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Falling back into bad habits

2K views 7 replies 2 participants last post by  Blanca 
#1 ·
My wife and I seemed to have turned the corner over the summer. We were having weekly conversations about our relationship, and we were building our communication and conflict resolution. Things were going wonderful, and we both were aware of each other's needs. Well over a few months the weekly conversations stopped. The skills we were learning and developing declined. There were no problems for months, because nothing came up.

Well something came up, and we reverted back to our same way of arguing. She wouldn't validate my concerns, and she shut down and wouldn't talk. I kept pushing to try and get her to talk, and made her pull away more. It's a nasty cycle.

We are in the middle of changing roles within the house. I have always been in charge of the home, children, and emotional issues. She has always been the bread winner. Our problems in the past were initiated by her desire to to be home. She no longer wanted to be the bread winner. So I found a better job, and we are working towards her working from home for spending money.

There are a lot of adjustments with this. She will ignore a problem as much as possible. Now that I am the breadwinner, and am away from home for most of the week. My job can be consuming, and I have told her that I no longer have the energy to lead that area of our life. I need her to do that. I have always lead the the weekly meetings, and tried to bring up our problems and work towards a solution. During our talks previously we agreed that she would take the lead on these talks. Well that hasn't happened.

We still go to bi-weekly marriage counseling. This has gone on for about 5 months or so. Our sitter was gone during December, so we weren't able to go for over a month. Things really degressed during the month. We went back to see her on last Thursday, and it's almost like we have made no progress in the last six months. I want to start seeing some return on my investment I suppose. I can't keep going to a counselor to mediate our marital problems forever. I want to start doing that ourselves!

My problem is that I am meeting her needs. I have made it clear that my #1 emotional need is good communication. No matter what I do, I can't seem to get her to dedicate herself to making our communication better. I believe that our communication will take time and effort to get better. It took us the better part of 8 years to build our habits of communication. I think it is going to take probably a good year to break those habits and reform new ones.

I am more than willing to put that time and effort needed. How can I get her to understand that I can't be the only one willing to do this?
 
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#2 ·
The counselor is not the problem. She is giving my us things to work on. The problem is that we are not working on the things she gives us.

For example: We were given a task to work on talking once a night using feeling words. We were given writen instructions on how it is supposed to be done, and examples of words we should be using. This was given to us about 5 weeks ago. I have asked to do that several times since then, and my wife will say ok. But we have yet to even try doing that.
 
#3 ·
I am more than willing to put that time and effort needed. How can I get her to understand that I can't be the only one willing to do this?
I know how you feel. I have to push my H to work on the relationship. Ive told him that doing marriage books together, forums, etc, really help me, but he never suggests it. We still have a lot of problems to work on in our marriage, but im tired of being the one to always find the solutions, and always finding things to help us. he never takes the initiative.

sorry i dont have any solutions for you. im just waiting it out and not pushing him. i do try and focus on what he is doing, things he feels contribute to the relationship, but im still waiting for him to step it up. patience i guess.
 
#4 ·
I guess what I have a hard time with is that we are on solid ground. I think it's easier to work on things when we are in this state because there is good will built up. There isn't as much hard feelings, so in my mind it's best to work on things now so when something does come up (we all know **** does come up). I just want to change our conflict resolution.
 
#5 ·
She never wants to have to deal with anything. Her way of coping is to ignore a situation. When things are going well, it's much easier to put things on the back burner. When I bring it up, she will say that she knows she needs to, and she will. I just kind of run out of patience asking all the time for some work to be done to actually make things better instead of duct taping the real issue.
 
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