Quote: GH, It just occurs to me that you are falling into "taking care" of her.
Muddle and I have wives that are very similar in this respect. She sometimes ASKS me to "take care" of her either directly or indirectly and actually one thing that came out in our last R talk that was VERY important was...
W: (crying) You were never home after the kids were born. You just kept living your life (true BTW) and left me at home 24/7 to deal with all this (financial/kids/etc). I can handle it, and did back then but I wanted you to help. I needed you and you left me alone SO much. M: I know. I realize that now. I am sorry.
(BTW, to explain the sitch for those of you kinda new to me, I have a full-time day job, working 40 hours+ a week and then for my entire marriage have also pursued a photography career that until VERY recently has been making NO money. To be honest, it was more of a hobby for a long time there, but one I would always insist was my "career" and thus justified taking assignments to cover sporting events, etc, that I just wanted to go to and that paid next to nothing. My W, for her part, almost NEVER complained because she knew I loved what I was doing but she did try to get me to scale back, something I often promised to do but didn't ever really follow through on. I always had an excuse why it was important I was gone 3-4 nights a week and many Saturdays/Sundays. She lived with this, accepting it for a long time, with the only real request being that I find a way to make my "business" make some money so that at least my being gone so much would have SOME benefit other than me getting to go to cool events, etc. I agreed but lingered for YEARS probably LOOSING money to my "career" all the while taking on MORE AND MORE "jobs" that I really didn't have to take. I was a jerk about this. I could have EASILY shifted my focus to actually MAKE money (which I have done now with weddings) and been home a lot more without damaging my "career" but I simply didn't want to. Now I am paying the price for that. Even my old boss at my day job, after only working with me for a few months called me into his office and warned me "If you keep this up, you won't have a family to go home to." and that was from a single, anti-marriage, man who knew me very little... oh, and about a year before the affair. Damn. Anyway, back to wrap up the convo...
W: I don't need you to be sorry. I don't really need you to feel bad, I just want you to know how much that hurt. It seemed like you didn't care about me. It seemed like I asked you all the time to be around more and you just ignored me. M: I didn't do that on purpose to hurt you, but I can see how you felt that way. W: It sucked and then when the kids got older, I just resented you for being gone. It's almost like all the stress I was under and all that I had to do alone, all the time thinking you could have helped, made me/us miss out on a lot of what should have been good times. As it was, I felt your near constant anger, which made me afraid to even talk to you about all this (very true) and the fact that you were gone unnecessarily (true again) just made things so much worse than they needed to be. I tried to talk to you about it but you never seemed to care so I gave up.
That was one of the BIG things that came out of the convo. I can't believe I forgot to post that.
Anyway, my W is painting a pretty accurate picture of my involvement in family life over the past 6 years or so. She readily admits that I DO/DID help a lot when I was there, but I freely admit NOW that I choose to do things in my photography career that paid little or no money just because I LIKED to do them and at the expense of important time with my family, then when I WAS around, I was often bitter and angry for various reasons.
So, back to me "taking care" of her. I really have never done that. I DO a lot for her, but she is actually someone who resists being taken care of most of the time. The problem is that on those rare occasions when she would ask me to take care of her, I often was not around to do it.
I know it's anti-DB to pursue or "take care" of our spouses, but 180's are also a big part of the plan. I, like many of us, have had to weigh the benefits of 180's that MAY go against other DB "rules" like, for instance, the idea of getting out, i.e. GAL. In my case, since a LARGE part of the problem was me being gone so much "having a life" as my W has said a lot in the past, GALing would not exactly have made things better. I had to consider the good/bad of going out MORE versus the potential good/bad of maybe cutting back on my going out and instead modifying the GAL idea to be more about learning to enjoy the life I already had.
I don't really think about this stuff that much anymore. I know the "bad" traits I was exhibiting and I wanted VERY much to change those things for my sake AND my families. I think I have done that. Now, it's just a matter of living my life the best I can, true to the man/husband I want to be.
I have in no way forgotten about me. I think about me all the time. Now the trick is to make sure she does too, lol. I just think the way for me to do that is NOT to play hard to get. I did that for the past 6 years and here we are. I am trying something different this time around.
