On another thread, you said this:



So I am trying to apply this to a current situation. I do not want to handle this current situation in the same way that I have handled situations in the past.

So, my questions are these...

What if your H didn't tell you that he felt controlled?

If you are getting clear signals that he feels controlled, but he tells you that your sensors are mistaken because he fears that if he is honest, he will be punished, then what?

I have been mulling over the statements that you have made since yesterday. When you said this...


...I identified that I do not feel that way. What I want/wanted was for him to change his mind about not wanting me to go and THAT IS controlling.

I wish to change this behavior.

The situation I am referring to is an out of town trip for my H. When he goes on out of town trips without me, it is a huge trigger and I will feel afraid and unprotected, so I suppose that makes it a boundary for me, with regards to recovery.

I do see that he should be free to make the choice whether to protect me or not.

I suspect that the reason he doesn't openly tell me is that he fears that I will be upset with him and emotionally distance myself from him or that I will engage in punishing behaviors, such as angry outbursts, etc...so he tells me that he wants me to go and he doesn't know why I am getting the message that he does not.

He then leaves the decision for me to accompany him (or not to) completely on my shoulders.

The thing is, if I decide to go, I fear HIS punishment (for controlling him). In the past, his methods of punishment are to ignore me on the trip, purposefully not meet my needs (and then pretend like it was inadvertent or a misunderstanding).

What I would prefer is complete honesty about what he prefers and the freedom to be hurt that his preference was not to protect me.

I can see why he would not feel safe to be honest about what he wants.

But I don't know how to make myself be okay with his choice, particularly if he isn't making that choice out in the open. Given that I am not okay with that choice, I don't know how to avoid distancing myself from him emotionally (his fear) when I feel unprotected.

It frustrates me. I feel like I am being forced to either choose to be unprotected (by trusting my judgment that he does not want me to go) or to be punished (by "forcing" my presence).

It feels like I am trying to POJA with him based completely on my perceptions, rather than an honest input from him.

It also feels like a huge DJ to say that I don't feel like he is being honest with me, but what he is telling me (that he really does want me to go) is not matching up with his behavior (that he feels controlled and forced).

I wonder if I am making ANY sense at all.

Froz, I *just now* happened to see this post. Hope you didn't think I was ignoring it!

As far as the statement above - I think I'd not worry about the "your sensors are mistaken" part because we all know they're not. I'd focus on "I'm afraid to be honest with you."

We all know the standard answer to that is to make sure it's safe for the other person to be honest with you - as in, you have to promise not to morph into a six-headed hydra if they say something awful. But I think I'd just ask things like -

Aren't you more afraid of being a liar?

Aren't you more afraid of ruining our marriage even further?

Aren't you more afraid of hurting me AGAIN and making me even less trusting than I am now?

I can only say that love takes a certain amount of courage. That's why the leading characters in romances are always called the hero and the heroine - because they behave bravely in order to protect their love for each other.

Frankly, "I'm afraid to be honest with you" sounds an awful lot like blame-shifting to me - as in, "Well, it's YOUR fault I can't be honest with you." Uh-uh. No, it ain't. It's a choice made by that other person, and there is nothing you can do to control the choices other people make.

Is there? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />




Well, duh, Froz - that's what I wanted, too! But I have no power to "make" him change his mind. So I did the next best thing, which was to tell him that I really and truly did not want to control him or anyone else. And this WAS and STILL IS 100% true. Sure I wanted him to want me, but if all I could get was to NOT be controlling, then that would have to be the next best thing.


These are horrible for me, too. I can only tell you that it's 100% a choice on his part not to protect you and not to treat you like a valued partner.

And there ain't nothin' anybody can do to change that.


???
Of course he's free to make that choice. How can it be otherwise? Can you get inside his brain and regulate his thinking? Of course not.

Of course you are right that any husband *should* protect his wife. That should not be something he's gotta mull over on a moment-by-moment basis. NOTE: Any man who has to think about whether or not to protect you is NOT your husband. I don't care what the marriage license says.

BUT (a big butt) -

YOU are free to make the choice not to participate in a relationship with a man who chooses not to protect you.

THAT is the only part of this you can control.

Look at it this way:

THREAT/ULTIMATUM: "Start protecting me, or else!"

BOUNDARY: "I will not be part of a relationship with a man who refuses to protect me and protect our marriage."


You can't POJA anything when somebody is withholding information or otherwise being dishonest.

I guess I can only tell you that both of y'all are going to have to find the courage to be politely but radically honest about what you want and how you feel. I think that once you get past the fear of this, and you say what you want and the world doesn't end, you will see how freeing it is.

All of this walking on eggshells is not getting anybody anywhere and is only driving everybody crazy.


Courage, BOTH of you. Courage. Love ain't for sissies. That's the best answer I have right now.
Mulan

What needs do you have on the trip?

Instead of asking him for information about whether or not he wants you to go, why not try asking him, specifically, to predict whether or not he'll meet your needs (list them).

If I go on this trip will you <have time to spend with me/ take me shopping/ eat breakfast with me every day/ <whatever>.

Then, make your decision based on that. If he's going to not have any time to spend with you (by choice or necessity) then you have the information you need to make your decision -- go if you want to go and visit the area (without depending on him) or stay if going and not spending time with him will bother you more than staying home.

If you ask in advance, then it will be less likely he can fall back on a 'misunderstading'.

Be very, very specific:

- will you have dinner with me every night
- will you have breakfast with me every morning
- will you take me dancing one time
- <whatever>

Stop trying to read tea leaves! Instead, develop very specific, yes or no questions.

(P.S. if he says "I'll try." I'd ask "how hard?")


Mys

Nah. I figured you didn't see it.



If he would make it a regular habit of telling me when is afraid, I could take extreme precautions to avoid his fear. That, I could work with. Often, he does not. Often he will just start off hiding his fear from me and not give me the opporunity to make the choice to protect him (or not).

The "I was afraid to be honest with you" in this instance came AFTER the dishonesty. I was glad to get the truth (I hope it's the truth) about what he was afraid of at all, but it would have been nice if it had come without a couple of days of confusion and without my digging for it.




I have reached the same conclusion. I don't want to be controlling. I just don't want to be controlled through dishonesty.



I know. Wanna know a probably not so secret secret?

I stay because I keep hoping that my options will change - the one that is beyond my control - because I do not like the option of leaving and I don't like the option of participating in a marriage in which I am not protected. Eventually, one will have to take precedence because I do realize that in NOT choosing I am choosing the latter.




Honestly, I don't have a ton. I just don't want to be punished for going, particularly when he not only did not tell me that he didn't want me to go, he asked me if I would.

I don't believe I asked him if he wanted me to go. He asked me. After that, I started getting signals that he didn't want me to go, so I asked him about THOSE. He said my signals were wrong. He said he didn't know why I was getting the signals that indicated to me that he might not want me to go.

After a couple of days of that, he told me that it wasn't that he didn't want me to go at all, it was that he was afraid that I would talk about marital problems too much and that I would not be enthusiastic about spending the evenings with his co-workers (that I would want all his free time spent with the two of us alone). He also said that it made him angry because he felt like I was babysitting him.

In the past, I have felt punished for "forcing" my presence on these trips.

One time, the only thing I asked of him was that he drive me to a nearby (but too far to walk) location so that I could shoot some photos. He "forgot"...so when I mentioned not meeting my needs as a form of punishment in my previous post, that is what I meant.

I am willing to either be specific about what I want, or take responsibility for not communicating it clearly (and not getting it).

I am also very willing to negotiate regarding his concerns about my attending, but I can't do that if he doesn't share them with me.




My difficulty making a decision on this matter was really more about whether or not it would be controlling on my part to go (even though he said he wanted me to) when he was sending me clear signals that he was trying to get me NOT to.

I realize that his voicing what he wants is NOT my property or my responsibility. It is really more about my wanting to avoid being punished for "forcing" my presence and trying to control him.

I kind of felt as though I were being put in the position to make the decision on my own, without honest input from him and it felt like there would be a consequence for me either way - if I stay I feel unsafe (and it would be my fault for deciding not to go when he told me he wanted me to) OR going at the risk of being punished for it.

But he said he needed me to make a decision quickly because my decision would determine whether or not he would drive or fly and he needed to make arrangements for his flight if I opted not to go.

I felt stuck, which was why I holla'd at Mulan.

I decided that those were my two choices...stay/unsafe or go/risk punishment because I didn't feel like I could rely on him for accurate information with which to base my decision.

I opted for stay/unsafe. It sounded better to me than leaving my normal routine and risking the punishment.



I have found that it isn't doing me a heck of a lot of good if I can't get honest answers to those questions.

Now he has voiced his concerns and he has stated again that he really wants me to go, so I will address his concerns through POJA and I will accompany him and PRAY that there aren't other concerns I don't know about. If there are and he tries to dump them on my property and punish me for them, I will find it even more difficult to trust him in the future.

Am I missing anything?

Thank you so much for your responses.

So - how have the two of you addressed these specific things? Seems like there would be a lot of good stuff to POJA here.
Mulan

We haven't addressed them yet. I asked him about it again last night and he assured me that as soon as he gets some free time, he will share his concerns with me.

okey-dokey- sounds like this might be the part to zero in on.
Mulan

I'm confused. Do you mean "part to zero in on" being the concerns or the lack of free time?

Okay, we discussed and negotiated.

I told him that I felt more comfortable not having any expectations with regards to time spent alone together on the trip and that if something came up that I would like to do, I would just request with as much notice as possible and forfeit my right to be pissed about it if I don't speak up.

He agreed to let me know if I talk too much about a topic that he feels uncomfortable with (since I have no way of measuring how much is TOO much, with regards to discussing anything deep.)

So off to San Antonio we go (tomorrow).

Wanna know something really cool?

He told me that his tactic was designed to get me to decide not to go because he didn't feel like he could get the things we negotiated for without doing that. He admitted that it was subversive.

He admitted that when I sensed it, his excuses were him backpedaling.

He said that I wasn't crazy or imagining things!

He's never done that before.

It made a pretty sizable deposit in the honesty & openness account and it gives me some SERIOUS HOPE.

I am so, so, so proud of him (and grateful) for doing that because I know it isn't easy for him. In my eyes, it was a pretty mature and admirable thing for him to do. I don't want a perfect husband, but an HONEST one...well that is exactly what I want.

That sounds good, Froz. I would say, just go and *assume* you will do things together because that's what husbands and wives do - right?

Enjoy San Antonio. I grew up there but have not been back for many years. Let me know what it's like!
Mulan

I just wanted to thank you both for the help you gave me in sorting this out.

IMO, the trip went just fine.

I think that Patriot is getting much better with boundaries and as a result it is helping him to be more honest and open, which in turn helps me and helps our marriage.

I find it very, very difficult to set boundaries with someome who isn't being open and honest.

We had a conversation on the drive to San Antonio about a snag in my boundary-setting...trusting my judgment. This is where I think I often get stuck.

We have been taking a boundaries class at a local church. We had a guest speaker a couple of weeks ago and I was rather impressed with his keen perception.

Just from the couple of questions I asked, he wrote some notes about me.

He said that somewhere, someone in my life conditioned me to question my perceptions.

If he only knew how RIGHT ON he actually was.

I know that this did happen. All my life, my mother phrased it like this...

"Your perception is warped."
"We know that you sometimes see things that aren't really there."

Having that information now doesn't help me overcome this because I know that all my life I actually have had quite a bit of distorted thinking.

When I use the phrase "distorted thinking", I mean this...

Distorted Thinking

I suspect that I may have seen what was actually going on, and then added my own distorted thinking twist on it.

I have no idea how to separate one from the other or to begin trusting my judgment. For some reason, being able to separate it feels key to me in learning how to trust my perceptions.

Without being able to trust my perceptions, it affects my boundary setting in that I don't know how, or even if it is inappropriate or destructive to set a boundary on something I am IMAGINING.

Sometimes I feel sure I am not imagining it, and tell myself to stop questioning my judgment, but then I get hung up on trying to PROVE it. I don't know why, but it seems important to be able to set boundaries based on facts, rather than setting them based on intuition. I guess because sometimes intuition is wrong, particularly when you factor emotion into the equation.

None of the books I am reading about boundaries address this particular topic and I would like to learn how to overcome this obstacle (since I keep getting hung up on it) but I am at the very beginning stages of even attempting to reconcile it, so I find it difficult to even explain.

Great! You are more than welcome for whatever I can offer (most of which I simply stole from elsewhere <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />)


Well - I would submit that a boundary is a boundary whether other people are O&H or not - although yes, they might be using dishonesty and deception to try making an end-run around those same boundaries. But if the boundary is a healthy one, they'll soon run smack into it like a 100-pound high-school quarterback running into my son the 220-pound defensive tackle <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />).


I know you have often spoken of this. Telling someone their perceptions are wrong - especially a child or an adolescent - can sure do some serious damage but it sure does work to keep that young person squarely under control. And that's why people do it.


Well, sure. As Mr. Spock might say, "You proceed from a false assumption" - that is, you've added in the notion that your perceptions are probably wrong anyway so how will you ever know what's true? - and the false assumption that your perceptions are wrong is what's throwing the monkey wrench into the process.


This is also called "trying to make sense out of nonsense". I think Mr. Spock would understand that one, too.


I think it's very easy to understand why you would feel a very strong need to prove your perceptions are correct - when you've been shot down and told they are wrong for so long, you've got to convince yourself (and others) that they are not wrong.

Maybe you could try looking over some events in your life, both recent and far distant, where you questioned whether you were right about them or not. Remember what your perceptions were and then remember what actually happened.

I'll bet you'll find there ain't a thing wrong about your perceptions.
Mulan