I know of marriages which have recovered from worse that this Samson. If you reach a point in the therapy where you both understand each other's reactions and are able break the pattern, respect may be regained.
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Slowly I’m realizing that her emoting is less a product of being female or being generally shrewish
Sounds like you are on the way to better understanding. Let the optimist in you take heart from this progress.
I know people like your wife. My mum has had difficulty sustaining relationship because much of her interaction with loved ones is designed to seek self validation. It may not be calculating - your wife may be so driven by the way she is feeling and lacking in insight into why she behaves as she does that she may not realise she is being unreasonable. Within the last year, at 58, she has finally achieved a degree of emotional maturity that has eluded her for most of her adult life.
If there is potential for change, identifying what the bottom line is that makes your wife flip will be critical. To me it seems that she seeks evidence to confirm her view that you no longer love her - so that what may be an innocent question (when did we get together?) immediately becomes emotionally charged as she interprets your answer within the context of what she needs to know (if he loved me he'd remember). The employment thing is a flash button issue for her - your attitude may to her be proof of your lack of love. It may only be possible to tackle it when you have dealt with the fundamentals of your relationship.
I absolutely agree there is no point in engaging when she has gone off on one - I like the detonator simile - that's exactly what it's like. There is nothing you can do once those buttons have been pressed. Just retreat to the underground bunker and wait for the storm to pass. This is not a retreat of the optimist - it's pragmatism.
Hats off to you Samson - keep at it.
P.S. To Thinkalot - have you read Samson's Bail Out thread? I am being presumptious but I think Samson is aware that his current approach is not helping his wife and he is in therapy to seek different approaches (as well as finding out if his wife is capable of change too).
Last edited by meanon; 25th January 2004 at 6:40 AM..
Reason: To add P.S.
My main intent in seeing a marriage counselor is to gain truth, not have a referee between my wife's emotions and my own in some Jerryspringeresgue parody.
But I see M's point of view now, and I've seen it many, many, many times before: Presume facts that support a doubless conclusion. This is the essence of the inappropriate emotional reaction.
The counselor takes a different and very refreshing approach: How about not guessing, not presuming, but actually asking for the motive behind our actions and then formulating an appropriate reaction based on a doubtless conclusion??
How, the counselor wondered could husband make up for this transgression? Wife replied that he could cease and desist expressing in any way, shape or form, my desire that she get a job. Quid pro quo manipulation:
Samson, I view your counseling as analagous to particularly testy and racorous collective bargainibg negotiations, with the counselor as the Mediator.
You're management, your wife the bargaining unit and your marriage "contract," ie, the mutual understandings and expectations that form the crux of everyday marital interactions, is what you want renegotiated with your wife's re-entry into the labor market. That's the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
I se three possible outcomes:
1. A Victory for Management: The marital "Collective Bargaining Agreement" (CBA) is re-written and your wife re-enters the work force.
2.A Victory for Labor: The status quo remains, and the CBA is not re-negotiated. Your wife remains a homemaker.
3.Compromise: Your wife re-enters the work force part-time, as, for example, a substitue teacher. Or for a limited 2 year period. And you increase your material contributions to home life.
Since you want the status quo changed, you are in a weaker bargaining position. You're ultimate bargaining chip: If there's no CBA renegotiations, you will shut down the factory (ie, marriage), lay-off the workers (leave your wife) and relocate to more business friendly areas (date, again). In short, you can always tell your wife that if she doesn't re-enter the labor market, you just might re-enter the marriage market. I hope it doesn't come to that.
The Mediator, if he/she is good, must craft a CBA, which is acceptable to both sides. If no compromise is reached, his/her job becomes even harder. Then, the Mediator must convince the losing side, either Management or Labor, that no one lost because the consumers, the children, are the ultimate beneficiaries of this business' continued operations.
Good luck, and I hope your Mediator/Counselor is very, very good.
You're ultimate bargaining chip: If there's no CBA renegotiations, you will shut down the factory (ie, marriage), lay-off the workers (leave your wife) and relocate to more business friendly areas (date, again).
Good analogy.........although I must confess that I'm releived you made it and not me......while my hide might be thick, I'm hoping to keep it in good condition...
So, I've really my best in responding choice now is to use YOUR analogy and try to dodge the sticks and stones throw in your direction
While you've identified my "ultimate bargaining chip," at the moment it seems to be my ONLY chip.
When emotions become invested, as Meanon so eloquently explained, both parties leap to emotion before rationality. I will never believe that humans are capable of being fully rational, because I believe our emotions trump reason. So it becomes less than reasonable to ask people to be rational.
Perhaps you, also, interprets her actions within the context of what you need to know (if she loved me she'd get a job and relieve me of this burden)? When both of you fail to get the confirmation you need, you retreat to pain and respond from the anger of self-protection ("s/he doesn't love me (as proved by the failure to do X) so screw him/her and what s/he wants").
Once people are in that situation, it's the beginning of the end, particularly if neither person is willing to abandon the defensive position.
__________________
I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to my fellow creatures, let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
Moimeme, your persistant conjecture is most thought provolking and I appreciate reading your posts, particularly when they are so often riddled with contradictions. First, Meanon said that:
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an innocent question (when did we get together?) immediately becomes emotionally charged as she interprets your answer
Meanon is explaining NOT how
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both parties leap to emotion before rationality
, but only ONE party "leaps."
Second, if it it true that you believe
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it becomes less than reasonable to ask people to be rational.
then I've mistaken. Based on much of your posting I thought you believed humans should control their natural emotionally driven erges, and that morality, seated at the helm of cognition, should be our guide against the evils of .......adultery, for example.
Thirdly if every time either of us fail to get the confirmation we need, why would we continue to do it a second, third, fourth,...nth time especially if the result is to "retreat to pain and respond from the anger of self-protection." This would seem less than positive reinforcement for the behavior, wouldn't it?
Finally, the best for last, you speculate that I "interpret her actions within the context of what [I] need to know (if she loved me she'd get a job and relieve me of this burden)?" I am male, and not within the 15% of the male population that would be most likely to ask this question that would be more commonly considered among 85% of females.
My fear is freezing in the dark under a bridge 25 years from now because my wife refused to work and allow us to save present dollars for inflated future costs.
My fear is that we'll need to buy another car.
My fear is that one of our children, my wife, or myself will need medical care.
AND: I'll be damned if I don't begin to sound some alarms around here letting her know about these realities so that her feeling won't be hurt!
Now, where's my spatula.......gotta go practice flipping hambergers.
Location: Alberta (Born in the Hometwon of the Calgary Flames!!)
Posts: 1,422
its funny how people predict or speculates doom from his first counselling session, when hes merely stating a reaction from an action. usually thats how it works doesn it? samson, im glad you take the negative with a grain of salt, to do such shows your intelligence and staying true to yourself. You know how you feel sitting through your sessions, i know how i felt during my first session, and it sure the hell was pretty close to yours. im sorry but i just dont see your first session the way some other posters feel.... but thats because i can relate somewhat.... before the session even begins you get the feel of what the atmosphere is going to be like and expect it. i totally agree with arabess.... you could have walked.... you could have given up and just left the situation but your indicating your willing to try, and just enduring that first session shows that. kudos to you..... you know your gonna hear all sorts of quips and quirks, possibly due to thier lives not being positive or having actually experienced a marriage let alone counselling yet for one.... just drudge along through the muck eventually you hit dry land now and then.... but remembering your doing yourself and your wife a service for your marriage. hang in there big guy
Samson
she went to “DEAFCON 1:” a highly emotional barrage of defensive language began to emerge from her underground silos. Before my own very effective and extremely damaging arsenal could be launched, a mental coup removed the optimist from power. With the optimist’s head in a basket, I withdrew, refusing to participate in the activity that seemed designed to cause marital Armageddon.
Plan ahead. Infiltrate her base using a spy, and have that spy diffuse the bombs. Disarm her if possible.
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Hell: Day 1 http://www.loveshack.org/forums/t31164/?highlight=Hell Samson
To read almost two dozen pages of marriage despite having had our last child 16 months ago. Since I had heard these many grievances before (usually after she'd discussed with close family or friends) I wasn't shocked to hear them again, yet another time, and most for the third or fourth time.
Sounds like she is sowing the seeds of dissent.
Samson
I get the impression that your wife is very manipulative after reading HELL: Day 1-3. She seems very unreasonable, and I know direct confrontation is useless because you lose ground from the fallout.
In my opinion, manipulators are among the most difficult people to crack. What methods can be used to diffuse and disarm people like that? I don’t know enough about your wife to suggest a strategy.
What methods should not be used? Why?
- Do not reason with an unreasonable person! Logic and emotion are mutually exclusive. Combating an emotional response with reason is like throwing water on a grease fire. Reason will work on people who understand and respect it.
I did 18 months of weekly sessions. Know what? It really helped a lot. No sh*t. Someone, somewhere in one of these threads in LS said something about counseling being effective not so much at solving specific problems, but at making us learn to recognize our patterns and then to change them. I thought this was very perceptive. In retrospect, I would say that this is a very good description of what we did.
We went through a lot. Complacency, money troubles, apathy, resentment right on through to adultery (hers, not mine). The initial sessions were pretty rough. Be forewarned though: there were days when we had actually, really started to do better, and something completely unexpected would trigger a real hell-fire session . It happened; it sucked. My philosophy - which you seem to have some of as well - was that even if today sucks, tomorrow will probably be better. Way more often than not, I was right.
While I had certainly done my share of putting my marriage in the shape it was in, I honestly felt that more of it was her. I was the one who tried hardest, held strongest to keep it together - both my wife and the counselor (a PHD, by the way) offered this opinion, unsolicited. So, I actually had the satisfaction of being there when my wife was gently, diplomatically, effectively told that in many cases, she was wrong, she was selling me short, and should pay attention to what I was doing to save this for us. I heard my share, too - and I owned up.
We have been out of counseling for a year now, and I am glad we went. Maybe I am a rarity; I do not know. We learned a lot. It's pretty cool when we get involved in a hot topic, then we see - usually at the same time - how it is spinning out of control. Then one or both of us manage to get the train back on the track. Know what? We usually resolve things quite nicely nowadays. Even laugh about it too.
I, too, like your posts, Samson. It obviously does you some good to post. It does others goos to read it. That not feeling like the "only f*ck-up in the whole world" bond we can share is pretty powerful.
In reference to meanon's post, no I hadn't read that thread by Samson... I'm glad though, Samson, that you are trying new things. I hope these threads give you plenty of support and food for thought as you soldier on.
Please note: The suggestions and advice offered on this web site are opinions only and are not to be used in the place of professional psychological counseling or medical advice. If you or someone close to you is currently in crisis or in an emergency situation, contact your local law enforcement agency or emergency number.
. It happened; it sucked. My philosophy - which you seem to have some of as well - was that even if today sucks, tomorrow will probably be better. Way more often than not, I was right.
Hybrid Mode
