I agree with LP. I think you're a 3. I think your H is a martyred 2. I think it would be easy to be married to you just like it would be easy to be married to IHJ's Type 3 H. All I would have to do is communicate "We are the very best couple ever so we very much deserve lots and lots of sex and fun!"
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
Instead, I just turned to him and smiled and said "Hush." and then smiled at the young female clerk too as if to say "I am really vastly undercompensated in many ways for taking on the immense job of caring for this unbelievably high-maintenance man but he is sort of cute so there you have it.".
That r00led.
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Quote: Anyway, even if I believed your theory, I might tend to think that I could think of better options for my midlife than financially and emotionally supporting an ill-tempered slacker musician type in exchange for the occasional hot throwdown.
This was an unfair thing for me to say. My H isn't a "slacker". He's a very hard, overly conscientious in an anal retentive way, worker. It's just that his interests/ambitions are in areas that are unlikely to result in much monetary reward. A while back I was having a conversation with him in which I was playing job coach and refusing to believe his negativistic statement of "I never had a dream. I have no idea what would job would make me happy.". After about two seconds thought, I said "Well, one of your dream jobs might be to compose movie scores.". After a moments silence in which he was processing his lack of desire to admit that I was right, he had to agree with me. Of course, immediately he added "So what if I do have a dream job if it's a dream that will never come true because it is so impractical.". I did have some further optimistic, proactive thoughts along the lines of "Well, you could at least have some fun writing the score for one of D15's web animation cartoons." but I didn't continue because I frequently feel like I am throwing my optimism into a black hole when my H is in one of his "moods".
There is some sense in which our fight about sex has always really been a fight about money/work. My H bears resentment towards me because early in our marriage we did sort of have a deal that I would be the one who made the money. His thinking is along the lines of "I know myself and my limitations. I never would have chosen to take on middle-class Dad financial responsibilities if I hadn't knocked you up. I never would have knocked you up if you weren't such a seductive HD slut. I never would have believed that marrying you was a workable proposition if you hadn't given off the vibe of someone who was very intelligent, competent, optimistic and pro-active and therefore able to carry more of the burden of responsibility.". The fact of the matter is that he is right. I am more the one who changed the rules of the "game" mid-play. I feel sorry for my H because really my only excuse/defense for doing this is some lame combination of low self-esteem and sexism but ,unfortunately for him, almost everybody on the planet would agree that I am in the "right" on the matter, including me half the time. That is why I find Blackfoot's perspective so helpful. His "sexism" varies from my "sexism" in such a way that it helps me figure out how I am wrongminded. For instance, my H and I had a good moment a while back, after a discussion in which I described smearing the competition at a booksale, in which we both jokingly agreed that a good model for our marriage would be that he could be the male lion hanging out back at the den and I could be the female lion out on the hunt. Sort of like he could be roaring "Fetch me an elk, woman and be quick about it!". When either of us tries to force the standard stereotypical sexist roles on the other, things go to h*ll because he doesn't like to hunt and I don't like to do activities in support of a hunter. But my societal training keeps telling me that the way to get him to want to f*ck is to keep forcing/supporting his efforts to hunt until he's successful. I keep going down this cheeseless tunnel even though all evidence points to the fact that what makes him want to f*ck me is when I give off the vibe that I am a good hunter myself and there will be elk-a-plenty for all!
Therefore, the way in which my low self-esteem comes into play is that I don't think it is "right" that a man should want to f*ck me for my best traits. I'm like the prudish opposite of the gorgeous LD woman with an IQ of exactly 100 who binds her breasts and wears thick glasses because she wants a man to want/appreciate her for her mind. We both feel like we are being "used" when we are appreciated for what we actually do have of "value" to offer in a relationship. Really we are both suffering from a sort of perverse self-loathing.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
Quote: I think it would be easy to be married to you just like it would be easy to be married to IHJ's Type 3 H. All I would have to do is communicate "We are the very best couple ever so we very much deserve lots and lots of sex and fun!"
Wrong! Your relationship with my H would fail for the same reason as mine has and for the same reason as yours with your H has...our H's needed too much propping up ininitally, and you and I tried to help them too much in their manhood, for various reasons, which set off all kinds of weird dynamics.
That's why I still stick by my previous post to you that things may improve in your marriage once the financial/emotional stress of raising the kids is out of the picture.
Quote: ..."Well, one of your dream jobs might be to compose movie scores.". After a moments silence in which he was processing his lack of desire to admit that I was right, he had to agree with me. Of course, immediately he added "So what if I do have a dream job if it's a dream that will never come true because it is so impractical."...
maybe starting from scratch at this point in his life, it would be...but it isn't in a general sense. I know a couple of guys that I went to music school with that moved to LA right after graduation, and have been working in the movie industry ever since. Me? I was a performance major. now THAT is impractical!!
Jenny, I think your H sets you up, without even being aware that that is what he's doing.
For instance, in the "I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up.." convo, he had already pre-planned to shut down whatever suggestion you would make within the next utterance but he couldn't do that because you came up with something pretty good. It's like this weird verbal competition between you two. I have no doubt he really feels that way but the last thing he wants is for you to pour sunshine on his pity party and yet you do that quite frequently. I can relate, as I do the same thing.
What I wanted to ask you though is this: Is there part of you that does it out of sadism? Or is it habit? I know for a while you were toying with the idea of saying "oh" or "hmmm" or something noncommital like that..I think that's the best approach until you are able to break the verbal sparring gridlock that befalls your M.
It's like the two of you are silently daring the other one to try and deal with what you've just said. He dares you to deal with his job depression and you dare him to try and stay pissy when you both know he'd enjoy writing scores. And on it goes. Fusion at its best, eh!
I don't think he has ever really grasped that it's not your job to improve his functioning in the world. It's been your pattern for so long that he has come to depend on it and resent you if you don't play the game.
Say...this is totally unrelated to your post but do you sell books on ebay? I was looking through a gal's selection of books and she had posted a picture of herself sitting on a rock and I thought, Hey that looks like Jenny!
Quote: Wrong! Your relationship with my H would fail for the same reason as mine has and for the same reason as yours with your H has...our H's needed too much propping up ininitally, and you and I tried to help them too much in their manhood, for various reasons, which set off all kinds of weird dynamics.
I KNOW that you are right. I just sometimes like to pretend like I think your H is sexy as a random act of kindness. Merry Christmas IHJ's H !!!
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
Quote: maybe starting from scratch at this point in his life, it would be...but it isn't in a general sense. I know a couple of guys that I went to music school with that moved to LA right after graduation, and have been working in the movie industry ever since. Me? I was a performance major. now THAT is impractical!!
Actually, I think that this is a great time in history to be a creative type. All the new technologies are making it much cheaper and easier to self-publish, produce independent films, create professional quality audio files etc.. Also, based on the limited research that I've done, creating original scores or soundtracks is a growing field due to the difficulties found in obtaining the rights to use previously recorded music. One way a performance artist could make money these days would be to set up a website featuring performance shorts. Use some guerilla marketing tactics to create a buzz about your site. Include a virtual money bucket on the site and collect money like a street artist. You could also allow Google to place relevant ads on the side of your site and collect advertising revenues every time someone clicked on the links. Then you could team up with a small independent publisher like I hope to shortly become to produce a book entitled "How to Make Money as an Internet Performance Artist" and collect royalties. Good Luck!
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
Quote: What I wanted to ask you though is this: Is there part of you that does it out of sadism? Or is it habit? I know for a while you were toying with the idea of saying "oh" or "hmmm" or something noncommital like that..I think that's the best approach until you are able to break the verbal sparring gridlock that befalls your M.
I had to think a bit to figure out how my behavior might be sadistic. Then it occurred to me that although my conscious motivation is to "cheer my husband up", my semi-conscious motivation might be to "make him take personal responsibility for his unhappiness". I guess I can see how this might be sadistic, however I guess I view it as a sort of "cruel to be kind" variety of sadism since I truly believe that taking personal responsibility for your unhappiness is the first step in becoming more happy. Of course, I might also be motivated by the desire to "prove" that "I" am not the one who is responsible for his unhappiness. It's like I'm motivated by a sort of irrational rationality that reasons along the lines that if I can prove that it's not my fault that he is depressed then he will understand that it is unfair to make me suffer along with him in anyway. Though, actually my idea that he would enjoy writing scores actually did cheer him up because it made him feel like I "understand" him.
Quote: Say...this is totally unrelated to your post but do you sell books on ebay? I was looking through a gal's selection of books and she had posted a picture of herself sitting on a rock and I thought, Hey that looks like Jenny!
Yes, but not me.
You know part of my thinking lately was motivated by a post you made in which you said that Mr.HP had said something to you like "You don't know what it's like to be a man in a man's world." in response to some advice you had offered him careerwise or something like that and you agreed with him. I have to say that this struck me as just about the most blatantly untrue thing I have come across on this BB ever. If you were out in the corporate world, you would be a f*cking shark. As someone who spent a while working in HR, I have to say that if , for instance, my quarterly bonus was based on successfully hiring two people to aggressively take over a sales territory from the competition, I would hire you and Corri and start spending my bonus as given.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
I just read through it and was inspired to take the ennegram test online. I'm all about the guilty pleasure of labeling and categorizing people based on these personality tests. I've taken the MBTI no less than 12 times.
I also wanted to post because I see a lot of similarities between my H's behavior and MJ's H. My H is very fatalistic and negative and seems to enjoy being dissatisfied and I have fallen into the trap of trying to find his happiness solution so many times. But, as we come to find out, they don't want our damn solutions. But this is hard for me, who, as it turns out, is an average to healthy Type 4 with a lot of the Type 3 influence. I just can't understand how unhappiness can be satisfying.
I did do one counseling session with a DB coach and she told me about "one-downmanship" as opposed to "one-upmanship." Instead of responding to H's negativity with a way to make things better (the way healthy, rational people would look at it), agree with how bad things are and even say they are worse. This worked a few times with my H. And when I turned it on myself and showed my own negativity and low-self esteem moments, he did an about face and marched me right back to happy land. I guess he felt I didn't belong in his land.
But, it's just one of many little techniques that works sometimes, not at all other times. Ultimately, you're right, making him happy is his job.
I'm going to soundly label my H as either a Type 5 with a 6 wing, or the other way around.
And as a communications professional and an amateur P.R. practitioner I also think it's an exciting time to be a creative type. With a good idea, and a little learned skill, you can reach more people than people just 50 years ago would have dreamed.
