Ladies that lunch

[Brian_M]

GEL:
Thanks for your feedback. I think I now agree with you that if my male friends are going, then I should have a right to go as well. My W is not exactly sensitive and considerate of my feelings instinctually. It sounds like this is yet another area where I need to explain social etiquette to her.

haphazard
You are just too funny. I love the example dialogs! The point about the romantic gestures goes back to the “love bank” concept. I invest in the M a great deal, but my W does not. My IC’s point is that my W needs to get the message that investment on her part is mandatory. More importantly even is that my W needs to learn what kind of investments are meaningful to me. At the moment, my W has settled into the notion that I do all these nice/romantic things for her selflessly so she should just accept them. Though, she does not feel the prod to give back every now and again. Worse yet, by continue to do the romantic sweet things all the time, I am reinforcing her notion that the lopsided state of investment is ok. Thus, the strategy is to cut back the nice things to come down to her level. From there, I am supposed to be very direct and upfront with what I want from her in an attempt to get her levels up.

To put it another way, my W is one of the really beautiful spoiled women who is used to men showing her with affection simply for the reward of spending time with her. She is self-centered, arrogant, conceited, and has no idea how what sustaining a healthy R really entails. All the previous men in her life let her get away with that. I will not. Sadly, she is so inept that I have to break things down to a really specific and simply level for her.

My W and I just had a huge fight about a week ago that illustrates my point exactly. Our fight centered around the basic concept of being a supportive partner. I am a musician in my spare time. I had been working on a new song tirelessly for three weeks straight. I finally played the work in progress for my W and then asked her to tell me what she liked and what she thought could use improvement. She was quick to dive right into all the negatives, and boy was there a long and detailed list. Then, she just kind of scowled and left the room. She did not say a single positive, supportive, or reinforcing word during her entire diatribe. I assumed that she must be drunk and cranky again so I just let it go. Though, the next day, I asked her again if there were any positives to my new work. Again, she drops a few more scathing remarks and leaves. This time I followed her and asked why she was not showing any support for my efforts or passions. She responded with even more negativity and side-stepped actually answering my questions. By that point, I was feeling really downtrodden and upset so I started spilling how much her lack of support and enthusiasm for something I find so important really hurts. Even if she could not think of anything positive to say, she could of at the very least have been a decent human being and acknowledge the effort put into it. She was like a deer in headlights in that it had not occurred to her that I actually want her to be supportive of the things I love. A few days later, she overheard me working on the same song some more. This time, she tried to kiss a$$ and change her tune by saying some nice things about how much of an improvement there was. Thus, clearly, some of my message sunk in. Any way, being with my W is like trying to train a 4 year old how to play well with others sometimes.