Did you know that of the over one million marriages that will end in divorce this year, two thirds to three quarters of those divorces will be filed for by women? What the heck is this all about?
In the early years of marriage, women are the relationship caretakers. They carefully nurture their relationships making sure there is enough closeness and connection. If closeness and connection is not present, women tend to do what they can to try to fix things. If their husbands are less than responsive, women become extremely unhappy and start complaining about everything under the sun; enter the constant nagger. The nagging starts with things that need to get done around the house, then responsibilities pertaining to the children, and how free time is spent followed by sarcasm, criticism, and attacking comments. Men do not respond to nagging. They disappear, they avoid, they shut down. Women respond to that by nagging even more, like a pit bull that is not going to let go of their catch. It becomes a seemingly never ending cycle.
Women eventually surrender and convince themselves that change isn’t possible , usually after decades, yes I said DECADES, of trying unsuccessfully to improve things. One key point is that the women attempt to fix things on their own, they consult their friends but they do not consult a professional who can actually help them shift things much quicker. Women believe there is absolutely nothing they can do because everything they have tried has been unsuccessful (key point, they did not get help from someone who is trained to help save marriages). At this point women begin to quietly and carefully map out the logistics of what they consider to be the inevitable, getting a divorce.
While planning their exit strategy, women no longer try to improve their relationship or modify their partner’s behavior in any way. They become resigned to living in silent desperation until the exit day. At this point, the husband views his wife’s silence as an indication that “All is Well” because the nagging has stopped. When the wife drops the D-I-V-O-R-C-E bomb, the husband is completely blind sided and does not have a clue that things were this bad. Now, the husband attempts to make changes in their behavior, but the wife has checked out at this point, it is too late. The wife is not able to recognize the changes or his willingness to change. The relationship is in the RED zone.
If you resonate with anything in this post, please do not give up. I have seen so many men make amazing changes once they truly understand how unhappy their wives have been. Sometimes men are slow to catch on, but when they do, their determination to turn things around can be astounding. I have seen many couples strengthen their marriages successfully even though it seemed an impossible feat.
Give your husband another chance. Divorce is not a simple answer. It causes unimaginable pain and suffering for lifetimes. It takes an enormous amount of energy to face each day. Why not take this energy and learn some new skills to make your marriage what you’ve wanted it to be for so long?
If you’re a man reading this and your wife has been complaining or nagging, thank her, validate her. It means she still cares about you and your marriage. Spend time with her. Listen to her, acknowledge her. Compliment her. Pay attention. Take her seriously. Show her that she’s the most important thing in the world to you.
Perhaps your wife is not responsive because she is already bailing. If so, be patient, do not crowd her, start doing the things she has nagged you about over the months or years, don’t expect her to notice right away. Be patient and do not push her. Demonstrate that you have changed through your actions more than your words…validate her. Watch the validation video and implement what you learn immediately because you might just convince her to give your marriage another try.
“Validation” is a fable about the magic of free parking. Starring TJ Thyne & Vicki Davis. Writer/Director/Composer – Kurt Kuenne. Winner – Best Narrative Short, Cleveland Int’l Film Festival, Wi..”
Check out the emotional freedom technique to help you deal with all the pent up emotions and release them.
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Hi Darshana
I found this a stimulating post (obviously!) and watched the video, thank you.
The situation portrayed in this post is almost identical to a personal experience I had in a long-term marriage; only my situation looks like a complete gender reversal. I have been told several times I think like a woman so you never know – although I’ve known a lot of other men talk to me about going through a similar experience.
At the end of my marriage I presented my then ’soon to be ex’ with a number of questions:
Had she decided to use me just as a sperm donor from the very start? (we had children and I’d noticed she would try to dump me after every child was born) – she said yes; she regarded me as ‘useful’.
Why had she not bothered to tell me straight (I’d suspected this was her motivation as she’d dumped me immediately after catching for her first child but we’d got back together again soon after)? Because she knew how much it would hurt if she did – she felt ’sorry’ for me. That ’sorry’ didn’t stop her continuing to have children with me while always knowing she intended to end the relationship the moment I said ‘no more children’, nor did this ‘pity’ stop her spending several years after I left gradually alienating me from them.
I spent 28 years of my life ‘validating’ her (I continued to do this after we split and wouldn’t allow the children to show her disrespect) and I can remember clear as a bell the only two times during that 28 year period any single member of my family ‘validated’ me. During the marriage I worked an average 70 hour week for the 15 years we were together and she got the entire pay packet. We never argued over money. When I left I gave her my home, my children and my continued support and I walked out homeless with my clothes in a bag. She knew I loved her and she knew I cared and worried about my children.
She enjoyed the power she had over me and broke every agreement we made after we split. Two years after leaving, behaving like a ‘perfect gentleman’ throughout, I asked her why she continued to treat me this way when it made the children vulnerable and she replied ‘I’m teaching you a lesson’. It took me another decade to finally learn the lesson was to force me out of the family’s life altogether and when my children hit adulthood I walked away from the whole thing. I am now happier than I have ever been – and I’ve been completely celibate for the 15 years since I left her.
Two years before leaving my ex I established an ‘exit strategy’ similar to the one your post mentions, the early parts of which involved taking action to try and save the marriage. I nagged my wife for several months to go for couple counselling with RELATE, which she did once. Straight after the meeting she changed ‘overnight’ into a wonderful partner. Come the day of the second session, several weeks later, she asked me to cancel the session if I was now happy. I cancelled – and one week later she was back to treating me like something she’d trod in.
What I learned during the marriage was that my wife always said the opposite of what she actually meant or intended to do and all I had to do was hear the reverse meanings of what she said to make the right decisions.
During our very last discussion about the marriage my wife told me how surprised she was at how well I was taking the things she was saying to me and I asked her to be as honest as she could be in telling me how she wanted the relationship to proceed. She told me she wanted me to stay for the sake of the children but no longer wanted to relate to me sexually and wanted me to find another woman for this.
What I heard was: ‘My plan is to use you financially whilst I date other men and when it’s convenient to me I’m going to tell you to leave’. I told her the next day I hadn’t signed up for this kind of relationship and left.
It took me five years to recover from losing the marriage emotionally and to establish a new sense of ‘identity’. Although I’ve been completely sexually inactive since the divorce I’ve done a lot of dating/meeting with women, including speed dating. I interact with a lot of women at work (and I manage a lot of women).
I’ve studied David DeAngelo’s material (aka Eben Pagan) and read the Magic Bullets material- and it’s all very interesting but it hasn’t changed me or who I believe I should behave. I’ve learned so much from my dating experiences and after this next paragraph I’m going to tell you in one sentence what I think the real problem is and it has nothing to do with men (why thank you, Carl!)in fact women need to learn something from men.
From a subjective viewpoint, and from the viewpoints of many other women who’ve spoken to me about my ex’s behaviour, my ex may seem to be an unusually conniving individual, but I’ve learnt that she’s actually a typical modern female. As many females who think she’s ‘evil’ think there’s nothing wrong with what she did; and when I’ve gone speed dating and online dating and even with women at work who’ve taken an interest in me – they engage in similar truth-avoidance and men-bashing behaviour and want to push the responsibility onto the man for the whole thing.
In my opinion: women don’t know how to ask for what they want and expect men to pick up the tab for the whole relationship.
Men are just there to blame, really, aren’t they? I’ll give you an example of this in a business setting:
I’m sitting in a room of 15 business women all on better salaries than me and the facilitator of the meeting (a man) starts talking about the glass ceiling and how these 15 women have been held back. Everyone in that room (apart from me) agrees that men have held them back – some also agree though that some got promoted after those same men noticed their ability. Finally the male facilitator gets to me and says ‘Carl, we’ve completely ignored you; do you have an opinion?’ and I reply ‘I can only hear one thing: women good; men bad’. Everyone laughs.
But I have to ask isn’t that the gist of this post (and pretty much every other post I read like this): men are stupid creatures that just don’t ‘get it’ do they? Men need to do this; Men need to do that; it’s women that care; it’s women that nurture; it’s just more women good; men bad, isn’t it?
Who knows what would happen if we just took the gender bias out of these things and just asked ‘what are these two people going to do to relate more honestly and sincerely with each other so they both act like they’re a part of a relationship instead of one of them always looking to blame the other?’.
I guess that’s what I’m looking for. A woman who actually wants to treats me like a person rather than a man first. I’m probably in denial. There’s no hope for me.
Carl,
Thank you for sharing your perspective. It sounds like you were in a no win situation and certainly there is some gender role reversal here. I am so sorry you had to go through this experience. What are you looking for when dating?