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But I see in your comment a theme that is underlying many of your posts lately. What I feels is still a lack of self esteem. I totally understand this. But as you do think to improve yourself and your M, I think you need to realize that you deserve to be happy, to be admired, respected and loved. YOU deserve this. You are giving respect to others, but for this to truly feel like a valued gift to them, they must know that you respect yourself. If not, they feel like it is “sucking up.” In fact the higher your self esteem (without being arrogant of course), the more valuable your respect becomes to others. You are asking you H to grow up, be a man, love himself, assert himself, and give you security. Now know that you are worth it to do your part.



I understand what you are saying. It's true that I often feel like Eliza Doolittle in my relationship with my critical Type 4 H. I know that there is something loving about his desire to "improve" me and something that seems like low self-esteem in my resistance to being "improved". I think the reason why the tables have flipped to some extent in my relationship is that I've just about finally reached that point where I really do feel like I'm "good enough" and am no longer in need of improvement. The fact that my H has resorted to "picking on me" about thoroughly minor matters is a reflection of this. We've been having some very odd interactions lately. For instance, last night he started gently stroking my eyebrow while commenting on the fact that it looked like I had over-plucked them. This provoked almost no emotional reaction from me. I just nodded like a sleepy baby and said that he was probably right. IMO it becomes somewhat ridiculous to give myself messages like "I should love myself enough to do a better job plucking my eyebrows." or "I'm feeling great about myself today because my eyebrows look fantastic!". I could probably come up with a list of over 1000 things I could do that would boost my self-esteem more than perfecting my brows.

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver