#1. It was JUST a question.
#2. Recovery takes work. For true change, you have to realise you own happiness, what you think created it, test it, and change it if your theory does not hold true.
#3. MB concepts, if applied correctly are not shallow. The more I think about them, the more I apply them to my own experience, the more questions I have.

Very good point. More to tumble around......
So, are you saying that "givers" are more content to begin with?

I agree...

My problem was that I was unable to establish much if any of a TAKER in my marriage. I tried to ask for things which I needed in so many ways and was shot down in twice as many ways. I had NO way to 'ask' which was heard, and I tried everything I could think of including counseling. I never understood it... she was so giving up until we literally got married, and then bam!!! Walls went up and that was it. She immediately treated me like I was the biggest jerk on earth.

Having a Taker is certainly important, and I believe that it is certainly not only acceptable in marriage, but in reality a requirement as well. My wife would 'give' what she wanted in a way she wanted, but would not 'give' what I asked for or needed. That was the crux I found myself in, and it seemed that I had no way to move the situation in any direction.

After having my TAKER shot down so many times, I felt less and less capable of bringing it to the fore. I would attempt to, however, it was easy to run and hide because of all the failed times before. I had NO stick... I had NO carrot... She was willing to accept 'carrots' but it was a one way street, things went in but wouldn't come back out. If I 'said' anything about either, she withdrew further, ignoring me more and treating my children worse. Even our MC has since said that I had really only two options... to simply deal with it or leave. I chose to NOT deal with it NOR leave, but to really address it head on in MC. She lasted 3 sessions then bolted.

When I told him about some of the things she has done which I have somewhat 'blocked out' he couldn't believe it. When I told him about the 'shopping spree' in my house when she left, he said he couldn't believe how 'ruthless' she was choosing to be.

It is difficult to believe that I could have TRIED more... I probably could have tried 'better' to be a better 'taker' but in reality I think that some of us just don't have the 'giver' in working order.

However, I do realize that in my 'giving' I became resentful. There is NO DOUBT about it, in the last 6 months, since her affair, I had become resentful because I know I felt that 'after all I did and forgave you... you STILL WON'T DO ANYTHING DIFFERENTLY!!!' I felt that almost every day. My giver had 'given up' and my taker was saying OK this is enough and if something doesn't change for THE good it will CHANGE FOR GOOD. On my thread LA talked about me not being able to pull out my Taker until 'Enough is enough' became the issue. Initially, I thought that was true, but then as I thought about it, I realized that it wasn't that I hadn't been trying to show my Taker... it was that my Taker wasn't accepted by my wife as legitimate. She wouldn't accept that my needs were valid, and appeared to only see them as TAKING something FROM HER, rather than allowing her an opportunity to GIVE.

I believe that every part of me had had enough... finally. My Giver had enough. My Taker had enough. And I finally realized that Nothing was going to change without major change.

And perhaps this is the crux of MOST people who have unmet needs...

Are you seeing your SPOUSE's Taker as legitimate? And is your SPOUSE seeing YOUR Taker as being legitimate?

Who / what is ML?

This is a great post. Painful. I have learned to. I have learned that being (or thinking you are) a giver all the time does not help you.

It may help you feel better about yourself, but everyone needs to be a taker, too.

On the surface this can seem so strange and irrational, but I understand where your wife is coming from on this. When dating - there is always the possibility it isn't going to work out. Dating is two individuals spending time, getting to know each other. Marriage is a whole different ball game. Successful marriage REQUIRES intimacy in a way dating never did. intimacy requires a vulerability that can be very uncomfortable - so walls go up as self protection. If you're a big jerk, she is justified not opening up to you and is thus protected. That is what the taker does: protect us.

I am not saying you did anything to cause this, I'm just saying it could be a natural instinct for her; it was for me, and one I struggled with early in my marriage.


Exactly - This is why the Principle of care and protection is so important. We have a responsibility to bring both our Giver and our Taker to the table in any discussion and make it safe for our spouse to do the same. Our spouse's Taker is not the enemy of our marriage and will only want to win at our expense if it doesn't trust that we will do a good job of protecting our spouse. I know that my DH has my best interest in mind at all times - so my Taker is reasonable and reigned in by my desire to seek his best interest.

Something I've also come to realize is that WE teach others how to treat us - if our spouse's taker is running rampant over is, it is because we ALLOW it by allowing our Giver to turn us into a pretzel to make them happy. Proper boundaries and care and respect are essential in keeping us from being run over by a run-away taker. Time and again I see men bending over backwards - giving to their wives' Takers, thinking it will make her happy. All it does is cause her to lose respect for him and Take even more.

Happiness in marriage does not come from being more a Giver, or being more a Taker, it comes from a healthy balance of Giver and Taker moderated by Care and Protection.

I.A. More to

Excellent points Vibrissa.

My issue with this thread is / was the opening question and the way it was framed.


People are a combo of GIVER and TAKER and our happiness in intimate realtionships is extremely situational. What if a person who gives all the time is married to another person who gives as well? What if two people who tend to let their TAKER flow freely are married? Then you have people who have psychological issues which cause them to experience extreme highs, extreme lows, or both...

With people who choose to give and give and give without getting what they need in return ...and who (from all outward appearances) hear no evil / see no evil / speak no evil, comes problems with resentment and rage, so I truly doubt that anyone who an outside observer would call a GIVER is any more happy than other people. Quite the opposite in fact.

Anyway, here's a great answer as stated by Vibrissa:

1) People are a combination of GIVER and TAKER. And, whether GIVER or TAKER is in control depends on the circumstances.

2) People who give without getting their needs met usually have issues with resenment and repressed rage.

So, my answer is NO.

I don't see why you would have a problem with this. Sure people are both givers and takers, but I for one lean heavily tword giver.

I am a teacher. My day is spent "giving" to my students. It is my job, my expectation and (because I am a natural born giver) I take very, very well to this requirement. Always have.

I have seen educators approach this job as takers. They seem to expect accolades for walking into a classroom. I still work with quite a few. Usually they learn- or move onto another career.

Yes, you can say I recieve from my job by student accomplishments, but that is NOT the litnus test for my job. It is not a "apples and flowers" for teacher society anymore.

On a side note, I was having this conversation with three friends. We all considered ourselves "givers". Our occupations? Nutritionist, nurse, home health care provider and educator! I do not think it is a coincidence that we are friends.

I've been trying to figure out for a while now if the ideas being expressed here have to do with Dr Harley's description of the Giver and the Taker as distinct yet coexisting parts of our personality or if the terms refer mainly to a tendency to give by way of investing more in a relationship as opposed to taking from the relationship without investing anything in return.

The Mayo Clinic website points out that whenever there is an affair, a possible contributing factor might be that the cheating spouse has been getting less from the marital relationship but it can also be the result of the cheater investing less in the relationship. link to one article The dissatisfaction can actually come from having less invested in the marriage and so being less willing to negotiate solutions to problems and keeping the marriage alive. This is often true of exit affairs.

In this regard, taking is merely being selfish and giving is being less selfish. But Dr Harley's Giver and Taker are not really the same ideas and if the discussion is about his concepts then investment or lack thereof really are not what is being discussed.

We are taught from an early age that giving is good and taking is bad. But when we go to a retail shop to buy something, both situations giving and taking are at play. The buyer gives money and takes something of value in return. The retailer gives something, either a product or service and in return takes the money of the buyer. Neither giving nor taking is bad and neither one is really good either. They are in fact merely differing sides of the same transaction and depending on which specific aspect we are examining, both sides are actually enacting both perspectives, both giving and both taking.

The problem of course comes in when there is a disproportionate value of what is given and what is taken in return. If we feel that we have been ripped off, we complain about the retailer taking our money. But a retailer often accepts a check in payment only to have that check bounce and so it is then the retailer who has a complaint about the buyer taking and not giving what was promised in fair exchange for the product or service given.

But from a MB POV, the Giver and Taker are not simply descriptions of the actions of one spouse or the other, or even of both under differing parts of the same transaction. What Dr Harley is calling Giver and Taker are two distinct parts of the personality that all of us have. We are all both Giver and Taker, not just based on the same differentiation as I talked about with the buyer and seller, but at some more basic level that is part of our humanity.

Our Giver is that part of us that wants others to be happy and is even willing to sacrifice that they might be happy. Our Giver just gives, does not take and is incapable of even trying to judge the value of what is given in regard to what we are receiving in return. The Giver doesn't care if we get anything in return or not. It is simply desiring to make the other person happy even if we have to be unhappy to accomplish that.

Out Taker on the other hand doesn't care if anyone else is ever happy. It is the part of me that wants ME to be happy and doesn't give a rat's behind whether anyone else is ever happy or not. It is purely selfish. It can only Take and can not Give under any circumstances.

Now it is pretty easy to deal with each side of our personality when we have not much at stake in the relationship. But if we are emotionally attached to the person in some way, such as being married, then our Giver and Taker each interact at various times depending on whether we are in a state of Intimacy, Conflict or Withdrawal.

Out Taker and our Giver are both GOOD. Our Taker wants to protect us and our rights. It seeks to ensure value in exchange for what we invest or have already invested. Our Giver protects our spouse and strives to make sure that we don't take advantage of him/her. But our Giver also is willing to make us unhappy in order to make our spouse happy and so is detrimental to our own feelings of romantic love and our biggest source of resentment, which when full grown leads to entitlement which is our Taker seeking to protect us from the imbalance of the relationship.

So our Taker can also be a good thing for us and for the relationship, though our Taker never considers our spouse and so is bad for him/her.

Our Giver can be bad for us, even bad for the relationship since it allows us to build resentment in an attempt to ensure our spouse is happy, though short term, the Giver would seem to be good for our spouse.

POJA is what Dr Harley came up with to prevent either our Giver or our Taker from being totally in charge at any given moment in time. POJA keeps our Giver from sacrificing for our spouse's benefit to our own detriment and so ensuring resentment as the result of our sacrifice. POJA also prevents us from allowing our Taker free reign and gaining at our spouse's expense by using the tools that belong to our Taker and our Taker alone, namely Selfish Demands, Disrespectful Judgments and Angry Outbursts, even extending to Independent Behavior which is what our Taker resorts to when our spouse does not come into agreement with what we want to do.

So our Giver is good because it wants our spouse to be happy and bad because it is willing to make us unhappy to accomplish it. Our Taker is bad because it is willing to make our spouse unhappy to make sure we are happy but it is good because it wants us to be happy. One protects our spouse from us and the other protects us from ourselves.

Once POJA is brought to the relationship, both Giver and Taker are kept fulfilled in each decision since our Giver is satisfied because a solution that fulfills POJA makes our spouse happy. But our Taker is also satisfied because the same solution makes us happy at the same time. So learning to follow POJA ensures that we are both happy, both Giver and Taker are satisfied with every transaction and that neither of us has to strive to gain more in an effort to balance the transaction. It turns us from the actions of giving and taking to giving and getting and so both our Giver and our Taker are fully satisfied with the outcome.

We can keep our Taker at bay short term in order to accomplish the goal of making Love Bank deposits and so pushing our spouse from Withdrawal or Conflict toward Intimacy. But long term, allowing our Giver to run all negotiations is a really bad idea, just as bad as allowing our Taker to run all interactions between our spouses and ourselves. Giving is a good thing. Letting our Giver always have free reign is not good for our marriage. We DO have to give to our spouse. We do NOT have to stop our Taker from being involved in order to do that. It is possible to satisfy our Taker while also letting our Giver give freely as long as we are following POJA.

....

What Mark said

Of course. He knows everything. And he says exactly what you and I said but with many more words.

That is excellent post, Mark.
All Characteristics of the ID, Ego and Superego-...if I remember correctly.
Only one is present at birth,(ID?- someone help me here) but all three are developed into the adult.

Barbie,

You're side note is very important when taken within the context of your opening question(s), and I am about to 2x4 you.

You run with "Givers" because you can sympathize with each other about how much you GIVE. (surprise!)

You told us your H is a "Taker" and you are a "Giver" despite the fact that you are learning Marriagbuilders concepts... and from that learning you should be aware that we are each a combination of both Giver & Taker and that we should strive to (respectfully) use both in our marriages to meet our spouse's ENs and also to ensure we keep resentment at bay by getting our needs met as well.

You posted this thread / question(s) because you wanted some sort of comfort: Your H scored his happiness in your marriage at 7,5. You wanted an explanation for that which did not involve failure to meet his ENs on your part since you spent two entire decades GIVING and GIVING and GIVING.



Here's what you wanted from this thread:
He is just less satisfied / unsatisfied because he's a Taker and that's just how takers are.



DJ!

None of this helps your marriage. Your H gave his honest account of his overall happiness in your Marriage. The score was 7.5 If you are not satisified with that score you don't need an analysis of your H's innate propensity to be more critical of intimate relationships or the liklihood that he is just naturally a generally unhappy person. You need to look at yourself / your behavior in the Marriage and see where you may have been off target in terms of meeting ENs.


ETA: Hopefully, Mark will return and post a very long comment repeating what I just said.

Well, respectively I hope Mark does not. I hope it is plain that I was being honest and posing an honest question.

One that is valid, is part of MB and has gotten some excellent responses.

This thread was started as a question about takers and givers. I had no solid notion of where it was going to lead, but it has brought out some pretty origional thoughts. It has also matured the way I think about it.

I thank you very much for your concerns (and 2 x 4's) about me, but if you don't mind, I would rather the topic stay to the question posed.

I have tried to keep the line of questions/answers going, but it has been derailed at least three times now.

If I wanted to feel better, I would have simply asked for support. Most people here are pretty good at that.

I may be wrong, but I find most of your reply a DJ.

What good does any of this analysis do? He rated it a 7.5.

What are you going to do so he rates it higher?

Are you interested in the answer to that question?

Not saying my values should be your values, so take what you find useful and ignore the rest.

We all have a giver and a take. We are not givers OR takers, we are givers AND takers.

Your husband rates the marriage lower than you. Are you interested in doing what it takes so he would rate the marriage a 9.5?

Have you asked him what would make this a 9.5 marriage for him?
Have you started doing those things, or stopped doing the things that lower his rating of the marriage?

From looking at what Dr Harley has written, that's largely what this website and what Dr Harley's methods are about. They are not about spouses putting one another into convenient to describe boxes. The MB method is about ending LB behavior and performing those acts that meet their spouses greatest emotional needs.

Has your husband expressed an burning desire to be categorized as a giver or taker and having that discussed on-line?

If so, then this thread is a step in the right direction, IMO. If not, then I suggest this sort of thinking may result in his satisfaction number dropping, not rising based on what you are discussing here.

Thoughts?

Barbie,

Do you believe me now that someone else has asked the same questions and made some of the same observations?

I had to post that 2x4 to you because of what I saw - an attempted analysis of why your H rated his satisfaction at a 7.5 which has (until now) been devoid of any discussion about what you can do to raise that score.

are you asking or telling?

No, my H does not read MB. Thinks there are "zelots" here.

I can only think about my rating- very high. My H (as nice as he is) had/has many traits that I find annoying- but everyone (including me!- fer shame)has those traits. I rated the M higher, but I was not rating him, I was thinking about daily life, common goals things like that.

Sounds funny, but I respected his right to be the person he is... I did not see it as a reflection of me (or the marriage.)

Yes, I would like his rating to be higher. He thinks his number is high. It seems lacking to me, but as he told me, that is my opinion.

Yes, he has told me what would make him happier, I have to decide if ther is POJA. Especially re: fairness and balance.

He does not read MB. But, no I would not think he would like to be labeled.

I think it is important to understand the taker and the giver
and the role they play in a relationship. I know how mine goes, and it has been the first positive insight to the dynamics of our relationship that I have had in a long time.

And no, it is not a condemnation of him or me. It is just realising my motivation for my actions.