My taker is really getting angry. I am becoming very upset with my H. The situation is that i am married for 2 and a half years and have a 10 month old baby, about a year ago my husband told me that he was feeling so empty and by that time he was depressed and confused. All that time i tried to save our marriage, even forcing him to go to 2 therapist, but what happened? he left therapy both times arguing that there is nothing to do in our marriage, he does not love me anymore. He also decided to separate our finance and assign a percentage for each one to support our house and our baby, the rest of the money we earn is for anything each one of us want (we do not save anymore for our home). Afterwards he decided that we could not live anymore without the love he felt for me when we were just married and said that we have to separate. Here i have to say that we don't have sex for 6 months, but we still sleep in the same room and in the same bed (¿?)<BR>OK, i was very hurt with all of this and at the begining i couldn't even imagine to live without him, but i accept his feelings and was agree to separate. So about a month and a half ago we fixed a date for him to leave our house, because my H didn't want to go right away. <BR>Then as all the things seems to be on its way i stopped trying to make him fall in love with me, so i began to do the things the best i could. I do not fight anymore, i attend him at home, i take care of my baby almost alone (my parents help me here, taking care of my baby all the week)i can say that even i work out i become something like a good (¿?) housewife.<BR>What happened? my husband is still in our house, he is a little more kind with me but i feel it is because the situation is very confortable for him. I am feeling that i am doing everything and all i get is to have a good roomate, i am afraid that if i talk to him about these feelings and this situation he will tell me again "I do not love you anymore as i used to and without that love what we have is all we can have, so i have to go and we can stay as very good friends for our baby" <BR>All of this is upseting me so much, I WANT A REAL MARRIAGE and i do not know if with my actual attitude he is thinking that we are becoming good friends or he is falling in love again?<BR>I want to negotiate with him many things, like sharing housework, taking care of our baby together, etc.<BR>I do not know if this is the right time to do this, am i taking him from the withdrawal stage to the conflict one? How can i notice that? Am i in the right way? or maybe it is better to put the damocles sword over his head and force him to decide if he will stay or he will go? and if he decide to stay he must follow certain rules? Do i have to put his things outside and tell him that he must leave the house right now? When can i have a really husband? I think that my TAKER is really upset for all this situation.<BR>Please help me with your advice

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by trapito:<BR><B>Then as all the things seems to be on its way i stopped trying to make him fall in love with me, so i began to do the things the best i could. I do not fight anymore, i attend him at home, i take care of my baby almost alone (my parents help me here, taking care of my baby all the week)i can say that even i work out i become something like a good (¿?) housewife.<BR>What happened? my husband is still in our house, he is a little more kind with me ...</B><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>I'm not sure that you realized that by doing this (being nice) you were basically following <B>Dr. Harley's</B> concept he calls <B>Leading the Other Back to Intimacy</B>. Here is a quote from the article about this...<P>"If you set a good example by meeting your spouse's needs first, alas, that usually means that your own needs are met last. Your Taker is not pleased with this arrangement, and may try to sabotage it. You will need to make a deliberate and patient effort to override the Taker's instinct to retreat back to fighting and name-calling. But if you resist that instinct to argue, and instead focus attention on meeting your spouse's needs, your spouse will be encouraged to meet your needs. When both your needs and your spouse's needs are finally met, the struggle is over. You will have restored Intimacy."<P>The rest of the article can be found at <A HREF="http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi3620_state.html" TARGET=_blank>http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi3620_state.html</A> .<P>Doing this can cause your husband to enter a frame of mind where he is willing to negotiate meeting your needs in return for your meeting his. <P>I am not sure how long you have been doing this for, but it might be worthwhile to try doing it for reasonable long period of time. When you feel he has softened up, try to approach him with <B>Dr. Harley's</B> questionaires. <B>Dr. Harley</B> suggests starting with the <B>Love Busters</B> questionaire ( <A HREF="http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi4120_lovebustq.html" TARGET=_blank>http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi4120_lovebustq.html</A> ), and then doing the <B>Emotional Needs</B> questionaire ( <A HREF="http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi4110_emndsq.html" TARGET=_blank>http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi4110_emndsq.html</A> ) . Using these you <I>both</I> can work on not doing the things that make each other unhappy, and doing the things that do make each other happy.<P>Good Luck!<P><BR><p>[This message has been edited by felix18 (edited April 30, 2000).]