Women are not rehabilitation centres for broken men.
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Stay-at-home moms tend to let things go.
I'm sorry, can you please explain this comment so my silly little female brain can comprehend what you mean?
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I'm going to make a suggestion that is not according to DB principles. It might not sit well with you, but it's known to work.
Guess what, Tom? I did this. It didn't work! It just made my cheating ex-husband believe he was so wonderful that two women were begging for his attention. What a lucky boy he was! And because I had no inkling that he was in fact cheating, it just made him despise me for being so pathetic. How thrilling to put one over his fat, ugly, boring stay-at-home wife. Yes, those are direct quotes! Caring for an infant? Pfft, that's for the non-special, non-wonderful, non-lucky boys! Thanks to my grovelling, my ex-husband felt empowered enough to inform me that I'd never been good enough for him and I wasn't the wife he deserved. All because he had another younger, slimmer, funner woman blowing smoke up his ass. And guess what? Eighteen months after abandoning me and our baby, he's cheating on her too.
Being pretty won't keep a man. Being funny won't keep a man. Being sexy won't keep a man.
The ONLY thing that keeps a man is to marry a man who wants to be kept.
PERIOD.
Scout, I touched a nerve and I didn't mean to set you off. I don't disagree with most of what you say, by the way.
Still, even Michelle's books mention (I forget where, somewhere 2/3 the way through DB I think) that breaking through the ice is the hardest thing to do, especially the "why should I give in first?" She doesn't make a specific recommendation as to which gender should do the breaking, though, meaning that either can or should try. Nevertheless, I do believe that women are naturally better healers than men, so that's why Nancy Missler's suggestion made some sense. However, in 1hedlight's case, her husband has some major league problems that are not, in my view, caused by his wife.
Still, 1hedlight is trying to break through, and wants to preserve the marriage, and I thought I'd make the suggestion. There really is little to lose. If it doesn't soften his heart, and just turns him into a more arrogant and entitled pr-ck, then at least she learns that perhaps the marriage isn't worth saving.
