Mach, I read the quotes you pulled out. The "I told him", references were just explanations about what is going on with my story. My C has told me that I need to stand up for myself and set some bounderies..not let him walk all over me. So if he's blatently flirting with other women when we are together, then I need to explain to him how that makes me feel and ask for some respect. That's what I did. As for the "let him sit around" comment..it's an issue that has come up..damned if I do, damned if I don't, thing. He says he wants me to be more fun and do active things, but when I try to suggest them or plan them, he tells me that he's tired and just wants to relax then later tells me that i don't do fun and active things. "Let him" was probably the wrong way to phrase it. Either way, it comes back to bite me in the a##.
And I know that I have some things to work on. My C says that in most relationships, the power or control factor should be 40/40/20. Each person has 40% and then the 20% goes back and forth to one or the other depending on the need.My problem is that he can't make decisions in his personal life and readily admits that. So, if a decision needs to be made, he makes me do it and then if it doesn't work out, he can blame me. Always been that way and it worked for 19 years. Neither of us liked it, or even realized that it worked this way until recently. He realized he wanted more control and I realized that I wanted him to have more. It's hard to be the one to always have to make the decisions. Not a fun job. We're both very analytical so we never jump before researching it to death, but in the end it was always me that had to finalize everything. It's just the way our relationship evolved. He never said he had a problem with it and I didn't know it was happening, so it worked until he slid into MLC. And then he decided that EVERYTHING I did was bad or wrong for him. As I've read here, it is one of the scripted dialogs that MLCers spout.."you are controlling". At this time, he feels like everyone is controlling him to some extent.
I have read lots of stuff on controlling/manipulating behaviors. I think we all do it to a certain degree. That's what relationships are..debating, stating our points of view, laughing about it, talking about stuff and learning from the other's perspective. Feeling comfortable enough to say what we feel and grow as individuals. It's unrealistic to think that someone will just say happy happy, complimentary, ego stroking, pandering things every minute of your life. Who would even want that..it's pollyanna land. But that's what he tells me..the OW never said ONE thing to make him feel bad about himself.
