Negative Behavior Have Actually Made The Problem Worse

I believe that tough love must always be preceded by tender love. I felt that over the past couple of months, I had demonstrated my soft love for him by changing my behavior. Now it was time for tough love. What I said to him at the retirement center was a speech I had rehearsed many times. I said it with emotion, I said it with sincerity, and I said it with firmness. And the counselor helped him make the decision to find another vocation that would demand less of his time and would give him the freedom to start over with a more balanced perspective on life. Amy calls that and other changes Jim made pretty radical but very helpful to their marriage. With a twinkle in her eye, she told me, I am actually looking forward to living with Jim at the retirement center. I’m just glad I don’t have to wait till then to start living. Jim said, I’m not sure we can afford to live at that retirement center. Remember that love is looking out for the other person’s interest. The first step is trying to understand the behavior of your spouse, the inner motivations that drive him or her, and then asking yourself whether your past responses to that negative behavior have actually made the problem worse.

After The Thunder

Most of the time, the first step in becoming an agent of positive change in a desperate marriage is to change your own attitude based on a better understanding of your spouse’s behavior. Also remember that reality living encourages you to take responsibility for your own attitude toward your spouse. If your spouse is a workaholic, be honest with yourself about your attitude toward his or her behavior. But then resolve not to let your negative attitude turn into negative actions. Instead, follow Amy’s example and seek to be an agent of positive change, admitting your imperfections and realizing that you cannot change your spouse, but you most certainly can influence him or her. When you change your thinking and your negative responses, you become free to take a new approach. You open the way for love to do its powerful work. I knew Jodie in high school, but I had not seen her for many years. She had gone off to college, married, and moved out of state. We were catching up with each other when my thrill turned to sadness. Jodie had dreamed of a partnership where she and Roger could share thoughts, feelings, desires, and work together as a team in facing life. Roger, on the other hand, was an obsessive controller.

As Tears Go By

His father was extremely domineering, and he was repeating the model of his father. Jodie explained, He controls the money like he is a guard at Fort Knox. I have to ask for every single nickel. He has to have the final decision in everything. Our social life is almost nil because he never wants to do anything with anyone else. He’s told our children that he will not pay for their college unless they go to the university of his choice. Gary, I feel like I am a bird in a cage. I get short of breath and my chest gets tight. I feel like I am suffocating. They come on with no warning and render me helpless. The anxiety attacks had led her to seek counseling. The counselor suggested that the attacks might be directly related to the stress under which she was living in her marriage.

Time After Time

Jodie didn’t want to admit it, but she knew the counselor was correct. The emotional stress under which she had lived for many years was now expressing itself in physical symptoms. Something had to change in her desperate marriage. Many times they are some of the most respected people in the community, and often they are unaware of their controlling behavior. They are simply following a lifestyle, which to them seems normal. They are either living out the model that they observed in childhood, or they are following the script written in their personality. Let’s look at each of these. Roger, Jodie’s husband, fell into the first category. He made the money, and he ran the house. The only decisions his wife made were how to dress the kids and what the family would eat. Even in these areas, he sometimes criticized her. All other decisions Roger’s father made himself. He prided himself on being a successful man and ruling his family well. His children and his wife were respected in the community. Roger’s mother, in the early days of her marriage, had complained about her husband’s controlling behavior, but that was before Roger was born. After the children came, she busied herself with them and accepted her lot in life. She was pleased that her husband was a good provider, and she never questioned any of his decisions. If she disagreed, she kept her thoughts to herself, and in due time her pained emotions subsided. She did not have an intimate emotional relationship with Roger’s dad, but she assumed that her marriage was pretty much like that of all the women she knew. Roger was simply following the model with which he had grown up. He was a hard worker and a good provider, so he wondered why Jodie was complaining. Why was she not willing to play her role as well as he was playing his? If she had confronted him, he never would have admitted that his behavior was controlling. He was simply doing what a man does. He could not understand why Jodie would have felt anything but gratitude. Why shouldn’t she be grateful? She could not ask for a better husband than he. Unfortunately, Roger never changed his mind. Two years later, I got a note from Jodie telling me that she and Roger were divorced and that she had married a wonderful man. This is the person who has what psychologists often call a dominating or controlling personality.