My husband and I have 2 small children and do foster care. I love our family, but I also feel like something is missing. He is the best father anyone could ever have and he tries really hard to please me as well. I have no idea where this feeling of "is there something more?" coming from. I know I should count my lucky stars that I have such a good man. Please someone help me clear up my wacked out thinking. I grew up watching my mother go through 5 bad marriages and vowed that I would stay with the one I picked even if that makes me miserable (which I am not at the moment)

Hi. I made an account just to respond to your post. If your man tries hard to please you, what is wrong. Is he not doing it right? Communicate with him so he can please you in a way that makes you happy.

You are lucky to have such a husband! I have been married for just over a year and my husband reminds about once a month, usually during or just after some kind of disagreement how useless I am and how huge of a mistake he made by marrying me. He says I mess everything up, can't do anything right and nothing I do is a blessing in his life.

He also will not listen when I try express my needs, he says I shouldn't "force it."

I know we have issues and I know your husband is not perfect but try think of him and his needs and pleasing him and maybe things will change in your heart.

Marriages go through phases. Pray that the Lord will bring you out of this, ask Him to show you what to do.

Big kudos to you, Marty, for finding Marriage Builders and being brave and posting...welcome!

First piece of advice, read all you can on this website...click on the link to Basic Concepts, read about Emotional Needs (ENs) and print out the questionnaire...identify your top ENs.

You already identified that Family Commitment (FC) is important to you and that your H has made steady contributions into your love bank by being a great father.

Keep going...identify what gives you surges of love...and figure out how he can meet those ENs.

Then read about Love Busters (LBs) and print out that questionnaire and take it for him...you may figure out your H is meeting all of your ENs really well, except he LBs in DJs, or SDs, or IBs...which robs your love bank of 20 deposits for just one.

Then fill out the LB questionnaire as if you were him...how you LB...so you can look at your stuff with new awareness. Same for the ENs...and then ask him to fill them out when your better aware of what yours (ENs and LBs) are...

Finally, print out (paper monger, aren't I?) the Recreational Inventory questionnaire and do this one with your H...because it's fun and eye-opening...because with small children especially, we stop playing together as partners in our marriage...as we once did when we dated, were falling in love...solid allies. In marriage, slowly, from the LBs, we begin to see our partners as our enemies...and they really aren't...sneaks in and then sneaks up on our resulting feelings.

So know you are not, even if you only feel a touch of it right now. Act from your beliefs and your feelings will follow. Not the other way around.

Read the Four Rules of Marriage and see how you're practicing those, as well.

Get "Fall in Love, Stay in Love" by Dr. Harley (has more on ENs and LBs) and I'm positive you'll find the hole you're sensing...and it will be filled.

And I think you'll see why your mother repeated over and over again the same LBs, chose the same perception and perspective...not the marriage failing...her failing her half of the marriage. So you're safe from that...won't just come in and take over what you cherish (if that was your fear)...we do it...our half...and you can be in love with H, and he with you, over and over again.

LA

FFM,

Welcome to you, dear lurker, as well! Thank you for relating so much with Marty that you posted. I believe you contributed something really important by doing so.

Have you read "The Verbally Abusive Relationship" by Patricia Evans yet? If not, please do so right away...because what you describe in your marriage is very real and dangerous to you and to the marriage.

What your H says is half the issue...that you take it without enforcing healthy boundaries is the other half, which only you control. You haven't married the wrong person...you are adding to his withdrawal from your love bank by robbing yourself, too.

This isn't a phase...it's a permission. Only you can revoke yours...he can also revoke his...until you change your stuff, it won't pass, it will escalate.

I'm really glad you're here...read with Marty about LBs, see that they are abusive, not who you really are, nor who your H really is...they are choices we make and can choose differently.

You're fighting for him...do so in a really awesome, healthy way, seated in your power and limits. You can't change him in anyway...when you change, the dance you do once a month in your marriage changes. You can connect through conflict...takes acting from respect. "Boundaries in Marriage" by Cloud and Townsend is great for this, if you'd get it, too.

Think of it as your tough act of love...sticking to the vows you made to yourself, for better or worse meant when times got tough...not when your partner abuses you, 'k?

LA

Marty, maybe what's wrong has nothing to do with you husband, but to do with you. Are you finding enough time to do those things that make you happy? Like hobbies, or whatever it takes to make you smile? A husband can only do so much for us, the rest is up to us to figure out.

I know it has to do mostly with me... There are somethings that are him, but my goodness by any standereds he is a good man. I guess I have a bit of jelousy towards him... He is in a band and gets weekends to do gigs and one night to do band practice... Then he has his hunting things he likes to do...so yeah sometimes I feel like a glorified babysitter and I resent that time, but he bought a truck and he has to use the band money to pay for that truck so he can not quit the band. But when you figure my time we are left with no family time so I only do my stuff with the horses during non family time. ie right after work before I get the kids, or during lunch hour, or get my lazy butt out of bed at 5 am before work.

Marty, have you been reading all the articles? That a healthy marriage takes 15 hours of Undivided Attention (UA) with your partner per week? A lot of that can be Recreational Companionship (RC) if that's either one of your ENs...that Family Commitment (FC) is an EN, also?

You're not crazy...or dysfunctional. You want your good man's attention...and it sounds like his truck wasn't a result of you guys following the Policy of Joint Agreement...POJA...or it may have been, and then you both experience a limitation from an unforeseen consequence...so you POJA again...brainstorming for solutions you both are enthusiastic about.

It's not forever. It's a truck payment for a set time...so him trading off the hunting for that same time to make family...which can be more fun than hunting if that's what you make it into...is temporary. Doable. Even, enjoyable. For right now.

I found resentment made a block of my creativity...kept me focused on the negative, the if onlys and the what ifs...urged me to NOT stay present in reality...all part of the poison I took when I created it...then slaved to maintain it.

Usually when I had the "is that all there is" thought from my resentment and negativity, I was holding myself back from being intimate with my H...I was withholding, my giver mode too high, my Taker smothered by me inside...didn't get my healthy signals, was reacting to my fear of sharing with my H deeply...my own fear of rejection kept me in a perpetual state of feeling rejected, second-to-last place, unimportant, not cherished.

Because I certainly wasn't cherishing the life I'd created, vowed to and once desired above all. And I had it all. I just kept focusing on my lack, so that's what I experienced daily.

LA