05-13-2010, 02:14 PM
Calle, you mention in one of your books that it is a process that gets us to where we are at with our wives, and the first step in change is to understand this process. I’d like to share my process in the hopes it will help others learn from my mistakes. As you know, my wife and I have been married for 20 years, and we have 3 kids. So here is how I got to where I am. I will describe this as you suggested, as if I were teaching another man how to arrive at the same marriage I have.
Find a woman you can communicate with and connect to on a deeply spiritual and physical level. Find value in her. Be interested learning about her and be genuinely interested in what she is saying. Show her that you love giving her all the time and energy you can to meet any and every need she has. Gain her complete respect and admiration, and return these things with your desire to care for her.
Be self-confident. Know who you are. Stand up for yourself. Know that as long as the relationship is meeting your needs, you will be willing to give her 110%. Feel how well everything is working out and how making the right decisions is just comes naturally. And with this attitude, watch as your relationship flourishes in every area.
Begin the process of decline by allowing challenges at work to take part of your focus from your wife to solving work problems. Allow work to take more and more of your energy. Start to doubt yourself as you struggle with challenges. Start allowing others to control your life by allowing this doubt to make you more and more dependent on their direction instead of knowing where you want to go.
Start letting your wife see that you are struggling. Allow your own fears to overcome you and possess your thoughts so you have less and less connection time to give to your wife. Reject your wife’s attempts to help you and view her advice as “not understanding” your situation. Start making the transition from meeting her needs to meeting the needs of your career.
Let fear continue to rob you of closeness with your wife. Make your fear of losing your job so large that it takes up most of your thoughts.
Start feeling irritated when your wife tries to help you. Start to give her things in place of yourself. Start rationalizing that giving her things is your way of telling her you love her. Start to believe she doesn’t know what she is talking about when she says “things” aren’t important to her. Start to doubt your relationship with her. Start to feel lost and less connected to her.
Feel like you know there is something wrong, but that you can’t put your finger on it. Put little effort into really getting to the bottom of this feeling. Try to ignore it and say to yourself it will work itself out.
Have a baby for the primary reason that you think it will make up for what you can’t give her. Think that by doing so, it will give her what she really wants, and stay clueless about her real needs for approval, appreciation, love and consideration.
When the baby comes, don’t connect with wanting to serve your wife’s new needs. Instead, consider it “her responsibility” and don’t take full ownership of the responsibility to be aware of their needs. Feel like you are doing your job by providing an income, and that should be enough.
Go back to focusing on work. Allow work to give you a sense of accomplishment and self worth instead of gaining that by learning how to meet the new needs of the family. Remove the fear of not doing things right with the baby by passing the responsibilities on to your wife. Continue to allow the problems at work to be more important than the problems at home because you are afraid how it would look if you were not able to provide if you lose your job. Let the opinion of others, the unresolved fears you have control you.
As you become better at your job, start to feel the pluses of work more attractive, and the problems of home unattractive. When your wife starts to voice her needs, rationalize that those are her problems to solve, that you have your own set of problems that are more important to you. Start to make her feel less and less important in your life by focusing most of your energy receiving respect at work instead of home.
As you watch things deteriorating in your sex life, start to want to control. Start to want to fix things at home like you fix things at work. Take charge of the ”problem” by believing the solutions can be found outside of yourself. Start to create more of a division of responsibilities in your mind – these are my problems, those are your problems. Become irritated when your wife needs your help solving “her” problems. Start to resent her for not being able to solve “her” problems on her own which take away your energy to solve your problems. Do not connect with the fact that the problems at home are your problems too.
Start to cling to sex as a way of regaining the closeness you feel you are losing with your wife. Start to resent that your wife doesn’t want to provide you with the “restoration” you need. Keep your focus on yourself, your needs, and get upset when she doesn’t want to meet them. Be sure you hold all this in so that it can erupt in other non-specific ways that do not directly relate to the problem.
Start to want to get away from your family with others so you can have some fun. Feel like you deserve it. Start to make the fun activities more important to you and rationalize them as “needing to get away”. Become irritated when your wife calls to tell you “her” problems and see it as inconsiderate on her part. Ask yourself “why can’t see just leave me alone for a few days? Doesn’t she understand that I “need” this and will be a better person for “us” if I can get away from problems and regroup?.
When you get home from your “alone time” feeling refreshed, ignore how tired your wife is. Say to yourself, “she could get away and relax like I did, but she won’t do it”. Fail to realize that she does not trust you to take care of the kids because she has not seen you prove that you can, and to go away would be equally or more stressful than staying home.
Start making jokes to your friends and co-workers when your wife calls. Get them to think she is nagging you when she calls. Do not understand that she feels overwhelmed and feels alone in her troubles. Ignore her cries for help and continue to believe they are “her” problems.
Put more and more of your energy into work. Meet more and more of your needs from work. Make the family a problem, and work a solution. Start to sense more resentment from your wife. Start to feel hassled by your wife. Start to feel drained when you come home, with no energy left to give to the family because you used most of it at work, and you allow the resentment to a “missed managed household” to rob you of every joy that would come from helping your wife at home.
Trudge through each day like a slave, just getting through. Start to loose any feelings of joy as you begin to sense things aren’t going well despite all the efforts you have been making.
Start to feel confused. Let this confusion disable you from connecting with any emotions. Start to feel lost, aimless.
Turn to counseling, turn to God, turn to friends as you seek to overcome your “lost” feelings. Become frustrated with yourself as you just can’t seem to “get it” because you have become lost in the process. Start to feel like you want to give up.
Let your wife see more and more of your hopelessness. Feel less and less like a man, and more and more like a failure.
Take all of your blessings for granted. Continue to buy things for the quick fix of joy, only to find that it quickly fades and then becomes a “maintenance” issue, another problem among the many you already feel you have.
Argue more and more with your wife, failing still to get out of your lost feelings and wanting her to fix you. And when she gives you advise, resent it because you can’t see that she is trying to help you. Instead, see it as another way you have failed.
Withdraw from the family as you become more and more frustrated at your inability to solve and control your problem. Become more controlling of your wife as an attempt to gain control of your life.
Fail to see what this is doing to your wife and family. Fail to feel her pain as she watches her husband self-destruct and can do nothing to help him. Miss it when you start to snap at her, criticize her, and control her, because your own life is out of control.
Continue to believe everyone else is the problem because you are blind and confused and trying to maintain some level of sanity.
Let fear control you, making you more and more blind, more and more resentful, more and more self-focused.
Start praying to God for help.
Struggle to gain your wife’s approval by being overly helpful. Lose your sense of balance in the relationship. Start to ignore your own needs because you think they are selfish and you want to “prove” to your wife that you aren’t as selfish as she says you are.
Desperately try to get back up on your horse so your wife respects you again. Become increasingly frustrated as no matter what you do, it does not achieve the respect of your wife. Resent even more as your efforts fail. Become angry, irritable, and more distant each time your efforts go unrewarded, and repeat the cycle day after day, week after week, month after month.
Hurt your children as you put your pride first by arguing with your wife about respect over the effects on them.
Move out in an effort to stop arguing, and continue to search, but not find the answers because you do not know how to change.
Show your wife that despite your physical absence, nothing is changing because you still feel you need her respect to feel complete.
Continue to ignore her true needs, even as a friend, and insist in your mind and actions that you still deserve sex.
Drive her so far from you that her only choice is to end the relationship in a last attempt for peace in her life.
Once you have done all this, read Calle’s books, and pray that finally you can find a path back to wholeness again. Pray that you have reached the end of the misery and the beginning of a new era. Pray that you will allow yourself to get better by understanding and doing the right things to bring you out of your hole. Then, get busy.
Find a woman you can communicate with and connect to on a deeply spiritual and physical level. Find value in her. Be interested learning about her and be genuinely interested in what she is saying. Show her that you love giving her all the time and energy you can to meet any and every need she has. Gain her complete respect and admiration, and return these things with your desire to care for her.
Be self-confident. Know who you are. Stand up for yourself. Know that as long as the relationship is meeting your needs, you will be willing to give her 110%. Feel how well everything is working out and how making the right decisions is just comes naturally. And with this attitude, watch as your relationship flourishes in every area.
Begin the process of decline by allowing challenges at work to take part of your focus from your wife to solving work problems. Allow work to take more and more of your energy. Start to doubt yourself as you struggle with challenges. Start allowing others to control your life by allowing this doubt to make you more and more dependent on their direction instead of knowing where you want to go.
Start letting your wife see that you are struggling. Allow your own fears to overcome you and possess your thoughts so you have less and less connection time to give to your wife. Reject your wife’s attempts to help you and view her advice as “not understanding” your situation. Start making the transition from meeting her needs to meeting the needs of your career.
Let fear continue to rob you of closeness with your wife. Make your fear of losing your job so large that it takes up most of your thoughts.
Start feeling irritated when your wife tries to help you. Start to give her things in place of yourself. Start rationalizing that giving her things is your way of telling her you love her. Start to believe she doesn’t know what she is talking about when she says “things” aren’t important to her. Start to doubt your relationship with her. Start to feel lost and less connected to her.
Feel like you know there is something wrong, but that you can’t put your finger on it. Put little effort into really getting to the bottom of this feeling. Try to ignore it and say to yourself it will work itself out.
Have a baby for the primary reason that you think it will make up for what you can’t give her. Think that by doing so, it will give her what she really wants, and stay clueless about her real needs for approval, appreciation, love and consideration.
When the baby comes, don’t connect with wanting to serve your wife’s new needs. Instead, consider it “her responsibility” and don’t take full ownership of the responsibility to be aware of their needs. Feel like you are doing your job by providing an income, and that should be enough.
Go back to focusing on work. Allow work to give you a sense of accomplishment and self worth instead of gaining that by learning how to meet the new needs of the family. Remove the fear of not doing things right with the baby by passing the responsibilities on to your wife. Continue to allow the problems at work to be more important than the problems at home because you are afraid how it would look if you were not able to provide if you lose your job. Let the opinion of others, the unresolved fears you have control you.
As you become better at your job, start to feel the pluses of work more attractive, and the problems of home unattractive. When your wife starts to voice her needs, rationalize that those are her problems to solve, that you have your own set of problems that are more important to you. Start to make her feel less and less important in your life by focusing most of your energy receiving respect at work instead of home.
As you watch things deteriorating in your sex life, start to want to control. Start to want to fix things at home like you fix things at work. Take charge of the ”problem” by believing the solutions can be found outside of yourself. Start to create more of a division of responsibilities in your mind – these are my problems, those are your problems. Become irritated when your wife needs your help solving “her” problems. Start to resent her for not being able to solve “her” problems on her own which take away your energy to solve your problems. Do not connect with the fact that the problems at home are your problems too.
Start to cling to sex as a way of regaining the closeness you feel you are losing with your wife. Start to resent that your wife doesn’t want to provide you with the “restoration” you need. Keep your focus on yourself, your needs, and get upset when she doesn’t want to meet them. Be sure you hold all this in so that it can erupt in other non-specific ways that do not directly relate to the problem.
Start to want to get away from your family with others so you can have some fun. Feel like you deserve it. Start to make the fun activities more important to you and rationalize them as “needing to get away”. Become irritated when your wife calls to tell you “her” problems and see it as inconsiderate on her part. Ask yourself “why can’t see just leave me alone for a few days? Doesn’t she understand that I “need” this and will be a better person for “us” if I can get away from problems and regroup?.
When you get home from your “alone time” feeling refreshed, ignore how tired your wife is. Say to yourself, “she could get away and relax like I did, but she won’t do it”. Fail to realize that she does not trust you to take care of the kids because she has not seen you prove that you can, and to go away would be equally or more stressful than staying home.
Start making jokes to your friends and co-workers when your wife calls. Get them to think she is nagging you when she calls. Do not understand that she feels overwhelmed and feels alone in her troubles. Ignore her cries for help and continue to believe they are “her” problems.
Put more and more of your energy into work. Meet more and more of your needs from work. Make the family a problem, and work a solution. Start to sense more resentment from your wife. Start to feel hassled by your wife. Start to feel drained when you come home, with no energy left to give to the family because you used most of it at work, and you allow the resentment to a “missed managed household” to rob you of every joy that would come from helping your wife at home.
Trudge through each day like a slave, just getting through. Start to loose any feelings of joy as you begin to sense things aren’t going well despite all the efforts you have been making.
Start to feel confused. Let this confusion disable you from connecting with any emotions. Start to feel lost, aimless.
Turn to counseling, turn to God, turn to friends as you seek to overcome your “lost” feelings. Become frustrated with yourself as you just can’t seem to “get it” because you have become lost in the process. Start to feel like you want to give up.
Let your wife see more and more of your hopelessness. Feel less and less like a man, and more and more like a failure.
Take all of your blessings for granted. Continue to buy things for the quick fix of joy, only to find that it quickly fades and then becomes a “maintenance” issue, another problem among the many you already feel you have.
Argue more and more with your wife, failing still to get out of your lost feelings and wanting her to fix you. And when she gives you advise, resent it because you can’t see that she is trying to help you. Instead, see it as another way you have failed.
Withdraw from the family as you become more and more frustrated at your inability to solve and control your problem. Become more controlling of your wife as an attempt to gain control of your life.
Fail to see what this is doing to your wife and family. Fail to feel her pain as she watches her husband self-destruct and can do nothing to help him. Miss it when you start to snap at her, criticize her, and control her, because your own life is out of control.
Continue to believe everyone else is the problem because you are blind and confused and trying to maintain some level of sanity.
Let fear control you, making you more and more blind, more and more resentful, more and more self-focused.
Start praying to God for help.
Struggle to gain your wife’s approval by being overly helpful. Lose your sense of balance in the relationship. Start to ignore your own needs because you think they are selfish and you want to “prove” to your wife that you aren’t as selfish as she says you are.
Desperately try to get back up on your horse so your wife respects you again. Become increasingly frustrated as no matter what you do, it does not achieve the respect of your wife. Resent even more as your efforts fail. Become angry, irritable, and more distant each time your efforts go unrewarded, and repeat the cycle day after day, week after week, month after month.
Hurt your children as you put your pride first by arguing with your wife about respect over the effects on them.
Move out in an effort to stop arguing, and continue to search, but not find the answers because you do not know how to change.
Show your wife that despite your physical absence, nothing is changing because you still feel you need her respect to feel complete.
Continue to ignore her true needs, even as a friend, and insist in your mind and actions that you still deserve sex.
Drive her so far from you that her only choice is to end the relationship in a last attempt for peace in her life.
Once you have done all this, read Calle’s books, and pray that finally you can find a path back to wholeness again. Pray that you have reached the end of the misery and the beginning of a new era. Pray that you will allow yourself to get better by understanding and doing the right things to bring you out of your hole. Then, get busy.