Opposites attract, but it can be hard after 30 years!
I'm new to the site so just starting to get a feel for the possibilities here and how to connect. I have a story here about my relationship with my wife, so did wonder whether to post in the relationships community, but I think a certain age may need to be reached to make sense of this one!
So I have been together with my wife for over 30 years. Our first child has just left home for university and the second child will be there in another 3 years. I love my wife and family very much so all is good ... right? Well somehow I seem to struggle a lot and have done so all the way through in some ways. It all came to a head about 5 years ago - call it a mid-life crisis - but everything came down on top of me at once and I needed to get help. Some good therapy brought me back out of that, but I have never totally recovered from the experience and still have days with anxiety and worry.
Part of my difficulty is that my wife seems to have quite opposite personality traits to me and while this makes us a great team in many ways, dealing with the challenges of family life, it is always a little difficult to get on and support each other in the ways we each need.
Here are a few of these differences:
- My wife is a talker - she speaks to think whereas I think to speak. She come home from work and unloads her mind of all the twists and turns of the day. Once that is all out, she falls asleep exhausted on the sofa and I am left to my own thoughts. She is frustrated with me of course because I never say much about my day, but the truth is that I don't think about my day in the same way. I wouldn't tell anyone much about what happened in my day, as to be honest, there is rarely anything that interesting, but I would want to talk about how I feel about my day. If I try to talk about my feelings, my wife is lost - treating everything as a problem to be solved or a personal fault that I should correct.
- My wife is very thorough, almost a perfectionist. I am less precise - a bit more intuitive (and perhaps messy!) in my approach.
- My wife is forceful in character whereas I am more timid and reserved. I don't like to impose my views on others and hesitate to speak my mind for fear of offending.
- My wife is quite judgemental and driven, whereas I will go with the flow. I give people the benefit of the doubt and am sympathetic to different views whereas my wife find others frustrating if they do not seem to follow her logical view.
My greatest challenge with all of the above is of course the communication between us. When I am finding things difficult internally, I tend to just write my thoughts down on paper to stop it all churning around in my head. Often I wish my wife would read what I write, but sometimes I think my thoughts would be a little to strong for her to cope with.
Having said that, I did actually suggest to her just the other week that I could start writing to her. She didn't seem to think it was a bad idea, but I haven't had the courage to talk to her again about this yet. The trouble is that when I talk to her about my feelings she is quick to judge or take offence. If somehow my feelings of sadness relate to her, then what I say is taken as an attack and she will fight back with all guns blazing. One wrong word from me and I can be begging forgiveness from her for days afterwards. Because of this, 'real', to-way conversations between us are quite rare. She speaks a lot and I listen a lot, but my own thoughts and feelings are left locked inside leaving me isolated and lonely. I wonder if I write to her when I have things on my mind she may find it easier to read and then talk about things later.
I wonder if anyone else out there experiences similar problems with their partner? I'm sure a few will have had to end relationships for these kind of problems of communication and maybe some others have learned ways to cope better. I would be interested to hear of other experiences of this kind good or bad. For my part I do hope to work through these problems and reconnect properly with my wife. With our children nearly reaching adulthood we have the opportunity of more time together without the stresses of parenthood and I don't want to be one of those parents that has to break the news of their separation/divorce to their children as soon as they have flown the nest.
@TimBean9351 - Yes it is hard. My wife and I have been married 39 years and alot of what you stated rings true for us. My goal the last five years has been to be thankful for the differences and try to use them for the betterment of our relationship. It is not easy unlearning 39 years of not questioning and just going with the flow.
@TimBean9351 Many of the things that you mention apply to my 20 plus year relationship.He is more quiet and complains if I talk a lot. I resolved this by coming here . I also go to an adult 50plus center in my neighborhood. This way I can talk and text as much as I like. He hasn't been complaining about my talking so much lately. I think that it has been good for both of us that I found other people to talk to. I'm glad that you found us here at 50plus.
@TimBean9351 I've been thinking more about your what you wrote. In my relationship I am more laid back, take things as they come and he is the more forceful,precise, perfectionist person. This is very challenging as you say. However I am able to overlook a a lot of these things in the case of my partner because he is a good listener and very emphathetic if Ihave a problem. Does your wife have any good qualities that have caused you to stay with her all of these years? Also in my case I have been more like your wife(not a good listener,trying to solve his problems).I have been reading articles on "active listening" and this has been very helpful . I don't know if your wife would read an article like that or if it would offend her. (If I can find the name of the article that I readI will post the name here)..Your idea of writing to her is a good one though . So that might be a good place to start. Good luck relationships are very challenging!
@TimBean9351
Hi.
Maybe you can ask what you need of her when you try to express your feelings? So before the discussion starts just let her know that you need her listening ear and presence rather than a solution. Maybe you can also assure her that whatever you're about to say has solely to do with you and your perception rather than a lack of hers as she usually assumes. A lot of times when someone confides in me, I find myself at a loss on whether to console or advice. And I, myself, get frustrated when someone throws advice at me when all I need is support. I think the best way to go is to communicate what you need. It will be akward but it will help your wife understand what your expectations of the conversations are. And as your partner, I'm sure she will try to accomodate to your needs.
I've also read that the way we express can sometimes trigger defensive behavior in the receiver from the way we express our words. It might be worthwile to revisit the phrasing of your sentences and try to emphasize that everything you're sharing is about your perception. It will help avoid or minimize any misunderstandings or escalations from her side.
The letter writing could work but since your conversations involve your feelings, your voice and facial expressions are a very important component to that. I think its important that partners are comfortable to discuss difficult and sensitive situations together face-to-face, and be vulnerable together.
Hope this helps. Good luck with everything.
@intuitiveWriter1887
I am so grateful for your response and the time you have taken to for this. All you say is certainly spot-on for me!
I do try to be very careful about how I say things and how a bring up subjects of conversation that I know will be difficult. That does help in some ways to avoid any flash-points, but I perhaps over-think things sometimes. I can make things feel a little more contentious in my own mind that they need to be when I speak with my wife. When I have tried, awkwardly, to bring up a difficult subject she will find it quite painful as I struggle to get to the point and make her feel under pressure to talk about things she would rather not deal with. Generally I think it is better if I can be more relaxed about starting conversations and not to build up my own expectations about what will be achieved.
Your point about letter-writing is also a good one thank you. I should certain take care not to think it can substitute face-to-face. Currently I hope it will just help to un-bottle things that I have struggled to speak about and then we can continue further face to face. Even there, there are perhaps a few things I
I am very glad to have found over 50s group.
I do wish you luck in communicating and working it all out with your wife-but it sounds as though you are both committed and on the right track.
communication is key. I am divorced-was married 18years,knew him for 20. We split because of domestic abuse issues but,I can tell you,if that had not started to happen-we would have divorced anyway-because we were no longer communicating and had grown apart.
As they say,opposites attract-and we did. But then we both became too set in our ways/communication styles -and each was guilty of making many assumptions about the other person's feelings/ intentions/thoughts. And yes,we did go to marital therapy for several years off/on. It did help some-but I think it is key to find a therapist that both of you can relate to. We went through a few therapists-some would understand 1 of us 90% and the partner only 10%-does not work.
There has been a lot of great advice here. I would stress that expectations about another's response to you can cause issues. That was one of our issues. Predicting/expecting your partner to react a certain way-and then being either angry because it was always same response/not what you needed or hurt because he did not really understand.
So,I echo the advice to maybe outline what you need from the discussion before it starts-so that you both can benefit from it.
Also, I support the letter writing very much. It was much easier for me to write it down-reread it a few times for my word choices and intent-so that he could read it and then we could agree on a discussion time.
Also,what did not help us-per several therapists,was us keeping our feelings to ourselves for too long-so that by the time the discussion occurred,instead of the emotions being at a 1or 2,we were starting at 10/10.
Hang in there,the race that you are really trying to make it work says volumes. Also,not expecting the other person to completely change but looking at what behaviors you may need to change.
Lastly,you may need to have "date night". This was also advised to us-because we were so caught up in work,parenting,household,bill issues-which do need to be discussed but we also did not date each other anymore.just make time to talk about us/likes/dislikes/activities/enjoy something fun together.
None of this is meant to be judgementmental about your relationship in any way or offensive. Just more ideas.Wishing you and your wife success.
@caughtinthemiddle
Thank you - I was enthralled to read your response and to hear about your experiences. I am sorry to hear that your relationship didn't work out, but I hope you are finding new life apart is suiting you better now.
It was good to hear about the things you tried to help you with your former partner like the couples therapy and the written communication. I so wanted to try couples therapy, but after a few tries to persuade my wife how good it may be, I had to agree it was not for us. I does sound as though you each may have learned quite a lot about each other and yourselves through that experince!
The trouble in our case was that there was no way on this earth that my wife was going to expose herself to the kind of direct feedback that a therapist would give. If there is one thing she finds difficult, I think that is self perception. She cannot look at how others perceive her and how what she says and does affects others. To receive that kind of feedback, her defenses are raised and she believes she is under attack. That is not to say she does not learn over time, but a much more subtle approach is needed so as not to set off those alarms in her head. Interestingly though, she did recently take advantage of a coaching scheme at work (I think it was what some organisations call mentoring) where she had chance to meet occasionally with a senior colleague from outside here business line to discuss her challenges in her job. Apart from talking about the job it did seem to give her a chance to look at how she interacted with her staff from an outside point of view.
I did go ahead with the letter writing to my wife though. I posted the first couple of letters (emails actually) on my feed. She certainly found it a bit odd, but did reveal a few things that she may not have done otherwise. I think the experience helped us both too. A couple of weekends later we took a slow Sunday morning to talk... or rather for me to talk while she did a few puzzles in the Sunday paper (ok so she didn't learn how to listen over-night!), but I do think she took plenty of what I said in. I was able to tell her a lot about how I feel that I have not been able to before and I do think she understood.
It is still very clear though that we think very differently. We each want to talk about different things and have different times when we are most keen to talk. I will certainly have to pick my moment to be able to have another chance to talk to her at that level again, but it will be worth the effort!
Date night is always a good idea of course! My wife loves to go out for a meal. The danger is though that the evening after work is the time she likes to unload all the troubles of her working day. She can start when we sit down with the menu and still be going strong as we pay at the end. Once she has finished talking she is tired and that is it for the evening. It isn't always the same of course, it is just about listening, understanding and taking chances when they come.
Hi @TimBean9351
Might I suggest you show her this honestly written post. She needs the info or she may never understand.