Mixed Signals or Just My Imagination ?

[native]

Breakaway,

Your honesty about your situation is humbling, and I feel awful about how you have been treated.

Thanks for being so kind as to take the time to help me understand what you might be feeling.

'If I was speaking to him he would either totally ignore me, start talking to one of the kids or even the dog, change subject and start talking to ME while I'm in midsentence, or just turn to me and say "I don't care about that.""

This would hurt a great deal. It is hard to excuse any of this. I makes me wonder though, if this is what he grew up with. Still not an excuse. Regarding talking to you while you are in midsentence, I can identify with that, in the sense that I sometimes find it hard to control my mouth and get excited and want to add something. It is hard for me to really listen. One of my brothers is just like this too, and so is my father. I think we all have some mild form of ADD. If not, at least it is a self-control issue. And I do have a short term memory problem. I think it was because of something I smoked in HS.

"the only way to get a person to do something is to criticize them..."

This is simply a bad, bad idea and an awful way to motivate anyone. I've been listening to Ellen Kriedman's tape series 'Light Her Fire', and it talks about how to encourage certain behaviors in children and I guess mates, and I like what she says: ' the best way to help someone to change is to catch them in the act of being good and praise them for it'. I am applying this to my D6 and looking for ways to apply it to W.

H needs to bring that one up in counselling and let the counsellor slap him back to Timbuktu.

I am the neat freak around my house, but I gave up a long time ago trying to get W to help me do anything. I dealt with it badly early on and until I got the tape series above, had no strategy for getting W to help out. I have just shouldered the burden myself and felt resentful.

Does he expect you to do all the housework ? Even if he is the primary breadwinner ( I don't know if he is) he should do some of the housework. I don't know, maybe make a list together and let him choose his chores?

When W wants me to change in some way, when she is really upset, she shouts me down. Or used too. It was a serious power play, and it never motivated me to change, only to focus on her apparant anger issues.

I would have responded better to an appeal for my help in some way that would make her happy. Because I would have given anything to know how to make her happy.

'but it includes other things like wishing I would dye my hair black...(I have auburn hair). That might sound petty, but it's a subtle example of him consistently implying I'm not acceptable the way I am.'

I married a brunette, because I have always loved brunettes. I don't understand where he is coming from on this one, but I can see how it would make you feel.

Does he know that's what he makes you feel like?


Regarding the insurance stuff, totally inappropriate on his part.

Gifts and special occasions. This is where I have totally blown in with my W. I am not a gifts person (love language speaking) and my W is. So of course, my gift giving has been sporadic. And I don't receive them well either. I guess I am 'giving challanged'. I have gotten better, but maybe too late.

Your post was helpful to me. I did not find it complaining at all, but very insightful. I wish my W was able to put her hurts and dissapointments with me so clearly into thought.

Initially she would use hurtful comparisons to motivate me to change. Later she would get angry and blast me. Then she just kept it to herself. I don't know about your H, but I really think that the way she approached her hurts did a lot to push me away or kill my motivation to make real changes.

I really would have liked her to put it in the form of 'This is how you could make me happy...because what you are doing really hurts, even though you may not realize it.'

I would like to think that this would have worked better.

By way of admission, I only recently began to bring my needs to her in this way, as I began to learn it. But by that time, she no longer cared about my needs.

In fact, she says that thought the last 4 years have been better, the first 2 she can't get over.

Can I get a 'do-over'?