What a great way to make deposits for each other and your family even when you don't feel like 'R' talk today. Lots of options here to build your marriage. What do you think?

Have you read the links RMJ posted up on SW's thread last night? Specifically that wheel? What a great thing for awareness. I'm thinking about printing it out and cutting it out and putting it in my journal. I was really encouraging to see the things I'm already doing.

Adobe wasn't working for me, so I found it elsewhere in html

http://www.sikhwomen.com/antiviolence/EqualityWheel.htm

I thought it was really interesting how it was all stuff that Dr. H covers in the Basic Concepts. Validates for me again that these are universal truths.

He has not addressed the alcohol issue and refuses to talk about it. He has some vague plans about things he could do here to make some money--hasn't yet put them into action. Hasn't acted on the ideas we came up with in brainstorming last week. I have gently probed to see if he feels overwhelmed and paralyzed and am trying to figure out how to offer support without taking on the reponsibility--which is what usually happens and that doesn't benefit either of us.

BBQing tonight and doing family dinner. Just went for a 3 mile run with my daughter alongside on her bike---she really likes that. Was hoping to do yard work with H today; I suggested that this morning. Also asked him to come to DD's soccer game. He didn't show up at the game and is at the gym now and won't be home 'til after 4PM, so no yard work with him today. There's stuff I want to tackle and I mentioned it yesterday and he told me to leave it to him because I'd just screw it up. Nice.

I'm going out to rake and prune back rhodies anyway.

So that's the plan Ears.

Why do you think it would crush him? It would seem to me ok to be O&H with him about the parts of him that originally attracted you to him...his roots and large extended family being a big part of that...and how that all got messed up when you immediately moved away from all that. Can you say that sort of as a 'here is something I figured out and maybe I've been carrying around resentment about it and I'd like to let it go.'

But what do I know. I think I'm marked as a 'don't listen to that screwed up poster.' Hee hee.

No, you are not marked as a 'screwed up, don't listen to..' poster. But I don't think I could tell him. He knows I carry around resentment about moving and that I'm trying to deal with it. He often brings up how awful that first year of our marriage was in CA. And I'm glad he's O&H about it. I guess it was awful for him. Wife stressed out and having debilitating panic attacks over job. Excessive travel. He's not working and can't find a job. We don't have enough money. I didn't want to leave the PNW in the first place. When I look back on that year though, I don't see what he sees--I see:

Bringing the dogs to Tiburon.
Brunch on the deck of Sams/Tiburon.
Pt Reyes and the beach there.
Wine country trips.
Reconnecting with old friends I had made when I lived there 10 years' previous and introducing them to H.
Finding some GREAT and cheap haunts: movies, restaurants, take-out, etc.
Fun get-togethers with work friends--all of whom H liked.

Even the 1989 earthquake!

And so on....

He's entitled to his feelings but I am very hurt when he paints that entire year with a broad brush. It was stressful but there were great times that I remember too. We didn't have kids and we did some fun things.

So I guess all this colors my judgement of telling him that so many of the things I married him for did not pan out and were a disappointment for me.

No more concerning than women being dependent upon their husbands to pull them out their doldrums by cuddling or anything of the like, at least in my view. One could argue that it's concerning that the husband thinks it's his job to coddle and coo his wife back to being a human being again, yes?

People express frustration in different ways, some outwardly (explosive anger), some inwardly (implosive anger). Outward expressions of anger typically result in what you are terming tantrums, inward expressions of anger typically result in isolation and depression.

I'm not in any way saying that tantrums are acceptable, any more than I am saying that becoming isolated and depressed is acceptable. Both are largely results of improperly processed anger in many cases. That said, we're all human, and we're all susceptible to having weak moments where we react in a less than positive manner. What we need to recognize is that whether it's explosive or implosive anger, how can we best react when our spouse is having an especially hard time and having a tough time reacting productively?

There are times when I experience some diversity in my personal life and react very well, and there are other times when I'm just feeling completely drained and something comes along that just hits one of my buttons spot on, and then I can go off the deep end just like anyone else. What I try, and often fail to do is to recognize when this is happening to me and to put words to how I feel if my DW is around.

For instance, today, we were sitting in the sunroom overlooking the back yard. Some background to this story first. Our back yard is fenced and we have an inground pool and a plethora of landscaping all over the yard, which is also treed in to a large extent. Last summer, we got a dog, or I should say my wife and daughter got a dog, which we had promised to our daughter when we moved to the new house. I, on the other hand, would have rather we waited until this summer to get a dog, as I had a major project ongoing at work and last summer I was knee deep in said project, which ended in December of last year. I didn't really have time to focus on what I would have ideally wanted to do in the yard to accomodate a dog. Meanwhile, the dog has had the run of the back yard for the last nine months of time, and the landscaping and the grass has taken quite a beating as a result of the dog having the run of the yard. It's not that I haven't been around to witness this, but by the time I really had the time to focus on it, it was winter time and doing any kind of yardwork is a non-starter as the ground is frozen solid.

Fast forward to today. Yesterday we had great weather. I started working on the back yard, cleaning up leaves in the landscaped garden areas with my leaf vacuum. The leaves were so thick the vacuum kept getting clogged, and I was traversing the yard area to get tools to clean up and stepping in small holes dug by the dog and just generally getting more frustrated as time went on as I looked around me at the state of the landscaping due to the dog. So, after spending about an hour and not getting a whole lot accomplished, I switched gears and mowed the front and sides yards and fertilized afterwards, and worked on a few other gardening tasks in the front and side yards. Overall, a fairly productive afternoon yesterday. Still, as W and I were sitting in the sunroom early this afternoon, I recognized I was still overly frustrated about the general condition of the back yard, so I said to DW that I needed to vent. She indulged me and she let me spend about 10 minutes venting about the dog and the state of the back yard and all of the work that I now have to do in order to return the landscaping and the garden areas to some semblance of normalcy, that all of the cement surrounding the pool would have to be powerwashed, etc (positive point here - I finally might have a legitimate reason to buy a powerwasher! :)). I then asked for her input on how to best manage the back yard moving forward given the current situation. I admitted that I was a bit frustrated that we didn't wait to get the dog until this summer, but that I loved our new family addition and I myself have become attached to her, so I'm glad we did what we did in retrospect. I did ask that we had to come to some kind of a compromise on a specific area of the back yard for the dog to roam and put up some kind of a line for her to roam in that area. That was yesterday. We still need to negotiate some more, but she was amenable to compromise.

Other times, I haven't been able to remain cognizant of my level of frustration, and I've undoubtedly hurt my DW by venting and not actually vocally telling her I needed to vent. When I fail to vocalize my need to vent, it will too often come across as DW feeling that I'm blaming her for whatever is ailing me. It is natural for me to vent outward, because if I turn my anger inward, I quickly move toward becoming isolated and depressed. I also tend to be perfectionistic in my approach to handling tasks and therefore have high expectations when it comes to accomplishing anything. So, for me, it's important to vocalize that I need to vent when I feel my level of frustration mounting.

Specific to the example given with the loading of batteries into a new phone, I'm not sure of the answer, especially since you weren't feeling well. I've told my wife that when I'm not cognizant of my level of frustration and I start in with the venting, the best thing she can do is to use suggestive sexual humor against me, as it very quickly distracts me and makes me shift my attention toward, shall we say, more interesting pursuits? Specific to my example above, if I weren't cognizant, something like, "Hey lover, I'm sorry you are frustrated by the condition of the back yard right now, why don't you come play in my back yard for a little while and then maybe we can figure out how to deal with what you're frustrated about after I've calmed you down some?" Of course, this doesn't always happen, life gets in the way so to speak, but when it does, oh how I love my DW!

"the best thing she can do is to use suggestive sexual humor against me"

lol. I'm going to have to try that HH, and you're right about it being no more concerning for the husband to have to coddle and coo the wife out of her brand of frustration. It hit home with me, because that's how I think I handle it. I become isolated and depressed. With him, it's just the opposite, and both of us recognize the other's way of dealing with frustration as being some sort of dysfunction, when I don't think either way is productive.

I'm going to have to think about this some more. Thanks for your input on this topic.

Agree SW. Nothing wrong with wanting FS and whatever-emotional-need wanting an extended family is. Extended family support maybe?

Also - "it (the truth) would crush him"

Here's what Harley thinks about hiding the truth.


Also OH, this struck me

What's that 'but' doing there? He had a different perception, different experience and different feelings to you.

The 'but' suggests you had expectations of how he ought to feel, and that you were disappointed, and hurt, because he didn't feel the way you did.

Those expectations are pointless. Can you replace them with an acceptance of how he does feel?

Ok. He feels the entire year was awful.

I feel the entire year took 10 off the end of my life, even though there were some good times. But I wish I could have enjoyed the good times more while they were going on instead of turning into an agoraphobic.

ETA Thanks for posting Harley's view of the truth. He is right. My main issue with H's non-disclosure of the skank with whom he had an EA being passed off to me all those years (pre-EA) as just a friend rather than telling me she was a serious old girlfriend, was that he knew I didn't like her and figured I'd be upset if I found out she was more than just a HS friend.

So in the same vein, I guess it would be helpful for him to know I married him because he was an Oregon native and had an extended family I never saw as severely dysfunctional at the time.

I'm not being sarcastic. He probably needs to know this but I haven't got a CLUE how to tell him in a positive way.

You were attracted to him, amongst other reasons, because you liked the thought of his extended family being around, and he had a good job. So far no pain.

He already knows you miss his FS and he seems to wants to provide it.

So the problem's with the phrase 'severely dysfunctional'.

My opinion is that it's best to leave these labels to professionals and the occasional special and gifted amateur who's clever enough to know what label to apply.

Can you rephrase this disrespectful judgement as a respectful opinion?

Why not talk about behaviours instead of damning the whole family of which your H is a part?

Can you work out what acts or habits of the EF hurt you, and then express your disappointment that these behaviours appeared after your marriage, and your feelings about the possibility of close contact with the EF in light of this?

Is the EF is now a disincentive for you to go back to Oregon?

OH, I thought I'd posted last night, about the possibility of this being a temporary result of State of Conflict, and maybe you'd feel differently tommorrow. Maybe I did that preview thing instead of submit.

Anyhow, wanted to share, that I was reading HNHN for Parents, and it was so spot on that I'm going to ask you to consider buying it and reading p.42-46. It talks about the Friends and Enemies of Conversation, and spending 15 hours meeting the 4 intimate emotional needs - Intimate Conversation, RC, Affection, and SF. All of the stuff there is very different than you have been approaching these things. Intimate Conversation is not talking about mistakes.

There is an RH inventory for that that goes into honesty about the past, present, and future as information, not indictment. Maybe sharing this OH will lead to another heart to heart, I don't know. OH, your bank is in the red and your posts are reflecting that. Instead of focusing on this stuff that you're not enthusiastic about, I hope you get that book and see what Dr. H says about charting your course in a romantic, fun direction.

If jayne's reading this, the first chapters of this book are THAT GOOD that I hope you get this book and puit it into practice, too. The exercises are SO easy and look very fun.

Not in the least. My 'disincentive' is giving up my job and pulling my kids out of school for an uncertain future there. I'd be open to it if/when he had what appeared to be secure, well paying, FT employment. It's entirely possible my employer would actually let me work from Oregon but I wouldn't even ask them this question (and let that cat out of the bag) unless I knew H had stable employment that could support us until I found a job. And he does know all of this--we've talked about it. I think it might be what's behind his not moving forward with this plan as aggressively as he first spoke about when he came home.

My anger over the EF issues are for how they've affected H, not me. His mother treats him like sh*t. And yes, that's an intentional DJ. It makes me mad.

EO, thanks for the recommendation. I'll look for that book!

OH, I've been away for a bit and haven't kept up on anyone's threads, but I just saw your post saying you fear you "fell in love for the wrong reasons" and you worry that if you tell him you'll crush him.

Here's my take, and it may not be MB and I may not leave it up for long. I think I also initially "fell in love for the wrong reasons". Mine was the ol' biological clock. And yes, I think it would unnecessarily crush DH to hear me say that. So I don't intend to say such a thing in his hearing. I don't think of that as dishonest. If I loved him less *now* as a result, and so if it were an issue that needed to be addressed, then that would be different. But IMHO it IS possible for genuine love and a good relationship to sprout even outside of the perfect soil. My feelings of love for him is based on how he meets ENs. I suppose this just means that Family Commitment is and was extremely important to me, and one of the reasons I fell in love was because I saw his potential for FC.

I look at it as part of the Rule of Protection. Protecting your spouse. It's a very fine line - that argument has also been used to justify keeping an affair secret. I don't think this is the same thing.

I guess another way to look at it is, maybe instead of saying I "fell in love for the wrong reasons" it's more like, I fell in love because I thought he would meet my need for FC and that was important to me.

I don't know, could something similar be true for you? And so, maybe you fell in love because you thought he would meet your need for an extended family and family support (FC) and for wanting to live in the same geographical area and have the same goals and recreational activities (RC? also, there should be an EN for having similar goals in life?).

You don't need to feel "wrong" for falling in love for those reasons. And approaching your H with some H&O about how much you liked certain things you saw in him and what you thought your lives would be like, isn't necessarily hurting his feelings (the way saying "I fell in love with you for <insert some "wrong" reason like, for your money or for your family or for your little swimmers>".

OH, I'm not sure you married him for the wrong reasons. We all marry with the expectation that marriage is going to meet some of our ENs. Most people are getting those ENs met at the time they marry (otherwise they won't commit to marriage) but things change (for many reasons) over time and then those ENs aren't being met. And that is why most of us are here... to fix that. It is very common to start to thinking we married for the wrong reasons when things start to go downhill. But in all likelihood, if you were to divorce, you would seek out those same things in your next spouse because they are important to you.


So, FS and extended family are some of your top needs. You believed that your husband could meet them. For whatever reason, he can't or won't at the moment.


IMHO, the thing you need to be O&H about is the fact that those are some of your top ENs and if he can't or won't meet them, you would seriously have to consider whether you could stay in the marriage. Actually, I believe you already did this in your letter to him.

The extended family thing might be a bit hard if he is estranged from his family. What some people do in the absence of extended family is develop a network of friends with kids in the same age range. I have several friends who are part of a close-knit couples group and I think it really enhances their marriages and goes a long way toward making up for the absence of extended family nearby.

It's interesting that you say this. I'm not particularly close with my family and they are spread out all over. And I've already told you all about H's family. So what I love about this town is exactly what you have said. I may not have a lot of deeply close friends here, but what I do have is a network of friends, mostly formed from our kids being the same ages, and you are right---this fulfills my FC to a large extent.

That's probably why I get upset when H says he hates everyone here--has nothing good to say about anyone. Last night, we were talking about a flag football tourney that takes place every Thanksgiving weekend, and was started about 4 years ago when a family lost their college age son in a drunk driving accident. The son wasn't driving but was in the back seat of a car where the driver was intoxicated. The money raised goes to SADD and MADD. And H was going on about how this family had an 'attitude' about the whole thing and he didn't think he should have to have it thrown in his face every Thanksgiving. But this little town really rallies behind families in times of tragedy--any kind of tragedy. And it upsets me when he dismisses so much of it out of hand and I guess it's because I feel as though my FC is being compromised somehow?

Also, he has just stopped associating with people here--so no more group dinners, no more neighbors over for BBQ, etc. If I go to a parent meeting of some group or function, I go alone.

Maybe he's stopped socializing because he's embarrassed about the lack of a job. A lot of men really rely on their jobs to define them. That might explain the 'attitude' comment about the other family.

My husband attended an expensive private school for 2 years in high school and often felt 'less than' as compared to a lot of the kids who came from families with money. So much so he vowed to never send his children to this school.

Fast forward 17 years and guess where our son has been going to school for 10 years....yep, the same school my husband felt slighted, because it is the best school in the city and we can afford it. We live in the most expensive part of town and socialize with a lot of the parents from the school. Many of them are my husband's former classmates. All very nice people. I've never once felt out of place. But every once in a while, he'll make negative comments that indicate those old feelings of inadequacy have returned. People tend to get defensive when they fear that someone is looking down at them. And it is fear that is at the root of a lot of this type of behavior.

I understand that the lack of a job, our tight finances and all that related stuff is playing into his reluctance to socialize. Still, it affects me as I wind up as the single parent at so many events--so much so that in my mind, it's starting to stand out as obvious that my kids' father NEVER comes to these things.

And there's much that I just don't share with him as I don't want to spark a discussion on what jerks people are here. So if I'm at an athletic event and person A says something to person B and normally I'd relate that to H, often I don't.

and...


If you say it the following way I don't see any pain for H. In fact you are supporting him.

"I was attracted to you when we met, amongst other reasons, because I liked the thought of your extended family being around, and you had a good job.

I've told you that I want you to provide for us and I know you are trying to get a job.

I feel angry when your mother [says / does x - give specific examples] to you and disappointed that your EF hasn't been what I'd hoped."

See how replacing the DJ - of the EF - with an 'I feel' statement removes the painful content for your H?


OH to me it's your proud refusal to abandon DJs that is a big part of your problems.

Who are you to judge?

Again I wonder if certain posters here are culpable in encouraging this, e.g. labelling of others as 'dysfunctional'.

If you would stop labelling, judging and condemning other people - notably your H and his loved ones - I think your marriage would stand a better chance.


Final suggestion. The current topic's 'A bit of a whine.' As before - if you find yourself whining - ask - what do I want? How do I ask nicely?

This sounds like my dh sometimes. By the way, I wish you didn't feel like you needed to make excuses for handling him the directions wrong side up. Sounds like he was feeling very cranky and was looking for an excuse to kick the dog.

My dh has admitted to doing this lately (well, after I complained about it), and we now have the rule "No yelling at the wife". The corollary for me is "no nagging at the husband". Its about a tie as to whom is more compliant with the rules.