 Re: I'm confused and lost...
Hello,
There seems to be a series of conflicts other than this in your relationship. In order to understand why this is happening we need to look at your emotional context.
As in how well are his emotional needs being met in the relationship.
Now granted you may have a list of complaints about your emotional needs that your husband is not meeting, indeed these things tend to be quite symmetric. Having understood that we need to see on your husbands side how fulfilled he is in your relationship.
A couple of possible causes for his behavior would be:
- midlife crisis
- long running lack of fulfillment of emotional needs.
If it is the second option please look at the following list of male emotional needs and asses how well your relationship has been in fulfilling them:
Be proficient in supporting your partner emotionally. Generally this equates to showing respect to the man. We can categorize the emotional support a man needs into 6.
Trust –You trust his skills in dealing with his problems. You respect and trust his judgment and his abilities.
Acceptance - he needs to feel that he pleases you. He needs to feel you accept and appreciate him for who he is and not trying to change and improve him.
Appreciation – he would like to feel that you are grateful for the love and respect he shows you, that you are grateful for his providing for you and not that routine daily activities are no longer worthy of appreciation.
Admiration – you admire his victories and his displays of skill
Approval - you approve of him as a person and of his behavior.
Encouragement – you encourage him in a positive way to grow and evolve in skill and status, especially when he experiences setbacks
Now as what to do in this situation. I would suggest that in both cases being supportive and appreciative would be a great improvement and that will help motivate him in a positive way to keep balance. He is fully capable of doing so but as most men if you approach the subject in a negative way they exhibit stubbornness..
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