My Wife's Energy

[MyEyeIsOpen]

My wife and I have been together for many years, and we are madly, deeply in love. We both reach for "enlightenment" and agree fundamentally in our world view.

I recently had a religious experience that really pushed the spiritual envelope. I feel that I broke through "the veil" -- I, as my higher self, perceived my ego as the tool, the puppet that it is. The nonsense and futility of physicality isn't something that I merely believe now -- I've seen it, I've held it in my hands, and I know what it is.

I've had trouble getting back there lately, which is why I'm writing.

My beautiful Wife

As beautiful, brilliant, and strong as she is, my wife suffers from a mild mood disorder called cyclothymia, and sometimes it feels like it'll rip us apart emotionally, but even if it doesn't, it's very clear to me that it's holding back her development.

Her energy is unstable, and it's often drained. I believe she uses me as an energy source which is very draining for me as well -- what will often happen is that I feel fine or even great, and she'll sink rapidly into a dark mood. It happens in the morning frequently -- I'll wake up feeling good, and she'll wake up soon after, and there will be an instand down -- I can see it her eyes.

After some time of being in the dark mood, me trying to bring her out, she'll feel better... but I'll be in that dark mood. It feels like she's passing her funk to me, but I don't want to stop her -- she has no where else to put it, and I love her!

Which is why I'm trying to teach her to put it somewhere. I want her to let go of some of the baggage that she has, that's weighing her down, and weighing me down as well.

Unable Face her Demons

The problem is that part of her issue is that she can't face herself -- I'll give a typical example:

I mentioned the color paint I wanted in the hallway was different than what she had in mind, and after a brief conversation in which I was asking her what feeling she was going for instead of focusing no the color itself, she stormed upstairs, visibly upset.

She has some control issues -- it's very upsetting to her when she makes a plan and someone wants to do something different.

So I go try to calm her down since we're literally talking about paint colors, and I try to say it's not a big deal, and to relax and start over.

At this point in these conversations, she goes into attack mode. She starts saying nasty things and insinuating that I don't love her, or that I should leave her.

I work through that portion of the conversation by not engaging in the nastiness. She moves on to the self attacking at that point, where she says that she's worthless, and a bad wife, and I should move on, and our marriage isn't going to work because she treats me like ****.

At this point I somehow distract her -- get her chocolate, make her laugh with one of our scripts (we have a few contingency plans for these moods, as they happen fairly frequently, and they are predictable in their pattern). If everything works properly, she cries for a little while, we reaffirm our love for each other, and then her moves on to being a little down but moving around for the rest of day.


These episodes are very draining for me, and I believe they could be conquered in large part if she would face her demons, but the nasty phase and the self attack phase prevent her from doing that.

Instead of focusing on what is happening at the moment -- in this case, paint colors and reacting poorly to change of plan-- she goes straight to beating herself up over how it's all her fault. I try to tell her that it doesn't matter whose fault it is, and no is assigning blame, but it falls on deaf ears. There is never any productive demon-conquering.

What this is Not

This is not a cry help. I am strong enough to reject an energy drain, and I can choose to leave. I can raise my vibration if I choose to... but I want to bring her. I want to have the intimate connection I have, AND not be dragged down.

I was told recently that we're together for her to show me something, and I this might be it -- expedient means. How can I direct someone that I love, who is fundamentally willing to raise themselves, to conquer their demons and fly?

That's the advice I need. How do I love someone so deeply, and so completely that their baggage and cruft slips away, leaving only the pure light underneath?

Once I know that, I'll be ready to move on.

[Savage]

I've seen similar patterns. She wants to leave you, but she doesn't feel strong enough to pull the trigger. So she's trying to get you to do it for her.

You will need to talk about this a lot more with her to peel away the layers of falsehood. When you hit what seemed like reconciliation, it was only a temporary stop on the way to the truth. You didn't go far enough to hit the real truth yet.

Your current approach will only backfire because you're actively rewarding her for running these patterns. You can't solve the problem if you keep doing that. Things will only get worse.

One thing that will likely get you unstuck is to tell her you accept her as she is, that you accept her conclusions, and that you accept that the time has come to end your marriage. See where that leads.

[MyEyeIsOpen]

Interesting advice. I think you're at least partially right.

I think it's a little more complex though -- she doesn't want to leave me. She's afraid I'm going to leave her, because of baggage in her past. The script since her teen years has to push people away before they can push her away.

Basically, way deep down, she thinks I'm too good to be true and/or too good for her (not true, she's mind-blowing amazing in most ways, just not this way), so when she gets in a dark mood she falls back on trying to alienate me before I have the chance to reject her.

I honestly don't know what would happen if I tried to let her run with that. I'm afraid of the outcome, but you are right that I am enabling the response.

I'll think about it, thanks a lot.

[Savage]

If she really doesn't want to leave you, she'll back down if you start agreeing with her and let her push you away. This will help you break the pattern.

If you draw closer to her when she tries to push you away, you're rewarding her for running this pattern. She'll keep running it indefinitely because you're reinforcing it. Even worse would be if you reward her sometimes but not others, since then you're using a variable reinforcement scheme, which is even more powerful than a constant reward scheme.

The way to help break her of this pattern is to stop rewarding it altogether. Whenever she tries to push you away, pull even further away from her. Actually get up and walk away. Show her that her attempts to disconnect won't be rewarded with supplication on your part. If she really wants to stay connected with you, she'll soon learn not to run this pattern. Wtihdraw the reward and you'll de-condition the pattern.

You can even tell her you're doing this, letting her know that the best way to connect with you is to draw closer to you, not to pull away and make you chase her. If she does this to even a small degree, reward her for it by connecting with her to reinforce this more empowering pattern.

This may seem counterintuitive in some ways, but try to recognize that if you give her more attention for running her destructive patterns, you're actively reinforcing those patterns. She'll keep running the same patterns as long as you keep rewarding them, regardless of how deeply you discuss this problem to try to raise her awareness.

[bloodsport]

You mention your wife's scripts and demons. A book that helped me understand my scripts was "Come Here/Go Away". It may her help shed some light into her behavior as to why she pushes you away. And really until she addresses it and works on it, she may not be able to handle her energy constructively. Because everything starts with a thought and our awareness of the thought.

I wish you well.

[Sentient]

I think Steve's advice sounds pretty good on this one. There are many situations in relationships where that "Reverse Outcome" type of dynamic occurs (i.e. the more you try to force one outcome, the more you create its opposite). So, the more you try to draw her back in, the more comfortable she feels pushing you away.

I've noticed this a ton in my own relationship disputes. One of the ways I can counter a fight is to become really indignant. For instance, if I apolgoize and adopt the frame that I did something wrong, there is a chance I'll get to hear more and more what I should do better. However, if I throw a hissy fit, then my girlfriend all of a sudden gets nervous she's upset me, and now she'll start apologizing to me and trying to reconcile. Voila, I get what I "want" and never even had to apologize!

It's funny, and it works, but it's also based a bit on emotional manipulation. Whenever I can, I *really* try to avoid using this "trick" since I think its consciousness lowering for both of us.

The best outcome is talking openly about things without attachment to the issues. You might think that means I would disagree with Steve. However, if your wife is firmly caught in running her patterns, you probably need to use Steve's advice first to help her break them. Then once you're in a more productive space you can move on to the real truth through honest communication.

[Savage]

Originally Posted by Sentient

The best outcome is talking openly about things without attachment to the issues. You might think that means I would disagree with Steve. However, if your wife is firmly caught in running her patterns, you probably need to use Steve's advice first to help her break them. Then once you're in a more productive space you can move on to the real truth through honest communication.

You can decondition a pattern and openly discuss it at the same time. For example, I'll say something like, "I can see that you're running a destructive pattern right now, so I can't participate with you in this. I care about you very much, but if you want to continue running this pattern, you'll need to do it on your own. I hope you can see that I can't reward this kind of behavior. It just isn't me."

When I decline to reward a destructive pattern, I also talk about what I'm doing and why. This doesn't necessarily help at the time it's happening, but in the long run, it seems to help break the pattern faster, since the other person comes to see that you aren't just stonewalling and that you're genuinely trying to help.

[Sentient]

You're absolutely right. I'm happy you corrected me. I think you nailed it.

[MyEyeIsOpen]

Hm, well that didn't go well. Essentially the same pattern began to play out, and while in the angry phase, I told her she was in her angry phase and I didn't want to take part in it. I wanted to focus on being constructive, and I even cut her off at one point while she was about to throw a barb, and I said I didn't want to hear that, I wasn't interested in it. She shut up and let me talk, but used another tactic I didn't mention before -- she'll be quiet and look at me as though she's listening, but I'll finish talking and she'll remain silent. This means she literally was not listening to what I was saying at all. The conversation will literally go:

Her: *Silence*
Me: What do you think about what I just said?
Her: I don't think anything.
Me: Were you listening?
Her: No.

It's like a cutoff valve for her -- if I talk to her and she doesn't want to listen, she simply doesn't listen.

So I stopped talking to her, and told her why. She was on her way out with the boys and invited me to come along. This another "tactic": she'll derail any constructive conversation I try to have, ignore me, then at the very end, when I'm thoroughly upset and frustrated by her emotional stonewalling, she'll give some very small concession. I point out that she's just spent the last long while making me feel terrible, and that taking me on some random errand where it's impossible to talk because the kids are with us, will not make up for it.

At this point, she'll always say "Well, don't say I didn't offer," like she was the one trying to bridge the communication gap the whole time and I'm just being unreasonable.

----

Did I mention she's really an amazing lady, and we really do have a great relationship most of time? I know it sounds awful based just on what I've written here, and clearly it's an issue worth resolving, but for those of you confused as to why I'm still with her, this isn't really representative of most of our time together. Sometimes love is worth fighting for.

----

Anyway, I need strategies to get around this series of tactics. The issue is that they are all self supporting... if I start to overcome one script, another is in place to be a "fail-safe" almost, to prevent the cycle of negativity from stopping. I think that's why an otherwise happy and amazing woman still has these deeply destructive behaviors.

Maybe I should make a list of tactics she uses and come up with ways to undermine each. Not sure that's possible, they are pretty deeply entrenched. Might be worth a shot. What do you think?

[Angela]

You could do what Danger Man did for me early in our relationship. When I was feeling hurt of jealous, sometimes I would go into mope mode -- that is, I would feel completely stopped, a big lump of pain keeping me quiet and still, emitting bad vibes. I would be there, not knowing how to interrupt it and usually it became a downward spiral -- the evening would be ruined, pleasure and love wise.

Danger Man, clever man that he is, would not get upset. Instead, he would first ask me what it was I needed to say, and if I remained stuck in the silent treatment, he would say, "You can be like this if you want to, but it's not going to do our relationship any good. I'll be in the other room if you want to try something else. Or I'll be glad to walk you home." And then he would depart -- he wouldn't storm off; he would just remove himself from the source of the bad vibe.

In the past, when I had gone into that funk with other men, it would reactivate the guy and he would get upset, and his upset would reactivate my upset, and so on and so on. It was like a veil of darkness. You could only be as happy as the least happy person in the relationship.

Recognize that you have the power to be joyful regardless of your wife's behavior, and use that power! Mostly for your kids' sake -- teach them by example that they don't have to get upset just because someone else is upset. Teach them power and joy.

[Savage]

You're still making the mistake of entering her frame. You'll always lose when you do this.

[mattpd]

This is a section from the best book ever on attraction, The Attraction Code by Vin DiCarlo:

Here's the thing most people don't understand - Increased attention, reaction, and emotion is always a reward, and tends to reinforce the behavior you are reacting to.

So if a girl starts spending time with another guy, and you freak out on her and tell her how bad she is.. guess what.. She will soon be spending more time with him every soon.

We already know each and every emotion she experiences triggers the release of addictive chemicals - whether they are good or bad, it doesn't matter. Emotions are addictive.

If you cause a strong emotion in her directly after a specific behavior of hers, that behaviour gets reinforced.

The only effective strategy for punishing behavior is to ignore it.

---------------------

So by reacting to her, even if you think you are telling her off, you are actually rewarding the exact behavior you don't like, and making it even more likely she will do it again.

The worst thing about this kind of behavior from her, is that I've seen women so similar when with their boyfriends or husbands, and not do it with me. Okay, cast your moral judgements aside for a moment, as when I was a bad boy, relationship status was something I'd ignore. I ran by the rule that how people felt about each other was all that mattered, not the title of a relationship. So if a taken woman wanted me, I'd do it.

But... I'd also experience that women who would behave in a certain manner with their partner, would not do it with me. The relationship or their partner or whatever had trained her to be a certain way, and she actually had the power to change that behavior with me. For example, a woman would be a total prude in the bedroom and say 'no' to lots of stuff with the line-in partner, but with me the rulebook would go out the window.

Or a woman would be a complete pain in the ass to her boyfriend, but with me she would be perfectly well behaved. Now, this was not always the case, if the behavior was totally engrained it would come out, eventually, but it just made me realize that people can change so much when getting out of a relationship. It would always surprise me what boyfriends and husbands would often put up with.

[Bruce Achterberg]

MyEyeIsOpen (and others interested),

In this 3-part post I hope to help broaden your perspective beyond the scope of your problem, and instead of just giving you advice, actually give you some examples and actionable practices that you can implement should you further investigate some of the things I'll mention.

This all comes from personal experience, so rest-assured that it's results-orientated and holistic--something that will benefit all areas of your life.

Some of what I talk about may conflict with your view of reality, but consider it all the same. In general, we humans all talk about the same things, so while we may disagree on the semantics or even the concepts at first, if we consider something for long enough, eventually we find a truth--something shared between differing perspectives--that we can agree on and find useful.

* * *

Steve said this to you:

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

You're still making the mistake of entering her frame. You'll always lose when you do this.

I've done a fair bit of research in the area of behaviour and conditioning, and I have a lot of hands on experience. I'm by no means perfect, nor are my results always perfect, but at least when it comes to myself and the relationships I have consciously engaged in (not the ones that were existing and had history behind them), I have positive, good results--results you might call healthy and empowering, not unhealthy, unbalanced, and disempowering.

Since I understand the mechanics of these concepts and have seen lots of great examples, I'll flesh out what Steve was referring to help you out a bit.

* * *

The idea Steve is expressing is that so long as you're focused on what you are as something you need to fix or something that needs to change, you're going to be unwittingly perpetuating it.

If you subscribe to the idea of vibration and the law of attraction, the basic premise behind the universe is that focus is inclusive. You cannot not include something, only focus on something different. To put it another way:

It's about focus. Thought is focus. Observation is focus. You paint the picture with your focus. What are you painting with your focus?
– Bruce Achterberg, Twitter / Bruce Achterberg: It's about focus. Thought i...

So if you focus on something bad, you're saying to the universe, "yep, bring me more of the vibrational essence of this--what this feels like." And it doesn't just happen on a high level. It's very practical. I.e. If your partner does something you don't like, and you focus on it, the instant you do that, you notice that your vibration is not so much about what they did, but about you focusing on something that you don't like, which causes you to feel resistance. And this feeling of resistance is what perpetuates your situation. No matter what action results from that feeling of resistance, you can trace it all back to that initial feeling of resistance which is a result of you focusing on something that does not feel good--something that doesn't align with your desires.

Realise that when you feel bad, that's your internal guidance doing it's job. It's not that you should get rid of what you're focusing on--it's that you should shift your focus, which is a matter of changing "what" you look at or "how" you look at something (i.e. how you interpret it).

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
– Wayne Dyer

To put this another way, here's something I wrote in a recent post:

I see people around me crying for external sources to come to their aid, but they don't need that. It may seem like they do, but that's a belief that will only perpetuate their position. Seeking aid from external sources to make improvements in your life is like holding a cardboard silhouette cut-out in front of a torch, shining it on the wall, and asking people to make the light shining on the wall more complete. It's not about fixing the projection--that's just a natural result of the torch. It's about letting go of what is obstructing the torch in the first place, or in the case of humans, choosing to align with yourself instead of the limiting and inaccurate beliefs, and the fears that cause you to be less than what you are.

The above was related to a separate issue to the one in this thread, but the torch analogy holds up. Basically, it's no good trying to fix the projection of the torch--you simply have to drop what's covering it in the first place if you want the torch to shine brightly. To do that, you need to realise that you are indeed the one holding something in front of the torch, even if it's something about another person and you think that it's "not you." Realise that it's all you from a certain perspective, so taking responsibility on that level can be extremely effective on the more individualised, "I'm me, you are you" application level.

Regardless of the mechanics behind this, I'm sure you can at least see that what I'm talking about actually occurs in reality (the lens you use to look at it and label it is unimportant).

So that's enough about the theory side of this. Let's get to some more practical stuff. Onwards to the post below.

[Bruce Achterberg]

Abraham-Hicks once said that when dealing with another person, we're not really dealing with their thoughts about us. We're dealing with our thoughts about how we think they think about us(!).Most of the time, we're not dealing with them at all and are just caught up in the not-so-constructive web of our own thinking, not really focusing on reality in such a way that we look past the projections of our own thinking and begin to really cut to the core of what works within reality.

If you want to see an example of how effective it can be to align with reality, watch some footage of Cesar Millan's show, The Dog Whisperer.

This guy routinely cuts through issues that result from conditioning that is unchecked by awareness (i.e. thought that has it's own energy and sort of runs without you knowing it, much like a program on your computer booting up automatically without your permission and having your computer do whatever the program wants).

YouTube - Dog Whisperer: Chill Out!
YouTube - Up Close With "Dog Whisperer" Cesar Millan PT 1 of 3

You'll find more Cesar cases on YouTube; they're fascinating to watch and are extremely educational in terms of interaction in general. Browse at your leisure.

One of the most interesting things about the show is that often the real work he does is on the owners of the dogs and the state of mind they're in (often fear). In the dog owners not acknowledging the dog, and instead relating to the dog through their thoughts about the dog (hence, relating to their thoughts, not actually the dog), this creates a very unbalanced relationship with the dog, and the dog reacts accordingly.

As Eckhart Tolle would say, unconsciousness draws you in. You can't "reason" your way through it; simply interacting with it reinforces it in the other person, and in you (because unconsciousness isn't about logic or improvement, but about perpetuating the pattern that runs it). Interestingly, Ceaser see's his work with dogs as a spiritual practice, in that our interaction with animals shows us a part of ourselves that we can improve (the concept of oneness).

Note: Cesar's methods have roots in behaviourlist theory, which is great stuff--not to be considered in isolation, though. I'm sure you can recognise that treating a women, or any other human, like a dog isn't ideal. The key behind Cesar's material is that you have to acknowledge and fullfill the "breed" in the dog, and in the case of a human, you have to acknowledge and fulfill the human in them. You can't acknowledge what isn't there, hoping for it to develop, so acknowledge what is there instead, embrace and accept where you stand, and work from there.

But while practical, that's still a bit abstract and hard to apply.

What's easier to apply is the notion of "your external world is a reflection of your internal world," which encapsulates the above, but simplifies it. Recently I've been seeing the truth of this concept in my experience, and interestingly, the more you see a concept play out in your reality, the more prominent it becomes. E.g. I've been pretty happy lately, and for some reason, I seem to be surrounded by happy people. If I look to the essence of this, I see that what I'm seeing around me matches how I'm feeling. As Steve would say, as within, as without.

To give you a more specific example, recently I could see that I was starting to have an issue with someone. Suffice to say they were misinterpreting my intentions, or so I thought. Usually I'd try to explain my way through these issues, but I could see that I'd just be getting caught up in something that's really about someone looking at something, perhaps not even seeing what was actually there and instead misinterpreting it, feeling that what they were focusing on didn't resonate with them, then thinking that they had to remove what they focused on. I saw this pattern in advance, and instead of diving into it, I decided to leave it. I let it play out, and didn't focus on it at all. In my interaction with this person, I chose to interpret issue positively, and not get involved in the specifics of it.

I had no interaction with this person for a while, but I was starting to anticipate that there could be further issues with this person (not good!). To my surprise, our interaction lately has been extremely productive. This is without a doubt a result of my taking responsibility for this issue instead of seeing it as a problem with the other person, and taking the appropriate action. In this case, I admitted to myself that this was happening, and I knew it was probably going to still keep happening, so I didn't energise it further by trying to stop it. I accepted it, chose to look at it without resistance, and reality seemed to match how I felt about this issue internally.

A challenging part of human interaction is that often, you expect the person to interact with you consciously, with awareness. Unfortunately the majority of people you will meet are heavily conditioned and completely unaware of it. We all have conditioning to some degree, but conditioning that is not consciously chosen and not within your "light" of awareness will operate without your knowing it. That's why in many cases when people do undesirable things as a result of conditioning, while they may still be responsible, they didn't do it by choice. As Eckhart Tolle would say, they were unconscious--completely unaware of what was running within them--and thus they had no choice; no opportunity to become aware of what they were doing and choose something that aligned with them--what they actually desire and what they feel is right.

I'm not actually sure how to proceed in terms of acknowledging the human part of someone--their conditioning--while also moving them towards a point where they interact with life more consciously. But then perhaps it's not about moving them towards that at all, and it's about allowing them to deal with their own growth and live the way they want. I guess the term, "if you love someone, let them go" is fitting here.

Either way, as always, I suspect improvement in this area will require an inner shift I have to make; require taking responsibility for something I've previously not acknowledged and no longer seeing it as something that's being caused by another person. Seeing it as if it's caused by someone else robs you of your power, but it also seems to manifest your resistance to the problem externally in undesirable ways. This resistance, or lack there of, seems to be very much key. The better you feel, the better your results in reality.

I put it to you that in order to "solve" this problem--be open to what "solve" may actually mean; it might not be what you expect it to be--you might need to explore some other areas seemingly completely unrelated to this, and also do some work on yourself, especially from the perspective of oneness where you see other people as part of yourself and thus, working with other people is about improving a part of yourself, and something you want to do with love and patience, much like how you'd treat yourself as a person.

With that in mind, let's get to some more practical stuff. Next post!

[Bruce Achterberg]

I highly recommend any material by Eckhart Tolle. I specifically recommend A New Earth. The Power of Now (also by Eckhart Tolle) is good, too, but I found A New Earth a little easier to read. It felt more structured, which I liked.

My bet is that you're very focused on this issue since it's something you encounter so often. And with that in mind, I recommend that you watch this video:
YouTube - ~Abraham-Hicks~ Money & The Manager

The great thing about the above video is that it clearly explains what you should do in terms of intentions and thought and feeling in general, and when you're in a situation where you want something different, but you're kind of forced to focus on what you don't want all the time.

I also really like this video, and think it'd be helpful to many people:
YouTube - MONEY AND THE LAW OF ATTRACTION: Aligning With Your Veritable Fortune - Abraham-Hicks

2:10 and onwards of the above video really helped me--the notion that the more you focus on something, the more it's included in your experience, and that even includes observing principles, such as the law of attraction, etc. There is no upper limit: inclusion applies to everything, from stuff you want, to reality mechanics you might consider.

Abraham-Hicks have some great material, and I really find their stuff helpful. I find their audio and video content to be better than their books, since their books are generally incomplete (they don't cover all the different areas; I'm a fan of understanding the mechanics of something, not just hearing analogies or processes I can use), and I find it helpful to hear Esther-Abraham actually speaking what they talk about. There's more information available in the form of tonality, etc.

Finally, I'll mention that there's lots of great Eckhart Tolle material on YouTube. I watched this video recently, and really liked it:
YouTube - Eckhart Tolle in the Living Luminaries movie

* * *

MyEyeIsOpen, I wish you luck with your current task. This is a challenge that is here for you, and here to help you grow. Often unpleasant, often not very easy, when I ask myself why life would have us go through unpleasant things, I realise that, in part, I want experiences like this. I don't want life to be all roses and sunshine all the time. I want to be happy, sure, but I want to grow as well. And often that means we have to do unpleasant things, or even suffer for a period of time. But I find this suffering almost always transmutes your experience, acting as the fire that melts away parts of yourself that hold you back, leaving you with a greater sense of awareness and less resistance to your experience.

Take care, and be easy about all this. If this is something that you have to deal with, even if it is unpleasant, accepting it will make the journey a little easier--a little more pleasant.

Whatever you cannot enjoy doing, you can at least accept that this is what you have to do. Acceptance means: For now, this is what this situation, this moment, requires me to do, and so I do it willingly.
– Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

[uberinquisitive]

Bruce - thank you so much for those posts!

[eskimo]

MyEyeIsOpen, sounds like your wife is very egocentric in her relationship with you. I get the sense that you're someone with a compassionate heart and that you were initially drawn to her by way of this heart and that your compassion has fueled her existence from the beginning?

Well my situation is as I describe above. I decided to marry my wife 13 years ago because of my compassion and I'm just now finally putting an end to this wrong relationship, which has been a journey down a vicious cycle.

Basically, our relationship was focused on her and I sacrificed my own energy and personal development to fuel her ego and insecurities. Despite this, I was able to continue to grow (albeit at a much slower pace than I would have otherwise), but the thing was that instead of her keeping pace with me on her own, I carried her the whole way. She survived over the years by figuring out how to control and manipulate me to her advantage - the worst part was I didn't even realize it.

I was never really happy throughout the relationship but I never fully realized the gravity of the situation until I decided to file for divorce about 12 months ago and she started realizing that I was dead serious about pushing this all the way through. It's only then that I started seeing the truth about the nature of our relationship.

The reason it's taking me so long to end this is because I've had to continue to develop on my own to free myself from this situation but also because she's fought this as if her life depended on it. And essentially it does - she's about to lose her host organism.

Well this was my decision. I'm still waiting for my divorce to finalize but I'm much happier now and I feel like my life is back on track to the one I was supposed to have taken 13 years ago.

Your situation and decision may be somewhat different from mine. If you decide to try to work things out, I believe you'll need to get her spiritual intervention from some solid women. You may need to lead her to it but you're not the one who can fix her condition. Only she can decide to change things because, as already mentioned, the more you try, the more you'll be perpetuating the status quo.

God bless!

Steve

[Christian223]

Great post Mr. Bruce, really enlightening, i have came to realize a couple of things through it, thanks a lot.

[MyEyeIsOpen]

Thanks for all the thoughtful feedback, everyone.

I'm trying a "pilot program" tonight. I'll spare the details because they aren't important, but essentially she became upset about something extremely trivial, and I just didn't engage her.

I think it was sort of working, because she was straddling the line between dark mood and normal mood for a while, instead of spiraling into darkness, but it sort of fizzled. Maybe I did the wrong thing, I'm still practicing at this -- we had planned to settle down for a movie at a certain time, and I came downstairs at that time and asked her if she was ready to watch.

"If you want to," she said, in a really dour tone, with a really terrible look on her face. This is where I might have messed up -- I asked her what was the matter.

"Nothing is the matter," in the same dour tone.
"Hey, stop. If you're going to be like that, I don't want to hang out."
"Then don't hang out," she said.

So I said alright, unemotionally, and walked away. Shortly after she went to bed.

I'm resisting the urge to consider my circumstances "special" or "different," but I am skeptical that this will work for her -- she is so deeply stubborn, and this script is so thoroughly ingrained, I'm afraid that disengaging will cause some sort of relationship self-destruct. I think that's a fear I need to let play out to move past this though, I realize that.

Despite my calm reaction tonight, it really does hurt me deeply. It makes me angry -- I think, how could you keep doing this to yourself? To me? I feel physically drained. Like I said in my first post, I'll be coasting along feeling great, when one of these moods will come out of no where, and it's devastating to me.

What do I do with all this upset? I can't respond or engage her in any way, so when she hisses and snarls for no reason at 9pm on Sunday when we're supposed to watch a movie, my only option is to sit and just "deal" with the upset. I get to stew for a couple hours before I go to bed feeling down, and wake up next to her, who I know with certainty will wake up in just as ♥♥♥♥♥♥ a mood she was in when she fell asleep, like clock work.

I know I should disengage even on that level, but some part of me resists the disengagement. I feel like it's the only realistic option I have to feel better about the situation, but going through with the disconnect will mean the end of the relationship. Just like tonight, I can fully see the following scenario playing out:

Me (unemotional): Listen, this relationship isn't good for me. I feel like it's holding me back. I want to be with you because I think you're amazing, but I can't if you drain me the way you do.
Her (unemotional/deadpan): Fine, then leave.
Me: Ok.

And I'd walk away, and the movie ending would be her running after me saying: Oh don't be a silly ****, I love you too much to let you go, let's work it out. That's what I want... I want her to be motivated to keep me enough to move past this crappy mindset.

That won't happen -- she'll do the emotional equivalent of what she did tonight: go to sleep.

She'll be totally ****ing devastated, as will I, but she won't lift a finger to stop it. It'll play right in her "I'm not good enough to love" script. And if I come back it'll enable the same negativity. It feels like a lose-lose situation.



While I'm off on a long winded rant, I might as well throw in there that "there are plenty of fish in the sea" applies to me less than most. I am confident in my ability to get any woman I want to get, but there are certain things I look for that are almost impossible to find. Just one of my criteria limits my selection to around 3315 American women. The other major factor limits that number to an optimistic 1500, and there are other factors that narrow the range to more like 300 people... maybe I should learn Mandarin to expand the pool, lol.

My point is that I have reason to believe that if I can't make this work with the woman I love so very deeply, that I will never find another. I'll have plenty of company, but not the companionship I will crave forever. Maybe putting up with this devastation every few days is worth it.

[Angela]

You're right that as soon as you disengage from this pattern you two have -- I mean, as soon as you really let go of having your emotional well-being be 100% dependent on her words and actions -- it's true, your relationship will be dead.

And in that moment, you have the opportunity to give birth to an entirely new one, possibly even with your beloved wife, if you want to.

It's scary, though, because you have appointed her the All Powerful Dictator of how you feel, and to fire her from that job really will feel like a kind of death, for both of you.

Your well-being has nothing to do with her, and everything to do with you. When are you going to accept the role of Chief Person in Charge of How You Feel?

[Lauxa]

I think what I'm hearing is that when she is in a low mood, your wife leans on you to bring her out of her funk. You find this draining and want her to find the energy to lift herself up.

So in your example situation, you did not provide your energy to lift her up and so you are sure she will be in the same bad mood when she wakes up. How long will this mood last? Has she ever had to work through a black mood on her own before? It may take her some time to figure out how to do it. Don't give up on her! When she comes up out of it, maybe you could give some positive reinforcement and let her know that you are proud of her for working through it.

[Christian223]

Like the dog trainer said, you have to step between her food and her, her food is: her affecting your emotions at will, so you have to stop her trying to manipulate your emotions with firmity, she will feel better knowing she cant control you.

I think she has deep problems because she is the one trying to make you feel bad, i dont know why, but you should asked if she wants you to feel bad, or if she wants you to get angry at her, or if she wants to cry, maybe she wants you to get angry at her so that she can have a good motive to be very sad and cry. There are some women that like you to be angry at them, some other like to be humiliated, wich is really weird to me but i have seen it, and if you dont do that to them then they do thinks like those things you mention, trying to push you to your limits so that they get the response they seek. Once they get what they really feel they need, then they become happy and normal again.

All this is very confusing to me and i dont understand it very well, but she is abusing your emotions, and you dont deserve it, im not saying you to dump her since that may not be needed, but you have to do something to stop her abusing you.

[MyEyeIsOpen]

Well, generally her moods can take weeks to lift if I don't intervene, and I'm told they lasted longer before I arrived.

However, I do have good news to report. I was wrong -- for the first time in our relationship she woke up in the morning feeling better after going to sleep in a dark mood.

I was quite amazed. Here's to hoping!