Hey sunnydaze -- I ran across this post from Pepperband on my thread last night which I thought might resonate with you.



Thanks for your post -- I'm not handling things well. I hope your terrific weekend was followed by a good week.

In response to the title of the thread, and the vets can correct me if I'm wrong, I would actually suggest reading Four Guidelines for Successful Negotiations=.

See if you can get him on board with MB, even if it's just the Articles, Q&A, and Questionnaires here.

DW and I spent an hour each day either reading an article together and discussing our feelings about them, filling out Q's and reviewing them together, recently reading these forums, and we have ordered SAA and HNHNfP.

Everything we have gone over is in a binder, which we plan to put a wedding photo on.

The Q's (other than the PHQ) we plan to redo quarterly.

A new idea that we are going to implement is "love journals." The idea is to write about things that have happened that we like or dislike, good or bad feelings, or things related to our relationship - and to do so weekly at a minimum, and set time aside each week to share our journals with each other.

I think just learning has hit upon a key point here - if he reacts negatively to most everything you say, is it because of your affair or is it because of HOW you communicate? Also, why do you feel the need to complain about FS? Are you in financial difficulty or do you just feel he doesn't make enough money to please you?

I have been offline for awhile but I appreciate all the responses.

Seekingbalance, Thank you so much for the link. That is exactly what I am contending with. My giver was out full force for most of our marriage. Unfortunately now that I am attempting to bring my taker to negotiations, my DH doesn't always view this as a postitive. What I keep explaining is that if I am "in love" with him then ALL of his actions will affect me...good and bad. When I was in withdrawl, in some ways it was easier for him as I wasn't bothered by IB or even some DJ's.

Headheldhigh, I admire your stuggle and appreciate your advice. I really like the binder idea. We are getting there but still struggle with the radical honesty needed to truly answer those questionaries. He is very bothered when he isn't rated the hightest in all of my needs.

Americiajin, I agree we have a huge communication problem. Even pre A he was extremely sensitive to anything he took as criticism. Imagine what the A has done to him. He isn't just this way with me, it is work and friends as well. As far as FS, it truly isn't that important to me; however, he spends much more than I do on luxuries and I hate being the one to always say we can't afford that. The cost of living has increased dramatically and our salaries have not. My other concern is the future. The owners of his place of business are in their 60's. They will not continue doing this forever. The other aspect is the hours he works and the time off he (doesn't)receive. This impacts on the whole family. He is uncomfortable setting limits with them but has no problem telling me or the children that he can't do something because of work. I know I sound upset now and while I have been in the past, I have stopped that when discussing this with him.

I think all this advice is combined. When I am in withdrawl and not in love, his choices don't affect me and I am not as hurt. When I am pulled back into conflict, I want more time with him and I want less IB which brings the whole work thing into the spotlight again.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

I think we are married to the same man.


Have you told him that he needs to meet your top five EN's, not ALL of them?

My psychiatrist maintains that H's get 80% of their EN"s met from their W's, and the other 20% met elsewhere, while women get 40% of their EN's from their H's, 40% from their families, and 20% elsewhere (I may not have said that exactly right).

My point is that when his perspective may be "she's meeting 80% of my needs so if I'm not meeting 80% of hers there's a problem" when you really only need him to meet his 40%.

I'm just trying to say the same thing in another way -- you may meet his top 8 EN's so he thinks he needs to meet your top 8 and it scares him that he isn't. Scared men, in my experience, either shut up or get mad.

Does that make sense?


First, I don't think you are being honest with yourself. You were too bothered. He took withdrawals from your Love Bank whether that was really registering to you or not.

"I don't care" is the safest emotional place to be. Caring involves risk, risk involves pain. If you are interacting with someone on a daily basis who repeatedly hurts you, your fight or flight instinct is being constantly triggered, but for whatever reason, you can't definitively do either -- so you "fled" to "I Don't Care Land" and you "fought" with the passive/aggressive weapon of an A.

He may not see bringing your Taker into play as a positive right this moment. But I'll tell you something JL said to me that I keep going back to -- creating a great M is in your H's long term best interests. A little discomfort along the way is worth the end goal.

Being married to a wife who is ignoring her Taker is a pretty comfortable life. The stories I could tell you of then lengths I went to to keep my H happy.....ridiculous. His Taker cheerfully accepted all my sacrifices. Clearly a prescription for disaster.

Of course he's going to resist changing that dynamic.


DrH has a good discussion of this issue in His Needs/Her Needs. I think this is a hard problem.

My H worked ALL the time when the kids were little -- another drug in the prescription for disaster. I know he did it because he was worried about providing for the family, but I also know he did it because he didn't want to help with the kids.


And my H got ALL the goodies. Twenty years later and I can still get mad about it if I put my mind to it. I want you to take that statement seriously. If your Giver continues letting his Taker have all the goodies, your LB will notice, no matter how noble you think you might be in doing so.

To me -- and remember, I know NOTHING -- this boils down to a lifestyle issue and you all are not on the same page. Do you know what you want? Does he know what he wants? Can you sit down and set some long term goals? Can you get some budgeting software and really get down to what's going on financially? I've spent weeks recently entering the last few years of our bank statements into Quicken to do that very thing -- don't have the budgeting software yet though.

I wish I could help you on this. I never figured it out. I didn't even know it needed to be figured out.

Sunnyd,

Been traveling and haven't had time to keep up with the board. Let me offer a slightly different take on the giver/taker. First, show me a man or woman that doesn't like to have all of their needs met. Most of us really do. But, I will tell you something else about men, we NEED to be NEEDED. So a woman that is a total giver isn't really filling our need to be NEEDED is she??? There really needs to be a balance.

When the idea that men need a giver was mentioned, I flash to the classic sterotype of the "southern woman" who plays helpless and lets "her man" take care of her. Meanwhile closer inspection shows a spine of steel :), and cunning mind that knows how to get what she wants. Meanwhile, she is all perfume, fancy dress, batting eyes, and a "my hero" look. Think MEL! When she sees this, I WILL be hearing from her.

Balance girl, that is what is required. Not equal, balance.

Now let's talk about the daughter situation for a moment and I will offer my thoughts for you to consider. You said I can speak as a male and a father who has helped rear several boys and a girl.

Men see discipline differently than women. Men see child rearing differently than women. We respond to situations differently than women. I will say that my W's complaint about my child rearing skills was that I tended to be rather terse and too the point. Not wordy enough in your parlance. I also made it very clear when I was NOT happy with them and what I was not happy about. My W wasn't very fond of that either. It caused problems in the marriage but not major ones.

I say all of this because I thought Gamma stated his view very well and it was mine as well. I will add that fathers have a much harder time dealing with daughters than sons especially as the daughters mature. Hence if anything we will 'talk' too much if we deal with them at all. IN short I would venture to guess that most males feel themselves to be on shaky ground dealing with daughters. Hence your comment to him might well have struck deeper than you realize. However, there is another aspect that you forget, and that most folks (male or female) don't care for backseat drivers. You could have handled the situation, you were there. But, you let him and then expressed dissatisfaction with how he handled it. The odd thing here is that neither of you are probably experts in child rearing but you are his critic.

Couple this with something perhaps you don't realize and you have a problem. What don't you realize? Well I am guessing that you think you A is what bothers your H the most, I mean the physical act of the affair. It has been my observation on this site that what bothers the Bs the most and especially males, is their sense of failure. It will be the hardest thing to overcome in recovery.

Let's list what is probably in his mind about this:

1. He failed to detect for sometime that you were having an affair.

2. He failed to satisfy you in the bedroom.

3. He failed to satisfy you as a husband, friend, and in financial support.

4. He failed to make you happy.

5. Oddly, he probably feels he failed as a father as well.

Whether you think this is right, if this is what is in his head he is going to be very sensitive to you, to your actions, and to your words. He failed to see many things coming before and he doesn't want to fail again.

Hence my earlier comments about positive reinforcement and essentially team building approaches to you expressing what you need from him and how he can please you. You guys need to discuss and plan child rearing, jobs, who does what, and how you/he needs to be loved.

SunnyDaze, my bet is that his focus is on HIS failures a lot more than it is on yours. If you remember that, I think you will be able to effectively get your ideas across in a productive manner.

Think about it.

God Bless,

JL

1. He failed to detect for sometime that you were having an affair[/b].


5. Oddly, he probably feels he failed as a father as well
[b]Whether you think this is right, if this is what is in his head he is going to be very sensitive to you, to your actions, and to your words. He failed to see many things coming before and he doesn't want to fail again.


JL,

Sorry, I haven't figured out this quote thing but these comments are right on. Believe it or not, I do understand these feelings and try my best to take that into consideration. One problem that occurs is that I am an expert on parenting...(not really but I teach parenting classes) I think sometimes I go into teacher mode instead of spouse mode.

Another thing that happens refers to what Seeking Balance said (which I won't even attempt to quote.) When men feel like failures they get angry.

I guess my issue is that I am tired. I felt like I was hand holding and placating and building his self esteem before the A and it was never enough.

Since the A I have returned to that but my patience is running thin. I think if it weren't for my grevious error, I would have lost it before now. Does that make sense?

For years I stuffed my feelings because I didn't want to hurt him. Now I stuff my feelings becaus I hurt him terribly and am feeling so guilty.

All I want is a partner and an equal. We don't always have to agree, in fact, I prefer we don't. I want to share ideas and thoughts without it being taken as a personal assault and without being insulted and degraded in return.

Do I even deserve this after what I did?

Hi SD

Men breathe respect just as women breathe love. It is the very fuel that drives our engines. LOVE we can get by on starvation rations, but RESPECT that is utterly key.

While you are reaching out in love to offer your H opportunities to improve his husbandry or fatherhood, he is certainly hearing these efforts as contempt. we BHs can have a heightened spider sense for potential disrespect after an affair I'm afraid. I know I certainly have. Your affair was the most emasculating thing you could have done to your H other hat using a knife on his manhood. It will have been received as his being voted out of office and usurped by another man. You can explain until you are red in the face that your situation was not that to him, but i suspect like ME he will still feel that he has been assessed in comparison with OM and failed. That he is being TOLERATED by you. The consolation prize.

His behaviour as you report it seems to support this view.

You have to learn how to communicate criticism without it being misinterpretable as contempt by your BH. The book" Love and Respect" my Emerson Eggerichs is useful for this, in conjunction with "His needs, Her needs" by Dr Harley.

You are engaged in the "crazy cycle" right now and need to break it.



I wish your H would come on here. I'd love to help him.

Building on many of the things here, you have to put in more respect than you do "complaints."

We learned the Sandwich technique. For every complaint or negative, you have to sandwich it between two good things.

I.E. I think it's great that you are so willing to spend time with our daughter, even when she is being difficult. If I may make a suggestion, next time, try to deliver the same message with fewer words, it may be easier for her to understand. I'm so thankful that I married you, I'm so fortunate to have a husband like you who is willing to be a great father to his child.

What was delivered in the above example? Praise, a suggestion, and more praise.

Using what was mentioned above, you demonstrated respect, you made a respectful suggestion, and you closed with more respect.

Delivering EVERY message with the goal of demonstrating respect will go a long way. If everything you say is negative, he'll not perceive that he's respected and the cycle will continue.

I ask myself this same question.


I hear you. So tired. Completely burned out. Right back where I started in "I Don't Care Land."

I wish I thought there was an answer to this.

BTW sunny, there is probably an easier way to do the quote thing, but I know this works:

1.open bracket: [
2. type the word quote
3. equals sign: =
4.name of person you are quoting: just_learning
5. close bracket: ]
6. cut & paste the quote
7. open bracket: [
8. backslash: /
9. type the word quote
10. close bracket: ]

In Dr. Harley's terminology, you DON'T criticize, and you DO complain. He's been really harping on this on the radio shows I've been listening to (from about early to mid-September), and that's perfect because that's been mystifying me for a long time.

A complaint is very simple:

"It bothers me when you ..."

That's it. You don't explain why it bothers you. It doesn't matter why it bothers you; what matters is that it does. If you try to explain it, you will invariably come up with expressing an opinion of judgment. Stay away from that!

Now, your spouse may not care enough to change something that bothers you. That is their choice to make, and then you have to react from there. The important thing is to realize that this approach has not failed if it does not immediately secure what you want or need. Practice making the complaints correctly, first.

For what it's worth, I feel manipulated when people use the sandwich technique on me that Enlightened is describing. And I feel awkward and clumsy and manipulative when I try to use it, so I think I do a terrible job of it. But I know it does work for some people.

I do know that while Dr. Harley recommends complaining in marriage, he often recommends saving your complaints for later in specific circumstances. For example, in complaining about annoying behaviors, he does not want the annoying spouse to feel overwhelmed and hopeless. And I think he'd say your complaints do have to occur in an environment where complaints are not happening all the time and admiration (an emotional need) is happening.

Dr. Harley's big on admiration being sincere. I think the reason the sandwich technique feels manipulative when used on me is people have used it with fake praise, in an environment or relationship where positive comments where not the norm. And I've probably done that to other people.

I know what you want. So let me ask you this. Can you not take it personal when your husband brings up the affair?

No.

Since that's the case, it's just as unreasonable to expect your husband not to take things you say personally.

Folks are going to take things personally, period. The question is, what are you going to do to learn to say things in a way that he will take in a positive fashion.

You may have been working hard, but if you were doing the wrong things, the amount of effort will not change the outcome. Working hard on the wrong things will still equal failure.

You may find that working on the right things will eventually be easier than trying to do it the hard way. The problem is, there is no one answer. You have to try techniques and find what works with your H and then stick to the technique that works. That technique may not be your natural tendency, so it will require some additional effort in the beginning to change your approach.

Sunny, I'm surprised noone has posted this column:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5062_qa.html

Read through it looking for the story of S.R. and her husband, which sounds somewhat similar to the situation you are describing.

seekingbalance/saddestwife, I think that article would be good for you, too.

Oh, and from what I've heard, I have to conclude that Dr. Harley does not usually advocate this as a general complaining technique, although he includes it in the article and probably would think it is fine in some situations:

"Listen Buster, do you love me? Do you want me to love you? Do you want to spend the rest of your life with me? If the answers to any of those questions is 'yes' you sure are going about it the wrong way. You are not doing things that I admire, you're doing things that I find disgusting!"

I'd bet dollars to donuts "listen Buster" is wording that originated from Joyce Harley and was included by Dr. Harley.

Have you simply asked your husband how you can present your concerns in a fashion he can hear and will accept without takin them personally, and commit to addressing?

Thanks everyone for your input. It is always good to get a different perspective. Sometimes I feel as if I have done and tried EVERYTHING, only to realize that of course I haven't.

Before coming to MB, I never realized my part in the abusive equation. While my H did the AO's and SD's, I am the queen of the DJ's...that is something I am really addressing. Another thing I am famous for is, when I felt attacked, I would then list his faults. I also do not do that anymore although that one is a bit harder.

Last evening the subject of life support was brought up (H is having a procedure during which he will be put under so paperwork needs to be filled out). Anyway he expressed doubt that I would want him revived if necessary. I was floored. Clearly you all are right about his feelings of worthlessness!

After reassuring him that I most definitely do want him around for as long as possible, he then brought up my feelings a year ago and described them as indifferent. I mentioned that his were as well (although he had boundaries and did not have an affair). He claims that no he adored me and was totally in love with me. He would not even address that he was away 5 out of 7 evenings and when he was home he was in front of the computer. He did not go on family vacations or help with school activities.

Please note, I did NOT bring all that up; however, I was at a loss as to how to address his seemingly rewriting of history? As a WS, it reeks of justification. I don't want to do that but I also don't want to feed his fantasy that he was the doting husband keeping the home fires burning while I was out galivanting. Immediatetly after Dday he was remorseful for his past mistakes. I told him they weren't justification for my A...because they weren't but now he seems to have "forgotten" them.

Markos, I will try your version of complaining. Maybe when he sees that I can be bothered by something without exacting revenge, he will take it in the spirit that I mean it.

Enlightened Ex, I will also try the sandwich technique...we actually discussed that in my parenting classes...just didn't apply it to this situation. I don't think he had a lot of that growing up.

Bob, I have tried to get him to come here. I think your cycle is dead on and it is up to me to break it.

Last night when he began to bring up the affair and I felt myself get angry, I took a deep breath and told him I appreciated that he was in pain and I wanted to make it better for him. I told him he was hurting me and I realize that I deserve it but I would like to work as a team to help him. He seemed to relax after that although he still didn't follow me to bed for several hours and there were many empties when I awoke this morning.

SunnyD,

First about the quotes. I can only tell you what I do. IF I want to move something to another post and quote it I either type {quote} Paste stuff here {/quote}. I used { brackets rather than square ones. You should use the square brackets. If I had used them you would not have seen the commands. You will also notice there is a tool bar on the top of this window with a quotation sign. Click on that and you will see the two commands I just typed past what you want to quote between them.

There is another way and that is to quote directly from the other text and it will add where the quote came from but I find that cumbersome so don't use it. Although it is nice to see where it came from.

Ok, now for some more advice. You said You want my take on how to handle the affair discussion? I'll tell you what used to be common advice on this site a decade or so ago.

We used to advise the WS to bring up the affair themselves. Sit down with your H and say "Honey I want to talk about the affair. I want to know how you are feeling today, and what is bothering you? Then I would like to tell you what is bothering me about my affair? And finally I want to explain to you what I am learning from having had the affair."

If you initiate the discussion you start to normalize his ability to see this affair in a new light. I won't make it right, but you will allow him to begin to learn how to express himself more constructively. You and he MUST learn from this experience and grow from it. So he needs to see and HEAR what you have learned, are learning and hope to learn. He needs to hear that you need his help in coping and that you are more than willing to help him cope. YOu need to express your need for you two to act as a team in addressing this and other things in life.

You are NOT his teacher either in parenting nor in life. You are his partner and he needs to know you need a partner in life, not just his pay check. His response about the life support issue is very predictable and it really more than the affair is a major issue in your marriage and recovery.

My guess is that neither of you really understand what a team really is nor have you two really figured out what the other needs. These are the things you learn from addressing your affair. It is a learning opportunity and one that has opened deep emotional wounds in both of you, but that also allows you two to be open with one another like never before.

Sieze the opportunity SunnyD. You won't regret it.

God Bless,

JL

We can all work on improving our empathy for others. And, when we go through a horrible tragedy we all tend to focus more internally on how we feel and seem even less able to empathize with others.

I bet you H struggles mightily when he shares with you what he needs from you to know that you care for him and that information hurts so much that you instead focus on yourself and how you feel instead of what he is communicating he needs from you.

You committed an A. You do need to own it and to deal with it. It wasn't his fault that you had an A. Obviously he being away from the marriage 5 out of 7 days contributed to a poor marriage but it doesn't make him responsible for the A.

The A can be overcome and you continuing to punish yourself hurts your recovery as it doesn't allow you to empathize with your H. He turned to you and reached out to you when he really needed you and there was too much pain there for you to be able to move forward and support him.

Its not rebuilt in one day or in one moment. But it is in the learning process of understanding how what you do effects the other and vice versa. And we always tend to focus internally on our pain and we often miss completely the pain on the otherside.