Quote: Mrs. NOP said she felt she was not being heard but when it happened, she seemed to drop her resentments / flip a switch ( chose your word Mrs. NOP) and was willing to go the faster path towards making the M work more smoothly.
I think it was a case of "you got peanut butter on my chocolate/ no / you got chocolate on my peanut butter.
NOP saw, experienced and focused on the sexual issues. I saw, experienced and focused on the relational issues.
It got kind of messy. In a withdrawn, boiling just under the surface kind of way. I think we had a level of issues that you can only get when you've been with each other a few decades.
In relationships that have gone bad, both parties keep a record of wrongs. And it is the nature of humans to think their list is the more painful, their hurts more aggregious. There is also a tendency to do the adult version of "s/he started it first."
Which is why (in our sort of case) there must be a willingness to stop assessing who is the most to blame.
Our situation appears to be somewhat unique compared to the ones discussed here. For instance, we didn't have *major* differences on our view of and approach toward finances, family, child rearing, and religion.
In our interminable discussions during the 2+ years we waded through this, I suspect that NOP thought I was just trying to deflect the sex issue by bringing up the relational problems. And I could see how it would have appeared that way. Our limited success has been detailed here by NOP, with the occasional "I think we've made it" amidst a great deal of dead and dying monkeys.
As you've noted above, the "turning the corner" point came when NOP agreed that I might have issues within the relationship that were as important to me as his were to him, that needed to be addressed.
