GIMA - Have you read the book "Love Must Be Tough?" (sorry if you've referred to this, but it's hard to keep everyone straight)
I keep thinking about the "how long can we keep going on in limbo" question. One of the things that Dr. Dobson, the author of that book, mentions is there needs to be a crisis before changes will be made. It isn't exactly in the same reference as your or my sotch that he describes it since he's talking about infidelity, but I think the overall point may be fitting.
He suggests that at the right point you may have to create your crisis. Draw the line in the sand if you will.
If you haven't read it, it may be worth picking up. It's not nearly as helpful as the MWD books and only the first 100 pages seemed worthwhile to me, but there were some good things in there.
Me: 35 W: 31 S:9 M: 10 years Together 13 MySitch - Ups & Downs She moved out the day before Thanksgiving 2009, over 13 months post-bomb.
That is a VERY interesting observation. W's step father, who was there yesterday, and who is, in reality, the father figure who raised W, is THE MOSt hyper critical, never wrong, argumentative people I have ever met. They fought constantly growing up.
I see where W learned the behavior. Might this have something to do with W's inability to accept a compliment, like "you really look great in that skirt"?
The answer is YES. A hyper-critical parent will do it! She has probably internalized this critical voice and can't let herself hear compliments without throwing five more criticisms on herself in response.
Also, she may project the critical father onto you - something that will alienate most people from their spouses and the world. If she feels she must be perfect in everyway, and nobody can be, she may point a finger outside herself to the man in front of her when she hears that internal critic.
Great point @ W reacting to her parents being nice to me. I thought it couldhave been her being angry they were being nice to me despite her wanting to leave (IF she is still at that point, which I doubt). Don't know, could have been a jealousy thing. Could be my misperception, but it sure seemed like she needed to take me down a notch in front of them. I was not acting ANY differently than I ever have around my in-laws.
AGain, it could be "why are my parents so nice to H, but so critical of me? Why can't they be nice to me?"
Again, this would be her issue, for therapy. Not about you. Have compassion. Perhaps offer to let her know that it must seem unfair and painful right now if her parents aren't supporting her in the way she needs.
Oh, and throw in a compliment. You'll be the "good father projection" then. Am I making any sense?
Re: accepting compliments. I pulled this off one of SP's older threads, (very slightly modified to depersonalize it) because it seemed possibly relevant to your musings here:
Originally Posted By: aliveandkicking
There have been recent studies on positive affirmations and how if they don't align with how you feel about yourself, they can actually compel you to defend your position more (internally) and feel like worse sh*t about yourself. This is not conscious stuff. If you tell someone who is overweight that they look skinny, they will argue their case with you. And, as I recall sharing with you in the alt, there is no bypassing a person's own perception of him/her-self.
If (she) felt ugly and didn't even want to see a picture of herself, she was experiencing insecurity that was damaging your R (duh)...but it was not out of viciousness that she didn't accept your compliments or advances, it was out of her experiencing an unpleasant sensation because it didn't match or hold true. AND, some of this can be due to her insecurities, issues etc and some due to your delivery or non-delivery in other areas of the R...
.... to which I eventually replied .....
Originally Posted By: Kettricken
I have a theory about this (surprise) and not just as it applies to (this particular woman) -- I think it's a recurring pattern with WAWs. It's like when your mom tells you you're pretty, smart, the best girl in the class. It's nice .... but it means, not a lot. It's your MOM. Bias much? Similarly, when your long-time husband gives you the eye or the drool, if YOU don't believe you're sexually attractive/beautiful, it can mean ... not much. Either .... "well, he HAS to say that stuff; if he's gonna have sex it will be with me, so he has an agenda here" ... or more subtle. With certain personalities, it seems like people who get too close to us (immediate family members, long-term spouses) become so closely identified with our own self-concepts that WE we attribute our opinions about our bodies,etc, to them. Thus the "something off" feeling referenced above.
Not healthy, woah nellie, by a long shot. But possibly, informative. I wonder if the above explains why some women who experience (an OM) subsequently become more willing to believe the "Hel-LO Nurse!" from their husbands, because now that opinion has been confirmed by an outside so-called "neutral party" with no commitments.
Just something to think about.
Not a reason to stop complimenting; by all means carry on with that, when it's sincere. But understand why you *might* not be getting a positive response.
"Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock." -- Frank Herbert
Please forgive me for spamming your thread, GIMA; I will cease and desist if requested.
This discussion just reminded me of something I read on the SSM board a good while ago:
Originally Posted By: SillyOldBear
The second approach, used at the same time, is to "Tape Over." I'm sure you all remember cassette tapes, right? They were like CD's, only they cost three times as much to manufacture and a third as much to buy in a store. Well, NH compares problem kids to a tape recorder. All their lives, or at least since they started misbehaving in school, chances are that people have been harping on what they did wrong. Each of these comments gets stored away. If they heard one bad thing per day for five years at school--and that's WAY low for even a fairly good kid, sad to say--that's 180 days x 5 =900 negative comments on the tape.
If you say "Hey, GREAT job on that report! You must have worked like crazy! I think that was the best I've seen all year." to a kid like this, your comment goes on the tape, too. But it's got 899 competitors that all agree that it's false. That's why these kids don't trust adults who say positive things, and the more aggressively positive and forced-cheerful you try to be, the more they dismiss it as fakery. They don't trust. You or people like you (in their minds) have told them over and over how bad they were, and that's what they know.
If you asked a stranger how to get to the park, and he told you to go left, you'd probably go left. But if there 20 people behind him and they all said "No! Don't believe him, you've got to go right!" then you'd probably go right. We're trained by evolution to go with the numbers when we're not in a position to judge the quality of information. Usually, it's right. But when you've gotten erroneous (even if well-meaning) information repeatedly over the years, your logic works against you.
So what does NH do about this? Well, the problem with trouble kids is that they have this backlog of a thousand negative comments, but their behavior at the moment makes it hard to give genuine positive feedback--and remember, faking it makes it worse, not better. One fake positive comment is like two negatives. So if you can't say negative, and you can't say positive, and you can't fake it, what do you do?
In the NH way of thinking, you forget positive and negative and make neutral, but absolutely true comments. Things like "I see you wore your Metallica shirt today." or "You brought your book today." Never anything like "Dude, I love Metallica too!" or "You brought your book! That's EXCELLENT, Johnny, doesn't it feel great to be responsible?" These are dismissed as fake by the NH kid.
The comments suggested may seem meaningless, and in a way they are. They're simple observations of facts with no value judgment made or implied. Their purpose is not to pump up the all-important and all-powerful Self Esteem. They have three purposes:
•They establish that you are paying attention to Johnny. This is not dishonest, by the way, because to do this, you DO have to pay attention to him. •They establish that you are not being dishonest. The first couple of times you say "Hey, you're wearing your red shirt today" to a truly troubled kid, they'll literally say "No I'm not!" It's a reflex they don't control at first; they trust NOTHING an adult says. •You are replacing the negative records on the tape, taping over them with neutral comments. The idea is not instantly to change the kid's outlook from negative to positive; that can't be done. The idea is to begin to lower the amount of negativity in his head.
Now, this is directed at working with kids, but personally, I see lots of areas where, with a little creativity and careful avoidance of condescension, it could be applicable to interactions with adults, too. Especially adults who may still be suffering from a childhood with a hypercritical parent.....
"Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock." -- Frank Herbert
Great post. I think I have understood W cannot accept a compliment. I just didn't understand why.
My W fits the description in your post to a T.
The frustrating part for me (and the LBS) is I thought (and still do) I was doing what a thoughtful, loving spouse was supposed to do. I didn't over do the compliments and made them where appropriate. And I always meant it.
So here's the million dollar question. If we could figure this out on this forum board why couldn't her C figure it out?! I know from what little W has told me about her C sessions, her C told W "I think we're done here" in response to my W smiling at C's question of what life looked like after D!! And, no, no one ever reached out to me or even told me @ W's C'ing. And the topper is the C was a group to whom our CHURCH refers. Don't know about anyone else, but I was taught the Church was supposed to try to save M and the family where possible.
So here's the million dollar question. If we could figure this out on this forum board why couldn't her C figure it out?! I know from what little W has told me about her C sessions, her C told W "I think we're done here" in response to my W smiling at C's question of what life looked like after D!! And, no, no one ever reached out to me or even told me @ W's C'ing. And the topper is the C was a group to whom our CHURCH refers. Don't know about anyone else, but I was taught the Church was supposed to try to save M and the family where possible.
First, the church refers to Christian counselors typically. That doesn't mean that they necessarily are advocates of saving M. Every C has their own beliefs and those are sometimes transmuted to the client.
Second, why did the C not see this? It would depend on what your W was sharing with her and if she was asking her any questions or just letting her talk and vent. My first C, right after the bomb, was good but I wasn't in the right frame of mind to fix childhood issues right then. I had to get through panic mode and she helped me do that. Your W may have been in such a state when she got to her that her current issues were much more pressing that her FOO problems. C's, in my experience, will focus on the most immediate problem first and then dive deeper into the underlying issues. That is how it should be. If your W stopped going once she got the one answer she thought she wanted, she never even touched on the rest of her issues.
T19 M15 S19 XH47 M43 bomb12/4/07 PA5/07 S12/26/07 D final 11/17/08 Back together with no defined R 05/2010 confused....to say the least!!!
Great exchange of info everyone. Thanks for brainstorming on this.
GIMA, one other thing I would submit for your consideration is, is it possible that there is something about your W being critical in this way that pushes a button that you have? To some people a question like "Did you know that you overpaid the ice cream vendor?" would go unnoticed. ......and is it possible that there is something about YOUR behavior that triggers this response from your W (in addition to the dynamic caused by having her parents in the mix)? The example that I'm thinking of when asking this second question is that in my situation, I have come to realize that I am a "distancer" and my H was a "pursuer" in our relationship. H had to work extra hard to get my attention because I learned to be busy with work all the time in my FOO. I became a distancer because my family was smothering. I moved out of state to get away........Anyway, because of this I didn't give H the attention he so longed for (totally MY issue on this point).
