You know, I’m think I’m starting to see the humor and enjoyment you refer to when women react, like Honeypot is doing!
Honeypot,
Interesting question about Japanese alpha men. Do they exist? I don’t know of any on my side of the family. Well, I take that back. I think my grandfather was alpha male, never got angry, argued, just let the wife ramble on, and she could go on. Always that calm assuredness, or was that fear of sparking an endless argument? At the same time I got the feeling he did not really rule the roost, maybe on big, important matters. But on everyday affairs she did. When I look at my aunts, uncles and cousins, I get the same impression, and one that I think may be lost on most Americans, that Japanese families are more matriarchal that patriarchal. I think the image of the stern Japanese father, samurai-like in his stoicism, is just a stereotype. The men spend all their time at work, come home late, so the women raise the kids and control the household. I’m not sure that is alpha male.
As for WHY my w is as she is, I do think it is important. I don’t want to keep bandaging this thing. I want to CURE it once and for all. Otherwise it keeps coming back and both of us are getting tired of this way of life. Perhaps one day we will be old and tired enough to care, but right now there are plenty if years still at stake with raising the kids and I really hope that in another year or so most of this will be fixed and the healing can begin.
I also disagree that I can’t will my wife to face her issues. I can. I can tell her I don’t like the way she imposes on me, that I don’t want to tolerate it and if she doesn’t change, there will be consequences. Now some will say that is boundary setting. But I am blocking a path for her by setting consequences. Now the responsibility of choosing is in her plate. Now her values come into play in making her decision. She has to wrestle with her conscious and her guilt. I have set mine on the line. By limiting her options, I CAN impose a certain amount of my will on her.
NOT confronting her with this choice is avoiding my issues, avoiding my aversion to confrontation. This is the very subtle twist I have come to see. She has always blamed me for being passive-aggressive, for not standing up and being direct. Her directness, her laying down some boundary or ultimatum causes me to have to confront a dilemma – do I stand up for myself and create a fight, or do I back down and keep the peace? Do I take full responsibility for the problem, or do I see that she has a role and is just as capable of compromising her need to assert herself as I am? With the ultimatums, do I back down or do I become the bad guy and stand up for myself under threat of D?
But the same argument applies to her. Is she not forcing the ultimatum on me so that she can avoid having to confront the decision of being the bad guy? Once I called her bluff on this and SHE became to one to decide whether to file for D or not, rather than force me into being the one to decide, she suddenly realized jumping into D is not such an easy decision. It is one thing to push someone else to file for D so that you feel you then have no choice in the matter, it is something else for you to decide to D out of your own free will. This all sounds academic, but to me, it unravels this whole false defensive shield she has erected. I can start to see it as a house of cards. It levels the playing field and forces her to negotiate honestly, rather than through false intimidation.
So how I handle my problems and learn to assert myself is to understand that her façade, her mental disorders whether real or imagined, are just a defense and she does not have the power over me that she would like me to think. I am still unraveling that mess, and with each layer I level the field just a little bit more.
