SM34's Post

[MrBond]

Here's your own post SM34. You can use this as your forum.

Here was your latest post to add to.

Yes if you simply will not even try to make your spouse happy then you obviously dont care much.

I have seen people on here who refused to go to therapy with their spouse and blamed all the problems on theirwas. Thats different.

What I was referring to are the situations where the soon to be lbs was trying to make things right. Or showing love in a million ways, just not in the love language of the soon to be was. The was can obviously see their lbs loves them, and works hard for the family, loves the kids, devotes all their free time to their spouse, etc.. Just is missing something...like TELLING their spouse she ia beautiful every day.

So basically someone who is excellent in all ways but one, and there us no question they love their was with all their heart. But the was feels they NEED to be told how beautuful they are. They NEED their 'needs' met at any cost. learning to see the other gestures the spouse uses to shiw love would be considered settling. It is those that I am talking about.

This society is very individualistic, selfish and self cebtered. The pursuit of happiness trumps ALL other purposes in life.

In other cultures the impirtance is on the group or the tribe. Your happines does not go above all others and at the expense of all others. So you are taught to see the bigger picture. You are taught to see when someone means well and even if they miss the mark, they were trying and that's what matters.

You can see this self centeredness of American culture in many every day little things. For example in the language. In English we tell our children that this is 'my ball' or this is 'my food'. We might tell a child to leave that toy alone because it is 'not YOUR toy'. There is great emphasis in what BELONGS to YOU. The word 'I' is greatly overused and bears too much weight in individualistic societies.

In my home culture, the word 'we' or 'our' is used in place.of 'I',or my'. The emphasis is on the fact that the person is not an individual,.but an extension of their extended family or tribe or group. So we say to a child 'leave that toy, it is theirs not ours'. We say 'that is our food' not that is,'my food'.

The sense of 'I' is so detested that their is a saying that goes with it and that saying is said to anyone who utters the word I. Loosely translated, the sane is that I is a form if blasphemy. Another loose translation is,'God forgive you for using the word I'.

There is also another angle to this. In this culture if you have an affair and cheat on your spouse, it brings shame on you only (if that even. Sometimes I wonder if anyone is even ashamed of it). In other cultures, because you are an extension of your family, it brings shame on your entire family! Hence the honor killings etc.. You are not an individual, free to do what you please at the expense of others. That is why divorce is much lower. More importantly, we raise kids that are emotionally stable and have no baggage...

The amount if baggage that is carried around by the average American person us frightening. Their dad was an,alcoholic who beat their.mom, they were sexually abused as children, broken homes, neglected by their parents or raised by their geand parents, witnessed parents who cheated on each other. All if this stems from the self centered mission to pursue happiness. If your happiness is at the expense of others, how can you sleep at night? Easily when you have been raised to put your needs ahead.of everyone else, just like your parents did.


The funnt thing is people look at previous generations and their old school marriages that lasted a life time and then dont see how those people didnt put their own needs at top priority. They were.able to have a life long committed marriage by always seeing it from,the others perspective. And not forgetting that although your spouse is not perfect, they love you and have made a commitment. They are not cheating in you, they are loyal and faith full,.and that is ENOUGH to build a good life together.

My wife holds her grandma and grandpas marriage high,.way way high. And she thinks its a fairytale. They are,married to their 'soul mates' (fag me!). We on the other hand, made a big mistake in getting married. the kids of this fairytale marriage, 9 of them, have 7 divorcees and only 2 successful (so far) marriages. All 7 of those were mistakes? Then in our generation, her family has 3 grandkids who are married (my wife is one) and 2 out of the three are separated heading for divorce. Mistake? All of us failed to marry our soul mates? All of us are not getting our needs met and it must be a bad spouse sekection?

I would say it is the loss of the sense of community. Everyone is only concerned with their own happiness.

[Accuray]

Thanks Mr Bond, I will comment on this given more time because I disagree with most of it.

[Cadet]

Link to original post.

http://www.divorcebusting.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2381037#Post2381037

[Accuray]

SM34 I understand you're hurt and upset but condemning America and American culture doesn't seem like a healthy solution to me, and I don't believe that "pursuit of happiness" is the root of the problem. I firmly believe that all humans pursue happiness they just achieve it in different ways.

I do admire the fact that your culture is able to raise all your children to be emotionally stable and to have no baggage, that is quite an accomplishment! The culture you refer to also seems to be devoid of any type of possessiveness or jealousy -- why would anyone ever leave such a culture?

If you're talking about America, your statement about "old school marriages for life" is simply incorrect. The last generation had a higher divorce rate than the current generation, and the all time high was right after WWII. The divorce rate has actually been declining over the last 13 years in America.

Your assertion that pursuit of happiness leads to alcoholism, spousal abuse and parental neglect is absurd in my opinion. Societal dynamics are far too complex to be painted with a broad brush and labeled with a single simplistic cause.

My concern about your whole post is that the outcome of your current situation is not your fault. Society is bad, your wife's family is divorce ridden, your wife is selfish for wanting her needs met and thinks only about herself, her family is not shamed by her straying etc. You characterize yourself as an excellent spouse whose only failing is having a wife who couldn't figure out how much you love her and appreciate that appropriately. Is that really how you see it? American culture, society, values, parenting, and mental well being are all bad, your wife's family is bad, your wife is unappreciative, and you are "excellent?"

[MrBond]

I also fail to see where you following the rules of the group helps a situation. That would mean that you could treat your spouse like cr@p if it was allowed in the group as long as you stayed. It's how cults work.

Plus I don't see how your example of 'honor killings' is a good thing. Sounds barbaric to me.

But that's just my opinion.

[SM34]

Hi guys, I just saw this thread and didnt realize these posts were here.

MrBond, no I by no means condone honor killings. At all. I have lived half my life in America now, and most of that has been with my wife. And the first half of my life was spent in a british expatriate community in the middle east. So I actually dont share the views of alot of what happens on my 'home culture'....

I think I have a kind of hybrid view on life and morality etc... I try to take the good from eastern and western culture and mesh into some kind of reality for myself. After spending your entire life as somewhat of an outsider, or atleast different from those around you,it is sometimes hard to see what common ground you share with folks around you. A little confusing really...

To clarify, I would say this. In eastern culture, you are to be happy with your marriage regardless of wether it makes you happy. In western culture, there is a sense that if you are not happy, you change your situation and often times that involves changing spouses. I like to think that there is a happy medium....you try hard to be happy with what you have, but you also work on changing what you dont like, but WITH YOUR SPOUSE. This view ia probably something we all have im common on this board, since we are all here trying to better our lives, with our spouse.

I just cant help feeling like popular culture in America is very superficial and a lot of folks have a very 'surface understanding' of what marriage is. When you blend that with tbe strong sense that happiness is key to a good life (which it is, just that its within you) you have a very dangerous situation.



I mean think about it. We all know someone who has beeb in 5 or more long term relationships. Was that a wrong choice of mates, every time? Did every spouse go crazy on them? Was it really imcompatibility? I just dont agree with this mentality.

I have a large exteneded family of cousins etc in my home country which I stay in contact with. Most of them graduated from college either feom UK or USA so they are westernized to some degree. they all dated (from a distance) several people during their high school years, followed by choosing someone, then a one year engagement where they get to know each other (in a non sexual way). Then, they got married. Now, most of those people have two or more kids and seem very happy and fulfilled.

So if one set of people can seem to make a good choice of spouses with just one choice, while another group needs to try a whole selection of people, then something is not right. And then when the same people who dated and had long term relationships with lots of people are then getting divoeced multiple times,.isnt this weird?

[SM34]

Accuray, I admire your perspective and knowledge of eelationships, and your posts are daily mandatory reading for me. You are doing an awesome job helping us all here, as is mrbond and many others.

I detect a little sarcasm in the question of why someone would leave such a culture. So I just wanted to point out that it is not always by choice. Many of us are displaced due to political problema etc..

I myself have a problem where I have no future in NY home country. I am from the Coptic Orthodox minority of Egypt, and you may have seen how we are being persecuted by the Muslim brotherhood in our own home country. I also do not read or write Arabic since I went to british private schools my whole life. So I dont quite fit in over there (I grew up in a small gulf country). My cousins however, ALL returned to Egypt after finishing college in UK or USA because they love their home country and its people and family based culture.

I am an American now. So is my wife, and my daughter. My brother, his wife and two kids too. My parents also live here and are US citizens now. However, we cannot forget who we are. And that creates a daily struggle of tryinf to maintain your identity whike also assimilating into this community.

I am not saying I hate it here. On the contrary! This country is magnificent, and has given me lots of great opportunities that are not available elsewhere.

Consider this though. A couple of days ago, my parents (who had no prior souses or even sexual relationships) celebrated their 41st wedding anniversary. My wifes mom is in gwr second marriage (to her AP) aand her dad never remarried. her mon was sexually abused by her step dad. My father in law never remarried. He has 7 brothers and sisters and from 8 siblings only two marriages are still going. A couple of his siblings have been married twice and have blended families, put those kids through all that trauma only to divorce later. Baggage baggage baggage....

So it a coincidence which roles, WAS and LBS, have been assigned to my wife and I? Or is it due to life experiences? As parents, do we not have a duty to our kids to give them the best life? Does that not also incluse a stable two parent household? For me, that trumps my happiness. To my wife, it does not (although she doesnt appear to be checked out of our marriage and wont let go of me no matter what I try).

when I talk about America and American society, please do not think im talking down on you. As I said, I am American too. And my daughter is born and raised here. I have a vested interest in opening the dialogue with folks like you. We all need to fight to save this society from the inevitable collapse (if things continue this way) of marriages.

Do you agree with any of my views? Is it a coincidence who is in an affair and who is trying to save the marriage? Is it really something I could have done in my marriage that caused my wife to trash our lives and diaregard the interest of her own daughter? I mean bearing in mind that she is still around, still wants to dream about our family future etc...am I such a bad person? Or is she just more concerned with herself,than others? And if so, is that a coincidence?

[MrBond]

"In eastern culture, you are to be happy with your marriage regardless of wether it makes you happy."

Yes and if you don't, then you get killed or ostracized. So your happiness is based on fear. And let's get one thing straight. It's not "Eastern" culture. It's only in some. I don't think you realize how messed up this sounds.

"A couple of days ago, my parents (who had no prior souses or even sexual relationships) celebrated their 41st wedding anniversary. My wifes mom is in gwr second marriage (to her AP) aand her dad never remarried. her mon was sexually abused by her step dad. My father in law never remarried. He has 7 brothers and sisters and from 8 siblings only two marriages are still going. A couple of his siblings have been married twice and have blended families, put those kids through all that trauma only to divorce later. Baggage baggage baggage...."

Seriously? These issues are based on the individuals. Not "society". That's what makes your post so disturbing. You keep making these generalities. You're saying that no one in eastern culture has ever left their marriages or been unhappy. Those "eastern" cultures also have a high rate of sexual abuse and domestic violence and suppression of human rights more than any other places in the world. Do the research. Sounds like a happy society to me.

" We all need to fight to save this society from the inevitable collapse (if things continue this way) of marriages."

Society isn't going to collapse because of M's failing.

"Do you agree with any of my views? Is it a coincidence who is in an affair and who is trying to save the marriage? "

By your definition, only those in "other" countries hold M's to be sacred. This is an insult to everyone on here (a vast majority who are western, I might add) who believe in a good marriage. We are not on here to be selfish as you claim those in our society are.

That's what gets you into trouble with the posters. You generalize everything and try to make it sound so simple. When in reality, everyone (including your W) has free will to do what they want. Would you blame a woman who is beaten by her H to leave if society said that no matter what she may not leave him? Would you blame a father for wanting to leave a W who is alcoholic and beating their child?

You can't make generalities like that. It's the same reason why your search for the "magic bullet" has not been successful.

[Accuray]

SM34,

You've obviously done a lot of thinking about this, and that's great, but you're making huge generalizations based on poor sample sizes.

My MC explained it to me like this -- some people are emotionally healthy enough to carry on mature relationships and make them last, and some people are not.

The causes for this are many and varied, some of it may be culture, a lot of it is parenting, a lot of it is circumstance, some is probably genetic, etc. etc. The point is, you can look at a very complicated situation, an intricate system of long-term feedback loops, find a simple explanation for how it works that seems to fit, and them completely miss all the richness and detail that truly describes the system.

In my example above, two emotionally healthy people can have an emotionally fulfilling long term marriage. Two people who are not emotionally healthy will likely not be able to maintain a long term relationship, and will likely have a pattern of failed relationships. One emotionally healthy person paired with an emotionally unhealthy person will have a challenging relationship. They may be able to make it work through effort, or at some point the suffering may become too great and one or the other will have to leave.

I have a large exteneded family of cousins etc in my home country which I stay in contact with. Most of them graduated from college either feom UK or USA so they are westernized to some degree. they all dated (from a distance) several people during their high school years, followed by choosing someone, then a one year engagement where they get to know each other (in a non sexual way). Then, they got married. Now, most of those people have two or more kids and seem very happy and fulfilled.

First of all, you're making a HUGE assumption that their marriages are happy and fulfilling. You really wouldn't know unless you lived under their roof for a prolonged period. I can tell you that when I had marriage trouble, I confided in some friends and was shocked to learn what went on in marriages that I had also considered to be happy and fulfilling as an outsider looking in. The point is, you don't know what goes on behind closed doors.

However, let's pretend that they are 100% happy and fulfilling. They are all from the same extended family. Chances are they were raised with similar parental styles, have similar financial circumstances, etc., so that is not a very good sample -- it's far from random, so you can't use that to represent a culture, a country, or even a town. It's just one family, and that is statistically insignificant.

Consider this though. A couple of days ago, my parents (who had no prior souses or even sexual relationships) celebrated their 41st wedding anniversary. My wifes mom is in gwr second marriage (to her AP) aand her dad never remarried. her mon was sexually abused by her step dad. My father in law never remarried. He has 7 brothers and sisters and from 8 siblings only two marriages are still going. A couple of his siblings have been married twice and have blended families, put those kids through all that trauma only to divorce later. Baggage baggage baggage....

Once again, ONE FAMILY, completely insignificant when representing a culture or a society.

So if one set of people can seem to make a good choice of spouses with just one choice, while another group needs to try a whole selection of people, then something is not right. And then when the same people who dated and had long term relationships with lots of people are then getting divoeced multiple times,.isnt this weird?

No, it's not weird at all, your data set is meaningless. It's like you walked down the street and saw a woman with blue eyes and blonde hair and concluded that all American women have blue eyes and blonde hair.

You can't make these generalizations based on a few examples -- you have to look at real data, and in the area of marriages, it's very very hard to understand what trends may account for anything, because individual situations are so complicated.

I will say this -- in the marriage counseling community, (as covered by Michelle) there are two schools of thought. One is that you should try to save your marriage at all costs (in the absence of abuse), and the other is that if you have taken reasonable efforts to preserve a marriage that continues to make you miserable, then you should leave it. Even in the case of children, there is an argument that divorced but happy parents are better than married but miserable parents.

Unfortunately, there is no evidence to suggest which philosophy is the right one, it's a matter of belief and faith.

Now in my opening scenario, I referred to people either being emotionally healthy, or emotionally unhealthy. Obviously that's ridiculous, because "emotional health" is a giant multi-faceted thing, and people are more or less "healthy" on a spectrum. No one is just 100% self-actualized on all dimensions, we all have strengths and weaknesses, and marital success seems to be to be a function of the degree to which your strengths and weaknesses are complimented or exacerbated by those of your spouse. Do your gears mesh or grind when you come together?

That said, pretend you are 100% "emotionally healthy" and you are married to someone who is "emotionally unhealthy", and their unhealthy behaviors are a huge negative influence on you and preclude your ability to be happy. Pretend you were married to a woman who flirts openly with other men, spends money recklessly, gambles compulsively, and abuses drugs. Pretend you have children together and she's not a great parent. Pretend that you have raised these issues to her attention, done your best to support her, tried to help her and encourage her to get help, but she will not, and just blows you off. Her behaviors have driven you to bankruptcy and are a source of continued embarrassment and frustration.

With your Eastern Culture ideology, do you stay in that marriage? She not abusing you or your children, she's not cheating on you, she's willing to stay married to you, but every day is a living hell. Do you stay?

If you leave, are you being selfish? Are you being entitled? Are you the result of a bad upbringing and have emotional baggage? Are you being shallow?

Accuray

[SM34]

Accuray, sorry i did not respond to this message two and a half months when you wrote it. To be honest, I felt from the responses i was getting, that there was a serious flaw with my reasoning and probably with my attitude....so..

I took MORE time off from the board to focus on healing myself and letting go of these feelings of resentment. The feelings that i had made a huge mistake by marrying an american and being the first person in my entire extended family to do so. It will get me no where, what happened has already happened.

You are right in your example of a terrible spouse, I would absolutely recommend leaving the marriage. And it does happen n our culture too, when there are drugs or gambling going on the family will stand by the hurt spouse to leave that situation if the other spouse doesn't work on it.

I guess my argument would be that those situatuons are few are far between. In order to be such a terrible spouse you generally had to have had a very chaotic upbringing so because the culture is largely family based, this is a rare occurence I think. I'm not an expert, this is just my observation.

It may be clearly now to you and mrbond where my resentment lies. It is not that western culture is so terrible or that marriages here are doomed to fail, it is several issues from my perspective...

1) by marrying an american, especially one who comes from a chaotic background, I seriously reduced the chance at having a successful marriage. Or atleast it may the need to work hard at it that much more important.

2) accuray I think you will like and appraciate this second problem I am in because you seem to have done a lot of research and thinking into this specific problem. By marrying and american I put myself automatically in the 'one down' position in the marriage. This is crucial in way it failed!! I come from a family where no one is divorced and I don't want to be the first, and she comes from a family who's motto is if it doesn't make you happy, leave. She comes from a society where divorce is supported when you are not happy and I don't. And she knows all of this. So, from the start of our marriage i have had to tread lightly and she has the free pass to stomp on me if she wants to. You see where this has created a huge power imbalance?

I want it so much more than her! And that is what i was subconsiously blaming on this society and lashing out. It took me a few months but i managed to pin point this issue. I have to thank you, accuray, because i read your posts every night religiously, and you opened my eyes to this dynamic.

I have since read 'love must be tough' and also read a lot of stuff online that pertains to power in a marriage. The imbalance has to be corrected before we can hav any future together. The strange thing is, in some ways I feel like she knows this and is subconciously trying to force a correction. Could this be true?

I think I'm going to start a new thread within the next week or so. I've reached a different level or understnding now and I need to start a fresh. Would love some indepth discussions with accuray and anyone else who enjoys this theory of power imbalance so I hope to see you all on my new thread to explore this.

Comments welcome and encouraged.