oldmanofthesea
Master Don Juan
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2018
- Messages
- 1,597
- Reaction score
- 3,309
- Age
- 48
This is SO true. My ex-wife was always unhappy and she blamed me (now that we are divorced, she's still unhappy - go figure). We were in counseling and she couldn't tell the counselor what she wanted - she said, "I can't put my finger on it - it's just..... something." So the counselor suggested she get a whiteboard and write exactly what she wanted on it. So she did and she wrote a bunch of things on there like "drop what you are doing when I come home from work and spend 15 minutes talking with me about my day" (AKA listen to me ***** and moan about everyone and everything), "hold hands when walking in public", "give me one compliment each day", "if I'm upset, ask me if I want a hug", "kiss me when I'm leaving the house", "leave me a love note." etc etc. I did all the things and she still wasn't happy. When the counselor asked why, she said, "Because he didn't really want to do the things or mean any of it - he was just doing it to check the boxes." I felt like I had been backed into a trap by both the counselor and my wife. This exactly fits what you mentioned in your post.Once a woman expresses to a man that she desires to be treated nice, likes flowers or whatever it might be, the very act they request can no longer be a spontaneous and willing effort on the behalf of their men. A man at that point will only be doing what she told him. It is appeasement. It is not genuine.
Prior to that point, I was confident and told her no when she'd cross the line. Example being that she wanted to make changes to the house that were expensive, that she didn't make enough money to contribute to, and that I knew she didn't actually want based on my prior observations of her. She didn't actually want the changes to the house, she wanted to "have a say" and this is how she felt she needed to go about it. She can have say but if it's going to cost me $10k and not get used, then the answer is no. But over time, she got progressively more and more angry and made my life miserable so that's how we ended up in counseling and I think the counseling was a death sentence to the relationship. It needed to happen though. I should have pulled the plug long before.