Hill, you sound like you're making great progress. My family has a habit of making witty, but very sarcastic remarks. Ultimately it's mean-spirited and hurts people's feelings. I've had to retrain myself out of that, perhaps its the same for you.

On the honey-do thing, it might help to respond immediately to the request with something like "yeah, I notice the x is broken. I need to get parts from the hardware store to fix it. Can this wait until the weekend (or whenever)?" Her response will give you a clue as to the urgency of the thing.

We have a whiteboard for grocery store requests, maybe the honeydo list could be something like that?

Daisy, my personal thread is in the recovery forum. Feel free to post any time.

I was just thinking about my own habit of stewing, Hill.

The problem isn't analyzing, or overanalyzing, its taking a path before analysis is complete, or faulty analysis guided by faulty logic.

You have the proper first step down; tell your wife what is going on. If you need time to think, tell her so. If your thoughts end up in bad places, stop, write it down, and move on. Come back later, and think about your analysis; is this logical, emotional, reactive, probable?

Eliminate conclusions based on positive criteria, and THEN share your conclusion with your wife. It seems your previous strategy was worst possible outcome oriented.

Yes I'm trying to retrain myself out of the world of sarcasm. I think there is a time and a place for sarcasm, but not really as a primary style of communication. As far as the list goes, if she agrees enthusiastically to placing time and dates on requests from each other is there any potential issues you see?

My analysis was typically both emotional and reactive, if not illogical. For example if my wife is grumpy when I get home I jump straight over any possible conclusion but that of, "my wife is mad at me for no reason, and the entire night is ruined!" This is emotional, reactive, and illogical. The proper conclusion is that of, "my wife had a bad day with kids and I need to empathize with her situation. Furthermore if I empathize with her situation and take steps to relieve that her stress, the night might not only be pleasant, but maybe even, really, really, fun."

So I believe Dr Harley recommends taking one EN category and then writing out the many things we like within each category? So to take Affection for an example, one might do it like this?

Affection:

-Meaningful hugs when I leave for work
-Holding hands while on the couch
-Kisses on the back of the neck
-Massaging my shoulders during a long day

Is that specific enough in your minds, or is it better to go into more detail to maximize confidence in my wife's desire to meet those needs?

What is "meaningful"? Don't leave any room for misunderstanding. What may be meaningful for her, may be nothing to you.

Sorry that is a little inside talk between me and Tgrace. A complaint of mine that has been around as long as I can remember was me hugging my wife and her dropping her arms to her side, not hugging me back. This isn't something new, been around as long as I can remember. I told her that I love hugs where she hugs me back with a squeeze which I termed "meaningful". She agreed and has done it several times sense, but it is a habit she'll have to work on developing.

Oh, hogwash dude.

Meaningful?

How about "actual."

- ACTUAL hugs.

Dropping your arms is not hugging someone, that's allowing someone to hug you. I've done that to FWW because... well I just didn't want to look at her, let alone hug her.


Don't worry, though. That becomes easier as your build LB$ balances.

well said!

The only problem I see with this is that this places the responsibility for ordering your schedule on your wife's head and not yours. You know what all things you need to get done on the weekend. There may be additionally things that she doesn't know about (who knows, wash your hair, research something, etc).

As long as you POJA this it shouldn't be a big issue.

My husband is very sensitive to the sense that I am running his free time. Therefore I'm not very positive about specifying when I want something specificially to be done. I can tell you that if I ask DH to do something, and give a time, and he agrees to it, and he doesn't follow through...that is a LB.

Both "meaningful" and "actual" sound judgmental or borderline judgmental to me. Prisca's sitting here next to me saying it should be worded "This is the way I like to be hugged."

You should start each phrase with "I love it when ..." or "I'd love it if ..." You need to show her, in a positive and respectful way, how you like your EN met.

Telling her to give you a "meaningful" hug or an "actual" hug judges the way she has given you hugs. Instead, be specific, and tell her "I'd love it if, when you give me a hug, you wrap your arms around me and squeeze." Don't label it meaningful, or any other term. Just explain it.

That is subjective. This may be what dropping your arms means to you, but not necessarily what it means to someone else. When my dad hugs me, my arms drop, and I melt into his embrace like a little girl. And my dad feels "hugged." Very, very subjective.

I hesitate to say that this is all "semantics" at this point, but I totally understand where both of you are saying. I need to be certain that I don't DJ my wife by explaining to her how her hugs may or may not be "meaningful" in my mind. Instead I need to approach it with, "It would be great when you hug me that you wrap both arms around my waste and hold on for about 10-15 seconds." That is what I would love to have. Traditionally its been a arms at the side, then kind of a push away after 2 seconds. This isn't something that has happened in the last year, its been as long as I've known her. I'm not sure if it is proper anymore to analyze why, or even if it matters. I just come from a big "bear hug" type of family, so in my mind, anything but that doesn't feel so meaningful, you know? It DOESN'T mean that her hugs are not meaningful in anyway however, just a complaint of mine that I likely asked her improperly.

Things are going really, really well. Tonight we have a SF date which she brought up last night. I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say I wasn't expecting for it to be pushed off for some reason or another. For now let's just assume that it will happen. I want to make sure I do everything in my power and utilize everything in my body language so that she feels ZERO pressure about. In the past I suppose I'd get a bit too excited and maybe self-destruct a bit. Not today.

Awkward day all day today. Nothing clicked I felt those old feelings of walking on egg shells most of the day. I think both of us hit lazy and DJs started slipping out. No zingers but just the subtle stuff that leaves you feeling exhausted at end of day.

I initiated conversation today when it felt weird and I felt shot down most of the time. She did mention that "we shouldn't always point out DJs". Not sure why. Tomorrow we agreed to a new day tomorrow.

Hi Hill, some days are just harder than others. The nice thing is tomorrow is always a new day.

That's why.

I'm not sure what she might have heard or might be feeling, but our Marriage Builders coach (assigned to us after we went to the MB seminar) told both Prisca and I a number of times that very few couples can successfully navigate a discussion where DJs are pointed out on the spot, and strongly recommended that we just make note of them on the DJ worksheet and give each other the worksheet once a week.

Need some help. Yesterday was awkward. I feel that my wife made several comments that although technically not a DJ, the tone changes the meaning. When I bring it up I get, "I didn't mean anything by it" type replies. She denies anything if the sort and throws the words back in my face as proof that she was not disrespectful. I brought up again a comment this morning which made me feel bad. She got mad and said, "well MB doesn't work then!". I need help because I'm scared. She doesn't like me to stew, so I bring up my feelings and she doesn't like that either. I feel stuck either direction I go, and I'm afraid of "messing up" which I know makes things worse. I'd love to reset but the comments just keep slipping in which makes me feel bad again. As it stands right now I'm scared to talk to my wife.

This is one of the reasons it's dangerous to bring up DJs on the fly. The temptation is to argue that it's not a disrespectful judgment.

Plus, no matter how disrespectful your wife is, she doesn't want to be talking about DJs all the time, even if she's doing them all the time. Once a week is realistically about all people can take. So getting a written worksheet once a week is a lot safer than being told a DJ happened every time it happened.

What are you guys doing to continue to dig into the Marriage Builders material? There is definitely some material in Love Busters that will help get across the idea that we need to take it seriously when our spouse feels disrespected, even if we disagree, but it is a DJ for you to try to educate Grace on that fact and it would be far better for her to come across it herself in reading the material.

Left for work, we both agreed not a good idea to talk. Djs flying. I told her I was frustrated that no matter what I say she rejects it. Last thing I said during our discussion was, "it would be great if you could reread the dj section again today.". What am I gonna do? You know me I'll be on the site all day learning and reading. She us frustrated and so am I and one if things I'd like to POJA with her is a reset exercise. This would be something we both do that us full of affection when we find ourselves how we are today.