Most of this worry about the mechanics of how POJA is going to avoid an impasse is due to bringing the old attitude of, "What's in it for me?" Of course everyone is concerned about what they want, but the new attitude underneath POJA and all the other policies of Marriage Builders has to be, "What can I do for my spouse?", and "What can I do to improve my marriage?"

In the early stages of changing bad habits, you have to do things about which you may not be enthusiastic. The litmus test is, "Should I be enthusiastic about this?"

If you want to sit around and do nothing when your wife invites you to go with her to the park or art museum, you should get up and go, just like you did when you were dating and you were just happy to be with her, and the circumstances did not bother you.

There's another piece to POJA that is getting completely missed as well.

In POJA, you DO get what you want.

That's the POINT of POJA, to see to it that anything you do is something that your BOTH want to do and not just something that one does or gets at the other's expense.

But in order to practice POJA requires that we stop the "me against you" mentality we bring to the table. We don't want to POJA because we want to do whatever we want to do<FULL STOP>.

It comes from the way we have always done things where we took at our spouse's expense and our spouse took at our expense. The reason for POJA is to STOP that kind of behavior. POJA means we can't be selfish any more; THAT is why we hate it so much at first.

But POJA keeps us from hurting each other during negotiations and stops us from doing stuff that damages the feelings of our spouse. What's in it for me is a spouse who is in love with me and wants me to be happy. POJA isn't about sacrificing my wants and needs for the sake of the relationship. It's about not sacrificing and about not expecting my spouse to sacrifice either.

Mark

This is the bottom line. Do you want a happy marriage? More than anything else in life? More than WOW? More than a concert or a trip to the museum or meeting your best friend for lunch? Or do you pretty much want to be able to do what you want when you want and hope that your spouse can accommodate themselves to your desires? Even at the cost of their happiness and their love for you?

MB is a great tool to obtain a happy marriage. Each person has to decide for themselves if that is what they want from life.

Thanks Hold,

In my case, things didn�t work out: I told my ex we needed to straighten this out (and he needed to get a job, not just surf the internet or play games/music all day and then lie to his parents about trying to get a job) or I was taking the next military trip out of there. And he didn�t, so I left for 6 months, thinking he would realize how much I did for him. Hadn�t read HNHN yet to realize �all that work� meant nothing to him. With plenty of church women to feed him and take care of our son for him, he didn�t miss me, and didn�t see the need to get a job or stop running up my credit card (his were maxed and somehow he became a signer on my card so I couldn�t close it). After 3 months, something went wrong with my TDY pay, and I used it as an excuse to siphon much of my pay to another account. He finally got a job, then sent me a ten page dear john letter. When I came home, he wanted to save face with the church, so offered me a room in his new apartment until my next assignment, and I was so offended that I packed up my son and as much as I could carry and moved that weekend.

I am much happier now, have about a third of the debt paid off, and my son is doing well. But I do sometimes wonder if there was something I could have done better. Which is why I jumped on Chris�s question.

Sorry Chris, for the t/j, but I really hope in your case things get better.

Hey, I think I finally found the answer!!!



Love Busters, "Resolving conflicts over friends and relatives" chapter:


"Do nothing" doesn't mean "don't change anything; keep doing what you are doing." It literally means "stop doing what you are doing." Which makes sense. What you are doing is withdrawing love units from your husband or wife's love bank.

Thanks!

I have my big rubber NARCISSIST stamp ready.

*sigh*

So we're on the phone with SH this morning, and he says, "Let's try this: which is harder, when you are sick or when your spouse is sick?"

I did as I usually do, and waited for H to speak first. I do this because I see how I am leading, and I know that if I speak up before him, then he won't speak from his heart--he will just say, "Yeah, what she said," even if I've just said something that goes totally against what he thinks. No progress can be made from there, imho.

So H pipes up, "I think it's harder when she is sick, because then she can't do what she is supposed to be doing and I have to pick up her slack."

Okay, I'll give an inch on my linguistic tendency and my passion for analyzing word choices. I'm not angry he said that. I'm completely enamored with being privy to the workings of his mind. I love this stuff.

BUT...(lol) did he just say that I'm slacking off when I'm sick, and he resents that? lolol...to me, a caring person would say that it's hard when your spouse is sick because you want to be able to make them better and can't, or it's hard when oneself is sick, because you can't do the caring things for your partner...

BUT...a narcissistic person would say it's hard when your spouse is sick because they're slacking off and can't care for YOU.

So I laughed and said it was harder for me to be sick, because there is nobody to take care of me, so it makes it really hard to recuperate.

Steve said* that this should work itself out as my H learns to be a more thoughtful and caring person, but dang, it's three months with Steve already...I'm inking up my rubber stamp.

ETA: correction: what he actually said, as I read this back, was a 'we' thing--as 'we' learn to take better care of our partners, he did not single out H. I left my original wording in place intentionally.

CWMI, is there really any incentive for your husband to learn to be a more thoughtful and caring person?

Does he see that he is not?

Does he see that there might be some benefit to changing his attitude?

Maybe he just doesn't have the right motivation yet.

Wait until he gets sick...lol. I'm kidding.

I'm not sure about your q's. I see a big benefit to changing his attitude in that the way he views himself would finally line up with the actions he takes. I think that's highly important to self-fulfillment and general happiness. There's a quote that speaks to me, I can't remember who said it or even the words verbatim, but it's something along the lines of true happiness is when your thoughts and deeds are in agreement.

He thinks he's a fantastic H and father, and does not think that anger, withdrawal, or abandonment changes that--well, no, I can't say that what he thinks in his soul, but it is what he says--he also says that because someone is deceptive is no reason to not trust them.

Liars always say that, right?

Are you DJing here?

Truthfully I did nto translate what he said as you slacking off. He said he has to pick up your slack...which is another way to say he has to cover your part of the chores & duties. Grant it, it wasn't a loving and cuddly response but it was his real feelings.


Ouch.

Was that a "revenge" statement? Does your DH really NOT take care of you when you're sick?


You typed it that way at first because you're pissed and focused on your idea that your DH is not a thoughtful / caring person.

Put that stamp away Lil Miss DJ!

My questions were a way of giving him the benefit of the doubt. Oh well.

Chris, I got the flu over Christmas. It took me three weeks to get over it, and a large part of that was because my H opted to go into work early and stay late, from Christmas Eve until after New Year, leaving me home with four kids to take care while I felt awful, had no voice, and a fever. A couple of days ago, one of the girls in our church group mentioned her H taking the day off to take care of her and the kids while she battled a stomach virus. I said that was nice, and asked H if he would ever consider doing something like that for me. He said that if I was sick enough to need him to take a day off, I was sick enough to be in the hospital. So I asked him if he would at least TAKE me to the hospital. He laughed and said, sure. I said, what, would you drop me off on your way to work? He said he GUESSED he would stay with me at the hospital if I was that sick. lol. You guess? wth?

Yes, really, my H does not take care of me when I'm sick. He stays away from home as much as possible when I'm sick. I had a lot of morning sickness when pregnant, and it was awful with changing diapers on the other little ones, and it was a battle to get him to do that for me. He had projects to work on or a show to watch, I was the SAHM, changing diapers was my job whether it made me puke or not. I was fine so long as I was not pregnant at the time. So, um...yeah.

Have you discussed this with him? If so, what was his response?

Boy, this goes to show me that even though I'm not all that happy about my husband sometimes, it cn always be worse.

If I need him to help me when I'm at home with the kids and at my wits end about to jump out of a window, I call and he's there.

HMM. This just made me think of something. He helps me when I ASK for help. But when I was recovering after childbirth, and was definitely in my "entitlement mode" (who wouldn be?) and NOT asking for help because I thought it should be OBVIOUS to him to bring me food and water and be at my beck and call, I never di ASK.

Did you ever ASK him to stay home with you when you had the flu? Did you ask him to take off a few days from work now and then when the morning sickness was bad?

I don't ask. I think it should be obvious. Furthermore, if I have to spell it out for him, that means that he doesn't love me enough to figure it out on his own. How arrogant of me! It is incredibly humbling to ask for help, and even more humbling to ask for help from someone who isn't already willing on their own. Still, it's what I need to do. That way, it is my husband deliberately choosing NOT to help. He owns the choice.

Next time you're sick, try asking for help. In fact, maybe bring it up before you are sick and POJA a solution together so that there is a plan in place.

One discussion was Christmas Eve morning, where I asked him to not go in early and stay home instead to help with the kids, who were already up, and he accused me of being controlling, that he planned to go in early and I wasn't going to make him change his IMPORTANT PLANS, OMG DID I HAVE ANY IDEA HOW HARD HE WORKS BLAH BLAH BLAH GIFTS BLAH BLAH BLAH BUCK UP BLAH AND DON'T FORGET TO GET THE HAM.

He had to go in soon after our call this morning, but I sent him an email about it earlier. Still waiting for a reply...

Think, I ask. See above.

Gotcha. I thought I'd bring it up, since it was/is a huge problem for me. Much less of a problem now that I know that I have to ask for help, even in times when it appears obvious what I need.

If I were in your shoes for that verbal lashing, I'd be saying something like, "You didn't need to berate me, and I don't need an explanation. All you need to do is say no. If you want ham you can get it yourself."

It's amazing what some changes toward meeting emotional needs followed by a very straightforward respectful thoughtful communication of my needs did for us in this regard.

I was working hard to improve the way I treated Prisca, and feeling frustrated and wondering if she was ever going to respond. I addressed this a time or two with angry outbursts, with pretty terrible results. (After working that hard and sacrificing that much, is it really a good idea to throw it all away and start over at Square One???) But when I straightforwardly said: "I don't feel like you are respecting my point of view; the pain from this is so great it makes me avoid talking to you about these things. What you are doing is killing my feelings of romantic love for you." I felt like at that point she really took notice.

It did help that she had a background of understanding the basic concept of the love bank and the romantic love threshold. And it was also mandatory that she'd seen a difference in how I was acting.

Better still . . . (and this has to do with POJA)

If I make a request of my spouse (please stay home since I'm sick) and his answer is no (with or without verbal self-justification), then I can ask HIM to come up with an alternative solution.

"Honey, I'm really not able to take care of the children. In fact, I'm thinking that I feel so bad that maybe I SHOULD be in the hospital (hehehe). I understand that you feel you need to be at work early this morning, and that you want us to have ham for Christmas, but I simply can't because I'm too sick. The last thing I want to do is control you, so why don't you come up with a couple alternative solutions to this problem, because I'm so sick, my brain isn't even functioning on all cylanders and I don't think I can even come up with anything on my own. You're such a good problem solver!"

OK, I admit, the last part was laying it on thick.

Real thick LOL!