There is literally no time to make such a thing happen tonight. You don't understand the state the kitchen is in, nor the time constraints. I will have two short hours to shop, wash dishes, fix meals, change and dress children. My oldest helper is 4.


I can come in and be friendly and offer a nice greeting and a kiss. It almost certainly won't be well-received. At some point I have to stop talking and start working.

Pick up her favorite takeout. Make it easy on yourself.

Kind of reminds me on an old Brooks and Dunn song "It's my belief, pride is chief cause in the decline in the number of husbands and wives......"

Markos, do you see that you are totally pimping out your emotions and actions to her. What about being nice and loving regardless of whether she's quiet or not?

Markos, do you talk to your wife during the day? How about a nice phone call, "Hey honey, I was thinking, since we have church this evening, I was thinking about picking up dinner at X to bring home, but I wasn't sure if you'd planned anything. Would that work for you?"

Markos, think, too...how much of this stuff that you put on yourself to do ACTUALLY has to get done, right then? Do you think you could be the source of your own greatest stress?

She quit accepting phone calls from me a long, long time ago.

Well, please help me think it through:

The kids do have to get changed and ready for church.
The kids do have to eat.
I ought to start making some kind of preparation for the next day so that preparing something for the children to eat is easier.

Should I just leave the dishes to grow moldier another day?

We do email all day long, most days. But usually when I ask about plans for dinner I don't get an answer. If I tried today it would almost certainly be perceived as part of a plot to demand that she make dinner, after last night. Perhaps tomorrow.

What dishes are there if she doesn't cook? Do you have a dishwasher? If not, can you get one?

You're misunderstanding my dinner thing. You're not asking her what HER plans are for dinner. You're clearing YOUR plans with her. She wouldn't answer you if you said, I thought I'd bring home *whatever* for dinner, does that work for you?

How do you guys get this far without knowing who usually takes care of meals? Have you always done so and now you want to throw it to her? (btw, I know several SAHMs who don't cook...I don't get it! But, I like to cook.)

When things get that bad, I hire one of the neighborhood teenagers to help out in the evenings. If there aren't any in your neighborhood, you might try your church. Teens are happy for the extra cash and don't charge much. You could even make it a regular thing to have one come in 2 or 3 days a week to help with general housekeeping. Tell your wife you understand how hectic her day is chasing after kids under age 4. This can free up time and energy for everyone involved.

Best wishes!

She tends to cook until we run out of dishes.


No, but we obviously need one. Money is pretty tight right now, but I think we are going to have to make this happen in the near future.

There are also space constraints; we're not exactly sure where we'd put a dishwasher. This is an old, old house.


Okay, I will try that at some point in the near future. I still think it's like touching a third rail, today. I'll come prepared in case she's not prepared, and I won't make a fuss over it either way.


Yes, good point; I have tacitly accepted this situation for a long time, and then fell apart over it last night.

And -- you're a step behind; I've already apologized to her for that and acknowledged I should have kept my mouth shut.

google 'portable dishwashers'. they start around $250. I had one in an old house I lived in...loved that thing. I hate washing dishes!

Well, she's pretty mad, and is not speaking to me, but I think I'm managing to avoid too many more love bank withdrawals. I guarantee you she's not interested in deposits, right now.

She's been cleaning ... probably feeling very resentful. I know I've screwed up...

I am off work tomorrow and spending the day taking her to the doctor for a minor test. Two weeks ago we were looking forward to this as a fun date. We usually do well together on such days even when things have been going bad, so hopefully I can get the chance to make a few love bank deposits. There will be gifts. There will be donuts...

You are still chasing your tail.

Would you mind re-reading my post and commenting?

I mentioned that she'd 'move the target' - that no matter what you do, it's wrong!

I was right.

You're not doing anything differently than you were.

Her "Mad" is to keep you "in trouble" and running around like a *FOOL* after her. It's CRAZY-MAKING and you're eating it up like candy.

STOP IT!

You cannot see the forest for the trees...

Google "Crazy Making"...
Google "Verbal Abuse"...


Answering the question in your title; No, it's not right. She's ABUSIVE!

I can mainly say that I really relate to your situation. As i posted recently, my wife is unwilling to analyze issues, which seems to amount to the same thing you are experiencing. It is enormously frustrating. But that is not going to be helpful to you, so I ll keep this short and see what else people have to say.

Had my first session with Steve Harley this morning. My wife was very curious and asked me right off the bat today what he said and what I told him.

I gave her a summary, and then I went right into what Steve asked me to do: ask her to join us. To make a long story short, she declined, saying she doesn't see a difference between this and counseling we've been through before. I asked her to read an article on the marriage builders website, and she said "I don't want to go through this again."

Well, I'm not going to pressure her to do something she's not willing to do, because I don't want to turn this into a demand, so I simply said "okay." Her one word response was "okay?" so I elaborated:

"Yes, if you don't want to do it, I'm going to try not to demand it and try not to pressure you. Not having your cooperation makes me very sad, but I will get help from {male support friend} and Dr. Harley to help keep me motivated to do the right thing and do my best to be a pleasing husband to you even despite that sadness." (This is in the context of explaining to her earlier how I believe marriage coaching will help because it provides help with the emotional minefields, motivational swamps, and creative wilderness that are mentioned in Dr. Harley's "How to Find a Good Marriage Counselor?" article.)

Apparently mentioning my negative feelings, even in this respectful (I think?) way, was a mistake. I think that made me sound selfish to her and caused her to completely miss the message that I'm not going to pressure her or demand that she join me with Dr. Harley. She replied "What about my sadness?" So now we're back somewhere else on another topic. Here I am doing the best thing I know to try to help with her sadness, and it's not even recognized.

She's telling me a lot.

I'm saying "I'm sorry," a lot.

I mean it, and I'm not feeling resentful about it ATM, but I'm thinking I probably need something else to say.

We're having this discussion by email (not my first choice; please don't tell me again what a bad idea that is; my alternative is to demand that she talk to me some other way, and demands are NOT good right now!).

What else can I say besides "I'm sorry," in an email, to say "I am listening to you and am glad you are talking. Please go on."

If I ask too many questions, she resents that, so responding with specific questions aimed at communicating "tell me more" is probably not a good idea.

Argh. Getting mad at me because I thanked you for doing something I asked you to do? Getting mad at me because I then replied "I'm sorry"?

Come ON. Give me some credit for trying.

There ya go. You answered your own question.

Markos...stop saying you're sorry.

Seriously. If you apologize not for your actions but for your feelings/thoughts/beliefs, then you will NOT validate and respect her feelings/thoughts/beliefs.

When you apologize a lot, your brain can take that as you're sorry for being alive...seriously...constant betrayal. Too much sorry and too little degrades your life.

What I see in your thread is deep enmeshment with your wife. Time for you to break out of it because so much of what you struggle with in her is in you and vice versa.

First, apologize only when you can see clearly through your actions that you violated YOUR code of honesty, respect, consideration or acceptance. Where you may have failed to act from respect or disrespected her actively.

THEN you own what you did, why you did it (justified thinking) and how you won't do it again.

As you can see, you won't be doing that very casually, tossing "I'm sorry" around. Will take awareness, will and effort.

Next, make it a top priority for you to hear when you're lying to yourself. You said she doesn't accept your apologies when she says "okay" when you say sorry.

How's that a lie? Because you don't know if her "okay" is acceptance or not. Sure sounds like it to me...brevity aside.

I believe your wife's anti-counseling stance may benefit your marriage. I say this because she may be unwilling to accept the ineffective counseling in the past.

See, this "come back when you need to" is rather vague in my book. Did you attend regular sessions for a year or two? Did you both ensure you were learning the tools to resolve future issues together? Did you have to practice, practice, practice and report through all sorts of stress levels, crises, mundane circumstances? Using tools different times, different ways, same tools?

Did the "teacher" give you fish or teach you to fish together?

I agree that email in semi-crisis times is healthy and reasonable. My disclaimer though is only with the goal to have deeply intimate, face to face conversations. May take going from email to phone, to side by side, until finally, face to face.

A process...not an event. Agreeing to the goal is unifying...and taking the steps along the way. And you both have made a lot of progress, it seems...so really, you're finally hitting communication issues head on...and thinking it's an SF issue.

Did your MC give you guys a solid communication exercise to do twice a week? Have you talked about limiting relationship talk to once a week, a set time and hour, for just 20 mins only? Did you practice listen and repeat for understanding as homework and then do so in the MC sessions you attended?

Listening isn't being silent. It's confirming and clarifying, as LH posted, and NED and Soolee. And to really do it, you must first break apart your self from her self...in your own head. You must allow her words to be hers, about her, not you.

Which is tough...and you can do it. Goal of any conversation with your wife is for clarity...to really hear, not act upon what you hear. Then, once you get to where confirming or clarifying is routine, then you can POJA ways to act to resolve.

90% of issues in marriage are not to be solved, but understood. That's from a cool book "Fighting for your Marriage" by Howard Markman, et. al. So strive first to understand, then be understood.

It will cut out a lot of apologies which aren't yours to say...and gives you a sound road to walk, which what I hear you really craving the most.

That, and your urge to get her to walk it with you. Go first.

LA