Compliments & Passive Aggressiveness..Work to do!

[SM34]

Cat, I agree the everything you said. I need to just note the effect of something I do without inferring too much from it. Its too early.

I do tend to try to explain things. But its because I'm really getting a lot of FLAK for this! And I know I wasn't hearing things with Laurie because we talked about it extensively. She said if you know OM is not meeting her intellectual needs, then magnify that when you can. When she engages while with him, engage back.

This is excellent Cat:

You didn't convince your W to fall in love with you all those years ago.

She saw something in you that she liked.

Instead of trying to "convince" her of something, like all of the compliments that you referenced that didn't seem to work because you were trying to get her to believe what you did, just SHOW her.

By being a good father. By being a good man. By not having an agenda.

Absolutely! She saw that I have ambitions, I am driven, I am destined to succeed etc.. She saw a person who is genuine, who is loyal, who is funny but can also be serious when needed, and if warm and loving. That was me 14 years ago.

You know the theory of sex rank? I know it doesn't really fit with DBing but it is interesting. The author on the website "married mans sex life" makes an interesting anology on the importance of success for a woman. He makes the analogy with a football team.

He says We all cheer our team even through a losing season. In the off season though, we want to see changes being made so that next season is better. After too many losing seasons in a row, we don't support our team anymore. he says that women are attracted to a spouse who has potential to succeed financially and that is programmed from the hunter gatherer days...the male who can "gather" the most, or at least "enough".

We had several losing seasons in a row as far as my business and finances. I have written about this before but I just want to touch on it briefly. Things where good then went sour in business. Then, EVERY time something seems to be changing for the better I (and also W) were let down.

When my partner and I opened a second retail store things were supposed to get better. The economy got worse and with TWO partners halfing the money, the net gain in profits did not change much. When I finally got my partner out, I was supposed to have access to a double pay check. Well competition in the market made that not happen since we had wasted so much time with my partners drug addiction that our business needed an overhaul now.

So every step of the way, we would have huge optimism for the success of our team, only to have it shattered. Eventually she began to give up. In the last few months she said things like "I guess we are not going to be getting rich from your business huh?". They were said jokingly but it is a window into what was on her mind.

That is partly why I am workign hard at fixing my business and expanding now. It is a huge part of what attracted her to me when I was still a college boy. Big dreams, big aspirations, and the motivation and ego needed to get the job done. I lost all of that in the last few years. Time to get that back!