could use a sounding board

Hawkeye--

Very promising.

Excellent. I hope the changes stick.

Wow, that came quickly!

I am happy for you, and hope things work out!

It came quickly because she claimed that she had not made a load of credit card charges, that it must be fraud, that she would sign the document saying that she had not made the charges. I then told her that I would do that, and that if she was lieing that the bank very well might file charges against her for fraud, which would of course end her career. I made a strategic application of force.

It also helps that I have been telling her for years that she needs to let me handle the money, to get tough with her when she misbehaves. I do have a track record of being right about what she needs. At her first meeting with the counselor he said that she has an addiction problem, that she needs monitoring and consequences....Bingo, I am right again.

I came here because I needed to do what I could to make sure that I was seeing clearly. When one uses force in a relationship there is no room for error. I am well aware of the modern conventional wisdom that force should never be used in a relationship, but in my experience in marriage this not so.

In marriage--as in any other close relationship--the lines between defense and offense become very blurred.

[quote="hawkeye10"]Bingo, I am right again.[/quote]

Is this about being right or about the future of your marriage and your children?

Is this about being right or about the future of your marriage and your children?[/color][/quote]

Actually, it is about being right. My wife has a genius level IQ, and enough pride to suit six normal people. When a professional tells her the same thing that her husband has been saying for years but which could not hear through her pride it is like "Whoa, I should have listened to my husband"

A track record of me being right also strengthens my position in our power games. The next time I tell her something about her or our relationship she will be more likely to let her pride down and pay attention.

We realize that we are abnormal, as the mantra today is that relationships should not get much into right/wrong or blame, though credit (affirmation) is supposed to be generous. When we went to marriage counseling we were told that we both needed to take 50% of the blame and drop the subject. We said BS to that. In our relationship there are consequences for taking positions that turn out to be right, and for the ones that are wrong.

The goal of a good future for the marriage and the kids was never in dispute. My wife's behaviour was, she now understands that she was wrong, Thus she is correcting her behaviour. This only works if both agree that mistakes are not going to be used as a club. For us what is done is done except in how it relates to who is right in the next dispute. Money is going to be tight for awhile as we unwind our position, but the next time we can't afford to do something that I want to do I will not be saying "it is you fault because of all that money you blew". She made a mistake, she waited too long to fix it because she would not listen to me and she better pay more attention to my concerns next time, but the mistake has now been admitted to and corrected. it is over. We move on.

I'm not going to argue with what works between consenting adults.

Tolstoy said all happy marriages were alike--but I disagree with Tolstoy. The devil is always in the details.

I don't read Russian though my wife does....if the quote can be translated as "functioning marriages" I would find much to agree with.

I am glad things are looking up for you, if not exactly "happy" about your choice of competition and power play as the way to go.
My mother is a marriage counselor. She would tell you that support and help always produce longer term results than "see i'm right again"...but..
As long as you are happy and the kids are safe...

I appreciate your open mindedness....many claim to have it, my experience has been that few do.

I don't read Russian either, but even in translation I can see that Tolstoy's world was filled with unique, miserable marriages.

In an age and a class where marriage was intended primarily as the alliance between two families. There was as I recall in Tolstoy (it has been a lot of years) a belief that energy spent in the personal relationship between the couple was a bad use of energy. But i look around at our modern easy come easy go never really try to make it work marriages and i wonder if we are any different. doesnt it all boil down to the same lack of hope, lack of faith and lack of support for the institution of marriage? Do we moderns believe in marriage any more than Tolstoy did?

a lot of modern pop culture book writers claim that the problem with moderns is that we expect too much out of marriage, that we get disillusioned and move on trying to find what we expected to find. I have a lot of trouble with this explanation. It does not explain the not realigning of expectations to meet with reality, it does not explain the seeming readiness to quit, it does not explain why our expectations would be so wrong. When I talk to adults who grew up in divorce they seem to have a low expectation for marriage, they seem to be gun-shy, so how is it possible that generally expectations are too high?

i don't know, but it is something that i wonder about.

BTW- just because someone walked away from a marriage does not mean that they did not take it seriously, were not willing to invest in it.....you must get two people is the same marriage who are willing to do the work.

It takes two. Always.