I posted on Emotional Needs but thought maybe its more appropriate here.

Haven’t posted in awhile but have lurked here nearly everyday picking up gems along the journey. I’ve read the material on the web site, bought and read the books along with many others, tried marriage counseling and individual counseling and am still stuck in what now appears to be a situation that cannot or will not change.

Even though I have plan A’ed my rear end off my H has done very little but take. Over the last few months I have noticed that my H has been very negative whenever discussion about marriges comes up. Not our marriage, other peoples. Our D and her longtime boyfriend who recently bought a house together have been talking very seriously about getting married. My H’s counsel to our D is “why get married, it’s really not necessary”. One night when we were our having drinks with friends our regular waitress announced that she and her boyfriend were getting married he tried hard to talk her out of it saying “you don’t need to get married, you can feel just as secure with a good lawyer”. Needless to say these comments and many like them have made me feel like he either doesn’t believe in marriage or is just plain sour on marriage in general. What is baffling to me is the degree of his negativity given the fact that he gets all his needs filled while I’m running on empty. I am not a demanding person at all. I don’t LB, don’t make demands on his time and don’t make any financial demands.

Last weekend when my H made a negative comment about marriage (we happened to be watching the news and there was a spot on about the Scott Peterson trial and he said “see, if he wouldn’t have gotten married in the first place none of this would have happened!”) I asked him why he seemed to have such a negative attitude toward marriage. I asked him if he felt the same way about our marriage. His explanation went round and round in circles. I asked him if he could tell me “when” he thought it was a good idea for people to get married. He explained that people could get the same security from marriage by hiring a good lawyer to put together contracts to make the 2 parties feel secure. I said “what about love?”. He had no answer. He only said that he really didn’t like having conversations “like this”, which is his way of saying “I’m done talking”.

I have been hanging on the fence of leaving this relationship for some time. The big problem that I have is “I love this man”. I asked him if he was happy and he said “no”. I haven’t been happy for some time now but continue to hold out hope for improvement. I felt like this talk we were having was a turning point for me. Here was my H of nearly 27 years telling me that he didn’t respect the institution of marriage, saw few valid reasons for it and oh by the way wasn’t happy (even with all the work I have done).

During our talk my H explained that one of the problems he is having is that he doesn’t want to feel guilty about being selfish. For example he doesn’t want to feel guilty if he goes golfing 3 days a week or goes out for drinks after work 2-3 nights during a week. And he doesn’t like feeling like he needs to keep me informed if he will be late, etc. This took me by complete surprise because I never make demands on his time, I NEVER say anything about his golfing or drinks with his friends. I told him this and he acknowledged that was true but he still feels guilty and he doesn’t want to feel that way. I asked him if he could tell me why he thinks feels guilty if I don’t have anything to do with it. He said because he knows he is selfish but just doesn’t want to feel guilty about being selfish. What???? This is nuts, I get punished for his guilty feelings. The other thing that my H keeps bringing up is that he sees me as being much more successful than he is (I earn a lot more). Big deal. I couldn’t do his job any more than he could do mine, mine just pays more. He seems totally hung up on this. In fact after his A he demanded that we separate our finances so that he would “have his own money”. There was always money, he just never paid any attention to where it went when we were raising the kids.

Our relationship is nearly completely void of any SF. I have made many many requests to have my need for SF fulfilled. He does nothing. There is almost no intimacy whatsoever. This is killing me.

At this point in our conversation I told my H that I felt that I needed to make a selfish request. I told him that I wanted us to try marriage counseling again. I told him that what we were doing on our own didn’t seem to be working and that 3 years after dDay that I had hoped that we would be a lot further along than we are. At this point he held me in his arms and told me that he didn't see my request as selfish at all. I didn’t ask for an answer right away, in fact I asked him to think about it for 24 hours (I was going to Minneapolis for the weekend to visit our son and would return on Sunday afternoon) I asked to talk about it again Sunday evening.

On Sunday eve I asked if he had an opportunity to give my request some consideration. He said he had and that he has decided that he will NOT go to marriage counseling as he “doesn’t want to sit there and tell a stranger about his feelings”. I explained that I was very concerned that from our progress thus far it didn’t appear to me that we could do this on our own. So that’s it. He is unwilling to meet any of my needs even when I tell him how very important they are to me. Even when I implore him to engage. He says he knows he is selfish and just wants that to be ok with me.

What really confuses me is that when we were talking he tells me that he loves me. How can that possibly be true? How can a man love his wife and refuse her most basic needs?

Plan A has not worked for me and surely it shouldn’t take 3 years. I know that he is not involved in an A now, I’ve made sure that I know whats going on.

So I guess my question is: Am I just doing this wrong? Under what circumstances does plan A fail?

Plan A is not intended to be a three year long thing...

Please check out the following posts:
Zorweb's Plan A post and

Bramblerose's Plan A post

I hope these posts help you.

Cali

Okay, if you are serious about giving your M one more chance, then I would recommend a true Plan A for the next 3 months.

You say you've been doing Plan A, but if so, WS would feel like his needs are being met. You feel as if you are meeting his needs, but it may be the trap that many of us fall into. We fulfill the needs that *we* want fulfilled. We are not really listening to our partners.

Has WS filled out the EN questionaire? Have you evaluated what his top ENs are?

Finally, what is the status of the A? When did it end? It sounds like WS is still in withdrawal. Plan A is fine for the short-term, but at some point the WS needs to get on-board or recover never begins.

You are an angel, but I don't know how anyone can Plan A for 3 years. I had a hard enough time with 4 1/2 months.

Your WS feel guilty if he goes golfing or hangs out with his buddies 3x/week, even though you are okay with it. Perhaps he is feeling that he'd rather want to spend the time with you and his family. Another thought popped into my brain: perhaps he wants you to want him to stay home. Not sure, just a wild guess.

When he is home, is it a pleasant atmosphere? Do you LB? What do you enjoy doing together?

It is strange that these 'selfish' feelings are coming out after 27 years of M, but perhaps this is kind of a mid-life crisis. Perhaps he feels that he has been 'giving' his whole life, he now wants something for himself. See if he can relate that idea.

I believe alot of people have an idea of what their life should be like and when they look up after so many years, they are very disappointed with where they are.

My FWS is like that. He is very ambitious and I'm happy with our little family in the suburbs. He wants to make a mark on the world. I'm happy if my daughter is happy. We are just different.

Interesting. We are in the same situation. I make more than FWS. It has never seemed to bother him, though. But the important thing is that it may be no big deal to us, but it may be a big deal to our partners. If so, we have to take it seriously.

Just by chance, is your FWS a more senstivie type? That is my FWS. Although he loves SF, he prefers having it with an emotional connection. I recommend you work on your emotional intimacy.

I also recommend you sign up for Retrouvaille.

If, after you've done a true Plan A for 3 months, your FWS still refuses to engage in your M, you could feel you've done everything in your power to save your M. ((hugs))

Ibc

Thanks for the reply. My H has verbalized his EN but refuses to fill out the EN questionnaire. I printed it out for him and asked him to fill it out so that I could better understand what his needs are so that I could work toward filling them. He said he would fill it out but just never does. I have asked him, gently, about it a couple of times and he just acknowledges that he didn’t fill it out, end of subject. He does however say that he feels that I am filling his needs. He also acknowledges that he is not doing a very good job of filling my needs.

He says that he “wants to be selfish” just doesn’t want to feel guilty about it.

Your WS feel guilty if he goes golfing or hangs out with his buddies 3x/week, even though you are okay with it. Perhaps he is feeling that he'd rather want to spend the time with you and his family. Another thought popped into my brain: perhaps he wants you to want him to stay home.

Actually I don’t think that his preference would be to spend time with me. He says that he knows that is “how he should feel” but that he doesn’t feel that way, hence the guilt. He knows that I want to spend time with him, I try to engage him regularly, not nagging or overly persistent however. He has told me many times that the things he likes involve either motorcycles or golf, that’s it. If I suggest anything else he’s not interested. Even vacations, if we go on a vacation together it needs to be somewhere that he can golf at least every other day or so. Don’t even suggest that I golf with him, I’ve tried that too. Even took golf lessons so that I at least wouldn’t embarrass him. He takes his golf very seriously and says that I am not good enough to golf because I slow the game down and people behind us might get frustrated. What about me? Why do I count less than the strangers behind me on a golf course?

I feel like my once very loving H has become a selfish jerk.

I believe alot of people have an idea of what their life should be like and when they look up after so many years, they are very disappointed with where they are.

I think you are absolutely correct. I also think that my H would be less disappointed if I were less successful.

Our home is a quiet peaceful place. It’s just my H and I as both our children are grown and gone. I do not LB, ever. Sometimes I wonder if he would feel less guilty if I did LB.

Just by chance, is your FWS a more senstivie type? That is my FWS. Although he loves SF, he prefers having it with an emotional connection. I recommend you work on your emotional intimacy.

You know he used to be the sensitive type. Not anymore. In fact he even told me that he didn’t want to “make love” but would rather just f@#*. Wow, that blew me away. That made me feel like he didn’t want an emotional connection with me at all. I can honestly say that nearly every time we are intimate it doesn’t feel like love at all, more like a release of aggression.

Most days I think that he just wants to be single although he says he doesn’t. Maybe he just thinks that he “should” want to be married after 27 years together, who knows.

I think you may be right about the mid-life crisis but this has got to be the longest mid-life crisis on record. One thing my H said recently has really got me baffled. He said “I want to dominate”. I think he defines me as the dominate one because of the job that I have. We work for the same company, in the same department. He has worked there for 5 years, me for almost 19 years. I have worked hard and have gotten quite far up the corporate ladder and am respected for my contribution. Yesterday I was in his work area and was going to stop in and say “hi” but saw that he was meeting with someone and didn’t want to interrupt so I didn’t. Later he said “I heard you were in our office and didn’t stop to say hi”, he asked why and I told him. He said “it’s not often a big wig comes to our office and it would have been nice if you at least said hi”. I explained that I was trying to respect that it looked like he was busy and I didn’t want to interrupt. He said it wouldn’t have been an interruption, I apologized and said next time I would pop in for a quick hello. He seemed really put off by my not interrupting him. How do you interpret this?

Sometimes I think he is just plain jealous of my success. I would much rather have him be proud and supportive. He continually diminishes what I do. Often when he has introduced me to someone new he will say, “this is my wife Kaitlee, she’s a section chair which means she has lots of people to do her job for her. The reality is that I work my buns off and am responsible for many other people as well. He knows this and acknowledges it in private but makes me sound like a overpaid exec to other people. Can anyone help me understand the hidden meaning behind the things he says and the way he is acting?

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by Kaitlee:
<strong>
Sometimes I think he is just plain jealous of my success. I would much rather have him be proud and supportive. He continually diminishes what I do. Often when he has introduced me to someone new he will say, “this is my wife Kaitlee, she’s a section chair which means she has lots of people to do her job for her. The reality is that I work my buns off and am responsible for many other people as well. He knows this and acknowledges it in private but makes me sound like a overpaid exec to other people. Can anyone help me understand the hidden meaning behind the things he says and the way he is acting? </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I feel that your H is jealous of your success as well. As I see it, the problem lies within your H's view of roles in your M and his inadequacies due to your success. Maybe if you could find ways to boost his ego maybe it would lessen his anxieties and heighten his perceptions of himself. This is tricky because I'm not sure if you can control how he sees himself. This doesn't seem fair at all that you should have to stroke his ego for him to respect your success and not be intimidated by your accomplishments, but since a mate is a friend first, ask yourself what would you do for a friend who felt somewhat "LEFT BEHIND" as you lit up the charts? All this being said, it's just my opinion on how I see it from sitting way over here. If you can help him boost his self respect he will feel more of a connection to you and then he might see his golfing as some of his accomplished strengths and feel in some way sharing that with you shows he is acomplished in other ways besides professionally.

Take Care and don't lose hope.