I don't need to be convinced that I need to do something about the situation and say something to my parents.

I do need to be convinced that it's got to be done right now and that if it's not done now I should be subjected to angry outbursts and disrespectful judgments. I can't see why that should be the case.

My wife is taking all the enthusiasm I have for her and our marriage and kicking it. How do I protect myself from this?

Obviously AO's and DJ's are never the answer. So where does your power reside in the situation? What can you do to protect your love? As I see it you have 2 options in a situation, #1 would be to carefully construct a strict boundary about the situation in a non LB way and once again avoid the conflict with your FOO. #2 would be to sit with your wife and formulate a plan to tackle the FOO issues.

As far as the enthusiasm right now, well my only advice on that is to focus on the bigger picture and always work towards that not allowing allowing anothers actions to control your emotions.

How long has she been waiting for you to address the situation with your parents? Why NOT address it right now? If it is something as simple as saying, "You will treat my wife with respect or we won't be spending time together," then why wait?

No, you should not be subject to AOs and DJs.

I suspect you wouldn't be if you had addressed this issue a long time ago! What do you think?

I'm not excusing her behavior on this, but don't you think it's time for you to realize that there are consequences for the actions you do or do not take? You choose the action, you choose the consequence. Ignoring this issue makes for an unhappy wife. What are you going to choose?

Markos, just yesterday I asked ML almost the same question.


Here is what she told me:


Then I posted this:



Then she responded this way:




What I got out of the whole exchange is that if I know of a problem that is triggering my spouse�s LB behavior, it�s up to ME to stop the triggering behavior. Check out my thread because ML gives a GREAT (and humorous) example of how she and her DH used the POJA for the first time in the grocery store. She also posted what Harley told both her AND her husband.

I bet if you AND your wife were to read that segment, especially Harley�s response to both of them, it would change both of your perspectives on your own situation in a way that is gentle and humorous. That�s what it did for me. I SO MUCH want to fight making changes, and yet I know that I have to lead by example.

Another thing for me right now is that I must temporarily accept that my husband is incapable of stopping his own LB behavior, in part because of his addictive tendancies. I sometimes get caught in the trap of thinking, �I can�t accept this incompatibility forever.� And that�s when I realize that I�m wasting my time thinking about a future that is VERY uncertain and very much out of my hands. My energy is better spent DOING something that I CAN control. If there ever comes a point that I can no longer accept the unacceptable, I know that I will be lead through that process with the peace of knowing I did my best. The way I currently �protect� myself is to remember that I only have to do it for 24 hours. Tomorrow, if there even IS a tomorrow, I have the freedom to change my mind. That takes the pressure off. Acceptance in small chunks is FAR more manageable than acceptance for the rest of my life, or even the rest of the week sometimes. One day at a time . . . don�t get too far ahead of myself, because that�s a waste of my precious time.

Well, for the record, I became enthusiastic tonight over a drafted letter to my parents I've had in the works for several days, and sent it.

But I would still like to hear a lot more about these policy of joint agreement "grey areas" folks are telling me about. Is there a place I can read more about that?

Markos, I presume you're responding to my post and I wasn't implying that POJA had Grey areas, please go read it again. I think we've all established that your marriage is not quite ready for a all out POJA. So when you said that POJA would dictate doing nothing, I pointed to the grey knowing that y'all couldn't truly fully and honestly POJA. The grey would be 1) by continueing to see parents and "doing nothing" in that fashion that Love Units would be lost or 2) by no longer seeing parents and making wife feel bad about it that could be a love buster. I'm not saying you have done any of those just that they are in the realm of possibilities for where you are right now.

And that whole "do nothing", I've seen that all to often used as a tool to hurt the other spouse. I guess to me, once you're ready to truly use POJA that "do nothing" will rarely if ever be the result......

Are you struggling with setting boundaries with your parents Markos? (I know I do, big time!)

One thing I've discovered with boundaries is that I don't always need to state them out loud so that everyone knows them., In fact, sometimes stating them out loud actually CREATES more chaos. With my parents, for example, I don't state that I no longer think it's appropriate for them to provide me with the extent of domestic support they have given me. Stating that will just create crazy reactions on their part. So instead, I set the boundary and just live it by not accepting their unsolicited offers (unless it's a really good one, in which case I get husband's enthusiastic buy-in first.)

I do this in "friendships" too. There are several friendships with which I have become uncomfortable. Rather than "break up" by making a big statement about it, I have let the friendships fade by not feeding them. Luckily there wasn't a whole lot of "entrenchment" in these relationships, so it happened quite easily and I now have transitioned these people to "casual aquaintance" status without any drama.

Ah, okay; I can see how that might be the case for some people.

I'm going to be open and honest about the fact that doing nothing makes me feel some resentment, but I'm also going to be open and honest about the fact that I earnestly believe this resentment is temporary and that one day there will be a better solution. Dr. Harley has some interesting thoughts about two types of resentment in his Effective Marriage Counseling book that were very helpful to me.

Of course, if my parents go all crazy over what I said to them last night, they may act in such a way that makes me feel enthusiastic about seeing them...

If you honestly cannot see anything wrong with seeing your parents or taking your kids to see them, then you have a long road to travel before you can restore the love in your marriage. That is OK. That may be where you are right now. We all start somewhere. And as I posted earlier to you, I made the same mistake so I am not going to throw stones at you.

Now to answer your question (on the assumption that you meant it literally and not rhetorically). What is wrong with seeing your parents? It causes your wife pain. They treat her like crap. So she dislikes seeing them. And she feels rejected when you want to see them.

I understand that you love them. And you want to see them. So you WISH that she did not mind seeing them. But she does. And justifiably so.

Moreover, you really are taking other people's side against her. You are placing a higher value on your parent's pain from not seeing the grandkids than on her pain from dealing with people who treat her like crap.

You are shielding your parents from the natural consequence of their behavior. They treated your wife like crap. The natural consequence of that is that they should not be allowed to see you or the grandkids. Until they choose to treat her more respectfully. You are not forcing them to pay the price for indulging in their judgmental tendencies. At your wife's expense. Now exactly how do you view that as loving your wife?

Unfortunately, most likely someone is going to feel pain no matter what you do here. Your job is to make sure that person isn't your wife. Or you. If it has to be your parents, so be it. THAT is how you show love. When you can't avoid pissing someone off, make sure the person you piss off isn't your spouse.

My husband did not like seeing my family. I did not think they treated him badly (in fact, at the time I thought it was better than they treated a lot of folks who marry into the family, and we should be happy about that!).

We would fight about my family all the time, and eventually he just quit coming to things, telling me that he might never go to a family event again.

It was very painful to this super-close-to-my-family girl. But it was one of the best things we ever did.

After about 1 year, he seemed to feel safe enough to veture back into my family for certain ocassions as long as there were safeties in place ("leave at such and such a time exactly"; "stay together--warn me if you're going to the bathroom"; "be prepared to leave early if someone says something inappropriate." etc).

It was the best decision for us.

That solution is fine with me, but I don't think my wife would be as enthusiastic about it. Her feeling is that she wanted some kind of statement made.

I have been rejecting unsolicited advice from my parents for a long, long time now.

I think you misunderstood the part of my post that you quoted. I was not asking "What's wrong with seeing my parents?" I was asking "Why is me offering to not see my parents, for now, not enough? Why do I have to go do MORE now and say something? Why can't we just agree to follow the POJA and do nothing until we have enthusiastic agreement? Shouldn't the fact that I am willing to not see my parents as long as my wife is not enthusiastic about it, possibly for the rest of my life, count for SOMETHING?"

And I found my answer to that this morning. It was very simple: my wife didn't understand, yet, that I wasn't going to go see them again until she was enthusiastic about it. Just as she never explicitly told me "Even though I was enthusiastic for the last few months about you taking the kids to see your parents without me, for the time being, I am no longer enthusiastic about it," I never explicitly told her "I will do nothing without your enthusiastic agreement, and so if you are not enthusiastic about me going to see my parents, I won't do it."

Oops.

I think I've been misunderstood, and I want to clarify. What I was trying to tell Markos is that THIS is his thread. I've read through it, and it is clear that he has received very good support and advice, which I know he desperately wants. He has told me many times that he doesn't feel like he has anybody to talk to, but he hasn't said that since he started talking to all of you on here. He finally has a place to go and talk things out, and I don't want to take that away from him. I don't want him to fear that I will take whatever he says on here and blow up at him over it, or use it against him in some way. I want him to feel free to keep talking to all of you as frankly as he did before I joined this board. And so, I was trying to tell him not to worry, I won't respond to him on this thread. That may change, eventually, if he wants it to. For now, it just seems safe.

I am not leaving MB. I am seriously considering starting my own thread.

Yes, well, if you want credit for making a decision, then it helps if you tell your wife you have made the decision. You still might not get any credit, because she might not believe you are sincere or are capable of living up to your commitment. But if she doesn't even know you changed your mind, hard for her to thank you for changing it.

Good job of having an open and honest discussion with your wife. And good job on placing her higher than your parents. Not easy. Kudos.

I can understand her sentiments too. I have this kind of conversation with my husband once in a while too (he in your wife's shoes, me in yours).

I think in my situation it boils down to the fact that when I defer to my parents, or even if I simply don't "fight back", he sees that as me not backing him up and giving him the respect the he, as my husband, should have. I'm ashamed to say that the way I've handled this situation is to give him lip service and say that "it won't happen again," but then I never take action to make sure that it doesn't happen again. I can't tell you how many times my dad mowed our lawn before I actually DID what I said I was going to do, and tell my dad to no longer mow our yard.

At this point, the way I would handle this with my husband is to say, "I'm very uncomfortable about directly telling my folks what my boundaries are because I'm really afraid of the chaos it would cause. Can we brainstorm other ways I could enforce my boundaries that would keep the drama to a minimum, but still end up with you feeling respected and protected?"

Sharing my fears with my spouse is a very high level of intimacy, and being able to have such a conversation, even if it didn't result in a resolution, would probably deposit LOTS in my love bank, and maybe in his too.

So long, folks. Prisca and I are off to another town for the weekend to celebrate our anniversary.

Have a great time, ya'll!

Well, we had what I thought was a pretty enjoyable trip. But my wife informs me that I committed several love busters throughout the weekend, including one that could have very easily set her off and ruined everything.

To her credit, she did just as Steve Harley advised and did not bring these to me. He told her to wait and bring these to him. He hasn't said the same thing to me, but I was resolved to follow the same advice.

Unfortunately, by yesterday morning, my wife wasn't feeling very happy about getting up and starting the day, especially since it turns out that what I thought was our shared goal for the morning was not a goal of hers.

So I woke her up as nicely as I knew how and showed her affection, and received none in return, and started to feel a little upset. And then she stayed in bed for an hour while I busied myself getting ready, packing, hauling luggage to the car, etc., and my resentment only increased.

As I realized there was a problem, I felt chafed by the thought that I was going to have to wait a week to tell Steve and couldn't tell my wife, and that only increased my resentment.

She had no idea I was upset until we finally got in the car, too late to be on time to where I thought we wanted to go, and I got upset when one of the children was clamoring for something and said, totally wrongly, "I'm sorry; I can't get it for you right now; we don't have time, because we are late. And it's not my fault."

That ruined the entire rest of the day, including the drive home.

I'm starting to realize we're going to have to make several changes that I don't think my wife realizes yet.

First of all, our undivided attention time is lacking in quality. Believe it or not, even though we have several small children, we do fairly well getting time alone together. I'd say at least two hours a night. That adds up to 14 per week, one less than a healthy marriage needs.

But almost all of that time is spent watching television. It seems to be all my wife wants to do.

I love television, too, but I've been feeling the lack of any other time together for a long time.

I think she'd want to do things besides watch television if she was in love with me, but as it is, I think she gets a small love bank deposit out of that, and it is one of the few things that is reliable, and so she feels hesitant to give it up.

Meanwhile, I think we're going to have to ramp this up to at least 20 hours a week.

20 hours a week taking care of each other's intimate emotional needs sounds wonderful to me, though I know it will be awkward at first.

I'm afraid she's going to have to spend time with me in the mornings if we're going to get that much time together. Or else something else somewhere is going to have to give. I'm not sure what.

In the winter the children tend to go to bed earlier since the days are shorter; with summer coming on, this is going to be more difficult.

Markos, hey bud it's progress and not perfection, remember that. If the trip overall was progress then write it off as that, progress....... But I want to look at some specifics real quick, again keeping in mind that I'm only talking to you and ownership for your side of the steet......


I totally feel you on this, been in that boat way to many times, heck used to REACT just like you. But therein lies the problem, reacting rather than acting. The time for action is when you �started feeling upset� but since you didn�t get yourself into check at that moment, things spiraled out of control until ultimately you lashed out at a kid and threw around that childish word �fault�.

I have a quote on my wall that simply says �Expectations are nothing more than premeditated resentments.� and I read that and surrender to it daily. When it became apparent that y�all weren�t on the same wave length you had a choice A) drop the expectation and just have a great day taking it as it comes B) immediately discuss the issue and come to an agreement or C) bottle that stuff up and see how long it takes for the top to blow�. Obviously you chose C. You can come back at me with �Well Bill, she knew we had these plans blah blah blah� And dude, I don�t care, cut to the bottom line you knew you were upset, allowed the resentment to grow, knew it was because y�all weren�t on the same page, got chaffed, increased your resentments, and so on. You knew all this and you failed at protecting your wife and children from your outburst. What can you do differently next time to protect your family?