Thread #7 - What goes down, might come up.

[25yearsmlc]

My thoughts...in reverse order.

When she apologizes, I think a lot of time the tendency is try to help her alleviate the need for apologizing. So you say ... "you doesn't need to apologize." Stop that. Just say, "thanks for saying that or something like that." By saying she didn't need to apologize you just minimized things and it is PART of your cycle. It takes the wind our of her sails and the reason for doing it is to try to keep the peace. You turn what she said and make it about you. Maybe she feels the need to apologize....by all means let her.


Well said...

You are still looking at someone else to make the D choice for you. You have presented your situation here and even people like 25 say it might be time to move on. yet you are looking for someone else to help push you two along.

As for the cycle. It starts and ends with you, unfortunately. Because of expectations and "just wanting to know" but your Wife is taking an immature approach to it.

She is being conflict avoidant. Conflict isn't deadly to a marriage, but how you fight can be. I mean a lot of people here say "we never fought." what you are really saying is that we never resolved conflict.

the 2 couples who told me they "never fought" both got divorced and the person who said "we never fought" was shocked by the WAS. I was not shocked.

One of the few helpful things the priest who married us said, was

"the number of conflicts in a marriage isn't important. Life throws more curve balls to some couples. But HOW you resolve those conflicts will be a HUGE FACTOR in whether your m is a happy one."

In a healthy relationship, you should be able to express your needs to your partner, and the partner should be able to answer you.

In your case, You W assumes your needs or you don't articulate them. Then your W reacts to that by not addressing what's going on but assuming. She then acts out. You react, etc. she reacts, etc. You see the cycle.

You can break it, but her going to IC isn't the whole part of it.

i know this gets asked all the time, but how did you guys meet? how were you different?

i wish I had more answers for you.

just wanted to add the .02 about conflict resolution and problem solving approaches. How does your wife solve problems when you are not around?

And when you are together, what does she do differently, if you know?