Worried I found DB too late #2

[houndfan]

Well, I am going to take a different approach to your sitch and I have a feeling that when I am done you will want to kick the dog...

First, I am certainly not taking your H side on this AT ALL. But I am going to pepper in some of what I have learned with my W in counseling as some of your posts mirror our lives and my participation therein.

Have you ever thought that maybe H doesn't understand what your expectations are, or that he is unsure or unclear of what you want? I see many times when you are venting about him that are mirror images of our MC talks. My W used to get very frusterated with me for very similar things. i.e. she would be doing some task and I would stand and watch not knowing what to do to help or assist. Then we would argue and she would tell me that I should know what she needs or expects. I have even had the arguement that I didnt want a drink and then drank all of her soda whilst she was working on something around the house LOL!

Well, this comes up often in MC and the reality is that I don't know what she wants or expects even though she thinks that I should. Its like DB'ing we think we know what our S wants or expects like contact, communication, reaching out but DB'ing teaches us that those tactics push the S away. Same approach here, maybe he is timid to act because he doesn't know your expectation and conversely you have pushed him away. Maybe you have been critical of his attempts to assist you so he is shy to act. Maybe he is an idiot like me and just needs to be spoken to S L O W L Y.

(Flinching) Again, I am not suggesting that you should be more culpable, I am just suggesting that a different approach may yeild different results.

I know from experience, I was the one who asked for the D, I was the one who pushed for the seperation but once I got it I realized I didn't want it AT ALL. I pushed for those things because I felt like I was not being heard or considered. I would get in trouble, or "bitched at" for not helping out when she had dinner on for the kids, dogs running crazy thorugh the house, laundry piling up etc etc. So, I would do something that I thought she wanted and it would send her off the deep edge. It drove us apart!!!!

"As I told him, I know he's capable of better. Time will tell whether or not he can harness that or if he's followed him mother's footsteps and just given up. We really are products of our environment." Are you sure that you know what he is capable of? It seems to me that you have some expectations for H that he may not be aware of and you are projecting his "failure" on to some environmental conditions. See what I am getting at? reread some of your posts and maybe it will show through to you that I think you have a level of expectation that may not be fair or possible. Who knows as we only see what you post, but I think that there is an element of this with H, with the Floor guy etc.

So I will put myself in H shoes for one second. I wanted to S because I thought that it would be easier for the family, the boys everything. Well, she then bought into it too and then next thing I know she is seeing OM and my life is out of control. I think maybe your H has some of the same issues that I had... after seeing some of your responses to the stimuli I would guess that he is gun shy. He want's to reach out and has done so on occassion, but again you are posting that it is not to your specifications are you telling him the same?

So what do you do? When you are on the floor putting togther the dishwasher and he is just watching - maybe a 180 that is not judgemental which will open him up.

You seem to be analyzing his actions as well... stating that his touch is empty or not what you expect or whatever. Again, what do you know here? He is trying right? He is feeling this out too, so why do you have the need to judge the action? I would accept it as a step forward and long for the next one rather than wonder why it wasn't more complete!

So here is the moral of my post and hopefully you take my suggestions constructively as I think that you could be in a position to turn this around for your family: Every marriage consists of 3 marriages - there is MY Marriage, HER Marriage, and OUR Marriage. How you approach each one is critical to your overall success. Do you know what he thinks of HIS marriage without your input or direction? What about the collective marriage that you two share do you know what he thinks about that independent of your thoughts? I think that he knows what you want out of YOUR marriage but me thinks that there are no collabrative thoughts about the collective marriage (Our Marriage) because there may be some expectations on both sides that are not being met.

In reading the board I think those that make it create one marriage: OUR Marriage and those that don't have singular Marriages: "He doesn't know what I want from My marriage." And those that struggle have independent thoughts of their marriages.

Accept, Affirm, and Change right!

I really hope that I am wrong here, maybe it is because I am a guy, but I really think that you have the power to turn this around RIGHT AWAY! I can tell you that in my sitch I needed to change me first for W to even think about having me back, but she also admitted soon after we R that she need to communicate expectations more clearly and she needed to be less critical.

Fast forward in my life and I can PROMISE you that my wife never feels like I am on the sidelines any more. I now understand her clearly because she tells me what she expects rather than thinking that I should know.

I would suggest that approach with H and see what you get! Tell him more clearly because if he is a dumb as the Hound it may take a while to break him!

Good luck!

[Broken Tree]

Hound, can you take a look at my sitch when you get a shot. THX

Treeman

[cw68]

hound, I really appreciate your post and it didn't make me want to kick you, but it's definitely making me think. there's some truths in there for sure. I will respond to this later, I have guests in town, but tonight or tomorrow I'll be able to post. It'll be good to think about it and let it sink in, too. big thanks!

[houndfan]

Our best decisions in life are made after much thought and introspection....

[cw68]

Hound. I think you're right in that my H doesn't understand what I want and I have been critical. One of his issues with me is that I'm too critical and I am.

One thing that has always bugged me is the dinnertime thing. I used to get irritated because I'd put the food on the table, pour the drinks, cut up the kids' food, whatever and then sit to eat and he'd be halfway done. Then the kids would need seconds, or spill or something, and then the three of them would be done and gone, leaving me sitting there to eat alone. I finally did mention it and now he waits to eat until I eat and that does help. I still wish that he could just reach over and cut up food on his own without having to be prompted, however! (Little pet peeve.) I think one approach to this -- and I'm not picking the dinner thing, it's just clear to me and if I use this thought process with other things I might be able to find workable solutions -- is that I'll stop calling the family into the kitchen until all the food is on the table. I liked having them around, having us hang out together, but I'm going to give this a try and see what affect this has.

Hound, how do I let him know my expectations or needs when he says I'm overbearing? I feel like right now I have to just let everything rolls off of my back.

For instance, deciding to replace the cooktop when "we" have a house full of guests. Ceramic dust everywhere (it looks like a volcano blew inside the house), my sister and I cleaned for two hours solid the first morning she was here, her asthma's been set off, I have no cooktop so food has been difficult and he's the one who gets to scoot and not deal with the repercussions. I wish he would have just waited and actually helped clean up instead of complaining this morning that he's all stressed out because the kitchen's a mess. (Seriously, this ceramic dust is a pain in the patooty. It got into every cabinet so every single thing in the kitchen has to be cleaned. It's taking a while, even with my sister's help, because of the volume of work needed.) How do I share this without coming across as "overbearing" and critical?

You're right in that I don't know if his touch is empty. It just feels that way to me and I should clarify the difference to myself. It's how I feel, not what he means. I have blamed his childhood and his mother's influence for a lot of this. I still think it's true however, but I guess I can't show him anything. I've told him that he might not have faith right now in us, in marriage, but that I have enough faith for him. That maybe marriage means leaning on the other person when you don't have it in you and that sometime I'm probably going to need to lean on him. I still feel that way, but I can't dictate his feelings. I still think he's capable of great things, but you're right in that I don't know what he thinks he's capable of.

I need to learn to be less critical yet still be able to acknowledge things that don't sit well with me AND I have to learn to let the little things roll off. For the record, I haven't said anything about the cooktop issue/timing/cleaning.

[houndfan]

CW - thanks for your reply, I think that you hit some important topics that may need to be addressed with yourself and H!!!! Again not taking sides, but I think that we have been in parallel situations.

So how do you communicate to him without being critical or overbearing? That is tough because of course I don't know your H. So I will tell you how we are doing things in our house....

First all judgement needs to be set aside in order for your communication to be effective and purposeful. For example, the dust thing is a great sitch to evaluate. It is possible to suggest to him that alternate timing could have been better for the family without judging or being critical. Me thinks saying something to the effect of: I love our plans/stove top/whatever, but the additional dust really made it difficult on me when my sister was here, we had to clean etc rather than spending quality time together. Next time maybe I need to plan better. Sounds like you are deflecting the blame to yourself, when in reality you are communicating a need to him without any danger words!

In the past my W would have said to me in that sitch: Why did you decide to make the cooktop change now, don't you see what it did to me, you didn't help clean yada yada... DANGER WILL ROBINSON - it becomes about blame rather than solutions!

Here is what I see from your posts -> He seems to me to be wanting to participate in the family. He seems to want to try, but he is holding back on you and your kids! Your task is to get him to participate more in the family in a way that is non-threatening and non-judgemental. It does not mean that life as you know it changes forever because that would be unfair. But it does mean that you may need to give more than you want until you TWO can seek professional help in your M!

In my house, dinner time is the time of day when 80% of all arguements happen. Very similar to what you have shared above. Me thinks it's great that you have been able to offer a suggestion to H that he is following by staying around for the entire dinner. But again, I would suggest that you really look at what is important and focus on those things FIRST! W and I have talked about the dinner stress in MC several times and we just see the time differently so we have had to learn new approaches to the stressors. It becomes about our individual responses to anxiety.

We used to blow it out over similar things. She would comment under her breath that she was the maid as she made dinner, got drinks, etc and the boys and I would swing in and out. Well now she communicates to the team in advance as to what the expectations are at the table. Once she is seated she is not getting up and she will no longer enable that behavior.

In return she does not let it stress her to the point of a blow-up. So what did I do? Dinner became much less stressful for all of us and now I help out like crazy because it is fun. It was a perception thing she would get pissed and think that we didn't appreciate her because of our approach and I would feel alienated by her approach. It would create anxiety and she would deflect by getting on me.

This is hard to communicate in a post, but I hope you see what I am driving at... our mutual behavior changed because she changed how she communicated expectations and I began to listen. She did it in such a way that I wanted to make sure that I met them. At first when we were S it was not this way, but slowly things have gotten better.


You said something in your post that really is similar to our sitch. Let me give you some background about my sitch first. I am a jerk, arrogent, pig headed... I cheated, lied, stole - the entire bit from my wife. If I were your H you would have kicked me out years ago. But I had the balls to tell her that I was done with the M. So she kicked me out and decided that maybe she had had enough. So I had no room to be asking for anything at all. But I asked for one thing during the S which was to make my feelings matter....

So.... you had said that "it's how I feel, not what he means."

I think that most marriage problems start with that exact feeling. What you said there is very selfish and not the behavior of an OUR marriage. While your feelings are very very important they should not trump his intent EVER! If his intent is to show his love to you and he's not good at it, it should not damage your feelings. Does not mean that you can want for more and communicate that to him, but you should never assume what he means. (That is stright from our last MC session) Those assumptions are relationship killers. The cooktop is interesting again because it seems to me like he wants to provide aesthetic improvements to your house he seems to want to participate but you have judged the timing etc... other things suggest the same.

I have a question for you: How do you handle his need to be an individual and conversely yours? In our pre-S life we were Stay at Home Mom and Professional Dad and that was it. We were not Hound and Ms Hound EVER. We had no individual interests. And when one of us would show interest in something it would create - yep you guessed it ANXIETY! She would have it because I cheated and she thought I was off being an ass. I had it because I was upset that she did not want to spend that time with me after working 80 hours a week. So we never created identities. Since the R in December we have really worked and encouraged some individual activities. I am smelling some of this in your posts as well. Especially as it realtes to your kids.

Again, I am just offering from my experience, but I used to get so pissed after a long week when I would ask to go play ball with my buddies or whatever. she would always repond with "I've been on duty all week and you need to do XYZ with the boys." Well resentment would build toward W and kids. I would do the same crap to her too.

So now we have these awesome individual identities which have made all 4 of us happier! And we allow the other to participate without JUDGEMENT. Now we had to find balance here too, but I think we are doing a great job. So in your case, maybe this bachelorhood is a byproduct of the same feelings. Is it possible that he felt compressed by family life and you feel compressed by motherhood and neither of you can spread your wings?

If that is the case, this is an excellent opportunity for you to AFFIRM....

CW run to Barnes and Noble immediately and buy John Gottman's Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Get it tonight!!! Right now!!! Read about the Four Horsemen first and then read about your "start-up" you can do this stuff in conjunction with DB, in fact I think I read somewhere that Michelle was a fan of Gottman's work.

Don't get too caught up in Gottman's study and the mechanics of the book, I think that right now that does not help you or H. Also, I would caution your getting H's participation right now in the exercises. When W and I started the exercises they were full of negative thoughts, now though they are fun and we do them all of the time over and over again!

Again, not taking sides but sounds to me that you can use some of the principles to help you make some movement with H right away. Also, CW, I don't think that you need to become a Patsy in all of this either. But, I found that changing how I respond to stress, anxiety, and a multitude of situations saved my marriage!!!!

I am not a clinician, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night!

Send me a message after you have read some of the book!

[minkerman]

Seven Principles is indeed a good book. Unfortunately I have it on my nightstand, and am reading it by myself! But, hopefully W will be back soon, and we can get busy with the principles.....

[cw68]

Hound, I think I was pretty critical and now H is gun-shy so it feels like anything I say is taken as criticism.

I know that H just wants to get the house looking and working better, and this may not be good DBing, but I'm not going to say that I needed to plan better because I'm not the one responsible for the timing of the cooktop replacement. It's been in the garage for a month, I didn't plan on putting it in when I have a house full of guests, he did. I'd rather just not say anything. Admittedly, I have judged the timing of him replacing the cooktop. To me, he didn't think too much about me or my guests, or at least he didn't think about the ramifications of his actions on those around him. Saturday they come in town, Sunday he makes the mess and leaves, doesn't come by on Monday (leaving me to clean up and there's no way I could do it all with guests in town) and then Tuesday he complains about the kitchen being messy (luckily they are gone until tomorrow). This just doesn't sit well with me, regardless of what his intent was. There hasn't been any "sorry for the timing, I didn't think, I should have waited, I should have had the right tools" or anything. Judgmental, sure. Rightfully irritated? I think so. IMO, I'm just in a lose/lose spot. If I say anything, he'll take it as criticism. So I'd rather just still be irritated and not have him feel judged.

Is "it's how I feel" a selfish statement? I was realizing that my feelings are not what he means but rather my interpretation of them, I wasn't trying to have my feelings trump his intent, but rather I was acknowledging that they are separation and I don't always know what I think I know. You make very good points about OUR marriage, btw.

As for our roles, we had/have less of a problem being individuals as we did being a couple. We both did plenty of things outside of the house/family, but they weren't together. We could each do our volunteering and other activities (mine: politics, him: marathon training) easier on our own because of the whole babysitter thing than we could together. I chose community and family things to occupy my time and my H chose single and childless friends to out to the bars with or solitary activities like running that I couldn't be involved with. OK, we could have gotten a babysitter, but whenever we did, I'd head home to relive the babysitter ($$ and time) and he'd stay out until 2am. As for running, I don't run and he has said that he wouldn't do short slow runs with me because he didn't want to be held back with his training. And my H travels a fair amount for work, which really ramped up after we moved to this new house and I felt very lonely in the new town. These things really contributed to us losing our connection. I thought our marriage was stronger than it was so I didn't worry, thought it would just be a phase. Unfortunately, I hadn't a clue that he was in pain and frighteningly unhappy with our relationship.

Our parenting is the thing we do best together and outside of the infant stage there hasn't really been a lot of stress on our roles in this regard. He's really trying to focus on the family and I'm very supportive of that. I realize that if he comes back, that will be the reason. He's not confident he can come back to the marriage, but if we make OUR marriage it will make all the difference to all of us.

We've both talked about how communication is key and regardless of whether or not we move forward together it's something we have to get better at. My personal feeling is that I can only show progress on things that aren't threatening because he's so afraid of me, our marriage and the pain it brought him. I can only work on myself right now.

[cw68]

As for the book, I'm going to finish the five love languages first.

[cw68]

Journaling: We all ended up going out to dinner tonight and it was a pretty good evening. Interesting how textbook so many of their (and ours, I suppose) patterns happen to be, you'll see later. I was chipper and upbeat when he got home. Because of all the stress of the last couple of weeks with the house and now with the guests, I told him I just couldn't stick around tonight to help. He's taking the next two days off, so we can do the cooktop tomorrow and I need a break. H said he didn't mind and understood.

Well, then H wanted to go look at a motorcycle tonight that he was interested in. There's another he's looking at again tomorrow and will probably buy it, but this was a better deal. Interestingly, he just planned on seeing it, didn't ask me if I could give him a ride to it since if he bought it he'd be driving it home, not to mention what he'd do with the kids. I didn't take it as being taken for granted, but rather that he included me in the plans. He even asked me if I had found a helmet and recommended a store at which he bought stuff at today. To me that's a big move because when he had a cycle before I never rode on it, not even a single time. So this guy doesn't want to plan any social activities alone with me but obviously plans on taking me riding. I'll take it! So we went out to dinner before he was going to look at the bike. It was a really good evening. I worked it, trying to be interesting, asking him lots of open ended questions and throwing other good DBing in there. The motorcycle thing ended up not happening.

(Hound, he forgot that Sunday was Easter. We aren't religious, so it's more of a fun Easter basket kind of day. He asked if I was doing anything for them and I just said I was, but didn't tell him. Then I asked if he wanted to get together for brunch or something, then said that he'd probably want to see the kids with their baskets. H said that it would ruin his plans since he was going to go to the casinos in Tahoe and watch the bball games. Here's where the pre-DBing, old CW would have said something like, "Well, I guess you can choose what's more important." or some other more judgmental, cynical thing. But I didn't say a word and he decided to come over for brunch. Bummer, though, he will miss the kids finding eggs.)

IMO, it was pretty obvious that it was a good night. I was wondering what tomorrow would bring because my sister and family won't return until later, he's got the day off and I'm at the apartment tonight. No need to worry, when I went to leave he asked what time in the morning I was coming by because he thought we could all hang out tomorrow for the day. Instead of meeting at home, I suggested we meet at the gym. (180. Well used to be a 180, now it's just normal behavior.)

So the textbook behavior was him pulling back when it was time to say goodbye, IMO because we had a good time and definitely did some "connecting" the previous couple of hours. Usually I get a hug and a kiss and tonight it was a simple hug in passing. Not a big deal, but I think I would have been bummed if I didn't know that they get close, pull back, get close, pull back. D6 was sad when I left though, and S5 was a terror once his Dad got home. I wonder if he sees his behavior changing or if it's just me. He's like temper tantrum king now where he used to be more relaxed.

That's it. I'm off to read but always feel better posting here.