She can hold the relationship hostage, but after his growth, she won't be able to hold him or his happiness hostage. He may or may not remain with her for the kids' sake, but he won't need her or any woman to be happy.
This may be true in theory and in the long run, but try going face to face with the reality of ending your marriage and family. It is not a pleasant outcome. Everyone can piece their life back together and maybe end up happier than before, but my position is to save the marriage.
Mine too. Being a happy, healthy, and attractive person is a good way to do that; it has the advantage of possibly enticing the other person to want to work with you to save the marriage.
Originally Posted By: Cobra
Thinking that you need to keep forging ahead and become a better person, to keep growing for you own sake is not really the objective IMO, contrary to what many counselors like to propose. If the marriage can make you happy but you may even need to go backward in your growth, who is to say that is wrong? What is the necessary level of growth to be happy? There are plenty of couples out there who are dysfunctional from our understanding, yet seem to be happy. It works for them. There is always risk is shaking up the status quo.
And there's risk in letting the status quo fester. There's a large number of people on this site who thought that their spouse was happy with the status quo and were quite surprised to find out (a) they weren't happy and (b) they aren't interested in any proposed solution other than splitting up.
Originally Posted By: Cobra
I also don’t buy into the notion that a person must be happy with his/herself before s/he can be happy in a relationship.
The person not being happy with himself is going to interfere greatly with his partner's enjoyment of the relationship. He can end up being temporarily happy within the relationship.
Originally Posted By: Cobra
This idea of breaking all codependency traits and becoming self reliant is a hard path for many people. Most of us want companionship and can never truly feel happy or fulfilled alone. So I see nothing wrong with wanting another person or in weighing the consequences of that codependency against individual happiness. I do believe that growth is necessary in FOO type issues that worm their way through to destroying a marriage. That growth is important because it directly impacts the spouse.
Clearly we're happier with a partner than alone. But the difference is between seeing a split as an unfathomable disaster and seeing a split as a painful occasion that can be endured with happy times alone or with a new partner waiting on the other side.
a fine and enviable madness, this delusion that all questions have answers, and nothing is beyond the reach of a strong left arm.
