EO's journal

[eyesopened]

I've moved the discussion by the HD women's club over to HD v LD



This is my last journal entry on this board. I'll be maintaining a private journal, and I'm moving back over to the KLA (keeping love alive) forum because I've found those CDs to be very helpful as are all Michele's books that I have. The most helpful other book I've read is Willard Harley's His Needs, Her Needs, which reinforces what Michele says about sex as an emotional, not just a physical, need. His Needs, Her Needs, is also the only relationship book I've ever been able to get my husband to read.

Some of the most helpful concepts in bringing about the positive changes in our marriage came from Michele (TSSM and other books and CDs).
1. Think back to when things were better and identify what was different then (of course, some things that are different we wouldn't want to change such as having kids).
2. If at first you don't succeed, try something different.
3. Just do it
4. Don't let feelings dictate your actions--in other words, feelings often follow behavior if you take the initiative to act.
5. More of what works, less of what doesn't work.
6. Focus on the positives instead of the negatives.

I'm also grateful to Michele for explaining the research on desire and arousal patterns and the connection, too, between emotional intimacy and sexual intimacy.

I'm very grateful to the HD husbands on this board, who through expressing their feelings, gave me a look at what my husband, who never talks about feelings, may have been experiencing and feeling by my careless rejection of his advances and desire for me. Thank you especially to Tim, SuperDave (you may have changed your username, but you'll always be Super to me), AntlerDave, Scott, Chocolateeyes, and all the rest of you. And, if you haven't expressed the hurt and rejection you feel to your wife and you believe that she loves you, please give it a try. No matter how bad things were between my husband and me, deep down I truly love him and it would have cut to the quick to know that he felt unloved. In a way, that's what happened after he read His Needs, Her Needs, and said that he didn't feel that any of his needs were being met (he's not a complainer, so I eventually had to take what he said as his actual perception). Even though I didn't change immediately on the day he told me that in an email, it eventually led me to the path I've been on these last few weeks.

I also have to give an enormous amount of credit to my husband who's also been changing in efforts to meet my needs (Harley's book helped him because it gave him some concrete, rather than abstract, ideas to work with). I'd forgotten just how affectionate and romantic he used to be, but he's showing me every day now.

A few months ago, I wrote my husband a letter explaining why I would probably move into my own apartment once all the kids left home. The letter wasn't a threat as in "do this or I'll leave"; it just expressed what seemed to be inevitable. That letter and the events that led to it are what piqued my interest when I read an article by Michele on walkaway wives. What is most ironic is that I always thought that it was my husband who would have to do the changing before anything improved. Instead, once I started changing using Michele's techniques and concepts, he started changing; and I am falling in love with him again and even looking forward to our youngest son going away to college in a few years so that I can start traveling with my husband on the numerous trips he has to take as a project engineer (construction). Living in an unfinished house undergoing remodeling surprisingly doesn't even bother me anymore; but he's been setting up appointments with realtors lately to look at new, completely finished, houses (believe it or not, I'm now the one who's saying that perhaps it would be better to stay put because I love the historic area we live in and its "walkability" and that maybe we could just hire contractors to build an addition and remodel the kitchen).

Good luck to all of you; and may you all achieve passionate marriages.