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

[Accuray]

Even if I look at his motives as being completely well-intentioned, his presentation just exhausts me. Even if he's just thinking outloud, the effort it seems it will take for him to do it just makes me want to say no

You can't own that. You have to let that go. Even if its hard for him, if he wants to do it, let him do it. If he did you 50 "favors" and you only cared about two of them, you're still getting 2 favors and the other 48 didn't hurt. The point is, feeling like a good provider and being appreciated for it makes men feel good. If it doesn't cost you much to cultivate that, then do it.

My MC talked about an interesting dynamic in any relationship. He said that when you got married, let's say you both did the dishes. One of you might only be 5 seconds faster at doing them. That 5 second differential is going to lead the better person to take it on more often and therefore get better at it, whereas the slower person will be more likely to defer and therefore get worse. You then get polarized where the slow one *never* does the dishes because it's too painful for the fast one to watch, yet the fast one feels trapped into the task. All it takes is a slight difference to get that divide going. If you want to break that, the faster person has to sit on their hands and shut their mouth and let the slower person work through it.

It's like me offering to buy you a cup of coffee, then explaining that I'll have to forgo my OWN cup of coffee, and go out and dig through the car to come up with the change, probably be late for work and have to skip lunch because of it, and ... or you could just pay 99cents yourself. Wouldn't you just say, "No, thanks, really!"? Do you remember the character Cliff Claven on Cheers? He was just annoying in that sort of way, regardless of his "intentions."

Yeah I get it, it's like "enough already!" That said, I think you have to look at this phase as transitional to establish a new norm, so try tolerating it for a while. Try to hear that as "blah blah blah...I'll buy you a cup of coffee...blah blah blah". Then when it comes, say thank you.

I'm just saying try it.

WRT my sitch, whenever anyone suggests they're going to put someone through what I went through, I start to shake and dive for the nearest ditch, so yes, I'm a little sensitive on that point!

Accuray