MEM11363

Tiger,
Be playful and fun with your kids. Ignore your W when she is anything but nice/warm to you. Non-sexual affection is fine if she initiates it. Be at the house less. And when in the house - stay out of the room she is in unless she has asked to spend to with you, or has gone out of her way to be nice to you.

And stop having any conversations about how you feel. They are horrIble for your marriage. If she tells you that you seem distant, just smile and shrug. Because "you" seem distant means "you arent chasing me like usual". If she wants closeness she knows what to do.

But honestly - none of this is going to work at all when it is so obvious how desperately you want her approval and fear her disapproval.

If she gets aggressive - and she may - just hold up your hand: "when you can speak in a polite, respectful way we can talk".

This moratorium stuff is beyond strange. Never heard a woman say she was putting a moratorium in saying ILY.

If you had the stones - when she gets aggressive about you being distant: have some fun with it - ask her: when was the last time you asked yourself: what can I do for H? And then did it? And then let her talk - she will give you lots of excuses why she has no time for you.

At some point you smile and say: fine with not being your highest priority, and will tolerate being a low priority - like I have been for quite some time. As long as you don't expect much from me.


QUOTE=Tigerman;888929]Enchantment:

Thanks for that. She had her thyroid levels checked a few months ago and they came back normal. I don't know where in the normal range, though. FWIW, she usually doesn't sleep well now, either, and is more stressed, and more badly affected by stress, than I ever recall her being. Her periods are still pretty regular in frequency, as far as I can tell, but I have no idea if they've changed in any way.

FNG AND MEM11363:

Thanks for your feedback. I know I'm overly analytical, but that's only when I'm by myself. One of the things that's been most frustrating is that I have very much been loose and playful with my wife and kids, but my wife is often just not up for it. Or only up for so much of it. Frankly, she'd fail the "second date test" pretty regularly - anyone who so often came off as this mopey, easily agitated, or stuck in her own anxieties and stresses would have turned me off fast, if I were just getting to know her. There are flashes of the old her and I feel like that person is still there under all the other crap that's there now. Maybe that's wishful thinking on my part. Only time will tell. I think there is something to what MEM says. I want to reinforce with her that I like the affection she shows out of her own initiative. On the other hand, doing that might just be enabling her to continue on in this way that's easy and rewarding for her but that leaves me frustrated and lonely. Maybe the best thing for me to do is to simply be available even less than I have been, whether that's being out of the house or busy with other things while at home. I've been good at creating that sort of distance and I think it's been beneficial (for me and the relationship), but maybe a heavy duty focus on being unavailable is needed to get her to kick her thermostat setting up further. Anyway, there's a lot for me to consider in what both of you say.
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Tigerman

MEM11363: I think you're pretty much right on point. The conversations about my feelings are over. They're pointless at best and most likely are poisonous. To be honest, I just don't even feel like opening up like that with her now any more, anyway. As for the desperation for her approval, I think I'm guilty as charged, despite my ongoing efforts to fully detach. Your advice seems sound and I plan to put it to work. Of course, there are all kinds of pitfalls i might run into, but what you say helps me form a target in my mind that I can stay focused on. Thanks again.
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MEM11363

T,
I need you to understand something - you and I are more similar than my posts might imply.

In some core male/female behavioral areas my W and I are inverted.
I am naturally more emotional than she is. The main difference between you and me is that I have gotten more disciplined about using restraint. I try hard not to do or say things that are counter productive. That doesnt mean I let W treat me bad. It does mean that when she acts badly and then attempts to stonewall she gets frost bite.

You have let your wife convince you she can't apologize. It simply isn't true. She doesn't like doing it - so it's a won't/not a can't.

And her ability to get away with THAT is predicated on being able to make you angry or your inability to let conflict persist because you get too anxious.

My W is a good person and generally fair, but I acted like you for a bit and she began to get in some very nasty habits. The first was a blatant attempt to stop apologizing. And for frame of reference in a normal week there would be a couple blatant boundary violations - and she knows what to do when I firmly point those out. But she really attempted to shift the whe dynamic, when I started being very passive.

Your mission should be to prevent your W from directly or indirectly hijacking your emotional state. And to do that you have to find stuff you like to do, and focus on that a LOT more.



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AFEH

Tigerman, it’s the ego that hurts through our emotions. So to stop hurting we have to learn to get away from our ego when we have the need to.

We have two types of consciousness. Our ego consciousness (EC) and our observer consciousness (OC). We need to be able to step out of our EC and into our OC at will.

We are exceedingly easily manipulated through our ego by underhanded sales people, con artists and most especially within our marriage.

Once you’ve learnt about these things you’ll see things you’ve never seen before and you’ll never be so easily hurt again by another person. Read Awareness by Anthony de Mello.

People who get easily emotionally wounded have very poor boundaries. So learn about boundaries, create some for yourself and assert them.

mdmk

Try this link it works for me

(PMC - How Man and Women keep score - YouTube)

Tigerman

Driving to work today I had what might be considered a moment of insight. Not a huge breakthrough, but something that I think will be helpful going forward. I've been rewarding my wife for her bad treatment of me, time and time again, in the hopes that being nice to her will lead her to reciprocate in kind. However, my wife knows she treats me badly and that it's not because I'm not good to her (although my raging jerk moments certainly made this worse). And I know it and I know that she knows it. She's known it for a long time, she told me so several times over the years before I ever started working on me (even saying that she knows she should be better towards me), and has basically said as much in more recent discussions where's she's explained her withdrawn or un-fun behavior and attitude by continually focusing on what needs of hers aren't being met (in terms of things that don't have to do with our relationship, but instead with her career and parenting) and making it clear that until her needs are met, there isn't a chance that she's going to be any better in how she is with me.

What have I done in response? I've tried to help her get those other needs met. Or I've quickly settled for the crumbs of affection and intimacy that she gives me when she feels like it, despite feeling like garbage about how agitated or withdrawn she often gets when I try to initiate those things. My whole approach has been stupid for lots of reasons. Chiefly, it's just screwed up that her behavior and attitude towards me are so sensitive to whether all those outside needs are being met. I should not be essentially validating that. Plus, they're her needs, so it's up to her to meet them. I can help her with that, if she asks for my help, but it's not up to me to fix her life for her or jump in to make things happen for her. And all this tells her is that I'm okay being a low priority and taking the dirty end of the stick most of the time, so long as she throws me some scraps on a semi-regular basis. The more I just hung around waiting for the scraps to be thrown my way and busting my head open to try to help her with her needs, the more it told her that I was perfectly fine with this kind of situation. It probably emboldened her to treat me even worse than she otherwise would have.

I have no doubt that her affectionate behavior is genuine and that she loves me, as I don't think she's putting on an act just to keep me around. But she clearly wants that to be only a one-way thing: when and only when she's comfortable, feeling insecure and needing reassurance, horny, or whatever. Maybe it's a control thing. I don't know. But it's this pattern I have to break. Sure, I'll accept the affection that's shown to me. But I'll be damned if I'm going to keep acting like the hungry dog that's hoping for more scraps to fall off the table. Or the determined bulldog who won't give up trying to reach her, no matter how many obstacles she throws up in front of me. It really is hard for me to take this stance without feeling like I'm coming off as passive-aggressive or spiteful. I think that has to do with me internalizing how she's characterized my actions when I have tried to detach in the past. What I think I need to tell myself is that of course she's going to try to portray my (reasonable) detachment as something wrong that I'm doing - it makes her very uncomfortable! Probably just as uncomfortable as I feel when she's disconnected from me! And who would like a cruddy feeling like that? The only way out of this is to push past that and not give in to the urge to make all the tension go away by settling into the old routine. Hopefully, this might get us to the point where she realizes she really wants to drop her defenses (stop trying to constantly control things, make herself vulnerable, etc) and meet me as an equal in this. Maybe that won't happen. If it does, though, that would be great.

MEM11363

Bob,
This is spot on.

MEM11363

Tiger,
Your light bulb moment triggered a very happy memory of mine.

About 10 years ago I came in the door from work. I was talking on my cell phone as I often did back then when I arrived home. Later that night my W said to me in a very nice, but not tentative manner: "I would really like it if you made the effort to finish your last work call before you walk in the house. Could you do that for me?" She did not apologize for this request. Nor did she radiate anger at me. She expressed a desire in a sincere and honest way.

And I thought for a moment before replying: "Yes, that is totally fair."

And then I thought some more about this and realized that I should be at the far opposite end of the spectrum from where I had been. And so I made a conscious choice after that: When I walked in the door, she immediately got my full and undivided attention via a big smile and a long hug. And the unspoken, but powerful message was: No matter WHAT happened today, you are the most important person in my life. And so everything bad gets drowned out by the happiness I feel from being reconnected with you at the end of the day.

This is a very powerful message. It is the opposite of what I had been doing. I love my W for showing me the way, and gently encouraging me to prioritize her and our marriage.

FormerNiceGuy

Good insight.

You now see this and need to commit to yourself that you will act in a manner that is authentic, regardless of the way your wife responds. You will never "please" your wife by being a doormat/chameleon. If she thinks you are a "yes" man, it will just piss her off. Throw a few pendulum swings in there where you go to the other end of the spectrum and act like a jerk and you have a nice recipe for relationship strife.

Yes.

No. There you go again, trying to fix her by figuring things out. You don't know this and it is meaningless speculation. Quit it.

The pattern you have to break is your behavior. She will respond or not.

You have to control yourself. When her behavior triggers you, it is your problem. Did you try to have a debate with your kids when they were two and throwing a tantrum?

You get it. This is about learning to self-sooth. No addictions - just sit with your own discomfort. No seeking validation from the wife - which is where most of your problem lies.

Then you go and post this:

Too many "she's" and "her". You can't will the outcome and trying to do so will get in the way of you acting naturally. Think golf swing (if you are a golfer). You are still too focused on her and her issues and not enough on yourself. You can fix your problems, not hers, so fix them and then evaluate.

Sorry I am on a sports roll here. If your tennis doubles partner keeps taking your shots because he thinks you don't hustle, you have two choices. Tell him he is a bad partner while he picks up the slack or start hustling. Fix your game.

Tigerman

I know I still have a lot of holes in my game, but tonight I got a good measure of just how far I've come. Shortly after I got home from work, my wife unloaded a huge stress/anxiety/depression/self-loathing puke on me about her career frustrations and related stuff. Just a totally emotional, raw, to the bone explosion. She feels totally lost and like a loser. And, of course, the conversation quickly turned to how so much of her difficulty achieving what she wants is due to me always forcing my career to the top of the priority list, at the expense of time and opportunity for her to work more. This mostly has to do with how childcare and other home management duties are distributed.

I won't get into all the details, but there's a core of truth in what she said, based on how things had been between us for years. But it doesn't really match the reality of the last year or so and certainly not how things have been over the last six months. She's clinging so hard to the past, for whatever reasons, that it's preventing her from benefiting from how things are now. I remained calm throughout the situation (with the exception of one moment where I nearly blew my stack because she kept yelling at me to finish what I was trying to say while she kept interrupting me as I was trying to do just that!), told her that if she has needs that aren't being met she's responsible for addressing them and if she needs my help she has to approach me for that, and made very clear that I did not view any such request for help as her asking me for permission for anything (as a child might) or as some sort of weakness on her part. I also reminded her that I had tried many times, both recently and over the years, to either anticipate what she might need on this front or to get her to talk to me about it. Every single time, she either reacted angrily or just shut me down. So, as much as she was saying that I should just know what she needs and do something about it, that doesn't fit with how the situation was actually set up. I said that I want to work together with her on this and I'm very supportive of her, but for anything to get better, she's going to have to trust me, approach me as an equal, and let her guard down. She just might have to admit, out loud, that she needs something. And she just might have to settle for less than everything she's looking for, but I'll do my best to help her. The result of that will surely be something much better than where she's at now. That can only happen, though, if she treats us like partners working together, rather than adversaries squabbling over the scarce resources of time and peace and quiet. She clearly resisted what I was saying at first, throwing back at me things from the deep past or distorted versions of recent episodes. I calmly deflected those, brought the conversation back to what would be productive, and (softly) hammered home the same key points. Eventually, she showed signs that she was coming around to what I was saying and that she wanted to talk (at some future time) about how we can arrange things to help her out. When I was done talking, I hugged her and told her I love her. And then I went and hung out with the kids for a bit, who were playing out back.

After getting to cool down for a while on her own, she bounced back a good bit. We didn't mention the episode at all before she left for her movie night with some of her girlfriends. There was no big emotional goodbye, no speech about anything, no revisiting any of the details of our talk, or anything like that. We had a nice goodbye and then she was on her way over her friend's house.

In the past, this would have been a disaster. I would have reacted to her emotional state by getting all freaked out or angry. That would have led me to either placate her ("You're right about how terrible I've been. I'll do anything you want!") or blow up at her and refuse to do a darn thing for her. The whole thing would have turned into a nightmare that just fueled resentments and pushed us even further apart.

Am I certain that we'll actually have that talk about what can be done to help her and that it will go well? No. I can't control her end of that, so there's no telling for sure whether she'll ever approach me or approach me in the right frame of mind. But, the stage has at least been set for that to happen. I didn't cave or forfeit my boundaries, I stuck to focusing on what's needed to responsibly handle the problem, and I didn't get sucked into some need for a big emotional follow-up (good or bad) once it was over. And I don't feel a bit of anxiety now, nor did I feel any throughout this. This is probably the best I've ever felt after this kind of thing. Thanks to all of you who have helped me along the way.

FormerNiceGuy

That guy sounds healthy.

Kudos for all the hard work.

MEM11363

Beautiful.

In a week or so, in a low key way, you might mention what you CAN do to help with her schedule provided she gives you some lead time. And that also means making sure you know what your extended day care options are - in case you both have to work late.

Tigerman

Rather than giving a blow-by-blow account of developments since my last update, I'm curious to hear thoughts about something that just happened. I've grown weary of my wife's tendency to fall into spells in which she's quite affectionate whenever she feels like it, while giving very little response when I'm affectionate toward her. This pattern is undeniable at this point and she falls into it pretty easily and for long stretches.

I've resolved to turn the temperature on my end down very low, below where I've tried to keep it over the last few weeks. Yesterday and this morning I did not initiate any affection with her at all and gave only lukewarm responses to her kisses and hugs. I also didn't try to initiate any fun conversation with her; the only things I talked to her about concerned the kids or the household. From how she was acting this morning, I could tell that she was aware that something was going on. By the time I got to work this morning, I had a message on my voice mail from her. She was talking in a sweet voice, obviously fumbling over her words, and telling me that she just wanted to say hi and that she's thinking of me and that she loves me. After waiting about an hour, I call her back and we chat for a bit. Nothing big and we just go over something funny that happened to a mutual friend that she found out about this morning. As we're going to end the call, I can tell that she's doing that hesitating thing where she's wondering whether I'll say ILY first. I don't. She adds one more small detail to prolong the conversation a bit further and then says ILY. I say it back before we hang up.

What can I do to break out of this cycle? Is it really a matter of keeping my thermostat set at ice cold for a prolonged period, no matter what she does? I can see some sense in that, but it also seems like it might be passive-aggressive behavior on my part. I sure don't want to talk to her about this, as avoiding R talks seems to have been really helpful lately. But I'm tired of feeling like all this is so one-sided. I don't doubt that she loves me, is attracted to me (to whatever extent someone with no libido can feel attraction), and wants us to be happy together. I do doubt, however, whether she has any appreciation of the fact that things working well between us requires that she allow herself to be open and responsive to my displays of affection and intimacy. Otherwise, she had might as well replace me with a teddy bear or a soft blanket - something that she can pick up and get comfort from when she wants it, but that doesn't ever seek her out or impose anything on her.

EDIT: A big part of what bothers me here is that she gets thrown off so much when I stop pursuing or responding, but I also get little or no positive reinforcement when I pursue. It's as though not only does she want the comfort hat comes from me responding to her when she wants to be affectionate, she also needs me to continue banging my head against a wall with her by regularly pursuing her. I end up feeling like I'm in a no-man's land.

MEM11363

Tiger,
What would happen if you simply let her set the temperature regarding affection? Simply let her come to you. AND kept the overall temperature cool enough that she does so daily?

This doesn't mean being a jerk in ANY WAY. I simply means easing up on enough calls/texts/emails/i love yous/gifts/requests to spend time together etc. that she WANTS to hug you to get some warmth.

IF she complains that YOU aren't initiating enough verbal/other stuff - just look puzzled and say: Babe you far prefer for ME to let you decide when we are physically affectionate and I far prefer you to initiate the talking part of it. And then shut up. And don't argue. And don't let her make you angry. And don't debate. She will likely say she has no idea what you mean about affection. And you are being a jerk.

Get very practiced at: "This isn't a conversation - its an outburst" and then hold up your hand for her to stop. And if she doesn't, shake your head and walk away.

You can also say "this is no longer a conversation, its a hostile outburst and it needs to END right now". Practice using edge in your tone - without raising the volume.

badbane

I am curious I know that you guys are cooling off. But are you being sexually playful at all. I mean have you made her feel sexy lately. I mean I smack my wife on the ass every once in awhile, or sneak in a boob brush. I do it at random times and not just when I want sex. Maybe you should try to be more playful. There is no reason why on this earth you can't be playful. IF she objects just say sorry but it just happens.
I think you guys need to go on some dates or something. Jeez there is cooling things off and turning things off. Sex is good and while cooling off is great you should still make your wife feel sexy and confident.
Tell her she looks hot, accidentally touch one of her private areas ( do not apologize just tell you couldn't help yourself), if she bent over at the waist tell her "look i know we are trying to be cool here but that's just not fair."

I read alot about you working on manning up and that's good. I haven't read one thing in this entire series where you made she feel sexy. Maybe you should try it. Stop apologizing for being sexually attracted to your wife.

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