Cobra, for the zillionth time, this statement does NOT mean that you simply "accept" the way things are and resign yourself to a life of misery. This statement means you put the fulcrum where the lever will actually WORK to move the thing you want moved.
Isn’t this exactly what I am doing?
Changing your own behavior is the only thing you can actually change, BUT changing your own behavior CAN change the dynamics of the R and lead to a change in the other person.
…and this too?
You cannot directly MAKE someone else do anything, short of using force. You can make it worth their while to change, but THEY still have to do the changing.
I agree with this statement in principle, but for my sitch, changing myself to make it worth W’s while to change will not result in change. I have not seen strategy ever work for me. W has ranted and raved that I should know negative behavior on my part will only harden her position. I know that is true up to a point. I also know that positive change on my part does not bring about change on her part either.
For me to become the perfect H means she must then become the perfect W. This puts the spotlight on her and she just throws up more defenses and deflections. The latest strategy was to dig back into our past and bring up all her resentment over the last 15 years. It is all an anxious reaction in having to confront her emotions.
So I give the carrot by working on myself, then use the stick to keep her from going into her shell. I cannot make it sufficiently worthwhile for her to change so I make it too unbearable for her not to change. She has the choice to change or not. This may come under the definition of a boundary, but I am sure it feels like control to her.
