I read some of Coach’s posts, and they are interesting. I have a dilemma here though. Confidence has never been one of my issues. Even in this crappy, crappy situation, I DO still feel good about myself. I also DO want to save my marriage. Keep in mind that I am also the type to analyze, think things through, and debate the choices before making what I consider to be important decisions. This is what has caused me to not be too quick in making dramatic changes to the situation.
Coach has another thread titled “? For the Men.” In it he describes a business situation where one partner is screwing up and how to handle it. The gist being, take charge, set up boundaries and do not put up with the behavior. Now here is my thing, like I said, I am a confident guy. When the sitch with my W first started, and she was still discussing problems, one thing that drove her away was her perceiving me as controlling. I “dominated” the relationship. It was my way or the highway. She said this made her feel unimportant, and destroyed her self confidence. So what does she do, a complete 180, takes charge, leaves and finds another guy. Now she is in charge, right? And I agree, what I need to do is get myself back in charge, but with my situation, I feel I need to be cautious in how I go about that. So, this causes some of my hesitation to implementing an “I won’t stand for this” type attitude. Trying to decipher the DB strategies can be tough, and dbmod makes a good point in that same thread, this is not a “one size fits all” thing. You need to apply it to your specific situation, to the personalities of me and my W.
Now I am also not saying that this technique is necessarily wrong for me, but like I said, I am still thinking that through.
I have a lot more reading to get through, thanks very much for that link. Between all of Coach’s posts, I can see there is a lot of valuable information in there. Keep the advice coming! This stuff is great!
BITS
Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.
