GFI,

After reading your post I have realised I am trying to impress my wife via my children.

I know my children are enjoying spending time with me and obviously my first consideration is obviously them and I would like to think I am doing things that I never did when our marriage was solid. It is shameful that I neglected my childrens needs so much, and come to that, my wife's too.

The trouble is I know I am still having trouble detaching and just concentrating on the children. I am concerned that any negative action or utterance by me will be seen as a backslide, therefore I think I am fabricating situations to please my wife conciously and sub-conciously. I must cut out this 'seeking approval' behaviour and drop the rope. I asked gucciloafer to send me a link regarding dropping the rope but I have not received anything as yet.

This behaviour yesterday caused me to concoct a text to my wife in regard to a plumbers visit. The text I sent (which I wrote in a post yesterday) sounded way too contrived and when my wife read it, she said it was like being sent a text from somebody she had never met. This agitated her and our conversation was very much on a 'business' level rather than friendly.

To conclude, my actions, anticipations and behaviour has to be tempered to make it more 'natural'. I am trying so hard to DR with my wife and use all the tools and strategies, whilst trying to build a relationship with my children. I appear to have compartmentalised my sitch into two seperate 'projects' - 1. Build relationship with children. 2. Start to re-build a friendly relationship with my wife. I know I am trying to fast track things a little in my relationship with my wife by being a bit over the top with the children and trying to attract approval and to show her my changes, but the letter writing and the wooden text has cause agitation and suspision.




Last edited by markhaving probs; 05/08/09 07:02 AM.
Bomb dropped: 19/12/08
Me:48
WAW:41
D:10
S:6
Married: 15 years