Coming out of our "entitlement" ruts?

[RedHeadWife]

Can I be honest? I think if you want things to get better, you are going to need to put in more effort to start things going in the right direction.

I know it's not easy feeling like the only one putting in the effort. I am still a bit resentful for that since I felt that I put all the effort into making the M better after H's D bomb and didn't feel like I was getting anything in return, but at the same time, I am also accepting the fact that someone has to do it and usually it is the wife/mom.

Maybe this isn't typical, but I'm willing to bet $$$ it is, that we wives/moms are the glue that keeps our families together. Hope I don't offend any of the males around here, but it seems (and even another friend of mine just said this the other day) that our H's are pretty high maintenance. Sometimes I feel like I have 4 boys instead of 3 and a H. Who takes care of us? But I think that's just the way it is and we can either accept it and be happy in our lives or be resentful of it and unhappy in a lot of ways.

This is just my take from MPOV right now. It seems that the wife/mom needs to take the initiative to "make everything right" all the time, but a lot of times we aren't willing to do that and that's when things start breaking down in the M.

It sounds to me like you guys are just going 'round & 'round in circles. I totally understand what it's like to have the kids and trying to get them ready to go somewhere (trust me, I know -- lately I can't even get out the door to Wal-Mart w/o already being stressed to the max) or just being in the house w/ the kids and all the demands that are on you along w/ the laundry, housecleaning, etc. I think that's how I ended up, as H put it right before the bomb, that I had become "tired, angry" and some other stuff, can't remember right now. I had become those things b/c I was allowing myself to be resentful for all the things that were "expected" of me. But that's just kind of the way it is and I now have learned to accept it. Yes, sometimes it still pisses me off that I feel like I have to do everything, but in a way, I am also finally feeling fulfilled b/c I'm doing everything I can to keep my family happy and that includes my man.

What if you tried to get in the mind-set that you actually could lose H? That's what kicked me in the a$$! When he finally said "I'm done" and it was truly over for him, I was willing to do anything & everything to keep it together. When you are looking at a sitch from a different POV, sometimes things look differently. What if you looked at H and thought "other women find him attractive and he COULD find someone else if he wanted to." What if you just decided to do everything you could to make things good in your M and decided to deal w/ your issues once things were going really good?

Does any of that make sense?