When it's a one-way street...part 2

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CV,

If you truly dislike spending time with your H, what can he do to make things better? If you want him to study up on gardening, does he know that or are you expecting him to mind read?

Is there *anything* he could do at this point to start to bridge the gap, or are you just too far gone?

One thing I liked about SSM was the notion of cycles. If the LD partner doesn't engage in sex, the HD partner withdraws and won't invest time, if the HD partner withdraws, the LD partner is less likely to provide sex, and down the drain you go.

I observe this dynamic with my parents. My mother tends to ignore my father. He makes nasty sniping comments to get her attention, which makes her feel badly, so she avoids him even more, and that's their cycle. He feels "you're wrong, you ignore me" and she feels "you're wrong, you insult me". The tragic thing is that they both *want* to have their needs met, but they're locked in this cycle that pushes them apart.

I'm sure that you know that the way you're treating H is reinforcing whatever negative behavior he's guilty of. I hear you that you've tried bending over backwards to be positive and H didn't respond. That's contrary to what DB suggests should happen. There are four possible explanations for that IMO:

1) You didn't do it consistently enough, or with enough sincerity. (i.e. although you were being nice, were you salting in barbs about the fact tht H wasn't reciprocating?, were you sabotaging your efforts?) In DB when the LBS is trying to restore the relationship, the 180's must be credible. If you salt in back sliding at all, the WAS believes nothing has really changed and all the effort is for nothing.

2) You didn't do it long enough. My MC says that the patterns we learn in marriage about how to treat each other and what treatment to expect take a LONG time to change. It's "retraining" as we previously talked about. If you were nice for a month, and then moved into the other bedroom, that might not have been long enough, you may have to pull it off for six months or longer to make it credible.

3) Your H is evil. It's possible that despite the fact that you are nice to him and he believes in your good intentions and good will, that he's still going to be mean/rude/inappropriate no matter what you do. This is fairly hard to believe, because if he was truly evil, would a woman as intelligent as yourself have married him? Otherwise he's a bully, and you can't get a bully in line by being nice, you have to stand up to him. If he's bullying you, that means he doesn't respect you, and that doesn't seem to be the case, or is it?

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