Venting about Wife, Formulating Solution Approaches

[Aquarius Guy]

I have found that it has been a helpful format for me to rattle on about my complaints, listen to input from others, and forumlate some phrases to ask my wife for improvements or accomodations.

 

So I would like a more loving feeling in the house. I wold like wife to go along cheerfully with some of my wishes.

 

I would like fo rmy wife ot understand all the things I do for her, rather than pointing out what she would like improved, from her prespective.

 

I would like to be better organized, so I could be more flexible for her desires. I would like to be generous to her, and have her feel apreciative of my efforts.

 

Right now I have some bookeeping things to do for the marital fincances, and I am not very fast in doing that stuff. I had a bookeeper at on time. Maybe I should put an add in a nearby supermarket.

[Curmudgeon]

It sounds like you would like a total makeover where she, her personality and her approach are concerned.

 

Why do I doubt that's likely to happen?

[Kenyth]

Read what I've said about marrying someone and trying to change them. IMO, it never works. Unless you are being mistreated, you must accept her as she is.

[Aquarius Guy]

CHANGING THE WIFE:

 

One solution is for my wife to change, to meet my desires, as my desires evolve and mature; ebb and flow. Obviously, her changing to satisfy my wishes would be the most desirable solution, from my most selfish perspective.

 

More than occasionally, my wife will find ways to accommodate my desires to some extent or another. Sometimes she will suggest compromises, in which I make some concessions, and she makes some. Sometimes I have failed to clearly ask for what I want. If I have not let my wife know of the essence of my desires, she cannot particpate in suggesting compromises. So my first obligation to my marriage, is to let my wife know the essentials of my desires. I would like a more loving atmosphere in the home. Not real specific. Leaves room for give and take, this trial or that attempt.

 

By defining my desires, I provide a motivation for my seeking out wishes to fulfill for my wife. Marriage could be about attempting to fulfill each other's wishes.

 

One purpose of venting, is to find constructive cravings that are unfulfilled. Once a need is identified, requests for fulfilling the desire can be formulated to best suit my wife, with the least amount of difficulty in changing from her current self.

 

So one of the goals of this thread, is to minimize the changes requested of my wife. The solution should be more about how I can change my approach, to find more joy, with my wife as she is. But suggestions for changes in my wife, could be an important step in the process of developing proposals for changes in myself.

[Mz. Pixie]

First of all, you need to look within yourself. Do you expect your world to begin and end with your wife?? No one person can be everything to another. Are their needs that you're asking her to meet that are unrealistic for her??

 

How much fun are you to live with? Do changes need to be made in that area?? Ask someone you really trust what he or she thinks about you and what changes you could make to be more positive and loving towards your wife.

 

You can visit marriagebuilders.com. They have a emotional needs questionaire that you both could fill out, where you list your most important emotional needs for your spouse and your spouse does the same. They are pretty indepth and will tell you some stuff you didn't know. Then, both of you make an agreement to go about meeting those needs for each other- discuss solutions and strategies.

 

Rather than expect the burden of change to be entirely on your wife, accept that you are not perfect. Neither one of you will get anywhere withholding things from your spouse in order to get something or keeping tabs. You can't be like, "If she does this for me, I'll make this pleasant for her" You have to go about it as a spirit of sacrifice. When you keep tabs and withhold things expecting things in return you set yourself up for a battle of wills that cannot be won.

 

You should approach everyday as "What can I do today that will make my spouse happy" as far as your spouse is concerned. Then go about doing it. That will in turn affect her in profound ways. Perhaps not when you first do it but after you keep it up for a while it will. The real issue is that neither of you want to give in- but at some point to have a good relationship someone will need to step up and make the first step.

[Aquarius Guy]

Dear Mz. Pixie,

 

Thank you for your optomistic response.

 

If the problem was that my wife was not getting her needs met, then my looking for ways to meet her needs would be a logical step.

 

Emotional Needs is one of the Marriage Builders concepts. Another analysis is the Giver and Taker Role Analysis.

 

I fweel I need to pay attention to the messages I am sending to my wife. I feel my wife is a taker, and I am giving her signals that she interprets as that is OK.

 

Taking beyond the family budget is not OK. I am willing got give her a back rub, or help with family chores, or fix up around the house, Manage the cars, bills and taxes. There may be a key element that I am missing, but I don't believe so.

 

I believe that I have unwittingly encouraged my wife to take more than is reasonable, and I need to be more convincing in my asertion of boundaries.

 

Perhaps a behavioural analysis. Behavioral Marriage Mapping:

http://www.utexas.edu/research/pair/ourresearch/cst5.pdf#search='Behavioral%20Marriage'

 

This reference does not come up as a Link, so you have to paste the address into your browser. It is a PDF file.

 

The pattern of taking by my wife goes something like:

 

Wife states that she deserves something, without Joint Agreement, and beyond the family means.

 

Wife Talks about plans for obtaining what she deserves.

 

Wife acts to get what she feels she deserves.

 

I, the husband have been failry silent throught the process.

 

I can retaliate and get something without her joint agreement.

 

Or I can take steps during the discussion and planning stages:

 

DESEERVING TALK:

You feel that you deserve X, and I would like you to have X, but I want the family budget to work. Can we live together in the Red Zone? I was willing to accept debt when we were young.

 

I feel I deserve A, B and C.

 

PLANNING TALK:

You are planning to purchase X, but I need you to figure the budget first.

 

Perhaps a wish list might be useful for my feeling and disres.

 

I want to be sure that I have asked fro what I feel are my needs and desires. I want to make the effort to give the full range of my options for receiving Love, so if I am disappointed, it is not because I have not asked.

[HokeyReligions]

 

I fweel I need to pay attention to the messages I am sending to my wife. I feel my wife is a taker, and I am giving her signals that she interprets as that is OK.

 

I believe that I have unwittingly encouraged my wife to take more than is reasonable, and I need to be more convincing in my asertion of boundaries.

 

Signals can be (maybe often are) misinterpreted. My husband and I struggle with that sometimes. It ties back to a basic knee-jerk emotion: "If I have to tell you exactly what I want then even when I get it, it won't feel sincere and that, in effect, is the same as not getting what I wanted to begin with." It sounds simple enough, but its not because we don't always recognize it or recognize our emotional responses.

 

That is a tough one to work out and to get through, but it can be done.

 

Unwittingly encouraged may equal enabling. Even with the best intentions, it can (again, maybe often) results in a negative response. That negative response could be immediate, or it could pile up with other such negative responses and explode into a huge ball of resentment later (maybe years later).

[Aquarius Guy]

Update:

 

There are a number of things that my wife could do to better accommodate my feelings. To be more considerate to me.

 

One of my problems, is that she rejects considering doing anything more for me. If she would say, something like, "I will try to make some time for your ideas, and we can talk again soon to see if I am giving you the most meaningful feelings of accommodation, and the easiest ones for me, that mean something to you."

 

I am dragging my feet in trying to do all the things that might please my wife, because I feel she is dragging her feet.

 

So that is the rant part, and today, I did asked her to try to accomodate me once a month on a small issue. She refused, to always, usually, every other day, or once a week. Once a month is a start. An acknowledgment of the validity of my feelings that form the basis for my request.

[2sunny]

Maybe you should BOTH read the proper care and feeding of husbands by Dr. Laura Schlessinger.

 

Men are generally not that difficult to figure out or to keep happy.

 

Women, on the other hand, tend to be a bit more manipulative and demanding by general nature and the things that they have to accommplish each day.

 

Bottom line is - you need to have a clear understanding of each others needs and wants. Compromise almost always comes into play with married couples, whether it be time, effort, moral or money issues.

 

If you can have a good idea of what the other expects and wants and needs in order to be happy, you have literally won most of the battle.

 

Men are usually motivated from a gal by a happy household, encouraging words from the wife , good eats and a good sex life.

 

If most women would recognize this - life should be so simple for most marriages....

 

PS. I hate it when women use manipulation as a tool for things they want or need...... it's just not fair at all!

[whichwayisup]

You need your wife to be more emotional with you, to feel that connection. To feel validated by her and appreciated. It's more than her 'compromising', it's making time for YOU and listening to you when you've had a s***ty day. For her to do nice things for you because she 'wants' to, not because she feels 'obligated' to.

 

Speak from your heart, always, when you talk to her. Show her your feelings, don't be afraid to wear your heart on your sleeve with her to make a point.

[Aquarius Guy]

Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands

Binding: Hardcover

Publisher: HarperCollins

Date Published: 2003

ISBN: 0060520612

 

Thanks for the reference. Alibris has some as low as $8.00.

[Aquarius Guy]

Update:

 

I feel like it would be helpful to list some of my feelings of frustration, so that I can avoid the feelings from forming resentment, too much.

 

My complaints can be refined to be requests for change to my wife. Or, My complaints can be further analyzed to see that there is some part of responsibility that is mine, and should be addressed by changing myself.

 

Certainly the hope is that for all my complaints, my wife will immediately change to my requests, and become more accomodating to me.

 

But the purpose of venting is not entirely in the hope that my wife will change.

 

VENTING: My wife rejects some of my ideas, and makes make wrong statement in expressing some of her ideas.

 

I feel that my wife could be more respectful to my ideas, and less make-wrong in presenting her ideas. I have not taken her to lunch/dinner and discussed my concepts of Make-Wrong, and how that affects relationships. That would be a frst step to arriving at compromises, is to create a construct of concepts and terms for disucssions.

 

I have recently purchased some parenting tapes, and my wife has refused to watch the parenting ideas with me (or even by herself). We are supporting one son, who is theoretically in college(Took no classes the Fall), and I feel my wife should be keeping her parenting skills up to max, and coordinated with me, to get our budget better in line.

 

My wife has crazy budget ideas, that come and go. She gets real intense about one issue or another. She is really close to ADHD, and is impulsive, intensely insistant, and then drops things for days or weeks, or months.

[Pink_Tulip]

Your posts all consist of, my wife is selfish and won't conform to what I expect of her. I am a good husband, poor me. I understand you are venting, but I would assume a lot of your condescending attitude toward her is carried over into your conversations with her as well. No one likes to be treated like that, and it is the natural tendancy for anyone who is talked down to to rebel. Your relationship sounds like the classic parent/child situation. You have all these expectations of her and are very clear in how you want her to behave and act, and she says screw you and pushes every button you have to piss you off. Sounds fun.

 

Since this has been going on for months and your focus is still on her behavior, you have missed the point that you cannot change her. All you are doing is pissing her off more and creating even more of the antagonism you wish to change.

 

The only way this will change is for you two to go to counseling. You need a third party to help with the communication, because it seems to be completely nonexistant. She will never, ever, hear you when everything you say is another idea you have to 'fix' her. And you aparently aren't hearing her.

 

You have an adult son and you expect your wife to take parenting classes? Your best case scenario is that she immediately modify her behavior to your needs, without question? You have diagnosed her with ADHD and other mental health issues b/c she isn't doing what you want? Is this a serious post? I am having a hard time belieing it.

[Aquarius Guy]

Dear Pink,

 

Thanks for the feedback.

 

At this point I am listing out all my desires for wife to change, or the situation to improve.

 

I am not being overly demaning, or controling with my wife at this time. I am trying to be a doormat to her face, and do whatever she might ask, that is at all reasonably possible to do.

 

I am preparing a presentation package to ask her about Make Wrong comments.

 

I have not mentioned the parenting tapes for several weeks, at least.

 

I spoke of my wife as being impulsive and sporadic, as in ADHD characteristics.

 

I am focusing on presenting the make-wrong concepts, so I can at least have the concepts in place for discussion of those issues. Whethe she might change for her put downs, is another conquest.

 

I seek to dominate my wife with charm. I am not being nasty or bullying.

 

My wife cannot control her temper. I am cool and stay fairly calm. I am not demanding, but rather being pleasantly seductive.

 

I am working on being more charming and seductive.

 

Today I made the bed beforre leaving for work, and washed all my dishes. I am rather domesicated.

[Pink_Tulip]

 

I am not being overly demaning, or controling with my wife at this time. I am trying to be a doormat to her face, and do whatever she might ask, that is at all reasonably possible to do.

 

 

If that is all true, then the above may be your problem. I think it is human nature for people to walk all over others who let them. The doormat solution has never, nor will ever, work. Been there, done that. All it did for me was to make me angrier and angrier and feel more and more taken advantage of until I exploded. You need to nip this in the bud now.

 

Also, it is hard for me to believe you have a dual personality of sorts, controlling here, but a doormat there. Is it possible you are dealing with her in a passive/aggressive way? That could be putting fuel on the fire as well.