When it's a one-way street...part 3

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Sorry CV,

So are these your goals?

You want less conflict in your relationship with your husband. You're not looking for your marriage to be "great", but you want it to be tolerable enough to ride it out until your kids are in college and you can end it.

If you could just live as roommates with your husband and enjoy the same courtesies that a roommate would expect, you would be satisfied.

The issues preventing this goal from being realized are the following:

1) Your H is bothered by how you treat him and obviously wants something different and that is causing tension -- i.e. he does not share your goal above and wants/expects something different, but he's not able to really give you a blueprint for what he wants from you.

2) You are bothered by how your H treats you, you feel he fails at "basic civility". Nothing you've done has been effective at changing this. If you make things *really* bad, H will do the minimum to bring things back up, but then relapses as soon as you take the pressure off.

3) You are married to someone you just fundamentally don't respect, which makes it almost impossible to be motivated to work on the marriage. Your goal is to improve your co-habitation situation, not to repair your marriage to the standard folks on this board seem to think you want.

Do I have that right? If so, you're in a very difficult situation and I feel for you. You must feel trapped.

A few more questions for you:

1) Do you feel you really know what H wants from the marriage? Would he be happy with less acrimonious co-habitation, or does he want a fairy tale marriage? Have you discussed this ever, or have you figured it out on your own?

2) Have you told H where you are in this marriage and what your plan is going forward? Have you shared your goal with him?

3) Have you considered the "brutal honesty" approach with him? Just lay it all on the table? How do you think he would react? Would it be better longer term if you did that?

I may be wrong but I get the impression you're caught in a dance where H doesn't understand just how far gone you are, and you haven't been telling him. This missed understanding and conflict of goals seems to have you caught in a cycle that keeps repeating.

Although it would have been hard for me to hear, I would have liked W to put everything on the table when she was so down on the marriage that she had an affair. I believe people always want to know where they stand, and to have their expectations set. Put it out there and give him the opportunity to deal with it.

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