I did not see your longer post above. Yeah, what you say is just what she says. But it is all rationalization as she does. Don’t get the impression that my wife is an innocent victim, controlled by me. The fact is that since going to counseling over the past 3 years or so, I have stopped walking on eggshells, stopped giving up my power and stopped backing down to her ultimatums. She still does all she can to get the upper hand if I let her. So I am learning to hold onto my boundaries. If that is control, then good for me because the “balance” in the relationship is quite fair right now. She does not think so because she is used to having most of the control. Sharing power is very scary to her.
We’ve been over the TKD issue before. There is a lot more to TKD than just kicking. TKD is very much an ethical/moral type issue to me. I see so much value for the kids already. There is so much more for them to still gain. To me, there is little difference in this than making the kids go to church.
As for the “petty examples” you cite, I agree, except that you’ve got the roles reversed. She is the one who likes to argue over little issues like matching colors, not me. Yep, she is sick and tired of arguing and having to share some of her power. She doesn’t like me challenging her for pulling the kids out of school without my knowledge. She doesn’t like me questioning why she has the kids on antidepressants without my prior knowledge or approval. So she shuts down when I, the father, wants to know what is going on and have some say so over my kids. Sorry Cally, you’ve got my sitch all wrong.
Should she be angry because she went to jail? Sure. But she is 50% responsible, just as I was responsible when she called the cops on me. As for a record that might affect her employment, it doesn’t seem to matter since I dropped charges and the school is well aware of her situation.
You seem to focus on the control issues going on here, and there are plenty of them. As long as we try to find a way to match one control against the other, the marriage is doomed. That is the problem we’ve had for so long. The underlying issue is the fear of insecurity, abandonment, loss, etc. Remove those fears and the need to control goes away.
And I do let her decide a lot of what goes on with the kids. But in other marriages, I know the W does not operate in a vacuum. Other wives will take the father’s wishes into consideration of how to handle the kids. My wife never did this. She did what she wanted, when she wanted and how she wanted. So I have had to exert MAJOR control to bring this into balance. As the kids get older, this becomes less and less an issue. They are beginning to decide things for themselves and she is learning to listen to them. The family counseling is helping with this, since even the counselor sees that my W does not listen to the kids.
The problem at this moment is not restoring a balance of power because I think the balance is pretty fair. The problem is for her to get used to this balance and relieve her anxiety. She grabbed that control early on in our marriage for a very good reason. I have learned to focus on that reason and try to make changes there.
