I have been married for almost 5 years. These 5 years have been miserable. I brought a child into this marriage and while we were dating my husband was a wonderful father. Now 2 more children later he treats my child unfairly and our other two children wonderfully.<BR>I have talked to him about this many times and even suggested us going to counseling. He will have no part in it. I have told him that if we don't go to counseling that I will leave him and he said that I would be "ignorant" to do so.<BR>We do not have a loving relationship and I am afraid that this will reflect badly on my children. I feel like my only choice is to leave. <BR>His love bank is severely overdrawn. I don't even feel like I love him anymore. I did leave him for a week and he begged me to come back and promised he would change. He has not and I am out of ideas and have exhausted my efforts.<BR>Would divorce be the best thing for me and my children?<P>

YOU go into counseling first on your own. <P>We're not there to see what is happening, and you're too close to the situation to see it. If your H was good with your oldest before, the changes in the relationships amongst you may not be (I should say DEFINITELY ARE NOT) coming entirely from him.<P>I bet there was a downward spiral here--not entirely of his making. How your eldest handled having two new siblings; how you handled your eldest in comparison to them, and in comparison to your husband--all of this has had an effect.<P>Again, we're not here to judge you, and you're not being judged. All that I'm trying to say is that a big problem has grown from a tiny seed ... which could have come from anywhere. So stop being mad at your husband and start being mad at the problem. Although it's obvious that he has a part in it, all of you may play roles in it. The best would be to get in front of a family counselor. <P>It would have been good if your H had not already been tagged as the "miscreant"--any of the other family members could be "pushing his buttons" for a variety of reasons (or no good reason at all)--including you. <P>Right now the challenge to you is to give him some free credits in your love bank. Then get into family counseling to see who might have been embezzling. Another challenge will be that if he doesn't want to go, your going (probably with your kids) must not look like a conspiracy against him.<P>There is reason to hope. Don't throw it away with finger-pointing.

Thank you Sisyphus for your quick reply.<P>I just want to do what I think is best for me and my children. I will go to counseling on my own. I have no problems doing that.<BR>I just get so frustrated with the way things are handled here.<BR>H is downright mean to my child. It is enough to make me walk out the door when it happens and never look back.<BR>Of course, I stay calm as I am always the peacekeeper.<BR>Our problems go way beyond the children though. That just happens to be my main concern. <BR>Let me start by saying that I have always been a wonderful wife. Always keep the house spotless, (Yes, even with 3 kids) Have supper ready when he gets home. Anything he wants me to do I do it. I always found pleasure in doing so. It has never bothered me. BUT, for the past year or so he has been very distant amd even calls me derogatory names in the presence of our children. Once again, I have asked him to stop doing this but it doesn't do any good. And now he is involving our children in the name calling.<BR>I feel this is not a good environment for them.<BR>I am not labeling him the miscreat nor has anyone. I have my faults but I have no qualms in saying that his far outweigh mine.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Whyme2:<BR><B>I have my faults but I have no qualms in saying that his far outweigh mine.</B><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>That attitude you expressed right there ... is poison. It's a natural, normal attitude to have. It may even be accurate. But it's still poison.<P>

Why?<P>I am honestly in the dark here. I wish I had an outside source that could see what happens in our house everyday.<P>I hope that I did not offend you in any way. I am just trying to be honest. I truly appreciate your help.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Whyme2:<BR><B>Why?<P>I am honestly in the dark here.</B><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>The Japanese have a saying "don't fix blame, fix the problem". That first "fix" is used in the sense of "assign" or "affix". They mean that energy spent trying to decide who is at fault is a waste of energy that could be spent responding effectively to the challenge. <P>Now you can't take the Japanese 100% at their word, because one of the things they do when they think they've fouled up is festoon themselves with ribbons of shame with their faults written out on them and prostrate themselves in front of their supervisors! But maybe we just have the flipside of their coin here--they blame themselves first, we Americans blame others!<P>Nonetheless, the point still stands.

There's a book by Bandler & Grinder - "Frogs Into Princes". These were the guys who started "Neurolinguistic Programming". There are some great descriptions of family interactions where the person who is acting up in the family is NOT the person pulling the strings. <P>You need to get in front of someone *very* skilled in watching the family dynamic and *very* knowledgeable in how to fix it.

OK, I understand. Thank you.<P>But now I have another question. I have said how I feel as if I don't love him anymore and that his lovebank is extremely overdrawn. You say that the challenge is mine to give him free credits into his love bank. I agree that it will be a challenge, how do I do it when my frustrations with him are so extreme?<P>I have come to a point in where I feel as if I could NEVER love him again.

Well, these are choices we can't make for you. At either end of the spectrum are people who will tell you to dump him, get as much money as you can from him, and cut him off from contact with his children. At the other end of the spectrum is the woman who runs the "Surrendered Wives" seminar program, who would advocate <I>Stepford</I>-type behavior on your part. <P>The only thing we can say with the limited knowledge that we have in hand right now is "if what you're trying isn't working, try something else!" The definition of insanity is repeating the same action expecting a different result. <P>

You say your husband begged you to come back and promised he would change, but he did not. There are several possible explanations for this, ranging from deliberately dishonest manipulation to a genuine confusion about what specific changes were needed.<P>This suggests a possible litmus test. If your husband is truly well-intentioned, then being very specific about your needs will help. Try to work out a plan for working on your relationship, being specific about the consequences of violating your agreement. It is important to involve your husband in the making of this plan, so that he doesn't feel controlled.<P>If your husband doesn't mind <I>you</I> going to counseling, then see if you can appeal to his ego by suggesting that he might be able to help the counselor understand <I>your</I> problems and figure out what <I>you</I> need to change about yourself. He may well be helpful in this regard, but he will scarcely be able to provide this help without revealing his own role in the relationship. (Of course, there's no need to point this out to <I>him</I>.)<P>If your husband is resistant to all of this, then you will need to consider the <I>possibility</I> that he really is just a manipulative cad. For the sake of your own future self-respect, though, I think you would be well-advised to try following Plan A before giving up on him. Just remember that you cannot follow Plan A effectively <I>unless you place a high priority on getting your own needs met</I>, recognizing that you yourself will have to take responsibility for getting those needs met.<P>A book that I found helpful was Susan Page's <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0767900421/qid=980186547/sr=1-6/ref=sc_b_6/107-1758539-2208515" TARGET=_blank>How One of You Can Bring the Two of You Together: Breakthrough Strategies to Resolve Your Conflicts and Reignite Your Love</A>.

I thank both of you Sisyphus and GnomeDePlume for your replies to me. I think that I have bigger problems to overcome now. I have read both replies over and over again and while I know what you BOTH are saying is correct I still have this feeling of not caring and not wanting to try. I know that this is wrong of me but I feel that there is no hope for us! Maybe I really don't want to try, I don't know what it is. I wish this all were easy and I thought maybe by joining in on this forum that maybe I could resolve some of my issues. But now they have only increased.<BR>I read Dr. Harley's book, His needs, her needs and I was of course fascinated by it. I begged my husband to read it and told him that it may help our marriage and he has totally refused.<BR>I am basically just fed up with him and with our marriage and YES I ache for love and affection. I want it, need it and deserve it. Is this wrong of me?<BR>Does anyone think that ALL marriages can be saved or is there a time to throw in the towel so to speak?

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Whyme2:<BR><B>I am basically just fed up with him and with our marriage and YES I ache for love and affection. I want it, need it and deserve it. Is this wrong of me?<BR>Does anyone think that ALL marriages can be saved or is there a time to throw in the towel so to speak?</B><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>First, count your blessings. You're living with someone who is, at the moment, being a jerk. Perhaps he has even been a jerk for quite a long while. And now you think you just don't love him anymore.<P>On the scale of misery, I would put this pretty low. You can feel this misery because you're not fighting for your life against some dread disease, genocidal government or any of a few dozen other issues.<P>That's not to diminish what you're going through, it's simply to apply a bit of perspective.<P>Now, decide what you're going to do: disrupt your three children's and your own lives (and I'm including some sympathy for him in here too ... neither spouse is *ever* 100% of the problem), or outsmart the problem.<P>He hasn't faced the problem yet ... he's still in denial. You will not get his active cooperation until he's pulled into the stages where you have already been. You, right now, have been thinking and feeling things for a while already; these are things that he will not feel until you lower the boom on him. Which I hope will never happen because you will find ways to make it unnecessary. <P>You have been slowly poisoning your own mind against him. What you're feeling now is the result of what you did. You have a husband who behaves as he does because you have rejected, perhaps so subtly that you didn't even realize you were doing it, any efforts he did make to connect.<P>Until you realize what part you have in the problem, the solution will remain out of your reach (because you will believe that *he* must provide 100% of the solution). <P>From his point of view, you may favor your firstborn over the children you and he had together--perhaps because you erroneously thought he was slighting your firstborn at some point in the past. Now he may simply be trying, consciously or unconsciously, to restore balance--but balance never comes because every interaction with your kids is an effort to teach the other parent a lesson.<P>There are a lot more resources out there for you. <BR> <A HREF="http://www.marriagebuilders.com/forum/Forum29/HTML/000553.html" TARGET=_blank>http://www.marriagebuilders.com/forum/Forum29/HTML/000553.html</A> <BR> <A HREF="http://www.marriagebuilders.com/forum/Forum29/HTML/000556.html" TARGET=_blank>http://www.marriagebuilders.com/forum/Forum29/HTML/000556.html</A> <P>

Have you checked out the EN Worksheet? Would he? You? be willing to fill one out to see what each of you needs? expects? from each other? If so, maybe then he would see what you need to feel loved and wanted and vice versa.. <P>Good luck- <P>arm6868@yahoo.com

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Whyme2:<BR><B>I still have this feeling of not caring and not wanting to try. I know that this is wrong of me but I feel that there is no hope for us! Maybe I really don't want to try, I don't know what it is. I wish this all were easy and I thought maybe by joining in on this forum that maybe I could resolve some of my issues. But now they have only increased.</B><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>I'm going to sound like Dr. Laura now, and point out that your choices should be based on what you know to be <I>right</I> rather than on how you <I>feel</I>. You don't need to <I>feel</I> hope. You don't need to <I>feel</I> loving. Just remember that feelings are subject to change. There are good reasons for your current feelings, and don't waste your time or energy feeling guilty about them. Accept your feelings. And do the right thing. If you do, and do it with the right attitude, you may be surprised to find that the feelings will follow. Again, I highly recommend Susan Page's book. It's very positive.<P>It's not easy, and it doesn't sound as if it is going to get easier any time soon. It is <I>extremely</I> important that you find a way to take care of yourself. Don't feel guilty about being a bit selfish. If you don't work on your own needs, you will have nothing to offer your husband or kids. <P>Your need for love and affection <I>is</I> important. Do you have family nearby? Can you call them? What about friends? Don't assume that your husband's failure to meet your needs means they cannot be met. (Just be careful not to get involved with another man. You're vulnerable right now...)<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><B>Does anyone think that ALL marriages can be saved or is there a time to throw in the towel so to speak?</B><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>No, I don't believe that ALL marriages can be saved. But you have given no indication that <I>your</I> marriage cannot be saved.<P>It would probably be easier to throw in the towel right now. It might even be better for you to separate for a time, if you can do it without hurting the kids. But I'd view that as a last resort.<P>There are ways to combat your negative feelings. One of them is empathy. If you can learn to see things from your husband's point of view, it might defuse some of your anger. Try to get him to talk, and listen to him without being defensive. He says it would be "ignorant" of you to leave him. Ask him what he means by that. Don't argue, just try to get him to articulate his position. Who knows, if he has to think about it, he might change it!<P>WARNING: Empathic listening is NOT EASY! He is likely to say some very unfair and painful things, and you might have back out. Try to be gracious, thank him for sharing, and tell him that you can't listen any more right now, but you want to continue later.<P>Don't worry if you don't <I>feel</I> empathy. Just focus your attention on trying to understand his position, however strange it seems. Keep an eye out for long-term misunderstandings, and try to figure out where they might have come from. Try to view the whole thing as an intellectual exercise. Provided your husband isn't simply a malevolent jerk, the empathy will most likely come (eventually).<P>Of course, if your husband is the kind that refuses to talk, you'll have to try something else. There are lots of options. But whatever you do, try to enlist <I>his</I> support in whatever you try. It will help a lot if he can be convinced that you're doing what <I>he</I> wants rather than that he's doing what <I>you</I> want. You want to avoid a power struggle.<P>