to whoever is out there, please help me and give me some advice. This has been bothering me for a while, and it's getting so bad that it's keeping me up at night now. it's 4am and here I sit to type this letter because i can't sleep. I just feel that i've lost who I am in our relationship and I'm afraid it's not all my fault.

My husband and I were married about 2 and a half years ago. we're an international couple. i'm big on family, extended family, but he isn't. He had some issues with his parents, when he was born his parents were already quite old, and they made it clear to him throughout his childhood that he wasn't really welcome. he was mostly raised by his much older siblings. he occasionally goes back to his country but he always regrets going there after he returns. I always feel like this experience scarred him somehow and made him not able to be in, or be appreciative of, any loving relationship, do you know what I mean. Can this be? I on the other hand was fortunate enough not to have these problems, I was raised in a close family and we are all still very close. I like to see them often, even though it's hard to be in another country so far away from them. Christmas was always a big tradition in our home, while his country (He is from Asia) doesn't really celebrate Christmas.

Our first christmas together, I gave him a nice gift. He looked at it and said "this isn't what I wanted, if you can't give me what I wanted then you should just not give me anything at all". I felt so terrible and rejected, but what could I do. I took the gift back.

I had always wanted to move back to my country actually. I miss my big extended family, the good times we have, the culture, the simplicity of life compared to the US, the better family and education oriented way of living, it's not always about money and work work work, you know? Anyway, when we got married he promised to seriously consider moving with me to my country. I was elated. Could this be true? I met the person of my dreams AND he was willing to consider moving to my country? I'm from Europe, and he'd been there before for a month or two on an extended stay so he was not totally unfamiliar with what he was getting into. We got married, then pregnant, and then he changed his mind and said he really didn't want to move there anymore. I was devastated, so devastated that it spun me into a pretty big depression, and it took me a while to get back on my feet. That of course also affected him, and he also went through his own time of feeling pain and adjusting from my reaction of devastation.

Anyway, after the kids were born I wanted to take them to my country to visit the family. He said no way, out of the question, kids are too small to travel. I pleaded, and finally got him to agree to at least see what a doctor says: if doctor clears them to travel, then we would. OK, that was great. Then he changed his mind again, and long story short: over christmas we ended up traveling to his country, not mine. Can you believe it? First he said kids shouldn't travel, then we end up traveling to his country, his family, the one i had heard so many bad things about, the country where they don't really even celebrate Christmas!

Before the kids got married, he bought me a bunny. I love that cute little bunny! but after the kids were born, he insisted I take it away, he said the bunny makes too much noise and he's worried it might wake up the kids. But then when I'm trying extra hard to be quiet after the kids go to sleep, he always says "don't tiptoe around the sleeping kids, they have to learn to get used to the sounds".

He has a problem communicating. He's pretty insecure, I think that may be because his family upbringing. It's like he can never trust that I love him, you know? He always asks for more, always fights and argues with me and wants me to give up more and more of who I am, I suppose to prove to him that I really do love him or something. It's like there is just no pleasing him emotionally, in no way can he be happy. And he always changes his mind about everything. When I want to go out with a GF of mine for an hour after the kids go to sleep (she lives a block away so I just want to go to her house for an hour or two and have a relaxing time), he says sure go ahead. But then the next day he is always so bitter and angry about it. I've learned to simply give up everything that I enjoy in life that doesn't involve him or the kids, even for an hour that I do need for myself every once in a while, and just not even ask him anymore. I guess that worked OK for a while but now I'm becoming just bitter about this, all the while he is still complaining and expressing that he doesn't know what's wrong in our marriage and he doesn't feel like I do enough to show him I love him. I mean, I give up everything for him, i give up my biggest desire to move back to my country for him, I do everything he tells me to do. What else can I do to show him I love him, have I missed something?

I'm at the point where I now ask him if I can go to the bathroom, because there are times that he tells me later "why did you have to go to the bathroom leaving me with the kids". I had a meeting early in the morning one day this week, and I was so worried asking him to take care of the kids alone that morning and take them to daycare himself, that I thought all night of excuses to skip my meeting, even though it was a meeting that I had organized and I had told all the other people they had to be there (it was an important meeting). I ended up not going, like I knew I would, to please him, even though he didn't know any of this, i just didn't want to get into another emotional confrontation with him, you know? We both work in the same company, and sometimes, about once every few months, the groups go out for a drink just to bond outside of work. It's a small thing, an hour or so right after work, no big deal. But i'm afraid to even ask him if I can go. Mind you he'd probably say yes, sure, no problem. And in this case he'd probably mean it too. But i'm so worried about all the times in the past where he said "yes" and really meant "no" and then it came back to haunt me in a huge way with lots of huge emotional arguements about how our relationship is doomed and stuff, that I just decided not even to bother to ask anymore. I guess you could say I feel beaten down emotionally.

And he tends to always latch onto negative things, or blow up at the weirdest little things. THings you wouldn't think are a big deal, some how he bottles them up and then later it comes out that whatever i did or said was actually very problematic for him to comprehend, and then we have a big arguement and half the time I don't even know where it came from. I swear I love him and I never did anything intentional to harm him, but he just always seems to interpret things that way you know? it makes having conversations and communication with him very difficult.

We share the housework (I do all the outside work and I vacuum, clean dishes and kids bottles after they go to sleep, pay the bills, sometimes do laundry - that's one of those whoever gets to it first does it) but he always makes me feel like I don't do enough, and i need to do more. I don't know if doing more housework is a sign of love to him.

It's not all bad mind you, he's a great husband and he takes such good care of all of us. I feel better having written this and vented a bit. I just wish he could feel happy and pleased and, well, just content, do you know what I mean? I mean I've given up every bit of self respect and i'm not at a point where I ask him for permission for everything I do, even going to the bathroom or where to put down a large bag of rice. It just seems like that's maybe not healthy and excessive and I've lost track of who I was in this process. I'm no longer the proud woman I was, I'm the scared wife who lies awake worrying at night when his next blow-up will be about something small and trivial. He just doesn't seem to see all the nice things I do for him. He'll say "sure, there are good things too, of course". But he likes to quickly gloss over them and then focus on the negative again. It feels like I have no self esteem left, and so often I ask myself angrily "why did I just ask him if I could put the milk away" or "why did I just ask him if this was a good time for me to do the dishes". I just hate feeling that way, it's not me.

What else can I do to make him happy? I think lately he has been coming around to the idea that perhaps he needs some help as well, so he started seeing someone, a counselor. He recognizes that he's been a "pleaser", even though that's hardly the right word, I learned quickly that whenever he said "yes" to please me, he didn't really mean it and it always came back to haunt me, so it got me so beaten down that I now ask him for permission on everything, I swear, even going to the bathroom. I'm worried that his new awakening and his "thinking" that he was a pleaser even though he wasn't will somehow now even make it worse. I've already done everything I can to accomodate his sometimes difficult personality (he has a strong personality and likes to argue and be right, but then again i'm that way too), and I'm afraid as he opens his eyes and heals from his traumatic experiences he will turn the other way and become even more demanding, as a sign of strength and rebellion against the years he believes that he was "pleasing" me, but really never was, you know?

He seems to always agree with what I want at first, but in the end it always ends up being about what he wanted. And he keeps thinking I got what I wanted, when in reality I was always the one giving in at the end. So he may think he's the pleaser, but it feels like I am always going out of my way to please him, you know, just to avoid any arguements. It's so hard to be in a happy relationship with him. I'm sure I made it extra hard with my desire to move to my country with him, and being so disappointed when he decided we wouldn't. But what can I do, I want my husband and my kids so I can't just pack up and leave, so that was my priority: my husband and kids. So often he says "maybe I should just pack up my kids and leave" that it has me worried and now I do even more to please him, and I ask permission for even more. I just feel like he has got the perfect thing going on, although I'm sure he has his issues and he is not in a happy place either. But at this point I just give up and give in to him for whatever he wants, anything. This year again we will not go to my country for Christmas. He doesn't want to. Instead he wants to go to Hawaii to meet his sister. I guess that's OK. It was a compromise, and he promised that then I'd be allowed to take one or both kids alone to my country a few months later in the spring so that they can see the rest of my family. But guess what, 2 days later after he proposed this compromise to me, he changed his mind again and said he shouldn't be forced into any decision like that, and he said i couldn't take the kids anywhere. So no I have to wait till next Christmas, another year and a half, before I get to take them to see my extended family again. And all I can do is agree, I have no choice. So he feels like making a compromise, then feels he was giving into me and pleasing me for makign that compromise, even though I was giving up yet another Christmas with my family as part of that compromise, and then he takes even that part away.

anyway this turned out longer than I thought, I'm sorry.

For all it helps, I have a similar situation. My husband gives in to me wanting to go see my mom (an hour away), then when I return I feel as though I have to "pay for it." Or I will want to paint a room and he says no. So I beg & plead so he finally says yes, then he asks why I painted it. I would respond because you said it is ok.

I feel the same way that I have to ask for permission to do something. I feel like I became someone other than myself. I lost a lot of myself esteem. I had good self-esteem at the beginning. I seems like he wanted to bring mine to his level.

I am big on family too, he is not. He is from a small adoptive family that loves him, but they don't get together much or talk. They leave him out when other family comes over. They say they don't want to bother him. Where my family just shows up. I want more family time. He dislikes my family and doesn't want to get together. He just wants to be me & him, always. I think it has to do with jealousy ans maybe insecurity.

I can't get him to talk half the time because he is watching news, football or playing a video game. But I get on the phone with mom and all the sudden he wants to talk.

I don't know if this helps, just wanted you to know someone else is out there with similar issues.:)

Just wanted to say hi, OhMyGosh, and that I see what you did there.

it is not a secret, I was suggested several times to go start my own thread. What I wrote is how I feel sometimes. There is no way I can find to please Echo it seems and it gets frustrating at times. It is hard to understand, and I wish that we can have a succesful therapy together. I want to move forward and hope we can but we keep getting dragged backwards everytime something good seems to happen.

But don't you see that creating a new screen name and pretending to be a wife is manipulative, not only to Echo, but to this entire board?

HONESTY is what is needed here, my friend. Now is not the time for manipulation.

ok, people, lets knock this off. This man was demonized on his wife's thread and told to go start his own thread. He did just that and created a new screen name so he is not demonized here too. So now he is accused of being manipulative. sigh...

This couple has been BADLY served on this website and their problems are now actually worse than when they arrived.

Can we please stop with the demonization of this man and help them focus on MARRIAGE BUILDERS PRINCIPLES?

Melody, he is pretending to be a woman. This is not 'his' thread, it is a farce.

Please stop this, canwemakeit.

I agree.

OMG, I am willing to give you a fair shake.

I'd like to hear more about what you are doing RIGHT NOW to improve things in the M. Try to explain that in a way that doesn't accuse your W of something. Own something about yourself that you know you need to change and tell us what you are doing to accomplish that. Stating you're going to stop cursing at your W isn't enough. You weren't able to control yourself before ... what makes you so confident you can do it now?

first of all, Echo has asked me to stay away from her for 48 hours. I'm scared. I fear she is kicking me out. I fear i'll never see her or our children again. I'm just really afraid.

I have been trying to do things. I agreed to do teh questionnaire which at first I thought was going to be silly, but hen after completing it and sharing with Echo I actually thought it was very usefull, and I told her that.

I agreed to drop the Christmas to Blegium this year thing, so we agreed on that and it was OK.

I agreed to stop using bad language which I do on occasion, and I don't mean anything with it but I know other people do take that kind of language badly and I understand that. So I agreed a few days ago based on all the things i was reading in the blog to stop using bad language. I hope that if I put my mind to it and try hard enough I can do this to an acceptable level.

I agreed to shave more often. this will sound funny. My beard doesn't grow too fast and well i never really shaved more than 1-2 times per week. In teh questionnaire she metnioned that she would want me to shave more often, so the next morning i shaved and plan to keep doing that.

I have been petting her on the head and kissing her neck and complimenting her on the delicious dish she made last night, things I feel like doing and I feel inside always but i'm not very good at acting out on. And I know it is not enough for me to feel them, it is important that SHE feels them, so I do have to act out on them.

And I realize taht even though the moving to Belgium thing is a closed issue interms of decision, in reality the hurt is still there, and probably everytime I talk to my parents over the computer (which I haven't done in days!) perahps somehow I make Echo feel bad even though that's not my intention. So I stopped talking to them (even though i only did that either late at night or early in the morning when she was asleep normally anyway).

I set up an appointment wiht dr. Harley and shared with her that I did that, but she has not responded to that. I have been asking, begging, pleading, that we stop blogging and start talking, but that for some reason is out of the question. I know I upset her with this blog thread, and it was stupid to switch H and W. But i really didn't think any men read this (all the posts on the other thread seem to be from ladies) and the feelings I wrote are real. Nothing about that was a lie at all, except the part about switching H and W.

OMG, it would not be a good idea for you to leave your home. That is not a reasonable or fair request from her nor will it help the situation. I would - respectfully - tell her that you will do what it takes to resolve this, but you don't agree to leave your home. You can't very well fix the problems if you aren't there. She is out of line to make such a demand.

The rest of this sounds really good, and I agree you should start doing your best to make her happy NOW. As long as it is not something unreasonable like kicking you out of your home. You do not have the right to kick her out of her home, nor does she have the right to kick you out.

p.s. good job on getting that appointment! You will really like him, I think. He is knowledgable and very straightforward.

Excellent work, OMG! She loves you, I doubt she's going anywhere. She just needs to feel like an equal partner. You're making good steps in that direction.

Have you ever thought about having a Christmas vacation at a resort destination, like Cancun or Spain or something like that? You can invite any family members who want to come, but the main focus of the vacation will be about you, Aileen, and your boys. If anyone else wants to make the same plans, you can accommodate them; if not, the four of you will enjoy some great family time.