Moved Back from Overseas to Figure This Out...

[labug]

Labug - thank you for your input. I get what you are saying, but aren't DB and DR (to a certain extent) "tactical" books/ideas designed to improve ourselves, which may lead to the spouse changing as well, and thus potentially save our M's?

Change yourself, the R changes, doesn't mean the other person changes. We have no control over others. If you're making changes not because you think you need to but simply to try to get your W back, the changes won't be authentic and won't stick. That's a tactic.

Looking deep inside yourself and finding things that need to change and changing them because you want to be a better man, husband, father-that's not a tactic, that's growth.

I am thinking about control a lot, and some examples of what that might look like. For example, a few months before BD, W had decided to delete her Facebook account. She actually did it. I, not knowing she could reverse the decision for up to a month (Facebook rules), was a little annoyed with her doing it without telling me because we worked for the same organization, and keeping connected to others through FB was important for our fundraising efforts. When she found out about my annoyance, she reinstated her account.

We didn't mention it since. I guess I can fathom the idea of it as control, but I think control is such a hard thing to define.

We can't control others. That's really hard to accept for a lot of people, I know it was for me. I loved to control things and I was very good at it. For me it was under the guise of "helping" or "making sure everything goes OK" or things weren't moving fast enough for me, etc I've learned over these last 2-3 years that unless people specifically ask me for help or to make decisions for them, I need to leave them alone.

You said yourself in your first post that you were a "fix-it" person, what kinds of things did you find it necessary to fix?

Tell us more about your day-to-day household life. How was money handled, who bought groceries, how were chores accomplished, who was responsible for childcare, how was the decision to move back to the states made, where is your W's family, did your W have a lot of friends, a support system? Do you have a temper?

Even DR has a step called, "Ask for what you want." What is the difference? Where does it become control?

Asking for what you want...how does that equate to control? Asking means just that, asking. The person you are asking is able to decide whether they want to honor your request or not.

Expecting compliance is control.

A final note, I sense a bit of defensiveness in your response to me. I don't take it personally at all, but if what I'm sensing is true, figure out why you feel that way. It's your internal compass and will lead you to things you should look at more closely.

This process is a series of steps and the first step is honesty.