dkd, I so get what you're saying. But I have an added complication (well, several probably) in that he fits all the characterists of OCPD, which means pretty much what I ask for, he makes sure he doesn't give it to me.

I've told him how much it hurts. I've told him how much rubbing them helps. We talked a few times about how serious it is, that it hurts so much that I'm hobbling. He knows. Let me put it this way. The only times I've ever gotten more than a 1 minute foot massage, is when it's leading up to sex.

Honestly, I'm not complaining. Not that much, lol. It's more of a hurt feelings thing. I make sure he gets sex 2 or 3 times each week, for 30 years, even though I dread it. If he's sick, I bend over backwards; if he needs help, I always help him, etc. And yet, the few things he knows I DO want - foot rubs, shoulder rubs, help with home repair chores, etc....those are always the last things. I want a door fixed, but he ignores it for 5 years; but he'll shampoo the carpet, which I couldn't care less about.

I don't know. I was feeling pretty successful this morning. What happened?

Of course I know if I just told him, he might give me what I need. If I can survive the backlash.

LA, I need some time to address your posts, but I'm busy. Back later.

Catperson, I think you know why I posted your quotes back to you.

However, the most intriguing and telling was your post about knowing the ultimate truth about human nature "for all of us."

You wrote: [I just want to make sure you understand that all of us operate out of our most basic instinct: fear. Could be fear of getting shot in a bad neighborhood, could be fear of hearing our mother's disappointment in her voice. Different for each one of us. But a big one is fear of looking bad; facing the fact that the marriage is crumbling would require her to acknowledge her culpability, her 'badness.' Many many people would rather go through bankruptcy or being banished from a family or group than look bad or admit fault. It is what it is.]

This is a pretty accurate description of how a person with the shame-based personality would function in the world.

Do you operate from a place of fear when you post to others? Do you assume that it is true for everyone? Is this your "forte," your "knowledge of human nature?" Is this "psychological speaking?" Does your daughter share the same belief? Are you aware how she is learning from your choices?

Human children are born with innate creativity, curiosity, innate need for love, safety, security, belonging, and later on, the need for self-esteem. And love, not fear, is the basic premise of life. It is our natural, most desired state, state of consciousness that is both experience and expression. Later in life experiencing love becomes a conscious, everyday choice. Or not.

Oh, and one last question. Lately, you started posting to others referring to yourself as "we." "We think, we are telling you, we know, you can't fool us, you are not listening to us, etc." Why are you doing that?

wtb, thanks for responding.

Absolutely. I am reading Healing The Shame That Binds You on someone's recommendation here. It is very applicable. However, I've been reading about people's innate fear for decades. Everyone, according to the texts I've read, has a different level of fear in them. Everyone. Could be as small as a fleeting thought like "what will he think if I do this?" to as big as "OMG, he's mad at me, I'd rather just die".

If you're asking do I think that everyone acts predictably... yes! How many texts have you read about human nature? I've read dozens of textbooks and personal books that describe this human nature. Of course there are deviations, but bottm line is you CAN predict people given a substantial enough description of their past.

Of course, on a forum, we only know what the poster tells us, we have no access to the spouse's viewpoint, and we're blind to a host of other possible variable. So we do the best we can, and adjust as necessary when they give us more data.

I'm guessing you're asking if she is turning out as screwed up as me. I would have to say a resounding no: her parents doted on her. They never ridiculed her. They gave her choices. They asked for her opinion. They spoiled her but still made her pay for all the extras so she'd learn to be responsible. We argued, but I always took her aside and explained what was happening so she wouldn't blame herself.

So...What do YOU think? She sees me being weak, but she sees me struggling to learn. She sees what my childhood does to me, but she sees me fighting to keep her from ever questioning herself.

I am guessing you're trying to say that I don't have the right to question other mothers because my life is so screwed up? Is that it? Or is it something else. Would love to hear it.

Maybe it's just the don't take crap mood I've been in lately. Maybe it's the bash catperson mentality from this week. Who knows?

H calls me on the way home and says our last hope for financial help, the place where he put the profit we made from selling (finally!) our last house, calls him and says the market has our value down so low that WE have to pay THEM to avoid a penalty, and we can no longer borrow against it to pay our bills. Thus began a conversation about all the great ideas he has, all the potential ways he has to make money, if he would just pick up the phone and call these people (ranging from hundreds of dollars to millions of dollars). I offer to help him with whichever idea he wants to pursue (I already have 2 part time jobs of my own). He has no answer, doesn't know what he wants to do. So I offer to make a list of all his potential projects, and help him with whatever he chooses to work on. Yeah, yeah, change the subject. As usual. (sorry, DJ, but I'm getting tired of watching him do these things that pretty much seal our fate)

Anyway, he changes the subject yet again. But then proceeds to blame stepmother for all our problems ("It could be the SM ruined our lives forever"). So mood, or whatever, I say "Or, it could be that we sat on a house for 4 years without fixing it and selling it, or else renting it out."

So he says, "Well, if the cats and dogs hadn't peed in and scratched up the house so bad, it wouldn't have taken me 4 years to get the smell out." (btw, this is categorically untrue - they ruined only the carpet, which got thrown out the first 6 months after we moved out; and the first year after we moved out, he never even WENT to the old house - I did it all on my own, except the carpet; we never even cleaned the garage out til 4 years later, when the house got sold)

Got tired of one more round of his blaming everything on everyone else and refusing to acknowledge responsibility, and one more day of listening to him call and talk to me for 1-2 hours about himself. So I just said "Yeah. Right. The cats ruined the house. Ok. Gotta go." And hung up.

You know, I know the rules of MB and POJA and all that stuff. But some days you just gotta say 'I'm not dealing today. Not even gonna think about MB and doing things right.' And you just call it a wash day, and try again tomorrow.

I hear you Cat. And it may not be MBish of me, but I agree with you. There's only so many times you can bash your head against the brick wall. At some point, you're going to damage your own head.

Your H sounds a lot like mine in some respects (but I've said that before!). Blame anyone/anything else. Indecision or avoidnance is better than doing something and taking the chance of it not being the right decision.

You know, I know the rules of MB and POJA and all that stuff. But some days you just gotta say 'I'm not dealing today. Not even gonna think about MB and doing things right.' And you just call it a wash day, and try again tomorrow.

Cat...I absolutely know what you're talking about here. I've been there many times. I just have to keep telling myself that it's a 'wash moment' or 'wash hour' and then try to reset things before the day is done. Otherwise, for us, we can go a whole week or longer without really reconnecting, and that just isn't productive.

How long does it take you and your husband to reset things after an arguement? Which of you usually breaks the ice first? Just curious.

Cat, could you clarify for me, what you did that was against MB concepts.

Do you remember the Frinds of Conversation? The enemies of Conversation? It's in Q&As>Meeting ENs>Conversation is boring. Let me know if this is all Greek to you, and you'd prefer a link.

An MB marriage is two happy people doing their favorite things, right? Only doing things that they are enthusiastic about? So you change the topic in conversations that you're not enthusiatic about. You tried to do that, cat, and your H wasn't enthusiastic about that. Okay, so you can take a break from the conversation.

If you read OurHouse's thread form yesterday, you can try that listen and repeat, if you are enthusiastic about that. But it's okay if you are not enthusiastic today. You can negotiate for what would make you enthusiastic about that. Who would want to have endless one-way conversations? How would you and your H feel about trying LA's conversation exercise, where once a week, each of you gets to speak and be validated?

And I'm wondering if you still want to stand by and watch your H make unilateral decisions that negatively impact your family. How would you feel about calling out to LA or Hold to ask for their perspective on that? They both have taken persoanlly taken situations like that and turned them around.

LA, sorry it's take me so long to address this. Your posts are so long!

Anyway...

I think my H wants me to know and feel his love. Desperately. I think he just doesn't understand me and doesn't know what he's supposed to do. I've spent 30 years shutting down, so he's flummoxed. That's my part to fix, to learn to talk to him. I know that's what he wants, if I could just get past that fear part.

I have done the putting myself in front of his face to talk to him, and he gets angry. I've tried sitting next to him so we're not facing each other, and that works better, but doesn't guarantee acknowledgment or validation from him. If I repeat myself to get a decision from him, then the anger comes out.
I heard you!
But you didn't answer, so I don't know what to do.
That's because I don't know what to do!
Ok. If I had known that I could have tried to figure something else out; but you didn't say one way or the other so I don't know if I'm supposed to wait for an answer from you.

Sometimes I push this, if we actually HAVE to have an answer; and then he's in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Sometimes I drop it and try to figure something else out.

So, yes, I have asked him, laid out a map, tried to figure out which way he wants me to talk to him so we can have an answer; I've even asked him how he would like me to talk to him; he doesn't know.

I guess so. I want him to ask about my day (never happens); I want him to commiserate, but he never asks about and never knows about me or my day unless I bring it up (such as 'I'm going to the doctor today for my arthritis' - "hmmm").

I DO want him to rub my feet because I'm in pain all day; that is the one thing I HAVE told him, about the pain, because if affects us all - at Disneyworld, I asked him to take the girls one afternoon so I could rest my feet; stuff like that. I brought it up Saturday after all the work we did, and he asked me a question about why I was limping; I said I always limp; every time I work on my feet or every time I sit too long, it hurts to walk and I limp. He seemed surprised, like he had never heard it before.

I don't think I want him to use the words I would use cos he's uber romantic and I'm uber not. But yes, I guess I want attentiveness - noticing I'm carrying something too heavy and offering to take it from me (or not giving it to me to carry in the first place). I'd love to be asked what I want to do. So he shows love by buying me stuff; I get that. But I've said many times, can we just stay home and get the door fixed instead of going to the movies? Will you hang this up for me? Will you help me with the yard?

So I'm supposed to feel loved because he shares with me? Because I'm his best (only) friend? And he feels unloved because I don't tell him back what's going on in my life? Then why does he get bored and change the subject if I ever share more than a minute's worth of talk about me? Every single time? It's even been brought up in IC; he's even told D18 that they ignore me and don't let me talk and should pay more attention to me - but it never happens, and every time I try again, thinking he's finally got it, he does it again - changes the subject, even in the middle of me speaking a sentence! It is so humiliating! And yes, I've stopped him and said 'that made me feel humiliated that you would change the subject while I'm talking'. But he just does it again the next time.

That's why I stopped talking. Hurts too much. And he knows it. But nothing changes. I think I posted about 6 months ago that we're sitting in the bathtub, and he asked me what went on at work that day. I thanked him for asking, told him, and then said how good it made me feel that he asked because he'd probably only asked me about myself 10 times in 30 years - oops! screwed that up...but I was trying to be O&H. Can't even do that right.

I get that I'm supposed to like myself enough to just get in there and pour myself out just like he and D18 do. But I don't like myself. Working on that.

But I don't understand how he feels excluded if I try to wedge my way in there, and they still ignore me and continue on about themselves as if I never even spoke.

I hear what you're saying about him going to the woods feeling bad, but if he goes there because I've asked for help...how is that in my control? Stop asking for anything so he doesn't feel compelled to go to the woods?

btw, he is one of those people who when he feels bad, does something. He has told me many many times that he has to 'do' something or 'fix' something when he feels bad, to get out of feeling bad. So why can't he do or fix what I am asking for, lol? Then we would BOTH be happy!

I don't get that. I know very well that he wants me to be happy. I've seen him upset about me being upset. I know he doesn't know what to do, so he gets mad. Not AT me, but onto me cos I'm the only one there, and he can't be vulnerable. I think when I answered before about 'then why does he ignore everything I say' I was saying 'I'm here working on doing things right; why can't he?'

I think the biggest issue, and I was thinking about this on the way to work today, is that I am afraid to tell him how I feel used when he spends 2 hours talking to about himself, yet he never thinks to ask about me. I know very well that he comes to me because he loves me and wants to share with me above anyone else. That's not my problem. I feel very loved. I do.

I guess I just don't feel respected. I feel like if he respected me as an equal, he'd be more concerned about whether I am happy.

Then again, it is probably just his fear/insecurity that's got him to this point. He is afraid of being wrong, upsetting me, whatever, so this is the dance we have evolved into.

Yesterday, I had parked my car in the street cos we needed to use D18's car, so I was going to move mine back into the driveway later. H comes home and says 'I don't know how to say this without you getting upset or mad...' and I'm thinking OMG, what happened? And he says 'You need to move your car. You can't park it there.' (it was facing the wrong direction, we're on the left side of the road, so I just pulled over to the left instead of turning around and facing the proper way)

So I was like, wth kind of monster have I been that he's afraid of saying even this one little constructive criticism to me?! I guess that's that mirror you're talking about, huh?

I think this will be a good thing to talk about, for a starter. Part of that week of reflection. What do you think?

Picking up the bag - I told D18 at the time it was wrong for me to do it but it was just my dysfunctional response to being rebuffed in the past. But I think aside from that, my payoff was in being 'right.' As in see, he doesn't even offer to help when I can barely carry the damm thing. Makes me the martyr, you know? Gotta stop that, don't want to live like that. Need to tell D18 that, too, so she doesn't pick up on it.

In my defense, I enjoy giving him a massage, I like him feeling good; it's just that I'm resentful at the same time, you know? So, as usual, it's just a point of me pointing out the resentment. Me talking. *sigh*

Hee. Maybe we should do a Wife Swap episode?

Gonna print this out, cos it's gonna take quite a few times to get this right.

I'm really trying to make his things about him, me about me. I just wish I would have started 20 years ago; it's so hard to change after 30 years! Ugh! *sigh* But that's why I'm here...

As always, thanks, LA.

I'm with EO...

what part did you think wasn't MB?

To not be the cause of your spouse's unhappiness...look deeply into that...because if you asked, in radical honesty, to our H, "Would you rather I listened to you on the phone and created resentment, felt like a martyr--or when I'm doing that, to stop the conversation, and to stop lying to you?"

Your DJs fuel your resentment...dwelling on what was...saying I wouldn't hurt now if he hadn't done/had done that back then.

You need amends from your H and from yourself for the last house debacle in your marriage. Neither of you are doing it.

Radical honesty is your bane, Cat, even with yourself.

Nowhere that I've read does Dr. Harley say "meet ENs even if you resentment...sacrifice for them." He says the opposite.

And there are days when you are delighted in listening to him for that 45 min ride home...somedays it brings you a feeling of intimacy, understanding...and some days it doesn't.

You bear the responsibility to NOT do that which you will resent--and to know why (which DJs in you are blocking your acts of love...and to giving you resentful feelings...and how much this lying is affecting your relationship).

You can share who you really are with your H and he will love you, anyway. He will stop making you up, filling in the gaps, and mourning a living loss of you daily when YOU change your actions.

This works in stages...and you've been changing your choices...exhibiting great bravery and loyalty to changing your half of the marriage. And when you slip back, and we all slip back, grasp, own and understand where you are at...can masquerade as new attitude and be very old. That's how much humans love and depend on routine. We're that sneaky.

Even to giving you the idea it's not MB. When it is...to dog yourself more...to hear others before they post or speak, as dogging you...

gives you the experience of being dogged. And they didn't do it yet.

(And yes, they did do it this week. I saw that.)

Radical Honesty "H, I appreciated the info about the house account. I know we'll work out something together for that. I'm feeling really angry again about that house in our history and my resentment is aimed at you. To me, it's our marital Jonah's Whale. I'm going to hang up for now so I can calm myself down. I'll see you when you get home."

We choose to allow issues to swallow our marriage whole...to hold us hostage to the past...and often, when we do, we'll see our spouse NOT changing, not choosing differently, because we are seeing the spouse who did/did not as if that is who they are today. That's US allowing an issue to swallow up our relationship...which is easier than owning we are doing it...we'd rather an "it" would sink our marriage than to hold ourselves to radical honesty...(our self-image fights us tooth and nail, btw)...

and radical honesty is how we swim out of the whale together. First step is admitting that running from something won't leave it behind...and every step of the way for decades, Cat, has been taken together. Even when it didn't seem like it.

Leave the blame in the whale behind, Cat. Wsn't real. Was two humans doing and not doing. And believing one thing will make or break, living in extremes...which keeps us reacting from fear instead of thriving from love.

You were honest. And you felt shame/guilt for your honesty and then gave yourself a write off from it. That's the addictive cycle, btw...until you address the shame/guilt (which was inappropriate...you weren't rude or bad...you really did have to go or else grow another piece of hate for your H)...and the next step is to hold yourself to saying just that, aloud, owning your actions.

You heard that cats/dogs pee was your fault...as if you peed on the carpet yourself, through them. Instead of a contributing factor...what gets to him the most...and not what got to you the most (the four-year power struggle)...and that power struggle continues into today.

Some days.

And some days, I see you lay it down...and love...speak...share...and you do not feel guilt/shame for those times when you do...and you end up feeling closer.

Please consider these two different languages of love...you feel very loved by acts of services...and your H feels very loved (not exclusively) in words of affirmation...

seems to me in the whale, you're gonna starve each other to death of those acts of love.

You're not in the whale now. Don't put your marriage there. Act from love because of your choice...and have a feast.

LA

Hmmm. If he gets mad and AOs, I withdraw, and then he comes back a little bit later when he feels better for blowing off steam. I don't bring it up, and we just move forward. If it's like this thing, we're not really arguing...it just depends on what comes up next that we have to talk about or do.

ears, I was figuring that my saying 'Oh, ok. The cats ruined the house. (implying it's the cats' fault we paid two mortgages/insurance/utilities for 4 years) Ok. Gotta go.' was the non-MB part. No?

I saw it as pretty close. It wasn't "who knows, you may be right, maybe the cats and dogs wield power over you in some way that I'm not aware of. I'm upset, and I don't know what to say, I've listened to my capacity today, I'll try it again tomorrow 7pm, and I'm gonna go cool cool off now," or whatever you're O&H would've sounded like, but I thought it was pretty gosh-darn close under the circumstances.

Really? Cos I have been beating myself up, over that.

That sounds wonderful. It really is eating me alive, cos I left my one dream job of my life because we went into debt so bad and I had to earn more money (and yes, I have told him this). Now, that's not all his fault by any means. It's complicated. But I would really like to move past that.

No, I didn't really take it as my fault. I got mad that he blamed not finishing the house for FOUR years on the cats! I mean, the whole situation is ridiculous to begin with, but then to say if only the cats hadn't made the carpet smell bad, I could have sold the house in a year, when he:

• didn't even go there the first year(!) after we moved
  
• never took even a single day of vacation to work on the house when he had FIVE weeks of vacation each year and never took more than one week (!) off (for a regular vacation)
  
• when he did start working, got so perfectionist that it would take him a month just to put up some shelves
  
• never took off any time at all to go talk to a financial person to protect us (I don't have access to our money)
  
• never accepted anyone's offers to help us
  

So it wasn't about me blaming myself. And he wasn't saying it was my fault what the cats did or didn't do. It was him not willing to accept the responsibility for his actions. The only thing I blame myself for in this is that I didn't stand up to him.

Ok, thanks. I guess I'm being overly critical of everything I say, analyzing too much. But I want to make sure I don't take any backward steps, you know?

Cat, I hear you, your H made a promise to take care of the house and then didn't do it in a timely manner. But don't you have a 50% responsibility, especially knowing that he wasn't doing it?


Huh? What's up with that? I mean, you don't have to share here if you're not comfortable, but is this working for you? Don't you have some responsibility here, too?

ears, just more of the 'I married my father' mentality. He's had a safety deposit box for 30 years I have no access to. I've asked for it, always ignored. Just this past year I got access to his bank account and that's just because he let me take over paying his bills. He has always made all the decisions, etc. Remember a couple years ago, when we finally sold that house, earned $130,000 on it? The money got put into my account (really our joint account). After he sat on it for 2 months and did nothing, the next bill period I sat down and wrote out checks for all my bills, around $25,000, like I told him I was going to do and like our CPA told us to do. He came home, saw me, and went ballistic. We have to keep the money in a special account and draw against it to pay the bills! (he said) I disagreed. We fought and fought and fought. Finally, he said he would take the money, he would pay off ONE of my bills (about $5000), and do what he said with the rest. I was defeated, so I just gave in and tore up all my checks. He never paid off that bill, and he's been sucking that account dry to the point where now we have to pay them to keep from penalizing us. He did the same thing with the sale of the previous house, too.

Believe me, that will NEVER happen again. But at the time, I had no skills to cope with it.

Of course it's not working for me. And last year, with IC's help, I told him I wanted to pay off some bills. We went to the CPA and by that time we only had half the money left, and she told us we had to keep the rest in an account for emergencies. Same time we went to CCC and they told us to either sign up or file bankruptcy. That's when he let me start paying his bills, but he refused to do anything else with the money.

I'm trying to do Dave Ramsey - pay off one card, double up on the next...but his job is so wanky that we never get the money we need...just all screwed up.

Ok, so this not having access was in the past, and in the present, you have access and a plan?

Also, cat, Hold has cut off his wife's access to ruin them anymore. Very thorough, which was necessary in his situation. Do you ahve a plan that fits your situation?

First, my H will never admit that he is mishandling the money; therefore, any action I take is akin to piracy. Or lunacy. Second, I have never had access to the money since he took it out of our joint account. He doesn't make enough each month to pay his bills, I don't make enough to cover any of his. So I pay off what I can each month.

That said, he is finally moving that money (what's left of it) from Merrill Lynch to where our ML guy went to work, cos ML was getting ready to start penalizing us. He left me the paperwork to fill out today. So this time, with my new added Superwoman strength, I will hold onto the papers until it is BOTH of us going, and I will ensure that I have access to the money this time.

And I am going to use it, a tiny piece at a time, to pay off bills. Not the whole thing, but say the Sam's bill. Then the Discover bill. etc. This paying off the minimum balance crap is insane! I refuse to believe that we have to sit on $60,000 while we're paying (let me go look) $1500 a month INTEREST.