You CAN change the way you perceive what your husband says and does.

Once your perception is changed, your reaction to his behavior will change as well.

Once your reaction has changed your behavior towards him will change as well.

And guess what???

It won't be a forced behavior..it will be a natural easy breezy behavior/reaction.

What LA is trying to tell you is a NEW way of looking at this..it isn't about blame...it's about AWARENESS...

No one is responsible for your feelings except for you.

PLEASE re-read her posts...they are very thoughtful...I have to re-read her posts often to squeeze every bit of wisdom out of them.

You are blessed to have her reach out to you.

PLEASE mull over them.

PLEASE.

~ Marsh

You say you're too tired to play games, but here you are in this dance with him - and yes it is a game, regardless of your fatigue.

You see, you want him to read your mind and communicate what you need to be healed from the post traumatic stress that you have received at his hands. You refuse to give clues, because if you did, you've set it up to mean that his response would somehow mean less than if he could read your heart and do the things you want him to do. And chances are, if he's not a changed man, you endanger yourself to more verbal and physical abuse.

You've made it out to be that the infidelity was worse than the violence. But I see otherwise because of the dance you are doing now has nothing to do with infidelity, and everything with an instinctive need to be safe and protected. And you haven't told him about those two needs for fear of a backlash.

You see, I've seen this dance before. My parents are coming up on their 60th anniversary, which 3 weeks after that marks the 60th anniversary of my mother beginning her post traumatic dance with my abuse-prone father.

They have little in common except the need to avoid change.

The trouble is, I carry some of that post traumatic stress as their child - as a witness, and as an empathic daughter of two parents who deep down love each other and have no way to show it because of the trauma - and it's not in the choreography of the dance they have rehearsed every time they talk... or don't talk.

Be courageous enough to not let this be your fate. Get some therapy so that you start communicating with him again and learn that you are strong enough that if he abuses you after you ask specifically for what you want instead of making him guess - you know you can handle it and how you will handle it.

KaylaAndy,
I've had lots of therapy. My fourth session was the day he broke my arm on December 17, 2001. I am somewhere around 150 sessions.

Harley's whole approach to marriage is that the individual's feelings are impacted by the behavior of the spouse, and the spouse can change his/her behavior to accomodate the spouse.

It's true that perception plays a part, but my problem was that I thought it was all my problem that I was so unhappy, and I didn't realize that he contributed to my unhappiness by his inconsiderate treatment of me. Yes, he was inconsiderate with the abuse. My God, he broke my arm when I was 12 days out of major surgery that included a hysterectomy. My first arm surgery was complicated by the fact that I was taking medication for a urinary tract infection from that surgery and I still had a catheter from that surgery. But I still looked at the situation as my fault because I had threatened to call this woman when he had pleaded with me not to. It was the affair that woke me up to the fact that his treatment of me was intolerable, and I didn't realize there was an affair until May.

The affair, objectively, may not have been worse than the abuse, but the affair affected me far more. With the affair, he just plain disregarded me. With the abuse, at least I mattered enough for him to pay attention to me.

Yes, that sort of reasoning is sick. It's like a child who prefers any attention, even punishment, to being disregarded. I've come to realize that I need enough self-respect to prefer no interaction to unpleasant interaction.

What I've also come to realize is that he has free will. I can change my dance step all I want, and he may continue on as before. My only real power is to leave the dance. I cannot change him, but I can remove myself. That's where I am.

I am open to enjoyable treatment and will remove myself when it is unpleasant -- and, yes, that is a subjective judgment on my part.

My husband's view, expressed over and over, is "your feelings are yours" and "I can't do anything about how you feel." Well, his breaking my arm and betraying me had a negative impact on how I felt. That's not a surprise. That's not giving up responsibility for myself. That's reality. I can't do anything about how he behaves, and I have limited ability to change how I perceive his actions.

Having said all this, I did make an effort since I read LA's post to show more receptivity to him. He suggested we spend some time alone this afternoon going to pick out glasses for him. It's a start. I'm more than happy to build on small pleasures. When I married him, I told my parents that I enjoy going to the grocery store with him. That's the marriage I would like -- where the company is so pleasurable that what we do together is incidental. That's how I felt about him once. That's why I married him. And Harley's approach to marriage gives me the hope that that can be again.

Respectful

Five years ago today, he punched me and broke my arm when I threatened to call the woman with whom, in fact, he was having an affair. Later that day, he called her in my presence and told her he could no longer have contact with her.

I thought it was over. It wasn't over. It continued because she comforted him when I was upset with him. It was exposed five months later after I followed Harley's advice to call the woman's husband and tell him what I knew. The husband got the truth out of his wife and told me.

It little matters to me that today is the day he broke my arm. What matters is I have come to a crises, which he says is of my own making and which may well be. I gave up on complaining because he said "I just tune out your chirping." I gave up on making suggestions because he'd say "it's my way or the highway."

Yesterday, I told him I'm giving up hope. I've run out of options. My way of telling him was most ungracious -- I went through a litany of memories of how he has treated me. He told me he's moving out. I said I'm done. He came back in the house and we talked. I ended up sobbing. I said that I just cannot bear to waste week after week, month after month, doing nothing.

Maybe some of the problem is my perspective. If love is a choice, maybe he's trying to make the choice to love me and I'm so hurt I don't see it. We agreed to plan today for what will work for both of us, focusing on two areas of concern -- house maintenance and weekend activities.

I was listening to tapes on feelings and there was mention of a movie called "Closer" starring Jude Law and Julia Roberts. It gives a very moving perspective on what love is. In it, a betrayed woman tells her boyfriend that he made a choice. I realized that, perhaps, now my husband is trying to make a different choice, and I'm not letting him.

Respectful

R,

You went from believing you were the cause...to seeing your H as the cause.

Somewhere in the middle lays reality. For all humans.

Knowing that I had an all or nothing perspective helped me to stop living life on the extremes of the pendulum. I shoot for 90 degrees, because I want to know reality more than I want a smooth life. The beauty is that at 90 degrees, the byproduct (not in my control), is stability...reality's charm. Doesn't make it painless or joyless...those extremes again...does make it possible to live in reality.

That narrow road that the bible speaks about, I believe, is this 90 degrees...and it's there, regardless of my perception...so putting myself there, making it my goal, has made all the difference.

LA