chapter and couldn't find what you mean by it. Can you be more specific? We even went through the communication chapter together but it is not at all important to my husband so we basicly skipped over most of this lesson.

This got burried. I'm realy hoping someone has some suggestions.

Take a deep breath and wait and think about what you want to talk about. Say,"I disagree with this and would like to talk about this another time." Write down what you want to communicate, wait until your emotions have leveled out. Take out the disrespectful judgments and angry outbursts. Keep yourself on target. Speak in a soft voice. Use "I feel" and "I think", leave out "you think" and "you do".

Reverse babble takes some practice. Read up on Ochid's links. As a beginner, you start out just calmly repeating what the babbler has said. Sometimes they realize how ridiculous they sound.

Most of all stay calm. If he starts to get flustered just stop. Say you want to continue the convo another time. Leave the room humming a tune.

Please read the link in my sig line about reverse babble. It is not a technique in the books, just something that has worked for some.

Read HN/HN to give yourself the true perspective and the upper hand on how to communicate. Then realize that the WS is 1000x worse than just the communication problems you may have had with your spouse, during their 'sane' days.

That info coupled with reverse babble may be doable if you practice.

Basically as LT said, RB is where you give back the guilt and blame to the WS.

Ex1:

Ws: The A was your fault.

BS: Yes, the A is your fault.


Ex2:
WS: You took my family from me.

BS: You took my H from our family.


Ex3:
WS: I need you to give me $$.

BS: We need you to give us $$.


It is a simple concept. Just takes practice.

L.

I would also suggest another Harley book: *Buyers, Renters and Freeloaders.*

Your husband is a total Freeloader when it comes to your marriage. In other words, he believes the relationship should require no work at all and should totally take care of itself. He becomes angry and resentful if the relationship needs him to care for it and protect it.

Sound familiar?

He is treating you like an employee instead of like a wife. You will have to stand up for yourself and show him that you are there to be a wife. You are not an employee, and if he insists on treating you like one then he is saying you are not a wife but a maid, a nanny and a prostitute. Those are all services that are paid for with money and the people who perform them are employees, not partners.

Read both recommended books, and good luck. It can take a long time to turn around a situation like this. Your husband has no concept of marriage being a partnership between equals; he sees it as himself being the boss and you simply taking orders and being informed of what *he* decides you need to know.

You need a husband and a partner, not a boss and dictator.

Good luck.
Mulan

I like the tool known as "emotional word pictures"

It can be helpful in situations where there is history of inability to discuss emotional topics with your husband and keep both of you safe.

take a look

http://www.familyfirst.net/marriage/creatingwordpictures.asp

Thanks for your help.

Iv'e watched some of Smalley's tapes. My husband uses word pictures all the time but they make me want to scream because they are always about his work. I have used them back but had mixed results. Probably since he uses them so much they do speak to him.

I guess Ive used bable some too. It would be realy easy to get synical with this one.

I've never tried a written disagreement session. I'll have to try that some time, especially on a subject that is emotional.

Thanks all of you for your suggestions. I'll try to keep them in mind in the weeks to come.

I suspect your H is having problems with low self-image and a fear that other people will discover that he's really as bad as he believes he is.

This is why he stonewalls and defends his position to the last breath. He fears that acknowledging your concern is admitting to you that he is damaged goods.

I got to a point where I was convinced my wife had no respect for me and my feelings. She refused to validate that i had a right to feel the way I did.

So what did I do? I withdrew...I punished her by closing off that piece of myself. We couldn't communicate because the mere act of communication meant that I had to become vulnerable...which I wasn't about to do, because I didn't think she respected me.

In MY case, reverse babble would have reinforced that lack of respect and would have infuriated me. So, I would recommend that assess your situation carefully.

If he's classified you as his adversary, you want to avoid anything that will reinforce that idea in his mind.

Low

Low Orbit,

We probably both suffer from low self esteme to an extent. We both have a need for affermation that the other is not meeting. Neither of us likes the other very much at this point. The adversary problem is what made me post this question in the first place. He is so slow of speach that he appears to not be very smart. His body language makes him appear to be lying all the time. He complains about my tone of voice being offensive and my timing and wording being offensive. He tends to not hear a word I say till I have restated it so many times that I am very upset.

What would you want your wife to do differently to save your marriage? You say your marriage is ending and it's your fault. What have you changed to try to save it and are you willing to work of anything else?

rb123,
When Tom was having his affair, he would tell me how psychotic and hysterical I was to be concerned about his relationship with her.

What I have come to realize is that it was irrelevant whether or not I should have been concerned. What was important was that my husband would treat my concerns with respect. He didn't. He led me down the path of trying to justify concern and that led to anger. Well, silly me, I ran interference for his conscience.

If you have a concern, it's a call to action for your spouse. If your spouse does not view it that way, he doesn't care. Simple as that. Focus on the fact that you have a concern not whether or not it is reasonable.

Your husband sounds a lot like mine.

Cherished

We've been working on this for a long time. The recent events that have caused us to split have also caused us to realize that we're not really interested in saving this anymore. We both have different expectations from life at this point and we are so far apart that we can't POJA.

She DID in fact change the way she addressed my concerns and the altered her expectations of our communication as well. So did I.

If she had an important point to make, she has learned to make it, then give me time to consider it before moving on to the next one. Just because I wasn't responding immediately to what she said, doesn't mean I didn't hear it. Now, if she tosses me a grenade, then tries to move on to her next point, I can assure you I'm NOT listening to that next point.

If he is an introvert, he's processing your words internally...in effect, multi-tasking (e.g. trying to listen to you talking and consider the meaning of what you are saying at the same time. It can be difficult for those of us who must analyze it to the nth degree)

So, what would happen is that she would get frustrated because I wasn't "hearing" her, I would get defensive because her barrage of words was overwhelming and felt like an attack. When I would get angry, she would respond with "You have nothing to be angry about", reinforcing that she didn't respect me and didn't care how I felt.

On my part, I made an active effort to understand he communication style and control my defensive reaction to it. I intentionally did not process to deeply during conversation (another problem altogether) so that I could be more engaged in the actual words. This helped her feel more valued and respected.

Do you make an effort to understand HIS communication style and tailor your communications to accommodate him? For example, tell him you have something important to say, say it, then give him time to think about it. Tell him you'd like to discuss it later. I would advise him to do the same, but he's not here. It may feel unnatural at first because you'll be speaking in "different" language from what you may be used to.

rb123... Sorry you are having trouble communicating with your H. I am an FWW and I, too, have had problems when our views diverge. I've been following this thread but haven't found anything that is useful for my sitch either.

You see, if I disagree with H on anything - be it politics, what TV show to watch, what to have for dinner, or our relationship - whatever the topic, if I don't agree with him, that means I'm trying to start an argument. Even the "I feel" statements can be met with hostility.

We're slowly working through this but it isn't always easy. I'm told my feelings are "unjustified" so I try to take things less personally.

I know none of this helps you - I'm sorry - but even though we're on opposite sides of the fense, I can understand how you feel.