# What if it *is* her (or his) fault? Blame game.



## Casual Observer (Sep 13, 2012)

Deleted long & self-serving post that, if I'd given any thought to, shouldn't have been posted. Sometimes we get a bit too full of ourselves. I'll leave the post where I mention a few of my faults intact though.


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## Fozzy (Jul 20, 2013)

Have you communicated to her that your patience is not infinite?


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## minimalME (Jan 3, 2012)

The following are genuine questions. 

In all of your posts, have you ever discussed your behavior? Your faults? Your contribution to the problems in your marriage?

Because if you have, I've missed these.

Every single time I read your posts, you're blaming your wife for something else. It's always her fault, and she's always the problem.


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## Casual Observer (Sep 13, 2012)

minimalME said:


> The following are genuine questions.
> 
> In all of your posts, have you ever discussed your behavior? Your faults? Your contribution to the problems in your marriage?
> 
> ...


In general, in my earlier posts, I really didn't have to go to too much trouble pointing out my faults because TAM folk were happy to do so for me. 

And I was thinking about doing a long preamble to the present post to discuss my faults as well, but, well, time ran out. 

-OK, so one thing is too much patience. I let things go far too long, hopefully someone will come around. So yes, I might not get taken as seriously as I should. 
-I also over-think things. That's been pointed out too. 
-At times I am guilty of wondering why someone else can't be like me. 
-I'm also too self-sufficient, which can frustrate others sometimes. 
-I allowed our (my wife and my) paths to go two separate ways when we had kids, thinking it was my job to make money and hers to take care of the kids. I didn't question that enough. 
-I let things get to me and interfere with my sleep, which keeps me from being as "up" as I should be for those around me. 
-I'm too consistent so it's super-easy for me to reconstruct things, and I don't appreciate that that's not a universal thing. 
-I'm a super-fast typist and keep notes and that might create a too-fixed viewpoint of things.
-I think solutions that work for me should work for others, if only they'd try.


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## Livvie (Jan 20, 2014)

Have you considered that your wife is as she is because that is just her? That there's nothing wrong with her or anything to solve about her being her? And then either take her, or leave her?


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## Casual Observer (Sep 13, 2012)

Livvie said:


> Have you considered that your wife is as she is because that is just her? That there's nothing wrong with her or anything to solve about her being her? And then either take her, or leave her?


Yes, been down that road here before. It's been her decision to try and make it work, and she's made progress in terms of dealing with the trauma at the root of things. Much as it might seem otherwise, I'm not going to throw her under the bus with some of the specifics.


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## minimalME (Jan 3, 2012)

Sorry, but this made me :rofl:

You're way past that point.



Casual Observer said:


> I'm not going to throw her under the bus...


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## Livvie (Jan 20, 2014)

Casual Observer said:


> Livvie said:
> 
> 
> > Have you considered that your wife is as she is because that is just her? That there's nothing wrong with her or anything to solve about her being her? And then either take her, or leave her?
> ...


Have you considered you are deluding yourself with a hyper focus thinking/blaming her trauma as the root of her personality, that you think is going to change, when probably the root of her personality is just----that's her personality?


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## sokillme (Jun 10, 2016)

Maybe it's no one's fault maybe you are just trying to make her what she is not. Maybe you have to accept that she is never going to get there with you. When your partner tells you this is all I have it's wrong to keep trying to get them to give you more. Dude sometimes you have to admit this is it. This is who you married.

If you are not happy maybe it's time to move on. Maybe even your wife will feel relief.


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## Holdingontoit (Mar 7, 2012)

I spent 20+ years trying to get my wife to be something she is not. Never worked. made me very unhappy. Much more unhappy than her.

Now that I have given up on asking her for what she does not have, our marriage is better than ever. Yes, I had to give up my hope of experiencing certain things with her. But that was my choice. I could have left to go seek those experiences with someone else. But that choice would force me to give up what I am now experiencing with her (and with our children as a combined unit).

Very few people get everything they want from life. No one goes through life unscathed. Yes, it sucks that you have to make this choice between some things you want and other things you want. You can't have it all. Very few people can. The fault is not your wife's for forcing you to face this choice. The fault is yours for not making the choice. Or owning the choice you make.

No judgement here. It took me 55+ years of living and 25+ years of marriage to get here. My life would have been more enjoyable if I had gotten here sooner. It will take you as long to get there as it takes. I hope you get there sooner rather than later.


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## Casual Observer (Sep 13, 2012)

Holdingontoit said:


> No judgement here. It took me 55+ years of living and 25+ years of marriage to get here. My life would have been more enjoyable if I had gotten here sooner. It will take you as long to get there as it takes. I hope you get there sooner rather than later.


So you're 8 years ahead of me in living and maybe 15 in marriage. Makes me look like I'm dragging up the rear!

Fortunately we're beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It might not be a train. Last night my daughter asked my wife why we keep going to MC if we come back and seem worse than before. My wife, not me, explained that it's a long process and we have a number of issues that go way back in time to address. This was the first sorta-public time she hasn't actively tried to sweep issues under the rug. 

And last night she initiated discussion of things-past that she now acknowledges and didn't try to re-write history. That was two big things in one evening. 

As if that weren't enough, we made some strong headway into the idea that sex isn't dependent upon hormones & nerve endings to be worthwhile. I'd earlier placed my hand on her thigh, as a gesture of reassurance, which she responded to favorably (not as a sexual thing; that's not what it was all about). Then I asked her, what is it about a hand on her thigh that makes it special? It's not nerve endings. Everything that happens, takes place in your head. It's appropriate and appreciated only if it's the right person at the right time; it's totally inappropriate for others or if disingenuous. But... physically, all it is is a bit of pressure. Her argument "against" sex has been that, for her, all she experiences is "pressure" so it does nothing for her. 

She let herself get into a different frame of mind, told me she was thinking about how this was something special because it could be shared with nobody else. I approached things very differently and very slowly. And she said it was pleasurable. In 42 years the only other time she's enjoyed sex was when heavily pregnant with our first child and some sort of weird hormone thing hit resulting in wild monkey sex. 

So, pretty big deal. It's been a very long process of going back and separating sex from being a thing (that went very badly for her prior to me, and tainted ever since) and making it about "us" if that makes any sense. We could never get anywhere, literally for decades, because she had repressed what had gone on and yet felt terribly guilty about sex because of it. She had expected this wildly physical orgasmic experience that went completely flat, at a time when she was playing the "saving herself for marriage" card in a public way. It was looking like this would be an impossible place to get to, but I think the MC has helped her a lot, encouraging her to feel that immense feelings of guilt can't be gotten rid of by hiding, but rather exposing and dealing with it.


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## Casual Observer (Sep 13, 2012)

Livvie said:


> Have you considered you are deluding yourself with a hyper focus thinking/blaming her trauma as the root of her personality, that you think is going to change, when probably the root of her personality is just----that's her personality?


Addressing just this one point, her "personality" changed radically between the "before" and "after" with prior guy. She became a very different person, once sex became an emotional trigger. It's been, literally, a 43 year trigger for her. As to how one knows she's become this different person, she wrote extensively about her feelings at the time, and you wouldn't think it was the same person, before, and after. She described herself as pretty much the horniest (and to some extent frustrated) young woman on the planet before. After, she didn't mention sex once. Ever. 

You can still make the case that what happened changed her in a permanent way. I think it's tougher to make the case that what happened is within the realm of normal, in terms of how she processed it. The MC asked her about that time in her life, if she had any close friends, anyone she could talk with about it. No, because all her friends were in church and she would have been ostracized by them. She essentially was leading a double life until "x" and at that point, she decided the best way forward was to pretend nothing happened.

She has spent a lot of time in IC and with shrinks and psychologists over the years, and never ever told them of any guilt she had. She had rug-swept everything. An awful lot of effort gone to waste, other than for profits to pharma companies for meds. She had thought a pill could take care of whatever the problem was. 

So another kind of shocking thing that she just told me about. Lately, she's been experimenting with not taking sleeping pills at night. Prior to MC, prior to any of this coming up, sleeping pills were mandatory. Not even a question. 

I think, not just for my wife, but for anyone with depression, if they can move from a place where they believe pills are the only answer to another place where talking about an issue can help... well, how can that not be a good thing? I don't dismiss the need for anti-depressants. But if problems can be resolved or lessened so you can take less, if you don't fear thinking about things (so you don't have to take a sleeping pill to eliminate that choice)... I think that's progress. It's progress I didn't expect to see, to tell you the truth.


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## sokillme (Jun 10, 2016)

Holdingontoit said:


> I spent 20+ years trying to get my wife to be something she is not. Never worked. made me very unhappy. Much more unhappy than her.
> 
> Now that I have given up on asking her for what she does not have, our marriage is better than ever. Yes, I had to give up my hope of experiencing certain things with her. But that was my choice. I could have left to go seek those experiences with someone else. But that choice would force me to give up what I am now experiencing with her (and with our children as a combined unit).
> 
> ...


Yep the decision is is the things she doesn't have a deal breaker for you. That is what you need to decide. But you really need to stop trying to force someone to do something they are not capable of and assuming it's because they don't love you enough. It may be because they don't love you the way you want. If that is the case it's fair to say so.


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