If I were your wife, then what I’d want you to do would be to remark at some point while trying to bring me out of a funk, “This wouldn’t have been my first instinct, but it really seems to make you feel better,”
My wife prefers I make the appearance into a reality, and is willing to overlook the time in between where I’m still working on making it such. Like me, she prefers an improved relationship to truth-at-all-costs.
Don’t get me wrong—we went through many years of doing it your way, which also used to be my way.
And it really, really sucked.
I had argued for doing things that way, because in one of my first relationships, I was hit with a bombshell when my newly-ex told me that she’d had sex with me because she wanted me to like her, not because she wanted to.
At that point, I went all radical honesty in my relationships, because I never wanted to be responsible for someone else doing something they didn’t like or want, just for my approval. And it made a mess of several years of my relationship with my wife, because we were both unhappy and unsatisfied, because I insisted that we be “honest” in this fashion.
Fortunately, we eventually came to our senses and decided to do something about it. Granted, it’s only in recent years that we’ve had the technology that’s allowed us both to start making the necessary changes in ourselves, not only so that we don’t have to pretend, but also so that we don’t care any more if the other person is “just doing that to make me happy”.
Because, as it turns out, doing something to make someone else happy is actually a good thing, as long as the person is happy to be doing it. If I’m happy that she’s happy, then she’s happy I’m shopping with her. ’Nuff said.
My wife prefers I make the appearance into a reality, and is willing to overlook the time in between where I’m still working on making it such. Like me, she prefers an improved relationship to truth-at-all-costs.
Don’t get me wrong—we went through many years of doing it your way, which also used to be my way.
And it really, really sucked.
I had argued for doing things that way, because in one of my first relationships, I was hit with a bombshell when my newly-ex told me that she’d had sex with me because she wanted me to like her, not because she wanted to.
At that point, I went all radical honesty in my relationships, because I never wanted to be responsible for someone else doing something they didn’t like or want, just for my approval. And it made a mess of several years of my relationship with my wife, because we were both unhappy and unsatisfied, because I insisted that we be “honest” in this fashion.
Fortunately, we eventually came to our senses and decided to do something about it. Granted, it’s only in recent years that we’ve had the technology that’s allowed us both to start making the necessary changes in ourselves, not only so that we don’t have to pretend, but also so that we don’t care any more if the other person is “just doing that to make me happy”.
Because, as it turns out, doing something to make someone else happy is actually a good thing, as long as the person is happy to be doing it. If I’m happy that she’s happy, then she’s happy I’m shopping with her. ’Nuff said.