I remembered this site from several years ago. DH and I filled out the needs questionnaires. I remember being surprised that he thought I didn't listen to him enough. So I started listening to him more. But that was a long time ago.

I told DH tonight that I needed for us to stop living separate lives. I told him that I don't feel any togetherness ever, to sustain me when we're apart. When we're apart, which is almost all day every day, I feel very lonely. I have tried to fill it up with church, community theater, lessons, friends. He went back to medical school at age 40. He is 47 now and finishing his residency. He keeps telling me that things will be better when he finishes. But I don't believe it. He is starting a job right away, and after that he will be an oncology fellow. He doesn't seem to think about me at all. He comes home and reads his medical journals, or watches baseball. I told him what I needed tonight. He told me to bring it up again when he has a day off. I told him I didn't need to, because I had told him all I had to say. He told me he could tell I was angry because he was tired. I said no, I told him I had told him all I had to say, and I thanked him for listening.

What I told him specifically was, I wanted him to spend some time working together with me to reach goals that we both cared about, such as: maintain the home, take care of our kids, go on vacations.

I do not want to be his "boss." If he doesn't want to take the initiative to work with me on the things that are important to me, then I will have to make a hard decision about whether I want to be married to him anymore. I can tell my kids to help me carry groceries in from the car, etc. That feels natural to me because they are children. But in DH's case, I have to spell things out for him that he doesn't have to spell out for me. It doesn't seem fair.

He is very happy with me, he says so all the time. But I think it's because he always has clean clothes to wear to work, and he doesn't have to worry about the kids. I think about what he needs.

We went to a marriage counselor, and she asked us what we wanted. He told her he wanted me to be happy. I told her I wanted to sort out what were my issues and what I could legitimately ask of him. My issues include emotional problems from being abused as a child, and I was drinking up until just over a year ago. I was alone a lot when he was working late, and I was drinking myself to sleep at night. I quit a year ago last spring. I go to AA. Thank god I have no more desire to drink the way I was drinking. I have a spiritual path now which is at least keeping me grounded. I don't feel like my alienation from my husband is the end of the world. I feel like I have options. I want the marriage to work out, but if it doesn't, I am ready to walk away.

I realize that I had a fantasy about marriage counseling. I had wanted to go for a long time. What I thought it would be was that I would air all my grievances in front of another person, and he would see that I had needs. He loves me, I know that, but he just seems to want to live for himself and medicine. He wants to become an oncologist, so there is going to be another three years of this. When he's done, our oldest daughter will be seventeen.

He spends time with the kids. I guess if he has to choose one or the other, it's better that he spend some time with his kids than with me. They need him more than I do. Last summer, when he had time off, he would take them sailing. I don't sail, I don't like the water. I was taking swimming lessons to overcome my fear of sailing. But I quit, it was just so unpleasant. He has never done anything like that for me. When we met, I quit square dancing, which I loved, and started doing Tae Kwon Do, which was what he did. Same as sailing, I tried to like it but did not.

It seems in retrospect, I just wanted to be married, and he seemed like he would be a good husband. He is a good person. Sometimes I make gratitude lists, and I can find so many things about him to list. He is smart, fit, handsome, doesn't get angry, faithful, loves me, loves the kids, doesn't abuse me in any way.

But I didn't ask what was really in it for me, other than the idea that being married was good. I changed myself to accommodate him. He didn't have to change anything. I was happy to do it then. But I guess I thought I would have a partner in life, when in fact there was no indication at any point that he was willing to bend even a little bit to accommodate the person that I was.

We stopped going to the marriage counselor. She was not able to help us. We don't fight, we don't do any of the relationship busters. We aren't disrespectful, in fact we are very respectful of each other. We don't criticize, we don't have selfish behavior. I told him I don't want to make him do anything against his will. But if he doesn't actually *want* to do the things that interest me, then what are we doing together?

I want my needs to be met without having to spell out exactly what he has to do. When I want a gift for mother's day, I have to tell him what to get me. Then I am on my own the Saturday before while he is out shopping. If I don't tell him what to do for me, then he doesn't do anything. If I ask him to go to the store to get food on his way home, I have to give him the list. He only gets what's on the list.

Am I off the mark? Am I asking for too much? Sometimes I feel like I'm just this pathetic needy person. But I feel so alone, and I am starting to think I just want to walk away from this disappointing marriage.

I guess what triggered these feelings is that I looked at my work notebook from 2006. I was in a job I hated for two years. There were good things about the job and bad things, but the bad things were pretty bad. I used to keep a daily notebook to keep myself on track. Every day I would write in that notebook, a review of the day before. Had I met my short term goals? What went right? What went wrong? What could I have done differently?

Eventually I quit that job. Looking over that notebook, I saw so many "affirmations," positive statements, attempts to feel better, milestones met, bite-sized tasks set out and accomplished, but day after day I would read the same thing, among the affirmations and tasks:

"Still lots of mental stress."
"Tired, stressed"
"Feeling bad about things in general"
"Feeling awful about work."

In the end, there was nothing for me to do about that job other than quit. After I quit, I wondered why I had waited so long to do it. Why did I make myself try to withstand a situation that was clearly painful? I did not need the money, it was the last job of a career in which I had been successful, but it was deeply unsatisfying. I was physically isolated, working by myself in a small office with no windows surrounded by people who weren't working on my project.

So I am seeing this marriage the same way. I have been going to AA and working on my character defects, letting go of my resentments, etc. Trying to lower my expectations, trying to change who I am and what I want. But the fact is, there are things I want from a marriage that I'm just not getting, and have not been getting ever since DH started going to medical school. It has been seven years, it will be four years more because of the fellowship in oncology.

Rereading this, I sound so selfish. But I don't think I am. I read his medical journals too. I discuss the articles in them with him. Tonight we were out to eat with his mother and one of our kids. I asked him to explain the biology of preeclampsia, and I was sincere in wanting to know. I go around during the day thinking about him. I know his daily schedule. On the other hand, I have been going to my 12-step group every Thursday for two years. Today I couldn't go for the second week in a row because my daughter was sick. I told him I had to miss my meeting today. He asked me, "what meeting?" I know he has clinic on Tuesdays. I never have to ask him about it. Why doesn't he know what I do with my life? I don't want it to be this way. I feel like I was wrong to have married him, if this is how he was going to be. Am I selfish? Am I thinking about him too much? Do I need to work harder to get a life for myself? Should I just throw in the towel? I have one shelf of a bookcase devoted to books about improving marriages. I asked him once if he wanted to read one, and he said no. He is happy! He says he's happy and he acts happy. But I am not happy. Is it my fault? I have been operating under that assumption and trying to fix myself. Trying to stop having expectations, trying to communicate my needs, trying to eat right, get enough exercise, etc. etc. but I am still so unhappy. I don't think it's chemical depression, because when we started going to the marriage counselor, I had hope. I was happy, very happy, whistling and singing and feeling like happy days were coming finally. But it was false hope.

That's such a hard one. I'm married to the same kind of guy. You can't MAKE him think about you; I know, I've tried. I take D17 to drums lessons every Monday at 5:30, have for the last 2 years. But every Monday when H is getting off work, he calls me and asks why we aren't at home. He simply is incapable of saving that bit of information in his brain. He can rattle off every trait of a piece of electronics that he sold 20 years ago, could even tell you how many of them he sold in a 6-month period, but he can't tell you whether his daughter is still taking after-school dance lessons. Because it is not HIS world.

The only solution I've been able to reach is to start taking back my life, the way I want it. Stop expecting from him, and start expecting from myself. Disengage from him, stop doing so much for him. He is far enough along in his medical career that he can start coming out of his cave to care for himself, as in dooing his own laundry, or cooking dinner one night a week, or fixing one broken thing in the house each week.

You might have to tell him to do it, and that hurts. But the benefit is that you're detaching from being his support system. I'm pretty sure that that is a big source of your sadness, that you give and give and give, and he takes it but doesn't realize he's taking. So stop giving. I'm not telling you to turn into a selfish witch. Just to stop being so codependent, stop resting your happiness on what you get back from him for all your giving.

My IC told me I can't change my H, but I can change myself. And when I stop propping him up, pull away and take care of myself, he will either have to stand up by himself, or fall over. I believe that will give your H the awareness of his place in the family that you need - causing him to come out of his cave and look around at everything that's going on, and question whether he wants to be part of it.

Thank-you so much for your reply.

I am taking back my life to some degree. But I seem to be walking a knife edge between healthy self-sufficiency and emotional divorce. Last night I told him that if I didn't tell him what was on my mind, I was just going to withdraw and feel more distant from him. He said, "you'll be like your mother." But I said no, my mother never left my father because she had no independent income. I do. I could leave.

I realize that when I got married, my expectations were unrealistic. I dropped everything of my own life in order to be THE woman for him, because I wanted to marry him. It was easy for me, I was trained (i.e. beaten and punished) to be compliant as a child. But the person I made myself into for him had no integrity, not in the sense of immoral behavior, but my activities and what I enjoyed doing were two different things. Further my idea of what marriage would be like was so fantastical that it could almost be described as delusional.

One of my favorite mantras from AA is "life on life's terms." If that's the way I was, that's the way I was. It is hard to change, but the alternative is surrendering to seething resentment that will envelop me and be the main theme of the rest of my life. I don't want to put up with a bad situation. I have done so in too many circumstances, and I am too old (50) to do that anymore. I just can't.

I need him to be on my page at least part way. I don't want any one thing. I know I complain a lot about this or that thing, such as the mother's day present or him remembering my schedule. If he's not like that, I can accept that, and in fact I got a really nice power screwdriver last Mother's Day, which I have to say I appreciated much more than I resented the fact that I had to ask for it. I probably would find something to complain about if he showed up with something he thought of by himself, and I didn't want it.

I just want him to have some common goals with me and to work on them together. If that is resting my happiness on him giving something back, I think I'm done trying to stop doing that. Meaning, I do rest my happiness, at least happiness with him, on him giving something. I think I have been trying to do what you say, and that has gotten me into the emotional divorce stage. I have been trying to expect nothing from him, while still wanting something in spite of myself. I think the problem has been not being able to articulate what I want. I don't want him to give me anything in return for what I do, but for him to put his money where his mouth is, to give me his time and actions in a way that has to do with what I want in life. IF he wants to. If he doesn't want to, I see no reason for me to be married to him, other than some material conveniences.

Do you think you are OK with your marriage? Or are you on this board to try to fix it single-handedly, like I am?

I have to say, yesterday I left the bed unmade and clothes and used kleenex (allergy season) on the floor of the bedroom. At the end of the day I took care of the clothes and kleenex. I was thinking maybe if I start being more of a slob, something will shift. But it seems contrived and silly, especially when it is all of five minutes for me to tidy up the bedroom in the morning, and because I like environmental serenity. I do housework with ease and don't really need help with that.

I just want to have someone in my life with whom I can actively share at least part of my dream of the future. I have shared his dream of becoming a doctor, have supported it in many ways - talking to him about work, about his career options, reading his journals. I didn't do this to get something back. I did it because being a doctor is part of who he is, and I wanted to support him. If he was a hobby nut (trains or woodworking), I would read his hobby magazines. I draw the line at baseball though LOL. He ran in the Boston Marathon, and my initial feeling was, he has so little time for me, and he is going to do this? But it was the dream of a lifetime for him, so I supported it. I canceled a trip I was going to take with the kids so that we could cheer and hold up signs along the way as he ran by (we drove to four places along the way). I urged him to get out and train when he didn't want to go out in the cold weather. He is not a runner. He raised money for the Lance Armstrong foundation, for which he was allowed to run in the second wave. I didn't support him because I thought "if I do this, he will do the same for me." I did it because I knew it was important to him, and that made it important to me. His late father loved the Boston Marathon, and as a family, they handed out water to the runners every year. The trip I was going to take with my kids was a road trip to Michigan, and they were lukewarm about it. So it was not a big deal to cancel it. I am taking them on a vacation this summer, hopefully a European road trip.

I list these things because I don't think they were codependent. I think I've purged the codependent things from my life. I didn't like his friends that much, so I've stopped going out of my way to entertain them at my house. They are tolerable, so we go out to a restaurant once a month or so, and he goes out with his best friend to see a movie once in a while. I don't go out with him anymore if I'm sick. He took the kids to a friend's house, and I was expected to go along, but I didn't feel well. When he was leaving with the kids he was clearly surprised that I didn't make myself go. I stood my ground and expressed my annoyance that he would expect me to go if I didn't feel well. Nine years ago I remember driving the kids to the same place, sick as a dog with the flu, and ending up in the hospital with pneumonia. Never again. I do not do those things anymore, but I wonder if I have gone too far in encouraging his self-absorption.

I wonder though, am I wrong to expect a similar attitude towards me in him, rather than accept that I think about him in a way in which he doesn't think about me. But as I said, I have seen myself attempt this "acceptance" in other situations, and it has left me depressed. I think it's wrong. I think the key is to figure out WHAT I want and stop asking for him to do a behavior that MEANS he is doing what I want, but ask him to do what I want as best I can. I know the specific actions I do with him come out of my thoughts about him. If he learns to do a set of actions without any thought behind it, of course I don't appreciate it. I'm no fool, he is going through the motions of appeasement so that he can go back to watching his baseball game. I want the thought, and I am convinced if the thought is there, the actions will follow.

Anyway, as I said before, "life on life's terms." What we did is what we did, and what I want is what I want. I need to concentrate my thoughts to hone in on the truth and reality of the situation. I would say overall I want him to get to know me, but I have made it hard because I have tried to be the person I thought he wanted me to be. On the other hand, there is nobody on this earth who knows me as well as he does, at this point. But he doesn't really know what I want, because for many years I didn't know, and it is hard to put it into words now.

Sorry for the verbosity. I am trying to clarify these things in my mind, and I don't write about them in general.

OK, I guess I typed too much, as I am not getting a lot of feedback.

I will try to be concise.

H is a resident in internal medicine. He doesn't have a lot of time for me. I have been trying to let go of my expectations for a while. I am ready to change this strategy, because I'm feeling emotionally divorced. Last night I told him I need him to ask himself if he has any goals in common with mine, and to figure out how he can work with me to achieve them. I have several goals, we have good communication in general, so he knows what they are. I don't expect him to have them all in common with me. But if there are none in common, or if he doesn't want to work as a team, I'm no longer sure what the point is of being married. I am flexible with time, division of labor, etc.

Any questions, please read previous posts, I laid it all out, probably in too much detail.

catperson says I need to stop being codependent. Am I, really? I do his laundry because I don't want dirty laundry in the bedroom. I tried leaving the room a mess yesterday, but it was revolting to me. I don't need him to help me clean the house, and I don't think I want him to. Should I try letting things go anyway? It is hard for me, it takes more energy for me to, for example, walk past trash on the floor without picking it up, than to pick it up.

Hi madknitter,

I really agree w/ cat's advice to stop resting your happiness on your husband. That is a recipe for UNhappiness. Please do not dismiss her words because you think you've already tried that. Try harder. Try until you succeed. The void you feel, what you call loneliness, can't be filled by other people. Your problem is not other people, it is something in you and blaming others is only a distraction from addressing it honestly.

What are your other relationships like? How many good friends do you consider yourself to have? How would you characterize your relationship with your kids? Do you feel resentment when your kids aren't enthusiastic about something like a road trip you want to take?

What I am hearing is someone who desperately needs validation from others. Does this seem like a fair description?

What is the difference between resting my happiness on my husband, which I don't think I do, and having legitimate emotional needs? It seems to me as if you are saying, I must strive to eliminate my emotional needs. This is not the type of thinking I expected to see on this web site, though personally I am inclined to think this way.

I didn't want to mention that the 12-step group I have been attending for two years is affiliated with codependents anonymous, because of the article "how the codependency movement is ruining marriages." At this point I love going to the group partly because of the relationship I have with the women in the group. However on the other hand, the philosophy of letting go makes a lot of sense to me. I was abused as a child and their cause-effect philosophy makes sense.

I have two girlfriends that I call on a regular basis and see weekly. I am involved in various satisfying church projects. I paint (still life in oil). I work on other crafts from time to time - quilting and two-dimensional origami. I sing and play the piano. I garden. I have a volunteer "job" in community theater. I read daily. I enjoy housekeeping - I was a flylady devotee for a while and learned how to do it in the most efficient way. I have about two dozen books on housekeeping!

I don't resent that my kids didn't want to go on the road trip, though I didn't have to press the issue. We went on a road trip about two years ago, and they loved it. If I need to go on a road trip, I am happy to do it by myself. In fact I went on a trip by myself before, and had a great time. DH took the kids to summer camp, and I went to California, rented a car, and drove it to Flagstaff, took the shuttle to Grand Canyon and back, and then took the train to Albuquerque. I have a recital tomorrow. H will be working and the kids don't want to go. I don't have a problem with that, I didn't even try to twist their arm. Why would they want to hear me and a bunch of other people sing songs they don't like? It doesn't make me feel unwanted. It is perfectly natural. I go to those recitals all the time, and I find it tedious to listen to other people's kids. Mine, sure I want to hear them, but the rest, I don't. They are objectively tedious, at least in my opinion. I didn't expect them to want to go. I am doing it for myself.

As I described in what I do for DH in a previous post, I don't feel codependent.

There are ways I am and was codependent with him. When I wake up in the morning, I want DH to have made the coffee. When he doesn't do that, I feel uncared for. However some days I will tell him to make it before he starts taking a shower. Or, I set it up to make it the night before. Maybe I'm blind to my codependency - obviously I have these traits, but I think regarding DH, I have discussed it with him and brought it out into the open, so that I can't play my codependent games with him. He would know if I did. About six months sober the resentments I had towards H dissipated considerably. I understood that I had told myself a story about him that helped me excuse my drinking. I won't go into that, it would triple the size of this post.

My codependency comes in the form of, for example, I was in a church covenant group, which I didn't really like after a few meetings. Yet I attended for another year, before I quit, and quitting was a very painful process. All it took was a phone call, but it was a very hard phone call to make, and I felt guilty about it for a while, still feel guilty when I see the leader of the group.

I was giving a woman a ride to the urban school program where I was a volunteer tutor. The program did not work for me at all. When the kids would tell me, "I don't need help with my homework today," my inclination is to take them at their word. I think children are treated with disrespect from all sides in our society, so I felt it would be additional disrespect to tell them I didn't believe them. So I wanted to quit the program, seeing as the dynamic that was necessary to successfully tutor them did not fit my idea of how things ought to be. However I went month after month because I didn't want to tell this lady (who was able to drive) that I wouldn't give her a ride anymore.

Another example of codependency was that the other students in my art class are forming a critique group. When they asked me to join, I had a sinking feeling that I would be trapped doing yet another thing I didn't want to do. But I just said no, have said no repeatedly because they keep asking. I told them the truth, I don't have it in me to critique their artwork. So on one hand that illustrates the feelings but on the other I was proud of myself.

I also told the director of religious education at the Sunday school that I would not teach next year, even though I am supposedly obligated. To me the way they teach the kids is spiritually stultifying. Obviously I am the only person who thinks that way, but at this point how I feel and what I believe are more important than what other people want me to do.

So I say all this to show, yes you are right in noticing that I have codependency issues. But on the other hand I have been consciously addressing this and really, what I am trying to sort out here, though I was afraid to say as much, is how much of what I want from DH is codependent, and how much is legitimate.

So are you and catperson saying that it is likely that what I think is emotional need is actually codependency, and that I should continue to try to find ways to meet my emotional needs through other people and my various activities? Obviously I wouldn't have posted here if I hadn't considered that already and was suspicious that it wasn't the whole story. But denial can be very powerful. It might be my problem to begin with, seeing that I have a history of codependency.

I had to type the previous post quickly because DH had made breakfast. At breakfast I summarized the discussion on this thread. He said in his case, he doesn't need to have his emotional needs met. He is happy because he likes who I am. I told him the ways in which I think I meet his emotional needs, in a non-codependent way. That is, being genuinely interested in his career, reading his journals, talking to him about his particular interest in medicine. In fact I was able to ace the GRE partly because one of the reading passages was on the process of non-enzymatic glycolization. I have never studied this, but I listen to DH talk about these things, and they interest me. If he wasn't doing medicine, I wouldn't go out of my way to learn about biochemistry. I don't have to force myself to do this. It is a natural thing for me. He doesn't know that I read his medical journals (other than if I talk about a particular article) because I do it during the day when he's at work, because of the fact that it is what interests him. I don't think that's codependent.

Secondly as I said I supported his effort to run the Boston Marathon, in spite of my initial dismay that he was taking on such a consuming project in addition to his work. It was not out of a need to sacrifice my interests in order to get something back. It was because I knew it was important to him. I don't resent the fact that he did it.

Is it wrong to wish he was interested in my life in a similar kind of way? Is this same as the wish to have a void filled? Am I wrong to think that I have legitimate emotional needs that are not being met?

In the past I have read the "five love languages" literature. I realized that one of the things that means love to me is getting gifts. For a long time I resented the fact that DH did not get me gifts. I can live with that. I don't resent it anymore, as I said I ask for gifts on the occasions that I would like them, and he gets me what I want. Yes it was written with resentment. That he then spends Saturday shopping.

But I perceive that I am gradually coming out of a place of resentment, and that I have legitimate emotional needs. I would not be posting here if I thought I still had a long way to go with my codependency and acceptance issues. I hit an emotional bottom about two and a half years ago, and started working on my codependency issues. I didn't realize until about a year later that I needed to stop drinking as well. At the time I felt very frustrated with my marriage. I thought at the time, I need to get my head together first, and then sort out what I have a right to ask for, and what I still need to deal with personally.

I see that I am still being perceived as extremely needy and needing to work harder at letting go of the expectation that my emotional needs will be met.

DH seems to agree. But if I married him with the expectation that he would meet certain emotional needs, and I was wrong about that, then I made a mistake when I married him. Maybe there is, in fact, no basis for our marriage other than an illusion. Maybe I am simply stuck with a person that I didn't have much in common with to begin with. Maybe the only reason there is to continue to live in the same house with him is a duty to co-parent our children.

Anyway I discussed this all with him. No raised voices, no bitterness, no crying. I feel pretty calm about all of this, and even though I am unconvinced that I just need to keep working, I will give that idea the benefit of the doubt long enough to turn it over in my mind.

The objections I have to keeping on working on detachment are (sorry to restate so much):

1. I have worked on it for about 15 years one way or another - stopping nagging according to flylady, stopping nagging because nagging didn't work, facing my codependency, taking care of my own needs and forming relationships with a broad range of other people (church, AA, friends).

2. In spite of this, I still feel something missing, and I have evidence that trying to change myself has been the wrong approach in the past, as I explained in the first post, my last paying job was a very difficult situation for which the appropriate response was to leave sooner than I did rather than try to accept a situation that was in some ways actually abusive.

One thing I mentioned to DH was that in the past I have asked for specific behaviors from him, but was wrong in thinking that was what I wanted. I don't think I wanted him to help with the housework to fill a void. I don't think I wanted him to buy me gifts to fill a void. I think I wanted some indication that he was willing to meet my emotional needs. To me, actions would have symbolized his willingness to meet my emotional needs. But when he performed the actions, it was done so only to appease my immediate requests. Which is perfectly normal. I didn't know what to ask for. But I realized, for example when he would wash the dishes, that that wasn't what I wanted.

So I guess what you guys are saying is that what I really wanted was for him to fill a void that he can't fill, rather than that I was simply ignorant and unable to articulate the true nature of my legitimate emotional needs (which I take to be: to have a partner with whom I have mutual goals and who works with me to achieve them).

I can't seem to get away from the idea that if I look at it that way, then it was a mistake to marry him in the first place, because all I ever wanted from him was void-filling, and now that I realize that was all I wanted, I am left with a roommate that has a life that really doesn't intersect with mine in a meaningful way, not because he isn't doing this or that, but because who he was as a real person didn't factor into my decision to marry him. My interest in his life is codependency, not something that is necessary for married people to have in order to be satisfied with the marriage.

But if that is true, what is there about a marriage to be satisfied with? I really don't get this. Am I just too sick to understand how people are happy in their marriages?

I am willing to try to understand how I am overly needy and must continue to work to meet my own emotional needs, but if you can please use the details of my life as I've presented it here in order to illustrate this, it would make more sense to me.

I'm sorry if I'm not getting this, however as you all know this is hard stuff to get.

You sound like you might be depressed. Have you ever talked to a doctor about meds?

I would be depressed too. Hubby is very busy, and satisfied, so he won't be much help.

I think I would insist on spending 15 hours a week doing fun things together. Just pencil the hours into the calendar like a dentist appointment. Then go do things together. Your lives are becoming very disconnected, and that is probably why you feel something missing.

Hi madknitter! I hope you are having a good weekend

I do not really know that much about codependency. I hear the term a lot, but I can't pretend that I know exactly what is meant. I've never read any books or anything on it. What I do have is my real life experiences and observations of healthy and unhealthy relationships, so I'll just share that without any special terminology, ok?

What I think it means to not rest your happiness on your husband is that you stop creating situations where what your husband does or does not do serves to validate you as a person. It sounds to me like you want your husband to be as into one of your hobbies (church, art, gardening, theater, crafts, music) as you have been into his medical career. And yet, you don't want him to "fake" it. You are setting him up for failure because if he isn't interested in that stuff, he just isn't. Now, here's the part where I think it goes off the rails ... you make that lack of real interest to be a lack of interest in YOU. Totally unfair. Your husband is obviously interested in you and cares for you since you have stated that he treats you well, does not abuse you, does not cheat on you, etc. It may be true that he does not find your hobbies (again, not you ... just your hobbies) as interesting as a cancerous growth, but so what!

So here's my next question for you, how do you feel about the overall quality of your relationships with other people? Not just with your husband, but with the rest of your family and friends. Do you feel loved, appreciated, secure? I think it is great that you are recognizing when you are doing something unhealthy, but it is probably going to take more than 6-months to get rid of the impulses and habits that caused you to make unhealthy choices in the first place.

I don't want to cause problems, but my feelings on the recital would be different ... to be honest, I would want my family (and I'd invite my friends too) to go to my recital if they could. Obviously I would be ok if they had something important like work and couldn't go or if it was too far away or something, but "hey I just think that's boring"? Are these recitals so frequent that they are not special occasions?

{{{{{{madknitter}}}}}}

I guess we were both posting at the same time

I think you are making the questions around your marriage have answers that are all black or all white. Life is gray. There is not one single reason why we marry the person we marry. So please do not take the fact that you may have had one dysfunctional reason for marrying to negate your entire marriage. You didn't marry your husband just to fill a void. I'm sure there were a lot of other good reasons you married him.

Yes, I do think it is wrong to expect your husband to be interested in your life the same way you have been about his medical studies or the marathon. I also think it is wrong for you to be so interested in his life, because it is at the expense of creating your own life. Are you working now? Are the hobbies you've been doing things you really enjoy? Or are they the things you think you should enjoy? I have a friend who you really remind me of. She is also a housework freak. I've known her for a really long time and know many of her secrets. What I've realized is that for her, the house is her. She thinks people will judge her based on the house and that if it is messy or not stylish, people will not like her as much. She spends so much effort on outward appearances but makes no real investment on her internal life. If you just met her, you would not suspect this at all -- she is bright, outgoing, is in demand as an interior decorator, has a gorgeously remodeled house, is conversational about art, music, hip new restaurants, etc. Privately, she is a mess. I love her dearly, but she does not love herself and no matter how much people give, it is not enough to fill her void. She is always unfulfilled.

Have you filled out the emotional needs questionnaire? If so what were your top emotional needs? I am sure you do have legitimate emotional needs. Expecting your husband to be interested in your life is not one of them though ... Recreational companionship is. Conversation is. Admiration is.

I haven't read The Five Love Languages, but know a few people who have so think I have the gist of it. Personally, I think most relationship self help books are not that helpful. They address some tiny part of relationships and market you into thinking here is the one key to fixing your relationship. Eh.

Thanks everybody for your feedback. I am depressed sometimes, sometimes not. I would rather solve my existential problems as I am trying in part to do here through discussion than use drugs to achieve a state of chemical happiness. Not that chemical happiness is bad, for those who want it. I totally support anyone who would choose that path. But it's not for me.



We both filled them out four years ago. At the time my main need was domestic support. That turned out to be unrealistic. Really, I wanted help with the housework because I wasn't that good at it. That is the reason I have two dozen books on how to keep house. I'm an egghead in the old sense of the word - we (mainly I) have thousands of books, but the paperwork was piled high, the dishes were never done, the laundry was always behind to the point where I'd have to spend the whole weekend doing laundry. Flylady helped me a lot with this. I have learned to keep house to please myself, nobody else. I am not like your friend. I don't consider this an emotional need anymore, it was something that I needed for myself and learned to do myself.

His main unmet need was for recreational companionship. The questionnaire describes this as "developing interest in your favorite recreational activities, learning to be proficient in them, and joining you in those activities." That was four years ago - his main activities are sailing and swimming. I hated sailing because I couldn't swim. In that time I've learned to swim. I took lessons and learned to blow bubbles and kick with a paddle board, just like a little kid, and I got to the point where I could swim laps. I still don't like swimming in a lake. I'm skinny. I love being hot. I don't like cooling off. When I'm in the water I have to work constantly to stay afloat, unlike someone with a decent amount of body fat, and I get cold quickly. But at least now I can go out in a sailboat with him without being paralyzed with fear in case we capsize.

I have to disagree that expecting my husband to be interested in my life is not a legitimate emotional need. Why not? Is it because it's not on the list of ten needs? The questionnaire says "There is also space for you to add other emotional needs that you feel are essential to your marital happiness, but are not included in the list." DH put in one of the blank spaces, #1 in fact, that we have shared values, a shared sense of right and wrong. Which we do. I need that too, for example I could never marry an authoritarian, or someone who thought it was OK to cheat the cable company, for instance. I think that's legitimate, even though it's not on the list of the ten needs that are explicitly listed on the web site.

Perhaps I am inaccurate in saying I expect my husband to be interested in my life, though that sounds like a legitimate need to me. I would like to feel as if I had a partner in life, that DH was working together with me on at least one aspect of my life that is important to me. Instead, I feel alone, I feel that I am working to get my needs met by church, friends, AA, hobbies, reading, etc. I did not think that was what marriage builders was about, but that seems to me to be what you are saying.

OK now it is becoming more clear to me. We filled out the questionnaire. I said what I needed, as did he. I made a serious effort to meet his need for recreational companionship. He was not able to meet my need for domestic support. Fine, I can meet that need in other ways. Then we went to a marriage counselor. I don't want to go over all the things we discussed, but I think I was pretty clear in my requests for what I wanted out of that experience. We had gone for three months, and nothing changed. So my conclusion was that I just have to learn to be satisfied with what I have. The counselor seemed to agree, and we did not make any more appointments. I went into a depression for about a week, and now I'm here trying to solve the problem the marriage builders way.

If it is the case that I have to learn to be satisfied with what I have, what is the point of this web site? What is the point of saying that anyone has emotional needs, if the only reason is to find ways to get them met through church, friends, having a life of my own, etc.?

believer:

15 hours a week seems like a dream to me. This week, DH has worked every day but today, and today we went to a school picnic with the kids. He will work tomorrow. He tends to work up to 80 hours a week. This is the typical life of a medical resident. That is why I am trying to formulate a way for him to meet my needs that is mental rather than actionable, for instance saying I want him to be interested in something about "us" rather than I want him to put in time doing things. Furthermore, because his time off is so limited, he likes to spend it with the kids rather than with me.

But this was also the only advice the marriage counselor had to offer. She said we needed to spend more time together. Other than that she was useless. Maybe that really is all we need, maybe that was the only advice that would have made any sense.

So I guess I will try to force the issue. If we can pencil in two hours, that will be two hours more than we pencil in now. If I start small during this time that he has to work so many hours, then maybe during the rotations (the different stints of work that a medical resident has to do) where he has more time off, it won't seem like a stretch to insist on more time.

Pencil in two hours if that is all that can be done. I understand that hubby is very busy now. And he will continue being very busy for the next three years.

I don't think your marriage will make it if something doesn't change. Two hours is a start.

And I agree with you that an emotional need for a spouse to be interested in you is legitimate. Why else would you stay married?

Madknitter, you did not understand my post.

I never said that your husband shouldn't be interested in you. However, you are still failing to make the distinction between him being interested in you (i.e. caring about you, caring about your welfare) and being interested in YOUR HOBBIES. You are creating a problem by creating unwinnable situations. You want him to participate with you in your hobbies, but only if he is genuinely interested, but god forbid he has to fake his interest, then that is not good enough. Do you see how this is a catch-22?

You say that you want him to work on one thing that is important to you. Do you not consider raising your family together to be an important shared goal? Could it be that what you actually want is for him to sacrifice for you the way you perceive yourself to have been sacrificing for him?

When your husband expressed a need for recreational companionship, that did not mean that you had to keep doing things you don't like doing just because he likes doing them. Instead find recreation that you both could enthusiastically enjoy. That might mean trying things that are new for both of you until you do find that one thing you both agree is fun.

You never answered my question about how you felt about the overall quality of your relationships with friends and family. You don't need to if you don't want to. However, I suggest that if the answer is that the quality is lacking (which seems likely as you imply they have been failing to fulfill your needs in your post), then perhaps you might want to spend some time considering why you do not seem to have the skills to create close mutually satisfying relationships.

MK,

How about a new look, with fresh eyes, at your marriage?

Do the EN questionnaires and the LB questionnaires again. Our ENs change in how high we rank them as they are met (those that aren't tend to rise and those that are tend to be the ones being met). Great addition to your gratitude journal.

Also, do the Recreational Inventory...because you're seeing HIS best RC activities and not jiving. That's a POJA and the best way for that is to go through this extensive (and fun) inventory to try new RC activities together.

Would you say you've stopped having new experiences together? Could that be why you don't mind reading the medical journals? Makes you a part of each day of his new experience?

Also, about you working on your codependency issues...the primary act of codependency (as you and others have said) is in my mind, an act of betrayal. When we use fantasy and try to reform ourselves to get something from someone. Each act told yourself you aren't enough as is, aren't lovable, honorable or worthy.

Good signal to know because in the actual act, you were not loving, you were dishonoring yourself.

That hurts your marriage as well. If you had radical honesty back then and stated, "I'm going to be this way from now on to adapt to our marriage" your H would have felt pain--because he loves you for who you are...and there you are, self-negating.

The 12-steps aren't about changing who you are (I saw where you said that above)...it's about knowing your real power and limits as a human being (not a as a human doing). Maybe what you first grasped, because it was a lot, in attending those meetings can be looked at again...what you know now is a lot more than what you knew then.

So please revisit...because a lot of your efforts may be furthering your fantasy that is codependency in new ways (that don't throw up your alarms)...and in what you said to your H the other night, I heard "You don't so I feel" and that's not really true. I believe you were sharing, "I still feel and don't know how to get to where I want to go. Will you help me?"

LA

As I said these are hard topics to address, hard to communicate.

I certainly don't want H to join me in any of my hobbies. We talked about the recreational companionship last night. He even said aghast do I want him to oil paint with me? I said no, oil painting is not recreation. It is one of my forms of artistic expression, and it is work. I don't do it to have fun, I do it to create works of art. It is not something I would want him to do with me, not because it wouldn't be nice if he did, but because that has never been anything to do with who he is, and it would be a waste of time for me to want him to paint. He has never oil painted and probably never will. Same with singing, actually he does sing LOL. We might be able to work out a duet. I am OK going sailing with him. I don't think he's going to stop sailing just because I don't like it. He's not on this web site, I am, and he isn't interested in pursuing any of the marriage building or relationship theories that I'm interested in. He has told me that and that too is OK with me, he's busy and would rather read up on pre-eclampsia than how to make a marriage better. I don't feel any sense of unfairness that this is my project, because in fact, I'm the one who's least happy, so why not have me be the one posting on here, reading the books, etc.? So, he will probably keep sailing and will probably keep going for a swim in the lake when he feels like it. I don't mind sailing with him. After all, the questionnaire says, the need is for me to DEVELOP INTEREST IN HIS FAVORITE RECREATIONAL ACTIVITIES. Why should I not make an honest effort to meet his need? He has been sailing since he was a little boy, and now our girls our learning, another reason for me to get over my fear.

So, I do not want him to participate in my hobbies. That's not what I was talking about.



Now you understand, this is exactly what I was talking about. We do not work together on this. I would like to work together on this more than we do. He does his thing and I do mine. Again I think the problem is time. When he's working, which is usually six out of seven days, sometimes seven out of seven, I take care of the kids. When he has time off, he will spend time with the kids taking them to the science museum or sailing.

He is very concerned about my diabetes. I have type I diabetes, and part of the reason he went into medicine is to be in a position to be able to help me. But we don't work together. We have arguments about it. I want to sit down and talk about it, but he hasn't had the time.

Another thing I would put in the category of shared goal is thinking about retirement, for example. But if he wants to leave that up to me, that is OK too.

So, I do not want him to work on my hobbies with me, sorry to have come across that way.



OK, it was for lack of time. My relationship with daughters is excellent. I consider myself a good mom. They are happy. I had a philosophy of respect for children before I had my children, and I have to say I am not one of those people for whom "everything went out the window" when the kids came along. When problems come along, if they want to change schools, if they aren't doing well in school, I talk to them and then do what I feel is my responsibility to help them solve the problem. At this point most of the problems have been solved though my older daughter is having some intimations of adolescent identity crisis. I might have to get her a counselor, she has said she might be willing. It's not all-consuming. No bad behavior, just some fears, bad dreams and fear of the dark. I get along so-so with my mom, she is a bitter and critical woman. We had a fight two years ago, I called her on it when she said my sister was a "little sh*t," probably not in the best way, and she laid into me like never before, telling me I was "holier than though" and "you think you're so great with your IQ of 200." Which I don't think is actually true. Either that I think I'm so great or that I have an IQ of 200. I was a little freaked out, but we swept it under the rug. That seems to be the way she needs to have things, and at 76, I would rather grant her the same respect I grant other elderly people, and let her be who she is. I love her anyway, she was a good mother to me to some degree. My dad is a good man, he apologized for the beatings of my youth. He's optimistic and cheerful. He's getting old and frail though, they live far away and I worry about him, especially because my mom treats him very poorly. I have two younger sisters. I identify and get along very well with the one two years younger. The one eight years younger is extremely codependent to the point of borderline personality disorder kinds of behaviors. But she is getting better. She divorced her abusive, alcoholic husband about a year ago. She asks me for advice and I give it to her, also she comes to visit during the summer, she has three kids who get along with my kids.

I get along with my two best girlfriends, I met them at AA and they coincidentally go to my church as well. I have some issues with my mother-in-law, she has some neurotic fears (for example thinks Aspartame is poison) also is somewhat materialistic and elitist, which rubs me the wrong way. But over the years I've thought about her good points, and there are many. She was just over today even though DH was working, and it went pretty well.

I can talk to my sister and my AA friends about matters of the heart, about codependency, about depression. I can do the small talk with my mom, and that is something. I'm not sure how I said they weren't meeting my needs. I don't know how I was unclear. I have a broad range of human interaction. This has been one of my quests since I started addressing my codependency and even more so since I quit drinking. I do realize that lack of human interaction had something to do with me being overly needy with DH. But I think there comes a point in recovery where one has to address the face value of the relationship with a husband and not call every aspect of it needy and codependent.

I think my codependency is more of the people-pleasing type, not the needy type. Though obviously there is a "need" to not have people become angry, that is a negative need (not negative in the sense of bad, but needing for something not to happen) rather than a positive need (not positive in the sense of good, but wanting something to happen).

The examples I gave of my codependency was that it is very hard for me to get out of groups and obligations of the most trivial sort, because I am afraid that my departure will anger the people in the group. I realize this is irrational and I have worked at it, I am able to quit commitments (trival commitments that is) that are not healthy or fulfilling for me.

OK again running out of time, I have to attend a rehearsal.

Hi madknitter! Can you please explain what it is you mean when you say you want your husband to work on raising your family with you? I am not clear how you are not doing that already. When your husband and kids go to the science museum, why don't you go with? Or plan something for all of you to do together? Or even stay home and just have a family game night?

Regarding your diabetes, how would you want him to work with you on it? You've been reading your husband's medical journals on your own, so it doesn't seem like you need him to help you learn more about the disease. It seems like managing your diet and exercise would be something you should do on your own.

Check out the article on this site about Recreational Companionship. The questionnaire does not say that you need to develop an interest in his favorite recreational activities. Dr. Harley exchanged his favorite recreational activities for ones both he and his wife enjoyed ... that is how he was able to get his need for recreational companionship met. Why not follow LovingAnyways suggestion to use the recreational inventory to find some new things you can do together?

I printed out two and will ask him to do his next time he's home. I don't have a lot of hope about this, but I will do it. I don't think he will quit swimming and sailing.



That is pretty accurate. As I said I have applied to graduate school. Though that will not be a new experience together, it will be more of a new life for me.



Did I really say this? If so I was not being precise. In my study of the problem, in myself and in general, codependency manifests itself in various ways. There is people-pleasing, neediness, and lack of boundaries. To characterize any of these as an act of betrayal, IMO only serves to obscure something that is already inherently hard to define, because of the different forms it can take. Also it would seem to me to water down the concept of betrayal, to add the various forms of codependency to it. But if you want to clarify, I will think about it more.



I don't know to whom this applies, however in my case, I am trying to reform myself not to get something from someone else, but to be happier and more at ease in relationships.



I would say, I have to speak for myself on this. I wouldn't describe my own experience the way you are describing it. By saying "you," were you actually talking about me?



If I had been able to say that, I would have known that was what I was doing, and I wouldn't have quit square dancing, because undermining my own interests has never been something I valued consciously. It wasn't a deliberate act on my part, to join Tae Kwon Do to please him. My conscious feelings were: I want to spend time with him, he doesn't want to square dance with me, therefore I will do Tae Kwon Do with him. If I had talked to someone back then, and said exactly that, I would have been being honest about what I felt. My unconscious motivations have only become clear to me during the process of long-term self-analysis. If I had been able to say back then, "I am subverting my self-interest in order to please you so you will marry me," that motivation would have been conscious, and I would probably have taken steps to change at that point.

Of course there is always the danger that I am casting my early behavior in a negative light. But boy, I did not like TKD, for about six months I was not putting any energy into it, I was just doing cursory kicks and punches. After six months I decided I could make the effort, and I did get some skill. In fact, there are shades of grey. I learned how to persevere with something I was not good at. In my life I have always been able to find activities at which I was adept. But TKD was new, it was something I was very bad at to begin with. But I stuck it out and got better at it. LOL. What is going on here? Still, the idea that I subsumed my own interests, in order to please him, rings true.


I have to disagree with this as well. They were deliberately formulated to bring about a spiritual transformation. I have heard over and over in AA, "you have to change the person you brought in here." At least that is the party line. It has been the case for me, though again, it can be something different for another person. Just to be clear, I started in CoDA doing the 12 steps over two years ago, about a year later I stopped drinking and joined AA, where I attend a wider variety of meetings, but not a literal AA 12-step group. But I am familiar with them in AA and with the literature (Big Book and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions) that explains them.



OK I agree here but I say this is what is embodied in the first three steps. 1. Admitted we were powerless over alcohol (or other people in CoDA), that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 3. Turned our will and our lives over to the care of god as we understood god.

Which for me, was incredibly releasing. I really got that, I understood humility, at least it was a huge relative jump in my understanding.

The next four steps are about learning about our character defects and getting rid of them, the next two are about making amends to the people we hurt, the next two are about working the steps in our daily lives, the last is about reaching out. I think the steps 4-7 are particularly oriented towards changing as a person. Especially the 7th, where we humbly ask God to remove our character defects.



I will think about this, you seem to get the gist of it. But the way you put it is hard to understand.

If I ask him to help me, isn't there an implied expectation that he will? Or do I just ask, and see what happens, not expecting help? DH would say so, I know, we have had conversations about expectations. He says he has none and that nobody should (he reads Taoist "scripture" all the time). I am still afraid that completely letting go of my expectations will leave me completely unattached to H. I feel myself going in that direction. That I why I went to MC, and when that failed, that is why I came here with my hard-to-formulate questions.

Really I think, and I stated this, that he doesn't have expectations, because I am able to anticipate his needs and fulfill them naturally and without a lot of skin off my back. I don't think I'm saying he should because I do. I'm saying I would like him to fill my emotional needs too. Not that he should. If he doesn't have it in him to do so, I need to revisit whether I should be married to him at all. But I will give the "still codependent" theory some space in my brain for a while.

One thing I could do, which my AA sponsor has been suggesting, is that I revisit the 12 steps in an AA context. The fourth step, where one does the "searching and fearless moral inventory," is historically focused on resentments rather than a literal inventory of personal shortcomings.

Hi SnuggleFresh. Thanks for putting up with my slippery logic.



You have me there. Maybe I just don't appreciate what we have. We had one moment about two weeks ago. Big DD had bruises on her arm, and we thought someone might have grabbed her. She said she didn't remember where they came from. As I said DH is a doctor and was alarmed. So we talked about it, he really dealt with it admirably from my point of view. I was very grateful. I had told him not to come right out and demand an explanation, which is what he normally might have done. In fact he was very unobtrusive about looking at the bruises, so unobtrusive that I didn't even notice. I felt, for once, respected. We decided to talk to one of her teachers, the one who really gets her. I wanted him to call to get that male "voice of authority" edge. So he did.

It turned out she probably was not lying, it was probably from roughhousing. Her teacher called me back about a week later and had been observing, told us that none of her friends were tall enough to reach her arms. She is 13 years old, six feet tall, and though her girlfriends are not shrimps, they are shorter, and not bullies at all. She has friends among the younger boys who are about half her size. At least they look that small, I suppose they are not literally three feet tall. (She goes to an alternative school where the kids aren't age segregated.) So the long and short of it is she probably got the bruises in some normal kind of way, roughhousing or even sucking on her arm, it could have been that, kids do that.

So this whole matter was dealt with in exactly the way I would like in other areas of my life. But I tend to make other decisions, even to the point of where the kids will go to school, on my own. I run them by DH of course, and he is fine with what I do. We had another problem with the little DD, she is in a more traditional school and was getting bad grades. So I found a brain-training program and signed her up. Again I ran it by DH and he read the web site and said it looked OK.

So, this is an area where it would be nice if he asked me what was going on with the kids, rather than me telling him, or if he requested to get on the school email list, BUT I have to say I was mostly giving it as an example of the kind of issue I wish he would be more interested in, not the specific matter of kids. Not a hobby as I explained.



I don't like the science museum, and they all love it.



We did go to a school picnic together yesterday, and he did suggest a family day out last winter when I was seriously depressed. We went to a different museum, and I think we all liked it. I guess that's not what I mean, and I'm too tired to elaborate. Maybe it is what I mean, it's just so few and far between. But I want to plan together, not make the plans myself and have him come along. Which is how the picnic went, and our vacation when the kids were off school in the spring, and in general.



I play cards with the older one, but the little one is a very poor loser. I was playing Risk with the kids, and the little one latched onto a very bad strategy, and started to lose precipitously. She refused to finish. That was the last time, and I felt so bad, she was having so much fun until she started losing all her armies. I pulled out this Europe travel game that I had given her for Christmas, but she didn't want to play it. I can't force them to do things like that, though I have considered bribes. Mostly I try to persuade people to do things, kids included. Once in a while the little one has to have her arm twisted, but we only do it in extreme cases, such as a couple of years ago when we were on vacation, about to go on a beautiful nature hike, and she wanted to stay in the hotel to play GameBoy. I think we actually physically put her in the car that time. We had a clue that she would like it, in fact later she said it was one of the best days of her life. It was an exceptionally beautiful hike. But usually I respect their decisions, when we're talking about things that don't have to do with physical survival. Anyway it is worth another try.



I actually had a very specific request. I wanted him to sit down with me and plan meals. But he explicitly said he didn't want to. This made me angry so I haven't really discussed it with him calmly, though I have brought it up a few more times. You're probably right that this is something I should do on my own. I may just be using his lack of participation as an excuse to eat poorly, or grasping at straws and wanting him to do something like this to show me that he cares. But I can't help but think it would make me happy if he sat down and actually helped give me some ideas about how to eat better. I think there's some issues there too, he told me once when I was cooking better than usual that I was overdoing it, and I got mad about that. He may actually have been right, though he criticized one of my favorite things to cook, and it hurt. But I think that might be the reason he told me he didn't want to discuss it with me. I guess I could ask.



That is true. It only states that DH's need would be for me to do so, not that I must satisfy that need. To quote from the questionnaire: "4. Recreational Companionship (developing interest in your favorite recreational activities, learning to be proficient in them, and joining you in those activities)."

From DH's point of view, his need was for me to develop an interest in his favorite activities and do them together with him. There was nothing in the questionnaire that said I needed to do so. I thought the point of the questionnaire was to figure out how to make deposits in his love bank, and that meeting his needs was the way to do it. The articles say, don't do anything that will cause [me] to suffer. Learning how to swim didn't cause me to suffer, not really. There were other good things about it, in fact all this talk about it made me think I might want to rejoin the pool. I quit because I had stopped going there for a few months. My goal was to be able to swim in the lake where we spend a week in the summer, and I just couldn't do it. I seized up and couldn't exhale with my face in the water, therefore couldn't swim any distance with any kind of comfort. I sort of threw in the towel after that, and thought to myself, "why not? Why bother? It really wasn't what I wanted to do in the first place. But, I was not suffering. Plus I wasn't swimming with H anyway, I was doing laps at the pool.

I guess learning to swim was a convoluted way of going about going sailing with H, which is his favorite thing to do recreationally. But DH would be happy to have me just go around in the boat with him, and I had to learn to swim before I could ease the feeling of terror. I had a cousin pretend to try to drown me when I was a kid, which really left a scar, it was one of the most terrifying moments of my life, to be held underwater. Anyway all it gave me was a gag reflex that made it hard for me to breathe with my face in the water, and the lessons I took corrected that.

OK I am exhausted and hope I've answered your questions. Thanks for providing the food for thought, I think with the back-and-forth that you have so generously participated in, we have a better understanding and I'm getting some ideas that might actually work.

Sorry if I come off as argumentative. The reason is because I am. I don't think arguing is necessarily a bad thing, it is one way that people with different points of view and unspoken assumptions clarify their ideas so they can solve problems together that one person could not solve by themselves.

Your welcome madknitter. Hopefully you are getting a little closer to the truth about yourself and your marriage.

One thing you said that really struck me was



Might this be the unmet emotional need you are actually trying to get met? You haven't mentioned it before, but perhaps what you actually want from your husband is in the Dr. Harley category of admiration. To me, it seems to fit with the tenor of your frustrations and your actions (such as being upset by your husband's critique of your cooking).

Game night is just one suggestion for a family activity. I do think it is good for children to learn how to lose gracefully, otherwise other children won't want to play with them ... LOL! But I can understand getting frustrated at Risk. It's such a loooooong game ... and I suck at that type of strategy game compared to my husband. Try for shorter games like Spades or Uno where everyone can win a few hands. And rotate the games so that you take turn playing everyone's favorite game. If you're daughter is really young, maybe she can team up w/ mom or dad for help w/ strategy or stick to simpler games. The main thing is to create a fun family tradition. If you want more ideas, check out some parenting websites to see what other people are doing. Make it a once a week thing that you do and then it won't feel like you planned it and your husband just tagged along. Talk to him about it the way you talked to him about your daughter's bruises. Tell him you'd like to create a regular family activity for the whole family and get him to help plan if it should be game night or movie night or make a special dinner together family night.

I understand you don't want to force your children to do things, but when they refuse to do simple things you ask like playing a game or going on a hike, I wonder if maybe they are lacking respect for you (back to the above point!). How old are your children? I guess it would depend on their ages. A teen I could totally see doing that since they are becoming young adults.

I think you are still missing the point on recreational companionship. You had to overcome mental terror to join your husband in boating. To me, that is excessive. Also, it sounds like you do not actually enjoy it. Here is an excerpt from the section on this website about recreational companionship that I wanted you to get:



Please go read the whole thing (link for Recreational Companionship under "The Most Important Emotional Needs").

One last thing ... I wasn't going to mention it but since you brought it up ... being argumentative is actually not the best way for people with different points of view to share ideas and solve problems. Collaboration/teamwork is a much better way to do this.