Word.

Or realize that you are being a bit unreasonable (back to my example of the peas).

Why are you saying this here and not over on CWMI's thread?

Traveling jobs are not good for any marriage, but they can be handled easily by strong marriages. It's just that most people don't have the kind of marriages that can work with travel and heavy work schedules, and many of those are the ones using travel and work as an escape from the unhappiness at home.

But someone has to work the emergency rooms, fly airliners, pilot ships, drill oil in the ocean, and defend out country from its enemies. Just make sure you and your spouse work your way into it, and stop when it gets to be the least burden on the one left behind. My father took a 75% cut in income to quit traveling four nights a week. We children never felt the difference in money, but were a lot happier moving from a suburb to a ranch. Sometimes you both may have to sacrifice TEMPORARILY by long hours and travel, but it is fine as long as it is not an independent decision, but is negotiated and agreed to as the only way around a bump in the road.

Because we are discussing independent behavior here. The donut situation is just one example of many that have been tossed out on this thread.

I didn't think there was a rule about not letting a thought from one thread spill over into another.

That is like saying drunk driving can be easily handled by a good driver. Dr Harley does not recommend traveling jobs because they are so destructive to marriages. It simply is not true they can be handled easily and is most certainly not recommended by Marriage.

Traveling jobs are disasterous to even the most solid of marriages and Dr Harley calls them an "invitation to an affair." Not even Dr Harley and Joyce travel apart for this very reason and I think you would agree they have a damn solid marriage.

I found out the hard way how hard traveling is on even a good marriage. When my H and I were transferred to another city a few years ago, I would drive down and hotel it for 3 nights a week. We would be in constant contact all day long. This strained our marriage terribly and it would take us 2-3 days to get used to being around each other again. There was a noticable detachment after just 3 days that took days to overcome. We immediately noticed the strain and made arrangements for him to come with me to the hotel during the week until our new was ready and we could move.

I think folks who are NOT in intimate, romantic marriages might not notice this detachment, hence the notion that it is "easily handled." It is not easily handled in a marriage where the spouses are very intimate.

She is discussing CWMI over here. This thread is about a general principle.

Melody, my wife and I have a lot of close friends with solid, happy marriages where the spouse is a fighter pilot, or airline pilot, or staff level officer deployed in the infantry. And we know a bunch who traveled a lot and are divorced. The difference is that the successful ones already had a strong identity when they married. Their spouses knew they were marrying someone who was a doctor, was a pilot, was a high-level engineer or architect, and these spouses supported these careers without sacrificing themselves. There is no resentment, no jealousy, because they also had support the other way for whatever they wanted to become.

Many of them have transitioned through several careers - fighter pilot to astronaut, bomber pilot to airline pilot, pilot to doctor, SAHM to attorney, etc. Their marriages are what I referred to in a post above as 100%/100% partnership. It's not for everyone; most people CAN'T do it.

I agree that is the exception, and of course, you only can go by what they report to you. Dr Harley, on the other hand actually TESTS spouses for the level of romantic love so when he says this harms marriages, he is making that claim based on personality tests and on the statistical data. [military families and truck drivers have a very high divorce rate]


I have a strong identity and a solid career. We both do. We didn't have any resentments or jealousy, rather the issue was one of emotional detachment. Couples, no matter how strong their identity grow detached when they don't live together. They might stay married and even be happy, but it is unlikely that they have a romantic marriage.

Emotional detachment is the signal that you need to spend more time together.

Travel quit working for us because of emotional detachment, independent behavior on both our parts, which led to territorial mentalities. I also did not like missing out on my childrens' school activities, and not being able to do the DS things for my wife. Our weekends were filled with chores.

I cut way back on my travel, and when I have had to travel, I have tried to take work close enough to home (100 miles) that I can come home every night, and be there in time for supper most nights. What we didn't do correctly, because we didn't know where it was going, was to discuss and negotiate the changes - so even when I did more of what my wife said she wanted, she acted surprised as if I was committing IB. This left me very frustrated, until I figured it out and started explaining what I was thinking of doing next to adjust my work around being able to serve her needs better.

What I am saying is that even well-intentioned behavior can be perceived as IB if it involves change. Change is stressful to most people, and they require lots of explanation and buy in.

A friend of mine who had to travel a lot did the same thing, slowed down, made radical changes without real discussion. He just told his wife, "I can't take this anymore, we're not happy, and I am going to take something local with less stress, so we can spend more time together." Sounds good, right? They had no debt, lots of money, college savings, retirement taken care of. But they had not really discussed it per the POJA, so when he actually found a job making 1/10 of his former income, she freaked out, became abusive, and filed for divorce.

Dr. Harley is correct, but remember that he sees a population sample which is entirely comprised of couples experiencing troubled marriages.

He rarely sees those who are applying his principles and have the maturity and marital vision to be happy because their heavy careers are serving their marriage. That is the nature of a doctor's work: they know the sick quite well.

Dr. Harley figured out how to fix the sick marriages by 15 years of trial and error, and by studying healthy marriages. Gottman, Wasserman, and Popcak also came to the conclusion that the failure of marriage counseling was due to not studying successful marriages, so the psychology community knew very little about what made marriages work.

I guess I'm just lucky that my wife just don't care about the minutia. The shirt thing struck a chord for me because once upon a time I had a favorite shirt. It was a shirt given to me by my best friend before he committed suicide. It was quite an ugly shirt as it had to be sewn back together numerous times (I had this shirt for a good 12 years). My wife would always be gracious enough to sew it back together and joke that one day we'd have to have a funeral for the shirt.My wife also has a pair of scrubs that I think are the ugliest things I�ve ever seen. I would never ever tell her that I�d appreciate it if she didn�t wear those to work because they embarrass me. Because, well, I�m not her parent and it doesn�t affect me what she�s wearing at work.

It would cause a lot of resentment if she were to tell me that she didn't want me wearing the shirt when we were apart from each other because she thought it was ugly. So if we have a situation where I don't want to wear the shirt because it disregards her feelings yet everytime I look in the closet I'm upset that she doesn't want me to wear the shiirt, what do we do then? At this point, doesn't someone have to compromise (sacrifice)? It seems like there would come an every once in awhile where something couuldnt' be POJAed

On the flipside, my wife has a couple of shirts that her grandmother gave her before she passed away. I think these shirts are gawd awful and remind me of something an 80 year would wear. I don't care if she wears them when I'm not around her. She knows how I feel about them and doesn't wear them when we're out in public together. But I think it'd be extremely disrespectful to tell someone how to dress or to voice your disaproval for them wearing a certain item of clothing when the two people are apart.

And, yes, I realize this goes further than this. I was just picking on the shirt thing because it reminded me of my favorite shirt and then my grandfather who if he didn't wear a certain style of clothing, his girlfriend was very upset. He hated weawring the clothing but she wouldn't agree to any other style of clothing because she felt it looked best on him and his clothes and his style embarrased her.

My H and I have an agreement on this. He can wear whatever shirt he wants, as long as he remembers to actually wear a shirt. He's prone to trying to go out wearing nothing but an old undershirt, and that's where I draw the line.

But...he also sees studies, which indicate the same thing. Military families and truck drivers, for example have astronomical divorce rates. So, you can't say that this doesnt apply to all marriages. Dr Harley certainly does not say that.

Even the best marriages suffer under separation.

But you are her husband and your feelings matter. Would you tell her that they embarrass you if they did? Because you are not doing her any favors if you don't. If those pants bother you, that means her appearance is causing love bank withdrawals and you should tell her. A complaint is an irritation in a bad marriage and an opportunity for improvement in a good marriage.

My H is embarrassed when I go out in my jogging suit that he says makes me look like a "walmart shopper." I appreciate his telling me so I have an opportunity to change my clothes.

KT, sucking it up and not telling your spouse when something makes you unhappy is a renters tactic that leads to unhappy marriages. Check this out: Complaining in Marriage


No, the solution is to stop wearing the shirt if it bothers your spouse. This is not the "sacrifice" that Dr Harley refers to in his articles. I already addressed this in my posts so I won't rewrite it.

This is what Harley says about situations like this:

Ahhhh...that's because she wanted him to WANT to do the dishes...and he didn't WANT to. If I recall he said that he would do them...didn't WANT to..but he would. That wasn't gonna work with her because she wanted him to WANT to do the dishes.

But hey...I could be mistaken....it's been known to happen...

committed

My husband doesn't even know where are dishes are, much less WANT to do the dishes!!

Well, having seen you in the "People who shop at Walmart" video I sympathise with your H.

We need to nuke you silly foreigners!!

He's in a world of hurt if you aren't there then.

commie

One word...Aquanet....

Walmart keeps the shelves stocked with that combustible...oooops...I mean hairspray.