Putting it back together, but SSM issues linger

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Thanks again Adinva, this is super-helpful, I've been searching for someone who can give me your perspective as a historically LD wife! This is great.

I don't get what she's bringing to the table. What does she think she's bringing to the table? Just more ML?

Yes, good question. Sometimes I think she feels that she always had the marriage figured out and that I've now gotten on board, so she doesn't have to do anything new.

Other times, she gets sad that she's falling short, and I have felt like she's daring me to leave the marriage. I don't know if that's because she still wants out, but wants it to be easy because I'll be the one to leave? She denies that, maybe I'm paranoid. She told me that ending the marriage now will be "up to me", meaning she won't walk away again.

She has also told me that I'm "unlucky" to have her. I think she also fears that I'm with her just because I'm attracted to her physically. She's unhappy with herself, and has a hard time understanding why I'm so committed. In many ways it's the "not going to put in the effort and then be unhappy with the results" syndrome.

What's interesting to me is that she was able to get OM interested, and I'm still interested, so why does she have a hard time understanding why she's desirable? I think that's been validated.

Assuming you're talking about your basic human emotional needs, I think you're missing something. She's denying that she has any emotional needs that she looks to her H for. While I'd argue that she's probably in denial about that, that all humans have emotional needs, just the fact that she had an EA suggests it's untrue. What did she get from the EA? She might benefit from counseling to figure out why she wants to avoid emotions, but she'd have to want to do that. Coming from you it would sound like pressure. (Where I'm getting this is that my H seems to be similar. While I always thought he was unemotional he really was just not expressing his emotions and then resentment would bubble over. My T pointed out that because he got angry with me I could see that there really were emotions there.)

Yes, good point. Historically she kept everything in. She didn't feel it was her place to ask me to change or do anything to make her happy, that she should be responsible for making herself happy. She kept everything bottled up and eventually couldn't take it. When she realized she'd crossed the line with OM, she did go to counseling, but specifically to decide what to do about her feelings about me. She didn't even tell the IC about OM or the EA. The IC kept recommending that she talk to me, but she never did, she just told me she wanted a D with no chance to reconcile.

After the bomb, I started going to IC (the same person that W saw, who shared her diagnosis of my W with me despite the fact I kept asking her not to). The IC was angry when she found out my W hadn't let her in and told her about OM, I eventually had to change therapists. My W is dead set against continuing her own IC, or going to MC. She said it's hard for her to keep it together, and she doesn't want to feel worse.

Well, ok. She learned there was a deal breaker and she did something about it. Maybe you go along with status quo until you discover that you've come to another dealbreaker - maybe with the physical needs being met better, you can be OK without the emotional part. Are you OK with that?

I don't know. The fact that I'm posting here to talk about it tells me probably not. Many of the books I've read talk about the fact that a good sex life is essential for a happy marriage, the two mirror and reinforce each other. I do believe that unless the sex life is *good* there will always be a tax on the M. Based on all the pain I went through, I want the best M I can have. I don't want a 7, I want a 9.5.

I still don't get what she values about your R that caused her to turn around on the ML issue. You presented a rational argument, the finances and why-not etc, and it worked - wow. For me, the rational arguments aren't enough - my H is in a fog about that stuff and just wants o-u-t. I'd still wonder what she was looking elsewhere for, just so you can improve on what you have with her.

Don't get me wrong -- the rational arguments did very little, that's just negative reinforcement which isn't enough to change anything. I think it just gave her pause. It did a little to dispell the fantasy that everything would be better with me gone. The rational arguments would never be sufficient to change her mind however.

I also talked to her about what I wanted our "new" marriage to be. I convinced her that I didn't want to go back to what we had. I told her that we had an opportunity to start over, that there were no guarantees, and that if it didn't work that was OK with me too.

I also figured out on my own that what she wanted was *connection*. That's what she got from OM. She also wanted to feel that we were working as a team, that I wanted to spend time with her, that I would choose her over my hobbies, etc. That was the positive motivation.

Initially however she was so burned up she wouldn't let me in. She had constructed an intricate model in her mind of who I was, what I represented, what I would and would not do, etc. and a lot of it was just in her head. She had convinced herself of my badness to feel good about being with OM. I had to slowly demonstrate through action that she was inaccurate in how she viewed me, that she had constructed a caricature of who I was. That was the hardest part. She had her mind totally made up, and had added on layers of reinforcing beliefs that had to be stripped away one by one.

I had to be patient, supportive, and had to give her space. Basically it was everything you read in DB, 180's, act as if, etc. The only thing I didn't do is GAL, because historically I would GAL too much!

What did I do specifically? Right away I stopped pursuing about 95% of my hobbies, sports etc. Just quit cold turkey. Cancelled music lessons, dropped out of activities, etc. I started spending as much QT with her as she wanted. I had meaningful discussions with her. I treated her like we were dating. I used to come home, make small talk, eat dinner, spend time with the kids, then retire to the "man cave". I stopped doing that. Instead I would spend time with the kids, exercise, and then QT with W -- every night. I would IM with her from work, send her e-mails, up the communication.

I'm naturally a night owl, but I made it a point to go to bed at the same time every night. I changed my attitude towards the M. I started doing the dishes, I started doing the kids laundry, I picked up the clutter around the house that I knew bothered her.

I looked at every task in our lives necessary to keep the family going, asked myself if I just "assumed" that she owned it, and then challenged why I felt that way. I was no slouch before, I definitely did my share, but I definitely also had unspoken assumptions about things she was responsible for, and I rethought all of those. I particularly tried to pick up the things that she liked the least, or that caused her the most stress.

There was no "one thing" that worked, it took everything, and I can tell you it took every ounce of what I had to give to make it work. Nothing about it was easy -- and the whole time I was burned up inside! I wanted the apology, I wanted the remorse! I wanted her to care about MY needs! I had to smash all that down and it was very, very hard.

Re my "aggression" comments. I'm projecting onto your W what I've learned about me. It may not be a fit. I always thought of myself as the better half of our relationship. I communicated, I was flexible, I was understanding and tolerant, while he was increasingly rigid, complaining, and difficult. I stated upfront when I needed him to be more respectful, affectionate, communicative. I really thought he had all the problems and my flaws were minor. I have since learned that my "minor" flaws were major in his value system, which is just as legitimate as my value system. My "minor" transgressions were creating a miserable existence for him. My excusable and understandable, and fixable, intimacy issues may have been destroying his love and respect for me. He wasn't communicating any of this so I thought we were happily married until he told me that he wanted to separate and get divorced. Not to go through every detail of our sitch, but in retrospect I think I was actually a lot more resentful and angry at him than I was willing to admit to myself or anyone, and I subconsiously took it out on him at every opportunity. The ways I did this were so innocuous as to be unrecognizeable - getting caught up reading the internet late at night, being right in the middle of something when he pointed out things that he wanted done, not fixing a food he remembered liking because I didn't think it would be good. Just little tiny ways of saying without speaking, "I do not care about you." In other words, my failures to meet or even understand his needs were acts of aggression I didn't even know I felt.

You *may* be too hard on yourself here. If you were in the middle of something when he made a request, you were in the middle of something! It's not like you did that to spite him unless you could see the future. It's hard for me to see the balance between looking out for your own needs versus being passive aggressive about H. You may be taking on too much responsibility here.

You can't be a good relationship partner unless you're good with you, and to do that, you have to see to your own needs too.

One thing my DB Coach and my IC both keep telling me is that I cannot own my W's issues. Those are hers to deal with. If you were not meeting your H's needs, I would have to think it's because he wasn't meeting your needs either.

One thing I liked about the SSM book is it made me understand cycles in relationships. If you do a positive act, you get a positive response, then you do another positive act, and pretty soon you're both spinning in a good direction. The opposite is also true -- you reject H for sex, he withdraws and does not spend QT with you, you get resentful and dig in even harder on no ML, he feels even more resentful and hurt and withdraws even farther, or gets critical, and you're in a full scale negative hurricane.

The point is, you don't do that by yourself. If H was giving you what you needed, you would have stepped up for H. That's how it works (or should work, I seem to be having issues with W in that regard!)

So when I hear someone won't go for a 10 minute bike ride because they don't like to bike...or kayak...or walk...or ML...it sounds kind of like aggression to me. If I can't get outside of my self-consciousness to do something my H would really love in terms of ML, well, again it sounds like resentment to me. In my case it was. I always planned that when my issues became a real problem for us I'd go get help from a sex therapist. But that time should probably have come a long time ago - my H just wasn't telling me that he was bothered. Instead he just decided the problem was that he wasn't attracted to me anymore.

I wish my W would go to a sex therapist. There is no way. She told me that her LD doesn't bother her at all, so she has no reason to work on it. I think that she feels as long as she steps up the frequency, that's good enough -- but it's not! I'm not looking for anything crazy, I just want intimacy and connection, I want mutual desire.

My MIL is a narcissist. Everyone recognizes that, including W. It's all about MIL. I think my W has some of that going on, but then has episodes of realizing it and feeling badly about it, but those episodes aren't enough to motivate any change. I don't know what to *do* about it, that's what's frustrating.

I guess what I'm trying to say to you is that your wife sounds angry or resentful by withholding her needs from you and withholding her fulfillment of your needs. What she says on the surface, that a marriage shouldn't involve needs, doesn't ring true to me. But it takes all kinds. The real question for you is probably is your marriage enough to fulfill you now or how can it become fulfilling for you.

Rambling a bit today. Rooting for you, and happy about your major success so far!

Thanks Adinva. I feel like I was resigned to mediocre before. I figured out how to cope, and I was going to make it work. Now that I've been put through the wringer, I want great! If I'm going to do all this work and make all these positive changes, why stop at "good enough"? Let's take it up a notch, you know? Wish W would join me on that mission, it would be better for both of us, I know it would.

I realize I'm lucky, there aren't a ton of success stories. I should be very glad with just having W back. I should be proud of what I've done already. Instead I feel like it's not enough. My goal in IC is not to deal with my crisis anymore, it's to be the best marriage partner I can be. I told IC I want to turn over all the stones and work out whatever I need to work out. I'm all in.

I guess I choose to keep going.

Accuray




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