imLin, it sounds like your H needed to change, not you, but oh well. PEI, I feel one should not have to change one's true character. You can be more aware, perhaps, of affects on other people, but if you are a strong personality, then that is who you are. Right? They forget what attracted them to us in the first place (as imLin said), then suddenly it's not what they want. They rewrite the history of our marriages, and we (the strong personalities) are shown up as mean, or b!tches, or whatever. I tried the 180 change ... became more demure, handed everything over to H, and you know what, I am miserable and want to just leave. MLC sucks! And, I agree, that the worse the childhood, the worse the MLC and the longer. I think mine is still in the tunnel ... we just happen to be staying together.
Vent over! Sorry! I am having a bad week, maritally speaking.
Hi BeingMe, thanks for stopping by. I have to disagree with you here though ... there is a huge difference between being a strong personality and being controlling. Learning to take no for an answer and learning to respect other peoples opinions, methods, styles and skills is not mutually exclusive to being a strong personality. My H was attracted to my strength and abilities, but that did not give me license to unleash it all on him! My 180s do not include being demure or handing everything over to H ... but they do include SHARING opinions when appropriate, as opposed to IMPOSING them. And yes, there are times when the sharing of my opinions is not appropriate or appreciated. They do include handing over all the things that were H's responsibility that I had taken on over the years ... his money, parenting to some extent, fixing problems that come up, booking appts, etc.
I have not changed who I am, I'm just learning to take it down a notch. My way is not always the right way 'for someone else' ... this has been a big lesson for me. Different does not equal wrong or inferior ... another biggie.
I would suggest if you are miserable then you haven't made changes because you saw value in them ... and these changes are supposed to be for us. For me they were precipitated by H's MLC and how he feels. There were nuggets (some of them huge!) of truth in his view of me so that was where I started.
If you guys are together then you have an opportunity to really examine yourself here ... don't waste it ... figure out how to be true to BeingMe and meet the REAL needs of your H ... not his exagerated MLC spew.
Take care, Peace PEI
Holding onto anger to punish someone else, is like lighting yourself on fire to get smoke in their eyes ~ 25yearsmlc
