How do you know when its time?

WOI, sometimes you just have to sit down face to face and ask, what do you feel will make you happy and put this marriage back on track? Don’t be afraid to ask the question, just be prepared to hear the answer and don’t be offended. Don’t answer right away, think about what she is saying, even write it down. Stay calm and ask questions if you are not sure or if you don’t understand.

Make a list or ask her to make a list of her priorities. Then discuss them. I will give you a couple of coaching techniques.

Ask open ended questions, not questions that require a “yes” or “no”.

Speak in terms of “we” or “I”.

Try to speak in terms of “agree”.

Try to use terms of appreciation, respect, and admire.

Repeat what she says or give feed back by saying “I hear that”, this validates her feelings and thoughts.

Having said that these are some appropriate questions:

I can appreciate what you’re saying, I would like to do some of those things as well. How do you think we can go about working towards those goals?

I respect your opinion, have you thought about a way we can manage that?

What do you think we can do to handle that?

If we were to make a list of what our responsibilities and jobs entail so we get a better understanding of what we are each doing so we don’t take each other for granted, what would be the first five things on your list?

I really admire the hard work you put into getting your masters degree, you are so good at what you do. I really appreciate the hard work and effort you put into your cases. These kids are really lucky to have you. Your hard work in school paid off b”h, not everyone can say that.

If it were up to me and I could just wave a magic wand I would grant all your wishes, but unfortunately life is not that simple or that easy as you well know. So is there a way we can work together to set mutual goals we can both work towards?

WOI, these are just suggestions and obviously you have to set a calm and safe environment to open this type of line of communications. Again, this is a way of sharing responsibility and accountability for whats going on and working together towards a solution. If you stay calm and not accuse you might be able to accomplish or at least open a path towards accomplishing something. Try to use what we call the two breath method. Don’t respond in anger. Take two deep breaths before responding so that you have a chance to think before responding. Don’t just respond instinctively or you might take the bait for a fight, or you might respond because you are not understanding or misunderstanding. So take two breaths to assess what she says before responding. Try to keep on track. Repeat what she says and ask if you are understanding her. Make an agreement such as…”So can we agree to think about what we both just said and sit down again tomorrow and continue this conversation to work on the problem?” or “So can we agree on this goal? Can we agree that this is the top priority for both of us, can we agree to put this at the top of the list?” Then proceed to make a list, write that down and move on to the next item.

If you can work through the issues in that fashion you would then work on ideas and agreements how to reach each goal and assure your wife that neither one of you should pressure the other to overwhelm yourself with all the things on the list. Work towards one goal and once achieved move on to the next.

Vacations are really great and everyone needs a vacation. But you can’t look at what other people do for vacation. You don’t know if their parents paid for it, if their parents are babysitting for them, if they borrowed the money, paid by credit card and will be paying it off slowly or if they actually have the money to do it. People tend to spend money whether they have it or not and that’s how they get themselves into trouble.

For all the people you can point to that take amazing vacations you can point to just as many that take a ride in the country and have one sleep over in a cabin or something like that or go to the poconos for an overnight. To those who can only afford that, they truly appreciate that they can have that vacation. Some people have a 10 bedroom house and some only 3. Some people have 10 kids and some don’t have any. Hashem is in charge and if you want something you can’t expect it to just be handed to you. If it doesn’t just fall in your lap, there is a reason for it, and you have to roll up your sleeves and work for it. Only the tzadikim had the “manna” delivered to their doors, the rest of am yisroel had to go out and collect it for themselves.

It is really nice if parents can afford to keep gifting children with everything they want and need. It is really, really, nice. But kids can’t go on their entire lives expecting that from their parents, and kids can’t go their whole lives expecting their spouse to pick up where their generous parents left off.

I hope this helps somewhat.

are you really going to base a heavy decision like this based on our opinions? wow thats scary! I think if it was once good, you prob can get it back to that point but you just have to work on it. marriage aint no picnic!

WOI: Would you mind sharing the breakdown of how you reach expenses of $8500 a month? Understanding that may help some provide ideas on reducing that, which may be of help to you. You mentioned credit card bills, but what are you using the credit for? How much is your monthly student debt expenses? Do you have credit card interest you pay? What new charges are being accrued monthly?

Have you heard of IMAGO RELATIONSHIP THERAPY?

Revealed by Harville Hendrix in his groundbreaking book, Getting the Love You Want, Imago Relationship Therapy involves viewing a conflict between a couple as the answer to the situation, not the cause of the disharmony. By examining the conflict itself, a couple can unlock the key to the solution.

There are therapists who are specialised in Imago, they have saved many marriages. It’s definitely worth a try.

I want to explain one thing. I don’t think my husband is a “cheuvanist” overall. I think he has some cheuvanistc VIEWS. He can be sweet and helpful at times. He doesn’t look at a garbage bag and say “NIMBY(not in my back yard, meaning, not my job). What irks me is when I feel he should take care of his “stuff” and he just drops the topic. Maybe it’s really about opening the lines of communication. Being able to talk so we can really hear each other and not just have our own agendas and ideas of how things should go. If you could hear that silent voice of your wife’s talking, what would it say? I think if I really tuned in to my husbands true neshoma, his hopes, wishes, dreams and fears, it would say “I’m having a hard time making Parnassa and I feel really guilty about it (and lousy about myself). Deep down I wish I could be every thing you’d want, but it’s not working. Could you work? And then if he could hear me, he’d hear how lousy I feel about myself that I want to do more, but that I’m scared. There’s so much that’s happening underneath the surface. We can be married to each other, and so far apart emotionally. And the longer it takes to talk the more scared and untrusting we become. We need to hear our spouses wishes, hopes, dreams and fears and not be afraid to listen. After we do that, we need them to hear ours (and be shown that talking about it is safe and we won’t be criticized). This whole business is so scary, but it’s too big a deal to let it go easily. If there’s even a teeny bit of kindness and hope that she can hear you, and you her, then I’d say, fight for it.

We never tell a person “get divorced”, or “don’t get divorced”.

We can help a person access his/her own wisdom, but ultimately the person has to make his/her own decision.

WOI, it seems that your partner should have a complaint here as well, and maybe there is something that HE needs to say to her, that she would be able to “hear” better from him than from you and that is “although we are working from your house WE are still working and our business hours are ” 9 – 5″. It is NOT fair to me that you keep asking your husband to leave work and do errands for you and the kids as if he were sitting at home doing nothing. WE, he and I, are running a business and WE would both appreciate if you would respect that as my wife does. If we could afford to we would rent space so we would NOT be here, but we can’t. So could you please forget that we are here, and pretend that we are working elsewhere so we can run the business like professionals?” HE has every right to say that, as do you.

In addition, your housekeeper should take on more of the responsibility in the home and you should have less. Turn on the fire for her and teach her how to cook if your wife does not want to. But it should NOT be your responsibility. YOU should be in your office all day as if you left the house and went to work elsewhere. YOU need to define your work hours and home hours. When your wife worked in the city or she was in school, did you call her and ask her to run errands?

You both need to be respected and you both should make a list of HOW you need to be respected, because it seems like you are NOT being respected. You are being verbally abused and you are not respected in your work. I don’t know if you return the verbal abuse, but this is definitely something you need to talk about and put a stop to. Lets say your wife was on the phone in the evening with the parent of one of her clients. What if you started talking to her and tried to get her attention. That would be disrespectful to her. She would be very upset because she would be trying to be as professional as possible with the parent and she wouldn’t want you to interrupt her. She would expect you to understand that and respect her for it. WOI, it is the same thing. When you are working, you should be able to expect her to respect your work hours and not interrupt you to run errands. If she needs a favor she should call a friend like everyone else does and not interrupt her working husband.

In coaching one of my first questions to my clients is “How do you need to be respected?”. So I would ask you to make a list and ask her to do the same and then discuss it.