Will she lose interest and walk away or will she become submissive to the man, like she is deeply desiring to do?
In my case, she left. But I hope you aren't asking in order to avoid doing what you should do out of fear you'll lose her, because if it does cause her to leave, then that is what needs to happen.
To illustrate an example of what happened to me, that played out
exactly as
@stormrider described:
My ex-wife was enamored with me at first. She stroked my ego, wanted to see me all the time, complimented me, wanted to have s*x constantly and talked about how much she loved it, bragged about me to her parents, friends, and family that I was the best guy she had ever dated. It lasted a long time like this.... nearly a year. Then it started going down-hill. She was a VERY unhappy person, in life. Always complaining about her friends, her job, her family, her anxiety, what happened in traffic, what happened at the grocery store, etc.
She then began aiming the complaining at me. At first, it was in response to my expressing dissatisfaction with what she was NOT bringing to the table (literally this was limited only to: doing her share of house-work, contributing financially, and taking care not to damage my belongings that she couldn't afford to replace - seems like a lot right?!) I wasn't allowed to be disappointed in her and she fought me furiously. Then she began to make up gripes about me. "You aren't vulnerable." "You aren't emotionally available." "You don't this you don't do that," "you make all the decisions," "you always put your foot down." I didn't understand what she really wanted and when I asked her to explain it, she couldn't. So, I got us into couples therapy.
Couples therapy consisted of me sitting there mostly quietly while she complained about me for an hour. When he asked her specifically what it was she wanted that I wasn't doing, she responded, "I don't know, I can't put my finger on it..... it's just.... just....... SOMETHING." The therapist responded, "Hey, I believe you, but if you can't tell him exactly what you want, you can't expect him to do it." So he then told us to get two white boards on the way home, she would create a list of things she wanted from me, and I'd create a list of things I wanted from her.
Mine read as follows:
1. Do your half of the chores
2. Contribute the $X per month toward bills/budget that we agreed upon without excuses
3. Take care of the belongings we use which you cannot afford to replace if you damage them
I still have hers in the attic. She ran out of space within minutes. It was stuff like "hold my hand when walking into the grocery store," "when I come home, listen to me vent about my day for 15 minutes with your undivided attention," "Every day, tell me 3 things you love about me," "leave me a love note" etc.
I actually did all the things. The next week in counseling the counselor asked her how it went. She said poorly. I was surprised, since I did all the things. I responded, explaining I did everything on her board. He looked at her and asked, "Well, did he do everything on your board?" She said, "Yes." He asked, "So why are you unsatisfied?" She responded in an angry huff, "Because he only did them because they were on the board." And that was when I knew I could never fill the black hole void in her soul. But I lied to myself for another painful year or so as things continued to decline into depression and misery. Then one day, she gave me the greatest gift and simply didn't come home from work. It was really hard, but I've come out of it a better man than I ever was and am still on the journey of continued improvement.
