Make a thoughtful request. Negotiate it. Respectfully persuade him:

"H, I would love it if you would confront this guy. It would make me feel valued, and defended. How would you feel about calling him up (writing him a letter?) (going to see him?) and explaining to him why he's losing our business and will never see us again?"

(Here we go!)

Make a call? Write a letter? And if horndog grease monkey had fired a pistol at hubby and missed, would a strongly worded e-mail have been required?

Like it or not WE jointly make the environment we inhabit. Based on a whole lot of "don't dare be uncivilized" mindsets he encounters, the scumbag has a "risk/reward" calculation that balances "admittedly small chance of HNC agreeing" against "no chance of any negative consequences", so he took a shot. Why not? It was a freebie!

Don't worry folks, there are still a small contingent of us "neanderthals" out here, doing our best to keep the barbarians at least somewhat in line. You folks can relax. We'll do the dirty work while you all yawn and "tsk, tsk" at us!

Though written for a more violent issue, the "Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdog" allegory applies here as well.

Thank you guys.

I'm struggling with how to express what I wanted, I don't want to judge him or make him feel bad. I'm the fighter of the two of us, and he's the one more likely to let things go. But, I want him to want to take care of it.

This is the easy part, and it comes right out of Marriage Builders: "How would you feel about ... ?"


This is the hard part, at least for many women. BE SPECIFIC ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT. Don't say "take care of it," because that's not specific. You have an emotional need here, and are feeling frustrated that it is not met, and if you want your husband to meet it, you are going to have to make specific suggestions about how he can do that. He doesn't feel what you feel, and so he can't feel what would "take care of it," so you have to tell him.

Do you want him to tell the mechanic off? Embarrass the guy publicly somehow? Get him fired? What specific actions on your husband's part could make you feel cared for in this situation.

Prisca and I are sitting side by side reading your thread, and we don't know what you want your husband to do. She commented that she's a woman, and she doesn't know. For some women, firing the mechanic would be enough to "take care of it"; for others, more might be required. Prisca got hit on last week and all she needed emotionally was to talk to me about it.

So draw your husband a map and tell him what you need to have this need met.

my H is VERY passive agressive and I know he would NEVER confront another man if this happened to me. some men just arent confident to stand up to other people and would rather just avoid the confrontation the address it.

Didn't you say that your husband was going yo tell the guy that it's not cool what he did and he's taking his business elsewhere? It seems while he's not going to rant and rave,he is going to say something to the guy and not financially support him anymore.

The way your post comes off it seems you want a physical altercation or for your husband to go confront him in an aggressive manner.

I think what would make the most angry about this is this guy is an acquaintance of you and your husband. That's really insulting.

Sounds like your husband is in a no-win situation. If he gets angry and has an Angry Outburst, he's certainly not building a good marriage. But if he's not angry about this, he is also wrong.

I agree with the others, clearly state what is the win-win solution and see if he will discuss and/or implement it.

Why not POJA what you would like to see happen? But that means negotiating and finding something you BOTH are enthusiastic about.

But sitting here, coming to us about how he's not meeting your standard before you've tried any sort of negotiation with him is simply setting him and your marriage up for some level of failure.

On a lighter note, just tell him you want him to club you over the head and drag you back to his cave and ravage you. Of course, first he will have to scream savagely at all the other cavemen, stand fiercely tall and beat his chest to warn off all other predators before he hides you away to keep all for himself.

He might just be fine with role-playing that out at home.

I also don't understand what this means. "Take care of it" can mean different things to different people. Do you want the mechanic to join Jimmy Hoffa? To have a black eye? To be yelled at? To be told that this is not acceptable? All of these are examples of "taking care of it". I am a non-violent person and would lean towards the latter, and that in NO way would indicate that I am not protective of my spouse, just that I don't like violence or yelling. Others thrive on exactly that. It's not fair for you to demand a reaction from your H that is not in his character, to me that would be bordering on Selfish Demands. Now, if he thought that there is no reason for you to be upset and that you all should still be buddies and hang out, that's different - but that is not the case.

Personally I feel that you are using your H as a fall guy for something else, but I can't figure out what.

AGG

Some of the recent responses on this thread disturb me. They accuse Hopeful of doing something she hasn't done - like asking her H to have a physical altercation and an angry outburst, coming to us about how he's not meeting her standard "before she's tried any sort of negotiation with him", demanding something from her spouse that is not in his nature and setting him up to fail. The accusations against her are getting wilder and wilder when she hasn't done any of those things.

According to her posts, she HAS been negotiating with her H about this and he has made his position clear:

DH has actually lovebusted HER by telling her that she should not be so upset over the situation. I'm surprised that those who think Hopeful is at fault for making a demand (which she does not appear to have done) have not commented on her H's response to her expression of upset. Telling a spouse that they should not feel the way they feel is a terrible DJ.

Hopeful DID try to negotiate. She asked him to "tell the guy off" and he refused. See here:

"What was said last night" was was SHE said to the mechanic when she declined his kind offer. DH hadn't said anything to the mechanic and, at the time of Hopeful's post, made it clear that he had no intention of doing so. He told her she was "giving it more attention that it deserves". He was telling her how to feel, and telling her that, apart from not going back to that mechanic, he was not going to get involved. Why is she getting the flak for expressing her unhappiness at his lack of concern for her feelings here on MB?

We should remember the context, also: this man is not just their mechanic - someone with whom they interact only for business reasons - but "somewhat of a friend". It is true that married women can and do get "hit upon" and I think most of us learn to deal with it at the time, and move on. Like Prisca, we might feel satisfied with complaining about it to our husbands but we do not expect them to confront every man who does this. But when this is "somewhat of a friend" it's a bit more serious. A "somewhat" friend (I understand that this is not a good friend, but he is more than a stranger) propositioned H's wife for sex, and H tells her she should not be upset over the situation, it is not his job to tell the guy off and she is giving the insult more attention than it deserves because she wants him to tell the man off?

On this thread, I see a woman who has tried negotiating to get her H to speak to the man, who has met the response from him that she should not feel as upset over being propositioned by a friend as she does, and who is being accused here on MB of not negotiating, not making herself clear, making a selfish demand that her H beat the guy up and using her H for a fall guy.

I am shocked.

I hope you're not including me!

I feel like I "get" what hopeful wants. She admittedly is the confrontational one in the relationship, and as one of those myself, I get the need to feel like someone else will protect you, that you don't have to do it by yourself. It gets tiresome. We're wimmin, we want to be protected, even IF we can do it ourselves.

I think she should let him know just how neanderthal he would have to be to make her feel protected in that primal way. And then negotiate the ways he is comfortable doing that. They have negotiated to the lowest common (get rid of the guy); having him beat the mechanic up is not a good idea (jail); changing his feelings is out (SD, DJ); we've got a primal need to express. You man, me woman kind of stuff. The whole common law/wedding planned stuff probably plays into this. She wants to be his property more than she will ever admit out loud,because it goes against what she thought before. <<<armchair psychiatry, yr welcome, lol.

I suggested she write down what she would like from her DH and post it here for feedback, because Dr. H recommends this at times. Because she was having a tough time telling her DH how she felt.

Do you think this isn't a good idea?

I agree her DH shouldn't tell her not to feel that way. That isn't MB.

Brainy, I'm not at all arguing against her writing down what she needs from her H, but that was not my point.

My point is that she HAS told him what she would like him to do, which is to speak to the mechanic and tell him WHY they are moving their business. She said that here. I quoted it above. Here it is again:

She told him that, and she told us that, and yet it keeps being said that she has not told him clearly what she woud like.

CWMI, I can't see where this took place:

Somehow, this thread has taken off with the idea that she asked her H to beat up the mechanic, when I cannot see that she did any such thing. She told us what she asked for. She asked her H to tell the man that they are offended by what he proposed and tell him that they won't be bringing their car back for service because of his insult to Hopeful. Her H won't do that, and that is what is upsetting her.

I can see why she is upset. If things were managed H's way, then last night H paid for the work on the car and said nothing about the sex proposal - from a "somewhat friend" of theirs. If their car is like most, it won't need a service or any treatment for six months, and maybe not for a year (like mine). Only when 9 months or 18 months have passed and the mechanic hasn't seen them again might it possibly cross his mind that something is up. Most likely, he'll send a card saying "your car is due for a service", he'll get no response and they will fade from his memory. Nothing will ever have been said to him about his conduct towards Hopeful, Hopeful's H and his own girlfriend/new mother of his child.

I'm really bad at basic MB 101 stuff, evidenced by the mess I've made of my own marriage, so I'm not sure what Dr Harley would say should be done next. It may be that, having clearly asked H to speak to the mechanic (which she did) and having received the reply "no I won't" (which he gave), Hopeful should leave the topic for good. Perhaps asking him again is where a SD would come in, because that would be pressurising him. If she sulked and showed upset at not getting her first request met, that would definitely be making a SD under the guise of a request.

But as yet, we haven't heard that she has demanded, DJd or asked her H to risk jail by beating a another man. My post was expressing my amazement at where all that had come from, and why she facing those accusations after what she wrote.

Oh I misunderstood. I thought she was having trouble telling her DH how she felt. My bad.

That's why I suggested her writing it down. I see where you brought up that she already had. Thanks for pointing that out.

About beating up the mechanic I didn't go there and so I don't know about that.

Brainy, my reason for bring that up was not just that it is a DJ - after all, if he's not using MB then that won't have mattered to him - but that it explains her H's response. He says that he isn't going to get involved and that the solution to the problem is for her not to feel that way. That is the solution that he is working with.

So I'm not, of course, saying that she shouldn't write down her request for him to speak to the mechanic. I'm suggesting that since she made a spoken request for him to do so and he responded that she shouldn't feel that way, that the problem is not that she hasn't expressed herself clearly but that he has rejected her request as invalid - she shouldn't feel that way.

I see somewhat of a negotiation taking place where she expressed her feelings about it, and he said they would drop the mechanic. So NC has been established moving forward. But Hopeful is not enthusiastically agreeing to this, she wants more.

It's probably society, but we assume she means blood.

*I* assume she means feelings...didn't she say that, she wants her husband to be outraged or some such? You can't negotiate feelings, MB101. Only actions. I am picturing a guy, who doesn't want to say anything, just pay the bill and go, trying to bluster the muster to declare, "Leave my woman alone!" only trying to sound like, idk, Schwarzenegger, and ending up sounding like Woody Allen. You just can't expect Woody to play well in an Arnold role.

She did tell him what she wanted, but when he told her that she shouldn't feel offended and was giving it way more attention than it deserved and he would not get involved, she was unhappy and could not express to him why this felt like a lack of care.

It wasn't the initial request (to speak to the mechanic) that was her problem, it was H's reaction that she subsequently struggled with. She came here to ask whether we understood how she felt about H's response - to see whether she was being unreasonable in being disappointed that H wouldn't speak to a "somewhat friend" who asked her for sex.

Perhaps the MB answer is for her to let it go, because a request should not be pushed and argued for, because then it becomes a demand.

After reading the beginning of this thread last night, NG and I were walking and a man gave NG a second look...and the first one was a little too long.

Turns out he knew her from somewhere professional and just didn't recognize her in her street clothes. They exchanged niceties and she introduced me and away we went.

I had a bat in my hand because we were going to the park with D11. I half joked afterwards about what I was going to do with the bat after the guy didn't stop looking at my fiance.

Today NG thanked me and said she felt protected and safe with me.

Women like it when a man stands up for them.

opt

Sugar,

So she needs help explaining to her DH how his not getting involved made her feel? That's what we need to help her with? Then help them POJA it?

Am I correct?