hw, you need to set rules for your conversations so that they do not involved his going over the legal events at work or your talking about how boring your day is. Of course that is not going to be satisfying conversation! Of course it's not going to make you feel romantic!

As markos says, if you were to organise dates where you did something interesting, conversations around the subjects of the dates would arise spontaneously.

I live in a huge city where there is always a lot do to, much of it free. We go for walks around various districts, looking at the architecture that tells so many histories. We go to free art galleries; I am not an art lover, but in a huge, free art gallery like the Tate or the National Gallery there will be exhibitions on themes that we can discuss. We go for walks along the river Thames, where there is street art, skateboarders, street food and buildings associated with the years when London was a trading port. We go for a drive then a walk, where we can see countryside that has been flooded, 11th century ruins, cathedrals and market squares. If we spend money it is on old cinema (a passion of both of ours) or the odd trip to the theatre.

When we do something for a date and then go for a cheap meal or just a non-alcoholic drink in a pub, conversation is effortless. We do not talk about the minutiae of my job because it's obvious to me that anyone on the outside finds talk about one person's job boring. In your shoes, I would try to set a ground rule that each of you must not talk about the things you've mentioned that are tedious. If, after setting up an interesting date, your husband still wants to talk about the legal problems at work, you could use Joyce Harley's strategy of simply saying "I don't want to talk about that. Can we talk about something else?"

If you use 3 or 4 dates to make your week interesting, your boredom would be alleviated and your conversation could become interesting.

This is how you fix that:

Ok, I guess I don't get it:

We go out to dinner: we have to talk about something.
We go to the lake and out on the boat: we have to talk about something
I guess we wouldn't talk if we saw a movie.
If we bowl, we would have to talk about something...

That is about all there is to do in this area. There is a rural museum.

I'm trying to decide what to plan for next weekend. Not sure what I want to do..

Conversation doesn't always have to be about what we are doing in our daily lives. It can be about our thoughts and feelings about life. Do you both read books? Newspapers? The Internet? You can talk about those things and your thoughts about them.

Do you/can you do a Bible study together? We often do our Bible studies together and that gives us a great platform from which to share our ideas. We often discuss MB radio.

How about reading a book together? Back in the days when our daughter was young and we were homeschooling, we would often select a book to read out loud at night. Later, we'd talk about the book events and ideas.

My H loves music and knows a great deal about the various artists and bands. We often take scenic drives and plug in the iPod, and we'd talk about the music that was playing and which ones he liked best and why.

In a recent radio show, Dr. Harley talked about the three ingredients needed for a great marriage. I'll try and find that broadcast, but meanwhile, he said that each spouse needs to meet the needs of the other; each spouse must avoid doing things that hurt the other; AND, and I thought this was really interesting -- the couple must both enjoy their lifestyle.

It sounds to me like you don't really enjoy your lifestyle very much. You are extroverted and would enjoy more social interaction while your H is at work. Your H is enormously stressed by the goings on at his workplace.

Although my H and I have a wonderful and very fulfilling marriage, when my social life slows down too much, I feel a bit discontented and like something is missing from my life. My H meets all of my most important ENs and we spend lots of enjoyable time together and go out on dates and all of that. However, I still like to have the time out with a good friend doing something enjoyable once or twice during the week while he's at work.

You and I have different lives, of course; you're young with kids at home, and I'm an empty-nester and work from home. Sometimes the things I do during the day just aren't quite enough to make my "other" hours, the hours I am away from my H, as enjoyable as I'd like.

So you might try considering together what would make your lifestyle more enjoyable. I used to think, a couple of years ago, that it wouldn't matter where my H and I live as long as we're together. But that's not really altogether true.

If we lived in a place with a lot of loud parties or other irritating neighborhood factors, or if one of us, or both us had stressful unfulfilling jobs, or if we lived in an unsafe area, or we had nothing much interesting to do during our days that felt like we were living with any meaning, then we wouldn't be as happy or as in love as we are right now.

See I'm almost an empty nester. That is part of the problem. I went from homeschooling 3 to homeschooling 1. And she is my social butterfly like me, or like I used to be. I'm working on doing a marriage Bible study with 5 or 6 other couples. It might be the Harley video course. It will be at our home. That said, my husband was so mad at Joyce when I called a couple of years ago that I've tried very hard not to mention their names.. We'll see.

I do have date night type questions, but it just felt so incredibly artificial for me to take out a list of arbitrary questions. Yes, I read marriage books, nonfiction women books...not sure my husband would find that all that interesting.

Yeah, if I could just get him past the "I'm stuck. I can't do anything else" stage that would help. Prisca, I've wondered if I might pm you as there are several other factors that I really don't want to get into on this board.

PMs are disabled on this board.
What other factors are there?

I'm also at a loss as to why he was so mad at Joyce. What did she say that he took offense to?

I cannot go into it on a public board.

She went on and on about what a good husband he was. His comment was that if he was such a good husband then why on earth was I calling into a marriage show?? He was appalled that I called in. I think it completely embarrassed him. Plus they got the part at the end about the mission work wrong. That particular trip, he did take by himself but all the ones before and all the ones after have been as a family and all were with my consent. Anyway, the idea that something private would be talked about in public really bothers him. He has no idea about my posting on these boards. I suppose that is my secret second life...

Many of us have much of our recoveries to thank for bringing our problems to this board. Privacy is the real origin of secret second lives. That is where trouble starts. Talking about things anonymously can hardly be considered a public disclosure. Your husband's extreme sensitivity suggests a much larger vulnerability to your marriage than your need to talk to us.

I guess I just worry about something being used against him. (Nothing illegal or anything like that.) Just the way his mind works.

Troubling.

Is your husband being accused of having an affair/inappropriate relationship with a patient/client?

Oh my goodness, absolutely not... No, in fact it isn't even him which is so frustrating. He is responsible for a man and has been dragged into this mess as his supervisor. He did absolutely nothing wrong which is so frustrating. And no this has absolutely nothing to do with opposite sex stuff at all.

I'm not sure why it is troubling about him not liking my being on the radio show. He is a very private person. He has told NO ONE. I mean NO ONE about what is going on in the office. His partners know and sympathize. I think most of them have been through it. I think 70 percent of people or more in his type of profession go through something like this in the course of their careers, about 14 percent of them a year. ( I guessed 75 percent, but I looked it up and it is 70 percent of people in his specialty have had this happen to them by the time they are 55.) I guess he thought he would be the one who would miss it. Yet he considers it to be a failure and won't even tell our parents about it.

No it is more in the way his mind works.. For example, he isn't sleeping. It might be the outcome of a case. ( Even if his client isn't doing what he or she should..He will still wonder what he could have done better.) It might be that he and my son were working on a model train track and he broke a piece.. Then he discovers the part is out of stock and he spends all night beating himself up about it. He cooks something ( or I do) and he will talk about how it could have been done better, revisiting the subject over and over and over. He asks me about a decision, makes it but then goes back over it 5 or 6 times daily. This has gotten worse since the legal matter started. He honestly cannot let himself be still. I woke up at 5am to find him taking apart our sinks because they were not draining fast enough...

That is all I will say at this point.

This is another good reason to keep your problems on the front burner. If you are complaining to him each day, then he won't show up surprised later that something is a problem to you. He shouldn't be surprised to know that if he refuses to resolve problems with you that you are looking to get some help.

He is using this as another tool to dismiss your complaints and be disrespectful.

Possibly he was embarrassed about the call being on the radio, but his focus on being seen as a good husband illustrates your problem, hw; he does not take your complaints seriously, and thinks you have no right to be making them.

You seem to be the embodiment of the bored 1950s housewife described in Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, originally published in 1963. That and other books were credited with giving voice to a "sick housewife" syndrome that characterised suburban America.

I think that so far, you have been looking at two kinds of solution. The first is making your domestic role ever more professional in order to fill your time - waxing floors, making jam, ferrying your child to her activities - but this hasn't eased your boredom and loneliness. Alternatively, you have considered becoming more independent of your marriage; you have considered (and dismissed) the idea of paid employment, and taking up activities and hobbies that have nothing to do with your home and family. However, I don't think these things will ease your loneliness very much or for very long.

I think the clue is in LongWayFromHome's post; it is in changing your lifestyle, and this can only be done if you husband listens to what you are saying and decides that your happiness is important enough for him to act upon.

I am not suggesting that you work alone to find your own happiness while your husband stays as wedded to and focused on his job. That is not what an MB marriage looks like, and I know that this wouldn't make me happy, and I doubt it would you, either. I am suggesting that it is your total lifestyle, centred around your husband's job and where you live, that is the problem.

I think that change is required on several fronts simultaneously. Your husband's job dominates your lifestyle and takes him away from you; that must change. You do not have a fulfilling occupation during the day, and you dislike homeschooling your daughter; that should change. You seem to be in rural isolation, which would be fine if you loved it, but I don't get the idea that you do; it increases your loneliness and your sense of being at the beck and call of non-drivers whose needs are greater than yours; it would be good if that could change. Your need to home-school, which you dislike doing, also seems to be caused by the environment in which you live.

Your husband seems to spend too much time with the now adult children; that is unnecessary, even though it makes him a "good man" and "good father". He seems to spend time alone with them, without your being present. No wonder you are bored!

Those are not changes that you can do for yourself. Indeed, I'm not suggesting that you do anything that increases your independence from your marriage or increases the separation between you and your husband. These changes need to be done for both of you by both of you, for the good of your joint happiness.

I know you'll tell me that you can't do anything I suggest, and I won't hound you about that. It's just that I can see that the problem with conversation is global, as you suggest in the quote at the top of this post. It won't be cured by your reading an interesting book every week and discussing it with your husband. The problem is much more profound than that.

Exactly. His default DJ (my wife has no right to complain about such a great life) is the crux of the problem. Your problems are not at all insurmountable - in fact they are very, very easy to address.

Your H simply won't. He simply refuses to take your complaints seriously. This is somewhat complicated by the fact that you don't take your own complaints seriously either, which of course encourages his initial mistake. Whenever he suggests it is nonsensical for you to feel unhappy and dull, you kind of agree with him rather than standing your ground. But you must. He is making a critical error when he suggests your feelings can be dismissed. You know you will never successfully do that. Nor should you, even if you could.



Yes but you have a solution - do more things that are fun. It is more than a solution, it is a key emotional need. He needs to sit up and take note of this immovable fact, that is way, way, way more important than his job.

He does not have a solution - he is dismissive of the entire problem.

His job is a five year commitment. You are a lifetime commitment. What fool takes time and effort from their life plan and diverts it toward a short term issue?

The first challenge is getting you to take yourself seriously - why shouldn't you have fun? Are you seriously planning an entirely dull life?

Interesting show today. The lady had a husband who was depressed. Poor gal sounded so worn down... But basically Dr. Harley said that he had to get help and that he couldn't meet her needs. He talked about having her ask him what she could do to meet his. She even talked later about trying to get some of her needs met and gave an example, but Dr. Harley really confused me because he basically just said that she couldn't demand that he do things. ( She was trying to do all the inside stuff and outside chores as well.. Plus I'm sure she just wants fun stuff to do.) He never, ever addressed the fact of how she was going to get her needs met. Only that he was going to get his met...

So I you have a depressed spouse, expecting fun isn't realistic, is it??

I just sent Dr. Harley a question asking him to clarify it.

[quote=indiegirl This is somewhat complicated by the fact that you don't take your own complaints seriously either, which of course encourages his initial mistake.

The first challenge is getting you to take yourself seriously - why shouldn't you have fun? Are you seriously planning an entirely dull life?

[/quote]

I have a really hard time with this. That is what my therapist asked me at our last session. I don't feel like I have a right to my feelings. I feel incredibly guilty for not feeling like I should. I sometimes don't even know what I feel because I feel whatever makes the other person happy is the only option. So I've been trying to journal and pray and really figure out how I feel about things and if they are valid or not...or rather trying to accept them as valid. which you are right. I don't. I think I am being selfish.. I just don't know how not to dismiss them..

Dr. Harley did address this on the show. Did you listen to the whole thing?