Compliments & Passive Aggressiveness..Work to do!

[SM34]

Mr Bond, I AM doing it. But perhaps you missed the post I wrote a few days ago about the history behind the compliments issue.

13 years ago, a year after I met my W, and when I was 21, I was critical of her weight gain. I was young and stupid and even though I didn't care about it for myself, I felt that my college boy buddies were laughing at me having a steady girlfriend who had a "few extra pounds" and not sampling the mass amounts of young college meat going around.


i approached it the wrong way with her and even though I back tracked a few months later after seeing that she was starting to resent me, and I spent 13 years telling her how beautiful she is, she never let go of that. If we reconcile, I want to talk to her about that and clear it up once and for all! I married her 5 years ago with A LOT more weight than when we met. She gave birth to OUR most beautiful baby girl in the whole world. I don't care about her weight! I mean I want her to be healthy so we don't have problems later in life, but not from a vanity perspective. My W is a very beautiful lady and she gets hit on all the time when we are out together.

Examples of situations that I mentioned before:

She spends 45 minutes getting ready infront of a mirror when we are going out. She has the most beautiful face, and the most proportionate features, and the most beautiful green eyes I have ever seen. Her skin is flawless. She can literally go completely natural and she would still get hit on. Her hair is so perfect that she wakes up looking like she just brushed and styled it.

But, she spends forever in the bathroom putting foundation on her perfect skin, outlining her perfect eyes, etc.. Then I keep telling her "Babe you are so beautiful. Other women would KILL to have your skin and eyes, and your perfect hair. You can go natural and look beautiful, and all the other women envy you for it.". You know what her response would be? "Are you kidding me? What about this blemish right here?" pointing to only microscopic mark on her face. "Look at my eyes.I look like I havent slept in days, and may hair is a mess!".

When she was pregnant, we had several other friends who were pregnant at the same time. They all went and did these arty pregnancy photo shoots and we were getting those pics in the mail all the time. I thought well what about my wife? She is beautiful. So I said "Hey baby lets go take some pictures of you and your beautiful pregnancy bump!". She said "Are you joking? You don't seriously think I am beautiful when I am the size of a whale do you?". I would answer "Well yes actually I do think you are beautiful with your big bump. That bump has my precious baby in it, and it is the most beautiful sight I have seen in my life". Sounds good right? The response? "You're just saying that. I look like Sh%t".

So thats why complimenting got hard for me. If I over played the compliment, she would say I was just saying that. If i under played it, she would say well don't look too excited about it. I can't win.

Recently, after BD, I came home one day and the whole house was spotless, all my laundry was done and folded, the bathrooms smelled freshly cleaned, there was dinner cooking and the whole house smelled like food, pretty much everything a good wife can do in one day she had done that day. As soon as I noticed I said "WOW honey did you do all of that in one day? The whole looks great and dinner smells wodnerful! good job!". She looked at me with a very plain face and said thats what I always do when you are at work. Of course at that point she is trying to show me that she is still doing her "job" at home even despite not being in love with me.

She got D3 dressed and looking SUPER CUTE for Christmas day. I said "D3 looks great! She is so cute! i love the clothes you picked out for her. Good work!". she said "All i did was get her dressed."

So maybe it is not me that needs help with complimenting, it is her that needs help accepting them as truths =)

I will keep trying to seem sincere with the compliments. Like you all say, it takes months of consistent work for a WAS to even start to believe a change.