When it's a one-way street...part 7

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CV,

I feel for you.

There are times when he is courteous. In fact, in the hypothetical, he's being courteous when he offers to get me something to drink.

Yes, this is kind of a tragedy, what is courteous and thoughtful in his world is not adequate in your world. You are looking at the same act from different perspectives and taking away two very different conclusions.

As you know, I have this problem in my own marriage. I tell W "it was great that you took our daughter downtown and out to lunch" and she hears that as a condemnation, a criticism, and a complaint.

So in that scenario, I'm your H -- I did something that I thought was well intentioned, sincere, and thoughtful, but I came away feeling like a jerk, and my W came away from the conversation hurt and angry.

We can play the game of "who is more reasonable" -- many of the folks I talk to about this tell me that the "average person" would not react to my comment in that way, so in the court of public opinion, I'm in the right on this one -- but that doesn't really win me anything. I still feel badly, and have a wife who feels badly from the interaction.

I brought her a lemonade -- she wanted an iced tea.

I think everything falls apart when his selfish desires come into play. If there was only one drink he was interested in, or he didn't want a drink at all, then he would get my drink as I asked.

He doesn't seem to see himself as selfish -- his self-image seems to be that he is a good husband who does his best to provide for your needs. Would you agree with that? I don't get the sense that he walks around saying "I'm going to take care of myself and too bad for you". When you complain, I don't get the sense that he says "yeah, so what? Too bad!" He truly seems to be surprised/confused by your reaction to him -- would you agree?

I guess his heart seems to be in the right place, he just fails in execution because he is oblivious or lacks some kind of "courtesy sense" that you think he should have.

BTW, I used my analogy with him previously and he immediately denied that he's like that, appalled that I would even suggest that he would act that way. I referenced an example for him, and he said that it was a long time ago. So he went from completely denying it to acknowledging it but discounting it because my example was a long time ago. So I gave him a more current example, and he went into his rationalization of why he did it. Bottomline, it's just not "real" a problem for him. It's either not true, not current, or justifiable.

So he's feeling like he keeps breaking rules that he's not aware of. Or he's aware of the rules, but he thinks they are silly or inconsequential, and that they shouldn't *really* matter.

It feels to me that his good intentions are a real asset for you. Without the good intentions you'd have a much worse problem. At the same time, the knowledge of those good intentions is probably what tortures you, because he'd be much easier to drop if he were willfully abusive or uncaring.

It feels to me that you only have two ways through this:

1) You need to align your perspective to match his version of reality -- this I believe is in line with some of what zig was recommending. Even though he brought you a lemonade, he still did something FOR you -- just not what you would have liked. This was still an act of service that you could appreciate for what it was. This takes some retraining on your part not to view the "lemonade instead of iced tea" as a slight or an offense. I don't know if you feel you can be successful with that or not, it's taking a glass half full perspective on everything, or assuming the best intentions. That's one path forward and doesn't require him to change anything.

2) The second path is to pursue negotiation with him. "You want to make me happy right? Here are some slight changes you could make that would make me happy. In return I will promise to X. Do you agree that you can make those changes? If not, could you propose something that might accomplish the same end?" On this path, you are working together. Your challenge is not to make the wall he has to hurdle over too high, and his challenge is to step up and hurdle it. Obviously this takes time, patience, and repetition, and you TRULY need to be happy when he makes progress and not just feign happiness and focus on everything else that's wrong.

I don't see another path, maybe someone else does. Does that help at all? You have raw materials, and you each have some blind spots that you need to help each other work around.

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