Quote: So I believe many dysfunctional people in relationships will not change until they have to. And this is the caveat to Schlessinger’s book. While people should do the right thing, what will make them do so if they don’t have the self discipline to do so themselves? You cannot force someone to do something, but you don’t have to tolerate their inaction either.
I have some concern for the phrasing of "many dysfunctional people" - because it seems (and do correct me if I'm misunderstanding) to be assigning the dysfunction to *one* spouse alone. And while I wholeheartedly agree that there are marriages where one spouse alone is the primary problem, I don't think that is true for the vast majority of dysfunctional marriages.
And even in the cases where one spouse is the highly dysfunctional one, I would think there would be quite some dysfunction in the other spouse to have ignored the issues, been blind to those issues, or to been drawn to the dysfunctional one.
I will also acknowledge that I dislike lumping the spouses, who aren't on here participating, as the dysfunctional ones. Since I was once one of those spouses.
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This is the clear message I got from NOPkins – push things off center to destabilize the current situation that is comfortable to the dysfunctional spouse. The risk is that they may not like it and will leave. The flip-side of that risk is by not doing anything, you will become resentful and eventually leave. In either case, the marriage is doomed.
Speaking from my perspective, I can identify with many of you here because I was the one with the "smaller" voice in our relationship. I expressed needs and desires in the earlier years of our marriage, albeit non-sexual, that were dismissed, unrecognized, unacknowledged.
I also rocked between "Am I being selfish & demanding? Insensitive to him? I should try harder to be less demanding and more understanding!" and "is this not a part of marriage, relationship? Can he not see how deeply this is hurting me?"
Just as many of you do here.
I pushed as hard as I felt I could while holding back in order to not become completely destructive. I was like many of you here in that I did not want to totally destroy my marriage because of my "needs". I prayed, wept, read relationship books, & studied the Bible. And finally distilled those years of efforts into "am I willing to sacrifice my marriage for these needs/desires?" My answer was no.
As you wrote about the results of such, Cobra, I slowly sunk into a morass of resentment, hurt and withdrawal. However, there is no measure known that would have said "I'm comfortable with this situation."
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But once you can accept this truth and prepare for the worst (detaching), fear of this outcome then shifts to the spouse and they must do something to find a new state of equilibrium. Boundaries are meant to prevent the move back to the previous dysfunctional equilibrium. I do not think that just doing everything right is enough to push a dysfunctional equilibrium off balance. Sometimes I think drastic measures are needed to make this push. That usually comes in the form of the “bomb” or serving of divorce papers. GEL dropped her form of the bomb the other day. I ended up doing so too.
And while one spouse wants to change this equilibrium, the other does not want to because the current state works in his/her favor.
I totally agree with you that an attempt at "doing everything right is enough" will ever break through to success.
While words without actions are useless, I'm beginning to believe that actions without words are also useless as well. Doing a multitude of things silently hoping that your spouse will suddenly get convicted and start reciprocating, is probably an exercise in futility.
Telling your spouse that you are desperately unhappy, that these are the things that are important issues to you, that you are open to dealing with whatever issues they have with you, that you will do what it takes to make the relationship better for them, and here are the things they can do to make it better for you - I think this is a foundational requirement.
At times I wonder if Nop & I are some sort of exception, rather than being more typical. Perhaps it was my remembering what it was like to feel inconsequential to my spouse that made me at least sensitive to his expressions of the same later in our marriage when he had reached his end point. Perhaps it is because he has always had the "stronger" voice in our relationship. Many of you seem to be dealing with spouses who are the more dominant personality, which probably contributes a lot to your lack of success.
When NOP began the final campaign to reach some marital change or go for divorce, during the interminable discussions/arguments, he couldn't seem to hear that I had issues too. I know some of you are married to people who don't express what they might be unhappy about (if they are unhappy at all). I do wonder if some of your spouses have expressed it and you just haven't been in a place where you could hear it. I believe NOP saw my "but what about these things" as a defensive attempt to completely avoid his issues with me.
And I'm sure there was some defensiveness in my responses, but they also contained my truth, the facts as I understood them. As he continued to push for some resolution, I initially responded to him sexually in a sporadic, half-hearted, unhappy, disconnected way.
I think some of you have gone through the same thing sexually, but cut the cord totally or withdrew because you found it too uncomfortable. If NOP had done so, I guess we would be divorced now.
Perhaps, for some of us, that is part of the process. The working through it poorly, but working through it.
You can't expect that sex is suddenly going to be a connected, marvelous, wonderful thing - your relationship isn't at a place to provide that. Sex is going to be like your current relationship. Prickly, dysfunctional, disconnected, sulled up, withdrawn, unpleasant.
You can't pull the plug on it when it's all of the above. It's like becoming a long distance runner after having been a chip eating, cig smoking, beer swilling couch potato for years - those first few teetering steps are going to be painful, ungraceful, unfulfilling.
You can either quit because it's too difficult - or
you can keep working at it and realize you will never be a marathon runner - or
you'll discover that you can work up to a quality that you never thought you could have.
