My wife has the memory of an elephant, the observation skills of a hawk, the stubbornness of a mule, the argumentative nature of a lawyer (fittingly enough her chosen profession), and a sensitivity shield only around 5 nanometers thick. Add in Ivy League smarts and her devastating arsenal of illogical arguments/reasons, and I've literally got ZERO chance against her when we bicker. My only recourse is to put her off-balance somehow and attack her from the rear (errr, not literally... mostly) with a tag-team Blitzkrieg force of both logical (Spock) and "taste-of-her-own-medicine" illogical (Kirk) statements. When I've properly confused/frustrated her, I'll attempt to segue into another topic, a strategy that is only 50% guaranteed to work. If she's mad enough (terror alert: severe), she's like an unstoppable Juggernaut, running straight at me and yelling "You have no chance to survive make your time!" (Plus, in addition to anger, she'll probably be crying, which I absolutely hate.) At that point, if my attack-and-switch-subjects tactic doesn't work, I'll either 1) enact my backup "Operation Shutdown" strategy, 2) suicidally stick to my guns no matter what, "Thelma-and-Louise-style", or 3) hug her and tell her, in my best soothing voice, how ridiculous the whole argument is, thus calming her down. As Al Bundy said, "Women. Can't live with them. The end."
I prefer Norm from Cheers. "Women, can't live with em,...........pass the beer nuts" SHHHH.....we are hunting wabbits !! DD
LOL. Great way to slip a Spock and Kirk analogy into a marital situation. All you need now is to find a way to get Bones in for the makeup sex... Yea, you should at least try the counseling, if its going to end at least you gave it a shot. Better than just giving up if there is a chane for something more. In the end it comes down to this. If your personalities are to far off, or the way you deal with problems is totally backwards from the other..Things more than likely wont work out. Counseling is just a way to try and combine the illogic of the women and logic of a man. Bad example but should get the point across: Girl: I want a $100 hamburger Guy: WTF..... Girl: You don't love me Guy: WTF Conselor: She doesn't really want the $100 hamburger she just wants to feel like you love her enough to to give her the world if you could. After Counseling: Girl: I want a $100 hamburger Guy: I'd love to get you a chain of $100 hamburger restaurants, But right now we have to look ahead towards saving for our future and I don't have a future without you. Girl: I love you Best advice...Concede all arguments when you can't BS your way out....
We are starting tonight. I'll be honest, I don't have a lot of confidence this is going to work. For whatever reason, I feel she's simply fallen out of love with me. I can probably think of at least 10 people that she'd care more about if they simply disappeared out of their lives than me. For a husband and wife, that's not a good sign. We'll see.
Good luck RM. I feel like I know you, at least a little, from your posting here and it makes me sad to know you're having such a tough time. No matter what happens, you'll still be a Gifford, so there's always that.
That sucks to be going through such a hard time. Do you think she is going to counseling because she wants to find out what the problem is and make it better? Or is she going because she feels like that will make it easier/less painful to end the relationship if she goes through all the steps and this is one of them? I really hope things go well for you.
From what RM95 wrote, I get the impression that he thinks it is the latter, not the former, and that's a damn shame. I hope things work out for you two, RM95. You guys were so happy, not that long ago. Maybe you can work out your differences. Good luck.
Considering it's always been her that's wanted the counseling (up until the last week or so when I've fully come around to the idea), I'm going to go with the former. I'm hoping that what's causing me to have the feelings I'm having today are more due to her being unhappy in the relationship currently and not indicitive of lost feelings for me. The thing is, had we gone last Monday to counseling, I'm not sure what I would've said I was unhappy about in the relationship. I do hate our bickering, but there was nothing specific to it that I could point a finger at and tell the counselor that it was the main problem. At least now, I have something to say about things that are making me unhappy as well. Basically, I'm not sure what is going on. I know she's not cheating on me. If you know my wife, you know that's not something she would do. If she wanted someone else, she would let me know before doing something with that person. I'm hoping that the way she's acted the past week is because she's beyond fed up with my reluctance to go to counseling. There are other issues in play as far as stress in the marriage is concerned, but there's been headway in those areas. Maybe once we get these things out in the open to a neutral party, it'll spur a fast reconciliation of our feelings. I'm not worried about us being compatible. When we first met with the Catholic priest who married us, we had to take a test that was supposed to test how well we fit together. He said that he had never seen a couple as compatible as we are and he even mentioned that during the wedding itself. When we're getting along, things are great. We have a lot of fun together. I'll be honest and say that I've had my moments over the past year where I thought I may had made a mistake. Now I know I haven't. I've spent the last six days with my stomach in knots thinking about what I would do if this didn't work out. I pretty much spent half the time at the OSU/UT game thinking about it as well as all day yesterday afternoon. If we work through this, I know we'll both be much better off for it.
Unfortunately, things aren't always what they seem. My ex-g/f always kept saying, "why can't be like them? they look so happy together. blah, blah, blah." no one likes to air their dirty laundry in front of everyone. good luck RM95.
You know RM95, that may well be an act to protect her ego. She married you, I doubt she did that lightly. Keep an open mind, it might be you both really love each other but neither of you can see it and are acting less than compassionately (if not down right icy) to each other to try to protect yourselves. Good luck, my advice is to put more work into you (and being more compassionate to her) than into her, and hope she follows the same lead. I don’t think you will want it to be over and later reflect you could have done this or that, all you can control is you, and you need to feel square with whatever follows. And if the counseler doesn't challenege both of you (maybe not the 1st time, but within a few times) that one is not doing their job. Finally, be open, be blunt, be direct--what do you have to lose?
Good luck with this RM. Not sure if it will make it any better but I can tell you my story. My GF and I were together for 3 years exactly. The first 2 years were awesome, we had the best relationship ever, never argued, had chemistry, everything. She was ready to get married, I was too but haven't been burnt in the past I wanted to wait. I told her if it was meant to be then we will get married when the time is right. All of our friends wanted us to get married. Well that final year, we still got along great, but our relationship grew into more of a brother/sister type thing. The "spark" was gone, we loved each other, but the lust was gone. Things became routine and not so exciting ya know? Well from what i've learned over the years this "spark" or "lust" type feeling is what women strive for, they live for it, they think that if the spark isn't there then something is wrong. I told her it was just life and that the spark fades over time with everyone. I told her true love is what is important, not lust.... well, our relationship has ended because of this silly "spark" thing she always talked about, shes been searching for it ever since. I know the difference between love and lust, she didn't. Our relationship ended because of that, sounds silly right? I'm just happy that we didn't get married right away or it would have been much more painful. She'll eventually realize the difference between true love and lust and will realize that she had true love with me, but it will be too late as I have already moved on. Good Luck.
Thanks man...I hope that's not it! I have a pretty good feeling it's not. But thanks for sharing your story. I've been through that as well. I really think a lot of it has to do with our finances and the two of us figuring out what we want to do with our lives. She said on Thursday that she finds it terribly frustrating that I don't really know what I want to do for a career. If she finds it frustrating, how does she think I feel about it when I'm 11 days from turning 30!?!?! At least it's good that I have a lot of ideas. I could be sitting here without a clue as to what I could do, but I'm currently thinking of three major things that I want to do with my life. Of course, when Major's next brilliant idea pays off, it won't matter! That said, she knows what she wants to do and I've been nothing but supportive about it, even if it means moving out of state. I think some of the finance issues have been resolved in some way where we have a good plan to be completely out of personal debt and in a house by the end of next year (all goes well, we should be in a house by March). That's a good point. She could very well be acting this way because all the other times we discussed counseling and I said I was interested, I completely forgot about it as we started getting along again. Maybe by acting this way, she's doing what she thinks needs to do to show me this is the only way it's going to get better. We'll see how it goes tonight. I'm definitely feeling better about things as I have a chance to type them out. This is why this place and the posters are so great. Thanks guys.
my wife and i did it, at an extremely low point in our marriage, and i have to say it honestly help. not that it wasn't painful, nor was there a big breakthrough moment, but we both got some validation for our issues, and we both had adjustments to make. here is where the quality of the therapist is really key, and having someone who is completely neutral. going to see "his" or "hers" together is pointless. good luck!
Interesting thing is mostly it's the guy who is craving for the "spark," and the gal who is looking to settling down for a more stable relationship, having kids and stuff. Probably a sign of mismatch either way. In the usual case, guys would be called immature, shunning responsibilities, so on and so forth. What do we say about the ladies in the reverse situation?
Having never been married, I can't offer much, but I would think that the fact that SHE is the one pushing for counseling bodes well for her wanting to stay in the marriage. I mean, if she wanted to end it, why would she want to bother with counseling? At any rate, good luck. I hope it turns out well for you. The counseling is a good step.
RM95, I'll be thinking about you and your situation and praying for it. Tomorrow will be 15 weeks since I have been married and things have gotten better between my wife and me since I last posted a thread on it. However, this morning we had an argument and she does like she always likes to do - get defensive and unyielding and go Bobby Knight on my ass. Which when that happens, I just shut down because I don't respond well to that (I don't know many people who do). She finally apologized to me (after I wouldn't answer my phone and had turned my cell phone off) but she still made some comment on how I drove her to that behavior. But you know what I did? I decided to take the high road and surprise her by showing up to her work place on my lunch break. I took her off to a back room and made out a little bit. I then looked her in the eyes and told her, "Don't worry about me getting mad because I'll get over it in time. It doesn't mean I am leaving and don't ever doubt me on this." I then told her later that I know I'll get mad at her again in the future, but because of who I am as a person, I am not deserting her. It helps that my mother-in-law knows how she is and she basically tells her the same stuff I do (you got to change your attitude at times and quit trying to act like a hardass because it doesn't help anything). Now there may come a day where I become like Popeye and say to myself that "I've stand all I can stand", but hopefully that will never happen. Oh and I hear you on the finances man - that one really sucks. I've told my wife that I wished we had talked more about that before we got married. I hope your wife isn't the spender like my wife because if she is, then we both can relate. I just finally said to myself that as long as we can pay all of our bills on time, I won't worry about it or try not to worry about it. But yea, that issue can really eat at you if you let it. Just hang in there and hopefully something good will come out of this counseling session. If counseling doesn't work, is there someone in either your family or her family that can act as a mediator (like my mother-in-law)? Good luck.
