Finding my way - part 3

[Meghan]

I’ve read a few posts on other threads tonight about things like validating and accepting responsibility, and wanted to think through some things over here. In particular, I read Claire’s post that said:

“I would absolutely encourage anyone who is looking to save their marriage to learn to STFU and LISTEN with an open mind and validate the OTHER person's p.o.v.”

I’ll readily admit that I haven’t always been so good about this. I was pretty defensive at first because I saw a lot of my own unacknowledged issues and hurts reflected in what H. was telling me. It felt really, really unfair. There are still times I feel defensive, because I feel like those same issues are still here and H. still hasn’t heard them.

But the truth is that only one of us is stepping up to try to save the marriage right now, and so it falls to me to try to fix things. And to fix things, I have to actually hear the issues, validate H.’s point of view, and then perhaps make some changes in areas that I think will be worthwhile and effective (this is not an open invitation to martyr myself – just a starting point to hopefully generate enough stability that we can start to fix things on both sides).

Clearly there are ways that I’ve contributed to the problems in our marriage. I feel like recently I’ve been validating and taking more responsibility for those contributions. But here’s the rub: I’m not sure it’s helping, so I'm trying to think about things a bit differently.

First, much of the validating I’ve done has been verbal which, while better than nothing, doesn’t actually show change. In addition, it’s also been challenging to validate H. because almost all of our relationship talk happens in counseling. When we do talk about his issues I validate his experience as much as I can – I really do think I’ve been better about doing this. So far so good, right?

The problem is that as soon as we get to me – which we usually do, because after the individual sessions the counselor knows that I have my own complaints – it undoes all of the validating. The fact that I talk about my issues leaves H. feeling like I haven’t actually heard or recognized his concerns, and he gets frustrated and really angry. So, the validating and taking responsibility don’t really seem to work so well at the end of the day.

I’m going to keep validating, but I think I need to take responsibility for these issues in a more concrete way if I want to have any kind of meaningful effect. So, I’ve started a list of things that I’m responsible for that contributed to the issues in our marriage. Starting with identifying and owning them, I’m then going to give some thought to what I can do differently going forward to show that I recognize my contributions and that change can happen (I’m thinking 180s).

Here’s what I’ve got so far in terms of my contributions to the issues in our relationship (I’ll add more as they come to me):

- not taking H.’s issues more seriously when he first brought them up
- not going to the doctor sooner to try to fix the hormone problem
- withdrawing from the relationship
- not trying to talk to H. more or differently about what I needed and wanted
- not making our marriage enough of a priority compared to other things in my life
- focusing too much on work (and finances too, I suppose) and letting it increase my anxiety
- depending too much on H. to help me manage my anxiety and my work
- not giving him the same level of emotional caregiving that he was giving to me
- not giving him the same level of physical touch that he was giving to me
- treating H. like a dependent rather than a partner
- taking on too much responsibility (control?) and taking it away from H.

I want to sit on these ideas for now. This isn’t about blame (despite the fact that I’ve been doing a whole lot of that recently). It’s about taking stock of where we are right now, figuring out what went wrong and how I played into it, and giving some thought to what could and should change moving forward.