Wow, there certainly have been a lot of people stepping up to the plate and offering you advice, ideas, hope and encouragement for your sitch, both on this thread and your previous one! I hope you can see this as support and not simply pestering you to “try it my way”. Please consider what I am about to contribute as more of the same, advice, ideas, hope, encouragement, not pestering.
After all, you’re the one to name your current thread, “Never give up; never give up.” So hopefully you will suffer through this post with unwavering patience as well.
We have many R issues in common, HDH vs. LDW, wife doesn’t want to do it, talk about it, think about it, have to admit (even to herself) that she is a human being with urges. You know the drill. So do I!
I have made some progress with my W and my sitch in the last couple of months, so I hope what I have done to realize the progress may help you in your sitch also.
As for asking my W to read SSM, she ignored the book until I wrapped it in a book cover carved out of a brown paper grocery bag. Unwrapped, if she picked it up, someone might see what she was reading. That would open up all sorts of vulnerabilities. Was she into sex? Was she sexually starved? Was she the one who was sexually starving her partner? You get the picture. So I wrapped it up in plain old brown craft paper from a grocery bag, and pleaded with her to please read it with me back in January, ’05. She made it as far as page 48 and then put it down, and hasn’t picked it up again since. The chapter she was reading had to do with legitimate reasons why women lost their desire to ML. Gees, if that was me reading about what was causing me to decline, I’d be riveted to the book, not putting it down. KWIM?
In May of this year, I discovered this BB because our R/M was really getting me down. I remembered how Michelle had mentioned the BB near the end of her SSM book. I found folks like you and “Shortchanged” were in similar sitches. I also found advice from many people to check out David Schnarch’s book titled “Passionate Marriage.” I believe you know of the book since you titled your last thread, “Into the crucible?” which I understood as a reference to his PM book.
I did check it out, both in paperback and via audio CD. The audio CD is where I’m headed with my pitch. I received it in the mail from Ama---.com, and devoured it in two days. After doing so, I decided I needed to find a way to get my W to listen and absorb and assimilate also.
Schnarch did a very neat job of condensing his PM book into a series of four (4) forty minute lectures, each one building upon the previous one. They are perfect for anyone who has a forty minute commute to work. Imagine your W driving to work, multitasking; not only is she driving in to the big city to her big job, she’s listening to a series of lectures that you have asked her to listen to, thus working on her R/M as she committed to doing so, but continues to procrastinate about instead.
Sounds good, but what about the packaging that the CD audio book comes in? Just as my W would not even pick up SSM until I wrapped it up in craft paper for her, I had to reason my way through her fear of all things pertaining to sex mentality and disguise the CD audio book.
My solution was to burn a copy of the two discs that PMcd is packaged in to plain old blank CD-Rs and simply label them PM1 and PM2. That way, anyone could be a passenger in her car without noticing that she was doing something positive for her R, namely listening to the 4 PM lectures.
HD, why do I go into such detail about this recent episode of my R/M? Because it worked!! I asked my W to listen to the 4 lectures on a Sunday afternoon, left her alone for the next 5 weekdays since we work opposite shifts anyways, and the next weekend she was more than willing to talk about US and our R/M.
Why did the Schnarch CDs work when so many other things had failed? First of all, he put everyone at ease by describing his approach to marriage issues as non-pathological. Life is an incredible challenge so having a few hang-ups that you need to work through to relate to your spouse doesn’t make you a case number. It just means you are part of the human race! Next he talks about differentiation. Figure out yourself for yourself and don’t rely on your partner to tell you who you are or how to feel; if you are hurting, sooth yourself! These are not only great relationship topics, but great hooks to get you interested in his style. But the one that really got to me was in lecture 4 where he talks about growing old and reaching gridlock. To paraphrase (poorly at best), it is quite possible that if we don’t hit gridlock and actually feel compelled to communicate with our spouse of all these years, we will go to our grave not really knowing who that person was that we were married to. Gridlock happens when we continue NOT communicating for years of marriage what our own needs are to our spouse and life cannot go on any longer without change.
Sounding like an infomercial here…..all that in 4 easy 40 min. lectures!!
You decide, hairdog. Maybe you’ve BTDT. Like the rest of the responses to your threads, I’m just offering something that might help to unlock the great mystery that is your wife. She IS a great gift and YOU deserve her (in her unlocked state, that is).
Weber: I really appreciate you taking the time to relate your story. I could definitely see myself doing the "brown paper bag" project.
I am interested in the Schnarch CDs. Were they just titled "Passionate Marriage" or was it "Secrets of a Passionate Marriage" ? I own the book, of course.
Could I get my W to listen to the lectures? Maybe. Maybe not. It's certainly worth a shot. The only shortcoming is that it's not a lecture by a woman, which would give it more credibility for my W.
Thanks for the recommendation, and thanks also to doglover.
HD, good luck getting her to read/listen to any of it. I find that if I try to get MrsGGB to look at anythng that even remotely stinks of sex/relationship she runs the other way. Kinda like trying to give a 2 year old a spoonful of castor oil.
If MrsHD is anything like MrsGGB, she'll only look at the stuff if it was her idea, and that isn't likely to happen unless she 'gets it'. I've given up on reading materials. Communication seems to be the only path there, and that has to be gentle enough to avoid being pushy, yet firm enough to move her along.
hairdog, honey got me thinking that maybe my bf is an 8 not a 7, and that sent me to the enneagram book where I've been reading about 8, 9, and 1. You might find this interesting and affirming re your W:
Quote: To give a false sense of autonomy, the personality creates what psychology calls ego boundaries. With ego boundaries, we are able to say, "This is me and that is not me. That out there is not me, but this sensation (or thought or feeling) here is me." We usually believe that these boundaries correspond with our skin and therefore with the dimensions of our real bodies, but this is not always true.... While all of the types employ ego boundaries, the 8, 9, and 1 do so for a particular reason--they are attempting to use their will to affect the world without being affected by it. They try to influence their environment, to remake it, control it, hold it back, without having their sense of self influenced by it. To put this differently, all three of these types resist being influenced by reality in different ways. They try to create a sense of wholeness and autonomy by building a "wall" between what they consider self and not self, although where these walls are varies from type to type and from person to person.... Type 1 individuals... hold a boundary against the outside world, but they are far more invested in maintaining their internal boundary. All of us have apects of ourselves that we do not trust or approve of that make us feel anxious and that we want to defend outselves from. Ones expend enormous energy trying to hold back certain unconscious impulses, trying to keep them from getting into counsciouness. It is as if 1s were saying to themselves, "I don't want that feeling! I don't want to have that reaction or that impulse!" They create a great deal of physical tension to maintain their inner boundaries and hold aspects of their own inner nature at bay.
What a great idea, Schnarch's Passionate Marriage on audio cd. I am having trouble plowing through the book - it's not a quick read - but I would love to get the whole gist. MrDL might appreciate it too - he could esp use the parts on differentiation.
Thanks! DogLover
There are many wise, empathetic and funny people here: you are my buddies - I'm grateful for your support.
Ouch. That pretty much describes her. Unfortunately, there's not a lot I can do about it, including making her aware of that particular passage. She will deny it, for the most part.
I know... it's a bummer. But maybe your new ability to stand your ground coupled with an awareness that what she's doing is resisting her own inner nature will cause a tiny shift in the dynamics between you two. She is at war with an internal enemy-- her own flawed, physical, less-than-perfect, needy, vulnerable humanity.
I'm reminded of that movie Broadcast News where Holly Hunter's character (also a 1) was obsessed with her work and her perfectionism. At one point she tells her boss at a party in a tactless, aggressive way how he should handle some staff issues, and he says, "It must be wonderful being the only person in the world who knows exactly the right way to do everything." "Oh no!" she wails, "It's awful!"
It might be interesting for y'all to rent this movie. I'd be curious to see how your W reacts to the Holly Hunter character. It's quite a good movie-- very funny. It has some falling-down-on-the-floor-clutching-your-sides-laughing stuff. In fact one of the opening scenes is like that. I'll tell you the ending... Holly is ultimately so perfectionistic and demanding that she winds up alone. William Hurt and Albert Brooks are in it too.
Here's Roger Ebert's review: Broadcast News . He says it "has insights into the more personal matter of how people use high-pressure jobs as a way of avoiding time alone with themselves." He gave it four stars back when it came out in 1987.
Quote: It is as if 1s were saying to themselves, "I don't want that feeling! I don't want to have that reaction or that impulse!" They create a great deal of physical tension to maintain their inner boundaries and hold aspects of their own inner nature at bay.
If this is true, then why do 1's not have any problems with inner boundaries at the beginning of an R?
This confuses me. What do the Enneagram people have to say about that?
