Remember rule number one for you, Hill:

Calm down.


Okay, you have got to get to the point where

NO MATTER WHAT SHE DOES

you do not commit one DJ, EVER.

You have got to get to the point where even if she DJs you, you do not DJ her.

One of the fundamental things I learned last year that was a big revelation for me was that abuse does not justify abuse. Disrespectful judgments are marital abuse. It will make it easier for Grace to feel positively about you, your marriage, and the Marriage Builders program when she knows that you are going to protect her from you abusing her NO MATTER WHAT, even if she slips.

If you can't work that out, I would seriously get on the phone with Steve Harley ALONE and ask him for some help.


It would probably be a good idea for you to do that, too. In fact, the three abuse chapters in Love Busters: SDs, DJs, AOs (because they are all related). And the SD, DJ, and AO sections on this site under Basic Concepts AND under the Q&A section. And maybe search around for some old radio shows on the topic, too.

I am betting the number one thing that might help you is to practice what Dr. Harley recommends to control Angry Outbursts: practice learning to relax in response to frustration. Get by yourself for a few minutes, a few times every day, turn out the lights, close your eyes, and relax every muscle in your body. Then after you've done this for a few days, start following up on the relaxation by thinking about a frustrating situation WHILE STAYING RELAXED. Think about the situation and practice staying relaxed while thinking about a trigger that frustrates you.

Over time this will help you learn to keep your cool.


If you let even one single DJ fly, and you did, then the way to dig out of this hole STARTS with you going to her and apologizing to her and not making any reference at this point to her side of it. Any reference you make to her side of it will be perceived as disrespectful on her part and will invalidate your apology and will prevent this from working.

You've done damage, now is time for damage control.

You abused her (you were disrespectful).

Your abuse was not justified by the fact that she was abusive.

Keep the issue of her abuse and your abuse separate. Work on your abuse: apologizing for it, atoning for it, eliminating it. This is the only path to a better marriage in which she will WANT to keep improving her side as well.


I don't think she's likely to want to negotiate anything right now. And if she did agree to this, it would likely become a trap for her: next time this happens, you might feel like it's time to do the reset exercise, and she might feel too wounded to go through with it, and if you feel frustrated about that you might abuse her; you will already have the adrenaline flowing through your system and will be likely to lose control.

Get a short circuiting exercise going for YOURSELF: some way to reset YOURSELF, calm down, relax, disperse the excitement and frustration and adrenaline flowing through your system. Focus on your own side of this because our tendency is always to incorrectly magnify our partner's faults and minimize our own. Apologize for what you've done and offer to do something nice for her to make up for it. And take NO for an answer if that is how she feels right now; just offer again later, until she feels better.

I saw a great post on this forum last week about Disrespectful Judgments:

http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/u...in=163599&Number=2508857#Post2508857

It might be helpful for you to switch the genders around and reread it that way.

Also, are you still listening to the radio program? Dr. Harley talks about SDs, DJs, and AOs practically every week. I can't tell you how helpful it's been for me to hear him keeping me straight frequently.

You've said this before but it is so hard to implement. Often times DJ's involve tone and are hard to recognize. Many times I recognize the obvious ones, but sometimes the not so obvious ones take a bit longer. What I do know is that when I'm feeling bad about a comment that my wife makes it is almost always because it is a DJ, not an SD or AO.

Ok just apologized for the DJ and told her I really want to hang out with her tonight. Not sure what yet I'd like to do to make up for it, but I'll do that as well, just need a bit more time to plan while at the office. I'm an emotional person and I feel like my wife knows how to push my buttons at will. I hate that about me. I have been taking deep breath's at times, but that typically only gets me through the first few. As the day progresses and I'm feeling wronged or neglected, it becomes harder and harder for me to control my emotions. I am working on that. I listen to MB Radio every day including a rebroadcast of Friday's show on the way to work.

I think the worksheet actually makes dealing with that easier! You have some time to think it over and decide exactly what it is that you found disrespectful, and you can include that on the worksheet. As opposed to trying to tell her right then, when you may not know exactly why something bothered you, and you may be feeling frustrated and likely to make a mistake.

Dr. Harley's been handing out this assignment to couples for something like three decades, I think. There must be something to doing it that way.

If a DJ involves tone, you can put that in your description on the worksheet. Some of the DJs that Prisca and I have noted for each other have been nonverbal.

Remember the goal here is not to make her account for every DJ but to help her learn to protect you by not having them.

All the more reason to start using the forms instead of talking about DJs on the spot.

It's a lot easier to be respectful and control your emotions using the forms, too -- you can edit yourself 3 or 4 times if you need to before showing your spouse what you wrote.

Don't discuss the forms. Don't argue about what is written, about whether or not they are REALLY DJs or how it was all just a misunderstanding. You respectfully write down what she said, how she said it, and how you felt. Do so with the mindset of helping her take care of you, NOT with the mindset of showing her how wrong she is.

Allow her to do the same.

Great, you are moving in the right direction! Most women like for their husbands to take the initiative and plan something SPECIFIC and make preparations themselves, so keep that in mind.


That's one of the things that is going to change if you hang around here long enough AND IF you keep doing the work that is involved. The relaxation will help. Recognizing that you alone are responsible for deciding to have your own AOs, DJs, and SDs is going to help even more. This is the single biggest factor in overcoming this.


Be proactive: practice relaxing when nothing's wrong.

Deep breaths are good, but add relaxing your muscles as well. From toe to scalp.


What you are actually doing is feeding your emotions by dwelling on what's wrong in your frustration. You make the frustration a habit and you entrench habits of response that are not good for your marriage.

I suggest you dwell instead on the plan from this program: eliminating DJs and other abusive love busters entirely, never giving yourself any slack for committing one, always recognizing that no matter what your wife does you do not have to respond with demands, disrespect, or anger. Dwell on the fact that you probably underestimate the seriousness of your own demands, disrespect, and anger, and that once they are eliminated your marriage will probably get a lot better.


Keep it up! Harley's advice always seems to be timely for me.

Don't forget you can send him and Joyce a question to answer on the air. They send you a free book, too. One of the long-timers here brags that she built her whole Marriage Builders library out of free books from asking questions on the radio show.

If you are ok taking the time with me, I'm trying to get a grasp of what is a LB as well as what my EN's are. I am having a hard time getting in touch with what my feelings represent. I know when I feel bad, but I frequently don't know why. I have a problem with DJs, SDs, and AOs. I can recognize them and I'm trying really hard to eliminate them, but there are other things that I think I need or want from my wife but I'm just not sure.

Independent Behavior/Affection: I know this has both LBs and ENs, but they are intertwined and I don't yet know how to separate them. My wife is a person that is always moving. She's very active and has a lot of "hobbies" that she enjoys doing and has a ton of friends. That way this is all tied into affection is because I still have feelings of neglect that frequently are felt when my wife is doing all of her many things. To her credit she has done a much better job in returning my phone calls, texts, emails not so much. I used to think she didn't return them because she wasn't interested in me. I think there is a little bit of that, but more so it is because she is busy with kids, friends, hobbies, etc. To me it doesn't matter if she is busy, all I feel is that she just doesn't have a desire nor the time. I feel like I'm "fit in" to my wife's schedule and that is not a good feeling to have. I love affection. I love to give and receive affection. I can think of 7-8 things yesterday that involved my expressing my affection for my wife. The opposite is not true however. I don't say this to "keep score", I say this because there is a whole inside of me that feels hurt that my wife doesn't "want" to show me much affection, and also that doesn't receive affection from me with enthusiasm I guess? I'm not sure what I mean exactly, but from my perspective, when I show my wife affection she seems indifferent to it. Its like I could be rubbing her shoulders or not rubbing her shoulders and she's totally fine either way. I'm not sure what this means, while I feel this way about it, but I feel compelled to figure it out because its driving me crazy.

SF: I think I've tip toed around this subject with my wife. Truth is I want sex all of the time. I think about it a lot and I don't think I've really every gotten my "fill" of it from my wife with the exception of when we were dating. I'll be honest, I'm lacking confidence in asking for fear of rejection I suppose. I think about being with my wife during the day and often at night before we go to bed. In other words, I'm very much into her physically and I know that I often feel better about our relationship when regular sex is there. I guess I feel selfish for asking her for it? I think part of me wants her to want it, which is just like the affection thing. I've mentioned a few times about maybe having sex twice a week or something, but I still feel like this isn't really in my hands at all and I'm at her mercy 99% of the time. I'd love some perspective on the subject.

Admiration/DJs: Up to this point I've never had this on my list of important EN's. I'm starting to rethink that. I feel that my wife focuses on the things I'm not good at rather than the things I am good at. I suppose this is human nature. I've often felt that although my wife doesn't add it to the end of a sentence, that her tone reflects a "stupid" or "dummy" when it relates to certain things. For example she might say, "Oh well I wanted for you to drill holes on the back of those flower pots, not the bottom." The statement itself is perfectly fine, but the tone means you could rephrase it to, "Oh well I wanted for you to drill holes on the back of those flower pots, not the bottom, dummmy!" She'll slip in a "I'm proud of you for working so hard, being a great businessman," or similar but not very often. I'm starting to think I want to be admired and if I was admired by my wife I might have more confidence in a lot of parts in our marriage?

"The opposite is not true however. I don't say this to "keep score", I say this because there is a whole inside of me that feels hurt that my wife doesn't "want" to show me much affection, and also that doesn't receive affection from me with enthusiasm I guess? I'm not sure what I mean exactly, but from my perspective, when I show my wife affection she seems indifferent to it. Its like I could be rubbing her shoulders or not rubbing her shoulders and she's totally fine either way. I'm not sure what this means, while I feel this way about it, but I feel compelled to figure it out because its driving me crazy."

Maybe you still haven't it on the things she likes? You still seem to be judging a lot based on what you like and expect. For example - my partner likes to be lightly stroked (like caressed on the arm) ( He tells me he likes it). I don't like that most of the time - I prefer a much firmer touch. The light stroking is actually irritating to me, so I need to remind him to apply more pressure when he forgets (as he does often because we all tend to do what we like). If he were going to judge my worthiness based on my reaction to what he likes we would be in constant conflict.

I can appreciate that line of thinking. Part of my frustration is just no knowing what my wife wants or doesn't want, likes or dislikes. I'm glad you and your spouse know how each other likes to be touched. For us it seems that I like to be touched but my wife doesn't or is at least doesn't care either way. I sent her a long email on Friday asking about a few of these things and expressed to her that I "want to learn how to float your boat." I hope to hear back from her soon on the subject as I'm sure it will be enlightening.

Hill, one or two problems at a time, please! The path to resolving all of this is here on the Marriage Builders plan, but the first step is eliminating control and abusive behavior from the marriage. Your wife will probably feel a lot better about trying to meet your emotional needs when you get passed this obstacle; right now I will bet that since she was just lately heard saying "Marriage Builders doesn't work" that she doesn't want to discuss any of this.

The way to discuss all of the above is going to be as a REQUEST and with NEGOTIATION. But discussing it now, before eliminating your own abusive behaviors, translates emotionally for her as "I will stop abusing you when you start doing these things for me."

To make one point perfectly clear: women feel a LOT better about sex when they are in a good romantic relationship with their lover. That relationship is precluded when love busters are sitting around in the recent past, as they are today. You would be in a much better spot right now if you had dealt with her DJs calmly and had not replied with DJs of your own. That is a difference she will notice immediately!

I know that I feel the path to a Love-Filled marriage is hear on MB, I can't speak for my wife. If I may go over something because it might enlighten you to how things occur or don't occur and how I react to them. I almost never "act" upon things with my wife, I "react" instead. Maybe this is the crux of the problem. I "react" to a DJ by her towards me and if I'm on my game I'll response politely even if it hurts me. I'll "react" to feeling neglected. I "react" to her mood(when she is grumpy). I "react" to what she says or her facial expression if I forget something(This happened this morning once and yesterday.) I "react" to me sending her an important email or text and not getting a response. I "react" to pretty much everything which is probably one reason I feel insecure, and completely without control in this marriage. The insecurity causes me to walk on egg shells and second guess everything I say to her. Like I said I'm just plain scared to mess up.

Here is an example. My wife told me earlier in the day that her folks would be out of town this morning. I heard it and made a mental note. So this morning she thought it would be good if I went to work(I was gonna stay home and help her since she tweaked her back). We were discussing how to pick up one of the kids, and I said just brainstorming, "Well can your Dad pick her up?" I realized as soon as I said it that it wasn't possible, but before I had a chance, she said in a tone that I can't convey but that I know to have the "dummy" attached to it, "Hill I told you yesterday they were gonna be gone..." So I immediate said sorry 8 times because I know she doesn't like it when I forget things. So what do I do? I "react" by going into "egg shell" mode. She doesn't like when I do that either but yet when she is irritated at me I get put in a position that I believe to be impossible to navigate. Once we are in this "stage" inevitably things fall apart. I really wished my wife were a little easier on me and more tolerant of annoying habits or things that irritate her because as soon as she reaches that point I feel she remains resentful and make me "pay" by a series of DJ's throughout the day. I forgot something yesterday morning as well and I believe was made to pay all day for my mistake. I feel like she is my boss honestly right now and even though I aim to please her, its never good enough. Feeling pretty discouraged right now, need to rally though before I get home tonight.

Hey Hill .. I see your having a not so good day. Just focus on your response and make sure your doing YOUR best to avoid the Djs and AOs and SD's.

Did you watch those vids i posted a few pages back? I also mentioned them to your wife in her thread. They are very uplifting and informational.


Hang in there Hill .. you seem to be moving into the "down" side of your cycle ... recognize it and move positive memories of you and your wife into the for front of your memory while you make an effort to diffuse your negative feelings. Your both still learning ... so do not be too hard on yourselves.


MNG

Where is your Love Buster plan for DJs, Hilltopper? This is the reason you made it ... review it, and do not allow yourself an excuse to slide.

It is not your wife's fault that you "react." Use your plan. Stop reacting.

A reminder:

My wife has the videos I believe, for me they were removed before they got modded, but thank you!

Yes, review that plan. Find out if this round of DJs from you are caused by you not keeping to your plan, or if this round of DJs from you are caused by scenarios that your plan doesn't cover. Then you will need to either extend your plan, or go back to following it.

Wife is on couch giving me silent treatment. Very hard to deal with. Not sure what to do when she does this. Very, very common.