Dancing Nancie

I am curious to see how much time and dedication other people who have turned around a marriage put in. I put this as my top priority, and it can get frustrating when that is not reciprocated.

I am unsure whether or not I am being over-bearing about it or not. So, my question to all those out there who have turned around a marriage that communication was the major issue is how much time and energy should be spent doing that?

AZMOMOFTWO

I can't answer that yet...ours is one in which things just got a bit stale and I'm working it. Its sometimes reciprocatd and other times not. It can be frustrating but I already see some changes for the better. First thing I did was change my attitude. No more yelling at the kids (which we were both guilty of) I use postive reinforcement (and then husband followed). Whew! All of a sudden our house is full of laughter and not yelling. Kids still act up but they are responding very well to this. I let work, bills, and life stress me out and I think it was contagious. Instead of focusing on what we did or did not do in most cases, I am focusing on reconnecting and revitalizing. A moving forward. I also started working on me, a more confident me is a happier me. I've always been in shape but not since I've had the kids but now I am 30% to my goal in just 11 days! That has improved how I feel and as a result how my husband sees me. I spend time giving him attention (usually hugs) he returns them and now is starting to initiate them. I am taking him to lunch this week (something we used to do about 2 years ago and stopped when I began to work from my home office) and I am taking him out on a date (a surprise which has kept him guessing) on Sunday. We also have a family day planned for Saturday. In my case my husband told me something was missing and he was unhappy but he still loved me. I realized that all this stress and yelling in the house made me someone who I am not. I love peace and laughter and we rarely laughed anymore. I guess I felt the same way but was just trudging along. So he woke us both up I just hope it was not too late. I know he still loves me, he has made that clear, I just hope he is still in love with me. Within this short time with a lot of effort though I have seen huge changes, we still have a long way to go but the other day I said to him "I just want to make you happy" and he said "you do". That makes all the effort (and its a lot) worth it. I guess the answer to your question is put the marriage first, its a lot of effort but the rewards are huge. As to how long, I guess that depends upon the problems that you've had and how long you've had them. Its not a quick fix but look to make each day better and one day you will be there.

swedish

In my case, my husband and I both put our marriage on the top of the priority list and have kept it there. This involves mainly just making sure on a daily basis that we show each other that they are loved and appreciated and can speak openly without fear of attack or hurting one another (I'm a sensitive soul but have told him I'd rather know when something bothers him even if the truth hurts) and know the other is there if one is having a bad day. We also spend a lot more time doing things together (whether it's just us or with the kids)

Communication (lack thereof) was the major issue which led to other bigger issues, but turning that around for us has been changing how we communicate today. When our marriage got to the breaking point, we did work through how we got there and why but at this point I don't think there is any positive benefit to rehashing the details of the past. We both get it and it's painful to keep going back there.

We were in a cycle of him being frustrated living with my 3 kids (from a previous marriage) and me thinking it's a matter of time before he bails (he hinted at this when things would get rough), me being unhappy/depressed as a result and pulling away from him, him being frustrated and thinking I didn't love/care about him and our marriage was going into the ditch in the meantime.

Once we talked through all of this I know he's in it for the long haul and the woman he first met is back, happy and laughing again. He's happy and laughing again. We both know why and are committed to keeping it this way.

So yes, communication is important, but I would say in the present. Once old wounds have been healed, leave them in the past.

BlueCreek

For my wife and I the communication issues revolved around me bottling up my issues rather than being upfront with them, and my wife being unable to grasp what I needed from her to feel more loved. I finally sat her down and opened up to her and told her we needed to both change for our marriage to get out of this funk. Since I was the one that saw the marriage as being in greater trouble than her, I think I was more in your situation.

Improving the communication was actually more difficult than I thought it would be. I was so committed, planning everything out that I needed to change and focus on to improve myself, and I assumed after our long talk that my wife would be the same, so is so incredibly committed to nearly everything she does. But while my wife knew it was important, she just did not see it in the same critical light that I did. So she didn't put near the effort into it that I did.

And that's what really makes it difficult when both aren't equally committed. The one that feels more committed is easily upset and, as you said, frustrated that the other doesn't take it as seriously. You can easily start to pressure your spouse, but then that often back fires because NO ONE likes to be pressured into changing. And the slower they move, the less incentive you have to work on it yourself. It really is an easy catch-22 to fall into.

I think for me the first month was the hardest. I was dying for things to change ASAP and nothing seemed to happen. In that first month I vacillated back and forth between working hard on it and moping around when my wife kept putting our goals aside when anything important (i.e. what seemed like everything) came up. I had to fight hard to strike that delicate balance between pressuring her and reminding her that change was needed, because if I had just left her alone I'm not entirely convinced she would have worked on it at all. But I was mostly successful. I sat down with her once a week to acknowledge improvements, but point out where nothing had changed, and left her alone the rest of the week. Most importantly I tried hardest to work on myself in at least some small way, refusing to let my wife's slower transition to affect my duty to improving myself. It wasn't easy, but it worked. I'm a very patient person, and I figured I'd put seven years into my marriage with things not being so great, I could afford to invest the time needed to changing it. It really took about 3-4 months for me until she had really gotten on board as she saw me changing and our marriage improving, and it was nearly a year before I felt we had both really changed our marriage for good.

Amplexor

While my marriage is not turned around yet it is in much better shape then it was a year ago. Poor communication was one of the biggest problems we had. We have never put timeframes on the recovery of our marriage. “It will take as much time as it takes.” We have taken many steps in our journey and give our marriage one of the highest levels of dedication available. (Kids first) Please see my post “When is enough, enough for a more in depth history. Good luck.

__________________
Amp

Confidence – Love – Patience – Faith Are the tools to help heal a marriage.

Dancing Nancie

And that's what really makes it difficult when both aren't equally committed. The one that feels more committed is easily upset and, as you said, frustrated that the other doesn't take it as seriously. You can easily start to pressure your spouse, but then that often back fires because NO ONE likes to be pressured into changing. And the slower they move, the less incentive you have to work on it yourself. It really is an easy catch-22 to fall into.

I think for me the first month was the hardest. I was dying for things to change ASAP and nothing seemed to happen. In that first month I vacillated back and forth between working hard on it and moping around when my wife kept putting our goals aside when anything important (i.e. what seemed like everything) came up. I had to fight hard to strike that delicate balance between pressuring her and reminding her that change was needed, because if I had just left her alone I'm not entirely convinced she would have worked on it at all. But I was mostly successful. I sat down with her once a week to acknowledge improvements, but point out where nothing had changed, and left her alone the rest of the week. Most importantly I tried hardest to work on myself in at least some small way, refusing to let my wife's slower transition to affect my duty to improving myself. .[/quote]

I would be very satisfied with a situation similar to this. She has said previously that she is willing to work on things, and do some reading etc... Every two weeks or so after her not keeping those promises, I try and tell her about that. These always turn into arguments. We don't have the skills to tell each other when we are having feelings of anger, frustration, or bitterness. Which has been a main point in trying to work on our communication issues. This cycle has put us in a position where I am pushing her to work on things. She withdraws and thinks things will never get better.

I do think I am putting more commitment into "fixing" our communication issues. I do get easily upset, and this is the main reason. She gets quick to point out that things will never get better, and the more time I see go by with no effort to make things better the more frustrated I get. This is something I know I should not do, and makes things worse.

Did you take stock of what you needed/wanted to work on? What kind of activities did you do to work on those issues? Can you go into a little detail about what kind of things that you would go over in your weekly talks?

Thanks very much for your reply!

BlueCreek

Ok, since you asked for details, this will be a bit long, but here's what I did:

I sat down and created two lists. My first list was to look at myself and see all of my shortcomings and things I was doing wrong or ways I was withdrawing from the marriage. I said to myself, "If I were to die tomorrow, I want my wife to be able to say I tried as hard as I could to be a perfect husband to her and father to our children. What can I do to be that man starting today." I then wrote down every single thing I could think of broken down by categories. Here's a VERY brief example (my list actually took up two single spaced pages -eek!)

Listening To You More
• Whenever you talk to me, I will stop whatever I am doing and truly listen and focus so I don’t just forget what you’ve said all the time, this especially goes for when I am on the computer or watching tv.
• When you are upset at me, I will stop just getting defensive and tune you out and instead I will truly listen to what you are saying and if necessary even add it to this list of things I need to work on.

Taking Care of Our Household
• I will come up with a cleaning schedule (bathrooms, kitchen, family room, etc) to help keep the house in better shape for you so that there is less you feel you need to worry about.
• I will hang up a small white board in the kitchen for us to start jotting down stuff that needs to be take care of and I will start doing them in timely manner instead of putting them off for months and months.

Next I ranked each item on the list from 1-5 in terms of what I thought was most important to my wife, and then I graded each item A-F in terms of how I expected she would mark how well I currently met those goals.

I then created my second list and wrote down all the things that I felt were missing on her end that kept me from being as happy as I really wanted and needed to be, only I noted how I would rank or grade them on a separate piece of paper.

I let her know I was doing this and that in about a week I would want to go over it. I told her she didn't need to do anything yet or think on it like I had. Then when the time came (I left the actual evening up to her so that she could chose a time she was relaxed and not worn out or stressed) we sat down in a nice quiet room with some desert and the music on low in the background and went over my list. I went over it each item at a time with her, discussed them, and re-grading and prioritizing them based on her input. She also added a few things to the list that I had missed, stuff that never even occurred to me that really bothered her.

By getting my stuff out of the way first, I think it was a little bit less threatening and a "you have to do this for me" feeling for her when we started on the list I'd written up for what I needed from her. I also told her if anything on the list made her feel uncomfortable, that we would skip it and only come back to it when she was ready some another time. So we went over every item and discussed it and I had her rank and grade before showing her how I would.

When it was all done, I told her that I was going to start working on everything right away, but that I did not expect the same from her. I just asked that she slowly work first on what she felt would be easiest for her, not necessarily what I saw as the most critical. Then I asked her what would be a fair amount of time before we sat down to go over how we were each doing, and we decided on a week at the beginning until we got the hang of things and then farther apart later on.

Like I said the first month didn't go so great. Every time we went back over out lists she would say she didn't get a chance to work on this or that too much because one of the kid's kept her up a couple nights late and she was really tired, or she was in a bad mood after having an argument with her mom, or whatever. The two mantra's I kept on telling myself over and over were: A) I will not pressure her and take this slow, and B) I will not be negative. NOT easy, but absolutely critical in my opinion.

But after about a month when we got together to talk about it as planned, two things happened. First, I told her it was really important that while her excuses were certainly valid for why it had been hard for her to make many changes, the fact of the matter was that I didn't feel like our marriage came first and until that changed, we should just hold off on our lists. And second, I think she was really kind of embarrassed. There were all these things on my list I was working on and she was giving me credit for, but not much on her list was changing.

I think this list was really important for us for three reasons. A) It gave us an open non-judgmental forum to communicate our needs from each other and either of us could ask to add something to the list whenever we felt was necessary. It's can also just be easier to be honest and say everything you mean to on paper. B) It let us come up with specific resolutions together as a couple to improve or fix things. C) It allowed us to objectively quantify improvements and see how it directly translated into a happier marriage. If something my wife did moved her up from a C to a B, I was able to tell her exactly how great she was and give tons of positive reinforcement. There was no chance she might make a change for me and have me not be aware of it or show her my appreciation.

Now it sounds like your situation may be more complicated than that. My wife never had a "things will never get better" attitude because she didn't think things were that bad to begin with (it was a shock to her that I did.) But for my situation, I think this method of communicating not only our issues but brainstorming ideas together to address them properly was the single most important thing we did. We still have our lists, only there are a lot more A's and B's and we only bring them out every two or three months.

blind

I don't suppose I have an answer to the riddle of how long one should work at trying to repair a broken marriage because of poor communication. There are no hard and fast rules in this in my opinion. I just wanted to chime in and let you know that I absolutely understand the frustration and the catch-22 you mentioned. I made many mistakes in the past (I was never unfaithful). My story is on this forum if you are interested. One of our primary problems was certainly communication. I've made many significant changes toward being a better husband, father, and person. But, my wife continues to withdraw from me. I am still committed to seeing this through, but I suppose at some point my motivation will wane unless I begin to see some improvement. This all started for me in Nov. 2007. My changes really started taking shape in Jan/Feb 2008. My wife has been consistently withdrawn from me and the marriage most all of this time. In fact any affection or intimacy from her ceased in total back in Jan. 2007. So, I can say I've really been at this for over 5 months without noticeable improvement. Again, I'm still committed to saving my marriage, but one must wonder how long this can possibly go on. All I can say is that if my wife slowly returns to the marriage and we can be happy again it will be worth it (even if it takes many more months or even a few years). If you can find any improvement in your situation it will go a long way in further motivating you. There have been times when I thought I saw improvements and it did wonders for my patience and stamina in all of this. Best wishes and sorry for kind of making this post about "me".

Dancing Nancie

[quote=BlueCreek;11023]
Listening To You More


Next I ranked each item on the list from 1-5 in terms of what I thought was most important to my wife, and then I graded each item A-F in terms of how I expected she would mark how well I currently met those goals.

I then created my second list and wrote down all the things that I felt were missing on her end that kept me from being as happy as I really wanted and needed to be, only I noted how I would rank or grade them on a separate piece of paper.

I let her know I was doing this and that in about a week I would want to go over it. I told her she didn't need to do anything yet or think on it like I had. Then when the time came (I left the actual evening up to her so that she could chose a time she was relaxed and not worn out or stressed) we sat down in a nice quiet room with some desert and the music on low in the background and went over my list. I went over it each item at a time with her, discussed them, and re-grading and prioritizing them based on her input. She also added a few things to the list that I had missed, stuff that never even occurred to me that really bothered her.

By getting my stuff out of the way first, I think it was a little bit less threatening and a "you have to do this for me" feeling for her when we started on the list I'd written up for what I needed from her. I also told her if anything on the list made her feel uncomfortable, that we would skip it and only come back to it when she was ready some another time. So we went over every item and discussed it and I had her rank and grade before showing her how I would.

When it was all done, I told her that I was going to start working on everything right away, but that I did not expect the same from her. I just asked that she slowly work first on what she felt would be easiest for her, not necessarily what I saw as the most critical. Then I asked her what would be a fair amount of time before we sat down to go over how we were each doing, and we decided on a week at the beginning until we got the hang of things and then farther apart later on.

Like I said the first month didn't go so great. Every time we went back over out lists she would say she didn't get a chance to work on this or that too much because one of the kid's kept her up a couple nights late and she was really tired, or she was in a bad mood after having an argument with her mom, or whatever. The two mantra's I kept on telling myself over and over were: A) I will not pressure her and take this slow, and B) I will not be negative. NOT easy, but absolutely critical in my opinion.

But after about a month when we got together to talk about it as planned, two things happened. First, I told her it was really important that while her excuses were certainly valid for why it had been hard for her to make many changes, the fact of the matter was that I didn't feel like our marriage came first and until that changed, we should just hold off on our lists. And second, I think she was really kind of embarrassed. There were all these things on my list I was working on and she was giving me credit for, but not much on her list was changing.

I think this list was really important for us for three reasons. A) It gave us an open non-judgmental forum to communicate our needs from each other and either of us could ask to add something to the list whenever we felt was necessary. It's can also just be easier to be honest and say everything you mean to on paper. B) It let us come up with specific resolutions together as a couple to improve or fix things. C) It allowed us to objectively quantify improvements and see how it directly translated into a happier marriage. If something my wife did moved her up from a C to a B, I was able to tell her exactly how great she was and give tons of positive reinforcement. There was no chance she might make a change for me and have me not be aware of it or show her my appreciation.

QUOTE]

I really appreciated your input. I think your post helped my wife and I think about what we could do that is comfortable for us. I don't think either of us were comfortable with the rankings.

My wife and I talked last night, and we are going to start doing something similar to this. We decided to give each other something we want the other person to spend time learning more about, or do for the other person. We are going to check in once a week and talk about the things we learned. I am going to take a survey that tests my knowledge about her. She feels as though I don't spend enough time listening to her. This is very true, and something I know I need to work on. I am affraid to find out that I don't know nearly as much as I think I do about my wife...

BlueCreek

I think the rankings helped my wife and I get a firm grasp of exactly what was most important to each other, but I can certainly see how that, and especially the grading, might be uncomfortable for some people. There are lots of good quizzes on the net for testing your knowledge of your spouse, have fun with them and you certainly will be amazed both by what you don't know, and what you have forgotten. I wish you all the best with your wife!