Marriage advice for my brother....

And this has to be quick, I hope you can read between the lines, but it's on my mind, Mother was worried about you..and me too...you are under a strain...well I have been there, "got to admit it's getting better it's getting better all the time", lol

I won't quote the bible to you, I'll quote BEATLES LYRICS, lol it's all the same to me...

I used to be mean to my woman I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved...only it's not your wife, it's your deepest self...that "inner child" some call it...

It's good for the little brat to be tied up when he's young...but we aren't young anymore...and if we are going to LIVE, now is the time...

I know Sue has been through some tough stuff and it's made her a real fighter...she is aggressive because that is how she has gotten what she wanted...

For whatever reason you are more "passive"...but no person is really passive, the aggression smoulders underneath...probably has to do with growing up with Mother and Daddy and all their stresses...

She pushes and manipulates you..and you are sort of foot dragging with her or resentfully you go along...

Of course I'm JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS big time not knowing too much, except my own marriage..

Under tremendous stress with Bobby, I begged Bob to "be my friend" a few years ago...we had become separated over "religion" and that too went back to Bobby...any mother will gladly go to hell for her child, nothing noble about it, just the way it is...I'll throw "god" in there too...

Only I think well...it does say if I make my bed in hell behold thou art there, not a beatles lyric sorry...

He looked me in the eye and said he couldn't be friends with an "unbeliever", lol...after 25+ years of marriage and three kids mind you!!!! But we have stayed together...and even have good times some times...

But I realized he could not be my friend and I could not look to him to meet my needs....and I would meet his needs when I could, but when I couldn't, I would preserve my own life first...it is not selfish...to want to live..even a mother when the airplane cabin depressurizes, she puts the oxygen mask on herself first, a person is no good to ANYONE if he is "dead"...and being miserable is very much a kind of DEATH...

Night of the living dead, we're living in it...

But we can step out anytime, it's just a matter of clicking the ruby slippers together...and speaking the truth in love to one another...say what you need to do and why and give the other person as much as you can but not at the expense of your own life...I do not believe in laying down one's life...in being crucified...I believe in living...and enjoying other people as much as I can, and in letting them know they are bringing me joy...I think that is the greatest thing any person can do for another, to let them know you find them DELIGHTFUL...

And I find delightful things in Bob, he is wonderful to me in so many ways...lots of men would have left me...

But lots of women in my shoes would have left him too...I am proud of us...Mother and Daddy helped, remembering them...Daddy telling me what Mother said to him like knives in his belly....I didn't want to do that...

I think you should just tell Sue when you are too tired...to try to find a way to help her get what she needs but to stand up for yourself OUT IN THE OPEN...to say what you need.....

Ideally this stuff does not have to be openly stated...most married people can sort of "feel" it...and it's risky, being too explicit...

But I think Bob and I both showed each other there was something that meant more to us than the marriage...so we knew what the boundary was...and then we could decide to cross it or not...

I find life a lot easier with a friend...even if it's not the closest intimate friend I dreamed of once upon a time..."some day my prince will come", lol....and "save the princess"...Daddy told me when he got married he didn't even know girls went to the bathroom, lol, that's the trouble with that vision of "princess" I hate that little bitch Snow White, her teeny feet, her pot of bubbling soup and singing all the time I'M GLAD THAT WICKED WITCH KILLER HER...

But the prince does show up kiss her and they live happily ever after.