New to the forum, 31M, married to my wife for 3 years, and it is falling apart. Well it has been for a while, and I largely ignored it, until she was at the end of her rope. We have 2 children, a 2yo that we have toghther, and an 8yo that I have from a previous marriage.

The biggest problem in our relationship is that after our son was born, I began to expect too much from her, since she was staying home with the kids. She basically catered to my every want, and still I found fault in everything she did. After about a year, we began to argue a lot, and now after two years we are in trouble. She threatens to leave me at least once every two weeks, and she has become very withdrawn at times. We will make up, but after a few days of good, I will become condecending again, or nit pick, or joke around with her and take it too far, until I reach her breaking point.

I need advice on how to contain myself from doing this. I try and make a conscious effort to not do it, but somehow I end up doing it anyway. It may be too late, as she is fed up, but I do not want to give up hope. Any advice will be welcome. Thanks.

The advice on containing yourself is to stop doing it. There is not any special magic to doing it, other than your decision to stop it. If you want your wife to be in love with you then you have to stop doing things that destroy that love.

You might want to start with the book, Lovebusters and follow the lessons in it. From there, go to His Needs, Her Needs and that will give you the skills to restore the love in your marriage.

Did you live together before marriage? Have either of you had any affairs?

We lived together for maybe a month before we got married. Neither of us have had any affairs. I have not read any of the books yet, but I have become familar with many of the concepts on the website. When I see it in print, it seems very simple, but practicing it in real life is more difficult.

Amazing the subconscious � isn�t it? The things we did almost involuntarily, then we look back on it and say � WTH was I thinking?
Well you aren�t thinking. You are reacting. And that is what you need to stop until you can reprogram yourself.

You'll have to get better by going to the other extreme. You need to be OVERLY positive to reshape your negative comebacks to her. It may feel phony at first and she may question it but you can be completely honest with her on why you are being overly positive. �I am reprogramming myself because I have a very flawed reaction to certain situations. It is wrong what I do and I want to change. I need to do this for you and for me. Please bear with me even though it may feel fake or over the top for you. Can I ask that of you?�.

You have to take those subconscious acts and bring them to your conscious level so you can STOP them. Being overly positive will be a way to reprogram that subconscious into being more positive and those will be your first acts instead of all the negative ones.

Around here they call that fake-it-til-you-make-it. But that is usually a phrase used when you�ve lost your love for someone but you�re going to act in a loving way until the feelings of love return.

This is something that I�ve tried and it helps.

Oh and the best way to avoid the reaction is to simply say to yourself STOP no matter how simple the response may seem!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Give yourself some time to formulate a response. Don't just shoot out the first thing that comes to mind.

I tried being overly nice a short time back when things had gotten pretty bad, and it seemed to work. Our relationship started back on the right path, but as soon as things started getting comfortable again, I fell back into my old habits.

Basically she takes care of me, and I start to make small comments about how it wasn't right, or wasn't enough, etc. She kinda shrugs it off at first, then after a while everything sets her off. Somehow I do not see the root of her anger until she blows up, throws her wedding ring at me and says its done. I have the best of intentions, but can't seem to break the cycle.

Unfortunately, I found this site maybe a little too late. I tried to show this to her when I got home from work today. I thought maybe we could try the processes shown, perhaps even find a counselor. She says no, she is done for good this time.

I guess for now I will try to meet her emotional needs, refrain from doing things selfishly, and keep from criticizing her. Hopefully this will be enough.

Well yes, but do you only do things that are easy? If that is the case, then your marriage is probably over. If you can't behave in a way that a spouse finds attractive, any person to whom you are married will quickly fall out of love with you. IT sounds like that has happened here.

If you can't control yourself, you might want to try anger management courses. A good one is Anger Busters.

It is not so much my anger as my nitpicking. I think that I am offering constructive criticism, but it ends up being condescending.

I am willing at this point to do anything to get her back, but she refuses to give me that last chance. I don't really blame her, since I think I have had about 100 "one more chances" by now. She does not believe that I can do anything to erase the hurt that I have caused in the past, nor does she think I will ever change.

Of course she believes that.
She is judging your behavior.
Stop your inappropriate behavior and then after a few weeks she may think , "Hey maybe this isn't another empty promise. He seems
To be changing his behavior"

I'm going to relate something I heard once that I kind of think really describes the way that Marriage Builders works. This instance, to me, is the rare description of a man who knew how to maintain a marriage naturally.

All this is is a marriage proposal. It was a second marriage for him, a third for her. They had been dating and having a great time. And then, he proposed;

I want to marry you.

I don't want to marry you too cook and clean for me; I can hire somebody to do that. I don't want to marry you so we can have sex; I can hire somebody for that, too.

I want to marry you because you make me laugh, and because I am miserable every moment I am away from you. And I want to spend the rest of my life with you.


- and he did. And they laughed and dated just as they had before they married.


Drop, your wife has become a maid and nanny, not your romantic partner. She spends all day dealing with the kids and household, and then has her efforts met with your criticism.

She didn't marry you for you to be a breadwinner and the manager of the housekeeping department.


She married you to have a ROMANTIC partner.


Your marriage is on life support, and I can quite easily guess that one of the VERY FIRST things you should be looking at here is the Policy of Undivided Attention.

As far as your complaints - there is a reason that your attempts to "grin and bear it" failed. Just NOT complaining isn't a solution. FINDING solutions together and AGREEING ENTHUSASTICALLY is the solution to your complaining.

House isn't clean enough? Hire a maid to come in a few days a week.

You DO have to learn to state your concerns RESPECTFULLY though, and I'll wager you have been using Disrespectful Judgements and Selfish Demands instead.


Read through the basic concepts.

Read through the basic concepts...


Read through the basic concepts!

THe funny thing about our relationship is that we had a great romantic relationship. We spent several hours per week talking, cuddling, having fun, etc. As the other aspects of our relationship fell apart, that was still there.

I have been studying the basic concepts, and trying to identify what I need to improve and what needs to be changed. I hope that by doing this it will change her mind, but from where we sit now, she doesn't want to have anything to do with me at all, so I do not have many opportunities to give her undivided attention.

So to share the whole story:

I met my wife in high school, we dated for about a year, then went seperate directions, mainly because her parents were very controlling, and she couldn't do anything. She was kicked out of her house at 18 for getting into a car accident, and moved in with her boyfriends parents. Her and I attempted to reconnect a few times around then, but somehow one of us was always dating someone else.

I met my ex-wife around that time, dated her for 3 years, and then got married. She was pretty cool when we dated, and she moved in the day we got married. From that point forward our marriage began to fall apart immediately. She did nothing around the house, we went from sex a few times a week to maybe once per month, and was not very plesant to be around. She started the arguments that she would be happy if we had kids. Big mistake. Once our daughter was born we fell further apart, as she experienced post-pardum depression. After 4 years of marriage, I caught her cheating. I filed for divorce (03/08), but listened to her plea to give her another chance. She shaped up for maybe 2 months, then it was back to fighing about everything, and she was back chatting with guys online. We filed a second time about a year later (01/09)

I reconnected with my current wife on Facebook while I was going through my divorce. Her name just popped up one day on a friend's page, so I friended her. We met up for a few drinks one night to catch up, and we fell in love with each other at first sight. We took it slow, since I was still going through my divorce.

She met my daughter a week after my divorce was final (07/09). My wife treated her better than her own mother did, and I knew she was right for me. She moved in with me (09/09) because her income had been reduced, and it was getting difficult for her to support her house as well as visiting me. One month later (10/09) we were married.

We had an amazing relationship the first year. We had both been in relationships where we were mistreated. My ex had taken advantage of me, and her ex was an abusive alcoholic. We respected each other, had fun, had a healthy sex life, put the other person's needs ahead of our own, and we were happy!

Everything went downhill once our son was born (10/10) He was born 2 days after our first wedding anniversary. We moved into our new house the week prior, and she had quit work to take care of the kids. My daughter was with us about 40% of the time, but her school was 45 minutes away, so my wife would take her to school. We also were renting her old house out, and I had to evict our renters for non payment around this time.

With her staying home, I expected everything to be done for me, since I was at work. I was also taking care of the rental house, so there were days where I was gone for 14 hours, leaving her with the baby. Unfortunately I did not see the error in my ways until she told me she didn't want me anymore this past summer (08/12). I found the MB site, and studied the basic concepts. I applied them to our marriage, and it seemed to help. However, we fell back into the same ruts again within the past month or so. About 2 weeks ago, she was really nice to me in an attempt to fix our relationship. Instead of responding positively, I complained about how stuff wasn't good enough. We fought on and off, and finally Sunday she had enough when I didnt remember what she said, then accused her of not telling me.

I am trying to show her the MB site, so we can begin to follow this. There are a few letters posted in the Q & A section that might as well be my relationship with the names changed. She wants no part of it, says she refuses to give me another chance, and that she can never recover from the hurt she felt in the past.

Sorry for the rambling ramble, but I find this to be a good release from the anexiety and hurt I am feeling now, as I am on the verge of losing everything that means anything to me.

You need to not only read everything on this site, but order the books HNHN and Lovebusters TODAY. You need to start implementing the MB principles TODAY. Have you read about the states of marriage? Your wife sounds like she is heading out of conflict and into withdrawal. You need to put 110% of your effort into turning this around TODAY.

Have you read about EN's? Do you know what your wife's EN's are? She is likely not going to be cooperative about filling out an EN questionnaire, so you may just have to guess for now.

You need to avoid the lovebusting! Think of it this way. You are trying to get your wife to fall in love with you again. Don't you want that? For your wife to be in love with you? Every time you do something that makes her happy (filling an EN), it makes her fall in love with you more. Every time you do something that makes her unhappy (lovebuster) it takes away from that love. You can do as much as you want to make her happy and make her fall in love with you, but when you are ALSO doing things that take away from that, you are just beating your head against a wall. You want deposits and NO withdrawals.

Someone mentioned UA time. A cornerstone of Dr Harley's program. It is imperitive to schedule UA time. 15 hours to sustain romantic love, 20-25 hours to CREATE romantic love (this is your category).

Come back here and tell us what her EN's are and how you plan to meet them. Also tell us what lovebusters you are engaging in and how you plan to STOP engaging in them. Finally, tell us what your UA schedule for this week looks like.

Remember that UA time is time spent filling the 4 most intimate needs: IC, RC, SF and AF.

Drop,

Step 1). You have to have a no tolerance policy regarding your LoveBusters. If she's that far gone no matter how many deposits you make in her love bank one LB will set you back to square one. If have to find a way to do this or you won't get her back.

Step 2). Find ways to meet her ENs best you can or at least meet the ones she will let you. Find and read the article on Conversation, the friends and enemies of good conversation. Become a great listener.

Step 3). Try to entice her into getting those 20 hours of UA time. This may come after doing Steps 1 and 2 for awhile.

Do this for a very long time. Be polite and be positive around her. Be someone she�d like to be with. Show her what you can be � are going to be. Do this and there's a chance she'll believe your changes are for real this time.

I think I have a realistic idea on where our relationship sits, what ENs exist, and what LoveBusters are being committed:

She is in a state of withdrawl, because she does not want to reconcile right now.

LoveBusters I am guilty of:

Selfish demands. I tend to guilt her into sex when she is not in the mood.
Disrespectful statements: THis is a big one for me. I say a lot of condecending things when I think I am helping. Need to think before I speak
Annoying habits. I tend to not actively listen to what she says, not pay attention to the kids and what they are doing at times, and not clean up after myself. Been making conscious efforts at all of these, still need work on listening better.
Independent behavior. I run every other day, ans sometimes do it when she wants to hang out. Also, I can become preoccuipied with my phone or the internet instead of spending quality time.

As far as her emotional needs, I need to work on the need for intimate converstaion, as I dont want to engage as much as I once did. I need to play a bigger role in domestic support and family committment. Finally, I need to work on admitation. I admire her more than anyone, but I do not show it well.

We have always been great at UA, only recently it went down due to my son staying up late. We cut his nap out, so he goes to bed early again, so we get about 3 hours per night, more on the weekend.

Sounds like some great opportunities for you Drop.

Get busy.

I definitely have my work cut out for me. Reading the information presented on this site has put my actions in perspective.

It is truly amazing how predictable people are...My actions, her actions, and the situation around them can be explained by a few basic concepts!

Yes, the formula is just magical isn't it?

I am also the child of an uber-controlling parent and I am betting that she is especially sensitive to anything that even remotely feels as if you are lecturing or educating her. It does not matter that you do not intend your remarks that way, we trigger very easily. The misery of a childhood when nothing is good enough is really hard to shake off.

Yep. The explanations are simple and quite consistent from one relationship to the next.

What's hard is the implementation when you're trying to do this on your own.

I've been here for over 10 years and still was LB'ing my W. I was too far into my stuff to see where I was going wrong. Now that we're both in MB counseling it is far easier. The lines of communication are open, we are being (or attempting to be) completely honest and open with each other, learning the proper way to negotiate to find that win/win, etc.

You may want to consider hiring one of the counselors here to help you with your LBs. FYI they are Dr. Harley�s son and daughter and they are VERY good at what they do. They�ll help you identify issues further and help you learn alternative behaviors. They�re coaches more than anything. Unlike standard marriage counselors that get you to drum up the past, etc.

They�ll also help you in enticing your W back into the M. I think it would prove extremely helpful for you.

Hi Drop,
You have an opportunity to turn this situation around. There is a shift that needs to begin with you now. I can see it in the concerns you have mentioned several times. You have mentioned your wife seems to have given up. You are worried about her withdrawal. To be sure this is a sad symptom of failures in your marriage. But don't let this symptom of her discouragement dictate your positive actions or create more love busters on your part. You have to react differently to her 'dance' which is a negative feedback loop you have created. Change the dance. When you see something about the way your wife is doing something around the house you do not like, at this point, ask yourself 'what' or 'how' you can help. Take positive action that will help build romance back.