Muddle, I am not going to try to play catch up with your sitch by responding to all that has happened since my last post to you. I don't know if what I will say is encouraging or discouraging but one thing I have realized after having been in this crap for the better part of a year now is that there is a HUGE perception, especially by those of us who read alot, here and elsewhere, that there is some "perfect" formula for marriage out there.
I know you don't feel that way, and neither do I. Hell, most of us, when asked, would say that's preposterous yet I feel we spend so much time analyzing our actions/words and those of our spouses against the ideas/expectations we have formed based on our reading and experience posting to this board. We constantly question if something was "DB" or not, and constantly wonder if our spouses actions are "right" in terms of the overall view we have of how our marriage "should be". I am one of the WORST at this.
What I think I am learning is that all this DB stuff and pretty much ALL self-help writing is written with the clear idea by the authors that most people will not follow all the guidelines printed in a book. Most people will not even get half of what is said, but if, in the end, people find a way to make their lives better and learn to do that on their own, however "dysfunctional" their lives may be, then progress has been made.
What I am getting at is that there is something to be said for "whatever works for you" being considered above and beyond some formula that is supposed to deliver you to marriage nirvana. I say that because I KNOW my W has "issues", her drinking being the only one which I really believe may require serious change/outside help, but I married her with those issues. I KNEW she was not that affectionate. I KNEW she was not the happiest person alive. I KNEW our relationship was a bit one sided in terms of me doing for her. I knew MANY more things that now don't fit the "formula" but I married her anyway because I also knew she was a beautiful, passionate, intelligent, kind hearted, down to earth woman who loved me as much as I loved her.
I also know many couples that have been married much longer than we have that do not in any way fit the mold, yet they are totally happy (at least as far as I can tell). Do they need to fix something that ain't broke just because the books say to?
What I am saying muddle is that you keep questioning all these things as if there was a "right" way to do these things, as if there was a "right" way for your W to act, or for you to respond, etc. If you think there is a right way, then so be it, but I suspect that like me, you married into a sitch that was full of "wrong" and decided that the good outweighed the bad by far so it was ok.
I am learning to really take a hard look at my marriage going back to the beginning and see the times when my W is now acknowledging as "happy times". I see a LOT that was different about both of us but you know what? A lot of those things are NOT the "issues" the seem to bother me a lot now.
It's like we have a bad alternator in our car so when we take it in to the repair shop we use it as an opportunity to fix all the things we have been living with for years; that little rattle in the trunk, the way the window doesn't roll all the way down on the passenger side, the slightly high idle RPM, etc. Then we also go ahead and add those rims we want, a new steering wheel, some new tires and get a new paint job.
Do we NEED to fix/add these things? Sure, but not at the expense of being broke for the next year and not even being able drive the car because you can't afford the insurance since your "improvement" payments are so high. In short, while it's great to "maintain" the car and add things we want, sometimes it's best to fix the problem at hand that is truly in need of repair and wait until a better time to address all the "little" things that add up to much more cost than we can bear at the moment.
In terms of our relationship, I think speaking personally, I am so fixated on trying to fix EVERYTHING that was ever wrong to achieve a "perfect" new marriage that I loose sight of the fact that there are only a couple MAJOR key issues that probably caused 90% of the problems in our marriage, of which I can do a lot about. I seem to be treating the other 10% as NECESSARY fixes and deserving of my attention. I think I have made a mistake in taking that approach.
No marriage is perfect, and for us to think (and I DON'T think you are thinking this way now) that we need to fix every little thing wrong is probably spreading us too thin.
I am not too sure how much this really applies to you muddle, or if it's just me projecting myself onto you again. I just sense that there is a lot of conflict in your mind right now about whether what you are doing is right or not and I just wanted to basically, in my usual long winded way, tell you that it's right if you think it is because at the end of all this, you just have to be true to who you are. DB can help you get there, but once you are there, you have to just start to live your life.
Please, keep on fighting for what you want and don't ever give up because YOU lose hope. You can't control what she does.
